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BULLET DODGED
The SMH’s Peter Hartcher:
Everything Mark Latham has done since losing last year’s federal election has vindicated the electorate’s decision to reject him.
Now he has again given aid and comfort to John Howard by petulantly and vindictively disparaging the party that trusted him with its highest office.
In fact, his latest comments are so puerile and show such total lack of self-reflection that anyone reading them can only feel Australia dodged a bullet in deciding not to elect him prime minister.
Which is exactly the sentiment expressed earlier in comments by genwolf.
Nice thing about Mark is his rampage will continue for a good while yet, making the ALP look worse by the day by giving him any sort of power at all.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 29 at 12:57 PM • permalinkApparently “Mark Latham” is the Oz translation of “Al Gore”.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2005 06 29 at 01:22 PM • permalinkThe interesting thing about Harcher’s article, read in full, is that his hostility to Latham is revealed as motivated ENTIRELY by the fact Latham damaged Labor. The “Political Editor” of the Sydney Morning Herald is unable to control his emotions, and writes entirely as a factional member of the ALP defending the ALP from the latest “Rat.”
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 06 29 at 01:24 PM • permalinkAnd to rub salt into the wound, Ernie, the United States won’t receive a Purple Heart for either of them.
Posted by Jim Geones on 2005 06 29 at 02:02 PM • permalinkI suspect he was very careful in his use of words. Latham sees Howard as the enemy.
Posted by tim maguire on 2005 06 29 at 04:16 PM • permalinkSounds like he shaved his head just a LEEDLE too close…
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2005 06 29 at 04:32 PM • permalinkHartcher, writing in the daily Socialist-Marxist-Homily, yet again reveals the doppelganger effect plaguing modern journalism in Australia.
Once brimming with plaudits and adoration for Latham, Hartcher now scurries for safety beneath the petticoats of Labor’s illiterati, secure that his dissension will meld with the now deafening chorus of disapproval over their fallen former leader.
Has anyone asked Gough what he thinks?
Been awful quiet lately.
Posted by Jay Santos on 2005 06 29 at 07:21 PM • permalinkWhat I am finding increasingly interesting is that those journalists who supported Latham maniacally prior to the election are not able to say 2 things: 1. “Thanks to those of you who saw through him and kept him out of office” and 2. “what’s wrong with us that we got so blind-sided by him in the first place?”
I also note how he speaks of “Australia” not voting Latham in when he probably voted for Latham himself.
Dammit! I want a compassionate head-tilt and an apology from every reporter who got behind Latham, and I want it NOW!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 29 at 07:41 PM • permalinkJPB—I think she’s on another wine-tasting sabbatical from her blog and tribunal…
OK, yes, she takes BIG tastes…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 29 at 08:58 PM • permalinkAs if it’s not the stupid party’s fault for putting a double bunger on top of the stove.
There you go again, speaking Australian to a mixed audience!
Someone please translate “...a double bunger on top of the stove” for this linguistically challenged American.
I’m stumped, but I’m sure it’s one of those neat Aussie idioms.
HOOAH! Democrats convicted of election fraud!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 29 at 10:29 PM • permalinkRinardman — I think they mean he pops his cork under pressure when the heat’s on…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 29 at 10:30 PM • permalinkIf this is any indication, Labor still can’t buy a clue…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 29 at 10:42 PM • permalinkBack in the days when home fireworks were legal (30 years ago?) a double bunger was a large cracker. What were the other sizes? ‘Tom Thumb’ was the smallest.
I miss Guy Fawkes night - that was great family fun. Sure, a few idiots lost eyes and fingers, but those types were heading for car wrecks and other life-shortening adventures anyway.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 06 29 at 11:00 PM • permalinkRinardman, a double bunger is a type of fire cracker.
it is twice the size of a standard ‘bunger’, at about four inches long and about half an inch wide.They ar enow banned of course, in this nanny state world we live in.
From memory, it used to do wonders for egg production when they got ‘accidently’ tossed into the chook pen.
