Tim Blair, Surveys, Al Gore, Global Warming and the Loonacy of Statistics

Tim Blair gets excited over the silliest things.

Under a photo of a giant ice statue of Al Gore (weighing five tons and being used in a hospital charity drive), he recently announced proudly that 44% of US voters now say long term planetary trends are the cause of global warming, compared to 41% who blame it on human activity (allegedly a turnabout from things being the other way around). 

Well yes and over a third of Americans believe that their government was somehow involved in bringing down the twin towers, while 16% in one survey speculated that secretly planted explosives were the thing that did it.

Let's not go into the percentages that believe humans walked the earth with dinosaurs, or who think aliens drop in regularly (and are likely to safe us from ourselves, just like in the movies). Let's not even begin to tote up the percentages of Mormons or Scientologists, or those who belong to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or sign up for the Jedi religion. (Myself, I think the Thetans and volcanoes are responsible for global warming, but I'm having a hard time getting anyone to listen. Maybe Blair can help out).

Let's however give full credit to the Bush administration's war on science, which somehow saw the forces of the right align with the looniest aspects of Christian fundamentalism (which is not so far from Islamic fundamentalist looniness).

Meantime, you wonder what Blair's real point is. I guess all the recent news from Antarctica is good, because soon Australia will be able to establish resorts on the newly exposed rock and the right can go on whale hunting expeditions for a taste of that deep fried down south blubber.

But celebrating statistics that have nothing to do with science, and bugger all to do with reality? Yes, I know for a fact that ninety per cent of Americans think Tim Blair is statistically inept, but I wouldn't want the future of the world to swing on it.

It's a bit like Rush Limbaugh hoping that Obama will fail so the rest of us can suffer in perdition while he celebrates his accuracy in predicting things from his multi million dollar contractual perch. 

I used to think only Islamics got off on cutting off the hands of thieves, but you have to think the right would love us to drown in watery graves induced by standard planetary behaviour, just to prove a point.

I'm not up to providing a link. Just believe me. It's one thing to be a sharp right wing satirist and another to be just plain dumb. Dean Swift would eat Blair for breakfast and not even bother to burp as he went down.

Miranda Devine, Frank Sartor and the Napoleonic Lust for Power

Miranda the Devine is baaaack! And all play and no work makes for a feisty return to form.

How else to explain an article headed Frankly, the best option is Sartor. You see in these perilous times Miranda thinks Frank Sartor should become premier of NSW. He's determinedly non-ideological, he hates unions and the party machine doesn't trust him.

Miranda does note a minor problem - "he is said to be unpopular with the public". Well as she understands, that's just hooey. When has popularity with voters ever been an issue for state Labor, or democracy a requirement for right wing commentators?

You have to wonder whether Nathan Rees suggested Miranda write her column this way. If Miranda the Devine is backing Frank Sartor, it's a bit like Medusa making out with Poseidon. You have to think terrible things might befall Frank, and no, it's not just a wog thing Frank, it's your Napoleonic tendencies, first on view when you became mayor. As a bonus now, the wrong people clearly like you, and grumbling about a back bench salary isn't the way to endear yourself to the voters in these troubled times.

"It's time to bring in the kamikaze", suggests the good Devine. What an admirable fighter pilot she makes. Now can we just find a really good target for her, somewhere far out to sea. Maybe she can find out what really happened to Flight 19 ...

Piers Akerman, Brack Obama, Roughnecks, Blinkers and the Fat Owl Strikes Again

A friend has suggested that I tend to be a little abusive of the right wing rascals I write about.

Well yes but the Pravda-loving Piers Akerman, fat owl of the remove, is so obtuse and persistently, odiously relentless in his humbuggery, that to do anything else would be to give the game away. As the Phantom wisely observed on many occasions, you have to be rough on roughnecks.

In real life, I'm a milk-drinking moderate (provided, like my grandmother, the milk contains a tote of rum or brandy) but as ratbag right wing moderators aren't interested in logic or rational debate, there's not much point in deploying same.

No, they treat it like a football game, as if they're beleaguered Manly Sea Eagle supporters, constantly under attack by fibro and latte lovers (think New England Patriots if you come from the land of real football). And they're never afraid to attack the man, woman or child, to go the gouge and the coathanger, to clutch the balls or grope the crutch. They mainly care about the location of the jugular and the most direct route for the fangs.

