Just leave Sarah alone!!1!

By The Editor
Cross-posted at GrodsCorp

Poor widdle Timmeh Blair has had a raging erection for Sarah Palin ever since she was announced as John McCain’s running mate. And such is his lust/love for sweet, sweet Sarah that he gets very defensive when anyone dares take the piss out of her.

The political heavyweights at 9am With David & Kim turned their attention this morning to Sarah Palin’s candidacy (quotes are approximate):

Airhead #1: “I’ve got a feeling that it’s all about to implode.”

Airhead #2: “HEE HEE HEE!”

Airhead #1: “She’s got no international business experience.”

Airhead #3: “They did elect Ronald Reagan, for God’s sake.”

Airhead #2: “HEE HEE HEE!”

Airhead #1: (attempting an American accent) “A soccer mom – boss of the world.”

Airhead #2: “HEEEEEEEEEE! HEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Airhead #3: “A gun-totin’, moose-shootin’ soccer mom.”

She’s a hockey mom, geniuses.

Maybe after Timmeh finishes worshipping at his Palin Altar (a Palin Altar is like a Scientology Room but different) he can cast his mind back to the times that he’s mercilessly ripped into political figures who don’t align with his personal views.

Like Peter Garrett.

According to long-suppressed video evidence, Peter Garrett is some kind of ginger mutant. Check that buzz-cut bloodnut! Peter commenced total hair removal soon afterwards, for obvious reasons (although possibly the redness is due to lighting; we need hair-colour confirmation from Garrett’s office).

Note also, around the 2:49 mark, that Labor’s future environment minister appears to briefly consider an air-guitar solo – before reverting to an early form of his trademark “dancing”, which at this stage (1977) resembled a cross between an awkwardly tall girl’s skip-rope attempts and someone playing table tennis with both hands.

That’s some rooly heavyweight political opinion right there. Feel free to highlight in comments other examples of Timmeh’s mature and heavyweight dissection of teh Left.

It’s official: Andrew Bolt has gone off the deep end

Guest post by Private Tom
Cross-posted at ☮ is my religion

Andrew Bolt has officially crossed that thin line that divides the controversial and the batsh*t insane:

Catholics believe in Armageddon and the fires of hell. So do global warming believers.

Uh..no. Just-gah, this statement is so full of wingnuttery, no wonder Bolta refused to give any links to his strawman environazis-they don’t exist.

Catholics believe we must repent our sins to be saved. So do global warming believers.

No, you troll. Environmentalists think that we need to drastically cut our emissions on a global level to avert the worst of climate change. That has sweet f*ck all to do with ‘sinning’, which is a religious concept of personal immorality.

Catholics believe love of money is the root of evil. So do global warming believers, only they called money “industrialisation”.

This is so ridiculous it’s almost self-parodying: Bolt has painted conservationists with a brush almost the size of Brendoc’s forehead. I’m a “global warming believer” and I see bigotry and greed as the roots of evil-not industrialisation. Perhaps you’d like to explain why, if greenies are so anti-technology, the Greens are so supportive of more advanced renewable technology? I won’t hold my breath.

UPDATE: Apologies to the readers below who are offended by the comparison. You are right: Catholicism is indeed more rational and benign than the green faith, and doesn’t demand forcible conversion.

OK, that is self-parodying. Why don’t you name 10 people who have been “forcibly converted” to environmentalism? And benign? Like opposing both abortion and contraception despite that policy committing genocide against African women? Compared to campaigning for increasing international to developing nations (CLEARLY SUPPORTING INDUSTRIALISATION)?

F*ck off Andrew. Your pathetic attempts at smearing environmentalists are becoming more ludicrous everyday. BTW, the CEC called; your member’s registration needs renewal.

UPDATE: W.O. Michelle B. Button cross-posts this, and raises some excellent points:

* Catholicism demands conversion unless you want to be judged for all eternity in Hell.

* Tell the kids who have been molested by priests that Catholicism is benign. Tell the people who have been killed in the name of the religion.

