Having had a lot of contact with lefties and greenies over the years I've got a pretty good idea about what makes them tick. They are driven primarily by emotions, and quite immature ones at that. Basically, they think that ultimately everything is all about them; that only they truly care; and that they can create a utopia by sheer act of will (which invariably involves shrieking a lot and bossing people around).
Of course this quality can make them extremely annoying. But it can also make them quite interesting, amusing, and even likeable. Hell, sometimes they can even be undeniably charismatic! It's that fire in the belly that people respond to, see. (This is one of the reasons you see a lot of lefties and greenies in the performing arts.)
Needless to say, when people are driven less by reason than emotion, they tend not to be very consistent. They can even be downright contradictory.
I saw a perfect example of this on today's episode of The Bolt Report. Veteran environmentalist Norm Sanders was chewing the fat with Bolta and John Hewson.
Now the first thing that you notice is how affable he is. He's technically a senior citizen but seems much younger than his years. He's very energetic and enthusiastic, and also good natured. If you ever met him in a social setting he'd be very hard to dislike. (That may not be the case if you tried to debate him at a demo, but!)
So he's very easy to warm to, but his arguments are just all over the shop. Have a look at the discussion, and take particular note at around the four and a half minute mark. Norm Sanders really hammers home a point about the Earth being in a state of catastrophic decline, repeatedly saying it's a "fact" that the joint is going to hell in a handbasket environmentally.
But a little later he says that there are no facts, just emotions. And he just carries on regardless!
It's hilarious. And keep an eye out for Bolta's expression. It's a classic. He's clearly thinking something akin to "what the hell is this guy on?".
Well, he's not really on anything. He's just addicted to the endorphins created by his deep and virtuous desire to do his bit to "save the planet". He's hooked on a feeling (and he's high on believing) that nature appreciates his efforts. But the sad fact is that nature doesn't give a rat's about them -- nor does it care about itself, for that matter.
That's just something greenies will never accept. Hell, if they did it would mean that all their fine feelings are ultimately worthless in the grand scheme of things. They simply couldn't bear the thought of that. Consequently they just don't go there.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Why Rudd won't win if reinstalled, despite strong polling
The recent poll results that foreshadow a Rudd victory if Labor reinstalls their knifed leader are getting a lot of media coverage. They must also figure prominently in the party's secret deliberations about whether to replace Gillard with the bloke she toppled.
But if Labor do actually go back to the, er, suture, could they stitch up a win? Frankly I don't think so.
I believe that what the polls reflect is not so much clear support for Rudd, but more the electorate's desire to be once again in control of their government. It's as if the people are saying: "We voted Rudd in back in 2007. And we were robbed of the chance to vote him in again, or throw him out, in 2010. We want Rudd back so that we, the people, can decide who leads the nation, not a bunch of ruthless, faceless power brokers."
Of course I have no real evidence to back up this claim. It's just a hunch, but I'm pretty sure it's on the right track.
I suspect that there's a strong chance Labor heavies will take the most optimistic interpretation that can be gleaned from these polls and reinstall Rudd soon, even though they utterly detest him. And while the Coalition's lead will take a big hit, they'll still ultimately win the next election comfortably.
But if Labor do actually go back to the, er, suture, could they stitch up a win? Frankly I don't think so.
I believe that what the polls reflect is not so much clear support for Rudd, but more the electorate's desire to be once again in control of their government. It's as if the people are saying: "We voted Rudd in back in 2007. And we were robbed of the chance to vote him in again, or throw him out, in 2010. We want Rudd back so that we, the people, can decide who leads the nation, not a bunch of ruthless, faceless power brokers."
Of course I have no real evidence to back up this claim. It's just a hunch, but I'm pretty sure it's on the right track.
I suspect that there's a strong chance Labor heavies will take the most optimistic interpretation that can be gleaned from these polls and reinstall Rudd soon, even though they utterly detest him. And while the Coalition's lead will take a big hit, they'll still ultimately win the next election comfortably.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Julia Gillard, feminism and scandals caused by dodgy blokes
Just a thought on this old scandal from Julia Gillard's days as a lawyer: As Bolta is at pains to point out, she didn't actually know she was being implicated in a scam by her then lover Bruce Wilson. But the fact that she was says a lot about how poor her judgement was.
And now, with Craig Thomson, she keeps stressing how much confidence she has in him. That message is clearly partly aimed at Thomson himself, so that he doesn't quit or decide to turn on Labor. But perhaps it's also got something to do with her really trusting the guy. Maybe she actually believes he did nothing wrong or is basically a good guy deep down who deserves her support.
Who knows? In any case she does seem oddly supportive of blokes whose morality clearly leaves a lot to be desired. And this is greatly at odds with her image as an empowered, independent, lefty feminist. These women love to see themselves as aware of and immune to the duplicity of dodgy blokes -- be that in relationships or professional life. Yet they seem to fall for these scumbags and their ruses repeatedly. It's actually really sad.
I've seen it happen to a lot of lefty feminists I've known over the years. Many of them get burned by tricksters who win their affections by striking the requisite politically correct poses. They kowtow to feminism and have all the right (or should I say, left) attitudes to gender relations in particular and politics in general. Yet more often than not they're just dirty dogs deep down.
I've actually come to the conclusion that the syndrome constitutes a kind of iron law. The more a woman spouts lefty feminist dogma about her virtue and good sense over pervasive male rottenness, the more likely it is she'll fall foul of exactly the kind of bloke she so condemns.
And now, with Craig Thomson, she keeps stressing how much confidence she has in him. That message is clearly partly aimed at Thomson himself, so that he doesn't quit or decide to turn on Labor. But perhaps it's also got something to do with her really trusting the guy. Maybe she actually believes he did nothing wrong or is basically a good guy deep down who deserves her support.
Who knows? In any case she does seem oddly supportive of blokes whose morality clearly leaves a lot to be desired. And this is greatly at odds with her image as an empowered, independent, lefty feminist. These women love to see themselves as aware of and immune to the duplicity of dodgy blokes -- be that in relationships or professional life. Yet they seem to fall for these scumbags and their ruses repeatedly. It's actually really sad.
I've seen it happen to a lot of lefty feminists I've known over the years. Many of them get burned by tricksters who win their affections by striking the requisite politically correct poses. They kowtow to feminism and have all the right (or should I say, left) attitudes to gender relations in particular and politics in general. Yet more often than not they're just dirty dogs deep down.
I've actually come to the conclusion that the syndrome constitutes a kind of iron law. The more a woman spouts lefty feminist dogma about her virtue and good sense over pervasive male rottenness, the more likely it is she'll fall foul of exactly the kind of bloke she so condemns.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Richo nails it on Thomson, Gillard and Labor
Here's a good column by the legendary former Labor numbers man Graham Richardson. He's the guy famous for the line "whatever it takes". So if he's condemning the party's machinations, well, you know they've gone to a very smelly place indeed.
Speaking of which, Richo uses some powerful olfactory (and visual) imagery in his descriptions of Labor's predicament:
Then of course there is the Craig Thomson effect. This bloke is damaging the Labor brand every day he hangs around the parliament like a bad smell in a lift ...
Luck is important in politics. When John Howard faced defeat, the Tampa sailed to the rescue. I always believed that Hawke would put his hand down a sewer and pull out a $20 bill. I'm afraid Gillard would pull out something else entirely.
Hell, she wouldn't even have to leave her office to test the hypothesis. Labor has turned Parliament House itself into a sewer; a sewer now chockas with the stinking objects Richo alludes to.
The issue is beyond doubt. Labor is utterly unpolishable.
Speaking of which, Richo uses some powerful olfactory (and visual) imagery in his descriptions of Labor's predicament:
Then of course there is the Craig Thomson effect. This bloke is damaging the Labor brand every day he hangs around the parliament like a bad smell in a lift ...