Playing fair and all that nancy boy stuff is what liberals do. Politeness might get you somewhere in a convention of librarians, but when you meet up with a Murdoch bovver boy in a dark back page of the Daily Terror, make sure you bring a chain or two and wear some knuckledusters as well. They're churlish, they show a lack of generosity and grace, they know little of optimism and joy, but much about denigration, diminution and dyspepsia.

That's how the fat owl can start off a column, headed Brack Obama's actions must speak louder than flowery contrivances with a standard disclaimer "while it may seem uncharitable to be critical of a new US President on his Inauguration Day", and then straightaway it's on with the steel capped boots, and into a savage kicking.

The fat owl starts by mis-spelling Brack's name in his header - take that you softie, I can use a diminutive fluently and with the worst of them - then goes on to mention how Obama opposed the nomination of the chief justice (and why not, the twit couldn't get a few words at the swearing in right, let alone the law of the land?). (Why not bring out the old sneer about Hussein, Piers, going soft in your old age?)

Then it's on to the surge in Iraq, the keeping of Robert Gates in cabinet, the largely inconsequential content of the speech, and the subtleties of race. Obama you see, according to the fat owl, isn't a black with a slave heritage. His father was a Kenyan, while Colin Powell was a West Indian. Take that, all you black loving, slave disowning liberals.

I don't think the fat owl has any idea of the offensive, jaundiced, plantation owning blinkers he wears when he writes this kind of muck. Why my man, bring me out some more mint julep while I check out my records to see exactly what kind of mulatto you might be. You see there's something in the genes that might affect your abilities, or at least provide some incongruities I can rabbit on about (to prove I understanding nothing).

Then it's back to the Fat Owl's current favorite cracked record - the economy is stuffed, the time for flowery words has passed, and Obama will be judged by his actions. What a tragedy the economy was ruined those eight long years ago, in the last executive order issued by Clinton (or did it happen when the Democrats took over Congress?). Whatever, thank the lord, the good Shrub and his wonderful team or the greedy at the head of the American financial system had nothing to do with it.

Too abusive, you reckon? These turkeys love to dish it out, but right now, right here in this point of time, they're losers. In these perilous and uncertain times, induced by their own kind - the lords and ladies of the ruling classes - the world suddenly has found new voices. And they ain't the sheep of the right wing commentariat. Specifically they ain't the braying of donkeys, or those who have become like sounding brass or tinkling cymbals.

Is gloating unseemly?  Hell yes. Is it fun? You betcha. Sometimes when confronted by a fool, it's seemly to call him one, and hope that someday he might end up with the wisdom of the fool in King Lear. Though one suspects in the case of the fat owl ... fat chance.

One day in, and this kind of crap keeps getting written. Soon enough it will be time to put away childish things like the fat owl. Meantime, must line my boots with a special stainless steel toe worthy of Alex and the droogs. And then it'll be time to get out my zoot suit ... I feel like dancing ...

Tim Blair, Obama and the Obsessive Compulsives

Over at Tim Blair, it seems the poor possum spent the night (or at least until 3.20 am) watching the inauguration of Obama, Inagurationarama 2009, hoping and praying that the black dude might make a mistake, and thinking that he and his cohorts had it, only to discover that it was the Chief Justice who screwed up the wording.

Oh my lord, my sweet lord, talk about obsessive compulsive. Four years of this kind of scrutiny from the fruitcakes of the world. Worse than Abba fans.

Janet Albrechtsen, Obama the Saint, Emotion, Analysis and everything right with the World

You can rely on Janet Albrechtsen to pour cold water on anything liberal. Indeedy, you can rely on her to douse liberalism  and its appendages in freezing water saturated in icebergs broken off in the last great global warming event (may as well put them to a good use).

In much the same way that Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm couldn't get it up with a woman - even though he had a tenth anniversary gift from his wife allowing him to commit adultery with whomever - because he saw a photo of George Bush in her back stage dressing room, Janet Albrechtsen goes frigid at the very sound of a liberal.

Odd then that she's currently in Canada - home of the soft shelled liberal - and claims this odd residency as a 'vantage point' to follow the conservative talking point that Obama and his press gallery (you know the liberal media elite made up of the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Janet Albrechtsen) will have to check out their god carefully, and make sure he does a good job, not because he's black, good looking and speaks well (in contrast to the offensive way they judged George Bush because he was white, resembled a pugnacious pug and spoke like an incoherent chimp on valium).