* Catholicism is based on a book which, if it weren’t for the mass support in it’s Truth, would be found squarely in the Fantasy section of the bookstore.

* There is no scientific basis for Catholicism

* Catholicism wants you to believe that there is a guy in the sky who created it all and controls many aspects of the lives of people on earth.

Yep, Catholicism is totally rational.

Backhanded sympathy

By The Editor
Cross posted at GrodsCorp

The Age columnist and prime Bolt/Blair target, Catherine Deveny, might have bipolar disorder.

Timmeh shows sympathy and calls a ceasefire.

Deveny’s columns… are a frequent target here. No more. Assuming the above account is accurate—it’s unlikely someone would joke about a bipolar diagnosis—Deveny isn’t well.

Fair play, Tim. A credit to you. Andrew Bolt then agrees with Blair (surprise, surprise), albeit a little more crudely.

An unhappy columnist who writes what seems to me a plea for help, and who confesses she is indeed in trouble, should not be kept in harness by a newspaper hoping to win extra sales from her growing despair.

However, I can’t help thinking that Bolta (and to a lesser degree, Timmeh) are suggesting that Deveny’s assumed illness is somehow responsible for those opinions that the groupthinking duo so despise. Is it not possible that Deveny can have a mental illness and still have perfectly valid opinions, unshaped by that mental illness?

This is all assuming, of course, that Deveny does have bipolar.

ELSEWHERE: Darryl Mason deconstructs teh issue more detailedly.

It’s not how much you SNIP, it’s what you SNIP

Guest post by Tobias Ziegler
Cross posted at Not A Hedgehog

Bolt makes use of the current rising body count in Georgia’s South Ossetia region to consider, “How the next president would handle a war.” On the face of it, his proposal is a reasonable one:

How would the next president of the US react in a crisis – say, a war unexpectedly unleashed by a superpower? Barack Obama and John McCain have been set a test with Russia’s attack on Georgia

Fortunately, a savvy blogger such as Bolt can save himself the effort involved in actually analysing what the respective candidates said by simply linking to and quoting from his fellow Rightards. And that is exactly what Andy does, drawing firstly on a comparison by Roger Kimball that concludes:

To recap: John McCain forthrightly condemns Russia’s behavior and demands that Russia withdraw unconditionally. Obama wants to turn the mess over to the UN.

Andrew has to save his brainpower for the gymnastic contortions involved in maintaining an worldview in which all major problems (such as the moral decay of modern society) and non-problems (such as global warming) can be accounted for by a single entity. But let’s exert the mental energy that Andrew was unwilling to expend – let’s conduct our own analysis of the statements made by McCain and Obama.

These quotations are taken from the statements made by the Presidential candidates, as reproduced on their respective campaign web sites. We’ll just take the parts of what each candidate said that weren’t mentioned in the source Bolt took his content from.

Obama said:

Over the last two days, Russia has escalated the crisis in Georgia through it’s [sic] clear and continued violation of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. On Friday, August 8, Russian military forces invaded Georgia. I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire. Russia must stop its bombing campaign, cease flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia … Russia also must end its cyber war against Georgian government websites. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected.

McCain said:

The U.S. should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course. The US should immediately work with the EU and the OSCE to put diplomatic pressure on Russia to reverse this perilous course it has chosen. We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation. Finally, the international community needs to establish a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force in South Ossetia.

To recap: Barack Obama forthrightly condemns Russia’s behavior and demands that Russia withdraw unconditionally. McCain wants to turn the mess over to – well, not just the UN, but pretty much every multilateral body of which the US is a member.

The lesson in this is simple – Bolt, or anyone else, can make a statement on a complex issue such as foreign policy in relation to a warzone look however they like, by SNIPping the parts they don’t want to acknowledge. Bolt can save himself having to even do that by quoting his fellow travellers instead. But such truncations are inevitably going to be flawed. Whether you agree or disagree with what Bolt says, it is worth taking the time to read the whole of the source he is criticising.

