Oh Shit

From the "you have to be joking files".

Bye bye Marcus

Disgraced former Federal Court Judge Marcus Einfeld will be sentenced on March 20 for one count of perjury and one count of lying to pervert the course of justice.



In granting Marcus conditional bail until sentencing Justice James:

...ordered Einfeld to surrender his passports, not to approach any points of departure, and to report to Waverley Police Station in Sydney every Wednesday.

Which suggests that Marcus will recieve a custodial sentence for his gross dishonesty.

Funnily enough however I think it is the public disgrace that will hurt this priggish, activist, bore the most:

His barrister, Ian Barker QC, in the former Federal Court judge's sentencing hearing in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday, cited an article from Monday's Sydney Morning Herald newspaper which, he said, contained "nasty, vicious stuff".

Mr Barker said it demonstrated that journalists like the article's author thought they had a "licence to attack" the retired judge without restraint.

Such articles were "calculated to have a result they achieve - maximum humiliation", he told the court.

Mr Barker said the "persecution of Mr Einfeld" by some sections of the media was a factor which could be taken into account when sentencing the former judge.

The "persecution" has already begun:

THE collapse of Marcus Einfeld's public standing was almost complete this week after moves to strip the disgraced judge of his last remaining honours.

The NSW Bar Association launched proceedings this week aimed at having the disgraced former Federal Court judge expelled from the legal profession.

The Council of the Order of Australia is believed to be considering whether to recommend that he be stripped of his award.

The council, which advises Governor-General Quentin Bryce on when honours should be revoked, held an all-day meeting yesterday.

All so he could dodge a speeding fine.

UPDATE:

At the start of his sentencing hearing in the crowded Sydney court today, Einfeld's lawyer asked if his client could sit behind him.

But the Crown objected and Justice Bruce James said: "Mr Einfeld, you should go in the dock."

Green-eyed red

"I think Australia generally has a serious problem with excessive executive pay and pay-outs," Mr Tanner said today.

He refused to comment on Mr Trujillo's payout, but said there was justified widespread public anger at the remuneration of top-level executives.

"We have lived through an era here and in other countries, in (the) most extreme form in the United States, where the rewards paid to executives have ballooned and where there is widespread public anger at excessive remuneration of top-level executives," he said.

It isn't public anger Lindsay, it is jealousy.

The great leap forward

Australia under Chairman Kev:

TAXPAYERS are funding "happiness" workshops designed to teach positive psychology to public servants who didn't even know they were miserable.

Sounds kind of Maoist to me.

Dick Head Releases Map

BRISBANE city-fringe dwellers have been told to get on their bikes and stop making excuses.

International design and planning company EDAW has released a ``No Excuse Zone'' map of Brisbane, which urges residents living within a 9km radius of the CBD to ride bikes to work.

The map is part of EDAW's CycleCity strategy.

EDAW landscape architect Mike Harris said No Excuse Zone maps had already been established in Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Berlin and Copenhagen.

I have a message for Mike: Fuck off - you self-righteous wanker.

Queensland Election Timing

The most eloquent explanation of Queensland's election timing to date:



Via Currency Lad

Monstrosity paid for...

Someone in the ALP has an edifice complex:


My only question is: why am I paying for it?

...controversy builds in Barcaldine, in central Queensland, over the size and shape of the state-backed memorial to the Tree of Knowledge.

Locals have nicknamed the $8 million, 18m structure "Barky's box" and "the gallows" as they grapple with the size and meaning of the monument.

Striking shearers met under the original ghost gum tree in 1891 in a gathering that eventually led to the formation of the Australian Labor Party, but the tree was poisoned in 2006.

State taxpayers contributed more than $2.5 million to the memorial in Q150 grants and roadworks costs, with funding also provided by the Federal Government and Barcaldine Regional Council ratepayers.

Could be worse... I could be a Barcaldine Regional Council ratepayer

People in glass houses

Child safety campaigner Bernadette McMenamin is upset that a conference she addressed got a bit hostile:

Ms McMenamin accused filtering opponents of spreading "hysteria" – a reaction that drew a hostile response from the room.

"Yes, there's been an awful lot of vitriol, there's been an awful lot of misinformation, and certainly I think there's been an awful lot of hysteria, and most of that hysteria is not coming from the child protection advocates, but it's coming from all these anonymous bloggers and people that write to you and just call you every name under the sun, and it's not helpful," she said.

What sort of response did she expect? Standing up at a conference and accusing the majority of people in the room of hysteria and peddling misinformation is not the best way to start a civil dialogue.

Speaking of hysteria and misinformation, here is a sentence from one of McMenamins own press releases on ISP filtering:

It would be a way to prevent the rape and exploitation of the world's most vulnerable children and it would also reduce the numbers of Australians engaging in criminal activity".

She seems to be an expert in hysteria and misinformation.

The consistency of the left

The guy who drew this (see second panel):



Is criticising the guy who drew this:



Guess which cartoon drew the ire of Al Sharpton and the left in the US and elsewhere?

I will give you a clue - it wasn't the one calling Condoleezza Rice a 'house nigga'.

So it is ok to call a black Republican woman a 'house nigga' but not to call the authours of the stimulus package - who were presumably a mixed race bunch - crazed for authoring the largest, most flawed, economic stimulus in US history?

