BoltWatch

You maniacs! You blew it up!

2008-04-06T18:55:00.013+10:00

No, we didn't. BoltWatch will remain, right here, a historical monument to three years of resigned and reluctant Boltwatching.

But it will remain here only as a mummified corpse, with posts (and, eventually, comments) frozen in time. Nothing further will be added to it. Its task is done, and it retires with a sense of relief.

Because it has been replaced. Replaced by its zippier, more exciting, better-designed, thoroughly improved offspring -

The Blair/Bolt Watch Project.

A wondrous new world of collaborative (meaning mainly by other people) News Ltd columnist watching awaits. Where the deranged polemics of Andrew Bolt and his NSW-based counterpart, Tim Blair - note, only their deranged polemics - really will get what's coming to them.

No longer will the blogosphere's genuine political debate need to be dragged off-topic by being forced to deal with the noisy silliness of Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt. That silliness - when it can't simply be ignored - can be responded to on the new site, leaving the country's real political blogs free to concentrate on adult discussions without constantly being interrupted by Timmy and Andy's juvenile shouting and poo-throwing.

Consider it a community service.

We do.

The Boltblog view of "balance"

2008-04-06T18:39:00.003+10:00

Bolt has a facile go today at Mark Bahnisch for daring to pick up a pen for News Ltd. What is wrong with the HES section of The Australian? Stupidly hiring a lefty?

Bahnisch is right - the HES is indeed off on a frolic on its own, and needs to be made as relevant, provocative, challenging, sceptical, reforming and simply sensible as the rest of the paper.

Apparently those adjectives are the ones which describe conservatives like Bolt.

"Relevant". (Where would we be without Andy's refreshingly realistic view of the Prime Minister?)

"Provocative". (In the childish hair-pulling way, anyway.)

"Challenging". (The patience of a saint?)

"Sceptical". (Don't worry, only of things our opponents argue. And then we're sceptical to the point of idiocy. But if you want to push a war - don't worry, we'll be as credulous as you like.)

"Reforming". (Although we'd prefer it if you Labor types didn't do any reforming of our reforms, thank you very much.)

"Simply Sensible". (I define "sensible" as "agreeing with me".)

The first comment from one of his fellow travellers is particularly ironic:

This boof head is of course just that - a boofhead that starts his first day biting the hand that feeds him. Get rid of him, and find someone who can at least offer a sense of gratitude for his/her employment as well as bring a balanced attitude to the job at hand.

1. It is wrong to bite the hand that feeds you; you should "offer a sense of gratitude" for your employment instead.
2. You should bring a "balanced attitude" to the job.
3. Therefore, a "balanced attitude" is defined as "doing what your employer wants you to do".

And people say Bolt isn't balanced!

Compare and contrast

2008-04-04T07:24:00.000+11:00

Just like GrodsCorp has been taking the piss out of Brendan Nelson's Magical Listening Tour, Andrew Bolt has been taking the piss out of Kevin Rudd's world tour. Bolta's main argument has been that Rudd is doing nothing more than chasing photo opportunities with world leaders despite the fact that Rudd's out there doing very diligently what national leaders are supposed to do. The latest target for Bolta's derision is Rudd's meeting with French pres Nicolas Sarkozy.

The great autograph hunt continues:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has held a 15-minute meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the NATO summit in Bucharest.

Hello. Pose for camera. Goodbye.

But here's a real journalist's take on the meeting.

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy has told Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that France will back Australia's bid to get a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

France's backing gets Australia's campaign off to a good start because it is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

Mr Rudd, who launched the bid when he met UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the weekend, raised the matter during a 25-minute meeting with Mr Sarkozy before the start of the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania.

"The President indicated France would be happy to support that bid," a spokesman for Mr Rudd said.

Mr Sarkozy also indicated he may be travelling to the French territories in the Pacific later this year and if possible he would also like to visit Australia.

The two leaders discussed areas such as Afghanistan, climate change, and stronger economic ties between Australia and Europe.

Security council. Afghanistan war. Possible visit by French president to Australia. How utterly trivial!

I actually find it rather disgusting that Andrew Bolt can dismiss the Prime Minister of this country networking with prominent world leaders at a NATO forum as autograph hunting. Can you imagine John Howard receiving the same treatment from Bolta's poison pen?

Bolt 2/4: A columnist's tantrum

2008-04-02T13:48:00.000+11:00

The newspaper columnist vs the entry-level employee:

But my last straw broke last week when I got to the register with another four books for my children, bought on impulse on the way to the movies.

“Would you like a plastic bag?” I was asked, in the disapproving tones I’ve learned to accept from sales staff of a certain age and taste for studs.

Why Borders should be so down on a little plastic bag is a mystery, actually, given its business is selling stuff made of murdered trees and plasticised oil.

But, ever placid, I sweetly replied, yes, please - I would indeed like to carry those books in a bag rather than cart them into the cinema in my arms. Not that I said that last bit, of course.

And then I was told Borders now charged 10 cents for each bag.

I pointed out that the bag should be given for free as a service to customers kind enough to buy armfuls of the shop’s wares.

But the sales assistant informed me in tones sanctimonious that this 10 cents was for “the environment” - going to Coastcare, a green group I’d never heard of.

As I told her, to the increasing mortification of my 14-year-old son, if I wanted to donate to Coastcare I’d do it myself, and I do not need or want Borders to bully me into it.

As I huffed off with books unbagged, I heard her protest to a colleague that I was wrong to object because the bag levy really was for “the environment”.

Gee, I wonder why Bolt Jr was embarrassed. I'm sure his father's "huffing" outrage was expressed completely "sweetly" and "placidly".

Wouldn't you like to see the first, slightly less self-serving and carefully-edited draft of that piece?

Sue Gant remonstrates with him in the comments:

AGAIN - Andrew - it has occured to me that you were rather rude to that “overworked” lass in Borders the other day. Rather than make a humiliating public example of her (she’s probably been sacked now for bad customer service) you could have with good humor made your purchase and then written an Open letter to Border’s management eh? But it’s more fun to humiliate a low level employee. A shame really because your description of her work conditions was so eloquent and heck, I even related to it. By the way, this certain AGE - feel sorry for your kids when they reach it and have their sense of self esteem destroyed by opinionated adults who should know better.

I'm surprised Bolt's moderators let that comment through, actually.

Bolt 2/4: "Student needs help with teacher"

2008-04-02T13:07:00.000+11:00

Memo Melbourne University lecturers: better not sneeze in a way that could be construed as "left-wing", or your students may report you to Lord Andrew of Bolt!

I considered asking the lecturer if he was ashamed at the end of the lecture for not being less partisan or using an example that was not political. Then I thought better of it because I am doing four courses and all the lecturers and tutors do the same. I am only 1st year and these people will be passing me or not. Dear Dorothy Bolt what do I do? I want my degree but should I have to listen to this form of partisan politicking for 3 years.

The lecturer's crime?

Yesterday I sat in a lecture at Melbourne University on Politics, Philosophy and Economics where Global Warming was used as an example and pushed by a lecturer to first year students and a definite snide remark made against our former Prime Minister Mr John Howard.

In a politics lecture, he mentioned "global warming" and, apparently, made a "snide" (but unquoted) remark "against" Howard.

OUTRAGEOUS! He mentioned global warming. He used it as an example of something! And then, to top it all off, he did not refer to our sadly rejected former leader with the respect he deserves. Clearly it's just one step from that to re-education camps.

Bolt's commenters rightly fear the rights of their younger ideological brethren being curtailed:

Everyone has their own political opinions, however, they shouldn’t be rammed down the throat of a student and he shouldn’t be penalised for having views different to that of the lecturer. Perhaps, you are not familiar with the way a university works but it shouldn’t be like a union meeting where one ideology prevails.

"Verax", calling for the penalising of the lecturer for having views different to that of the student, appears not to have noticed the irony. Was the student "penalised"? No, he just didn't like something the lecturer said and wants him to be shut up so he doesn't have to listen to opinions he doesn't like for the next three years. The poor dear!

Then "Chade" suggests one lesson the student could take on board:

How about: “learn to accept other people have equally valid but differing opinions”?

Andrew Bolt's juvenile "I know you are" retort?

Good advice for the lecturer indeed. Well done.

It's like a farce over there, it really is.

UPDATE: I did love this bizarre remark from "scotty":

Don’t bother trying to get the lefty lecturer to see another view point - they are beyond reasoned argument.

Whereas here on Bolt's blog, the righties are famed for their openness to other view points.

Bolt (April 1) "An announcement from the seat of Higgins"

2008-04-01T09:08:00.004+11:00

I do like that Andrew Bolt recognises how much of a joke his run as a candidate for the Liberal Party would be, by using the subject as his April Fools' Day prank:

This is it for the blog, at least for now. I can’t pre-empt the announcement that my local member and friend, Peter Costello, is about to make, but it would clearly be a conflict of interest for me to continue to write about politics here if I’ve privately agreed to become a player.

Wink, wink, boom, boom!

Perhaps next April Andy can write a piece about how he's considering taking up actual journalism.

UPDATE: I couldn't let this pass. From the comments:

I do not believe you even needed to write that, Andrew. You have always projected as a man of honour, and if what you have intimated above really is that you will one day take a place on the federal benches of parliament, then Australia will be a better, stronger, and more responsible nation because of it.

You have courage, knowledge, and compassion; and you know and understand the heartbeat of our great land.

I can't say Roger's fine adjectives entirely describe my experience of the man in question.

BoltAndBlairWatch

2008-03-31T14:30:00.005+11:00

BoltWatch is in the process of being prepared for a relaunch. The new version will be collaborative (given my recent "dear God do I have to read the rantings of that idiot? No? Someone else is prepared to? Thank the Lord" approach to the site), will feature a better visual design (read: "an actual visual design"), and generally make the site's first iteration look embarrassingly amateurish (read: not change the way this site is viewed in the slightest).

One question which has not yet been resolved is this: should the remit of BoltWatch expand to also cover a BlairWatch?

Tim Blair, for Victorians who are only here because they've been exposed to Andrew Bolt's embarrassing drivel in the state tabloid, is roughly the NSW equivalent. Only his blog is even more disturbing. It's like Andrew's - very like Andrew's - but with more regular personal attacks on minor lefty bloggers, and considerably angrier Americans in the comments. It is also, scarily enough, one of the oldest, largest and most-read major Australian blogs.

Given how often Tim and Andrew like to write about each other, and given that the whole point of BoltWatch is to help quarantine the rest of the blogosphere from having to constantly taint actual adult political discussion with responses to this sort of right-wing tabloid drivel, dealing with both of them here seems appropriate. Don't bore your readers by exposing them to the Bolts and Blairs of this world - deal with it here, amongst the sympathetic company of people who similarly can't resist reading their rantings, even though they know they'll regret it. What Australian blogger hasn't faced, slightly shamefacedly, comments from readers along the lines of "Why do you write about that idiot? I didn't even know they existed until you pointed it out!" I know I have. And I know I'm sorry.

That's why I started BoltWatch, and readers of An Onymous Lefty have been relieved over the years to barely have to read anything about Andrew Bolt at all. Would they jump at the chance to have the Blair posts also disappear? I suspect the answer rhymes with "oh, f*ck yes". (I suspect the answer actually is, "oh, f*ck yes".)

I note that Timmy Blair is very proud to have had his American fans name an internet "law" after him:

Blair's law. Coined by Australian journalist, Tim Blair as -

"the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force."

1. The alliance between the radical Left and extremist Islamists is an example of Blair's Law.

The fact that the above example does not in any recognisable way describe the real world in which the rest of us live, doesn't counter the trend Blair has noticed and, with Bolt, ironically illustrates. And which this -watch site could, conceivably, also highlight.

"BoltandBlairWatch - tackling the multiple idiocies of the Australian blogosphere's most giant, useless forces."

Or should we stick with Andy, and Andy alone? Your feedback is ~~important~~ of at least marginal consequence.

Cross-posted to An Onymous Lefty.

UPDATE: Name? "The BoltBlair Watch Project" has been suggested, although I think it might work better as "The BlairBoltWatch Project". Other ideas?

One eye closed

2008-03-31T14:28:00.005+11:00

Despite appearances I am actually quite understanding of bias. I'm biased, my site is biased, and bloggers in general are biased -- that's what blogging is all about. But there's bias and then there's bias.

The latest bulletin from Kevin Rudd’s Excellent Adventure:

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has announced he will speak with all three US presidential election candidates during his trip to Washington.

Wow! And?

The Prime Minister is visiting seven countries, meeting the US President and the UN Secretary-General, touching base with NATO, the EU and other foreign leaders. It is hardly a holiday and it is exactly the kind of job that the PM should be doing. But what does Bolta do? Dismiss it as spin, spin and more spin when Rudd announces that he has secured meetings with each of the three potential next US Presidents. John Howard used to schedule overseas trips to ensure he was in London for the cricket.

Surely Andy is taking the piss with these articles. Surely.

Name just ten! (reprise)

2008-03-31T14:22:00.005+11:00

Our mate Andy is famous for shrieking "name just ten" at anyone who'd listen while arguing that the stolen generation was a pernicious lefty lie. Of course, when ten stolen children were named he'd start shrieking "name just one hundred" without missing a beat.

Now Bolta has shrieked his famous line in a new context.

Could Steffen name, say, just 10 of the species that have so far been wiped out by this “human-induced mass extinction event” in the 40-odd years of alleged human-induced global warming?

Perhaps my green critics on this blog could help him. Just 10.

Of course, Andy thinks he's being ironic by using his "name ten" line but we all know that it's being shrieked with spittle-flecked lips just as seriously as it was during the stolen generations debate.

26/3: "Don't boycott China's shame"

2008-03-26T13:23:00.004+11:00

Andrew Bolt is not always an apologist for authoritarianism. If it's authoritarianism he can lay at the feet of people he thinks are representative of "the left", he's happy to sink in the boot. Which is good, because that's where we can finally agree on something.

His column today, arguing that the Olympic Games are a fine opportunity to make Beijing choke a bit on the contempt the rest of the world has (or should have) for its outrageous human rights abuses, is fairly reasonable.

Yes, he can't resist trying to have a go at lefties:

Our own protesters like to scream abuse at the West, but at least Western countries and institutions insist that when they give money to foreign nations it’s in exchange for promises to be less corrupt and more democratic.

(I think he's saying here that protesters shouldn't criticise the West because its institutions are at least not as bad as China's. Otherwise I can't for the life of me see the relevance of that remark.)

And he notices the new Prime Minister's (the new MANDARIN SPEAKING PRIME MINISTER WTF OMG) kowtowing to Beijing, in a way he never noticed John Howard's:

Our own Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, for instance, can furiously vow to do “everything within our power” to stop Japan’s “slaughter” of whales, but dares only murmur that China should “exercise restraint” in slaughtering Tibetans.

(Strangely enough, Bolt never applauded the Greens for being the only Australian political party willing to stand up to the Chinese leader when he spoke here in 2004.)

But at least he didn't try to argue that we should leave politics alone and come together to celebrate what the Olympic Games are really about - world-class ~~advertising contracts~~ athletes. His article seems to suggest that, no matter what the IOC says or demands of participants in the Games, they (and we) should stick to our guns. The Chinese are certainly going to stick to theirs - which are, of course, not metaphorical guns.

And so what if he tried to turn this into a bit of a bash-the-left exercise? He's got a particular audience, they expect him to at least play some of his favourite hits when they go to his show. So what if he doesn't apply these standards to less convenient targets and in fact goes to some lengths to use this article to apologise for them? I don't expect him to suddenly oppose Western-friendly governments passing draconian legislation - not when he has the handy "at least they're not as bad as China/Mugabe/Saddam" comeback.

The fact is that on this issue, it doesn't matter - we can unite in being appalled at the autocrats in Beijing and wanting to do something about it. China is a brutal, dissent-crushing dictatorship, and it deserves all the condemnation and unfavourable exposure we can give it. Those who oppose authoritarianism in all its forms; and those who oppose it only when it's from a "communist" regime. Together.

Andrew Bolt: shameless

2008-03-24T16:21:00.002+11:00

We reported yesterday about Andrew Bolt's dodgy use of blockquotes, editorialising and selective reporting to make a point about the delegates selected to the Australia 2020 summit and smear The Sunday Age in the process. (By the way, he has today added to his list of delegates, deliberately using the same style of bullets to make a point.) In his post he labelled nutritionist Rosemary Stanton as an "anti GM food campaigner" which is bad, you see. She's a filthy lefty hippy, or something like that. One of Bolta's commenters took the bait and wrote the following.

What?????

This is the woman who, and I kid you not, in her book Food for Life, defines nursing as “standing with light activity”

*slams head on desk again*
-- Nemesis12

This comment triggered the kind of response you'd expect until Rosemary Stanton herself dropped into Bolt's blog-of-shame to set the message straight.

Before damning me, you might get your facts straight. I have written many books but none titled Food for Life and none that say that nursing is ‘standing with light activity’.
-- Rosemary Stanton

Without having read any of Stanton's books this seems like a pretty open-and-shut case. It's unlikely that Stanton would make such a statement unless it were actually true. But Bolt's response to this clarification is stunning in its arrogance and lack of ethics -- even for him.

UPDATE

Rosemary Stanton replies - kind of - in comments below.

Can you imagine Bolta's response if he were misquoted, defended himself, and then had his defence dismissed as such? You'd hear the screaming at the Southbank HWT building all the way from Brunswick.

UPDATE (6:45pm): Norbett in comments at GrodsCorp provides further info that seems to weaken Stanton’s denial but still leaves the fact that Bolt supports his commenter’s inference that nurses do no work.

Bolta quotes selectively (and makes the rest up)

2008-03-24T09:40:00.005+11:00

BoltWatch is pleased to welcome The Editor as a regular contributor.