P.S.: Just out of interest, let’s see what the actual President had to say, if we chop out most of the content of his statement in a Bolt-like manner:

The United States is working with our European partners to launch international mediation, and with the parties to restart their dialogue.

Pansy.

UPDATE: Bolt has propagated the same rubbish in his Hun column today. My comment on his column:

Absolute rubbish, Andrew – you are either being disingenuous or you haven’t taken the trouble to actually read the statements released by the two candidates.
Given that most commentators and foreign policy analysts are discussing whether McCain has been too bellicose, and that McCain seems to have relied on Wikipedia for his foreign policy advice about Georgia, it seems that what you are looking for in a US President is someone who will act without thinking or knowing. Isn’t eight years of that enough?

Where it’s not due

Guest post by Tobias Ziegler
Cross posted at Not A Hedgehog

Here is an interesting case study in how Bolt uses selective reporting and distorted interpretation to weave a new pseudo-fact into his narrative.

It starts with this BBC News story on Bangladesh:

New research shows Bangladesh may not be as vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change as previously feared, scientists in Dhaka say.

They say satellite images show the country’s landmass is actually growing because of sediment dumped by rivers.

Now, note that this story does not actually relate to research evidence for or against global warming. Instead, the research suggests instead that any loss of land mass due to rising sea levels will be offset to some extent by “new land” being created as sediment gathers in the delta regions where rivers flow into the Bay of Bengal.

But to what extent will it offset a rise in sea levels? The researcher says:

Mr Sarkar said that in the next 50 years this could add up to the country gaining 1,000 square kilometres.

That would be a gain in landmass of well under 1%. On the other hand, the IPCC projections for the impact of rising sea levels look like this:

A report by UN scientists has projected that rising sea levels will inundate 17% of Bangladesh by 2050, making about 30 million people homeless.

Which leads Dr Atiq Rahman to this conclusion:

“The rate at which sediment is deposited and new land is created is much slower than the rate at which climate change and sea level rises are taking place,” he said.

All of these details are reported in the BBC’s story. What does Bolt choose to tell his readers?

Bangladesh growing, warming hype receding
Al Gore wept for the people of Bangladesh, millions of whom would be made homeless – he claimed – as global warming caused rising seas that would drown their low-lying country.

Small problem. Bangladesh is not sinking, but growing:

New research shows Bangladesh may not be as vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change as previously feared, scientists in Dhaka say.

They say satellite images show the country’s landmass is actually growing because of sediment dumped by rivers.

A report by UN scientists has projected that rising sea levels will inundate 17% of Bangladesh by 2050, making about 30 million people homeless.

Satellite images of Bangladesh over the past 32 years show that the country is growing annually by about 20 square kilometres (12.5 square miles), said Maminul Haque Sarker of the Dhaka-based Centre for Environment and Geographic Information Services.

So, he manages to fold Al Gore into the story, which begins to tie it to the broader “don’t believe the hype” narrative Bolt has constructed. Now, how does he handle the response by the IPCC scientist?

Naturally, confronted by the real-world data, one of the IPCC scientists responsible for the scare puts his faith instead in the theory:

Dr Atiq Rahman, a lead author of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, told the BBC that there was little in the new research to make him think that their projection needed revising.

Work in the buzzwords – remind readers that it’s a “scare”, and denigrate a scientist as relying on “faith”. Suggest that “real-world data” should trump “theory”, when in fact they are not contradictory – the research data being reported addresses historical change, whereas the theoretical projections (derived from empirical evidence) address the future effects of an entirely different factor. Finish dismissing the expert with this:

And why not. Believer Rahman has a far more reliable way of measuring sea level rises and land growth than mere satellites:

He said that many people living along the coast had observed that sea levels where higher now than in their grandparents’ day.

Include the non-quotation in the report of Dr Rahman’s comment (along with another implication of zealotry – “Believer”) that mentioned some anecdotal reports, while leaving out the next sentence (which I have provided earlier), which would have quoted Rahman noting that the land gains from sediment will not offset the sea level rise. Make him sound as illogical as possible.

