It’s that time again. Enjoy your weekend, and use this thread to share anything you like.
Let’s all enjoy Sane Sunday, as the ABC has decided to invite three rational commentators onto Insiders:
Insiders Sunday ABC 1 @ 9am the panel The SMH’s Phil Coorey and the Financial Review’s Brian Toohey and Laura Tingle
Chris Uhlmann will be hosting and will interview Joe Hockey, and Talking Pictures has Jack the Insider.
Lateline‘s (ABC1 at 10:40pm) Friday Night Fight Club is Julie Bishop vs Mark Arbib.
Have a good one.
41 Comments
Oh dear! This is becoming a habit for the moral sneaks.
What is it with Movement Conservatives and their inability to keep their dicks out of some other guy’s mouth?
Cheers.
It’s like Homophobes Marek. They are a little insecure and scared of what they themselves might be.
OMFG!
This will resonate with old Grods readers.
“What is it with Movement Conservatives and their inability to keep their dicks out of some other guy’s mouth?”
(NTTAWWT)
Can Bishop bring her photocopier?
Captain Obvious@4
Obviously a member (npi) of the Teabugger’s Movement.
Remember Bolt’s crowing thread about the Institute of Physics and their “censure” of the CRU?
Here’s the real story…
I doubt whether the Dinkum Climate Fraud will be posting this any time soon….
I was just reading Chris Uhlmann on their ABC’s The Drum that was sinking the boot into Kevin Rudd and Labor and I thought I might just check the polls again.
Now quite obviously Kevin and Labor have enjoyed a record popularity after the stench of Howard and his mates’ demise and the mainstream media has had to do something or the Coalition would face annihilation at the next election.
As a result the headlines scream hysterically about Rudd and Labor on the nose. Rudd and Labor’s sagging popularity and voters turning away in droves at Mr spin, spin spin.
I don’t think anyone has ever had so much including the kitchen sink thrown at them like the present government. To it’s shame the ABC have suspended their charter of honesty and integrity in reporting to assist in this endeavour. Bastardry at its lowest.
The point of it all is to try and create a herd mentality in the voters minds that this is what the rest of Australia is thinking so they should be too.
Reporters like Chris Uhlmann need to have the smelling salts put under their noses.
More than one in two voters like Rudd, less than one in three like Abbott. If an election were held at anytime including right now the coalition would still be smashed apart.
On one hand we have a government trying to do their best for Australia, on the other we have an opposition including grubs like Fielding opposing every single piece of legislation without any care of damage they might do to Australia and its citizens.
The MSM and the ABC play the man rather than the facts. In Rudd’s case they can’t attack his work ethics so it has to get personal against him.
Despite Abbott at 53 attempting to be mutton dressed as lamb and doing ridiculous stunts rather than offering genuine policy responses which is essential in all oppositions, he is always portrayed in a shining light by both mainstream media and the ABC.
There is no scrutiny of his lack of genuine alternate policies, Barnaby is a lovable old uncle who ‘tells it as it is cos he’s a great communicator’. If the media manage to get them elected these will be the people running the country for god’s sake!
Naysay words are cheap actions in the absence of substance.
The majority of the mainstream media has its strings pulled by an expatriate who stands to earn more from a conservative government elected here. That is his prerogative.
The ABC has no excuse.
Quite right, Mack. I reckon , though, we’re in the “Phoney War” stage of an election campaign, and when the real campaign hits the track, we’ll see a bit of a change. Abbott cannot possibly keep up this stupid skylarking machismo bullshit all the way to a poll: he has to deliver some substance. I don’t think he can, the man’s a blowhard and as much a wildcard as Barnabubble; when the election pressure comes on, they’ll start the mad babbling on camera. It’ll be a real treat.
This biggest fraud is this moronic gibberish about Rudd lacking ‘authenticity’. What could be more phony and fraudulent than having a policy for something you have described as ‘a load of crap’? Abbott seems to have been gifted the most absurd free kick, led of course by Ltd News but more depressingly allowed to continue by even the ABC. It’s as though everything just healed magically after Turnbull left.