Luck is important in politics. When John Howard faced defeat, the Tampa sailed to the rescue. I always believed that Hawke would put his hand down a sewer and pull out a $20 bill. I'm afraid Gillard would pull out something else entirely.
Hell, she wouldn't even have to leave her office to test the hypothesis. Labor has turned Parliament House itself into a sewer; a sewer now chockas with the stinking objects Richo alludes to.
The issue is beyond doubt. Labor is utterly unpolishable.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Ian Rintoul on The Bolt Report
Just watched The Bolt Report. There was a short interview with Ian Rintoul, a full on leftie who wants a very soft approach to the whole asylum seeker issue. Bolta only asked him a few questions but his responses were revealing.
When Bolt ran the line that the people smugglers were clearly testing the Government's resolve regarding their Malaysian solution by including little kids in their human cargo, Rintoul sidestepped the issue. He was clearly reluctant to judge the people smugglers. In the leftie "mind" there's no such thing as criminality. It's all just social and economic forces, you see.
When asked how he felt about the fact that so many people had died at sea as a result of border control policies that were soft, but not as soft as he would like, he weaseled out again, and did some pretty expansive contextualizing. In a probably unconscious acknowledgement that the Government's approach had cost lives he said that he didn't think "the welfare of asylum seekers was on the Government's mind". Nor on Rintoul's it seems.
Basically, what Rintoul's advocating will result in even more deaths at sea. Yet that doesn't seem to bother him. Ironic considering he and his ilk keep quacking on about how "compassionate" they are.
Have a squizz at the interview and see if you can come to a different conclusion.
When Bolt ran the line that the people smugglers were clearly testing the Government's resolve regarding their Malaysian solution by including little kids in their human cargo, Rintoul sidestepped the issue. He was clearly reluctant to judge the people smugglers. In the leftie "mind" there's no such thing as criminality. It's all just social and economic forces, you see.
When asked how he felt about the fact that so many people had died at sea as a result of border control policies that were soft, but not as soft as he would like, he weaseled out again, and did some pretty expansive contextualizing. In a probably unconscious acknowledgement that the Government's approach had cost lives he said that he didn't think "the welfare of asylum seekers was on the Government's mind". Nor on Rintoul's it seems.
Basically, what Rintoul's advocating will result in even more deaths at sea. Yet that doesn't seem to bother him. Ironic considering he and his ilk keep quacking on about how "compassionate" they are.
Have a squizz at the interview and see if you can come to a different conclusion.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Sir Crispin Tickell on China, climate change and democracy
I often listen to the BBC World Service in the wee hours. One of the regular shows is called One Planet. It's hugely biased, but still quite interesting. One recent interview really caught my ear.
The presenter Mike Williams was taking to British diplomat and environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell about China and its approach to climate change. Tickell's observations were revealing because he invoked several of the most beloved cliches and misrepresentations of the deep green Left. (You can listen to it here. Tickell starts about a minute and a half in.)
Of Australia he said that we are the biggest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide. The nation is "doing a great deal of harm, thereby".
This is just completely irrational. So what if each person here has a comparatively large carbon footprint? We are a small nation and the cumulative impact is negligible.
Tickell then said of our addiction to fossil fuels that "Australians are increasingly aware that they are dependant on what doesn't work".
Clearly, the opposite is true. We are increasingly aware that these methods (coal in particular) are "oldies but goodies". One of the reasons we're so resistant to the carbon tax is that the much hyped renewables are neither reliable nor affordable enough to replace what's been working very well for a very long time. And we've still got mountains of the stuff, so why not keep using it?
Like so many warmists, he also repeated this massive lie about China being an environmental exemplar -- "pioneers of clean, green growth" as he puts it. Williams didn't pick him up on this point, but accepted it, adding that having such a policy is easy if you're an authoritarian regime.
