cut to the bone …

Labor’s new description of Coalition polices is a good one, I hope they keep it through thick and thin. It is a feature of why I would vote for the Coalition. I WANT them to cut to the bone. Starting with the Climate Change Department. In fact, amputate completely. Then the CSIRO climate astrologists. Catallaxy wonders what the many thousands of public servants actually do: 12 per cent superannuation and all that

So Julia Gillard has attacked Tony Abbott’s budget reply

And what he has chosen to do is to take an axe to working people’s superannuation

by delaying the increase of the 9 per cent SGC to 12 per cent.

That’s absolute balony. The increase in the SGC was coming from the workers’ paypackets in any case. I only hope that the deferal to the increase is made permanent by a Coalition Government. As I wrote previously, it is a very poor policy. Let’s stop this further incursion by the nanny state.

In a sign of desperation, perhaps under the advice of John Hewson, Labor is about to embark on a scare campaign on the GST.

But all Tony Abbott has promised is a wide ranging tax white paper which would then lead to a second term agenda. Amongst those changes might, theoretically, be a change to the GST with the concurrence of the States. But such changes (if any) would be taken to the electorate prior to the next (2016) election. Exactly how John Howard and Peter Costello took their tax changes to the electorate in the 1998 election.

This is the honest way of making major changes of position.

Labor’s way – Gillard’s way – is to make a solemn promise (eg the carbon tax) and then break it.

I hope Tony Abbott takes heart from these words of Lex (Financial Times, 16 May 2013):

The luxury (or curse) of large modern offices is that so many people can spend so much time in meetings or on Facebook. This also explains the curious phenomenon that mass firings do not tend to do any damage. What on earth did the 30-odd thousand bankers eliminated from HSBC since 2011 do all day long? The same question might be asked about the potential 14,000 new job cuts announced yesterday by chief executive Stuart Gulliver.

What on earth do many of the hundreds of thousands of public servants do all day?

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gum trees in the Kimberley …

… Over 100 species from the Myrtaceae Family (gum trees and paperbarks) grow in the Kimberley and are under threat should the Myrtle rust infecting the Eastern States reach here. Next week I will try to attend a seminar to discuss this in Perth. It will be devastating should it turn up here. Quarantine of seedlings is essential.

Eucalyptus pruinosa

Eucalyptus pruinosa

Eucalyptus miniata

Eucalyptus miniata

Euc.lirata 1

Eucalyptus lirata

Euc.pruinosa fl

Eucalyptus pruinosa

Corymbia zygophylla, Broome Bloodwood

Corymbia zygophylla, Broome Bloodwood

nests inhabitingGhost Gum, Corymbia bella

nests inhabitingGhost Gum, Corymbia bella

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the boab tree … Kimberley icon

…Kimberley boab trees, Adansonia gregorii, click to enlarge …

Adansonia gregorii insert

Boab nuts

067

Boab tree near Roebuck Bay, Broome

Cnv0173website - 156

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howling at the pussycat …

The clowns have the megaphone …

Zeg’s Take

The True end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction & he, who writes honestly is no more enemy to the offender, than the physician to the patient, when he prescribes harsh remedies to an inveterate disease.”                                                                                                        John Dryden

The Howl And The Pussycat

May 14, 2013

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Save South African frogs

Reblogged from Dear Kitty. Some blog:

Click to visit the original post

From SAPA news agency in South Africa:

South Africa: Endangered Frogs Get Luxury Suite At Pretoria Zoo

17 May 2013

Johannesburg — The Pretoria zoo is going to start a breeding programme with 10 critically endangered Pickersgill's Reed Frogs to help save them from extinction, Beeld reported on Friday.

A special "frog room" had been equipped for the six-month project, the zoo's reptile expert Mike Adams told the newspaper.

