Jeremy Clarkson sparks PC ‘outrage’ in criticism of gun control antics

One of the advantages of Sitemeter is the ability to see what people are searching for on the blogs.  When old Jeremy Clarkson posts come up it can generally be assumed that he has ‘caused mass outrage’.  In the eyes of the press, Jeremy never seems to cause less than outrage, although one of these days perhaps we will see that he has sparked huge ambivalence, but that is unlikely. Whatever it is that he sparks is always described in terms of large numbers.

Usually it relates to some comment, tweet, or whatever, that has offended the panty waisted, PC whipped, wusses of the professionally outraged or insulted class of sensitive new age sooks.  These people are so good at doing their thing that they can reach a stage of absolute mortification quicker than Wyatt Earp could draw a six-shooter.

His latest sin, seems to be a cynical reference to gun control advocates by suggesting van control in the wake of an incident involving some idiot performing hit and runs in Cardiff, which was certainly, a tragic event: 

TOP Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has sparked outrage on Twitter with a remark in the wake of the hit-and-run rampage in Wales.  The outspoken TV presenter, 52, posted a remark on the social networking site comparing vans to guns. 

He wrote: “Following the absolutely tragic events in Cardiff yesterday, will there now be calls for tighter van controls?” 

He followed it up minutes later with a second tweet: “Serious point. If someone runs amok with a gun, gun laws are ­discussed. If someone runs amok with a van....” 

His comments provoked outraged responses from other users. Brian Paget (@brianpaget) wrote: “The horrific events in Cardiff yesterday give a glimpse of what society would look like if Jeremy Clarkson was Prime Minister.”

While the event he referred to is so insane as to defy description, Clarkson has a valid point.  Gun control advocates have no moral objections, compunction, or consideration towards grieving families to press their cause in the wake of a shooting incident.  They can drag the bodies of victims across the parliamentary chambers and press offices of the world at a speed that would leave a Benghazi Jihadist breathless.

There is a breathtaking double standard in the selective outrage expressed toward Clarkson when the ghoulish actions of gun control frantics are considered.  Given the context, Clarkson’s statement is quite reasonable and temperate.

Jeremy for PM; now there’s a thought.

Presidential debate 2012 #3

Mitt Romney should be fairly pleased with his performance in the third debate today.  A challenger goes into a foreign policy pretty much as an underdog, with the incumbent holding most of the aces and the inside knowledge.  It is damn hard to win it as a challenger, but a slipup of any sort is the makings of losing badly.

Romney managed to steer clear of foul-ups and at the same time managed to make a good impression as someone the ability to do the job.  The President attempted to paint him as a newbie with little skill, knowledge, and no experience but only succeeded in appearing condescending against a man who kept his cool in the face of it.

President Obama really needed a big win from this one to have a chance of regaining the momentum in the campaign, but failed to do much more than come off with a tie.  Romney has probably come off best by looking like a sound alternative to the electorate, and looked more comfortable and at ease than the President.

Most of the immediate polls gave it to Obama, although one on whether respondents would be likely to change their vote on the debate result gave Romney a win.  These polls though are only an indication of the immediate knee-jerk response and are probably not much of an indication.  Polls over the next few days will tell the story.

One of the problems though, is that it was essentially a debate between two guys who are essentially promising to do pretty much the same thing only more competently.  The whole thing would have been improved by tossing Gary Johnson into the mix to put the cat among the pigeons with an actual alternative.

After the last two debates it was nice to see a real moderator at work, even if he did fluff it a bit with his “Obama bin Laden” remark.

Swan’s mini budget ‘savings' mainly tax increases

… we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.” – Thomas Paine

Cartoon: By Nicholson 

‘World’s best Treasurer', Wayne Swan’s original budget for this year was initially treated with skepticism over his contention that Chinese growth would continue virtually unabated despite evidence to the contrary.  Since then, revenue has declined dramatically, resulting in a shortfall that has been obvious for nearly as long as the budget has been out there.