Yep, all the tiresome repetitions are there in Seduced by the Saint, in the American owned The Australian, wherein Albrechtsen says it would be mean spirited to complain about the media rejoicing in the sight of a good looking, left wing articulate man of color getting inaugurated.

And then in typical fashion goes on to be mean spirited. You see all the hype, all the excitement is actually only being felt by the media - when some Canadian hack writes about a bond between Obama and the American people, he obscures the fact that the bond is really between the media and Obama. People like Phillip Adams (though how that antique-collecting antique fossil is allowed to represent the liberal media must remain a mystery).

This is the same vicious, uncaring media that did down poor President Bush and his valiant team. "During the George W. Bush years, cynicism accompanied much of the media's reporting of his presidency. During Obama's term, the cynicism appears almost certain to give way to a predictable pattern of fawning support. Those in the media who were devoted to dishing out criticism of Bush on so many scores for just being Bush will award Obama a free ride from criticism for just being Obama. The not-so-secret deal is that he's handsome, he's articulate, he's left wing and he's black".

Deary me, I feel a song coming on:

I'm not aware of too many things

I know what I know, if you know what I mean

Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box

Religion is the smile on a dog

I'm not aware of too many things

I know what I know, if you know

what I mean, d-doo yeah

Choke me in the shallow waters

Before I get too deep

After that short break sponsored by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, let's take a look at all the issues which Albrechtsen thinks poses a problem for this superficially handsome, superficially black man. Well for a start there's climate change. But wait how's that a problem?It doesn't exist. Do nothing and all will be well, and this slick, carpet-bagging black will look good and take all the credit due to George Bush's profoundly wise inertia.

Okay, think the global financial mess. Well, we all know that's just a beat up by the liberal media, and the fault of poor people wanting to buy homes they couldn't afford. A short spell sleeping under the stars or in trailer parks will sort them out. Otherwise George W and his magnificent team, undeterred by the kind of old fashioned lefty economics supported by Keynes and Stalin, left the American and world economy in fantastic shape (except those bits ruined by the Clintons, the Democrats and the liberal media).

Enough already, think Iraq. But only yesterday in the esteemed pages of The Australian, it was announced that Iraq was a triumphal victory for George W and his masterful team. Mission accomplished, Iraq's now a fully functioning democracy, and all that handsome black man (think Will Smith with a blackberry) has to do is tell his team to skulk away into the night, leaving the Iraqis to their own devices, and all will be well.

What about the middle east then? Well in his last few years Bush and his devoted team devoted all their skill and attention to achieving peace in the middle east, as a legacy project. The assault on Lebanon, and the recent attack on Gaza have produced immense benefits for Israel and for peace. All that glibly articulate black man has to do is turn up for the clod turning ceremony when the tree of peace will be planted for all eternity.

You can see why Albrechtsen is bitter. Here's her hero done all the hard yards, and the fawning liberal elite will hand all the credit to Obama, when in truth he's got bugger all to do. Instead he hops on a train and pretends he's Lincoln. Doesn't anyone remember Lincoln was a Republican?

Janet knows, you see. She knows progressive politics "is essentially an emotional, rather than a rational, pursuit. Its foundations rest on altruistic, even utopian, belies about the perfectibility of man and society. For progressives, hope triumphs over experience".

Thank god Janet's not like that. She prefers to dwell in cess pits and dung hills, because that's where the truth lies. Humans are imperfect, corrupt experience triumphs over hope. Forget William Blake and his synthesis of innocence and experience. We're all living in a world where stuff happens (actually Donald, I think you meant to say shit happens, which is okay, you seemed to suggest, if you're the one doing the shit). Haliburton rules, you suckers.

I'm guessing Albrechtsen's favourite ad is the one where the truckie collects some beer from an idealistic, white-dressed angelic hippie commune. He uses a fluttering dove to flick the top off a bottle of fine brewed ale, before taking a swig and driving off, splattering mud on the utopian creatures as he goes. Does Albrechtsen have a secret fantasy life as a fat, stomping, blue singlet, working class hero given unique powers to see the mud splattered truth? Does she imagine she's Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour? With the mud thrown by the wretched liberal media?

Whatever. Whenever you read this kind of emotional, hysterical nonsense, you wonder how someone like Albrechtsen can reach so deep in to her bag of tricks, and talk of sober analysts, and voice concern about the role of emotion in politics and its implications for critical scrutiny. Janet, fact is, bitching on (and on and on, week after week) from a single, fixed, monomaniacal, compulsive obsessive point of view ain't sober analysis.