They then got onto the subject of democracy in general, with Tickell saying the Chinese really "aren't that bad" in this regard. Rather than accept that China is itself very undemocratic, which is clearly the case, he shifted the goal posts on what democracy actually means.
And there's a classic interchange in which a clearly shocked Williams says: "You're surely not suggesting China is a democracy." To which Tickell replies: "I don't know what you mean by democracy." It's truly jaw dropping stuff. When you can stun even a BBC journalist into incredulity with such a take on tyranny, well you really must be "out where the buses don't go".
Tickell's whole attitude in this interview is a distillation of the classic warmist position. It's inaccurate, irrational, and well on the way to being totalitarian.
The presenter Mike Williams was taking to British diplomat and environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell about China and its approach to climate change. Tickell's observations were revealing because he invoked several of the most beloved cliches and misrepresentations of the deep green Left. (You can listen to it here. Tickell starts about a minute and a half in.)
Of Australia he said that we are the biggest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide. The nation is "doing a great deal of harm, thereby".
This is just completely irrational. So what if each person here has a comparatively large carbon footprint? We are a small nation and the cumulative impact is negligible.
Tickell then said of our addiction to fossil fuels that "Australians are increasingly aware that they are dependant on what doesn't work".
Clearly, the opposite is true. We are increasingly aware that these methods (coal in particular) are "oldies but goodies". One of the reasons we're so resistant to the carbon tax is that the much hyped renewables are neither reliable nor affordable enough to replace what's been working very well for a very long time. And we've still got mountains of the stuff, so why not keep using it?
Like so many warmists, he also repeated this massive lie about China being an environmental exemplar -- "pioneers of clean, green growth" as he puts it. Williams didn't pick him up on this point, but accepted it, adding that having such a policy is easy if you're an authoritarian regime.
They then got onto the subject of democracy in general, with Tickell saying the Chinese really "aren't that bad" in this regard. Rather than accept that China is itself very undemocratic, which is clearly the case, he shifted the goal posts on what democracy actually means.
And there's a classic interchange in which a clearly shocked Williams says: "You're surely not suggesting China is a democracy." To which Tickell replies: "I don't know what you mean by democracy." It's truly jaw dropping stuff. When you can stun even a BBC journalist into incredulity with such a take on tyranny, well you really must be "out where the buses don't go".
Tickell's whole attitude in this interview is a distillation of the classic warmist position. It's inaccurate, irrational, and well on the way to being totalitarian.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Labor's poisonous culture reminiscent of the movie The Firm
As Labor presses on with its disastrous plans to inflict a spectacularly pointless carbon tax upon the good people of Australia, secretly skeptical party heavies are going insane with frustration in their climate closets. There are quite a few in the party who must desperately want to do something (knife Ju-liar, get her to dump the tax, or preferably both) to make the problem go away. But there's a truly flightening level of bloody-minded groupthink in Labor that is keeping them pinned down and silent, at least for the time being.
Niki Savva writes about one wretched soul whose life has been made utterly miserable by the carbon tax policy:
As despair sinks into depression, one cabinet minister recently revealed his desolation in a conversation with an acquaintance when he confessed political life had become near intolerable.
He acknowledged the carbon tax is destroying the government, yet they could not walk away from it. He could not see - or he was not prepared to admit it that openly yet - a way out and this only fed his frustration.
This prominent member of a government, which recites like a Gregorian chant the mantra that climate change is real, then admitted his grave doubts about the science. He didn't use the word crock, but that was pretty much what this secret deniers' camp follower was saying.
In an interview with Bolta she expanded on why the poor bastard couldn't break ranks and do the right thing. Doing so would ultimately bring down the Government, and he would become Labor's "king rat for all time". Knowing how much the party hates its "rats" (remember their loathing of Mal Colston, whom Robert Ray memorably derided as the "quisling Quasimodo from Queensland") you can understand why he's currently choosing silence.
