Australia's Greatest Treasurer Got It Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Funny:

774 ABC Melbourne presenter Jon Faine says a couple of months ago he asked Mr Costello why the Coalition had not called an early election to get the campaign out of the way before the Reserve Bank decision.

Mr Faine says Mr Costello's answer surprised him.

"He looked me in the eye ... and said 'there will not be a rate rise in November, take it from me'," he said.

"I said, 'You might be right, you might be wrong, but you're prepared to punt on it?' And he said 'there will not be a rate rise in November'.

"Wrong, wrong, wrong."

One would assume that Costello told Howard exactly the same thing, which is why Howard delayed the election so long. So when Howard loses the election and Costello does not take over the keys of the Lodge, we'll all know why. Greatest treasurer? Pig's arse!

Die and you're under arrest!

This is hilarious. Britain's stupidest laws revealed:

Most ridiculous British laws

1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament.

2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down.

3. In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store.

4. Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day.

5. In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter.

6. A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet.

7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail belongs to the queen.

8. It is illegal to avoid telling the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing.

9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour.

10. In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow.

Wankers One And All

They used to call Derryn Hinch the Human Headline, but it looks like Dennis Shanahan has taken over the title. Whatever may be happening in reality, you can always find a wilfully misleading Shanahan headline plastered across the front page of Teh Oz.

Today it's "PM Defies Rates Backlash". Never mind that there hadn't even BEEN a rates rise, let alone a backlash, at the time of writing (UPDATE: 0.25% now) our stoic PM was already defying it. According to Dennis (and despite a never-ending parade of polls pointing to a Labor landslide) this "news" has "further confused the politics of the 2007 campaign."

One Murdoch hack who is not at all confused is Paul Kelly. He has reached "an inescapable conclusion" - Rudd would seize more power as PM. I'm not even going to bother with the contorted logic that leads to this fear-mongering conclusion, I'll just point out that the entire Coalition front bench wanted to get rid of Howard at APEC, and they couldn't do it.

Still in the Murdoch stable, that old nag Janet Albrechtsen has a go at Julia Gillard:

This is not just about her image as the unmarried, childless woman eschewing all the ordinary ambitions of Howard's middle class and the working-class aspirationals.

No, it's "deeper" than that. It's about her - gasp! - "anti-American sentiments" and her "long history of left-wing politics". Who would ever have expected a senior Labor Party member to have such a background, eh? Give me a break.

Crossing to the Fairfax stable, we find Tony Abbott pulling out his hair (what's left of it) with frustration:

Rudd thought that the Howard Government had forfeited all legitimacy. Now, he wants voters to think that he is actually a leader in Howard's own tradition. But for the opinion polls, it would all be dismissed as a shameless fraud.

In a recent profile, The Australian's Paul Kelly described Rudd as "a political identity still under construction" and concluded: "whether he can control the hubris generated by any political victory and possesses the personal qualities needed to run a government are unknown".

All that can be said with certainty about Rudd is that there is nothing he won't pretend to be if it helps him to become prime minister.

How's that, eh? A Howard minister quoting a Murdoch hack for proof that Kevin Rudd cannot be trusted. We have come full circle.

Before I go, just one more wanker: Alexander Downer on Lateline last night:

TONY JONES: Is the government - like your MP, Cameron Thompson says - looking forward to the positive news of a rate rise tomorrow.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Oh, I'm sure he didn't say that...

But actually Cameron Thompson did say it! He said a rise would "underline the strong economic performance of this Government". But two and a half weeks out from the election, nobody in the Howard camp wants to acknowledge reality. What a pack of miserable wankers!

Helen Coonan Is Full Of Shit

I work for a major international software company and I have a background in telecoms: I've worked for big companies like Optus in Australia, and British Telecom in Europe. And I can tell you that Australia's slow broadband speeds are a regular topic of conversation with visitors from the USA and Europe.

Moreover, any telecommunications professionals who listen closely to Coonan's discussions soon realise that she doesn't really understand the technology she is talking about.

The Business of Efficiency

Here's the story from Flemington that you may not have heard today, from Race Three:

Bling Bling lay motionless on the track, but Bay Story tragically staggered on towards the line with its crushed left hind leg sagging underneath.

Many punters couldn't watch, while others wept as the drama unfolded...