I'm guessing that when someone gets to condescending name calling - delivering a back handed chop to Obama's cheek for his "toastmaster skills" - she's reached the last level of abuse usually reserved for the scoundrel. Remind me never to buy The Australian, when a quick click through read will give them diddly squat revenue.

And pray this is the last right wing loony tune we have to sing about how hard done by was good ol' George W by the librul media elite, and how they fawn on Obama when the people deep down are to the right of Genghis Khan. 

Spare me o lord, or I'll have to watch Bill Maher's Religulous all over again, ten times, for my sins, meditating in my usual way on the Mystery that is right wing commentary, frantic, flawed, and deeply, hysterically emotional.

Andrew Roberts, The Australian, Right Wing Cheerleaders, the virtues of Bush and the turkey stuffing of America

Over at The Australian, that venerable, proudly nationalistic rag owned by an American, you can always get a gig by being a cheerleader for George Bush and the Republicans.

As a choice, prime cut example, take a look at History fairer to Bush, by Andrew Roberts. After a long interminable read, it's clear that the only thing Roberts forgot to mention is the way the sun shines out of Bush's arse and illuminates the dreary lives of poor Americans.

Roberts presents himself as a historian, so he should remember that historians who write of current affairs usually make prime sources for later historians on the follies of contemporary views - since the one sure truth about history (and historians) is that it (and they) are lamentable guides to the future.

To read Roberts, it seems Bush did nothing wrong - his response to September 11 impeccable, his security measures excellent, his wars top notch (talk of Haliburton and oil a ruse), musings on missing WMD irrelevant, any problems in Iraq the fault of Europeans, his verbal fumblings an amiable Ronnie Reagan ploy (like Will Rogers, only funnier), torture a very effective life saving policy, and when it's all said and done, Iraq a total victory. Mission accomplished. (Oh and did I mention that the economy is all the fault of the Clintons and Oliver Stone sucks).

Throw in some standard labels - Bush haters being the most favored and most flavorsome - and you have to wonder if Bush has actually succeeded in brainwashing the right wing in America, since the hagiography is of the kind the Russians used to have to write about Stalin while he was alive.

Reality check for Andrew Roberts. If America has done so well under Bush, why do many (most) Americans think the country is fucked? And if Bush has done so well why is there so much near Messiah hysteria about the arrival of Obama, who is in reality a mere mortal and prone to all the sins and omissions of a man?

You don't have to hate the Shrub to see a mediocre man out of his depth. Who can forget the bemused look that fatal day in school when he was whispered the fatal news, and appeared like a man who'd been hit across the head by a flounder? Well flounder he did, and the world is the worse for it. 

I don't expect much from Obama, but to go back into the garden and pretend all was rosy there when much was blighted by a wintery chill ... it's too much Andrew Roberts, way too much. You've scrubbed the apple so hard, no sensible history teacher would recommend eating it. If only we had an Olbermann award for worst columnists in the world with which to time waste a day, Roberts would be high in the top ten. All fructose corn syrup and no oats.

Gerard Henderson, Polonius, Obama, and the blinkered right

Ever since Gerard Henderson became self-appointed advisor to princes and potentates, it's been hard not to think of him as an antipodean Polonius.

His advice has been as useful as that Polonius delivered to Hamlet - after all, telling Prince Harry to lay off Nazi uniforms, and to watch his language, even when playing jolly japes amongst chums, is really stating the bleeding obvious.

But like Polonius, Henderson tends not to follow his own advice - it's a pity he can't remember those lines about brevity being the soul of wit. Instead he tends towards tediousness in the limbs and outward flourishes, and rarely is content to be brief. (You could also imagine Polonius explaining at great length his participation in the 2020 conference as a noble example of his public participation in a tiresome frolic, for which he had little personal stomach but a strong sense of public duty - but that's another story).

So what does our prating Polonius offer Barack Obama on his elevation to the top job? You can, if you have a strong and anti-depressive stomach, go here to Can-do guy with all the safe moves.

And as you've probably guessed, it's more of what the tiresome right seems to want to insist - that Obama is really only George Bush done out in black face, a bit like a new Al Jolson, come to dance to the same tunes as his real policy master.

It seems Obama is going to toe the line on Israel and the middle east, it seems Obama isn't going to do anything much about Guantanamo, and it seems likely he's also going to be a new Tony Blair - a ripe victim for the likes of Private Eye (even though Henderson hastens to assure us that Blair has had an exceptionally hard and at times unfair press, because he too was a visionary that just wanted to be George W. Bush in a fancy English frock).