Then, finish it off by bringing it back to Gore again:

Is he joking? I think we can safely add this to the long list of Al Gore whoppers. His Nobel Prize should really have been for literature.

So, there is Bolt’s detailed reporting of the new Bangladesh research. A finding that shows a small landmass growth unrelated to climate change gets turned into a rebuttal of the notion that rising sea levels could be a problem for a low-lying country. From this point, it can become another one of the “facts” that Bolt can state in any of his attack pieces on global warming, shopping bags, activist judges, or anything else where teh Left is a target. Leftists think we should respect human rights? These are the same Gore-worshipping bozos who said Bangladesh would sink into the sea.

It starts here, in a self-congratulatory post on how well he understands the role of blogs and how he is reshaping the world:

Take this week alone. If Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery has said global warming will leave Perth parched, I can run a graph showing its dams haven’t been so full in years.

If Al Gore says Bangladesh will drown under rising seas, I can show that satellite measurements prove the country is growing, not shrinking.

If the UN’s climate scientists warn of doom, I can link to a new peer-reviewed study showing none of their predictions seem to be coming true.

If some other alarmist says the North Pole is almost gone, I can run satellite pictures from Wednesday showing much more ice there now than at this time last year.

And thus the patchwork narrative is woven. We will see where the rising lands of Bangladesh pop up next.

Bolt’s Law

By The Editor
Cross posted at GrodsCorp

Yesterday Andrew Bolt, an influential newspaper columnist in Australia’s best-selling newspaper, crudely suggested that there is a link between using green shopping bags and infanticide.

Today “Strider”, a nobody blogger who resides in the most remote region of the intertubes, crudely suggested that there is a link between cycling and child rape.

You know the eponymous “law” of which Timmeh Blair is so proud?

Blair’s Law: the ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force.

Well, here’s the brand new “law” coined just now by GrodsCorp.

Bolt’s Law: the ongoing process by which teh Right’s multiple moral crusades are becoming one giant, intertwined idea despite their complete lack of anything to do with each other.

Brendan Nelson’s demeanour and moral purpose

By The Editor
Cross posted at GrodsCorp

Brendan Nelson has withdrawn the coalition’s support for an emissions trading scheme in the absence of similar schemes in the USA, China and India — a “pre-Howard position on climate change” as one journalist beautifully put it. Despite the fact that developing countries are never going to consider emissions trading if developed countries are not prepared to lead the way, Andrew Bolt thinks it’s a great policy from Nelson and the coalition.

Another brave but politically savvy call by the Opposition Leader… And Nelson’s demeanour in announcing this was also right. No histrionics, but still with a sense of moral purpose.

Nelson’s demeanour was right? Let’s take a look at the good doctor’s demeanour and moral purpose in making his policy announcement.

QUESTION: Are you saying there should be no emissions trading scheme until the post Kyoto arrangements are hammered out and China and India are committed?

DR NELSON: We must be ready to implement an emissions trading scheme as a market-based solution to address climate change and Australia’s contribution to it…

He then continues to dither for two more paragraphs, before providing a more solid answer to the next question.

QUESTION: Dr Nelson [inaudible] clear, regardless of when the start date of am emissions trading scheme would be, if we got to it and China, India and the US were not signed on, you would say that we should not start the scheme?

DR NELSON: We should not start an emissions trading scheme in Australia until we are absolutely confident that it is ready to commence and also that the rest of the world has a start date for dealing with climate change itself.

Okay. But there’s more detail needed.

QUESTION: Dr Nelson you appear to be adopting a sort of a pre-Howard position on climate change; that you’re not even committed to an emissions trading scheme in 2011-12 in the absence of further agreement at Copenhagen. Is that correct and have you given any thought at all to the detail? For example, would you support a slow start to a scheme if it did get up and running with fixed low prices for permits in the early years? Or alternatively the phasing in of different industries?