(This item is crossposted at GrodsCorp)

I'm not a huge fan of the government's planned Australia 2020 summit, but Andrew Bolt's hatred of the idea makes me look like a fanatical supporter. I think it's an idea with merit but the way it's been setup and will be run will ultimately lead to very little useful discussion and no real generation of ideas. But Bolta thinks it's a pernicious lefty groupthinking love-in, and perniciously twists The Sunday Age's words to make his point.

Kevin Rudd announces more delegates to his 2020 summit love in. As predicted, the latest confirm that most invitations are going to people who share the Left’s agenda

Here's a list of summit delegates on The Sunday Age's website.

And here's the layout Bolt used in his blog post.

See how he's placed The Sunday Age's list in a blockquote, suggesting that it's a -- you know -- quote? But he's also added names to the list that were in the paper's story text but not in the list. And see how he's selectively added his own extra notes to delegates' bios to emphasise the evil leftiness?

The Sunday Age:

Rodney Dillon, former ATSIC commissioner.

Bolta:

Rodney Dillon, former ATSIC commissioner, stolen generations activist and campaigner for the return of Aboriginal remains.

Campaigner for the return of Aboriginial remains? Evil man!

The Sunday Age:

Waleed Aly, a member of the Islamic Council of Victoria executive and a lecturer in the global terrorism research centre at Monash University who will join the committee dealing with Australia's future security.

Bolta:

Waleed Aly, Islamic Council of Victoria executive member ~~and a lecturer in the global terrorism research centre at Monash University~~ and “war on terror” critic (to go on group discussing security)

"War on verbs" critic and Muslim? He must be a terrorist who wants to bring down Western civilisation!

The Sunday Age:

Rosemary Stanton, nutritionist.

Bolta:

Rosemary Stanton, nutritionist and anti GM food campaigner.

Anti-GM food? Hippy.

But here's my favourite. The Sunday Age:

Ana Kikkinos (sic), best known for the TV series The Secret Life of Us and Young Lions and the film Head On

Bolta:

Ana Kokkinos, director of TV series The Secret Life of Us and Young Lions and the gay cult film Head On

Gay? Cult? Gay cult? Aaargh! Sound the moral alarm! Teh gays are in a cult and they're attacking! They're going to make our kids join the cult and give them teh gay and make them vote Green!

Bolta also inserted some delegates into the list who weren't in The Sunday Age's story.

Andrew Denton, Left-wing TV presenter

Evil, evil lefties!

Fiona Stanley, paediatrician and fierce Bush hater

Evil, evil Bush haterers!

Michael Tate, former Keating justice minister.

Paul Keating? Evil!

Christine Nixon, Victorian chief commissioner who’s project has been to feminise the force and make it "non-authoritarian"

Evil, evil women. Get back in the kitchen.

Sara Haghdoosti, member of the International Women’s Day organising committee and a former women’s officer for the Sydney University Student Representative Council

Women organising? Evil!

But the most telling part is the way that Bolta hasn't added any information to the following delegates.

Bolta:

Professor Joshua Gans, Melbourne economist.

GrodsCorp:

Professor Joshua Gans, right-wing Melbourne economist.

Bolta:

Lachlan Murdoch, media investor.

GrodsCorp:

Lachlan Murdoch, media investor and son of the owner of the largest and most right-wing media conglomerate in the world. Oh, and also the son of the man who pays Bolta's wages.

Just another sly and dishonest effort from Australia's shrillest journalist (sic).

UPDATE (11:50am): Blogger Gummo Trotsky pointed out to Bolta in the comments of his blog his dodgy use of a blockquote and italics...

Nice use of italics to suggest that the list, with descriptions, is quoted verbatim from one of your two sources when in fact the editorialising is all your own work.

...and got a terse response from a clearly rattled Bolta.

There is no intention to mislead, Mr Troll, and a quick click on the links I provided would make clear the facts. But if it makes you feel happier, I’ll take the words out of italics.

That'll make it much clearer, Mr Journalist (sic).

UPDATE II (12:00pm): My response to the removal of italics.

UPDATE III (2:00pm): An angry commenter threw down a challenge to the above comment...

Oh for heaven’s sake. Grow up and make a comment on the actual content of the post or go away.

...so I replied that I had made comment on the substance of the article and provided a link to this post. Unfortunately it seems at this point that I've been SNIPPED.

UPDATE IV (2:40pm): Bolta has responded to my comment about the blockquote and copied bullet points. I believe he has perfected the skill of shriek-typing.

Oh, and my comment with a link to this post is still SNIPPED.

Bolt 20/3: "Rudd's Chinese Friends"

2008-03-20T10:45:00.005+11:00

Andy's desperately hoping the Liberals will be able to fashion a scandal out of Rudd's having Chinese campaign donors.

Still nothing sinister, but ever more interesting:

"Still" nothing sinister? Not yet, but we're sure there must be! Somehow! Sinister! It will be! Just wait! He has Chinese friends!

Fairly shameless hackery (not that Bolt's exactly been covering himself in glory this week), clearly direct from Liberal Party HQ.

Still, fortunately for Andy, the Prime Minister did do something harsh and socially conservative the other day that he could praise (announcing cutting off the baby bonus from parents suffering from drug and gambling addictions) - the News Ltd polemicist presumably thinks that post makes him look balanced and fair. Hey, I said "good on" the guy! I'm an objective commentator, who just happens to be desperately hoping he can get the word "sinister" associated with the Prime Minister.

Bolt 19/3: "A lawyer's tantrum"

2008-03-19T10:56:00.002+11:00

Ignoring Bolt's fatuous attempt to try to attack me through my job today, he does make one very good point: that ancient photograph on my bar profile really needs to be updated. It's appalling. Thanks for reminding me, Andy.

Bolt 17/3: "Grab that man!"

2008-03-17T17:13:00.004+11:00

He loves him, he loves him not, he loves him again...

Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of America’s National Review Online, discovers a big political talent... Maybe we could use him.

There you are. Andy has forgiven John Howard for not handing over to Peter Costello. And so long as Howard retains an adamant, unshakeable, stubborn belief in a certain magic-bubble fantasy view of his Premiership, he and other people who desperately wish it were true will grab on with both hands.

Such as in this classic "the voters' voice stopped counting when they kicked out my candidate" comedy quote from Bolt's comments:

Not just Americans, but people all over the world are now laughin’ at us for dumping such a great government.

That's the spirit, Gordon! If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.

Bolt 24/2: "Students roasted for ravenous planet"

2008-02-25T11:06:00.004+11:00

Trinity Grammar is getting rid of energy-chewing air-conditioners in the interests of doing its bit for climate-change. (Of course, I'm assuming the ruling doesn't just apply to students and teaching staff, but also to the admin and school board people making the decision.)

But to Andrew Bolt, this is merely self-flagellation. Why? Well, cutting down energy use has "zero" effect on the planet!

Effect on planet? Zero.

Yes, according to Andy, energy consumption has precisely "zero" environmental effect. The energy we produce by burning brown coal? That extra CO2 in the atmosphere does NOTHING! It just magically disappears to space. It certainly doesn't have the long-established effect of increasing the atmosphere's ability to retain heat! No, energy consumption has "zero" effect on the planet.

And even if it did, the use of air-conditioners has precisely "zero" effect on energy consumption, anyway! It's not like they use a lot of energy whenever they're turned on. It's not like they operate by the energy-intensive processes of compressing and decompressing air and moving it around tubes to bleed off the heat. It's not like their use is one of the primary drivers of summer-time "brown-outs" when energy demand exceeds supply. Not at all.

And, finally, one school declining to use air conditioners has "zero" effect on the total amount of air conditioner-related energy consumption, anyway. Unless EVERYONE stops using their air conditioners at exactly the same time, there's absolutely no reason for anyone to do so.

"A journey starts with a single step"? "From little things big things grow"? "You've got to start somewhere"? Where did you GET those hippy freaking sayings?

Wait a minute - I know! You got them from a teacher! From reading! Aha! I knew it!

Unpleasant thing to come back to

2008-02-17T09:21:00.002+11:00

Eugh. I return from holiday, check out the RSS feed reader, and guess how many Andrew Bolt columns it's picked up since I last checked?

199.

Oh, the huge manatee!

I suppose I should have a look. The site is BoltWatch, after all. Although I can guess what Andy's been ranting about this week.

Let's see... (going in reverse chronological order because that's how they appear in the feed):

Rudd's like a communist dictator (Rudd’s great leap forward);
Child protective services taking an abused child is somehow just the same as deliberately taking children from impoverished families rather than providing them with assistance (Baby ‘stolen’ from under PM’s nose);
"Encouraging" staff at a university to attend something is really "obliging" them to do so (The Melbourne University of Group-Think*;
Opposing the badly thought-out, carrot-light but stick-heavy "Intervention" is the same as "demanding an end to black help" (Whites demand less help for blacks)...

And so on. That's enough. I don't really feel like wading through any more of that sort of drivel.

Elsewhere: the apologetic commos at New Matilda direct their "Sorry" to one oppressed columnist who really deserves it, pleading "Andrew Bolt, Please Forgive Us".**

* In case you were confused, Andrew Bolt's definition of "Group Think" isn't "like-minded people agreeing with each other", it's people Andrew Bolt doesn't agree with agreeing with each other. If you like what Andrew Bolt says, a negatively-charged epithet like "group think" simply cannot apply.

** I'm a bit nonplussed that New Matilda thought they really needed to preface the piece with the headline "SATIRE". They thought someone might miss the (IRONY) incredibly subtle point? (QUESTION) Seriously?

Bolt tries to cover tracks; fails

2008-01-30T08:19:00.001+11:00

Andrew's only been back a few days, and he's already made a complete elbow of himself.

Take Sunday, when he sauntered back to his blog and smugly declared the Iraq War "Won" (again), and derided critics for not recognising how right he and his fellow supporters had always been. "It's easy to publicly back George Bush now that the war in Iraq is won," he mocked.

A few hours later, he pulled the post and deleted all traces of it - but not before it was caught by Google (and RSS readers). Then he pretended that all he was really saying was that the war was "going well".

The Orstrahyan has the details.

Bolt 21/12: "Goodbye"

2008-01-08T00:00:00.000+11:00

This blog doesn't usually comment on Bolt the man, largely because the subject is irrelevant. A polemicist could be a lovely fellow with his family and friends, and still write toxic drivel in the newspapers. Alternatively, he could be a total arsehole to everyone around him, and still make sensible arguments in his writing.

Bolt's personal character has little to do with this site's critiques of his newspaper column and blog, in other words.

Still, since he brought it up - his last blog entry for the year did include a rather ironic description of his plans for the holiday, given that this is a man who regularly attacks supposed "left wing elites" and likes to pretend he's a man of the people:

For me there will be a few other things to attend to, like playing the Bach cello suites recommended to me by a friend. Finding some more bottles of that Green Point reserve Pinot Noir.

Truly, Andy is the salt-of-the-earth, and a genuine anti-elitist. Wouldn't you love to have a ~~beer~~ Pinot Noir with him?

PS: Oh, and to make you throw up a little, "Skye" follows a paragraph claiming that Bolt has "a sea"* of admirers with this apparent non-sequitur:

It’s great to have an Australian George Orwell.

It certainly would be. Oh, wait - she doesn't mean Andrew Bolt, does she?! My God, I think she does. Oh, the humanity. Mr Blair's corpse is rolling about in its grave so quickly that the headstone is now engulfed in a cloud of smoke.

*Is "a sea" the correct plural? Of "drips", I suppose.

UPDATE: I couldn't let the following eloquent comment by one of Andy's enthusiastic readers just disappear into the aether, and reproduce it here exactly as it was uploaded to news.com.au:

Well its good to see that some people have common sense and can see that thereis something wrong with all these lies and to think that they are giving our money to the un and ureopean union who are again under investigation for fraud as well as cohorting with taliban is discracefull,im so incensed by this rip off im starting up a new movement against the greens so stay tuned ,im going to make sure the truth is heard by banding all the real science together ,i hope andrew has a great xmas and you forgot to mention in the election everyone seems to forget that labor changed the boundaries in the election to include more labor voters in the marginal seats so they could win ,typical and of course there were a lot of chinese in the mix ,no doubt about the far far left labor motives ,1stthe internet like china,and the green rubbish and next of course the unions who will again ruin the country as usual.

Wow! Perhaps Andy should get "jack" to write a few guest posts while he's away.

UPDATE #2: Also this remark from long-time Bolt obsessive (and Blairville regular), "Alan of Sydney":

You’re unique Andrew. Thank God.

I'd thank God if there were only one of him too, Alan - except sadly that's clearly not the case.

Bolt 21/12: "Hear it from Hicks, Tracee"

2007-12-21T10:04:00.000+11:00

He's certainly got the wackos fired up over David Hicks at his blog today. So fired up, in fact, that the keyboard warriors are sending in death threats, and (despite the "moderation" process) having them published on news.com.au.

Some examples.

From "Ross of Kew":

So David Hicks, that immature, snivelling apology for a man, wants to die a martyr.

Well Mr Hicks, I can, and am willing, to accommodate your wishes.

From "gomadsfr of Kirwan":

Perhaps Rule .303 should apply. Or is it now Rule 7.62 or Rule 5.56?

From "BC of Brisbane":

Hicks is a complete nutter - when he gets out he should be watching his back.

Andrew Bolt and News Ltd might like to note that - whatever his sins - David Hicks is an Australian citizen, and serious threats made against another such person can actually have legal consequences. Including for any organisation which publishes them.

Bolt 14/12: "Beware those whackers"

2007-12-15T08:09:00.001+11:00

My god. He's finally cracked. Friday's column:

THIS may be my last column. If you don't see me again, you'll know the Pinata Left has whacked me, too, writes Andrew Bolt.

You see, Kevin Rudd's victory has unleashed a horde of haters with sticks who are trying to sack conservative commentators and close down debate.

Their demands are simple. They won. So shut up. No more of these "culture wars". No dissent.

I knew it would get this ugly, of course. The Left does hate best and is still the chest for the totalitarian heart.

He goes on, getting more paranoid, more shrill, more insane as the piece progresses.

THEY ARE OUT TO GET HIM.

Like Pauline Hanson's "if you're watching this then I am dead" video, Bolt's Friday rant is a fascinating look into the mind of a man with a staggering lack of self-awareness and a surprisingly poorly-developed sense of irony.

Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now then it means I have been murdered.

Pretty much everything he throws back at "the Left" (as represented by one or two people getting a bit carried away in their triumphalism) could just as easily have been thrown back at "the Right" when they were ascendant politically.

I did like the way he tried to reinterpret what happened last time the government changed:

Compare. When John Howard's Liberals beat Paul Keating's Labor in 1996, I saw no hooting mob dancing on skulls and demanding an end to all argument. But with Howard's fall . . .

"Ding dong, the witch is dead," screeched Jill Singer on this very page.

Yeah, no-one on the conservative side screeched with joy at the slaying of Paul Keating. No, there was no loathing or contempt for that man. Keating haters? Couldn't have been. Keating's name starts with a different letter!

Of course, 1996 was a long time ago and there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. No wonder Andrew's memory's a little rusty.

Still, I suspect (very strongly) that an identical piece, with the names reversed, could have been written in 1996 when the Liberals were crowing about their first victory in thirteen years. Because unlike Andrew's simplistic worldview - lefties = totalitarian thugs; righties = freedom-loving libertarians - the reality is that there are decent people and total douchebags aplenty on both sides.

Decent people, who enjoy openly and honestly discussing politics with people having opposing views in a spirit of open debate. And those who seek to misrepresent, slur and otherwise use their prominent positions to try to shut down debate with bullying and thuggery.

And although he's a freedom-loving righty, I'm not absolutely certain that Andrew Bolt fits in the former category.

UPDATE: Sorry, I missed this - as apparently did his editors - but he does actually begin the piece by referring to himself in the third person:

the Pinata Left has whacked me, too, writes Andrew Bolt.

Andrew Bolt appears to have lost his mind, writes Jeremy Sear.

Bolt 11/12: "Pack-raped girl sacrificed to the “stolen generations” myth"

2007-12-11T09:18:00.000+11:00

My god he's shameless. Bolt uses the raped 10 year old story to push his line on the Stolen Generations, in a balanced and well-reasoned piece entitled "Pack-raped girl sacrificed to the “stolen generations” myth".

If she'd been "stolen" earlier, he argues, none of this would have happened. Therefore, well, it's good to take aboriginal children from their parents.

Unbelievable. (Wonder how much better Andrew would have turned out if he'd been stolen from his folks?)

He then blatantly misreports the details of the case -

This is the girl who was pack raped at 10, with a judge letting her nine rapists - one a 26-year-old - walk free because the girl, she said, had consented.

That's not what the judge said at all. According to Bolt's own link, what was actually found was -

the sentencing judge saying the child victim “probably agreed” to have sex with them.

"Probably agreed" is a finding of fact differentiating the rape from one in which force was involved (the previous sentence in the judge's remarks, which News Ltd excluded). It is not a finding that she consented, which is flat-out wrong - and impossible, because she was ten years old. (Consent is a defence to rape, "probably agreed" is a mitigating - or at least non-aggravating - factor.)

Of course, Bolt's commenters leap on this misreporting as evidence that the judge doesn't know what she's talking about.

Funnily enough, he hasn't corrected it yet.

Bolt 28/11: "Will he keep listening?"

2007-11-28T07:54:00.000+11:00

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.

Bolt 25/11: "Howard's Grace"

2007-11-26T10:42:00.000+11:00

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.

His words says no, but his embedded advertising says yes

2007-11-22T07:45:00.001+11:00

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.

Bolt 19/11: "Brown's water solution would drown us in debt"

2007-11-19T16:56:00.001+11:00

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.