Bugger that, mate! We can't let tragedy stand in the way of fun, can we?

Speaking of fun that is funny, you have to wonder if the RBA guv'nors made their decision early, sat down for some champers and a cheese spread, and watched the Melbourne Cup today. A rate rise announcement in the morning, innit? Meanwhile, you just blew next months' mortage top-up, but hey! - it's all for the good of Teh Economy, right? The joke's on you, sport!

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, men in suits are being thrown in jail. In Burma, men in orange togas are being thrown in jail. In Iraq and Afghanistan....

Greens set to hold balance in Senate

Interesting analysis from the ABC election site:

This election, the Greens have also pitched themselves to voters as the buffer against either major party having the majority in the Senate.

"We've had three years of the Coalition dictating and getting through its nasty WorkChoices legislation, and selling off Telstra, etcetera, without any real review by the Senate and its committee system because they simply had the numbers," Senator Brown said.

Mr Mackerras says the idea of returning an umpire to the Senate will be very attractive to some voters.

"Since the Hawke era effectively, the minor parties have essentially assumed that they would have the balance of power and they have behaved very responsibly," he said.

"But Mr Howard is a control freak, let's face it, and once he got a majority in the Senate, he told the Australian people that they voted for WorkChoices, so he foisted WorkChoices on us. This was a blatant abuse of the Senate's power."

Just imagine if the Greens had held the balance of power for the past three years...

YES OF COURSE IT WAS TEH BLOODY OIL GODDAMMIT!!!

Suz at LP points to a great article by Jim Holt:

Was the strategy of invading Iraq to take control of its oil resources actually hammered out by Cheney’s 2001 energy task force? One can’t know for sure, since the deliberations of that task force, made up largely of oil and energy company executives, have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of ‘executive privilege’. One can’t say for certain that oil supplied the prime motive. But the hypothesis is quite powerful when it comes to explaining what has actually happened in Iraq. The occupation may seem horribly botched on the face of it, but the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude towards ‘nation-building’ has all but ensured that Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth. If the US had managed to create a strong, democratic government in an Iraq effectively secured by its own army and police force, and had then departed, what would have stopped that government from taking control of its own oil, like every other regime in the Middle East? On the assumption that the Bush-Cheney strategy is oil-centred, the tactics – dissolving the army, de-Baathification, a final ‘surge’ that has hastened internal migration – could scarcely have been more effective. The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.

The writer politely suggests that we should be sceptical of such post-facto analysis, since such clever plans rarely work out as envisioned.

But he omits one very important detail: the invasion was both immoral and illegal. And that should surely be the key to unravelling the whole sorry thing, restoring justice, and putting the criminal perpetrators behind bars.

Of course, ending the war on this basis assumes that the ordinary people of the USA are informed enough, and decent and honorable enough, to do the right thing and give the oil back to the Iraqis. Will they do that, or just turn a blind eye to this wicked crime?

And what about here in Australia? Howard has repeatedly implied that the main reason we Aussies are in Iraq is to support our key ally, the USA, and save them from the "embarrassment" of defeat. Does that mean we will get a cut of the oil revenues, or cheap oil via special deals with US distributors, or access to a few Iraqi oil wells for our own selected companies? What's OUR bribe, Johnny??? Of course, Howard cannot even speculate on such things because the whole damned business is so totally unspeakable.

So we plod on, we affluent Western citizens of the 21st Century, pretending that this great crime never happened. The pages of our newspapers are filled with empty spaces. Our television news is full of silence.

The truth has been hooded, bound, duct-taped and water-boarded. Welcome to the New World Order.

Chez Downer: Ain't Nobody Home

Last night a senior Iraqi politician very diplomatically urged Australia to leave his country as soon as possible:

He says Australian troops have made a valuable contribution in Iraq, but the US military is capable of taking over if they leave.

"The role is still there, but it can be executed through the agencies of the US military, so if Australia pulls out tomorrow it will not have a significant effect on the combat and the battle situation in Iraq," he said.

Alexander Downer is not having a bar of it:

"This is hardly the time, just as we are making real progress there, to throw the whole situation into turmoil by going around arguing that western forces should be withdrawn from Iraq."