Read more… 160 more words

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the Swan budget prescription …

Dr Swan’s Prescription


When the Treasurer sees a problem, he is eager to set things right — well, ha

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the Labor ship stinks …

Not a sinking ship yet, but a stinking ship that we have to have around until September. Another one gets into the lifeboat:

Even a former Labor president now embraces Tony Abbott:

FORMER Labor Party national president Warren Mundine is poised to assume a powerful position in indigenous affairs under a conservative government after forging an extraordinary alliance with Tony Abbott that he declared was “bigger than partisan politics”…

Mr Mundine, who quit the Labor Party six months ago, has endorsed Mr Abbott’s vision for Aboriginal Australia and confirmed he stands ready to serve a future prime minister in the quest to end indigenous disparity, regardless of that leader’s political stripe.

“If the Prime Minister offers me a job I would seriously consider it and possibly take it,” he said.

By “the Prime Minister”, Mundine means Abbott. Gillard is history already.

Another former Labor President is facing over a hundred criminal charges.

400 x 332 · 30 kB · jpeg·… Need to Do What We Can to Keep the Ship From Sinking » sinking ship

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how far did the IRS go? …

This far, says the Jawa Report:

While IRS Suppressed Shadowy Conservative Groups
Obama Supporters Shadowy Liberal Groups Skated Through Approval Process

You know I hadn’t really realized the extent of the IRS interference in the political process until I saw these graphics yesterday on ABCNEWS: [...]

MORE:

“THEY KNEW.”

drudgetheyknew

From the comments: “Yes, the Obama IRS delayed Tea Party group applications to limit their political activities and covered it up to win an election. That is obvious, inarguable, and criminal.”

Posted at 5:35 pm by Glenn Reynolds http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/169096/” rel=”bookmark”>

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impeach, impeach, impeach …

Overdosing on popcorn now, the fun has started. When you’ve lost Peggy Noonan (update), you may as well give up. Denis Miller too, on O’Reilly, His best line,
“A couple more weeks like this Obama’s going to be claiming he’s Kenyan!”

Steve Kates is just one who thinks He will be impeached.

Until today I thought he might get through it, even with the media more and more offside. But now I think the flow is in the other direction, and it is this article that has convinced me. Titled, “The IRS Scandal Started at the Top” and from The Wall Street Journal, it describes the Obama modus operandi in getting the IRS to attack opposition groups. Here is the killer passage:

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. “He put a target on our backs, and he’s now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?” asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a “wealthy individual” with a “less-than-reputable record.” Other donors were described as having been “on the wrong side of the law.”

This was the Obama version of the phone call—put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. Vandersloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.

The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn’t account for what the president’s vilification has done to his business and reputation.

This will have been magnified thousands of times over for any group that might in any way have been a threat to the President. Start a Tea Party group, here comes the IRS. Donate to Romney, here comes the IRS. Oppose the President, here comes the IRS. This is the worst scandal in American history, one that goes to the heart of democratic governance. If the Americans do not root this corruption out, American democracy is a sham, and everyone will know it.

Obama must go.

Peggy Noonan update: From her latest column with the title, “This is no ordinary scandal: Political abuse of the IRS threatens the basic integrity of our government“:

What happened at the IRS is the government’s essential business. The IRS case deserves and calls out for an independent counsel, fully armed with all that position’s powers. Only then will stables that badly need to be cleaned, be cleaned. Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don’t, the politicization of the IRS will continue—forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn’t stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again.

You can already see the punches being pulled. The issue is not the integrity of the IRS, it is the integrity of the President of the United States. When Henry II cried, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome monk?”, it was he who had to beg forgiveness, not those minions who took him at his word.

More, and a lot more at Pajama Media, A Degree of Malevolence

Everything that could never happen, all that was said to be impossible is suddenly upon us.

obamafront

Heh, the IRS softball team, is called The Cheaters …

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tree rings = temperature? … “preposterous”

CO2 and carbon is the stuff of life I keep repeating, now comes more proof that anything else is just rubbish. Tree rings a proxy for temperature? Yeah right … Thanks Dr Butina.

Posted in Climate, comedy, Environment, science, technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment