Category: Politics

I see that Mark Langley..Lothar..Lathing..oh, you know, that guy who come second on Saturday night is taking a while to get some messages left on his answering machine by voters. Simon Crean’s position as Treasury spokesman is under threat. I can’t imagine why. I only saw him on TV once during the election and that was on Saturday night. He looked bloody terrible but I guess the facial muscle work needed to form the words “We wuz robbed” in a two second endless loop didn’t offer up his best profile. All sentences that have ‘Simon Crean’ in them also seem to have ‘his replacement’ or ..in line to take over from Crean’ as well. Except these two.

Mr Latham yesterday defenced the performance of his Treasury spokesman I don’t have any concerns on the way Mr Crean did his job.

Well, you bloody well should have. As a further disincentive to ever vote for Mark Whats-his-name, Gough Whitlam, in a rash moment when he believed anyone in Australia actually cared about his opinion, backed Mark again.

FORMER Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam — one of Mark Latham’s leading mentors — said yesterday he was disappointed with the election outcome but still held hope for the future. “The major issues, health and education, will still be around in three or six years,” Mr Whitlam, who held the Opposition Leader’s seat of Werriwa for 26 years, said at the launch of son Nicholas’s memoir, Still Standing. “There will be fewer trees in Tasmania and more muck in the Murray, but there is still hope.”

Or was that “There will be fewer ALP seats in Tasmania and more muck in Caucus, but there is still hope I hope Gough is still around at the next election so he can at last do something for Australia and support Mark Whats-his-face so hundreds of thousands more voters will turn away. ..Gough Whitlam — one of Mark Latham’s leading mentors How many Coalition votes did that statement create, I wonder.

Interesting point from Glen Reynolds at Instapundit. There is little copy on the Howard victory in the US as it doesn’t meet the “Does it make Bush look bad/stupid” criteria. Who’s smart and who’s stupid. The journalists who always put a negative spin on events or the public that repeatedly ignores them. Bush will win in the states and the media will still be calling him stupid and subsequently, the electorate, stupid as well for voting for him.

Thank God. The country is safe for another three years. Looks like 86 Coalition to 58 Labour seats in the Reps and maybe even a majority in the Senate. A majority in the Senate would get Bob Brown off TV and the less oxygen he gets the better off the country will be. Crean, Beasley and Bob Mullins are all calling “We wuz robbed by the BIG LIE (they mean the interest rates ad) If Latham has any sense of leadership he needs to accept that the voter believes that the ALP are poor on economic management and do something about it. He needs to throw the “we wuz robbed” line into the dustbin with it’s equally sour grapes partner “the voters are stupid. Once again they have ignored our brilliance” Mullins raves on about how Howard couldn’t get one, not one, economic professional to agree that interest rates would rise under Labour. You’re most probably right, Bob, but irrelevant. I don’t need a PHD to remind me of Labour’s fiscal irresponsibility, I can always look it up. It’s recorded for everyone to see. and the chances are interest rates would rise more under Labour than under the Coalition. It’s believable. No, PHD’s didn’t back Howard, but the people did. There was simply too much rebutting every utterance from Howard as “A LIE! He lied about WMDs..he didn’t actually lie. Everyone from both sides of the debate believed there were WMDs. The fact that Saddam got rid of them doesn’t make it A LIE. He lied about Latham’s time at Liverpool…He didn’t actually lie. Latham’s time at Liverpool is recorded. You can read about it!. The fact that Latham says its A LIE doesn’t make it so. The luvvies over at Backdoor are in the middle of an orgy of disbelief, shattered dreams of a socialist Australia and are all mulling around in stark amazement at the stupidity of the voter.

I don’t understand. What does this say about our country? I feel ill. Posted by Dave

and,

How come our feelings were sooo wrong,Why is it that people seemed to coninue to trust the rodent even though he lied all the way to the end. Posted by MickM

Because he didn’t lie all the way to the end…in fact he didn’t lie at all. If you think he did MickM then you have the problem…you deal with it. Tired now…..need sleep…..Country safe…stand down.

Nick Leys, the source of Strewths ‘make Howard look bad’ style of reporting waxes philosophically about how the press love Latham. He says it as if it had never occurred to us conservatives that for generations the Journalist departments of Australian universities have been turning out Left Wing little echoes. I’m told by my friends in Academia that UQ were once so embarrassed about their Journalist school that even they downgraded the department.

THE Biff Factor ? Mark Latham’s friendly and down-to-earth approach ? has proved a key difference in campaigning styles between the opposing leaders. Biff’s youthful and energetic team regularly socialise with the press pack, while the Rodent’s people are more aloof. Biff has made a habit of dining with the reptiles once a week in whatever city he is in. Last night it was a Thai restaurant in Brisbane, which pleased some hacks who are sick of Labor’s penchant for deep-fried Chinese. The dinners are off the record and a chance for Biff and the media to shoot the breeze about anything. As one photographer said, it’s a good chance to ask Biff all the really important things, “like why is he a St George supporter when he grew up in the western suburbs”.

Can’t you just picture the camaraderie as the Journos and the Labour hacks sit there drinking chardonnay, eating Thai and giggling like undergrads at the stupidity of the voters who still can’t see their collective wisdom. With every utterance from Howard analyzed to the 6th degree and Latham getting a free ride with minimal efforts to critically assess his promises and throw away lines, the thing that they miss is that the voting public don’t miss the fact that Latham’s promises are still just that – promises from someone who has yet to be put under the hammer.

Terrorist Ivan Molloy gets ALP preselection for the seat of Fairfax (Sunshine Coast).

LABOR candidate Ivan Molloy posed with a machine gun supplied by Muslim extremists and has said Australia should be turning its military on both itself and the US. (the ‘machine gun’ is actually an M16 assualt rifle) Dr Molloy has also claimed Muslim guerilla groups should not be labelled terrorists. The group he posed with in the Philippines in 1983 has recently been linked by Washington to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network

Great picture. Says it all.

Dr Molloy, an academic at the University of the Sunshine Coast, posted on an Internet chat room in April 2002: “I have spent much time in Asia and Central America researching and supporting many popular struggles against oppression.”

Isn’t there a law against people holding public office and supporting the enemy at the same time? Oops. I forgot. The precedent has already been set by the the ALP when Jim Cairns held a seat on the USSR local council and the position of deputy PM at the same time. Guess it’s ok if your ALP. And some people want to give them another chance at government.

Philip Adams does a quick take on Howard’s surplus allocation.

And there’s Howard, acting as if all that accumulated moolah belongs to him and that we should be immensely grateful if he gives some of it back. Moreover, we should express our gratitude by voting for him.

Actually, I see it as Howard acting as if the money does belongs to us and he is allocating it in a manner that he figures will best answer our needs. This is one of the things we pay him to do and if he does it well we re-elect him. He knows that, we know that but Philip has to put a negative spin on it. I thought you guys hated surpluses, claiming that the money belongs to the voters and should be spent on us. Well, that’s what Howard is doing. You don?t have to be a Marxist to take offence but it helps.

My complaint concerns prime ministerial chutzpah — for pretending, for daring to suggest, that it is his efforts, and those of Costello, that have made Australia wealthy. You don’t have to be a Marxist to take offence at this topsy-turvy view of how wealth accumulates in a federal treasury.

Poor Philip. Can’t come to grips with the fact that the Coalition run a good economy. Our economy is in good health due to the efforts of Howard/Costello. If it was a Labour government that had delivered lower unemployment, low interest rates and unprecedented growth over three terms then Philip would be beside himself positively spinning the superlatives. Still, Philip does serve a purpose, even if it is only to underline the thought process of the dark forces.