Punditry Fail

Gerard Henderson writes a regular column in the Sydney Morning Herald, and he is, like many of his ilk, dependably predictable.

The fashionable left-wing view of former president George W. Bush is he invaded Muslim lands and instituted draconian national security legislation - the embodiment of which is the Guantanamo Bay military prison. According to the leftist line, all this was a manifestation of a world view labelled neo-conservatism.

Of course, al-Qaeda's attacks in the US - which culminated in the events of September 11, 2001 - took place before the ''coalition of the willing'' (US, Britain, Australia and Poland) invaded Iraq. Also, Bush was never a neo-conservative since he has been a political conservative all his adult life. But facts rarely suffice to diminish a convenient theory. And Bush - war monger overseas and human rights oppressor at home - is a phenomenon widely referred to at universities and within sections of the media.

Well, Gerry, how was it not a manifestation of Bush’s policies – which were disingenuously referred to as “neo-liberalism”, not neo-conservatism – when he was the architect (ostensibly; Cheney was the brain[-in-a-jar] behind the administration, after all) of the actions, when it was his Defence Secretary’s bungles that screwed up first Afghanistan and then Iraq?

As for al-Qaeda’s “attacks’ [sic] “in” the US, can you enlighten me as to which ones occurred before [culminating] “in the events of September 11, 2001”? If you mean the USS Cole, that was not “in” the US, and if you mean the ’93 bombing of the World Trade Centre, that wasn’t al-Qaeda. As you damn well know.

Apologists for Bush like to point out that Obama has ordered more drone strikes than his predecessor, and they like to claim that there are no general protests being raised against them. That, too, is false.

Conflating the actions of France’s President Hollande in Mali with Bush’s actions in Afghanistan and Iraq doesn’t help the argument either. In Mali, after all, there is a legitimate government being supported by European efforts, not toppled. And adding Algeria to the mix again points to a fundamentally different set of conditions as if it was equivalent.

That’s the kind of fuzzy thinking that got Bush into trouble and America mired in wars that have made getting out of the financial crisis it’s in significantly more difficult, as well as making any effort to help others nearly impossible. It’s also the kind of misdirection that left many people believing that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11 and believing that letting Osama get away wasn’t a big deal.

It’s flat-out ignorant. It certainly doesn’t deserve a paycheck.

It’s the Stupid Economy

When politicians here talk about how they’re going to be all about the economy, they mean inflation and they mean interest rates and they’re blowing smoke.

I don’t care what Tony Abbott thinks the unemployment rate is about
because he isn’t really going to do anything about it, at least not anything I want from government.
I want Medicare and I want major infrastructure builds, including the National Broadband Network (even though my internet speeds are fine, thanks), because these things help people and that’s what government is for.

Government isn’t just about the economy, and when that’s the focus all kinds of people get hurt, especially the most vulnerable of us. Cracking down on dole bludgers was a great gimmick for Reagan and Howard and Thatcher, but it hurt people and had absolutely no net effect for the rest of us.

Are interest rates too high? Where? Greece? Not here, so why are house prices so crazy? That’s not unemployment and it’s not government spending. It’s a lack of oversight.

Labor reneged on its budget surplus promise? I never wanted them to make that commitment, especially not when they were trying to keep us out of the GFC, which they managed well. Deficits are not evil in themselves and don’t represent mismanagement. It’s amazing that there are still people who think it’s like a credit card.

Every government spends money. I know how I want them to spend it, and vote for the party with the policies that spends accordingly. Promising to not spend is not going to win my vote.

Hot
We've had to add a new colour to the weather maps to account for temperatures higher than we've ever charted in the last hundred years.  And over the last week we've had terrific wildfires in Tasmania, New South Wales . . . well, pretty much everywhere.  And yet . . . .

When I moved here, Australia was in the midst of a mult-year drought.  This only officially broke in the last couple of years.  In fact, this year and last have been pretty cool and definitely wetter than my earlier experience.  Fire was a big deal then, too, and often started even before Christmas.  This year and last, that hasn't been quite the case, at least not anecdotally, if news media reportage constitutes anecdotal.  But after seeing the Tasmania reports, when we were told that yesterday would present "catastrophic" danger of fire, most of us took it seriously (except, allegedly, for three teenagers, who thought they'd see what happened if they set one off; thankfully the fire service were able to deal with it, and the police were quick to locate the suspects).  After all, with all this rain, there's been a lot of growth, and that means plenty of tinder for bush fires.

So it proved to be.  Not many properties affected, but lots of fire and tough conditions.  And yet . . . .

Today is cooler, which makes fighting fires easier, but the temperatures are set to soar over the coming days and to stay high for a while, including and in some respects to do a "heat dome" over the middle of the country, which is causing a pressure system to stay in place longer, allowing hotter temps, and hence the need for an expanded colour scale.

And yet in the news reports of the fires and of the weather nobody says "climate change".  Nobody says "global warming".

I heard one news reporter asking a meteorology expert whether the conditions were a change, a "new normal", and if we could expect more and worse.  Neither one said "climate change" or "global warming", but danced around the topic.

Not helpful.  Long periods in the high 30's, in the 40's, and expectations of temperatures in the 50's don't just mean we're going to have to be more careful about fires, that we're going to be hot sometimes.  They mean we're on "watch and act" status with the expectation of hearing the call to evacuate . . . globally.

Climate change is real, and cleaning out the gutters and cutting back the bush around our homes is only going to help a little.  Even when we use those activities metaphorically.

(Here's a map showing the weather move across the country.  No hot pink yet, but it'll come.)