Of repositions and flip-flops; compare and contrast

Apparently, Obama’s “policy switches” are giving all the lefties apoplexy. He’s moving to the centre, repositioning himself for the general election. He’s flip-flopping. He’s contradicting his previous positions every time he opens his mouth.

Except that the FISA legislation providing retrospective immunity to telecommunications companies for unlawfully helping the Bush administration spy on Americans is not an issue of left-right ideology. And his statements on Iraq policy do not indicate the he has moved terribly far from where he had already positioned himself, despite the overblown media hysteria and the Republican posturing. And on FISA, he at least had the decency to treat his constituency like grown-ups and provide an explanation of his thinking, acknowledging the disagreements that can exist within a political movement.

Compare that with this (expanding) list of John McCain’s self-contradictions, in which exactly what he says appears to depend entirely on the composition of the audience standing before him or the aim of the particular statement he is delivering. The contrast is a stark one, and it should not be obscured by irresponsible media repetition of a narrative about moving to the centre and alienating the base.

 

Attention to detail

The Garnaut Climate Change Review’s Draft Report was released yesterday. I’m still working my way through it and am holding off on reading others’ thoughts about it or solidifying my own opinion until I’m done.

But some others - the usual suspects, in fact - don’t need to bother with that. Needless to say, Andrew Bolt has been posting a steady stream of posts on issues related to climate change and emissions trading - despite showing that he is grossly incompetent in checking facts. I tried reading some of the comments threads on his site but gave up - seeing the same tired, flawed criticisms from commenters who obviously did not even watch Garnaut’s address at the National Press Club, let alone taking the time to read the report.

Meanwhile, Piers Akerman does one of his typical hatchet pieces, slinging mud at every Labor politician whose name he can fit into the column (he even manages to work Belinda Neal into a column on Garnaut) and hoping that his readers will be so mesmerised by his florid prose that they won’t notice he provides no evidence to back up his insults.

 

Greg hearts Dolly

Sheridan is happy to remain a fawning sycophant, even after the subject of his admiration is leaving in defeat:

With Downer’s resignation from parliament announced this week, Australia loses an authentic parliamentary and political giant.

…

I rate Downer as the equal second most important and effective foreign minister in Australian history.

This may seem a qualified sort of praise, but in the history of the Australian nation, to be the second most important foreign minister is a giant achievement.

Among the list of Dolly’s significant achievements, Greg devotes an entire glowing paragraph to the brilliant and entirely uncontroversial approach taken to working with the US, for which Sheridan himself was a cheerleader:

He was the key minister, with Howard, in invoking the US alliance in response to the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington. One thing that flowed from that, in a great service to Australia’s national interest, was a historically new level of military and intelligence intimacy with the US. Downer was a key player in Australia sending troops to Afghanistan, where they performed magnificently, and later in backing the US war in Iraq. I believe this was the right decision and it took a hell of a lot of guts.

And, naturally, Greg needs to remind us of his own importance:

He is a good friend of British historian Andrew Roberts. I once had a long conversation with Downer about how Tony Blair’s Christian convictions compared with those of William Gladstone.

 

Welcome back, Colourful

Caroline Overington has been released from whatever dungeon they were keeping her in. And she kicks things off by slapping - sorry, “pushing away with an open hand” - Dolly.

 

The voice of moderation turns 10

Happy anniversary, moron:

…there is no arc between Left and Right - the extremes of both tend to huddle together at the collectivist end of a line that has anarchy at the other. I’m somewhere in the middle, moderate as always, trying to balance the claims of individuality and freedom with the ballast of the collective.

Bolt celebrates his own milestone by summarising the wisdom he has collected over those years, while simultaneously recounting all of the battles against evil that he single-handedly fought and won:

For instance, if I hadn’t filled this space with columns warning that then Labor leader Mark Latham had character flaws that could “completely destroy not just Latham, but Labor”, you’d almost certainly have had to read the exact opposite, given almost every other columnist supported him.

…

Being of Dutch migrants, I was raised to respect authority. So imagine my astonishment when I checked the most basic claim of this campaign.

In fact, only two countries had “safe” injecting rooms, as well as other get-soft policies, and in Switzerland the overdose deaths had then tripled.

…

Here, for instance, are some of the facts which I found the more fashionable journalists refusing to report for fear the truth would destroy their Truth.

- The world stopped warming in 1998.

…

At first I was angry that such basic truths could be brushed aside for the sake of a “good” cause.

Now I mind less. I’ve found that if I report the simple facts that most journalists won’t, it will make me seem a genius. Fame couldn’t be easier.

…

So I put together pieces soberly showing that the first “stolen generations” claims had no evidence to back them. Just the facts, ma’am.

The first claim for compensation? In 1999, I showed it was lodged by a man, Peter Gunner, who’d in fact been sent away by his mother for an education.

The “stolen” Lowitja O’Donohue? As long ago as 2001 I showed she’d in fact been abandoned, which O’Donoghue then admitted.

…

I started to call Prof Robert Manne, the leading theorist of the “stolen generations”, its leading “propagandist” instead, and I challenged him: “Name just 10 truly ‘stolen’ children.”

It’s a shame that Bolt had to spend so much time outlining the achievements of his career as a columnist. His place in the world could be summarised with a few lines from a show that used to be on TV:

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.

NB: The unsettling implication of this is that Tim Blair must be Faith, the somewhat more erratic and juvenile Slayer who must have been chosen while Bolt was momentarily brain-dead. It is beyond my capacity to contemplate that Blair could be as sexy as Faith, so instead I posit that he must be Kendra, and at some point in the future will be replaced by a new Slayer after an unfortunate incident with an undead polar bear.

 

Dollyworld

Sam Roggeveen quotes a Dolly anecdote from Planet Janet that says it all, really:

A few days ago our Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told me a secret. He said, that after he’d a particularly bad day on the political hustings, he slinks home and he does three things: he sits down on a sofa with a glass of whisky, he turns on the television to watch FOX news and downloads the latest offerings from Mark Steyn, just to remind himself that there is some sanity in the world.

I’m so very glad his view of sanity is no longer part of our Government.

 

Moral midgetry

It’s interesting that moral relativism is acceptable for conservative loons - but only when it allows them to defend human rights abuses by the pillar of freedom. The concept of a higher standard does not apply. The notion that there are moral absolutes do not apply. Torture by the United States of America is acceptable because it’s not as bad as the torture done by Saddam Hussein and it’s not as bad as beheading people or flying planes into buildings. And besides, the United States saves the worst torture for the really nasty people.

Here’s an alternative view: for a country to refer to its President as “the leader of the free world”, it should show leadership, particularly in relation to freedom. It should not show contempt for the rule of law. It should not violate the most fundamental principles of treating one’s enemies decently, principles that were codified in response to the worst atrocities of the past century. It should act in a way that is consistent with the principles it argues the dark places of the world need to embrace.

And if it fails in holding to these standards, nobody should be foolish enough to defend it by claiming that there are worse places in the world.

 

Garnaut Alert

National Press Club Address, ABC1 @ 12:30 AEST.

Be there or be an rectangular thynge.

 

As Ron Weasley would say

… “that’s bloody brilliant.”

I first heard about Ingrid Betancourt a couple of years ago on SBS news, and I’ve been following the developments with Colombia and FARC since then. It sounds like a clever rescue operation, and hopefully another step toward the FARC abandoning their guerilla activities.

 

Evil

It’s not just for communists any more.