Pure Poison

By Jeremy

Intellectual dishonesty is pure poison to the enterprise of the law. Yet countless examples show intellectual dishonesty has now become a routine, expected part of American discourse. The most obvious half-truths and hypocrisies are greeted with shrugged shoulders and a grunt of “what did you expect?”

- Edward Lazarus

What’s that you say? Why does The Blair/Bolt Watch Project concentrate its efforts on tim Blair and Andrew Bolt and completely ignore the equally sterling efforts of the Pierses, the Marrses, the Devineses, the Albrechtsens?

Because of the name, silly.

Well, we’re changing that. And moving across to Crikey.

Welcome to…

Where deranged polemic, from all corners of the Australian commentariat, really will get what’s coming to it.

Bolt contemptibly uses bushfire deaths to bash “greenies”

By Jeremy

Andrew Bolt sees anyone who’d dare describe climate extremes such as those experienced in Victoria last weekend, just as predicted by global warming theory, as evidence in favour of that theory (not “proof”, Andy, “evidence” – there’s a difference) as an “opportunist” (and stupidly or dishonestly or both tries to counter their argument with evidence of a cold weather extreme in Maine*), and then spends an entire post today using the bushfire disaster to bash “greenies”.

It’s New Ltd’s big line on the fires. Turns out that arsonists had nothing to do with the most devastating ones, so it can’t run a Laura Norder campaign. Next target: Greens. Only problem, there’s not actually an evidence of the Greens opposing any policy that actually would’ve helped on Saturday. Andy has to cobble together policies which sound sort of like something a “greenie” might say, thereby define the person who’s said it as a “greenie”, and thus condemn the entire environmental movement for something it had nothing to do with. (And note: his quotes at the start of this piece don’t have working links.)

So if a council concerned with land values stops residents clearing trees, or if there are rules against untrained residents backburning in fire season in order to stop them STARTING bushfires, or if councils don’t have enough money to burn enough forest fuel to make a difference – well, we’ll blame all that on “greenies” and jump straight over the fact that the Greens and other environmental organisations (a) had nothing to do with it and (b) are in favour of forest management strategies designed to reduce bushfire.

(Hell, The Australian has given that ghoulish arsehole David Packham a free forum this week to claim even more – that “greenies” LOVE BUSHFIRES AND WANT YOUR FAMILY TO BURN DOWN AS PART OF THEIR “JIHAD”. And yet The Australian considers itself a serious paper. Bizarre.)

And of course it’s also open to question whether any previous forest management strategies would’ve prevented the disaster on the weekend, in those unprecedented conditions, anyway.

Andy’s smear is both contemptible and illogical – the connection he’s trying nastily to make doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny – and it is a sad indictment on the man that he can feign respect for the victims and horror at people he disagrees with mentioning the clear link between the disaster and what they’ve specifically been predicting is likely to happen, and then promptly go off and try to exaggerate the most feeble links imaginable to blame the deaths on his opponents.

High moral ground? You’re a guttersnipe, Andrew.

*He does understand that “global warming” refers to an increase in average global temperatures, and that part of what’s predicted as a result of that is localised extremes – including extreme cold weather – doesn’t he? If he hasn’t grasped that by this point, then he’s a fricking idiot. If he has, then his constant misrepresentations just reveal him to be a dishonest hack. One or the other.

UPDATE: Oh, that’s good news for News Ltd! The police do think some arsonists might have been responsible for the Churchill fire. Whether that pans out or not, it’s enough of an opening for a Laura Norder bash. If they can let the Greenie one go for a few moments. Anyway, back to the subject of the post, which is Bolt’s loathsome artic

What’s good for the goose…

By Scott
Cross-posted at GrodsCorp

Andrew Bolt asks a question of a rival newspaper that his own employer, The Herald Sun, would do well to answer.

Doesn’t The Age care if reporters have strong, declared sympathies that call into question their ability to report even-handedly?

Sage advice

By Scott

I hope Timmeh’s winged monkeys — notorious for their good manners and civility — were listening to their master.

It’s generally best when writing online – anonymously or otherwise – to observe the “would I say that if the person I was saying it about were right in front of me?” rule.

Time will tell.

The people speaks, the Bolta twists

By Scott
Cross-posted at GrodsCorp

Andrew Bolt gets all teary when naughty people criticise Malcy and not Kevvie. Bolta doesn’t like it when evil journalists form opinions, based on experience, analysis and other journalistic shit, that make Malcy and the Liberals look silly.

The Canberra press pack had a quick count of heads and declared the public hated Malcolm Turnbull’s plan to block Kevin Rudd’s $42 billion spending spree.

See, it’s the journalists who are wrong here and not Malcy. These journalists wouldn’t know public sentiment if it spat in their faces. Andy, on the other hand, has his finger on the pulse of middle Australia from the comfort of his air conditioned tenth floor office at Southbank. (Sometimes Bolt even goes for coffee in the food hall and he sees heaps of plebs ordinary people while he hurries through with a hanky over his nose.) Bolta provides six examples of journalistic anti-Malcy sentiment, five of which come from the “hard left” Fairfax and ABC, with the remaining example from News Limited’s Courier Mail.