Certainly despite all its obvious faults, the government is at least trying to get on with the business that the short sighted Howard years failed to achieve much less dream of…Australia has been spared the very worst of the GFC, its incredible the level of whining and rabid partisan shrieking, clinging to every political point that might be scored in spite of such a healthy outlook.
The Coalition seem very much trapped in the politics of fear and smear..hopefully people will not fall for this again, after giving them the benefit of the doubt so many times under Howard.
I don’t watch much commercial TV so I haven’t seen this before. But thank god for American comedians to bring this stuff to our attention.
Jon Stewart’s the Daily Show, Moment of Zen from 4 March 2010 featuring Channel 9′s today show. Virtual Curling.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-4-2010/moment-of-zen—wii-curling
Naomi Oreskes: Merchants of Doubt ( from Deltoid blog). Well worth a listen, and the book is out in May. Buy!
Marek Bage @ 1: even the Vatican isn’t immune!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/06/2838326.htm
Confessions@13
Whaaaa…!?!!1! Gays in the Catholic Church? It’ll be paedophiles next!
No! Say it ain’t so!!
Well, who didn’t see THIS coming?
Apparently o’keefe’s videos of acorn weren’t exactly honest after all, and the NT district attorney says so:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/03/01/2010-03-01_bklyn_acorn_cleared_over_giving_illegal_advice_on_how_to_hide_money_from_prostit.html
Now … who reckons ACORN should sue?
Colbert did a nice job with this story last night. It should be on the web site by now, or at least soon. It’s a bit funny.
How does Bolt explain the latest rise in one of his favourite graphs?
“The long post-mini-ice-age warming may be resuming after a break of a decade: ”
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/warming_again/#commentsmore
Me thinks it is just the Bolt effect in action again.
I’d also hate to think that the storms in Melbourne this afternoon were another instance of the Bolt effect after his rant against warnings.
Am i correct in thinking that PP is to be used to point out ALL ratbag rhetoricists, not just those serial offenders, Rusty & Timmeh?
If so, I’d like to nominate , for dishonourablemention, Angela Shannanoo & Charles Piersnone?
Angela’slatest sleight of phrase, referencing the Q&A questioner who asked “should those with strong religious beliefs be allowed..in politics?” She then goes on to attribute to him a different question “… any kind of religious formation (sic!?)..” and then assumes/alleges that “..he didn’t bother to ask himself why… Buddhist, Muslims & Jews were less entiutled..”
So, as well as being a shameless polemicist Shannanoo claims also to be a mind reader.
As for Piersnone, collapse of stout party.
@ 17,
Bolt finally posts the Roy Spencer graphic – minus the trend line.
http://andrewboltliesdeceptionsonagw.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/warming-again/
Quite a tame week on AGW by Bolt.
He doesn’t seem to want to comment on Hansen’s take on AGW:
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-pioneer-backs-tax-on-carbon-nuclear-power-20100304-pjaw.html
Just in case you were under the cosy misapprehension that the British Conservative party had changed its spots and become less fascistic….
I feel bad now that Bolt’s house was affected by the storms in Melbourne. It is a pity that the Bolt effect has cost him money.
Ironic eh?
joni@22,
Can’t wait to see how Bolt how he will blame Rudd for the damage (it should be good).
But the point you make is important, although there is a cost to reduce carbon pollution, there is also a cost for not doing so. Bolt is just paying the price for doing nothing.
I think Andy is getting spooked and is looking to cover his tracks. He has put this up on his blog:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/double_the_doubt
If this is so why have he run a completely anti-science, anti-AGW blog for the past 5 years?
Why then does he have such a deplorable record of deception and misrepresentation on AGW?
Sorry but you will not escape your allotted place in anti-science history through revision.
And in news just to hand, scientists believe that the Bolt Effect has caused the Bolt Glacier to develop a large crack…
DeanL,
I was having the same thoughts. Is Bolt beginning to try and revise his POV, to make out that he is not denying AGW, that he is just trying to allow the opposing POV out.
Is he beginning to be a journalist (reporting the story) instead of an opinion writer (creating the story)?
The latest claim Bolt makes is that the most recent rise in temperature is due to a resumption of naturally occurring warming due to the end of the mini ice age 300 years ago.