Bolt 8/11: "Death Culture", or "I am a complete and utter tool"

2007-11-08T13:59:00.000+11:00

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.

Bolt 31/10: "I’d vote Labor in Lalor"

2007-10-31T19:54:00.000+11:00

In which Andrew Bolt joins the modern world.

Andrew's views on homosexuality appear to have matured over the last year, such that he today declares that the Liberal candidate in Lalor's gay-hatin' bigotry is so repulsive that he'd prefer to vote for Julia Gillard. (Which, to someone as far right as Andrew Bolt, is a serious sacrifice.)

Of course, Andrews' coterie on his blog aren't impressed by his descent into "political correctness"...

Righty Groupthink Tracker

2007-10-25T20:36:00.000+10:00

Andrew Bolt is awesome. Tim Blair is awesome. Sadly though, if you read the two of them you're not getting twice the awesomeness, because a fair bit of it is duplicated.

BoltWatch is proud to link, in the spirit of "we should have been doing that ages ago, what the hell kind of slackarses run this website anyway", to GrodsCorp's amusing Righty Groupthink Tracker, in which the amount of Andy-Timmy-Andy-Timmy-Andy circular love is recorded for posterity. We're up to 11 12 from Andy and 11 from Timmy so far this month.

Remember: although Grods calls it a "groupthink" tracker, as everyone knows it's only the left that's guilty of "groupthink". We've asked Grods to call it something else, "Righty Awesome Collegiality Tracker" perhaps, but they've refused, hateful lefties that they are.

In the meantime, consider this an Amazon.com-style recommendation: if you like Andrew Bolt's blog, you might enjoy... Tim Blair's. (Because you've read it already.)

Bolt 24/10: "A child sent back to his death"

2007-10-24T07:49:00.000+10:00

Like the rest of us, Andrew Bolt is horrified by this story.

A 32-year-old Queensland mother has been charged with the torture and manslaughter of her two-year-old boy.

The toddler died in horrific circumstances on September 24 — with a post mortem discovering over 270 injuries on his body.

He had only recently been returned to his parents in Margate, north of Brisbane, after a stint in foster care.

Unlike the rest of us, guess what Andrew's first (his FIRST) question is?

One, I want to know the cultural background to this ghastly, tragic death

Hell, he's not even disguising his desperate search for a "ra... cultural" spin to put on the story!

Andrew, the way it's done is to wait until you find OUT the raci... cultural background, and THEN you blame it. If you start out by declaring it as your first priority (particularly when for all you know they're exactly the same "cultural background" as you), you make it incredibly obvious that all you're doing is trying to turn the story into a handy device for spreading racia... cultural hatreds. Because you don't even know the ...cultural background of the people involved and yet you're already concentrating on it as a cause.

And I love his passive aggressive response to being called on this:

Please don’t get on your high horse. It’s hard to see small children from up there.

Well, if you HATE CHILDREN, then fine, question my dodgy rac... culture baiting. If you hate children, and want to see them suffer. Which anyone who disagrees with me must do. Hate children.

Seriously, how contemptible.

Bolt 12/10: "Actually, Schembri eats with Jason"

2007-10-12T17:27:00.000+10:00

...and Andy's back to being a dishonest blowhard. Quoting another dishonest blowhard, this one at The Age. Named Jason Koutsoukis, he's written a laughable piece of anti-Greens polemic that pretty much defines the word "smear". From an imaginative (but farcical) attempt to portray Bob Brown as "a con man" simply because the Greens have never been in a position to implement policy (a delightfully unfair catch-22), to this totally unsupported offensive against Greens members:

In reality, the Greens are just as sneaky, just as pragmatic, and just as calculating as any other political organisation.

Prod the Greens a little and out come the weevils from their Brunswick Street burrows ready to tar and feather any critics.

Greens supporters are routinely the most vicious, unpleasant and abusive when responding to even the most gentle ribbing.

Uh, what? Any evidence of that?

Jason hasn't even got a meaningless example to back up that smear, let alone meaningful analysis of the behaviour by supporters of the various other parties... what you see is what you get. Nasty creative writing.

And of course, Bolt applauds it, and dignifies Jason's fictional polemic as "observation".

OBSERVATION?! How could you read Jason's piece and conclude he was "observing" anything?

Next, Andrew applauds Jason's feigned outrage at Bob Brown accusing John Howard of pandering to homophobia. As Jason points out, even if Howard has utterly failed to enshrine equal rights for gay people over the 11 years he's been in power, he "has employed gay men, he's appointed gays and lesbians to a stacks of boards, tribunals, government agencies and overseas postings".

So that's okay then. You people don't need equality; you need tokenism.

And that was it - that was the only substance to Jason's attack. Brown accuses Howard of pandering to homophobia; therefore he's a "con man" out of Dickens.

Yup. Another flimsy, contemptible smear against the Greens.

And of course Bolt immediately linked to it. Andrew has had an unpleasant 24 hours since Howard decided he regretted being a stumbling block against reconciliation. Do I support Howard's backflip? Or do I condemn him for it? All very difficult.

No wonder he leapt on Jason's little rant so enthusiastically. Hateful dishonest diatribes against the Greens? Now we're back on familiar ground.

Bolt 12/10: "It's time we got a grip"

2007-10-12T08:26:00.000+10:00

They'll turn on him, but some further common sense from Andrew in his actual column today:

HAVE we gone mad? A few drunk Sudanese louts bash a policeman yesterday and we carry on as if we’ve never seen such savagery on our streets.

Never, bellow the talkback callers to an eager ear, until we let in these uncivilised Africans.

With all due respect, Mr Talkback Caller, you are an idiot. We’ve got thugs of all colours—white in particular—now punching police and anyone else they find, and the Sudanese aren’t the worst of them.

While you were on the phone panicking about a few Africans, 50 extra police were this very week deployed into the city to deal with the grim fact that scores more people are getting bashed in the heart of our state’s capital, and not by Africans. Panic about that, sir.

Maybe Bolt's existence could overall be a positive thing. "Only Bolt could go to the rednecks", that sort of thing. Maybe they'll listen to him.

Bolt doesn't seem to want to talk much about Andrews' role in all this, though.

Elsewhere; he's stunned at Howard's last minute change of heart on symbolic reconciliation. Fear not, Andrew: it'll never be implemented. If Howard wins, it'll be put to a referendum phrased so that it won't pass, anyway.

Bolt 10/10: "Love that grows old gracefully"

2007-10-10T10:50:00.000+10:00

Today Bolt writes something uncharacteristically profound and thought-provoking:

There’s no immortality in the love of someone you met yesterday. Which is why ageing men who try to recapture their youth by taking a much younger second wife have gone for the poison, not the cure. Their new wife will remember them only as aged. Their old one would never forget them as young.

Never thought of it that way. Nicely put, Andrew.

...What's wrong with you? Are you mellowing?

Hell, in this piece you even satirise yourself:

So I reach again for my Phrasebook for a Moral Crisis and start typing.

Let’s see ... decline of society, rutting animals, sorry example to the young and, yawn, whatever I banged out when giving Channel 10’s Californication the thrashing its bare and bucking backside richly deserved.

Unbelievable. This Andrew Bolt is almost worth reading.

So it'll be all the sadder when he loses this self-awareness and goes back to being a jerk tomorrow.

Bolt 21/9: "Questions for gassy Gore"

2007-09-21T11:44:00.000+10:00

Andy's got some questions for businessmen hearing Al Gore speak today to ask. Andy reckons when he asked these same questions last year some time it made the other audience members' trip "worthwhile". "How we laughed", he remembers, happily.

I'm not going to reproduce his set of questions here. There are six of them. But here's one, as an example:

Mr Gore, you claim “the debate in the scientific community (on global warming) is over”.

But leading climate physicist Fred Singer, Virginia University’s Professor Emeritus of environment science, has done a new study of peer-reviewed literature and says more than 500 scientists published evidence rejecting at least one element of your kind of man-made global warming scare.

He says 300 of those scientists found evidence that the world has more than a dozen global warmings like this one since the last Ice Age, and also that our recent warming is strongly linked to changes in the sun’s activity.

Mr Gore, when even Professor Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, says it’s plausible “man is not to blame”, for global warming, why do you keep telling us the science is settled?

Is it that you’ve got so much invested in keeping this scare going?

One of the six. Is Andrew sure those were laughs and not yawns?

Anyway, perhaps people were more tolerant back in 2006. But I'd caution any of Bolt's readers thinking of hogging the mike with such waffle to note what happened to a student lefty last week when he tried asking some (much shorter) questions of Gore's colleague John Kerry:

Although you're probably safe if you're wearing a tie.

Bolt 6/9: Autocrat is the Left's new best friend

2007-09-06T12:34:00.000+10:00

Following on from yesterday's idiotic effort, Bolt's still thrashing the blatantly false "the left luvs communist china" line. He continues to ignore that it was only the Greens who tried to speak out against Hu Jintao last time he was here, and to leave his readers' imaginations to run wild with "Hu Jintao is exactly what they’d like to emulate" -style gibberish.

And what do the giants of the Left do with this man? What else but do some mutual back-slapping at a celebratory dinner: "...”I want to thank in particular Mr Whitlam, Mr Hawke and Mr Keating for attending tonight’s dinner,” President Hu said."

Of course, neither Hawke nor Keating were ever anything except right-wing warriors AGAINST the left in the ALP, and whilst Whitlam attempted to bring in some lefty policies, he was a complete coward on international issues.

So what do these ageing dinosaurs have to do with the modern left, whose representatives (the Greens) consistently oppose human rights abusing regimes like the one in China? Well, nothing except that they're all to the left of Bolt. How some old Labor PMs attending a dinner equals China being "the Left's NEW best friend", god knows.

(It's one of Andrew's favourite polemic techniques. In another piece today, he attempts to attack the left through Ted Kennedy, a hypocrite who's recently attempted to block a windfarm which might have been vaguely visible on the horizon from the enormous Kennedy seaside retreat. But if Bolt just criticised Kennedy, he'd gain no traction: no-one here would disagree with the contention that Kennedy's a shameless windbag. Which would be pointless; Bolt wants to use it to bash the left. So he opens his article with the following lie - "Leftist hero and Democrat patrician Edward Kennedy demonstrates perfectly his bona fides as a modern global warming prophet." "Leftist hero"? Give me a break!)

Back to China, someone in Bolt's forum yesterday asked him:

So, Andrew, if you’re being consistent, you might consider criticising the Liberals for their craven kowtowing to the bullies in Beijing.

Will you for once actually state your position categorically, with no evasive ducking and weaving, on the issue of how we should treat China? What’s your call? Are you really calling for our representatives to, diplomatically but firmly, stand up to the Chinese, or do you accept their argument that it’s better not to mention that stuff if it might risk some trade?

Principle or pragmatism? And if you go for pragmatism, stop throwing Beijing’s record at other people, for you’d be an apologist for it yourself.

You can’t have it both ways.

Oddly enough, Andrew has feigned deafness and declined to answer. Clearly he DOES want to keep trying to have it both ways.

Bolt 5/9: "What's Bush got over this guy?"

2007-09-05T13:39:00.000+10:00

Don't you love it when right wing pundits like Bolt try to deflect criticism of one of THEIR favourite leaders by throwing a much worse brutal demagogue into the mix and demanding that you go protest about them instead.

So you can't protest against George Bush and not protest against Hu Jintao. Which means you can't protest against anyone, because what are you doing protesting against Jintao and not Kim Jong-il? Or Mugabe? Basically, your protest sign had better list EVERY SINGLE BRUTAL LEADER IN THE WORLD OR ELSE YOU'RE ENDORSING THEM BY OMISSION.

Better make some big signs, and pick out some tiny fonts.

Bolt launches his attack against the protesters by singling out one of the groups taking part, the "Stop Bush Coalition", and magnifying their influence - calling them "the outfit coordinating the APEC protests" = so their choice of name somehow rules out everyone there from caring about the human rights record of China.

Of course, Andrew declines to note that it was only the Greens who tried to protest against Jintao during his last visit, and that the major parties kicked them out of parliament to stop them. Reminding his readers that the Greens were critical of both Bush AND Jintao during their visits doesn't suit his argument at all, so he relies on his readers not remembering the fact.

You've really got to love the disingenuousness of the way Bolt uses the China issue. Here, he emphasises the brutality of the regime in order to try to bash his political opponents. But when his political opponents are arguing that we should stand up to Beijing regarding human rights, where does Bolt sit? Seems awfully like he sits on the business lobby side - you know, the "oh, it's not that bad, let's not risk losing trade by pissing them off" position.

Or am I wrong? Since declaring an actual position on this issue seems to be beyond Andrew, since he prefers running both sides depending on which one is more convenient at the time, it's hard to tell.

Bolt 4/9: "Communists don't do irony"

2007-09-04T14:13:00.000+10:00

Some communist was critical of the Sydney Wall. Ha ha, laughs Andrew, forgotten about your own effort? How ironic!

You see, whilst the Sydney Wall is awesome and promotes freedom, the Berlin Wall was bad and evil. That's why I can attack you for the irony of supposedly supporting one (and I say you do, because you call yourself a communist and so did the people who built the hated thing, and therefore you're responsible for everyone who was shot trying to cross it) and not the other, whilst even more ironically doing precisely the same thing myself but in reverse.

Let's be clear:

Walls dividing cities put up by communists - bad.
Walls dividing cities put up by the Howard Government - good.

Get it? Conservatives are the side of freedom, so by definition whatever we do must promote freedom, even if it appears at a first glance (and most succeeding glances) to do the opposite.

It's similar to how John can call himself a fiscal conservative whilst squandering $2 billion of your money on advertising himself.

Bolt 3/9: Global warming activists shiver at protest

2007-09-03T21:04:00.000+10:00

No, he couldn't, really, could he?

Yup. Andy's still running the embarrassingly fatuous "if it's cold on a given day that somehow contradicts global warming" line.

Fortunately, that gives BoltWatch an easy post, since we've responded to this silliness previously.

(GrodsCorp were amused, too.)

Bolt 25/8: "Brisbane gives warming rally cold shoulder"

2007-08-27T08:43:00.000+10:00

Megan from Brisbane writes:

The Lying Bolta Army in Action In Brisbane

Wow! That's a pretty big accusation to make against the contributor to Bolt's recent spray. But, unlike Bolt and his army of "true dis-believers", it is based in fact.

Bolt joyously repeats some outright lies about the attendance numbers at the walk against warming in Brisbane last Saturday. Lies? Thats a bit strong, isn't it? Surely Bolt's mate could have simply been a simpleton mistaker of fact?

No, sorry, it was LIES! You know, when you say something which you actually know to be false? You see, the close up photo of the 'panel' of Senators Bob Brown and Andrew Bartlett could only have been taken when there were still several hundred people there. I was there, and when they left the stage there were still at least 300 people at the Riverstage. "Allan" the lying useful idiot and enabler must have taken his first deceitful close-up photo at that time and his photo from the Grassy Knoll much later, when the crowd had dispersed, but Bolt has the later photo first. Look closely, can you see either senator on stage in the "Grassy Knoll" shot?

When the crowd started its march there were, indeed, about a thousand or more, that alone was evident from the sparse coverage on the nightly television news. It was a wet day in Brisberg and the 'Riverstage' grounds were sodden so people quickly dispersed before, during, and after the key speakers and entertainment.

Still, Bolt, like his proprietor, doesn't like letting the truth get in the way of an idealist spray. Andrew Bolt loves a good LIE over the truth anyday and he wants fools to believe he is a journalist. Luckily he never has to speak to real people to tease out a story, his army of trolls supply him with plausibly deniable anecdotes. Well folks this story is an undeniable lie. Bolt repeats lies. Ahh, feels good to be able to say it again and again with the new defence of "Truth" to any claim for defamation. Let's try it again: Bolt repeats LIES.

The best of this is that he could indignantly disown "Allan" as soon as it became apparent that a self-styled 'journalist' became aware that his source is a liar. That will happen when Iraq freezes over.

Bolt quips: "A media which can’t even count 150 people (or less), and tells you instead they numbered 2000, can’t be trusted to tell you much about global warming that’s not equally hyped."

I quip: An alleged journalist who can't tell you any truth about global warming, or the level of community concern about it, can't be trusted to tell you the truth about anything and should be openly mocked at every opportunity, as he so wilfully mocks others. It is vital to our democracy that he loses his job immediately.

BoltWatch: it would be useful if someone can send in a photograph of the actual crowd present at the Walk Against Warming.

And if anyone has a shot of any of the rooms in which Bolt has given a "speech" recently, taken, as the ones in his piece were, after most people have left, that'd be good too. Because apparently photos taken after everyone has left are evidence that no-one was there in the first place.

Bolt 8/8: "The stolen truth"

2007-08-08T12:20:00.000+10:00

Bolt had to respond to the unarguable evidence of at least one "stolen" indigenous person, whose claim was upheld in the SA Supreme Court last week. But what do you do when you have to concede such a point? You find a scapegoat OTHER than the system you've been so bloody-mindedly defending. You run the line that it's the work of a rogue bureaucrat. Who's now dead.

There's an excellent response to the piece at Larvatus Prodeo - A Conveniently Dead Scapegoat.

Bolt 3/8: "Doomsayers frothing at the mouth"

2007-08-03T08:47:00.001+10:00

Ah, things are returning to normal. Yesterday's moment of sense and journalistic scepticism from Andrew Bolt has passed.

After being roundly savaged by his forum regulars after pointing out how flimsy was the case against Haneef and how dodgy the attempts by the government to buttress it, he's back to mollifying them. Those siding with Howard against Haneef are "the reasonable", he declares.

The article started off badly, as Andy sought to judge between the two sides (the Government vs everyone who's horrified by what they've done in the Haneef matter)

Points on both sides. Not all facts yet known.