Speaking of home fireworks we have Guy Fawkes every year in November here in NZ as usual. Nothing is more enjoyable than taking the boy down to the local supermarket the week before Guy fawkes and taking them home to fire off in the back yard. My favourite is the “boom box”.
What you say? Not in Australia? What sort of nanny state are you running over there.
I’m glad he’s cleared this up:
MikeA, sadly the last jurisdiction in Australia where fireworks are legal (the ACT) is trying to ban their use (it’s all about the noise upsetting animals apparently).
So do they make you pay a carbon tax on every cracker you set off? ;)
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2005 06 30 at 01:45 AM • permalinkCuckoo, you can only buy them for use on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend (for some reason this seems to the tradition in Canberra) and you also need a permit from the ACT government approving the area where you plan to set them off.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2005 06 30 at 02:05 AM • permalinkFact remains they’re there. Civil servants love to impose rules and restrictions, just as long as they don’t apply to themselves.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 30 at 02:18 AM • permalinkSen Faulkner spent a long time on Fox last night baring his innermost thoughts on Latham - cant say there was much to see.
What a rambling, self serving load of twaddle it was to. These people (the ALP) have been living in some hyper ventilated delusional dream world of free lunches for the last 30 years.
Australia needs a good opposition and that may well be the ‘wets’ of Liberal party, it aint the ALP.
The Liberal party needs to get more wet like South East Queensland. It’s currently a mild social democrat crew, and what we are in dire need of is a hard bastard economic rationalist dry party that ignores the chattering classes, who don’t vote for them anyway, and get on with the business of serious restructuring of this country- dismantling the welfare state, getting rid of all the logjams to economic growth and otherwise getting the fuck out of the road of an intelligent, educated population who can look after their own affairs and their own incomes. I expect the next three years of senate control to produce three-tenths of five-eighths of fuck all in any sort of serious, overdue change.
Even in Britain you could get fireworks when I was last there in 1998.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 06 30 at 06:48 AM • permalinkThe ALP is unleadable. Its factions cannot co-exist. Its constituency has been slashed right down the middle.
The last several weeks in Australia have seen a see-saw struggle between the Coalition and ... the Coalition. Which is a great thing. Tomorrow the Coalition has absolute power. Which is another great thing.
Conservative politics has won the vast middle to outer suburbs, where most people live, but the ALP refuses to understand this.
Latham was an angry man but he offered a very necessary point of difference to the Coalition and the ALP both sanctioned that point of difference and vested its future in it. It wasn’t the politics of the outer suburbs but it contained elements of it. Unlike current ALP leadership.
The ALP lost. It is responsible, not Mark Latham.
Just as it is responsible for its current decisions in rehashing its front bench, a mess of factional compromises, with experienced parliamentarians demoted, such as Simon Crean. That is surely wrong, whatever your politics.
Speaking of Beazley, why did the ALP ‘elect’ a leader who is a windbag who cannot put a sentence together without obfuscation - instead of - for example - someone like the cool, articulate Julia Gillard? After all, it is the party of equal opportunity.
The ALP is a lost organisation in search of a political culture.
ilibcc,
Julia Gillard is too much of an unreconstructed socialist to go down well with the modern Australian electorate. Sad as it is, Kim Beazley was the best choice available to the ALP in the immediate aftermath of the Latham implosion.
A few months have passed now and Beazley has proved more disappointing to both ALP supporters and opponents alike than most of us expected. For the good of Australia’s political system, it’s time the ALP looked for someone else again. However, few in the party think that they can win the next election, so maybe there won’t be a move until after that.
One of the interesting things to come out of this Latham biography is how Kevin Rudd was having kittens behingd the scenes about Latham’s stupid “Aussie troops home by Christmas” unilateral pledge. You would never know it from his public statements and persona, though. Rudd showed exemplary qualities of disipline and loyalty, even if for a stupid cause with which he strongly disagreed, because he knows that disunity is political death.