Kind of contradicts his prior claim that the earth was in fact cooling.
Can I just ask a question? Do either Monckton or Bolt have science degrees?
I believe that the answer you’re looking for is, no.
It looks as if Bolt is walking away from the ridiculous denialism he’s been espousing the past few years. He brought up his comments from 2007 about how he accepted that global warming was happening and how it is caused by humans (“man” was how he put it
. Rather surprisingly he didn’t renounce them. He claimed that that has always been his position.
I’m pleased. I think he realises he has painted himself into a corner and has to get out of it. He’s been relying too much on non-issues like snow on Al Gore’s house and stolen emails while all the time, the uncontestable facts are that temperatures, sea-levels everything, are heading in the wrong direction.
He’s not an idiot. He doesn’t want to be the one they come after with pitch-forks and torches when St Kilda is under-water. So he seems to be easing himself back into a slightly more contestable position, and it has to be said, a slightly more relevant one. I’ve always thought the real argument is what to do about it, not whether it’s happening.
Mind you, it is funny seeing his acolytes trying to make sense of it. They haven’t quite caught on yet that Andrew has left them high and dry… so to speak.
I would argue it’s less introspective than that, and in some way related to the overall position of News ltd. The Australian has been running with some pro-AGW pieces these past couple of weeks after widespread, public criticism of always giving space to outright denialists and none to those who accept reality.
It’s been that way for some time now. In fact climate change is a mainstream international issue enshrined in economic and, political affairs. Opposition parties who do not have realistic climate change policies are unlikely to be seen by their domestic voters as having legitimatacy in mainstream world affairs IMO. Is it a coincidence that now we have a denialist conservative opposition with a climate change policy (of sorts), that their media boosters in the MSM are having to embrace the reality of climate change, lest they be seen by their audience as being outside the mainstream? I don’t think so.
Holey moley.
Richard Dawkins is on monday’s Q and A …. alongside Steve Fielding.
What more can I say? Watch it!
I dunno if others have read it, but the SMH’s Good Weekend article on Plimer is interesting, especially with the relationship between Plimer and Fielding. The basis of that relationship is that Fielding is one of “only two people in Federal Parliament with a science degree”. Plimer is wrong – it is an engineering degree. Funny how the evolution/creation POV does not present a problem between them.
And I have a thread up on the blogocrats on the article, where one of Plimer’s brother-in-arms on creationists says of Plimer:
“… somewhere along the way, Ian has lost his membership card for science”.
So maybe the gap between Plimer and Fielding is not that great after all.
And I really think that Bolt is beginning to change his meme because he knows that the upcoming temperature results are not going to be favourable to his POV. And he is trying to pre-empt the charts that will come out of Dr Roy Spencer.
As usual I see Blots reversal on climate change a little different from the rest of you. I have been expecting the coalition to use climate change as a means of ramming nuclear power down the Australian public’s throat ever since they turned their back on carbon trading as an option. For coalition cheerleaders to start cheer leading for nuclear power they do require a reason.
I fully expect a complete reversal of positions by bolt and his sheep. Slowly but surely (over around 2-3 months) we will see in turn confirmation that global warming is really happening, admission that humans have some part in it, admission that we should do something about it and then full on advocacy of nuclear power as the only base load supplying alternative. Time will tell.
Not one anti-AGW post from Bolt this morning, maybe the tide has turned for our UoEBC graduate.
Bolt’s softening position on AGW is going to present a hideous conundrum for his most doctrinaire fans. I expect this to winnow out the worst offenders, who will probably gravitate to the more loony conspiracist sites for their fix of stupidity.
twobob@34: I’m no fan of nuclear as I suspect you know; I believe there is little stomach in the ranks of industry for the R&D and investment needed for renewables like solar ( esp. Desertec CSP), which doesn’t answer their need for ongoing mining commitments to keep Twiggy Forest in the billionaires club. As much as I hate the idea, I think we’re going to see nuclear adopted in increasing amounts in future. If they’re going to go down that road, then hopefully they’ll at least have the vision to invest in the most promising of the new nuclear technologies.
Re: bolt’s shifting stance on AGW.