Sorry? What "points" are on the Government side? What "facts" as yet unknown would justify the Government's treatment of Haneef? Would justify Andrews' incredibly incompetent and inconsistent prosecution ("He must go!" "He went - so he's guilty!")? Would justify the Government's legislation that gives the Immigration Minister such outrageously broad power that he can lock up any of the tens of thousands of visa-holders here at whim?

Well, no. Andy doesn't want to get involved in THAT debate. Instead, Andy wants us to think that the main "issue" is that some of the rhetoric against the Government was a bit colourful.

No, what’s really at stake is what kind of argument should win in these hysterical times: apocalyptic or calm?

...I’m only partly mollified even now, but if I needed any more incentive to give the Government the benefit of the doubt it’s been the yammering of its usual hyperventilating critics.

Who’d feel safe in tossing such a pack a bone?

Yes, according to Andrew if the Government does something outrageous, and it prompts scathing criticism, then the more scathing that criticism, the more he'll give the Government the benefit of the doubt. (Note: this does not apply to lies and innuendo about the Greens, which SHOULD NOT inspire giving them "the benefit of the doubt" - that dirty smear campaign's vehemence is just confirmation of its righteousness.)

In other words - the worse the Government acts, and therefore inspires the more stringent crticism, the more Andy's on its side.

Bizarre.

I also love his ironically self-unaware attack on "apocalyptic" rhetoric:

Sadly, the apocalyptic is now standard in political rhetoric among the global-warming generation and must be resisted as an insult to sweet human reason.

Well, sure. Like when a writer in a newspaper warns about muslims being about to (a) overrun and (b) destroy us. ("See Europe whilst it's there".) Oh, no, not like that.

Still, it's an imaginative and courageous defence. Even Andy can't find anything to say to defend the Government on the Haneef matter; so instead he has to resort to attacking its various critics. Not for their argument - he still hasn't got a counter to it. No, for the stridency of their polemic. Yeah, that should do it.

And just how much can the Government's critics' rhetoric absolve it of responsibility? Well, almost completely:

It’s for this reason alone, I suspect, that many of the reasonable will now side - however unreasonably - with Howard over Haneef.

Of course.

Bolt 2/8: "Haneef’s Chinese whispers"

2007-08-02T13:38:00.000+10:00

This is a rebadging of an old feature on BoltWatch, "Andrew Bolt says something sensible". (You might not remember it; it's been a while since he's written anything that could conceivably qualify.) For in the same sense as Bolty sometimes agrees with the ALP (admittedly almost exclusively when it's bashing the left), there are times when BoltWatch agrees with its subject (usually when he's taken the blinkers off regarding the Howard government and rediscovers libertarianism).

Now, Andy's overall message on the Haneef issue isn't entirely one with which BW agrees - his angle is that the laws are fine, it's just that Kevin Andrews has made a hash of things. (We agree with the latter, but also have serious reservations about the massive power the Liberals' legislation gives to the Immigration Minister.) Consequently, his damage-control line is, if there's something wrong (and it looks like there is), then let's chuck a Kevin Andrews overboard in the hope that it'll save the Government.

As you'd expect. Anyway, that's not "Andrew Bolt saying something sensible"; that's Andrew playing astute politics. The "Andrew Bolt saying something sensible" bit is his post today on the emptiness of this Indian "investigation":

In fact, it seems that what we have here is just the Indian police repeating what they’d heard from Australian ones, who have since been unable to prove anything against Haneef.

An allegation isn’t made more true by two people passing it on to a third.

So let’s settle down.

I'd have called the post "Kevin Andrews' Chinese whispers", since it's about HIS attempts to justify himself, not anything Haneef has done, but the point's a good one for Bolt's readers to consider. And the way Bolt succinctly makes it, in that second-last sentence, is excellent. Circular claims (including "we must investigate this person because as a result of the fact that we're investigating them they look suspicious") is not evidence.

Who'd have thought? Eloquent logic from Bolt. See, he is capable of it, after all.

Bolt 1/8 "You'd think it was Mighell's money"

2007-08-01T13:27:00.000+10:00

Andy's cross that any ex-ALP figure could support the Greens:

Dean Mighell is kicked out of Labor for his foul language and tendency to pose as a union thug, and within months donates $120,000 of his union money to the Greens instead.

How does this benefit the members of his Electrical Trades Union?

Well, the Greens are actually concerned with workers' rights and won't sell them out just because the government runs a scare campaign on unions. So it'll benefit any ETU members who are actually concerned with their basic rights.

The real question is why are so many of the other unions still giving their members' dues to Labor?

Bolt 27/7: It's all about me

2007-07-28T10:42:00.000+10:00

You know that surprising thing that happened in Victorian politics yesterday? You know how no-one had any real idea why Bracksy had suddenly quit?

Well, the returned Andrew Bolt knows:

Steve Bracks has quit and John Thwaites seems about to announce he’s stepping down - and all within hours of the Herald Sun hitting their breakfast table. Beware the curse of the Bolt.

It all makes sense now! Bolt the Kingmaker and Undoer. Give this powerful and influential man a raise!

Bolt 12/6: "Killing killers does work"

2007-06-12T12:13:00.000+10:00

I think Andrew's warming up for a piece on the death penalty, because today he tests the waters on his blog.

He reproduces an article from some CLEARLY AUTHORITATIVE website called "PR Inside" which reports that there's been AN ACADEMIC STUDY on whether the death penalty reduces murders (conducted by "an economics professor"!). Bolt reprints parts of the article which support his title ("killing killers does work") and excludes the bits that don't, eg:

The reports have horrified death penalty opponents and several scientists, who vigorously question the data and its implications

Uh, I just want you to hear that there have been "studies". I don't want you to read that they're derided as being crackpot. I mean, sure, I'm giving you the link - but if you're actually going to follow links and check sources then you're lost to me anyway.

And then Andy does what he's becoming famous for doing - he gives his trademarked disingenuous cop-out line, where he can later pretend (if his readers turn out not to agree with him, for example) he wasn't saying what he is clearly saying. Here it is:

That said, I think the consequences of the death penalty go beyond its effect on crime.

See? I won't elaborate, because that's not my point, but I've got that vague little caveat for later if I need it. In case you've forgotten my point, though, I'll get you back on track with:

And yet...

*Wink* *Wink*

Did his readers get the dogwhistle? They did, but, surprisingly, they don't appear to be jumping on board. Lucky he left himself that sneaky little out then, isn't it?

Bolt 11/6: "Not silenced, just irrelevant"

2007-06-12T12:10:00.001+10:00

Amazing that Bolt would enjoy yesterday's farcical Australian editorial, bashing a fictional strawman version of the Left that only exists in the minds of hardened cultural warriors like himself. Didn't raise any questions or issues for Andrew, just confirming (sorry, in his words "analysing") his own prejudices about anyone who doesn't agree with him. Raised a question for me though - Who writes this drivel?

Bolt 8/6: "They Come To Praise Me"

2007-06-08T12:35:00.000+10:00

Bizarrely ironic column from Bolt today in which he excoriates people on the "left" (by which he means anyone to the left of him, so that's a fair chunk of the Australian populace) for their sudden "support" of him when he recently suggested Howard should retire.

And when you trade in anti-Howard goodies as a conservative, the world is not short of buyers who suddenly praise the excellent taste they never suspected you had...

If I finally do buy respect, let it be through my reasoning, and not my choice of approved target.

Which is completely different from Bolt's continual refrain that he'd be happy to support the ALP if only it were more conservative. That they could have his respect if they stopped being so damned left-wing. Why can't there be TWO major conservative parties? WHY? People to the left of Rupert Murdoch having some kind of representation in parliament is NOT THE KIND OF COUNTRY I WANT TO LIVE IN!

Anyway, let's just see if I've got this right.

Bolt condemns the ALP whenever it does something he sees as "left"; praises it whenever it does something he likes. This is fine and principled.
Some ALP figures condemn Bolt whenever he writes something they don't like; praise him when he writes something critical of Howard. This is contemptible and shallow.

Yup, that's perfectly consistent.

Bolt 6/6: "The ABC with commercials"

2007-06-06T23:23:00.000+10:00

Andrew Bolt on the startlingly good news that Channel Nine is getting rid of that vicious little halfwit, Alan Jones:

Naturally all this gets Nine the ratings it deserves. Imagine what Rupert Murdoch could achieve with the station instead.

*Sluuuuuuurrrrp!* I'm sure, if he noticed, that Bolt's boss was more than pleased.

Good boy, Andy!

Bolt 6/6: "See Europe while it’s there"

2007-06-06T08:22:00.000+10:00

The other day Bolt was calling Peter Garrett a hypocrite for referring to John Howard's "Garrett will SINGLE HANDEDLY DESTROY THE ECONOMY AND BRING ON THE APOCALYPSE" argument as "scaremongering". Ha ha, mocked Bolt, what gall! And he linked to some article from nutjob site A Western Heart resident crazy-with-too-much-time-on-his-hands, John Ray which purported to show Garrett being a scaremonger. (But didn't.)

So I'm greatly amused by Rusty's effort this morning:

I’m off next week to show the children Europe, where the Europeans used to live.

"Where the Europeans used to live." You know perfectly well what that's code for (Bolt links to someone else saying it) - TEH MUSLIMS ARE COMING!!! OMG! WTF! RUN FOR THE HILLS!

Oh, Andy. Such effortless self-parody. You know, you're almost making this site redundant.

Bolt 5/6: "Rudd promises to let the ABC party on".

2007-06-05T14:37:00.000+10:00

Bolt's effort today is breathtaking in its disingenuousness. He argues that the proposed ALP plan for ABC board appointments - a bipartisan model whereby the opposition leader has veto power over a candidate - is somehow MORE biased than the existing one, where the PM simply appoints whoever he likes.

All of which means that governments - Labor or Liberal - will be less able to tackle an ABC cultural bias which already suits Labor justs fine.

Prime Ministers don't appoint politically-biased people! Only bipartisan bodies do that.

It's the same line that contemptible liar Sophie Mirabella (then Panopolous) ran at the republic referendum - that somehow a model where the governor-general was appointed by a 2/3rds majority of MPs, was more a "politicians' republic" than one where the G-G is simply appointed by the PM.

Through which of the two processes are you most likely to get a political G-G? The one where he or she has to be approved by both sides of politics, or the one where he or she only has to be approved by one? Mirabella, and others on the constitutional monarch side (and those saboteurs on the direct election side, who wanted to ENSURE we got a politician through having a public election), successfully ran the absurd line that the bipartisan model was somehow more political than the alternatives.

As Bolt's doing here.

How stupid do they think people are?

Bolt 29/5: "Days of our Rudds"

2007-05-30T22:53:00.000+10:00

Man, Andrew really hates spin. He can't stand it. He loathes the smell of it. If any gets on him he has to have a long vigorous shower so he can feel clean again. SPIN IS EVIL.

Introducing an Age story regarding the OUTRAGEOUS SCANDAL that Kevin Rudd's wife did something Kevin Rudd wouldn't have done because he's the leader of the ALP and she isn't, he laments:

Never has spinning been this brazen - yet strangely successful... The facts don’t matter when the spin is so good

He can only admire those shameless Fairfax fiends and their shameless inability to report a story in a neutral, informative way. Like the way HE tells the tale:

How about that? A political embarrassment that highlights Labor’s hypocrisy over its Neanderthal industrial relations policy is turned into a soapie about Rudd’s marriage...

We can all see that it's a "political embarrassment" (even if according to the latest polls it's only Bolt and his readers who are buying) that "highlights" Labor's "hypocrisy" (WILL YOU PEOPLE FRICKING LISTEN TO US?! It's Kevin Rudd being a "hypocrite" if a different and independent person in his family happens to take over a company that uses AWAs, even if when they discover their workers are being short-changed they promptly repay them long before News Ltd makes a big story out of it; it's NOT hypocrisy for John Howard to attack Rudd's wife for doing - even though she didn't - precisely what his IR regime has made it much easier for employers to do) regarding its "Neanderthal industrial relations policy" (until 2004 we lived in prehistoric times!). That's just straightforward journalistic objectivity.

But that spin about Rudd's marriage, Christ. For shame, Fairfax. For shame.

Bolt 29/5: "Rudd can do no wrong"

2007-05-29T18:18:00.000+10:00

You've just got to read the comments to Bolt's lament on voters finally deserting Howard.

First, the madness theme:

’Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.’

and

As every day passes, I am more convinced that the world has gone stark raving mad. These latest poll results appear to be further evidence of that.
Do you reckon there are any spare seats on the Ark?

There's the plaintive "why don't they understand all the good we've done for them?":

If the polls are correct the Australian Electorate is sending a loud and clear message to all future governments “do not make any hard decisions”

(Yes, it couldn't be that we simply didn't like the particular "hard" decisions that Howard took, or that they were bad ones, could it?)

The "those crazy fools, where are they taking us?!?!?!?!!":

The silly tyre kickers seem pretty keen on buying the shiny new model. They just do not yet realise that they cannot afford it.

And, of course, when all else fails - "IF YOU VOTE FOR RUDD THE SKY WILL FALL IN!"

Will they come to their senses before they sign up to at least a three year contract,that may end up destroying the pleasant lifestyle that they currently take for granted?

I hope they will eventually wake up, although they do seem pretty keen on going through with such a dangerous purchase!

But remember, although only righties are sane, understand economics, are cautious and can save us from disaster (essentially, the only people who are really entitled to govern us), we lefties are the arrogant "elites".

Bolt 23/5: "It's Hicks hysteria"

2007-05-23T09:39:00.000+10:00

Today Andrew Bolt responds to critics of the process under which Hicks was held for more than five years with no prospect of release and was bullied into pleading guilty to a crime which did not exist when he was alleged to have committed it.

Andrew commences thusly:

SHH, don’t tell the backers of David Hicks, since they’re mad enough already.

But I thought if your cause was true, you needed no lies. No hype.

So guess what that says about these devotees’ claims now that their favourite al-Qaida recruit has been flown back to Australia?

"If your cause was true, you needed no lies" followed by calling Hicks the system's critics' "favourite al-Qaida recruit". Oh yes, and calling critics Hicks' "devotees".

Amazing. Andy, if your cause is true, why do you need to immediately create strawmen to tilt against?

You’d think this was the second coming of Christ, rather than the return of a man who trained for months with a terrorist group linked to the killings of more than 100 Australians, and thousands of other civilians.

Yes, by criticising the fairness of the system (still in place) which, each time it was overturned by the US Supreme Court, was simply reinstated in a slightly new form, critics are somehow praising Hicks as some kind of "Christ" figure.

Andy might as well have finished his piece with "if you love Hicks so much, why don't you marry him?" It would have been equally as childish and idiotic.

The rest of the article is no better. Bolt seems unable to grasp that the the issue the left (and much of Australia) has with the Hicks matter wasn't some affection for the man, it was the blatant unfairness of the process. A process so outrageously unjust that it could actually make people have some sympathy for a man like Hicks, who in other circumstances they might cross the street to avoid.

(And yes, there was an advertising campaign designed to highlight that Hicks was a real human being and an Australian like the rest of us, but that was to help people like Bolt see that Hicks is a human being and the process to which he is subjected could one day be applied to any of us.)

Does anyone think that in the same circumstances, held by the US for more than five years with no prospect of being ever released, of being held until they could eventually invent a charge with which they could try you in a "court" which abandoned the basic rules of legal fairness to achieve a conviction, you wouldn't take a plea bargain to get the hell out of there?

Hicks can say "I'm over it" all he likes; that has absolutely no bearing on our objection to the system (still in place) and the people who established it (still in power).

Clearly Bolt continues to miss the point.

Bolt 18/5: "Stud for an answer"

2007-05-18T13:28:00.000+10:00

Some unkind people reading Bolt's post today might see it as a typical example of the cowardly but vicious way he attacks people by leading his mob to the abuse he'd like to make but can't, and letting them at it:

English immigrant Dee Bradbury took the draft new citizenship test for the Herald Sun, but got one question wrong. It was the one that asked when primitive people arrived here.

What? That's the entirety of the post. Is he making some kind of point? I don't get i.. oh, wait, look at the picture towering over the text:

Immigrant gets one question wrong... Bolt highlights it's one about primitive people... photograph of the immigrant with piercings...

Do Bolt's commenters get what he is driving at? Oh yes, they do:

"Obviously Mr Bradbury does not look in the mirror before leaving the house each day!"
"How grotesque ! I think that behind the “look-at-ME” self-mutilation is someone totally lacking in self-esteem and a sense of self."
"I’m in love."
"It’s not nice to make fun of people with genetic defects like having green hair. Or those who have been hit with buckshot in the face. Some sympathy please!"
"She appears to have been bumped while putting on her eyeliner. Otherwise, she’s gorgeous."
"Why, oh why do we let people like that into this country?"
"Gosh! Why won’t anybody employ me??? Discrimination!"
"That’s what happens to you after living in Melbourne for 40 years!"
"It’s the old, old thing-I have no redeeming qualities whatsoever and need to be seen; so with all this self mutilation now I can really say, ‘Oh look at me, oh please look at me!’ And people will, if only from idle curiosity or just revulsion."
"Be very afraid. It VOTES."
"I’m not so afraid. Australia’s voting system involves being able to count past 2. It probably votes informal. "
"Re the citizenship question to Dee Bradbury post. “When did Primitive people arrive here?” First accurate answer is: Not actually known. Second possible answer. “With me”. This “Thing” clearly has no interest in getting off Centrelink payments. And to think my poor darling wife has work 12 hour night shifts under a QLD Labor Govt workplace agreement to support such primitives.* Ugh"

I do believe that the dog whistle was successful.

*Hmm, I wonder who this could be.

Bolt 17/5: "Blog criticised"

2007-05-17T22:37:00.000+10:00

Having been reminded of the classic Monty Python argument sketch, Andy rediscovers the verb "to gainsay".