DR NELSON: Well, again the Coalition’s position has been for the best part of a decade that the whole world has to act…

Then two more paragraphs containing no details about how Doc Nelson thinks Australia should act.

QUESTION: So you’re no longer committed to a 2012 start date for an emissions trading scheme?

DR NELSON: Well again, we have always said that there has to be a genuinely global response…

So, “no” then?

QUESTION: Yes but Dr Nelson, that’s a [inaudible] change of policy… You’re saying that you’ve changed the policy?

DR NELSON: Well, what I’m saying to you is that there has to be a genuinely global response to climate change. That has always been our position. It always will be. Australia acting alone will be an exercise in environmental futility that will be destructive to our economic future. That has always been our position and it continues to be so. We would, we would expect…

QUESTION: But the answer is yes.

DR NELSON: No it’s not.

You poor, poor man, Brendy. I feel sorry for you.

QUESTION: And in the absence of a global agreement at that meeting, your commitment to an emissions trading in 2012 is subject to that, is that what you’re saying?

DR NELSON: Again…

QUESTION: It’s just a little unclear.

DR NELSON: Again, we will annunciate (sic) our policy, under my leadership, once we have carefully examined the Garnaut Report, the green paper, the other sources of expert advice that we are taking, and we’ll have a well-considered approach to it.

Australia can’t wait for you to annunciate (sic) your policy, Dr Dither.

But there was one more humiliation waiting for the opposition “leader”.

QUESTION: Dr Nelson, you say, you say you’re worried about the Greens in the Senate, but aren’t you throwing the emissions trading scheme’s future into their hands if you aren’t prepared to negotiate with the Labor Government and provide your numbers in the Senate to an emissions trading scheme.

DR NELSON: Well you’re putting words in my mouth and that’s not true.

If I could just say one other thing in relation to the Art Monthly photographs…

As usual, when the going gets tough Brendan Nelson resorts to schoolyard retorts and changes of topics. And this is the respectable demeanour and moral purpose that so impressed Andrew Bolt. “Hmm. Have we (correction: I) misjudged the man? Is he growing into leadership material, after all?” asks Bolta.

Not likely.

Quote of the year

By The Editor
Cross posted at GrodsCorp

In Bolt’s world there’s Left, there’s Right, and then there’s Bolt.

“…I’m not of the Right or even far Right. I’d certainly say so if I were. Try conservative.”

Reminds me of Andy’s famous Left/Right/Anarchy theory.

…there is no arc between Left and Right – the extremes of both tend to huddle together at the collectivist end of a line that has anarchy at the other. I’m somewhere in the middle, moderate as always, trying to balance the claims of individuality and freedom with the ballast of the collective.

Looks a bit like this.

What hubris?

By The Editor
Cross posted at GrodsCorp

Oh dear. Andrew Bolt has gone into martyr overdrive today in celebrating the ten year anniversary of his column in the Herald Sun.

Here’s yet another page or more of me telling you what I think. Such arrogance.

And the worst is that this has been going on for a decade. In fact, it was this week 10 years ago that I was given this twice-weekly column.

Bolta reckons he’s learned a few lessons in those ten years. Let’s have a look at them one-by-one.

Lesson 1: Don’t be shy. If I don’t fill this column space, it’s sure to be filled by an even greater idiot.

Proof?

For instance, if I hadn’t filled this space with columns warning that then Labor leader Mark Latham had character flaws that could “completely destroy not just Latham, but Labor”, you’d almost certainly have had to read the exact opposite, given almost every other columnist supported him.

Truth be told, I didn’t realise that Bolta was single handedly responsible for Mark Latham losing the 2004 election. I was under the impression that Latham was single handedly responsible for Latham losing the election.

Lesson 2: Toot your own triumphs.

As shown. After all, when you start criticising fellow journalists, you’re up for pack-payback, and it’s wise to give readers some reason to think you’re not as advertised: a “village idiot”, “extremist”, “lap-dog”, “mad professor”, and, of course, “racist”.