Then comes a predictable comparison to Kevin Rudd, who it seems is not a charismatic leader, who has introduced some "essentially symbolic change", but who has, as expected, turned into a pale copy of that visionary master John Howard, upsetting his 'own yes-we-can supporters' by not doing the right thing regarding the intervention in the NT, or introducing a carbon reduction scheme or winding back Work Choices enough. 

Why even though Howard was too tough on administering the mandatory detention scheme (what Howard is flawed, Howard erred, say it ain't so Gerard), it seems Rudd is just a faithful follower in mandatory detention.

All this goes to show that the world is essentially right wing, willing followers of Polonius and his ilk. Only the naive think otherwise (and probably like cafe lattes). Only the naive believe that democratic government is easy and that change can invariably be implemented without consequences. 

Alternatively only the naive listen to grinches like Henderson and believe that they're naive. Only the naive think that 'yes we can' always and inevitably turns into 'but not just yet'. 

What a sourpuss, dour view of the world our prating Polonius has. How sad that the best he can offer on the arrival of Obama in government is this capper to his column: "Obama's long-term success will turn on his ability to persuade Americans that government is more difficult than a lot of people realise".

Actually Polonius a lot of people realise that government is difficult. They've seen George W. Bush and his team comprehensively fuck it up for eight years, and now they're seeking shelter from the storm. Sure an umbrella or two will get blown away, but a few things will change, and we'll all settle for small mercies. 

It's a measure of just how fearful people are of a world gone wrong - economies blown away in homage to the greed of the rich and the need to fuel foreign adventurism - that they've placed such hope in one man. Even if it's mis-placed, this forlorn hope, this desperate optimism, there's one thing certain - the siren song of Republican stupidity now sounds decidedly off-key.

But there's also another certainty - we'll always have a Hanrahan or two around singing songs about how times are tough and we all need to be lashed to the post and given a lashing to make sure we toe the right wing view of the world. You know how it goes Gerard:

'"There'll be Obama-fires for sure, me man,

There will, without a doubt;

We'll all be rooned," said Henderson,

"Before the year is out."'

And the sad thing is, Henderson will never take off the blinkers and be able to see a different view of the world, as he harps and carps his way to the grave. I guess in the end that it comes down to this - would you rather be a self-doubting tortured Hamlet given to great philosophical insights, or a smug, tedious Polonius, given that one way or another you end up behind the arras dead as a rat, or at the end of a poisoned sword tip? 

Your choice.

Meanwhile, over at the Daily Terror, Piers Akerman, our sturdy fat owl in the remove, sings from exactly the same song sheet in Time for reality not just rhetoric from Obama. Do these turkeys exchange crib notes before they write up their columns? Do they ever wonder how this kind of group think kind of writing, like bees in the one hive, undermines all the nonsensical musings they expend on the virtues of individualism up against the perils of collectivism?

Piers does have something special to contribute: "Democrats believe in Fantasyland and magic, Republicans prefer something more tangible". You see, the current economic mess is all due Democrat lawmakers, and the Clintons. 

Nothing to do with the Shrub, nothing at all, think that and you're in cloud cuckoo land. The war in Iraq? Solid move. The mess in Afghanistan? Obama will get stuck in the mud there, but he has to. The economy? All the fault of greedy poor people who should learn to sleep in the streets. (Why I was up at factory at 4 am with spoon of gruel to work all night till 4 am, get up and start day again).

So best Obama get out that Kiwi boot polish and turn himself into George W. licketty split. And Piers gets paid to write this stuff, well enough to afford a good lunch and a glass of chardonnay. Tell me the world isn't totally stuffed.

But at least he allows himself a grace note. "Tomorrow's ceremony is about hope for the future. And we might permit ourselves to dream an improbable dream of an impossible perfect world, at least for the duration of the inauguration ceremony." What a soursob grace note, fat owl.

Right enough, then we'll be back to listening to prating prats prattling on about the wonders of George W. and the follies of the Democrats. Here's how it will go:

'"We'll all be rooned," said Ackerman,

In accents most folorn,

Outside the church, ere Mass began,

One frosty Sunday morn.

"If we don't get a Bush back, man,

Jeb Bush is the man to break this drought.

We'll all be rooned," said Akerman,

"Before the year is out."'