Downer would rather talk about Kevin Rudd talking Chinese:

"He likes to show off, and you get that a bit with certain people in life. I'm familiar with those types of people who like to show-off ... "

I bet you are, Alexy. People like Benazir Bhutto, for example:

Her record isn't pretty, but her backers in Washington, London and Canberra seem to have developed an acute bout of amnesia about her abilities.

Witness Alexander Downer's unbounded regard for Benazir Bhutto, now angling for a third stint as Pakistan's Prime Minister. Downer said last week he thought Bhutto was "a good woman", someone who "stands for the things we stand for in Australia". Perhaps Downer sees in Bhutto shades of another irrepressible politician dear to him. Ambition also unbounded, Benazir qualifies as a subcontinental "Lazarus with a triple bypass", in trademark white headscarf instead of a Wallabies tracksuit.

But Downer is more correct than he might imagine (and here's that possibility of "something else"). Like the AWB oil-for-food scandal he claimed ignorance of in his departmental backyard, Bhutto has a very similar skeleton dangling in her closet; allegations raised by the same UN probe that fingered AWB of some $US144 million in dubious Iraqi oil trades her company made when Saddam ruled Baghdad.

That's from a great Eric Ellis article in Fortune Magazine, looking at the corruption of Pakistan's Epaulette Empire, a $US40 billion sprawl of businesses controlled by Musharraf's comrades in the military:

Controlling around 10-15 per cent of the economy, the military is the biggest single stakeholder in Pakistan's booming economy. Property, tourism, construction, transport and telecommunications, there's barely a business sector not tinted with some sort of brass hue. The generals even own a popular breakfast cereal brand, alongside bakeries, petrol stations, farms, banks, and some listed on Karachi's soaring stock exchange.

Pakistanis grumble that other countries have a military, but in Pakistan the military has a country.

Obviously Alexy is not too worried about that little military dictatorship problem. In fact, he is giving Musharraf even more money:

"We don't want to withdraw aid that might be helping to stabilise the country," he said.

"We announced recently an increase in aid into the western part of Pakistan in order to try to contribute to stabilising that part of the country and reducing the influence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda."

Ah yes, it's not the corrupt men in shiny suits we need to worry about, it's the terrrrrrrsts! Funny, that's exactly what Musharraf says...

Another thing Alexy doesn't want to talk about is interest rates. Let's talk about Sheikh Al Hilali instead, shall we?

Wanker Of The Day

John Howard is not the only one still living in the 1950s. Gerard Henderson today stokes the still-raging bonfire of 20th Century military glory. By implication, anyone (like me) who says our blessed troops are wasting their time in Iraq and Afghanistan is also failing to honour the glorious dead from WWI and WWII, including Hendo's beloved Uncle Alan.

Might be a good time to check the dictionary definition of FASCISM again...

fas·cism (fāsh'ĭz'əm) Pronunciation Key
n.

1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
2. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

[Italian fascismo, from fascio, group, from Late Latin fascium, from Latin fascis, bundle.]

Remind me again, Hendo, what were we fighting for in WWII?

Friends Like These

Informed Comment:

Musharraf has been invoking the need to fight Muslim extremism as a pretext for his coup. But in fact, he made the (further) coup because the Pakistani Supreme Court had unanimously decided that he was ineligible to run for president...

If Bush and Cheney are ever tempted into extreme measures in the United States, Musharraf has provided a template for how it would unfold. Maintain you are moving against terrorists and extremists, but actually move against the rule of law.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Here we go again:

THE Coalition has continued its march back toward poll parity with the latest Newspoll showing the government now trailing by just six per cent in the two party preferred stakes.

Labor has dropped one point to 53 per cent while the Government has gained one point and moved to 47 per cent.

The preferred prime minister poll also shows encouraging signs for the Coalition, according to the Newspoll, to be published in The Australian tomorrow.

Prime Minister John Howard is up two percentage points to 43 while Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has dropped one to 47 per cent.

The gap in the primary vote poll has also narrowed, to just five per cent with Labor down one point to 47 and the Government steady at 42 per cent, according to figures broadcast on Sky News.

Prime Minister John Howard has again denied rumours that, if elected, he will hand over power to Dennis Shanahan.

Yo, Jimbo...