UPDATE: Some say it was payback from Sharpton for this:



And the article which goes with it; which presents Sharpton as the professional race baiter he is.

UPDATE II: The apology from the Washington Post seems to confirm this:

...to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

WTA: Soft on Anti-Semitism

In a move that can only be described as gutless:

Organisers of the Dubai women's tennis tournament were on Friday fined 300,000 US dollars by the WTA Tour after the United Arab Emirates refused to grant a visa to Israeli player Shahar Peer, the WTA said in a statement.

"The actions taken today are intended to redress the wrongs suffered by Shahar Peer, who was victimized by an unjust policy of discrimination by the UAE," WTA Tour chairman Larry Scott said.

"These actions are also intended to send a clear message that our Tour will not tolerate discrimination of any kind and that we will never allow this situation to happen again, in the UAE or elsewhere."

If the WTA wanted to send a clear message to the tournament organisers they would cancel it.

If the WTA wants to right the wrongs suffered by Shahar Peer they would cancel it.

If the other players on the tour had any principles they would boycott it.

Can you imagine if Shahar Peer was black or a Palestinian instead of a Jew?

This is just a nod and a wink – 300k is pocket change to these clowns – by allowing the tournament to continue the WTA is condoning anti-Semitism.

Individual Responsibility

Apparently:

LABOR and the coalition are locked in a tit-for-tat battle over who should accept the blame for home owners who locked themselves into fixed mortgages just months before interest rates started falling.

No surprises who each side is blaming:

Treasurer Wayne Swan lays the blame at the feet of the former Howard Government because it presided over 10 interest rate rises.

He acknowledged that people on fixed rates were in a difficult position.

"The main reason that they are there is because interest rates went up something like 10 times under the Liberal Party," Mr Swan said.

"And, of course, many people reacted to that by fixing their rates."

And

Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey insists the Rudd Government has to take responsibility for what happened to home owners.

"The Government took exactly the wrong path in trying to deliberately slow down the economy in its so-called war against inflation at a time when there was a looming credit crisis and, obviously, very dark clouds on the horizon," he said.

"The Reserve Bank was egged on to increase interest rates by implication if not directly by the government." Mr Hockey said it was a disaster for people on fixed mortgages.

"Now, they may well be paying 400 basis points or up to 4 per cent more for their mortgage today than they would have if Kevin Rudd had not declared a losing war on inflation," he said.

I have a better idea; how about these people accept the consequences of their own actions? They took a gamble that rates would continue to go up (despite the spectre of global recession) and lost.

That’s the nature of gambling, they wouldn’t be complaining if they had won.

Next they will want the government to mitigate their losses.

Headline of the Week

Naked PETA Members to Give Fishy Welcome to Aquaculture Conferees

Cufflinks

Having just seen another ass-hat wearing these:



I have a fashion tip for all of you trend-setters out there. Cloth cufflinks are for in-store display purposes only. For gods sake; take some pride in your appearence and get a pair of real cufflinks:



These:



do not count... unless you are six.

Parasites Enraged

A push by penthouse and sub-penthouse owners to revamp body corporate fee structures has enraged the parasites living on the lower floors:

Airline pilot Michael Corr, who owns a one-bedroom unit in The Pinnacle, slammed the move by penthouse owners as "greedy and completely immoral".

"These guys are worth millions and they are trying to screw everyone else in the building," he said.

I would love to know how the desire not to subsidise someone else’s lifestyle is greedy and immoral.

... penthouse owner Nigel Neaves said the current body corporate fee structure was "inequitable and ridiculous".

He said he was paying 10 times more in body corporate fees than lower-floor residents to use the same facilities.

Sub-penthouse owner David Callard said too many unit owners had been "getting away with low body corporate fees for years".

To put all of this in perspective:

Mr Corr said if the penthouse owners were successful, their body corporate fees would plummet from about $30,000 to $12,000 while lower-floor unit owners would see their fees jump by up to 70 per cent to almost $7000.

So the penthouse owners would still be paying nearly twice as much as the parisites to use the same facilities. Who is really being screwed here?

About time Heather

Heather Ridout has finally ended her sickening, seemingly symbiotic, relationship with Kevin Rudd and attacked “Fair Work Australia”.

The Australian Industry Group yesterday spoke out against Labor's Fair Work Bill, identifying seven areas it argues are unworkable and should be dumped.

AIGroup chief executive Heather Ridout said all seven -- including compulsory arbitration for low-paid industries, increased union access to worksites and obligations on employers to deal with unions -- were not released prior to the election.

The AIGroup has identified 60 provisions of Labor's bill where the role and power of unions have been increased, while employers had received virtually nothing.

This is after she earlier declared the system “workable”.

She could have saved herself a lot of trouble had she opposed this when she should have – during the election. Maybe her members told her to speak-up or look for another job?

Poor old Kevin. At least he still has his other trained monkey - Rod Eddington – who refused to quit as the ALP’s business advisor, despite this.

UPDATE: Maybe now Turnbull will grow a pair and oppose this legislation, as he should have done from day one.

UPDATE II: I am not sure neutered is the best description of Ridout - then again, considering the wording in the last update, maybe it is.