Michelle Grattan, The Age:
(The Opposition) expects its stand to be immediately unpopular — getting between the public and buckets of money could hardly be anything else… Turnbull did not make a very convincing argument …

Mark Colvin, AM:
You (the Liberals) are standing between a large section of the Australian middle class and a bucket of money. As you say, it’s not going to be popular.

Dennis Atkins, Courier Mail:
The Coalition’s hardline stand was cheered by the parties’ MPs, who saw it as getting the debate back to their “strong suit of economic management”. This may happen eventually but in the short-term they’ve dealt themselves out of the argument.

Tony Wright, The Age:
It brought to mind the image of the band playing uplifting tunes on the deck of the Titanic… (O)verwhelming approval and applause would likely be scarce in the streets for anyone attempting to deny the promised largesse.

Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald:
MALCOLM TURNBULL has decided to arrange himself casually on the railway tracks in front of the onrushing Rudd money train… It’s a bid for relevance on a point of irrelevance… At worst, it is an act of suicidal braggadocio.

Annabel Crabb described the scenes in Parliament when her colleagues heard the news:
Commentators gasped. Ladies fainted. The weak of heart covered their eyes… Indeed, debate raged around Parliament House yesterday about the political implications of Tarzan’s actions. Was he committing political suicide? Was this an incredibly beady-eyed act of political cynicism…?

After comprehensively proving perncious lefty groupthink with these examples, Bolta moves on to a much more authoritative gauge of public sentiment than journalists: online polls run by newspapers.

But much of the public seems, so far, to have failed to read the script written for it by the Canberra media.

The Herald Sun’s on-line poll has 53 per cent of more than 11,000 votes agreeing with Turnbull. The Australian poll has an already healthy 47 per cent of people saying he’s right to want to wait.

These are the same polls that ask hard-hitting questions (such as today’s Hun pearler: “Has red carpet fashion gone too far?”) and collate reliable statistics from a representative cross-section of the community.

But hang on, isn’t there an Age poll on the same question that should be included in Bolt’s analysis for fairness?

True, The Age poll is wildly against Turnbull, but if you believed all The Age wrote you’d think Rudd a saint and all who doubted him deserved hell.

And this man has the balls to call himself a journalist.

Selective selection

By Scott
Cross-posted at GrodsCorp

Wind power is useless. It is! Andrew Bolt has, like, proved it beyond all doubt.

Victoria in this heat wave has been desperate for electricity, not least for all the airconditioning. So how have our green-dazed Labor Government’s new windfarms been helping out the state’s supplies?

Well, to start with, let’s check the winds at Wonthaggi over the past three days, and see if they’ve been strong enough to drive the six turbines that now despoil that coast:

28/1 3:00pm CALM

28/1 09:00am 4km/h

28/1 06:00am 4km/h

27/1 3:00pm 7km/h

27/1 09:00am 9km/h

27/1 06:00am 4km/h

26/1 03:00pm 15km/h

26/1 09:00am CALM

26/1 06:00am CALM

Hmm. Not enough breeze to even fan a face. Thanks (sic) heavens for coal.

Of course, Andy has selectively selected some days this week that show poor wind speeds, during a heatwave that features hot north winds and not the prevailing south-west winds for which the turbines were designed. He has also completely ignored wind data for the rest of January and previous months that show much more robust gusts of wind.

Thanks (sic) heavens for facts.

Leftist weather

By Scott
Cross-posted at GrodsCorp

Andrew Bolt loves to cry about how teh evil Leftists are running this state into the ground.

Water:
MELBOURNE’s summer water storage levels have slumped to their lowest point in 25 years… Yarra Valley Water managing director Tony Kelly, said Victorians were now using an “unacceptable” amount of water…

Power:
TENS of thousands of houses sweltered through the night as sizzling heat caused power outages across the state…. “These extreme temperatures and excessive use of air conditioning can impact on the electricity distribution network,’’ Mr Batey said.

Transport:
MELBOURNE’S train system buckled under the strain of Wednesday’s heat, forcing maintenance workers to cool the rails with water… But commuters were left boiling mad after enduring more than 150 cancelled services in one of the system’s worst days in recent memory…

PUBLIC Transport Minister Lynne Kosky has blamed ”underinvestment over a long period of time” as a key factor in the poor performance of Melbourne’s public transport network in recent weeks.

But it’s not actually teh Leftists, it’s extreme weather events.

Water:
Melbourne has experienced below-average rainfall for the past decade.

Power:
Melbourne is sweltering through a once-in-a-century heatwave that is placing enormous demands on power supplies, with interruptions due to fuses blowing and not lack of supply.

Transport:
I’m no real fan of Connex, but when rails are physically buckling and breaking due to the extreme heat I do tend to understand that problems are largely out of their control.

Maybe the weather is leftist?