There is your next ALP leader. Pity the sorry knt looks like Eric Cartman, but.
TFK
O/T
Beattie damns Bomber with faint praise on sbs news -“He’s a nice guy..”
Not only but also- emotive words used to describe American raid “stormed, full scale siege, manhunt.”
Before abc news- promo for red kerry-TODAY is the big birthday for the g.s.t. BUT WHO’S CELEBRATING?........Followed by a promo for Clark and Dawe sabotaging the anti-terrorist laws and Philip Ruddock.
Next,the mooted industrial relations laws,-“Geoff Hutchinson TESTS the mood of the marchers in Melbourne.”
Gosh I wonder who’s side they would be on.
“John Howard is digging his own grave and we will attend the burial” says one ambivalent marcher.
Kerry then addresses the g.s.t. again,describing it as “the DREADED ACRONYM”.He then has a bob each way with this description.“the BLACK economy THRIVES but the GOVERNMENT RAKES (money) it in.”Art Vandelay — Of course he’s not bi-polar. A true whirling asshole covers the full 360°...
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 30 at 09:30 AM • permalinkEveryone wanted Kim back, we missed him and his humble pie. Sadly all he does now is whine and act childish.
Gillard would be fantastic as she may increase the majority in the senate… well if Howard doesn’t do anything too silly.
As I recall Rudd was the first person to wake up and wonder where the bloody hell Latham was when the tsunami hit and nothing was said for a week, started to organize things himself then. The man appears to have at least some perception of reality, a major step up for the ALP these days.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 30 at 09:33 AM • permalinkWell folks it’s 12.02am on July 1 and the control of the senate has just passed to the conservatives. I’m waiting for the sky to cave in any second now.
Posted by Hank Reardon on 2005 06 30 at 10:00 AM • permalinkOk guys, we can all take our disguises off now, we have ultimate power.
Come son of Jor-El, kneel before Zod!
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 30 at 11:05 AM • permalinklateline tonight-tony-“Labor’s day of rage keeps Latham off the front page”.
You wish Tones.
also “radical Israeli settlers even boasted of having(gasp) WEAPONS.”
Maybe they’ll even fire them in the air for two hours as a demonstration of their feelings.
We know how understanding and empathetic you can be about things along those lines.Re: Fireworks.
Damn, you guys need a couple of dozen indian reservations down there. In the USA, the indians will sell you almost any kind of expolsive device you care to pay for.
(Gotta love how the indians make their money these days. They take the white man’s money by offering casino gambling, cheap cigarettes, and explosive devices.)
Posted by David Crawford on 2005 06 30 at 11:35 AM • permalinkJulia Gillard for PM.
It would be a unique experience for the latte sipping inner city socialists to be able to pull each others puds when their PM appeared on TV, and not appear to be poofters.
That was crass and uncalled for, sorry Mr Latham, Green Valley influence.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 06 30 at 01:45 PM • permalinkIn NZ the rules are that as long as you get get in the door of the local supermarket in the week before Guy Fawkes night can can push your way through the clamouring crowds at the fireworks desk then you can buy them.
One of the best parts of GF’s night is just taking a walk around the local neigbourhood about 9.30 in the evening. Sky rockets are popping of in all directions.
Michael Jackson is more mentally stable than Mark Latham. What a clown.
Posted by Spectre765 on 2005 06 30 at 05:26 PM • permalinkJulia Gillard has such a lovely dulcet voice; I swooned the first time I clapped eyes on her, and her laugh sends a shiver down my spine. Besides which, anyone who picks fights with pandas has my support.
I don’t support Gillard’s politics, I was suggesting the hypocritical, anachronistic ALP put its mantras into practice, particularly since ALP state governments are obsessed with ramming social engineering down everyone else’s throats. She does speak well though, where Beazley merely hectors and blusters.
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Yes, he was the best ALP leader we on the right could have hoped for.
He’ll be sorely missed. Now we have to go back to putting up with leftists more accomplished in the art of concealing their stupidity.