...barbarians whose sole aim seems not to debate but simply to gainsay... To help the guilty understand the difference between argument and moronic gainsaying... Only meanness and the mindless gainsaying of whatever has been posted...

Amusing. (Note he's also ~~ripping off~~ giving a homage to the Tim Blair classic heading technique of "NOUN VERBED".)

Bolt then uses the "quoting someone else saying what I'd like to say" technique to sledge BoltWatch, so he can get away with not making the criticism in his own words:

Of course, I recognize that the entire existence of BoltWatch is to not only be highly inaccurate, but to criticize you at every chance for the simple reason that Jeremy Sear doesn’t agree with you, and if that includes posters at BoltWatch saying “My comment was not posted”, then so be it.

Dammit, they've stumbled upon our "to be highly inaccurate" mission plan. WHO TOLD THIS ASH PERSON?

Actually, I don't criticise Bolt "at every chance" just because I always disagree with him, and those who've had a reasonable look at the BoltWatch archives will see that there are numerous occasions when he's said something sensible and I've been happy to applaud the fact. And BoltWatch usually mocks his polemic techniques and the shallowness of his rhetoric rather than the views themselves. Yes, it's a blog where Andrew Bolt is a regular target of criticism; but I'd take that objection a little more seriously from someone who didn't so readily (and so dishonestly) bash the same targets over and over himself.

ELSEWHERE In the comments, "Angie of Melbourne" has a suggestion:

As today is request day, I’d also like to hope that posts which contribute nothing of a substantive manner be snipped.

Sadly, she means comments by readers. Still, imagine if Andy applied that advice to his site in general...

Bolt 16/5: "Life slows under the greens"

2007-05-17T00:26:00.000+10:00

He's still doing it:

The greens will soon have us back to the days...

Followed by a link to a story on something the UK Greens have proposed to deal with congested London.

The UK Greens. Not ours. Not that a regular Bolt-reader would know the difference.

Anyway, stupidly low speed limits and increasingly inflexible and harsh penalties for breaking them regardless of the road situation are a Law Norder issue, and Andy'll be pushing the metaphorical uphill if he thinks his readers are going to accept a nuanced argument on the subject now. WHY WON'T YOU THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

Bolt 14/5: "Rudd can win this if Gillard can lose"

2007-05-16T07:21:00.000+10:00

Bolt on democratic choice:

I’ve said before that a reverse on this would make Rudd at least seem he is indeed a conservative leader in the Howard mode who can be trusted to listen and not do anything mad or wildly unpopular.

Imagine if we had a choice at this election between a conservative party and a non-conservative party. Talk about unfair. What we should have is two conservative parties! Hooray for democracy.

But will the ideologues who helped put him into power let him do what is good for Labor and the economy?

Those are the "idealogues" with whom I disagree, of course. The "idealogues" arguing for increasingly conservative policy in the liberal party would never be tarred with such an epithet.

And yes - will those ALP people be willing to abandon their principles for power? Andrew will be very disappointed in them if they won't.

Bolt 11/5: "Zimbabwe beats Sydney for global warming cred"

2007-05-11T07:21:00.000+10:00

Watch, as Andrew shows how much the left likes that brutal dictatorship in Zimbabwe:

1. People concerned with climate change (I vaguely call them "the left") like to turn off lights to save power. (WHICH FOR SOME REASON REALLY MAKES ME ANGRY, but anyway.)
2. Zimbabwe is having power failures, thereby causing LOTS of lights to be turned off.
3. Therefore lefties must like Zimbabwe and, by entirely reasonable extension, all the horrors that take place there.

Now there’s a country to gladden a warming cultist’s heart.

For my next trick, let me show you this four-legged cat table...

Bolt 5/5: "On an AWA, Hoare would be an ACTU sob story"

2007-05-05T19:07:00.000+10:00

Quick retort to this one at AnonymousLefty - It's different when we do it.

Bolt 2/5: "Winning the War"

2007-05-02T12:24:00.001+10:00

Bolt was flown to the Gulf. He spoke to soldiers who told him that they thought they were doing something worthwhile. Therefore, you know, we should stay in Iraq.

The End.

PS His blog readers are thrilled by his bravery and his patriotic turn of phrase, including the ~~stomach-churning~~ imaginative:

That’s not how our SAS did the job. They aggressively harassed the enemy before they could settle, or even sleep. Think how we play Test cricket, and add guns.

I think John Howard's pants just exploded.

How far to the right do you have to be to see Channel Nine as "left"?!

2007-05-02T12:15:00.000+10:00

Bolt hilariously got stuck in today to Channel 9 for its "drift to the Left". Channel Nine?! LEFT? And he's not kidding?

Yes, apparently being unconvinced that Iraq is being "won" doesn't make you simply a journalist who can see reality and part of the vast majority of the population who, conservative or liberal, can see the war for the disaster that it is - it makes you a "leftist". Arguing that Hicks' five years in jail without trial was a disturbing farce that should worry us makes you a "leftist".

If only it were so. Many of these people aren't lefties at all, and continue to vote for the Coalition on the "I'm constantly being told that John Howard is a good economic manager" line.

But can you imagine the result of the next election if everyone who agreed with the "leftist" propositions Channel Nine is accused of presenting were to vote against the Liberals?

Funnily enough, the Liberals themselves don't seem to be so keen on having the election decided on those grounds...

Bolt 29/4: "If only cars could run on hypocrisy" and "Truthiness of untruths defended"

2007-04-29T14:51:00.000+10:00

Andrew's apparently started watching (at least parts of) both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

I think he's missing much of the point, though. He enjoyed Lewis Black's mockery of celebrity global warming "advice", as you'd expect, but doesn't seem to have been quite so keen on anything else from that episode. (The demolition of the imaginative Baghdad wall plan, for instance.) And he's apparently seen enough of Stephen Colbert to pick up on his first Wørd segment entry, "truthiness", although he appears not to be aware who and what precisely was being satirised by it. ("And what about Iraq? If you think about it, maybe there are a few missing pieces to the rationale for war. But doesn't taking Saddam out feel like the right thing?")

Still, I'm all in favour of Bolt directing his loyal readers to both shows. Patronising though this sounds, exposing the denizens of his forum to some common sense through satire could only be a good thing.

Bolt 29/4: "Getting on the Wik of Smearpeddler"

2007-04-29T12:14:00.000+10:00

Andrew doesn't like Wikipedia at all, thrilling at Andrew Hansen of The Chaser asking founder Jimmy Wales -

"how do you feel about the fact that when I looked you up on Wikipedia this morning I changed your page to say that you were a teenage drug lord from Malaysia?"

Says Andy - "an excellent question", subtly calling Wales a "smearpeddler" in the heading to his post.

I doubt Wales had reason to be too bothered - Hansen's vandalism would've been reverted almost before he reloaded the page. Like with a thirty-second edit to David Beckham's entry out of which a News Ltd colleague of Bolt's (who not at all suspiciously just happened to be check it in that brief window) squeezed a whole article in MX the other week. The speed at which these "Look! I vandalised Wikipedia! See how broken it is!" attempts are cleaned up ironically tends to demonstrate the strength and resilience of the system.

Still, News Ltd journos really seem to hate Wikipedia. I suppose what galls them is that when idiots write stupid things in Wikipedia, they're corrected by sensible editors very quickly; when News Ltd journos write idiotic drivel it gets printed into newspaper form and laughed at for days.

Maybe Bolt really doesn't like his own entry, although I'm not sure to what in particular he could object. It might be the lack of referring to him by his ~~laughable~~ preferred title of "Australian's Most Controversial Columnist". Maybe it's the lack of adulation for his Brave Stand Against The Global Warmenizer Religion. Or perhaps he's just pissed off that one of the links leads here.

Still, if Wikipedia really was a set of "smears", I suspect Andy's entry would look very different.

ELSEWHERE Andy should check out Conservapedia.

"Members of the Armed Forces continue to protect Americans, even the ungrateful ones", it declares on its front page, in a neutral and encyclopaedic fashion.

Unlike Wikipedia (which its authors appear to hate even more than Bolt does), Conservapedia aims to overcome its rival's "liberal bias", down to such crucial areas as ensuring that all spellings are the proper, God-fearing American ones. As it notes, sadly, "Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English-speaking users are American."

I understand that starting a Liberapedia might actually prompt the Rapture.

Bolt 16/4: "Green cheers: Go, Osama, go!"

2007-04-16T08:42:00.000+10:00

One of Andrew Bolt's little tricks for bashing the Green party in Australia is to ascribe to it the views of any lunatic around the world who calls him or herself "green", or their organisation a "green party".

More confirmation of the hatred hiding in the heart of the Greens, this time from a Canadian Green Party candidate, Kevin Potvin, who celebrates the al Qaida attacks on September 11 in which 3000 civilians died:

The thing about political labels is that anyone can use them to describe themselves, whether accurately or not. There are plenty of countries calling themselves "democratic republics" which are nothing of the sort. The word "socialist" has been used as a self-label by some of the more fascist regimes in history. John Howard's conservative Liberal party has little in common with "liberals" as known elsewhere in the world.

And as for the word "Greens", well, apart from the interest in environmentalism indicated by the colour, it's even more vague. You could have green luddite conservatves, or (as here in Australia) green social and economic progressives. Hell, "green" doesn't even necessarily have anything to do with environmentalism - it could represent a catholic party in Ireland. It means something specific here in Australia, because there is a Green party; but that's not the case around the world.

Which is, of course, why Andrew Bolt likes to bash green groups in other countries - in anticipation that it will influence his readers to punish the Greens in Australia. The notion doesn't make any actual sense - it'd be like punishing the Liberal Party of Australia for something said by some "liberal" group in the US - but it probably does have an effect.

Bolt's readers aren't sitting there distinguishing between some Green Party candidate in Canada and the Greens in Australia. They're being repeatedly encouraged to view the whole lot as the same - some menacing global conspiracy to, what, make them live in caves or something. And after long enough reading Andrew Bolt columns, what will stick in their brains from this story is the message from the heading - that the Greens who'll be asking for their vote at the end of the year somehow support Osama Bin Laden!

It's probably an effective technique, but it's pretty dishonest.

PS If Andrew really wants to ascribe extremist views to the mainstream of a political movement and see who has "hatred hiding in [their] heart", he should have a read of A Western Heart staff writer Tiberius' work.

Bolt 10/4: "Drug king's associates set to clean up on your cash"

2007-04-10T07:36:00.001+10:00

Bolt thinks it's rather daft offering a $1 million (ONE MILLION) reward to whichever of Tony Mokbel's dodgy former colleagues will turn him in.

And if these “associates” of a drug boss speak they’ll get a Tattslotto of your cash, which will be invested in ... what?

I agree with him.

What? Yes, not everything Bolt says is nuts. He's quite right about this - a million dollar reward is a stupid idea. It's the cogs in the machine of justice completely losing sight of the bigger picture (the "war on drugs", presumably) in their desperation to win one particular battle. It's passionate warriors in this fight being so outraged at one villain escaping that they're willing to create some new villains in order to get him. (They should join the CIA.)

Anyway, a perfectly sensible post from Bolt.

And while we're on the topic of Bolt occasionally not being a stupidly inflammatory polemicist, what else has he said lately that you agree with? Let's see if BoltWatch today can be a celebration of the times when Andrew Bolt puts aside the spittle-flecked invective and writes something worthwhile.

Bolt 6/4: "Kinder to our Christians"

2007-04-06T06:54:00.000+10:00

Bolt's piece today is a silly bit of "why's everyone so mean to Christians" rubbish.

Let's start with his wonderfully representative examples. What've we got to show all this oppression? Well, "Marilyn Manson ripped up a bible" (the first time Manson has ever done anything offensive to anyone, I'm sure). And Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope on television (to protest the Vatican's attempt to cover up sexual abuse by priests) in 1992. And, in an example not fifteen years old - Bolt mentions the American artist who recently made A NAKED CHOCOLATE JESUS (I have no idea why this is offensive. Didn't the Romans usually crucify people naked?) before it was taken down as a result of death threats.

These isolated examples aren't what Bolt's really talking about, of course - he's complaining that when "christian" right-wing politicians try to implement their faith as government social policy by which the rest of us have to live, people (surprisingly) object. And that this somehow oppresses Christians.

Ask Tony Abbott, the Health Minister and a Catholic, whose reasoned arguments on an abortion pill were sniggered away by a slogan on a gloating Greens senator’s T-shirt: “Get your rosaries off my ovaries.”

YET it seems the cheap-shot sneers of intolerant atheists...

That wasn't a "cheap-shot sneer", Andrew. It was a fair point - Abbott, a politician who declared that he was opposed to abortion, wanted to take charge of the government approval of an abortion pill. Surely Australian women are entitled to have the matter investigated by someone with no clear barrow to push on the subject - as a health issue and not a religious one. ("Reasoned arguments"!)

Let's be very clear about this: you're oppressing someone if you stop them practising freely what they believe. You are NOT oppressing that person if you simply object to their making YOU practise what they believe.

His other complaint is that the people objecting to Christianity being imposed on them don't make the same protests about Islam. Eh? Why? The obvious response, in line with the above, is - no-one's seriously threatening to make Australian laws in accordance with Islam. If they do, then we'll be up there fighting against them in a second.

I do like the unconscious irony of the way Bolt put it -

So when I see a Western artist mock Christ, I see an artist advertising not his courage but his cowardice – by not daring to mock what would threaten him more.

On an unrelated topic, but similar line of argument - Andrew, why did America invade Iraq and not North Korea? Even if Iraq had had WMDs, at least it was somewhat contained. How much more of a threat was (and is) North Korea, with its nukes pointed at the US west coast?

It wasn't "cowardice" by "not daring" to deal with "what would threaten [them] more", was it?

It’s this blatant double standard that may finally have shamed some of the usual jeerers into showing Christianity a little respect.

Christianity is shown plenty of respect by the majority. But that doesn't mean we have to lie down for those who think it should rule over the rest of us.

And it doesn't mean that artists shouldn't explore the impact of religion in our culture - which, in Australia, means exploring Christianity more than most other religions, because it's the dominant one. When religion strays into politics, it doesn't get to cry "help help I'm being repressed" just because people argue with it.

Bolt 4/4: "Up front on women"

2007-04-05T11:03:00.000+10:00

Andrew Bolt is worried that if we have female service personnel at the frontline, we will not be able to cope with their being used as hostages. His evidence -

Turney is one of 15 Royal Navy sailors kidnapped by Iran on March 23 as the British searched for smugglers. Britain insists its sailors were in Iraqi waters. Iran claims they’d actually crossed into its own territory, which is lucky for a regime threatened with sanctions over its nuclear program and needing a bargaining chip.

...this use of Turney is working. The image of a fearful young mother, reduced to writing the slogans of her barbarian captors, has transfixed the British press.

The Sun bleeds for this “hostage mum”. The Belfast Telegraph declares: “Only the capture of Prince Harry could have been more damaging.” And a Sunday Mirror columnist concludes: “Don’t put mums in the firing line.”

That's terrible. We must prevent women from serving in dangerous places because columnists will write columns arguing that we should prevent women from serving in dangerous places.

Or, to put it another way, we must bow to the wishes of hardline fundamentalist regimes that stone women for adultery by adopting some of their misogynist philosophy. (Which fits with the neo-cons' "we must fight the enemies of liberal democracy by abandoning liberal democracy" theory, I suppose.)

The funny thing about this "clash of civilizations" is that in its current form it isn't a clash between liberalism and religious fundamentalism. It's a clash between one brand of hardline conservatism and another brand of hardline conservatism, with liberalism as a convenient whipping-boy of both sides.

It's depressing that people like Bolt can run an "abandoning liberalism in order to save it" line and not be laughed at.

ELSEWHERE: Grodscorp makes the point more succinctly.

Bolt 4/4: "Fan mail for Hicks"

2007-04-04T09:16:00.000+10:00

Wow, that was surprising.

Andy quotes positively from Jim Schembri's idiotic attempt at "satire" in today's Age and concludes:

I think he’s summed up the lunacy.

Well, he's summed up the juvenility of writers like himself and Blair, anyway.

Question - do you think Andrew Bolt has really succeeded in convincing himself that advocates of the rule of law are somehow "fans" of Hicks? That anyone who thinks retrospective charges are unjust (even Howard's on record saying this) is somehow a "terrerist" lover? Could Andy really be that stupid? Or is he just dishonest?

(Full retort at AnonymousLefty.)

Bolt 23/3: "One hides, one stands"

2007-03-24T01:02:00.000+11:00

I think he's trying to make a "US-backed Iraqi government good/UN bad" point here, but it's a bit strange:

The story has been the perhaps understandable timidity of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, almost ducking under the table at the sound of an explosion outside his Baghdad press conference.

But witness the impressive cool of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki next to him. Not even the flicker of an eyebrow.

One man is a leader…

Well, that's one way of spinning it. Another way of looking at it might be to note that it seems to confirm that, in the last HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL four years of the Iraq War, Iraqis have got very used to loud, murderous explosions. It's not so much courage as resignation.

But I'm sure they're grateful to the US for making them "leaders" in this way.

Bolt 22/3: "Meet the greens' new recruit: a dead artist"

2007-03-22T17:38:00.000+11:00

The following caption at the NGV next to Frederick McCubbin's The Pioneers is CRUDE PROPAGANDA. (Avert your eyes.) Bolt quotes:

"McCubbin’s narrative on early European settlement suggests a range of simple questions: How did such people survive? What did they eat? How and for what reasons was the land cleared and whose land was it? To what degree did early settlers understand the bush and its ecosystems? How can we best balance agriculture and conservation in the future?"