Things are looking pretty dark on the other side of the Pacific. And it's not just Bush's GOP causing the problems. The US Democrats now have the power to end the war in Iraq, but choose not to. They are about to endorse a new Attorney General who point-blank refuses to condemn water-boarding as torture. Blackwater's crimes in Iraq are being ignored, if not whitewashed, and impeachment is still not considered an option. What's going on?

Phillip J. Cunningham, who teaches at a Japanese university, compares the US rightwing today with rightwing denialists in Japan, who still hold firm to a totally discredited version of 20th Century history:

The bad apple school of thought thrives in national narratives because it aids and abets denial for proud individuals and powerful constituencies.

The problem with Japanese rightists, and America's problem understanding them, is not so much the seemingly futile attempt polish up the bad apples, the futile attempt to make the class A Criminals shine. It's not even the rightists' dubious campaign to re-configure war criminals as honorable Shinto spirits at Yasukuni Shrine. The problem with the rightists is they are bound to honor the penultimate leader at all costs, which short-circuits all other arguments and prevents blame from being fairly apportioned.

The result of this implacable cognitive dissonance is denial.

Fortunately, the same thing is not happening here in Australia. I swear it isn't. And I will personally kill anyone who says it is.

Scumbags

Somebody put together a youtube video of Kevin Rudd picking his ear many years ago. Somebody poked pictures of it into Canberra pigeon-holes. And somebody has launched a spam attack that has crippled the Larvatus Prodeo blog for the past three days.

Given the Coalition's desperate situation with three weeks left to run, this campaign is going to get a LOT dirtier.

Vote Like You Care

My friend Winter Patriot is a finalist in the 2007 Weblog Awards. WP's excellent political blog is struggling to defeat a cooking blog called "Slow Cooker Recipes"!

Winter writes about 9/11 truth, other false flag terror, American politics, the bogus GWOT, and some of the key hot spots of south Asia, especially Pakistan, where things are rapidly deteriorating as we speak. He's done excellent work lately on subjects like the proxy war in Pakistan, the Sadr City airstrikes against sleeping civilians in Iraq, and Blackwater's Nisoor Square massacre.

I just don't see how we can let his blog finish behind -- or even just a little bit ahead of -- a site that tells people how to heat up cocktail wieners in their slow cookers!

Will you help us? I'm sure WP will appreciate it. But this is not just about showing appreciation to WP. If his blog does well in this "election", and especially if it wins, it will bring many more readers to the important stories that he writes.

Click here to go to the polling booth and then click again on the appropriate button to vote for Winter Patriot's blog. The voting is open until November 8th, and you can vote once per category, every 24 hours. If you can vote more than once, that'll be great! And If you can remember to vote every day until the 8th, that'll be even better.

Thank you very much - and good luck WP!

Lip Service

Finally something all the media players can agree on: the Report
of the Independent Audit into the State of Free Speech in Australia (PDF here) was commissioned by News Ltd, Fairfax, ABC, SBS, Sky News, AAP and others.

Fairfax CEO David Kirk says:

"We are not living in a dictatorship, but we are not living in a gold standard democracy. We are paying lip service to the principle of open government."

John Hartigan, chairman and CEO of News Limited, said the finding were "deeply troubling".

Who to blame, eh? Who to blame?

Pity The Poor Diggers? Piss On That!

Bwaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!

AN Australian army officer serving in Iraq says Diggers are disappointed with the media coverage of their positive work in the troubled nation...

"The boys get disappointed with what they see in the media. There's no focus on what we're achieving here, it's more of a focus on the political side and it's really upsetting for them," said Maj Kerr, a 33-year-old from Sydney.

Well, why the hell do you think you are over there in the first place, Major Kerr? POLITICS: Howard wanted to support Bush. Why do you think "the boys" are rebuilding orphanages and painting schools? POLITICS: the warmongers want good PR. What do you want - a big fucking HUG?

"I think the guys have done very well to improve the life of the Iraqis in the area. It's all stuff that is going to help Iraq sort itself out. All we hope is that message gets home. It's not a political issue, we just want people to know we're doing a good job."

You stupid bloody idiot. Do you really think the lives of any Iraqis (aside from Ahmed Chalabi & Co) have improved since the invasion?

Or are you in fact just doing your own bit of PR for the war, three weeks out from an election? Hmmn?

