42 posts tagged “howard”

In a final act of love George W Bush has rewarded his cheerleader friend John Howard accomodation in Blair House, a 119 room mansion, and to the cost of Barack Obama.

The President Elect had requested use of the house prior to inauguration to allow his children to start settling in for the start of the school year, but the obviously cash strapped (Yeah, right) Howard seems to be sticking to his plans.

Obviously his infatuation with US Presidents doesn't extend to Democrats and his usual excuse of having to suck up to the US President is not longer valid.

It's a distinct change of direction for a man who couldn't abide political asylum seekers to now be seeking refuge in the arms of one of his few remaining supporters.

And the quality of the accommodation is somewhat removed from the internment camps he was so fond of putting children into during his term.

A fitting bookend to a man who expects the silver spoon treatment. I can just imagine George and John sitting around congratulating themselves on the awards they have granted themselves.

The story link from the AM program is here.

The Haneef fiasco in Australian politics may be about to claim a scalp.Sadly not the main culprit, Kevin Andrews, but one of the bit players who helped mask the situation, Mick Keelty, the Federal Police Commissioner.

ASIO has already sunk Kevin Andrew's defence and the AFP sounds like they may have too except they are trying to hide behind non-disclosure rules.The likelihood of the more secretive ASIO (Australia's spy service) having less sensitive information than the Feds is laughable so I'm tipping Mick may have overstepped the mark in favour of a politically driven decision. Something that will not sit comfortably with the Australian Public.

At the time I started to wonder just how professional Mick was because the Haneef case reeked of political gain and he was using his credibility to prop up the embattled Andrews. Considering how badly Kevin Andrews was going at the time, it didn't make a lot of sense to go out on a limb for him with the impending doom of the Howard government widely predicted.

It's all very odd. What motivation would Mick have for dumping his career and worse, putting any further "terrorist countermeasures" up for public ridicule? Was he expecting a miracle survival of Howard to cover his backside? Further, how does he hope to avoid the final washout of the whole affair?

It remains to be seen if Keelty will take the "more quality time with the family" option or hang on grimly and die the death of a thousand cuts in the media. If things turn out to be so rotten as they appear, I hope he does the gentlemanly thing and walks early rather than the Andrew's approach of being carried kicking and screaming from the stage.

How much bad luck can one man attract?

Dr Brendan Nelson must be having a hell of a time getting to sleep every night with all the "Help" he is getting of late. Perhaps that explains why he can't come up with a sensible, understandable response to Climate Change?

Lately, every time young Brendan makes a statement, his shadow Ministers have to try and clarify what he meant at their next Press conference. This wouldn't be so bad but each one of them has a different idea about the good doctor's intent.

On top of this sorry parade of incompetent folk, Brendan has had to put up with John Howard resurfacing with support for the "Do nothing" approach that got him his marching orders.

I almost felt sorry for Brendan but then I remembered how enthusiastic he was to go to Iraq.

To use an old Aussie expression. Suffer in ya jocks.

I must be losing my edge. I certainly haven’t been keeping up with Plonka’s blog.

Plonka's excellent blog

 

I was horrified to discover my patronage of Gloria Jean’s coffees has had me help fund those shifty Hillsong Christians. The very same folk who have resorted to exorcisms for troubled teens and pinched their $200 to boot.

They have also been part of the Howard initiative to bury Evangelists in Australian schools in preference to qualified social workers. Something Howard promised to not to do to secure the legislations passage through the Senate. The plan was supposed to provide priests and no membership drives to be allowed.

To think I have sold my soul to a 5^th column Christian organisation for a free coffee every dozen cups is quite depressing.

Aussie company or not. I certainly won’t be funding such a dishonest company in future.

After seeing little Johnnie Howard robbing those poor neo-cons in the States, I thought I might drop a few tips on how to deal with the man (and the politics) if you find yourself having to protect your political system from his failed ideas.

Here are 3 things to look for just for starters

Here are a couple of quick pointers of the tactical style.

• In Oz, if you call your opponent elitist it’s a big negative. I don’t know what the US equivalent is. Perhaps intellectual? In any case it’s a good tactic especially if you are one yourself. It pays to get in first and stop your opponent from using it.

• Don’t release policy statements. Just stick to motherhood statements. You know the way it works. I’m a proud <insert country here>. I support our troops. Challenge your opponent on loyalty grounds if your pro war stance starts to look particularly silly.

• 3.       Play the man (or woman). This is really important. Don’t let your opponent look like they have a few ideas. Try and get them playing in your yard. This worked well for Howard until Kevin 07 came along. Rudd ignored Howard’s attacks and made Howard look silly on his own territory.

If you are unfortunate enough to find yourself at a Howard talk there are a few chinks in the armour that should prove entertaining come question time.

• 1.       You joined the war on Iraq because of WMDs. Didn’t you get that wrong? He has been cornered on this a couple of times and simply can’t answer it.
• 2.       Why did you sneak Aussie troops out of the country to join the war if you were so confident about WMDs?
• 3.       If your neo-con approach was so successful, why has your party been destroyed? Currently the two conservative parties are trying to amalgamate to survive.
• 4.       When your party wanted you gone why didn’t you honour your promise to stay only as long as your party wanted you?
• 5.       Wasn’t your style really a one shot tactic? Once you have lost the confidence of the Public, how long is it going to take to get it back? How long can a party survive if it can’t win Government?