A RANGE OF SIMPLE QUESTIONS? Bloody hell. Asking how our pioneers survived? What they ate? COMMUNIST BRAINWASHING. What happened with the land? HOW DO THEY GET AWAY WITH THIS SORT OF HATE SPEECH? Suggestions for the future? TREASON!

What's with all this thinking about art rubbish? It's a pretty picture, and that's all you need to know. Okay?

As Andrew Bolt sagely asks -

I’ll simply asked [sic] the NGV when it decided its painting [sic] were not art but raw material for the crudest propaganda? And when did it decide the public was not safe to draw its own conclusions about the work in front of its eyes?

I know - asking them open-ended questions! Where's the subtlety in that? It's precisely like telling them what conclusions they should draw (except inasmuch as it's nothing of the sort).

Wait a second - maybe Andy's suggesting that these messages of "crude propaganda" are being transmitted somehow other than in the actual words. Perhaps psychically. Hey, just because we can't consciously detect these secret communications doesn't mean that what Andrew thinks people are saying, to him, in his head, isn't real.

Maybe this explains why Andrew thinks that the media are "liberal"! It's because he can pick up on the subtle psychic energies they broadcast whenever he's not wearing his tinfoil hat. And those energies tell him terrible things. Terrible, crude, propaganda-like things.

Of course, we ordinary mortals might not realise that a question like "how did [pioneers] survive?" is actually "green" hate speech. So thank god Andrew Bolt's got a newspaper column where he can let us know what's really going on.

Bolt 21/3: "Humans: too wicked to raise a bear"

2007-03-21T18:43:00.000+11:00

Look at this little fellow:

Yes, of course you want to kill it. If you've ever argued that testing cosmetics by shoving them in animals' eyes is cruel; if you've ever suggested that perhaps the export of live sheep for ritualistic killing in the middle east is not particularly humane; if you've ever thought "hey, maybe an animal shouldn't die to make my coat" - then you're an "animal rights activist". And if Andrew's right, you're probably looking at the cute picture above and thinking: LET'S SMASH ITS BRAINS OUT. Man, he's really got us there.

I think that's Bolt's point. And it's a brilliant one, too!

Bolt 20/3: "Fancy that, it's the sun's changes that affect our climate most"

2007-03-21T07:59:00.000+11:00

Today Andrew Bolt disproves human-influenced climate change!

The alarmists said this drought was caused by global warming.

Now sure, I don't know who these "alarmists" are, but I do trust Andy not to just invent ridiculous strawmen to tilt against. Although, to be honest, and much as I'd like to see Andrew stick it to those evil global warming nutcases, I can't actually remember climate change scientists saying anything of the sort. After all, Australia's always had droughts. It'd be awesome if Tim Flannery (Australian of the Year? Communist of the year, more like!) came out and announced that droughts were only a recent invention - but he's a cunning bastard and hasn't fallen for the trap yet. Still, I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

Meanwhile, like with Andrew's BRILLIANT "if we have cold weather then that must disprove global warming" characterisation of climate change, I think that the more we talk about how global warmenisers don't think the sun has any effect on the Earth (THOSE IDIOTS) the more credible the claim will sound. Even if they keep denying that they're saying anything of the sort.

Anyway, Andy has a fantastic rebuttal to this crazy argument we're saying our opponents are making. Quoting the Oz:

"DROUGHT-BREAKING rains across eastern Australia have been predicted in new modelling by a scientist who believes massive pulses in the sun’s magnetic field are helping to drive the Earth’s climate systems..."

Which clearly means that our belching ever-increasing quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere is magically going to have no effect on our climate. This is exactly the kind of hard-hitting scientific analysis we need from our favourite columnist.

I know this idea that the sun’s changes influences climate more than man’s sounds crazy to some.

What cretins! I wouldn't have thought that anyone would deny that the sun has the biggest influence on our planet's climate. Duh. But obviously there there are lots of climate change scientists who dispute that (Note: Andy, please link me to one of the articles of a representative body of them saying this. The nasty cynics around here might suspect you and I are just making this stuff up despite the scientists not saying anything of the sort.)

And in pure terms, of course it does so "more than man" - if the sun suddenly disappeared, the Earth would be a lifeless rock within a few weeks*. This IS the real issue - not "given that we only have one Earth, and just have to hope that the Sun doesn't significantly change in our lifetimes, shouldn't we be making sure that we don't stuff up this planet ourselves?" Hey, if there's a possibility that the Sun might kill us all anyway then I reckon it makes perfect sense not to worry about if we might be doing it ourselves.

And I love the courageous way that Andrew finishes by stealing (without attribution or link - that shows BALLS) an image from the internet (and I can't remember where I first saw it either) to show the relative size of the Sun and Earth (but, incidentally, not the relative distance between them). Hopefully no-one, like the image creator, will mind a professional blog on the Herald Sun site doing this.

You have to be impressed at his cleverly making the point about the Sun being much bigger than human beings. IT REALLY IS.

So I invited them to see how big the sun is compared to earth, and the tiny, tiny people on its surface. Get some perspective, people. And some modesty:

Finally, someone standing up to the sun-warming industry; all those nutty solar environmentalists arguing that humans are changing the climate of the Sun. IT'S ALWAYS BEEN THAT HOT YOU IDIOTS. (Andrew: please don't find an image showing the relative size of humanity's footprint on Earth compared with the size of the planet; that might give the warmenizers the wrong idea.)

*Note: at a guess.

Bolt 15/3: "More hope from Iraq"

2007-03-15T17:29:00.000+11:00

Andrew reckons that the "surge" is working - US troop deaths are at a cyclical low since the most recent tactic change.

Funnily enough, Andrew doesn't mention a sudden decline in Iraqi deaths. I wonder why that is.

Meanwhile, if Andrew reckons the "surge" was a good policy, based on its apparent reduction in US casualties, shouldn't he be a huge fan of the Democrats' "bring 'em home" plan? That would result in a drop in US casualties in Iraq of pretty much 100%, wouldn't it?

Bolt 13/3: "Abusing my hospitality"

2007-03-13T17:03:00.000+11:00

Poor old Andrew Bolt's famed "tolerance of debate" is apparently "being abused"! Andy posts an email from "a wise reader":

But some bloggers have far outreached any reasonable bounds of guidelines and are fast turning your topics into a rabble with frequent multi entries,abusive personal interchanges and clearly in the eyes of many others at times just plain verbal diarrhoea.

That's true, but why would Bolt want to cull the posts from his supporters?

This is fast destroying the quality of the total post to many subjects. Maybe some new bloggers may even feel intimidated by posting their thoughts on a specific subject for any fear of attracting abuse from these serial posters.

Also difficult to dispute. The high "quality" of Bolt's forum indeed continues to be adversely effected by the actual people who post in it.

To illustrate my point. Just take one of Monday’s topics “Rudd’s many truths”.There was 85 posts to this topic.And of course rightfully so both pro & con for the subject content. But don’t you think that 30% of the total posts from just 4 bloggers is totally over the top. The following,details who these serial bloggers are & the number of their entries posted.

Brian Phillips - 9
Greg Williams - 6
Barney Fife - 5
Carbonsink - 4

Ah. "A Wise Reader" is objecting to the few lefties who respond. ("Abuse" = "disagreement".) WHY DO WE HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS RABBLE? Why can't we just be left to agree with each other in our echo chamber in peace?

Andrew wants some advice in how to deal with this terrible threat:

How do you think I should respond?

I think you should crush these insolent bugs with your mighty SNIPping fist! How dare they express contrary opinions? How dare they respond when jumped on by your loyal comment box vigilantes? They're lucky they even get to say their piece in the first place; but to think they have the right to subsequently come back and defend themselves from attack by all the Right Thinking Heroes of Andrew Bolt's Comment Box?

That's just outrageous.

PS What's the most abusive comment you've seen in Andy's comment box? Righties and Lefties, show me the depths of viciousness to which the other side's been allowed to sink...

Bolt 12/3: "Bookies bet against Fairfax's Rudd poll"

2007-03-12T20:48:00.000+11:00

I'm a bit late to this, but it's quite amusing anyway. At 12.28pm today Andrew posted the following to his blog:

You can believe this Fairfax poll:

The latest monthly Herald/ACNielsen poll shows Labor would win easily with a two-party-preferred vote of 61 per cent to the Coalition’s 39 per cent - a three-point swing to Labor over the past month.

Or you can believe the unanimous verdict of five big bookies:

The average probability from the five bookies for a Coalition government following the 2007 election is 52.0 per cent. It was 51.7 per cent on Monday.

(Via The Oz Politics Blog.)

Andrew didn't bother checking the figures himself - after all, it was on a blog! Why would a Great Journalist like Andrew Bolt need to go to all the effort of typing Centrebet.com.au into his browser and see with his own eyes before writing about it?

Well, because it would help save him from making a goose of himself. His short, half-arsed update to the story later this afternoon, after his commenters turned on him -

UPDATE

The poll wins, and the bookies are having second thoughts. Sports Acumen and Centrebet now have Labor marginally favorite, and Sports Bet has the two parties even.

I blame myself, of course. Until it became too much of a hassle last week I was updating the present betting odds on the sidebar of AnonymousLefty. If I'd kept going for just a little bit longer - or convinced someone to write me a script that grabbed the figure from centrebet automatically - he'd have seen that Centrebet is (and was this morning) paying $1.90 for a Coalition win, as opposed to $1.80 for an ALP win. Yes, they reversed briefly towards the middle/end of last week, but they were back with Labor in front again before Bolt published his story at lunchtime (I checked this morning).

It's not Andrew's fault that the odds are volatile, of course. It is his fault that he didn't check, though. And it is his fault that he tried to run such a strong line on such flimsy evidence.

Anyone want to offer any odds on Andrew Bolt learning to check his own stories before attempting to go the "gotcha"?

Bolt 9/3: "Rudd toughens up"

2007-03-09T11:36:00.000+11:00

I love watching conservative columnists try to spin an angle of attack for the politicians or public figures they need to destroy.

Andrew Bolt's effort this morning is very amusing. Where Latham was portrayed as a "lout", a thug, a bully-boy, a loose-cannon, Rudd is under attack for exactly the opposite:

I can’t be alone in having spent time with Rudd, only to get up from the table thinking he’d be vastly improved by a yanking of his tie, a mussing of his hair, or even a clip—metaphorically speaking—across his tin ear.

The Opposition Leader has always seemed too much the please-Miss-please scholarship boy with the instant answers to questions you haven’t even asked.

There’s something about him of the anxious nerd who feels the one big thing he has over you is his exam mark. Of the obsessive who feels endorsed by a score of 100, but devastated with 99.

In short, Rudd can seem too keen to be perfect. Too afraid to fail. Too unreal.

And too brittle.

TOO KEEN TO BE PERFECT. What a nauseating little bastard!

And "brittle"? He's "brittle" because he was accused of having "fear in his eyes" by, wait for it, Mark Latham. (Let me see if I've got this right: Mark Latham's a total thug, a bully-boy, but if he accuses someone of having "fear" then that's evidence that they're "brittle". Uh, okay.)

He's "brittle" because, according to Andy, in arguments with him "I’ve never known [Rudd] concede even the most trivial point". Wow, that does sound "brittle". I know if I were in an argument with Andrew Bolt, I'd be constantly conceding trivial points to him BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOU SHOW TOUGHNESS.

I'm certainly convinced by his brilliant reasoning right now.

Anyway, seeing the way the wind's blowing, Andy's hedging his bets. His previous enthusiastic endorsement of the PM's brilliant strategy in throwing an Ian Campbell out the window over the weekend to sustain his attack on Rudd ("If Campbell quits for one, should Rudd resign for three?") - which had his commenters convinced Rudd was going to HAVE TO RESIGN - appears to have died. Today he describes it as an "embarrassment" for the Government. In fact, he argues:

BUT if Mr-Gotta-Be-Perfect realises he can make mistakes, fess up and still come out strong, how liberating could that be?

The polls already suggest he won’t suffer much for admitting at last to a blunder. This week’s Newspoll had his approval rating still at a sensational 62 per cent, and Labor soaring higher than ever.

Ignoring the "Mr-Gotta-Be-Perfect" idiocy, clearly Andy's beginning to recognise that his little coterie of online friends aren't exactly representative of the way the wind's blowing. He's having to concede that Howard's looking grubbier and grubbier, and little of the mud he tried to throw at Rudd last week has managed to stick. Rudd's looking both strong and (at least compared with Howard) clean.

And even Andrew Bolt has a difficult time making that combination sound bad.

Bolt 7/3: "Just a seedy deal"

2007-03-07T16:54:00.000+11:00

Bolt's rant today is premised on the claim (now sadly never to be tested by a court because of a settlement) that police at the 11 September 2000 WEF protests did not use excessive force on protesters.

Back in 2000, as a university student, I saw footage of the protests. On that footage I saw, among other things, a police member conceal his name badge and then bludgeon a little old lady (who was sitting peacefully) over the head. And more.

Unfortunately, this footage does not appear to be on YouTube, where I could show it to you.

So - this is a call to anyone who does have that footage, to bloody well digitise it and upload it to YouTube. Please. Soon. Until you do, this ludicrous notion of Bolt's that protesters were somehow able to bully a settlement out of the State Government with completely fictional claims, will continue to slither around as a conservative meme.

I'll come back to this one when I can show you what I'm talking about.

UPDATE: No S11 stuff yet, but Will in the comments links to some YouTube footage of recent G20 protesters (or, as the Herald Sun described them, THUGS!!!) being set upon by police:

Funny, from Andrew Bolt's commentary I thought the police were panty-wearing "feminised" lightweights who tried to meekly confront the protesters with flowers and kind words. Perhaps he was exaggerating.

ELSEWHERE: Bolt's moderator Bernard Slattery thinks Andy's commenters are representative of "99.9% of the Victorian population". Bernie is particularly struck that "the overwhelming number of comments shar[e] the columnist’s disgust". At Andrew Bolt's blog? Well, maybe, but in a proudly individualist and non-collective way.

AND THEY'RE OFF: Andy reprints a letter from one policewoman at the protest blaming Rod Quantock (who had A LOUDSPEAKER in his hand AND LOOKED HER IN THE EYES) for the violence by HORDES OF RATBAG PROTESTERS at S11. And just watch the monkey nuts go...

(I'm particularly enjoying their outrage at the very existence of the lone commenter on that thread who dares to disagree with them. IT EXPRESSES A DIFFERENT OPINION! BAN IT! BAN IT!)

WORTH READING: A commenter on Bolt's policewoman thread links to this piece by someone who's actually sat through the footage of the S11 protest. Meanwhile one of Bolt's acolytes points him to some footage of a G20 protester being a dickhead. Which proves something or other.

The why of Andrew Bolt

2007-03-04T21:48:00.000+11:00

Andy is now re-posting anonymous tip-offs from Tim Blair's commenters on his website - thus slightly repositioning himself in the hierarchy of Australian news authority:

Journalists
Bloggers
"Journalists" who work for News Ltd newspapers
Tim Blair
The crazy man at Flinders St Station convinced we're being invaded by aliens from outer space
Tim Blair's commenters
Andrew Bolt.

Still, it could be worse. Andy could be taking his own commenters seriously...

UPDATE: In the interests of fairness, I've moved Tim Blair one step higher in the list. He's probably slightly more credible than the crazy man at Flinders St Station. I apologise for any offence caused.

Bolt 3/4 - Some Weak Drivel On The Burke Non-Scandal

2007-03-04T09:30:00.000+11:00

Andrew is, of course, still desperately thrashing the Libs' ludicrous "being in the same room as Brian Burke is some kind of crime" attack on Rudd as hard as he can.

The Libs' own-goal yesterday, losing one of their own long-standing cabinet ministers (now to be spun as a "junior" cabinet minister who "was so unimpressive that his hopes of a bright political future were already dead"), hasn't dampened their ardour for the scheme. After all, they're still losing badly to Rudd and this ridiculous beat-up is the only thing on which they seem to be having any success in tarnishing their opponent. Admits Bolt:

Second, the biggest contribution Campbell could possibly make to help the Howard Government survive was to resign from it. Nailing Rudd with this scandal is the Liberals’ best hope - possibly even its only hope - of staving off defeat. Nothing, not even a minister’s career, could be allowed to stand in the way of this.

Pretty pathetic, isn't it? The conservatives expect to govern the country for another three years merely because Rudd had lunch with Brian Burke. (Something so trivial that even one of their cabinet ministers didn't realise there was anything wrong with it.)

For a sane News Ltd response to the non-"scandal", read Tim Dunlop's retort:

[The Liberals] didn’t raise it at the time for the simple reason that there was nothing remotely reprehensible about what Rudd did. Ditto Campbell. It’s only of interest now because ~~Chief Wiggum~~ Peter Costello went completely over the top so the whole Liberal Party now has to get in the queue to reinforce his piece of misguided theatre.

No wonder so many Australians have lost any interest in party politics. For the next week or however long this wretched bullshit lasts I won’t have much interest in it myself.

I just love how they're trying to portray Campbell's resignation as proof of how "serious" it is to have had lunch with Burke in 2005 - rather than as a demonstration of how utterly desperate the Liberals are. So desperate that they'll throw one of their own overboard in a futile effort to try to make this limp attack on Rudd last another few days. It'd be laughable if it weren't so sad.

Bolt 2/3: "It's a joke, right?"

2007-03-02T15:43:00.000+11:00

Today Andy attacks the scientific consensus on the subject of global warming by revealing that Al Gore uses electricity.

Here he was, receiving film’s highest honour for his smash documentary, in which he warns that within a century the seas will rise up to 6m while monster hurricanes tear through what’s left of our cities.

Never mind that scientists reject such wild claims.

No, scientists are the people making the claims. (Well, except the "monster hurricanes [WILL] tear through what's left of our cities", which is of course a Bolt-esque exaggeration.)

