I have a big favour to ask of you all. Most days of the week Toby, Jeremy and I try to highlight the half-baked arguments, flimsy reasoning and dodgy data that sometimes end up being relied upon by the commentariat, but today I need a bit of assistance. Can any of you please tell me what on earth News Limited’s Tim Blair is trying to say?
I’ve read the article a couple of times and it still strikes me as being the most rambling, disjointed string of ideas that I’ve been exposed to in quite some time, and I say that as the father of a four year old. From conspiracy theory, to historical revisionism and random jabs at the Left, it’s like Bob Ellis had a right wing conversion and rushed into print.
David Burchell’s tenuous and largely incoherent column evaluating Kevin Rudd through the prism of Homer’s epic tales has me thinking – what other tenuous links can we build between the classics and contemporary Australian politics? Let’s use this thread to connect literary tales, themes and characters with our modern-day leaders. Here’s my opening effort:
Antony and Cleopatra is the tale of two great leaders whose love transcends the divide between their nations. But the divisions in Rome’s leadership and concerns about Marc Antony’s attachment to Cleopatra’s Egypt bring war and defeat, leading to the tragic downfall of first Antony and then Cleopatra. If the climate change and ETS sceptics in the Liberal Party are ascendant, I fear Ian Macfarlane and Penny Wong might meet a similar fate.
Another week, another open thread. Use this to discuss anything that doesn’t fit with any of our posted topics. As always, the latest open threads will be available from the sidebar.
Let’s kick the weekend off with a fresh open thread to discuss the weekend’s news and activities. Remember that the links to the current open threads are always available in the sidebar to the right of the page.
We’ll update with details about TV programming for political tragics as they come to hand.
Certain commentators are making a big deal out of the religion of the Fort Hood shooter:
Hasan warned that Muslims soldiers could not be trusted to fight a Muslim enemy, and could turn their guns on their countrymen instead. He then did just that himself. Question: why did the army not remove this man from his post? And how can anyone still doubt the role of Islam in this massacre?
What exactly does Bolt mean by that paragraph? “The role of Islam in this massacre”? In what way? Is he suggesting that Muslims in general are dangerous? Does one Muslim acting alone support that conclusion any more than to suggest that, say, Christians in general are dangerous any time one shoots up an abortion clinic? Read More »
Andrew Bolt proclaims a “new consensus” on global warming. His evidence?
More than 50 physicists, including a Nobel laureate and many others prominent in their field, have signed a new petition warning against the great warming hoax
The Council of the American Physical Society has overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to replace the Society’s 2007 Statement on Climate Change with a version that raised doubts about global warming. The Council’s vote came after it received a report from a committee of eminent scientists who reviewed the existing statement in response to a petition submitted by a group of APS members.
I await an explanation of how the American Physical Society has been corrupted by its vested interest in creating a job-eating, wealth-redistributing One World Government.
Andrew Bolt adds an update to his Rudd letter post:
I like Robert Doyle, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne. In fact, we’d probably say we were friends. So I say this more with a smile than with anger: Robert, you great, applause-seeking hypocrite:
I was part of a group of Australia’s capital city lord mayors who lobbied Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in August about this issue. Our mission was to reinforce with our Federal Government counterparts the crucial role that cities play in combating climate change, and ask the Prime Minister to take that message to the Copenhagen conference… I see climate change as one of the greatest international issues of our time and as Lord Mayor I take very seriously my responsibility to make sure the people of Melbourne are protected from the impacts of climate change.
It’s sad, how sane men now worship gods they must know are false. Have courage, man! When this battle is won, we’ll remember those who did not dare fight.
“Hypocrite”? “They must know are false”? Read More »
Long-term conservative US blog “Little Green Footballs” (still linked to by, for example, tim Blair) is distancing itself from recent antics by those suffering “Obama Derangement Syndrome”:
Q: At that point in time you were fairly well aligned with much of the conservative blogosphere which unified behind the war on terror. Lately that seems to have changed. More and more LGF seems to be distancing itself from the right. What’s changed? Has national security become secondary to economic issues, or does it run deeper than that?
National security is still an important issue. But the main reason I can’t march along with the right wing blogosphere any more, not to put too fine a point on it, is that most of them have succumbed to Obama Derangement Syndrome. One “nontroversy” after another, followed by the outrage of the day, followed by conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, all delivered in breathless, angry prose that’s just wearying and depressing to read. Read More »
Miranda Devine is unusually subtle in her latest column, in fact if you’re not reading between the lines you might miss a piece of information that should have physicists all over the world excited. On first read the column appears to be a fairly pedestrian piece of climate change denial, quoting a physicist about climate science, but on closer examination Miranda is telling us that she’s seen disruptive events in time that would make Doc Brown and Marty McFly quiver.
“Intellectual dishonesty is pure poison…” — Edward Lazarus
We expose the intellectual dishonesty, the flimsy arguments and the distorted data wherever they appear in the mainstream media. We challenge the punditocracy, and provide an alternative forum for discussing the day’s events. We welcome debate about politics and society, but constructive debate needs to be based on reason and facts. We’re doing our bit to hold the opinion-makers to these standards.