Wanker Of The Day: David Briggs

One thing you can say about David Briggs's Galaxy polling service: you gets what you pays for. His former employers at News Ltd commissioned the latest poll, and this is what they got for their money:

Voters will not blame Prime Minister John Howard if interest rates go up as expected this week, a new Galaxy poll has found.

The poll also found that while Labor has retained its election-winning lead, 22 per cent of voters have yet to make their final decision.

What a crock. The rates haven't even gone up yet, and in truth 100 percent of voters still have to make their "final decision". But even Galaxy cannot hide the harsh truth: voters have deserted Howard and they are NOT coming back.

Loathe as I am to call this election three weeks out, the coming interest rate rise surely sounds the death knell for John W. Howard. It may not be the last nail in his political coffin, but it's surely the one that shuts the lid down so tightly that even he cannot escape again. Surely?

The lesson from abroad today is that repressive governments and military dictatorships are not, and never will be, friends of true democracy. The lesson at home is that the Coalition never could be trusted to keep interest rates low. Can someone please tally a list of all the public assets Howard has sold off in the past 11 years? Then add up all the profits made from selling our country's natural resources overseas? Then look at what we ordinary Australians have gotten in return?

So what do you do now, if you are in John Howard's fear-soaked socks? You keep spinning it like it's real. You stick with your Karl Rove playbook and pretend that your greatest weakness is actually a strength, and you use it to hammer your opponents, even if that makes no sense whatsoever. Howard is warning to Costello's talk of a global economic tsunami, ignoring the fact that it was his great mate in Washington, George W. Bush, who criminally misguided policies created that same tsunami.

And Howard cheered him all the way.

Rodentus Super

Is this the answer to the Liberals' woes?

A GENETICALLY engineered "supermouse" has stunned scientists with its physical abilities.

The mouse can run up to six kilometres at a speed of 20 metres per minute for five hours or more without stopping, British newspaper The Independent reports.

Scientists say that's the equivalent of a man cycling at speed up an Alpine mountain without a break.

The engineered mouse also lives longer, has more sex and can breed well into old age, and eats more without getting fat, the paper reports.

The “supermouse” is the creation of American scientists who are working to create a community of 500 of the rodents,

Scientists say the super abilities came about from a standard genetic modification to a single metabolism gene shared with humans.

The Rodentus Super also lives longer, but is unusually aggressive. Let's hope they keep them all in that cage!

Howard Is Taking YOUR Money And Giving It To His Rich Mates

The latest figures confirm what many people have long known:

REAL pay has gone backwards under the Howard Government's new wage setting system, with some workers on award pay rates now more than $15 a week worse off in the past 12 months.

Recent higher inflation has overtaken the modest pay rises handed out by the Australian Fair Pay Commission last month, pushing most of the 1 million workers covered by award rates into the red, according to new figures.

The commission confirmed the figures yesterday, saying it had relied on Reserve Bank inflation forecasts, which were too low.

Meanwhile, the CEO of a company branded the worst price-fixing cartel in Australian history is a close friend who Howard invites around for dinner.

War Sucks. Soldiers Suck

Viva Ted Rall:

The war sucks. On that point, the millions of Americans who were against it from the start (and the many millions more who've come around to agreeing with us) agree with the soldiers serving in it. Forced re-enlistment through the "stop-loss" loophole is placing thousands of lives in suspended animation, destroying marriages and small businesses. Troops aren't getting enough protective gear.

It's also true that Americans have stopped paying attention. I'm a news junkie. And even I flip the page past the same old "2 Dead, 7 Wounded in IED Blast" headline.

But hey, soldier, you volunteered. If not for you, there wouldn't be a war in the first place.

It's A Set-Back For Your Pa-a-arty

But will it really make a difference?

"One of Kevin Rudd's senior frontbenchers, in an impromptu but nevertheless on-the-record discussion with me, face to face this morning, said that the 'me too' tag will not matter if Labor wins the election because, quote, 'once we get in we'll just change it all'," Mr Price told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

"The frontbencher is Peter Garrett."

Garrett says it was "a short, jocular conversation", implying that he did not mean it. Richard Wilkins confirms that he was just joking.

I recently commented on LP that leftwing critics are probably underestimating Garrett, and that many Labor voters will be secretly hoping that Rudd is NOT going to be a Howard-lite PM (as the Libs now paint him). And it IS late Friday afternoon... So maybe this blooper will actually work in Labor's favour?