Gore was getting the endorsement that counts—an ovation from the diamond elite of showbiz and the media—for preaching that only one thing could save us from the apocalypse he imagines.

Use. Less. Dirty. Power.

"DIAMOND ELITE"!! ELITES! ELITES! It just cracks me up when opera-loving well-paid mate to the powerful Andrew Bolt starts banging on about "elites".

Anyway, onto the substance of his attack. Why's it a bad idea to "use less dirty power"?

Billing records of the Nashville Electric Service revealed that the local Gore mansion—a 20-room, eight-bathroom behemoth with a well-lit heated pool—used more electricity each month than the average American household used in an entire year.

See, it's bad to "use less dirty power" because the former Vice President of the US, with a political staff and running a political campaign, uses more electricity than the average US household.

Therefore... uh. No, there's definitely a point there. Bolt is famous for his insightful and logical articles. He wouldn't be just throwing mud at Gore for the sake of it. His revelation must have something to do with the overall issue. But how? Ah, I have it!

An argument with which you do not agree is only as strong as the most inconsistent personal habits of one of its advocates.

Therefore if Al Gore fucks up in some personal way, we don't have to worry about the environment any more. Climate change crisis solved!

And thank god for that. Al Gore uses electricity, so there's no longer any reason to in any way reconsider our contributions to greenhouse gases, even on a governmental level. That's fantastic news.

I'm off to burn some tyres.

Elsewhere, I addressed the "Environmentalists mustn't live in the modern world" argument at AnonymousLefty this morning - Right sets tough new standards for environmentalists to live by.

Bolt 28/2: "Labor to the Max" and 26/2 "McKew against Howard. What's new?"

2007-02-28T08:17:00.000+11:00

Scott Bridges at GrodsCorp snorts ironically at Andrew's recent outrage about Maxine McKew leaving the ABC to join the ALP WHICH PROVES THAT THEY'RE A BUNCH OF COMMUNISTS AS I'VE SAID ALL ALONG.

In a spirit of ~~blatant theft~~* community, BoltWatch is pleased to reprint Scott's pieces below.

One side of story reveals clear bias

Andrew Bolt, after exhaustively examining one transcript, thinks he has proved beyond all doubt that Maxine McKew was biased towards the Labor party while working as a journalist on ABC TV. You see, McKew — wait for it — asked hard questions of politicians appearing on her shows.

How dare she.

Bolta brings us a condensed version of some of the questions she asked John Howard in one interview on 13 August 2005. They were hard. Made Howard squirm. You know, like all leading politicians — regardless of political affiliation — should do when being interrogated by the press on behalf of citizens in a democracy. So in the interest of balance, here is a condensed version of some of the questions she asked now Labor leader Kevin Rudd on 11 August 2003.

Kevin Rudd, first of all to the news out of Brisbane this afternoon, the planning for joint military training for interdiction of — potentially, of course — North Korean vessels. Does the Labor Party support this?

OK, but if both those matters can be dealt with, do you agree with this? Would you agree that we can’t afford to do nothing when it comes to North Korea, particularly in the wake of the news that’s come out of South Korea in the last 24 hours?

But hang on, where is the truth in doubt here? The PM said correctly today that the Government’s case for being part of the coalition did not rest on the uranium question exclusively?

Hang on, Kevin Rudd. At the time when the PM made the statement to Parliament in early February, he was acting on the known information at the time. It wasn’t a month later, it wasn’t until March, rather, this year, that the IAEA went to the UN and said, “These documents are forged,” and equally, the PM today cited the fact that there was separate British intelligence about this.

Again, John Howard said not a key piece of information, he says, that in fact, what ONA had in January was one sentence in an 86-page document.

By the way, you didn’t disagree with that. Alexander Downer said on this program last night there was an international consensus about Saddam’s arsenal and you were part of that?

But can I say that’s a very loose allegation. What is it you are really claiming?

Bloody hell! Kruddy got it real easy there.

Shouting to be Heard

Andrew Bolt bemoans (does he ever do anything but moan?) the “information class talking to itself” while outsiders must “shout to get a word in”:

The number of journalists, for instance, who regularly switch from reporting politics to being politicians or their flunkeys is extraordinary. I speak, of course, as someone who twice worked for Labor himself.

But add to them the other members of this cultural elite - the teachers, preachers, ad men, lawyers, broadcasters, political flacks and other species of word-wranglers - and it’s clear politics is increasingly run by a same-same class of chatterers.

Take Victoria: Our last three premiers have been, in order, a teacher, an ad man, and another teacher. Our last five Opposition leaders include three former teachers and a real estate agent.

It’s the same story around the country. Of our eight state and territory leaders, three once were journalists, two lawyers, one a teacher and two union officials and political advisers. Words are their business.

Too much of this can be suffocating. We have now a collective of politicians whose colleagues and advisers sound just like them, and whose doings are reported by people who sound just like them, too.

Here is the Information Class talking to itself, while outsiders must shout to get in a word.

Bolt’s inference is that only dirty, latte-drinking lefties are members of the information class while poor righties like himself must shout to be heard.

Of course, Bolt has lots of trouble communicating his message to his adoring public. There’s his twice-weekly, full page column in Australia’s largest selling newspaper, his blog, regular appearances on ABC TV’s Insiders, and in the last few days he has featured on Seven’s Sunrise, 2UE with Alan Jones, radio 3AW and radio 6PR. There’s even a rumour — that Bolta is talking up — that he’s about to be given his own show by ABC TV.

Poor Andrew. It must be so hard to make oneself heard above all that lefty latte-sipping.

*Not really, Scott's given us permission.

Bolt 24/2: "Howard fights back in PR offensive"

2007-02-26T09:31:00.000+11:00

Where BoltWatch slacks off, others fill the void.

Larvatus Prodeo calls "WTF?!" on Andy's spin last week regarding News Ltd's excited revelations that Howard Jnr has snagged himself a "bikini babe":

However, if Andrew Bolt has his way, apparently the PM’s son’s new girlfriend is a secret electoral weapon for daddy’s campaign.

"Just the news to revamp the image of John Howard when he’s under such assault from a younger, fresher rival"

Wtf? How does this make any sense at all?

Good question. LP commenters suggest that maybe Andy has succumbed to "Fuhrerbunker" syndrome.

Bolt 21/2: "Deathly Green"

2007-02-24T08:31:00.000+11:00

Guest post by Alex at Dead Roo:

Shocking news: Andrew Bolt is a source of misinformation

Far right-wing hack, Andrew Bolt, regularly invokes Goodwins Law by comparing his political adversaries to Nazis. In his latest smear attempt, he recycles one of the most stupid of all anti-environmentalist myths.

In an attempt to enhance their own fragile egos, right-wing ideologues will stop at no lengths to discredit any cause that they believe is related to ‘leftism’. Unfortunately for their great grandchildren, environmentalism falls into this category. Of course they are wrong - Environmentalists are the original conservatives, but that’s an discussion for another day.

Bolt recyles the myth that due to environmentalists, Sri Lanka banned DDT spraying in 1964, subsequently leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

The real reason spraying ceased was because the incidents of malaria had dropped to only 17, making continued spraying unnecessary. When Malaria reemerged, DDT was reintroduced, but failed to make an impact due to the fact that agricultural use of DDT had continued during this time and the mosquitoes had subsequently developed resistance. When this was discovered, an alternative, malathion, was used with good results.

Super sleuth Tim Lambert, takes great pleasure in exposing wingnuts for the vacuous imbeciles that they are, and I recommend you read this post which goes into great detail about this issue.

Also, keep an eye on his site for an inevitable response to Bolt’s post.

Cross-posted at Dead Roo

No, it doesn't work both ways

2007-02-20T16:51:00.000+11:00

Those who've been following Andrew Bolt's powerfully insightful contributions to the global warming debate will have come across the following brilliant argument, whenever the mercury drops, paraphrased as "it's cold outside, therefore there's no such thing as global warming". Truly, the man's grasp of the climate debate is without peer.

However, those of you in south eastern Australia might have noticed that it's been bloody hot this week.

And I just want to help clarify what this means: absolutely nothing.

Of course hot weather is not evidence for global warming. Only a total idiot could think that hot weather on one day, or over a week, could somehow be meaningful evidence on the subject of global climate change. Yes, true, cold weather is indeed extremely strong evidence against the theory, but hot weather is completely different. You see, hot days like today are just irrelevant aspects of the natural climate and are statistically meaningless. On the other hand, freakishly cold days like Christmas day 2006 are specific and incontrovertible proof that global warming is a lying communist plot.

Okay? Glad we've cleared that up.

Elsewhere: Crikey reveals Andrew's juvenilia (free registration required) and Irfan Yusuf has some comments about Bolt's attitude to Muslims.

Andy's green screen challenge and excitement at the exposing of a rock star

2007-02-16T13:25:00.000+11:00

Andy is now conducting his own version of my "green screen challenge" (itself shamelessly stolen from Stephen Colbert). Is the Green Screen Challenge the new "Friday Cat Blogging"?

Meanwhile, Bolt is thrilled by the Liberal Party's discovery yesterday that Peter Garrett was in a rock band called Midnight Oil, ~~ridiculously~~ bravely opining that "Garrett's bruises mark the end of Rudd's honeymoon". That killjoy AnonymousLefty retorts to Andrew's eminently sensible argument here, in his usual sniping, sarcastic way.

Righty Groupthink Watch

2007-02-16T09:45:00.000+11:00

Noticed Andy Bolt and Timmeh Blair linking to each other a great deal lately?

Whilst "groupthink" is, obviously, a crime committed by lefties, not conservatives, nevertheless GrodsCorp was sufficiently struck by the love-fest between the two News Ltd righties that it's started a Righty Groupthink Watch.

Of course, the feature will starve for content, proud individualists that Timmeh and Andy are.

Bolt 9/2: "Kicking the bucket"

2007-02-09T09:21:00.000+11:00

Bolt's column today speaks for itself. I'm even going to directly link to it:

Kicking The Bucket [or: I clumsily poured water over myself and it's Steve Bracks' fault for not building a dam!]

Have a read. Reckon Andrew's finally lost it? I don't think I've ever read from him a more self-pitying, pathetic rant.

There went the phone inside, and me still stumbling out in the dark with another two buckets of the kids’ bath water for parched plants I can barely see.

Back inside for yet another load, my pants drenched and feet trailing slush from back door to bath...

What the hell was he doing? He tells us he's spent $2500 on a sprinkler system and it hasn't occurred to him to put up some lights?

It's like he's figured that the only way to convince his audience that water recycling is terrible is to put on a Mr Bean-esque slapstick routine.

I’ll be only too glad to put them down for an hour so I can tell you exactly what I think.

Just call.

So, we have Andrew, standing there in the dark in his wet trousers, shaking his fists angrily at the sky and cursing greenies. That's the image he's described. To be honest, I don't think he's doing his dignity any favours.

In fact, though far be it from my place to offer any suggestions to the Greatest Controversial Columnist of our Time (TM), if I might, Andrew - perhaps you ought to reconsider publishing columns about yourself. You come across as, well, not to be unkind, a bit of a buffoonish crank. (We're laughing at you, not with you.)

You've got to feel for poor Andrew. Working in an office without air conditioning (apparently), so uncomfortable that he has to sneak into The Age offices for a bit of respite; struggling outside at night without any lighting, pouring buckets of water all over himself; gradually having to concede that there is fairly good evidence that we're inducing climate change - he's not having a good summer. And he's such a nice bloke! He deserves better.

Bolt 7/2: "Aircon is uncool" and Bolt 8/2 "Too cold to measure warming"

2007-02-08T17:26:00.000+11:00

One thing about Bolt recycling his drivel is that it allows BoltWatch to do likewise. (Uh, recyling posts, not drivel.)

His post today, "Too cold to measure warming"? Here's a response we prepared earlier.

And his newspaper column on Wednesday, "Aircon is uncool", in which he lambasted The Age FOR HAVING AIR CONDITIONING (the HWT offices don't? Really?) is just a variant of his old "leftists want you to live in a cave BUT THEY DON'T LIVE IN CAVES THEMSELVES" line. Which, conveniently enough, has also been responded to by BoltWatch already.

Gee, that was easy.

Bolt 5/2: "Wasn't every terrorist once a lovely child?"

2007-02-06T21:32:00.000+11:00

Andy responds to the "bring David Hicks home" television campaign with outrage at the decision to try to provocatively humanise Hicks by showing a photograph of him as a child:

This strikes me as fundamentally dishonest. It is not a nine-year-old boy that is awaiting trial on charges of carrying unlicenced freckles, but an adult who has openly acknowledged he trained with al Qaeda.

We've spent all this time and energy demonising the man, and now they want to humanise him? Seriously?

Now, I agree that it's sad that it appears to take images of an Australian citizen as a child to prompt the community to stand up and demand that our government actually insist on the release of one of our citizens who's been held in an American prison for five years without charge... but if that's what it takes, then it's no more unfair than, say, showing pictures of September 11 in an attempt to dishonestly imply Hicks had something to do with it.

Frankly, I don't care whether Hicks is a sweet Adelaide lad who was just adventuring around the world or if he's the biggest anti-Semite arsehole we've ever produced: the fundamental principle, that you either charge someone with a crime or RELEASE THEM, is far more important. If Hicks were guilty of breaking the law, it wouldn't have taken five years to charge him. They wouldn't have had to invent NEW laws with which to charge him retrospectively. I'm not demanding his release because I think he's a nice bloke: I'm demanding his release because locking people up for any longer than the short period of time it takes to determine what they've done for which you intend to prosecute them, is the act of a police state, not one governed by the rule of law.

It's an outrage, and - advertising campaign or not - Australians are finally starting to wake up to it.

Appropriate Henry Mencken quote someone linked to on AnonymousLefty today:

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

If only Andrew understood this.

But he's not giving up without a fight.

Andrew Bolt now tries the two stupid arguments you'd expect from a gutter-dwelling polemicist, starting with this:

"The image Adolf Hitler’s family hopes will set him free"

Yes, he compares Hicks with Hitler. He quickly and unconvincingly tries to cover his backside -

Let me make a few things instantly clear. I am NOT suggesting David Hicks is like a Hitler, despite his avowed dislike of the Jews he’s claimed run the world. Hicks has not, to my knowledge so far, killed a single person, and may well have served long enough already in jail, even if much of what is alleged against him is true.

No, I am not trying to compare Hicks to Hitler...

Sure, Andy, I believe you. Who would think you were comparing Hicks with Hitler? ~~Only people who can read.~~

That's amusing enough, but what tops it is Bolt's suggestion of REALLY appropriate images for any discussion of Hicks:

and

See? Unlike Hicks' anxious family, Andrew Bolt is ABOVE using manipulative and irrelevant imagery to influence the Hicks debate. It's simply something he would never do.

Because it would be, as he says, "fundamentally dishonest".

Bolt v Lambert

2007-02-03T09:30:00.000+11:00

Bolt thinks he's got one up on Tim Lambert:

Tim Lambert writes to me on October 6: [The new IPCC report] does not predict sea level rises of 14-43cm. You seem to be relying on an inaccurate story in the Australian.

Which Bolt, attacking Lambert for his "howler", counters with:

The IPCC report has since been released, and gives six possible scenarios of sea level rises, the highest of which predicts a maximum rise of 59cm, not 43.

Question for Andrew. If a report gives six possible scenarios of sea level rises, is it predicting all six? Could one particular of those scenarios be called its actual prediction?

If not - wasn't Lambert right?

PS I haven't and won't read through his comment thread. Debate over how many centimetres the sea levels are going to rise bores me rigid.

The climate change deniers are like creationists, who pick at debate within the scientific community as to the exact mechanisms of evolution as if it were debate over the reality of evolution. "Scientist A says it worked this way; scientist B says it worked a slightly different way; therefore the scientists can't agree and evolution is false!" Idiocy. And people like Bolt are attempting to confuse the climate issue with misleading drivel so as to delay action for as long as possible.

It's very tedious.

UPDATE: Lambert explains the issue.

How Bolt would make the rain come: build a dam!

2007-02-01T23:28:00.000+11:00

Andrew Bolt is convinced that building a dam would, somehow, have solved our water problem. (I've speculated on why he's so fixated on this "solution" previously.) Anyone who doesn't agree with him? The drought is their fault:

We'd rather die than build a dam

Well, I’m really speaking for the green-obsessed Labor Government, of course, which is fiddling while Melbourne’s gardens burn:

[Terrible statistic about how little water we have because of the drought]

For four years or more this Government has been warned to dam well do something. Now it’s close to too late, if no good rains come.

1. WE MUST DO SOMETHING.
2. Building a dam is doing something.
3. Therefore, we must build a dam.

He's a fricking genius.

Bolt 1/7: "Picking a Bone with the Left"

2007-02-01T23:11:00.000+11:00

Bolt quotes Pamela Bone's recent silly anti-liberal rant enthusiastically, appending his own facile "Besides, I’m not even sure that excusing mass murder and the killing of liberty is really so new for the Left, either" and asserting that lefties have always been pro-totalitarianism.

His idiotic and ridiculous sledge barely deserves acknowledgement, let alone response, but Pamela's does need a little:

WHY is it, asks British journalist Nick Cohen, that apologies for a militant Islam, which stands for everything the liberal Left is against, come from the liberal Left?

They don't. No-one genuinely on the liberal Left would "apologise" for militant religious fanaticism. There may be a few idiots coming to the conclusion that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", but they'd be abandoning liberalism to do it. And there are others who point out that in our conflict with the fanatics it doesn't help to start implementing similar philosophies on our own side; only a Bolt-esque fool would interpret that as "apologising" for fascists. (Sadly, Andrew Bolt is a Bolt-esque fool.)

An example of what precisely she's talking about would have been helpful.