As a long-term bolta reader/poster, I’ve noticed that andrew’s exact angle is lost on most of his readers. I reckon I could pick out threads that support any of the positions:
(a) It’s all a scam, driven by a conspiracy of bought-off scientists to allow governments to tax us all to death and micromanage our lives.
(b) There’s always been climate change and this is no different. There’s nothing we can do about it.
(c) There’s been some sort of unusual change recently but it’s nothing to do with us.
(d) It’s something to do with us, but it’s trivial and nothing to get worked up about.
(e) It’s something to do with us, might or might not be a problem, but the costs of doing something about it are prohibitive.
(f) It’s (any of the above) and it might be beneficial.
(g) It’s (any of the above) and australia can’t fix it alone.
(h) We can’t really know anything because the science is fatally flawed because of errors, manipulation, scaremongering and political interference.
That last one is AB’s asbestos underwear. If some piece of utterly irrefutable evidence came to light tomorrow which ended all arguments (lets say god just appears in the sky and tells us outright), then that’s the one that gets AB out of jail free. He never said it was all fake, he was just pointing out the flaws in the affirmative – it’s their fault for being so corrupt and mendacious that we couldn’t believe their arguments. They didn’t prove their case. He was just facilitating debate against alarmists like gore anyway.
Bolt’s REAL position (IMHO) is anything that undermines the worst-case scenario (i.e: it’s a problem, we’re causing it, we can prove it and we can and should do something about it). Which particular objection is posted on a given day depends on which bit of cherry-picked data is sitting in his inbox or which pundit is in the ascendancy.
I think it’s just a marketing position. The market for pro-AGW scaremongering is flooded. The market for erudite anti-AGW scaremongering is (or was) barely serviced at all. In australia, he pretty much had that market to himself for several years. His compatriots in the conservative blogosphere have been intellectually weak, or just plain nuts.
Good luck to him, I reckon. He’s made a career from filling that niche, and seems to be doing well out of it. I just hope somebody’s archiving his site for posterity. It’ll make the post-embarrassment interviews really worth watching.
“As much as I hate the idea, I think we’re going to see nuclear adopted in increasing amounts in future”
I agree. Nuclear has sat on the backburner (IMHO) primarily because it’s so freakin expensive. There was no WAY that a political case could be made for the billions to be spent on extraction, enrichment, construction, reprocessing, waste management, decommission etc when we’re up to our armpits in cheap coal. When cheap coal stops being cheap, we’ll see a nuclear power industry appear in australia.
Howard started the kite-flying and softening up. I expect labor to continue it at some point. Nuclear power is inevitable – and I have no particular problem with that, provided the waste management is well managed.
Maybe AB is moderating his position as he’s about to enter the world of Melbourne talkback radio. After all there’s only so many loonies out there.
Steve Fielding and Richard Dawkins on Q & A at the same time should be very interesting. I expect Fielding to oppose Dawkins at every stage and thereby expose himself as a creationist. I hope this happens because it will do great damage to the global warming denialist cause. The denialists sometimes maintain that the “alarmists” or “warmists,” as they call us realists, are engaged in a campaign to further the “religion” of AGW. However, Fielding’s hopeful exposure as a creationist will do well to show that it is the denialists who have hopped into bed with the religious fundamentalists on the climate change issue.
“I expect Fielding to oppose Dawkins at every stage and thereby expose himself as a creationist.”
Fielding can avoid the subject altogether and hope religion just doesn’t come up … but if he was planning to do that, I’m not sure why he’d choose this episode to join. About the only move fielding can make that won’t result in an immediate own-goal is to talk about intolerance of religion and try to shift the debate that way – painting dawkins as the unreasonable attacker. I hope richard’s not at his most combative, or that might just work for fielding. I fear the audience might just play into that strategy, though – fielding is a bit of a lightning rod for people who think religion has no place in the public sphere. It’s practically the only reason he’s in the senate at all. It could end up being great entertainment for both sides – for the atheists, seeing a foe get pummeled by, and for christians who’ll see their self-image as a besieged, moral minority being reinforced.
Hopefully, richard will ignore all of that and the discussion will be about the proper role of religion in politics, science and education – which is where he’s at his best, IMHO.