While Labor isn't quite in the Mafia's league when it comes to reprisals for betrayal, it certainly does have some rather effective compliance methods in operation. I can't help thinking that this poor pollie's predicament is more than a little like that of the protagonist in the movie The Firm, based on John Grisham's book:
Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise) is a young man with a promising future in law. About to graduate from Harvard Law School, he is approached by Bendini, Lambert & Locke, 'The Firm', and made an offer he cannot refuse. He and his wife, Abigail "Abby" (Jeanne Tripplehorn), move to Memphis, where The Firm is located. Avery Tolar (Gene Hackman) becomes his mentor at The Firm.
Seduced by the money and gifts showered on him, including a house and car, he is at first totally oblivious to the more sinister side of his company. Then, two associates are murdered. The FBI contact him, asking him for information and informing him that not only is The Firm mob connected but every associate that has ever tried to leave The Firm ends up murdered. His life as he knows it is forever changed. He has a choice: work with the FBI and risk being discovered by The Firm, or stay with The Firm knowing that at sometime he will get involved with laundering mob money and in the end go to jail when the FBI cracks The Firm. Either way he will lose his life as he knows it.
Of course the murderous criminality is not present in Canberra, but this miserable minister is clearly in a similar bind. He must either turn against his own party in the interests of the nation or obediently toe its line -- a line based on a mountain of lies. Either way he will lose his life as he knows it.
Spooky, isn't it. I can see a great political thriller being made about this bloke a few years hence. Can Tom Cruise do an Aussie accent?
Niki Savva writes about one wretched soul whose life has been made utterly miserable by the carbon tax policy:
As despair sinks into depression, one cabinet minister recently revealed his desolation in a conversation with an acquaintance when he confessed political life had become near intolerable.
He acknowledged the carbon tax is destroying the government, yet they could not walk away from it. He could not see - or he was not prepared to admit it that openly yet - a way out and this only fed his frustration.
This prominent member of a government, which recites like a Gregorian chant the mantra that climate change is real, then admitted his grave doubts about the science. He didn't use the word crock, but that was pretty much what this secret deniers' camp follower was saying.
In an interview with Bolta she expanded on why the poor bastard couldn't break ranks and do the right thing. Doing so would ultimately bring down the Government, and he would become Labor's "king rat for all time". Knowing how much the party hates its "rats" (remember their loathing of Mal Colston, whom Robert Ray memorably derided as the "quisling Quasimodo from Queensland") you can understand why he's currently choosing silence.
While Labor isn't quite in the Mafia's league when it comes to reprisals for betrayal, it certainly does have some rather effective compliance methods in operation. I can't help thinking that this poor pollie's predicament is more than a little like that of the protagonist in the movie The Firm, based on John Grisham's book:
Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise) is a young man with a promising future in law. About to graduate from Harvard Law School, he is approached by Bendini, Lambert & Locke, 'The Firm', and made an offer he cannot refuse. He and his wife, Abigail "Abby" (Jeanne Tripplehorn), move to Memphis, where The Firm is located. Avery Tolar (Gene Hackman) becomes his mentor at The Firm.
Seduced by the money and gifts showered on him, including a house and car, he is at first totally oblivious to the more sinister side of his company. Then, two associates are murdered. The FBI contact him, asking him for information and informing him that not only is The Firm mob connected but every associate that has ever tried to leave The Firm ends up murdered. His life as he knows it is forever changed. He has a choice: work with the FBI and risk being discovered by The Firm, or stay with The Firm knowing that at sometime he will get involved with laundering mob money and in the end go to jail when the FBI cracks The Firm. Either way he will lose his life as he knows it.
Of course the murderous criminality is not present in Canberra, but this miserable minister is clearly in a similar bind. He must either turn against his own party in the interests of the nation or obediently toe its line -- a line based on a mountain of lies. Either way he will lose his life as he knows it.
Spooky, isn't it. I can see a great political thriller being made about this bloke a few years hence. Can Tom Cruise do an Aussie accent?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)