Why are you as likely to read about the alleged conspiracy of Jews controlling American foreign policy in a literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet?

Not sure what she means by this. If she's trying to argue that there isn't a well-funded Jewish lobby in Washington, then she's being silly. Of course there is. It's not a bloody secret; it's so overt you couldn't really call it a conspiracy. Of course there's a strong pro-Israel influence in American foreign policy; both parties receive extensive donations from wealthy pro-Israeli Americans (of whom there are obviously more than wealthy pro-Arab Americans). Of course there are lots of lobby groups in the US; the Jewish lobby is just one of them. Denying it is like saying there's no evangelical christian lobby in the US Republican Party.

To recognise the lobby's existence is hardly neo-Nazi-style anti-Semitism - it's just being aware of a fairly non-controversial reality of American politics. Duh.

Why, after the bomb attacks in the London underground, did left-leaning British newspapers run pieces excusing the suicide bombers, these same young men who were motivated by “a psychopathic theology from the ultra-Right”?

"Excusing"? Show me the article to which you refer. That's ridiculous. The so-called "left-leaning" British newspapers ("left-leaning", ha) may have published pieces attempting to gain some insight into the minds of the bombers... but it's only idiotic conservative over-simplification to turn that into "excusing" them. Understanding a threat isn't capitulating to it; it's being bloody sensible.

Why, in short, have Left and Right changed places?

They haven't. Your attempt to argue that they have is incredibly weak.

Andy prepares to reverse course

2007-01-30T12:00:00.000+11:00

Is Andy preparing to join his boss Rupert's reversal on the question of man-induced climate change?

First step - a gentle, approving link to an argument that once he decried, followed by a non-threatening "of course, others disagree". Andy is recasting himself as "open to the evidence", so that he can gradually shift, along with his colleagues, away from an increasingly ludicrous position of stubborn denial.

And fair enough. He doesn't want to be the last one left standing when the music stops.

UPDATE 31/1: Listen to him today:

I’m not saying these scientists are wrong and the IPCC’s scientists are wrong. I’m just saying the incentives - up until now entirely on the side of hyping global warming - are now slowly changing.

"I'm not saying these scientists are wrong"? My, things are changing over at BoltWorld!

Bolt 30/1: "Lawyers complain. Police moved while being hit"

2007-01-30T11:49:00.000+11:00

Some typically stupid, illogical populism from Andy today, this time condemning lawyers from the Federation of Community Legal Centres ("taxpayer-funded"!!!1!11!111!!!!) for daring to "lodge complaints" against police officers alleged to have improperly assaulted demonstrators with batons at recent protests. (It's happened before*.)

Andy's spin?

Strange. The police this time just stood and took the abuse, the assaults, the hosing with water, the smashing up of a riot bus - too scared to uphold the law for fear of legal action just like this. And still it doesn’t save them.

Well, if Andy's right, and the police in question didn't in fact improperly use their batons, then of course that would save them. (Of course, Bolt's constant "pansy passive police" refrain may actually be completely wrong. "Police moved while being hit", indeed!) If the police used batons to preserve life and limb, then of course that would also save them. They're only going to be punished by a court if they've seriously overstepped the mark. Bolt says they haven't - and if he's right, that will by definition "save them".

But Andrew is of course trying to run the standard anti-legal system rant, where you cite "extreme" lawsuits as evidence that the system is broken. You don't point out that these are mere complaints, and if they're extreme and bizarre then they'll be rejected by the courts. The whole point of our system is that you can make a complaint and it'll be determined in a court. It won't be ruled out before you're allowed to make it in the first place. The court decides the merits after hearing the evidence, not some untrained bureaucrat who won't let anyone make a complaint that sounds silly to Andrew Bolt readers.

What would Mr Bolt prefer? That anyone claiming to have been assaulted by police who goes to a community legal centre simply be told to go away? Where are the checks and balances then?

Andy's objection doesn't actually stand up to any sort of analysis. But it's not supposed to. You're just supposed to hear the words "taxpayer-funded" and "protesters" and GRIMACE WITH RAGE at what THOSE BASTARDS ARE DOING ON YOUR DIME. Don't think about it any more than that, or you'll start asking awkward questions that Bolt can't answer.

*I have seen footage of the 11 September 2000 protests at the World Economic Forum, in which a little old lady is seated in a protest line and a police member covers his name badge and then starts belting her over the head with his baton. Oddly enough, this was not widely reported.

Oh, bollocks. He's back.

2007-01-24T17:17:00.000+11:00

...And with a spray! 13 posts in one day. More than BoltWatch can be bothered dealing with in depth, certainly.

Still. A quick skim.

Andy has a new moderator - "I don’t know what rules Bernie will impose or tone demand. But I’d suggest you go easy on mindless abuse and hard on evidence, courtesy and humor." Yes - evidence, courtesy and humour. The hallmarks of Andrew Bolt's work!
Quick bash at aborigines - IN 5000 YEARS THEY MADE MANY ANIMAL SPECIES EXTINCT. Piss-poor effort, really. Look how much many more we've wiped out in just over 200 years! They mustn't have been trying.
Andy's found a member of the police force who reads his columns and agrees with him! "Why can't we go back to the good old days of bashing little old ladies at protests over the head with our batons?" complains the good detective sergeant. WHY INDEED, wonder Andy's commenters.
Andy thinks you should read something Christopher Hitchens has written about how to fight THE ISLAMOFASCISTS WHO ARE GOING TO KILL US ALL. He helpfully provides a link, but - taking a leaf from Tim Blair's book of half-arsed blogging - doesn't actually provide any insight of his own.
Bolt's not too happy with the Howard reshuffle, particularly the idea that Turnbull might take global warming seriously WHEN WE KNOW IT'S ALL JUST MADE UP BY COMMUNIST CONSPIRATORS.
Bolt weighs in on the Big Day Out Australian Flag "debate", taking the angle that it's not the Australian flag that makes people use it as "gang colours", it's booze and A DECLINE IN GOOD OLD-FASHIONED AUSTRALIAN VALUES. The BDO organisers should simply have shut down the Toohey's stand, played music that Andrew Bolt enjoys (some Puccini, perhaps), and the racist yobs would have sat quietly with their flags and not bothered anyone. Now THAT would be a rocking Australia Day mosh-pit all the family could enjoy.
Andy finds a SNOB writing in the Sydney Morning Herald. Andy, famed for his working-class tastes, is justly outraged.
Andy notes the racism of American reportage regarding Barack Obama. He should have a look at some of the coverage from one of his boss' other media outlets.
Andrew's very happy at the abolition of the word "Multiculturalism" from the relevant department's name. He's less happy that it apparently might continue to exist in some form anyway. "This is not designed to kick multiculturalism", he sadly quotes the PM as saying. Then he gives a representative series of links regarding multiculturalism - three incidents where non-Anglo Saxon Australian goons behave objectionably. Just like all foreigners, obviously.
Riddle of the day - Andy's bored, and asks his readers for riddles. "What has it got in its pocketsses?" suggests BoltWatch.
Educational expert that he is, Bolt weighs in on the best ways to teach children to read. The educational sector continues to ignore his advice, because they are lazy heathens.
Bolt reports on the pro-rapist video that some idiotic young Lebanese misfits were parading on YouTube. Andy remarks, ironically, "lovely little sub-culture". This is profound because gangs of toughs advocating for rape are bad, and without Andy to point this out we may have missed it and not known what to think.
Finally, Andy offers his forum as a source of advice on how to induce an overdue baby. Medical professionals everywhere heave a sigh of relief as the burden is lifted from them.

And that's more than enough for one day. It's a nasty surprise, really; turns out his "goodbye - maybe I won't ever be back" was just cruel teasing. Ah well.

BoltWatch restored!

2006-12-30T09:11:00.000+11:00

Blogger has restored both BoltWatch and AnonymousLefty! The dastardly hacker has been turfed out, and the blogs have been handed back to their rightful owner (me).

It took them six days, but I'm back. And so is the entire BoltWatch archive and everything. What a relief.

Thank you everyone for your support over the last week; it's meant a great deal. (Please update your links back now.)

Bolt 22/12: "Goodbye"

2006-12-26T09:10:00.000+11:00

Andy says farewell to his loving readers over Christmas, and gives their little hearts some minor palpitations with:

That’s it. For this year at least, and we’ll see after that.

Oh no! Mr Bolt has to come back! He simply has to! Whatever would we do without him?

He reflects on blogging:

It’s compulsive, this blogging thing, and I’ve enjoyed greatly being able to have my quick say on whatever is passing by in the parade of news. Waiting for my turn in the paper - and being then kept to a single page - was too frustrating.

Although it did make running BoltWatch less painful.

But the bit of his farewell message I enjoyed the most was this parting shot:

I’ve even enjoyed what is rather unusual with blogs - that I’ve also had here a lot of people who are deeply opposed to what I’ve said and are prepared to say so. I wish only that they argued more and abused less, but I guess if it was the other way around I’d have more cause to doubt my judgment.

Andrew has apparently read the comments on his blog over the past year and concluded that it's the lefties who were uniquely abusive towards their opponents. (Andy's supporters were, to a person, polite, respectful and dignified debating opponents.) And that this proves him somehow right on whatever it is he's been ~~ranting~~ saying throughout the year.

Interesting. I guess he'd have to conclude then that the fact that on Christmas Eve someone hacked BoltWatch, deleted all my posts, and then replaced it with an "I love Andrew Bolt" fansite means that, simultaneously, I'm "right" as well. Because nutcases on each political "side" somehow define everyone else with whom they might partially agree.

No, of course he wouldn't have to conclude anything of the sort. That would be insane.

But still - whilst my abusive righty friends (those who stalk their opponents and delete their blogs) prove nothing whatsoever about the right as a whole (and of course they don't), Andrew Bolt's "abusive" lefties prove that the left as a whole is rotten and wrong. You know, because.

Anyway, Andy's off on holiday, and so - therefore - is BoltWatch. Until he returns, you can find me over at AnonymousLefty, bloody-mindedly blogging on about everything else.

Otherwise, see you in the New Year.

NOTE: This post has been moved across from its temporary home at "BoltWatch In Exile". The first few comments, however, are still at the original location.

Bolt 13/12: "Greenies with envy"

2006-12-14T11:13:00.000+11:00

It's going to be difficult for Andrew Bolt to keep up this "extreme Green" spin now that there are three upper house Green MPs and it's pretty obvious that they don't have three heads and suffer from the crazy after all.

Still, Andy's not giving up yet.

"NOT enough that a ban on new dams has your gardens and your sports grounds dying?"

Uh, no, that's the drought, Andrew, not a lack of dams. Nice try though.

First we had Moreland Council—dominated by Labor and the Greens—putting a ban on those gassy refrigerated airconditioners for the Shirley Robertson Children’s Centre.

Never mind that saving the planet meant making toddlers sweat. Temperatures inside the most sun-exposed room of the kindergarten hit 35C the other day, forcing staff to strip the sweltering children down to their nappies.

As we saw yesterday, that's complete crap.

Bolt, who has obviously read the BoltWatch retort and my comment to his original post, is now acknowledging that the council's decision involved the whole council, not just the Greens, and specifying that it was only refrigerative air conditioners that the council refused to fund.

But of course he still refuses to point out that the Greens suggested evaporative air conditioning as an alternative. Obviously that's because as soon as you realise that the Greens were happy to fund cooling systems for the centre, the rest of the attack falls entirely apart.

It's a smear, pure and simple. (Well, simple, anyway.)

So what next in this pitiful list of "reasons" to hate "the Greens"?

Ah, he's found some "former Swinburne University academic" interviewed by Robyn Williams on the radio, who's suggested that the current global population isn't sustainable and come out with some wacky ideas about reducing it -

How? Reid would end IVF technologies, of course, but also perhaps “put something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system and would make a substantial proportion of the population infertile.”

Pretty freaky, I agree.

But nothing to do with the Greens. Not Greens party policy. Not spoken by a Green party advocate. In fact, despite Andrew's attempt to conflate all of these things with the Greens, the only one that has anything to do with the party is the Council thing which, as we've seen, is a complete misrepresentation.

Is that really the best you can do, Andrew?

I'm surprised you left out Landeryou's latest anti-Green smear where he proudly announces that he's "uncovered claims" that one of the new Green MPs blew up Coode Island in 1991!

What next? The Greens are responsible for September 11? And El Nino! Perhaps we secretly set off the tsunami in 2004. Come on, Andrew, use your imagination!

Bolt 12/12: "Green ban makes toddlers suffer for the warming faith"

2006-12-12T09:02:00.000+11:00

Andy's not even pretending to be a journalist any more. He's now just repeating lies and spin spread by serial nutcase Andrew Landeryou.

Today's attack on the Greens is Landeryou's smear that a Greens councillor in Moreland, Andrea Sharam, is single-handedly responsible for the council denying kiddies in a childcare centre precious air conditioning WHAT BASTARDS THOSE GREENS ARE.

Bolt just repeats Landeryou's post. His one addition? Introducing it with "All the hallmarks of a totalitarian cult…"

Of course neither Andy points out that the council unanimously decided against providing refrigerative air conditioning for the centre. That's a council with 2 "independents", 7 ALP members, and 2 Greens. They all voted "no". Why's one Green held responsible for the whole thing?

And neither Andy mentions that the Greens were in favour of funding for the centre:
(a) new shading infrastructure; and
(b) evaporative air conditioning.

I lived in Mildura for a year, and evaporative air conditioning works perfectly well. It's simply untrue that the Greens were "forcing staff to strip the two and three-year-olds to nappies and underwear", as the Andies claim.

Still, why let facts get in the way of a good smear, eh, Andrews B and L?

Well, I'm sure Andy L knows perfectly well the whole story, and his spin is deliberate. Andrew Bolt - well, I'm not sure if it's corruption rather than simple incompetence. I don't think he DOES know what I've pointed out above, because I doubt he bothered checking the story.

Do you remember the old days in which a fundamental part of journalism involved contacting both sides of a story - to give them a chance to respond to the allegations of the other? If you were publishing an attack on a person, you contacted them in advance, put to them the allegations, and gave them an opportunity to try to explain themselves? Not only is that fair, not only does it give your readers a good picture of what's going on, it's also a good way of avoiding looking foolish when your story is printed and they point out that the smears you're repeating have a couple of significant holes in them.

You know, journalism.

PS I attempted to point the above out in the comments to Andy's post. Oddly enough, the comment wasn't "approved". Quelle surprise.
UPDATE: Now it has been.

Bolt 11/12: "Pinochet dead. Left celebrates, wiser heads remember"

2006-12-11T16:36:00.000+11:00

That heading again:

Pinochet dead. Left celebrates, wiser heads remember

Excuse me for what I'm about to do, but I think the kids of today have the perfect expression to use in response to this piece of Andy's:

WTF?????

The "Left celebrates"?!

Wait... is Bolt saying "the Left" is celebrating Pinochet's death, or that "the Left" is celebrating his life? If it's the former, I guess he's defining "the Left" incredibly broadly - most of Chile is celebrating Pinochet's death. If it's the latter, we're what??!?! I'm fairly sure we're not doing anything of the sort.

In any case, I can now reveal to you how, in Bolt-world, you become a member of "the Left" or "the Greens". And it has nothing to do with whether you agree with the philosophy of either of those groups.

This is the test to tell if Andy thinks you're a leftist:
1. You're not a neo-Nazi skinhead; and
2. You have done or said something of which Andy doesn't approve and/or which Andy can make look ridiculous.

Anyway, Andy has started doing the Tim Blair style of blogging - pop up a quote with one sentence before and afterwards and leave it to your readers to bang out what they think about the issue in the comments. This makes retorting to their pieces somewhat difficult, because they're not ACTUALLY saying anything. They're just quoting other people who are saying those things.

Maybe Bolt should become a Catholic Cardinal.

BONUS RETORT
Bolt 11/12: "A cow of a day"

Ignoring the painful pun of the heading, this is still one of Andy's more ridiculous efforts. Andy seizes on a UN report noting that the grazing of cattle has a terrible effect on the natural environment, from greenhouse gases to clearing rainforests.

Bolt's conclusion? That eating meat is the solution. (And, by corollary, that environmentalists who don't eat meat are the problem.)

*Sits Andrew down in a comfy chair, away from sharp objects, and addresses him as if to a child*

MR BOLT: Cattle are bad for the 'vironment, and 'Vironmentalists are idiots for not eating them.
MR LEFTY: Andrew, why are cattle bred by farmers?
MR BOLT: To be eaten.
MR LEFTY: What happens when we eat beef?
MR BOLT: Cattle numbers decrease.
MR LEFTY: And what do farmers do?
MR BOLT: Ooh! I know! They breed more cattle to replace them.
MR LEFTY: So how would environmentalists eating beef decrease the total number of cows being bred and grazing?
MR BOLT: Um... magic?

He's really a bit of a thicky, isn't he?

PS: Hotlinking

Andy, I know I'm sometimes guilty of the same offence, but then I'm not a paid columnist for a major newspaper. You know that picture of the cow you're stealing from Golf Today Magazine? You might want to change that link to something actually hosted at news. (I'm sure you guys have a file photo of a cow somewhere). For a couple of reasons:
1. It's unfair to Golf Today Magazine and their ISP, whose bandwidth every user who goes to your page at News Ltd is now using. Mere blogger hotlinkers who send over perhaps a couple of dozen readers can probably be absorbed by someone else's ISP without too much trouble: but you've got one of the main opinion pages on news.com.au, and your traffic must be costing them a fortune.
2. There's nothing stopping them replacing that image with something rather foul, which could cause you some considerable embarrassment.

Just some advice. Ask Tim Blair about it - he's a crusader on the subject.

UPDATE: Andy hasn't allowed my comment through, but he has removed the cow image.