As result WBT Swan has announced a ‘revision’ in which he has found what he calls ‘savings’ of $16.4 billion.  The trouble with this is that apart from a reduction of the ‘baby bonus’ for second and subsequent children, all of the others are tax increases of reductions in areas like the Medicare Rebate, which will probably take people out of private insurance into the public sector.

Probably, the worst of these measures is forcing big companies to pay their corporate tax monthly, which will raise the take by $8.3 Billion over four years.  In doing so the amount of investment capital of these companies is reduced along with a substantial increase in compliance costs.

Referring to increased taxes as savings is not just an Australian phenomenon, but is used as a sugar coated poison pill worldwide.  To the man in the street, it may, and is dishonest and deliberately deceitful; however, when the attitude of the state is factored in it may not be strictly the case.

In the main governments do not see any limit on their powers of taxation, other than in some cases Constitutional requirements that can usually be bypassed with clever wording and legal phraseology.  Indeed, former French Finance Minister Jean Baptiste Colbert described the art of taxation as, “So plucking the goose as to get the most feathers with the least hissing.”

In the eyes of Wayne Swan, he is entitled to take whatever he wants from whomever he wants, whenever he wants.  Given this view, it is reasonable to assume that he sees that portion of what the taxpayer gets to keep above what he feels he can take is actually wasted.  To him, a tax increase is actually a preventative measure designed to reduce funds that the taxpayer might otherwise splurge on himself.  It therefore constitutes a saving in his eyes.

This is not the most innovative excuse for a tax rise.  Those old enough to remember the election of the Hawke Keating government will recall that one of their earliest acts, was a tax hike which it was claimed was to ‘reduce the excessive liquidity’ out there in the community.  Apparently, we had so much money sloshing about in our pockets it was causing inflation.

Rudd likely to oust Gillard

 A new poll touted as indicating that Labor could win under Kevin Rudd is only the latest setback for Julia Gillard who is battling the growing disillusionment in Labor ranks with her inept decision making, along with the Thompson and Slipper scandals.  While the poll only represents three ‘key marginal’ electorates, it is significant that a left wing union is asking the question, and that it has been ‘leaked’.

Rudd was tossed out of the leadership when unions and labor MPs came to the conclusion that the party had little chance of winning under his continuing leadership.  Any nostalgia for Rudd is likely to be short lived and similar in nature to the George Bush ‘Miss me yet’ posters in the States.  It is telling that out of the whole Labor caucus, Rudd who has been tried and rejected is the only person considered for the job.

Gillard’s leadership has been such a disaster that the ‘drovers dog’ could do better: 

… A Rudd return would boost Labor's primary vote by 18 per cent in Blair, 15 per cent in Moreton and 9 per cent in Greenway. 

In Deakin, in Ms Gillard's home state of Victoria, Mr Rudd boosts Labor's primary vote by only one point. Under Ms Gillard, Labor is already on track to win the seat, lifting its two-party-preferred lead to 53-47 per cent compared with 52.4-47.6 at the 2010 election. 

According to the poll of 450 people in each of the four seats, Mr Rudd is more popular than Ms Gillard with Labor voters, men, women and both sexes over the age of 40. 

Mr Rudd's primary vote of 47 per cent among men outpolls Ms Gillard's 34 per cent by 13 points. With women, Mr Rudd's 49 per cent primary vote compares with 40 per cent for Ms Gillard. 

Mr Rudd (59 per cent) also polled 17 per cent higher than Ms Gillard (42 per cent) among swinging voters. He held double-digit leads over Ms Gillard in other demographics, including trade-qualified, university-educated, union member, people earning less than $80,000, people identifying themselves as being under financial pressure, and people with children at home. …   

It is difficult to assess why those three electorates were chosen, as currently around 60-70% of Labor seats could be described as marginal, and any seat it could lose can be described as ‘key’ as any loss would put them out of government.

One advantage Rudd would have over Gillard is that Conroy, Roxon, Plibersek, Crean, and others would refuse to serve under him, which is a big plus.  Treasurer, Wayne Swan has criticized Rudd but is uncommitted on serving him.  He would most likely serve as having no leadership potential of his own, it is his only option.  Peter Garret has said he wouldn’t serve under Rudd, but it is uncertain whether this is his own decision or Rudd’s.