Let's see what the media make of it.

One thing to keep in mind: if Labor don't win both houses, they will need to compromise with the Libs to get their laws passed. So maybe it WOULD be a Howard-lite government. Unless the Greens win the Senate, in which case they really WOULD have to dump all the Howard-style policies. Vote Green for the Senate!

It's Time For Murdoch To Sack Andrew Bolt

I have said before that I never - ever - read Andrew Bolt. But in this case I clicked through unknowingly from Antony Loewensteins' blog. And loathe as I am to give Bolt's unadulterated crap the oxygen of publicity, this bullshit should be the last column he ever writes.

The battle is actually over. Iraq has been won...

Bolt pretends only 100,000 Iraqis have died, then estimates that Saddam killed 400,000, which means the war was "worth it".

Before you start adding your two cents to the readers' comments (already jam-packed with well-deserved criticism), consider who pays him to write this stuff, who benefits commercially from the online hits his self-generated controversy invites (advertisers love it), and who is the great, unspoken cheerleader of this horrific, illegal war.

Murdoch should sack Bolt for this, and Teh Oz should be inundated with letters to the editor (not comments to Bolt). But there must also be a reckoning for Murdoch, the blood-soaked warmonger behind the wingnut wordsmiths.

Baby Blogging

"Which finger is for John Howard, mummy?"




"Wake me when the election is over."




"I'm so glad I won't have to see that man's face on TV any more."




"Look at me Daddy! I'm an Islamofascist!"




"Do I still get a Right To Life if I'm born in Iran?"




"When is Mr Howard going to ask mummy to release me?"

Kerry Nettle Comes Out...

... swinging!

Senator Nettle says if he [Kevin Andrews] will not resign, the Prime Minister needs to sack him.

"The evidence points to him conspiring to subvert the court's decision to release Dr Haneef," she said.

"We can not have a minister in this Government that operates in that way to try to undermine the processes that are going on in our courts."

Labour is just calling for an enquiry - rather lame, IMHO.

Kein Geld Fur Die Untermenschen!

Follow the logic... Thanks to John Howard's legendary economic management, the government now has billions of my taxpayer dollars to throw away in this campaign. But when it comes to money for Foreign Aid, Howard suddenly cannot make any promises. Why not?

Mr Howard says he will assess the country's domestic financial position before making aid commitments beyond 2010...

Labor's policy, launched in July, is to raise foreign aid to [a miserly] 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2015-2016, up from 0.35 in 2010-2011. The Coalition has so far refused to match the policy.

And of course, he's not going to match the Labor target, is he? Because the Libs are busy accusing Labor of stealing all their policies. So he just lies:

"We have significantly increased our foreign aid, we've doubled it, and it's working."

And once again - twice in a day! - congratulations to whoever at News Ltd let this get past the editorial team:

However, it was revealed in May that $644 million of aid earmarked for Iraq in 2006-07 never left Australia, and that the Government included funding for the so-called Pacific Solution and the AWB inquiry's legal bill in it's foreign aid figures.

Speaking of dodgy logic, Howard says he will be handing over to Treasurer Peter Costello "well into the next term":

"The average Australian understands exactly what I am saying and they accept it," he said.

"They know at some point everybody has to be part of a transition - it happens to everybody, it happens to Australian cricket captains.

"So if it happens to them it has got to happen to the prime minister."

Well, Australian cricket captains also get hit in the groin quite regularly...

Howard Accepts The Blame For One Million Dead Iraqis

NOT:

"I think about it a lot because I'm the person in the end who sends men and women into battle," Mr Howard told Sky News.

"I feel a very direct responsibility for any death or injury that occurs on the field of battle and it's the greatest burden that anybody has to carry and discharge."

Obviously, it's only Australian casualties that matter. Let's not even bother counting the untermenschen.

Meanwhile, buried inside Bush's latest request for many more billions of dollars in war funding was a little US Department of Defence request for special bomb racks:

The new Big Blu bomb is 20ft long, weighs 30,000lb and carries 6000lb of high explosives. It is designed to go deeper than even existing nuclear bunker-busting weapons.