Of course, Andy. You talk yourself up only to defend yourself. Nothing to do with being full of yourself.

Lesson 3: Facts seem barely to count against a moral crusade.

So Bolta has made it his stock in trade to counter with carefully selected facts that support his own moral crusade.

Lesson 4: The more moral the campaign, the less likely journalists are to tell the truth.

[...]

Here, for instance, are some of the facts which I found the more fashionable journalists refusing to report for fear the truth would destroy their Truth.

– The world stopped warming in 1998.

– No one can name even 10 Aboriginal children stolen from their parents just because they were black.

[...]

– Several people “helped” by euthanasia guru Philip Nitschke were not dying, or even in pain.

Name just three, Andrew. Just three. (Also, do you like the way he uses a capital ‘T’ for the other journalists’ “Truth”?)

Lesson 5: Reporting facts that others won’t will make you seem mad.

Oops.

Your seeming mad has to do with other things, Andy.

Lesson 6. But being wrong hurts more than being mocked.

At first that wasn’t so. Who wants to be thought evil or dumb?

But keep your job and your cool long enough, and the truth will quietly out.

If there’s one thing that Bolta has never been able to keep, it’s his cool. A shriller, more grumpy “journalist” the world has never seen.

Lesson 7: When facts alone don’t count, naming and shaming might.

[...]

I started to call Prof Robert Manne, the leading theorist of the “stolen generations”, its leading “propagandist” instead, and I challenged him: “Name just 10 truly ‘stolen’ children.”

Personalising it like this invites revenge, that’s true, and can seem too nasty. But it can also hotly prod a response when cold facts don’t.

Manne, enraged, decided to take our debate public – to the Melbourne Writers’ Festival – and the rest is history, Manne and his list included. Just name 10, Robert.

Oh, I see. All that shrill stuff is just a journalistic tool to out Truth (sic). Makes perfect sense.

Lesson 8 – There is no “everyone”.

When someone says “everyone agrees”, they usually mean everyone like them – and that is especially true when “everyone” is the teacher-preacher class that hogs microphones, pulpits and newspaper keyboards, drowning out debate.

And Bolta sure does have a hard time getting heard. He has a twice weekly, full page column in Australia’s best selling newspaper, he appears regularly on several radio stations, he is a panelist on Insiders, and next week he’s following in Timmeh Blair’s underwhelming footsteps and appearing on Q & A. Those damn lefties and their debate-stifling ways.

On the set of Insiders I had to be given the lone chair on the far right of the screen. This, because I had the nerve to share the judgment of most Australians over four elections.

Hearts fucking bleed, Bolta.

But what is the moral of Bolta’s tale of self-love?

And that brings me to the ultimate lesson I’ve learned over these 10 years: that it’s best to write for your readers, not your peers.

Some may think you a fool or a bighead and too often wrong. But if most figure you’re just trying your best to describe things as they are, you might just have a job for a decade.

And may you bring us regular doses of “journalistic” hilarity for another ten years to come, Andy. Happy birthday.

Grade nine stats

Guest post by Andrew Rose

Just thought I’d bring this comedy to everyone’s attention, and in particular Andrew Bolt’s skills in “graphical analysis” – ie: picking two arbitrary start and end points to support his point of view (completely ignoring the fact that these graphs indicate an increase in the mean over time).

NASA warming preacher James Hansen recalls that June day 20 years ago when he so memorably sounded the alarm about global warming:

On June 23, 1988, I testified to a hearing chaired by Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado that the Earth had entered a long-term warming trend, and that human-made greenhouse gases almost surely were responsible… My testimony two decades ago was greeted with skepticism.

Scepticism? I wonder why? Fast forward 20 years, and let’s see how that prediction in fact turned out, with the red dots marking the date of Hansen’s famous speech and his latest scare’um testimony:

Any 15 year old with a year 9 education would have laughed at this attempt at statistical analysis. Which I guess says a lot for those buying Bolt’s analysis of those graphs.