That should keep him busy. Howard appears to be trading on the theory that his style can be ongoing. Perhaps even transferable. But if you look at the damage done to his party then I don’t think it’s sustainable.

The Liberal party will no longer exist under its current name. It carries too much baggage. And John can’t claim to have invented a new one. This has been a survival tactic from a position of weakness rather than a powerful amalgamation from a position of strength. Typically mergers between weak companies are unhappy affairs.

For those of you not privileged to vote in the recent Aussie election, this is a photo of Maxine McKew who successfully challenged John Howard for the seat of Benelong. A seat that many thought was out of reach for Labor.

This is a short summary of the campaign for Benelong that will give you an insight to Aussie politics.

First a little background on Ms McKew. Maxine was a journalist with the ABC here in Oz and a very good one at that. I can't remember ever hearing her do an interview where questions were left unasked. And in a polite manner to boot.

I think this was part of the reason for her success. The relaxed technique often led to folk lowering their guard and saying more than they intended. More than one person fell victim to answers they gave Maxine over lunch. She is also sharp enough to see an opening when a pollie contradicted him or herself.

So here we have an intelligent lady with a personable character and lots of respect from her previous job. Not a bad starting position.

Add to this, Maxine is married to one of Labor's more influential pollies, Bob Hogg. Now Bob has a pretty good political history too and is regarded as a veteran Labor strategist. Add to this Ms McKew was working for Kevin Rudd after he took over the Labor Leadership, and the possibilities are starting to look interesting.

It sounds like Bob came up with the idea of challenging Howard which sounded pretty crazy to Maxine, but he offered the full support of the Party to made it a realistic challenge and he said "you can always go back to your old job if you don't succeed." I'm not sure if that meant working for Rudd or being his missus. (Bob can be a most amusing bloke.)

The use of the Party machine can be a very good thing but Maxine added the icing on the cake by rejecting anyone regarded as a Howard Hater. Her plan was to meet the negative Howard campaign with a friendly, encouraging style that looked to the future. When she visited a school that Howard had visited earlier in the campaign an opportunity came up to criticize Howard's donation of a violent game he had inadvertently won while visiting. Instead of milking the negative aspect of the software, Maxine gave a nice big smile and said wasn't that very nice of him. A brilliant response that summed up the difference between the two approaches.

Aside from the niceness, Labor really focused on the Chinese vote within the electorate. When the Libs gave their preference to One Nation (the racist party) Labor dropped leaflets in Chinese to all the letterboxes of Chinese voters advising of their decision. And in a master stroke, a bill board was erected in Hong Kong of a smiling Kevin Rudd. Now thats a focused approach.

I guess the final nail in the coffin was the attempted dirty trick of linking Labor with Muslim terrorists. This really finished off any chance of Howard surviving on the ethnic Chinese vote despite his appearance in one of their Churches just prior to the vote.

So there you have it. A positive person with a positive campaign against a grumpy backward looking PM even though he had a good history on the hustings. 

About 2 months back Catch the Fire Ministries prophesied a John Howard win in a special message from God to Pastor Danny. However, it would appear either God was in error or Pastor Danny can’t read God’s messages accurately. Little Johnnie went crashing down in Election 07.

This looks like a career changing turn of events for the good Pastor from where I'm looking at it. On the presumption that God doesn’t make mistakes, a Pastor who can’t read a direct message from God is seriously under skilled.

It remains to be seen if the Catch the Fire members are now going to stick with God or follow Pastor Danny. Now to some folk this may appear cut and dried but Pastor Danny has some remarkable skills that shouldn't go unregarded. Reading his blog, the good Pastor has cured a lot of people and in one case raised a dead girl back to life. It's very powerful stuff raising folk from the dead. No many people can actually do it.

Mind you there may be a bit of a demarcation dispute on this particular event. He raised the dead girl by praying to God so we probably have to share the points on this one.

This must be particularly hard on the 'Fire' membership. Not being used to having to think for themselves, they now have to decide if a Pastor who brings God up for ridicule is a charlatan or just plain incompetent. Either way he is not doing a whole lot of good for God, nor the church he represents.

However, if things follow the normal pattern getting prophecy wrong sits in a special category. True Believers simply ignore something so blatantly wrong and pretend it didn't happen. I guess the mental leap is simply too far for them to manage. More than one sect has predicted the end of the world and still had followers (those that didn't top themselves in anticipation) the following day. I can't remember which church it was but one has had at least 3 attempts at picking the end of the world and they still exist.

In the final wash up, I don't mind who these folk follow until they start trying to influence politics. Then it becomes my business. The fact that these characters had Howard's ear was a worrying prospect. Especially the secretive nature of the communications and the denials that they had occurred. Hopefully the Liberal party have learnt the lesson that Religious sects and Aussie politics are a dangerous mix and it's nigh on impossible to keep it under wraps when those Religious Leaders can't help but brag about their influence.

I hope I'm not "counting my chickens" too early but I can't help myself.

I was thinking about what job some of these Liberals might be able to manage when they get the flick from politics. (Assuming they don't want to just live off their meager pensions.)

Little Johnnie is probably the easiest. To save Jeanette having to get a job I think he should approach the Disney corporation for the job as Chicken Little of "The sky is falling" fame.

He'd be a shoo in really. Loves the scare campaign. He could dump the aussie track suit for a big furry costume that would make him look bigger. He loves American society so he could live it rather than try and copy it. And he be close enough to stay at George's ranch and go to Church with him every Sunday.

He'd be happy and so would we be.

Now thats what is known in business as a Win Win.