When your government’s biggest chunk of dependable GDP is armaments, the least you could do is wear crossed ammunition belts with a big old Ivory handled pair of pistols and dispense with your pretensions toward peace. Shrub the Magniloquent looks like he’s achin fer a nice set o Bearskin Chaps anyhow and so why fight it. Hit the road with a Wild West Show and tell all these evildoers that the only Peace we want is a good piece of the action.

I hate to be cynical but Albert Schweitzer these boys and girls aint and everybody knows it. Too bad we can’t trade insults to intelligence on the New York Stock Exchange.

When your government’s biggest chunk of dependable GDP is armaments, the least you could do is wear crossed ammunition belts with a big old Ivory handled pair of pistols and dispense with your pretensions toward peace. Shrub the Magniloquent looks like he’s achin fer a nice set o Bearskin Chaps anyhow and so why fight it. Hit the road with a Wild West Show and tell all these evildoers that the only Peace we want is a good piece of the action.

I hate to be cynical but Albert Schweitzer these boys and girls aint and everybody knows it. Too bad we can’t trade insults to intelligence on the New York Stock Exchange.

At least now I understand why the local price of hummus jumped in the past week.

Perhaps the markets will trump - creating a much bigger vortex than the Plunge Protection Team can plug.

Sad that Rudd will probably not be much better…..

*He introduced a federal GST. (This did make possible as promised some minor reforms to income tax but the overall government tax take is up)
*He involved Australia in a ‘humanitarian intervention’ into East Timor (a decision that led to the blowback terrorist attack on Bali, at least according to those terrorists who did it).
*He introduced national gun laws following the Port Arthur Tasmania mass shooting. (These have cost almost a $1B and have not impacted the overall homicide rate in any perceptible way)
*He involved Australia in the US invasion of Iraq.(This policy was opposed by most of our retired Chiefs of Defence Staff and presumably the current CDS holds similar views)
*He has introduced completely unnecessary new anti-terrorist laws. (The new laws have caught no terrorists and have already led to a number of cases of serious miscarriage of justice)
*He has increased federal power in the areas of health, firearms, labour relations and water supply whilst sidestepping the constitutional limits on federal power.
*Although Howard’s putting Australian troops into Afghanistan made sense in terms of Australia’s treaty obligations to the US, following the 9-11 attack, the ongoing commitment of Australian forces to nation building activity in Afghanistan is at best a questionable activity with low probability of success.

Mr. Rudd promises to reverse course on only one of these issues, Iraq. So there is little in the change of government for liberty loving Australians to be thankful for. Indeed the Labor federal victory means that probably for the first time ever we have one party in power at the federal level and in power in all state and territory capitals as well. The only ‘constraint’ is that there is still a slight conservative majority in the federal senate. This goes to election in June 2008. If Labor is able to win a majority then Australia will have become essentially a democratically elected one-party state. This looks like a real possibility at present as the Liberal Party (conservatives) leadership is in disarray as Peter Costello, the deputy leader and natural successor to John Howard has declared he will not run for the top job. So a new conservative leader (and who that will be is anyone’s guess now) will have to come in and establish a sufficiently credible reputation both to his party and in terms of public opinion in under six months. None of the apparent heirs apparent, at least for now, look like they are up to the task.

No, it’s red meat time and our political system is lost down a rathole of petty thought that will insure more grist for the mill of the military industrial complex.

One wonders who will be this era’s Dickens in preserving a record of this Best and Worst of Times.
I suppose you cannot be faulted for attempting to find refuge in the best, even though the relentless maw of our media machine so loves spewing out the worst.

My comments on Howard’s downfall should not be interpreted as an endorsement or praise of Rudd.