Ouch; No global warming for 16 years

A new report from the British weather service’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Britain, indicates that there has been no global warming since 1997.  From 1997 till now, the temperatures have remained stable, which is about the same length of time that the warming trend from 1980 till 1997 occurred.

 

Prior to this temperatures had been stable or declining for about forty years.  In uncharacteristic fashion, this one was quietly released online with no accompanying press release.  Normally new research results are presented to a fanfare, massive publicity and were it possible, a triumphal march of the climate scientists.

Phil Jones though insists that despite the sixteen years of rising temperatures being a clear indication that the earth was in an uncontrollable greenhouse warming and that unless we submitted to everything the greenies demanded of us we were all going to be cooked, the sixteen years of stable temperatures is too short a period to provide convincing evidence: 

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.  The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures. 

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years. 

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued  quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.  This stands in sharp contrast  to the release of the previous  figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year. 

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions. 

Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’. 

Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand the impact of ‘natural variability’ – factors such as long-term ocean temperature cycles and changes in the output of the sun. However, he said he was still convinced that the current decade would end up significantly warmer than the previous two. 

The regular data collected on global temperature is called Hadcrut 4, as it is jointly issued by the Met Office’s Hadley Centre and Prof Jones’s Climatic Research Unit.  Since 1880, when worldwide industrialisation began to gather pace and reliable statistics were first collected on a global scale, the world has warmed by 0.75 degrees Celsius. 

Some scientists have claimed that this rate of warming is set to increase hugely without drastic cuts to carbon-dioxide emissions, predicting a catastrophic increase of up to a further five degrees Celsius by the end of the century. 

The new figures were released as the Government made clear that it would ‘bend’ its own carbon-dioxide rules and build new power stations to try to combat the threat of blackouts.  

At last week’s Conservative Party Conference, the new Energy Minister, John Hayes, promised that ‘the high-flown theories of bourgeois Left-wing academics will not override the interests of ordinary people who need fuel for heat, light and transport – energy policies, you might say, for the many, not the few’ – a pledge that has triggered fury from green activists, who fear reductions in the huge subsidies given to wind-turbine firms. …

It is reasonable to assume that this report will make little difference in the way we see things happening; the manner of its release is designed to ensure it receives as little oxygen as possible.  There are now whole industries designed around the modern form of carpet bagging based on the global warming theme and these have a powerful lobby.  Thousands if not millions of professional people have invested their future in this scam.

The killer is that governments worldwide have an enormous amount of political capital invested in harvesting the moral authority that this cause gives them.  In short; they have painted themselves into a corner and either can’t, wont, or cannot afford to withdraw from their positions.  Once a party accepts an idea into its ideology, facts become an unwelcome distraction.

Do not expect to see headlines anytime soon saying:

Gillard moves to repeal carbon tax

Apologizes to Abbott over calling him a troglodyte for saying “GW is bulls**t

Waste; Bligh Government’s chickens come home to roost.

It is sometimes claimed that a government has a responsibility to do those things that the private sector either can’t do, or won’t do.  In the case of the late and unlamented Bligh Government in Queensland, responsibility was also taken for doing those things that the private sector would never be crazy enough to do.

Bligh took over the Premier’s role from Peter Beattie at a time when the profligate spending of that administration had put the state in the position where it was about to lose it’s AAA credit rating.  She called an early election and secured another term before that happened, and then spent wilder than ever before.  Some of the more idiotic items are still coming to light.

We have dealt here before on the $6 million Brisbane ski jumping centre of excellence.  Queensland owing to its tropical climate puts locals who want to compete at the top levels of this sport at a serious disadvantage by not having snow.  Rather than just tell them to go somewhere where there is snow, it was decided to build them an artificial jump complete with ski lift to get them up there. 

The arts expenditure has to be seen to be believed, with over a million spent on a bronze elephant standing on its head, which is supposed to illustrate an Aboriginal legend despite no elephants ever existing in Australia, but the New Zealand sculptor probably wasn’t aware of that.  As a bonus, a ‘contemplation’ chair comes with it.  Perhaps that at least will be useful. 

