BoltWatch

Dedicated to those who can tell the difference between A. Bolt and a nut.

Where Andrew Bolt's Deranged Polemic ... Gets What's Coming To It

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Bolt 28/11: "Will he keep listening?"
Shorter Andrew Bolt: the crushing defeat of the conservative party on Saturday does not mean Australians disagree with me. It does not mean anything should change. I am still right! THE ELECTION RESULT MEANS NOTHING!

Here are two election "promises" that contemptible Kevin Rudd has broken already! Okay, that's a huge stretch, neither of them have actually been "broken", but I am really desperate. (When he was talking to Kerry O'Brien he said he'd apologise to the aborigines! Now he's indicated he might use the word "sorry"! WHAT A LIAR!)

Now I will make bizarre claims that climate change is not only not anthropogenic but it's not even happening, and bang on about my not in any way crackpot "Rabbit Proof Fence was a conspiracy of lies" theory.

Becks. Good lie down. Talk to you later.

Labels:


- posted by Jeremy @ 7:54 AM |
Monday, November 26, 2007

Bolt 25/11: "Howard's Grace"
Andrew Bolt gets started on the eulogising of our ex-Prime Minister, before the Liberals realise the completely miserable position in which he's left them, before they realise how badly he's gutted the party and poisoned the well - before it's too late.
John Howard has always conducted himself with great personal courtesy and dignity. Whether you liked his policies or not, his personal behaviour was impeccable and his courage beyond question. He honored the office...

I think he’ll be remembered with a great deal of respect and fondness. A great man.

I echo the response of one commenter at his blog to this drivel:
What absolute rot. He may have shown the forms of politeness, but his actions were contemptible and low - right up until the last election, where he struck voters off the rolls and squandered unprecedented millions of taxpayers’ dollars on spruiking himself.

I’m not talking about his policies of the last 11 years, the ones where he built surpluses on the reforms of his predecessors, the mining boom over which he had no control, and with a GST which hit the poor the hardest, and which surpluses he never used to build infrastructure, only to buy votes at election time.

I’m talking about the way he played the “game” of politics. Consistently low and dirty.

He will thus be remembered with contempt by the progressive side of politics, and - because of his naked selfishness in staying on when his party was desperate for him to go - by many on the conservative side as well.

“Respect and fondness”? In his dreams, Andrew.

(Unsurprisingly, Bolt's tory fan club hangers-on were mortally offended by that comment and responded with a whole lot of "you're just JEALOUS" and "you are!" childishness.)

Bolt also specifically praises the rodent's exit speech:
All of those qualities were on full show during his concession speech, which - for those who missed it - is worth viewing.

Why? This is a new conservative meme, that Howard's exit speech was dignified and beautiful and generally "great" - and I really can't see it. The writing's been on the wall for a year, so he's had time to prepare something memorable, but there was nothing in there that attempted to bridge the divide he's chiseled into the national psyche over the past eleven years. That showed he understands and genuinely accepts why Australians have rejected him and his government. It was self-indulgent touting of his bullshit "economic credentials", and some "ra ra Australia is the greatest country in the world" playing to the crowd. What was so great about it?

I may write on this more at An Onymous Lefty.

Labels: ,


- posted by Jeremy @ 10:42 AM |
Thursday, November 22, 2007

His words says no, but his embedded advertising says yes
Talk about incongruent:



Interesting use of campaign dollars by the ALP, though, since I can't imagine many of Bolt's readers are in the "swinging voter" camp.

Labels: ,


- posted by Jeremy @ 7:45 AM |
Monday, November 19, 2007

Bolt 19/11: "Brown's water solution would drown us in debt"
Bob Brown has suggested that instead of building a dam or desalination plant, we should be collecting the water that falls on our houses in tanks. Andrew Bolt is horrified, on two grounds:
  • Tank water can be dangerous to drink if you don't filter/treat it;
  • It'll cost money.

It won't just cost money, according to Andrew, it'll cost SO MUCH MONEY THAT SOCIETY WILL COLLAPSE. That WE WILL BE DROWNED IN DEBT.

Er, how much will it cost, Andrew?
So, how many 2000-litre tanks would we need just to match the capacity of our biggest dam, the Thomson? Answer: 500,000,000. Or about 150 rainwater tanks for every single person in the city.

And how much would that cost? About $1,000,000,000,000.

But Bolt doesn't explain where he gets that ONE THOUSAND BILLION DOLLARS figure. Dr Evil in the Austin Powers movies, perhaps?


These water tanks will cost you ONE THOUSAND BILLION DOLLARS!

My guess is that he's taken the retail price of a 2000 litre tank today at Bunnings, rounded it up to the nearest $2,000, and multiplied it by 500 million. As if 500 million 2000 litre tanks would actually cost 500 million times the price of one 2000 litre tank.

For such a free market fundamentalist, Bolt really doesn't seem to understand basic economic principles. You don't reckon such mass production would make the unit cost of the things massively cheaper, Andrew?

He's also assuming that we'd actually need to immediately build at least one Thompson Dam's worth of water tanks, and that we couldn't simply build them gradually as required.

Andrew Bolt is mad.

UPDATE: Come to think of it, there are only 20 million or so people in the entire country. I'm fairly sure we don't have 25 houses each.

UPDATE #2 (21/11): Jesus, he was so enamoured of this idiotic post that he turned it into the column in Wednesday's Hun.

Other points his readers have raised:
  • The point is water production, not storage. You don't need sufficient rain tanks to store a Thompson's worth of supply: you need tanks to collect enough water to cope with each household's consumption.
  • The figure to compare is catchment area - how many Melbourne rooftops would be equivalent to the amount of land surrounding the Thompson dam?

Even Andrew's usual fans are less than enthusiastic about his sloppy maths and dodgy logic.

Labels: , ,


- posted by Jeremy @ 4:56 PM |
Thursday, November 08, 2007

Bolt 8/11: "Death Culture", or "I am a complete and utter tool"
There was a tragic school shooting in Finland yesterday.

If only, says Bolt, there were some way of drawing an implausibly long bow to blame that on some group I don't like:
We don’t know what is behind the killing. I’m interested in Auvinen’s contempt for humanity, which is not just a feature of the neo-Nazism he spouts, but of the more extreme global warming advocates who demand we reduce the number of dirty, earth-raping humans.

Now, in case you think that Bolt's remarks above are saying what they're clearly saying, he does follow up with the NOT IN ANY WAY LUDICROUSLY DISINGENUOUS claim that:
I’d better be clear for the jumpers-to-conclusions. No, I’m not accusing Auvinen of being a green, and greens of being murderers - or Nazis.

Of course not. Who could possibly "jump" to such a conclusion?

Now, I'd better be clear for the jumpers-to-conclusions, too. No, I'm not accusing Andrew Bolt of being a contemptible, disingenuous smear peddler who would use a school shooting to attack anyone concerned about the environment. I'm certainly not calling him a loathsome hypocritical polemicist who constantly tries to dog-whistle to his audience whilst pretending not to have any idea why they'd possibly get the message he's clearly conveying. I am not saying those things at all.

I'm simply noting certain facts. Stop putting words into my mouth.

Labels:


- posted by Jeremy @ 1:59 PM |

Portions of any work of Andrew Bolt are taken from his webpage at http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/, are copyright Andrew Bolt, and are reproduced on the basis of the "fair dealing for purpose of criticism or review" section 41 of the Copyright Act 1968. Other material is copyright by its various authors, which sort of goes without saying really.