Another $700,000 was spent on an egg shaped pile of rocks down the back end of the Connondale National park in a relatively inaccessible area.  There are some nice pictures of it though.

Some other items are: 

… $10,000 spent on T-shirts bearing the logo, "Buy Local - Back Queensland", which were meant to assist with the 2011 flood recovery. Public servants were ordered to cut the clothing tags out to try to hide the fact they were "made in Bangladesh. 

In another embarrassment, 58,000 Travelsmart backpacks found "gathering dust" in a Brendale warehouse. 

… expenditure of $43,000 to install 24 electric carparks in Adelaide St despite having no plans to purchase electric cars.

And that’s before we get into the real waste like the Health Payroll debacle, which has been described as the equivalent of buying a Mars Bar for $400.

Yep; we can be pretty certain that private enterprise would not do that; could not do that without a shareholders revolt, and definitely would not be insane enough to attempt it.

Johnson Campaign asks D.C. Federal Court to Intervene in Presidential Debates

Argues Former New Mexico Governor Has Met Criteria

Citing survey data showing former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson has in fact achieved the narrow criteria required for inclusion in the Monday debate, earning more than 40 percent of the vote in "head-to-head" polls against President Barack Obama, the Libertarian Party nominee's campaign today filed a complaint in Federal Court in the District of Columbia maintaining that Johnson has, in fact, met the Commission on Presidential Debates' criteria for inclusion. The complaint asks the Court to compel the CPD to include Johnson.

"The CPD requirements say Johnson 'must register support of at least 15 percent of the vote in five recent polls,'" Johnson campaign counsel Alicia Dearn said in a statement. "Nowhere does it say those polls must include three candidates. Indeed, the polls used by the CPD to exclude Johnson test only two candidates even though Gov. Johnson is on the ballot in 48 states. We argue that Gov. Johnson has met the specific and narrow criteria laid out by the CPD.

"Included in the two-party 'deal' struck by the Republicans and Democrats are the criteria by which candidates are invited to participate. As a two-term governor who is on more than enough states' ballots to be elected in the Electoral College, the decision to exclude Gov. Johnson can only be based upon the CPD's self-determined polling criterion — using polls that are 'head-to-head' surveys between Romney and Obama. Who decided that? The CPD rules do not specify the number of candidates to be tested in the poll. Using their own methodology, polls that ask voters' preferences between the President and Gov. Johnson are equally valid, and as we have demonstrated, will show more than enough support for Gov. Johnson to meet the CPD's arbitrary 15 percent requirement. The same would clearly be the result when Gov. Johnson is surveyed against only Gov. Romney. Nowhere does it say that only the Republican and the Democrat should be pitted against one another," Dearn said.

"It must be repeated that the official-sounding Commission on Presidential Debates is not official at all. It is a private organization created by the Republican and Demo cratic Parties for the clear and admitted purpose of controlling the presidential debate process. Everything from the schedule to the participants to the water glasses on stage are determined by way of an MOU between the two parties, to the exclusion of everyone else.

Two debates have already happened, and have excluded Gov. Johnson. We can't change that — no matter how unfair. However, the CPD has one last opportunity to do the right thing for Monday night's debate, which we have asked them to do via a letter transmitted Thursday. However, we are not holding our breath for an answer, and have asked the Federal Court to help them do the right thing. Also, we make it clear in our complaint that this issue does not end Monday night, and that it is not just about Gov. Johnson. We are also asking for a permanent injunction to require that the CPD's criteria be changed for future elections to correct the organization's fundamental unfairness.

"The American people need to understand that the presidential debates are televised productions of the Republican and Democratic Parties. Nothing more. And those productions are designed to exclude alternative voices and ignore the simple fact that one-third of the electorate does not belong to their exclusive clubs."

A copy of the Johnson campaign's complaint and letter to the CPD are available here. 

For more information about Gary Johnson, go to www.garyjohnson2012.com.