The bomb is designed to be dropped from as great a height as possible to achieve maximum velocity and penetrating power, guided on to target by satellite and accurate to within a few feet.

Each B2 bomber would be able to carry only one weapon because of its weight. The B2s, normally based at Barksdale, Missouri, flew round-trip strikes against Baghdad in 2003, but would ideally be positioned closer to its targets for missions against Iran.

Airplane hangars on the CIA prison gulag island of Diego Garcia are already being renovated to accommodate the new bombs.

And don't get me started about Diego Garcia... I was up at 3:30 am today reading a chapter on the Chagos islanders' long struggle, in John Pilger's book, Tell Me No Lies. If you are in the mood, check out these satellite images, showing tennis courts and swimming pools for US soldiers on an island the Blair government once tried to pretend was uninhabitable.

Wanker Of The Day

A minister's resignation is just what John Howard's lacklustre campaign needs right now, isn't it? Today Kevin Bloody Andrews goes into hiding and lets a spokeswoman invoke the old John Howard Defence on his behalf:

"He didn't see the emails. He hasn't seen the emails. Never heard of the police officer (mentioned)," the spokeswoman told AAP today.

She said Mr White could have received the email and failed to hand it on to the minister, but maintained the minister had a healthy relationship with the department.

"Absolutely, a relationship that any minister would have with his department.

"But there would be no reason for the minister to be seeing such (emails) because they are completely unrelated to his actual decision."

Mr Andrews first considered revoking Dr Haneef's visa on Monday July 16 and that was the only time he considered detaining the doctor, she said.

"The visa cancellation was entirely unrelated to the criminal proceedings and the bail hearing.

"I mean the cancellation of the visa is entirely a matter for the minister. It's only something that the minister can decide so there is no way that anyone could have known what the minister would decide."

That last bit is the Condi Rice and George W. Bush defence, BTW.

This is from the email in question:

"Contingencies for containing Mr Haneef and detaining him under the Migration Act, if it was the case he was granted bail on Monday, were in place as per arrangements today," the email said.

Written by Brisbane-based counter-terrorism coordinator David Craig to commanders of the AFP's counter-terrorism unit on Saturday July 14, the email was then forwarded to immigration department public servant Peter White the following Monday.

Two days later, Haneef was granted bail. Kevin Andrews immediately revoked his visa.

Resign.

Now.

You.

Bastard.

UPDATE: Lest we forget:

JOURNALIST: Were doubts raised in the meeting, did anyone…..

PRIME MINISTER: No the meeting I had at the Lodge nobody on my staff mentioned to me, nobody on my staff has ever raised at the relevant times doubts about the photographs no.

JOURNALIST: What do you mean when you say “relevant time”?

PRIME MINISTER: I mean relevant time, I mean before the election and I mean up until right now. I mean I’ve got to be careful that I don’t say nobody’s ever said anything to me about the photographs because unless I fix that in time that might be sort of taken out of context.

JOURNALIST: Can you fix at a date?

PRIME MINISTER: In relation to my staff I don’t think….I mean I probably would have had some discussions with them generally after I decided to commission the inquiry, generally some discussion with them perhaps late in November and they were, I mean to the best of my recollection I’d really have to go back and check and, hang on can I just finish answering Glenn, I’ll go back and check that, otherwise I might give an inaccurate recollection.

UPDATE 2: Crikey's email today asks some good questions:

Firstly, did Mr Prendergast, a senor AFP officer, brief his Commissioner Mick Keelty on the plan to detain Dr Haneef if the bail application was successful?

Secondly, did the DPP’s lawyers know of the plan when they were arguing against bail being granted on Saturday 14 July, and if they did, why didn’t they tell Dr Haneef’s lawyers?

Thirdly, is Mr Andrews’ statement today that he knew nothing of the plan credible given that he is the Minister for Immigration and there would be no point putting a plan to detain Dr Haneef in place without knowing that the Minister, the only one who could approve such a detention, was going to play ball?

Finally, how credible is Mick Keelty’s claim to The Bulletin a fortnight ago that he told the DPP that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Haneef when his own officers are hatching a plan to use the Migration Act to detain Haneef if he got bail?

Crikey also has this interesting analysis from Jeff Sparrow:

The leaked emails essentially vindicate the position taken in that case by the Australian Greens, at a time when Labor marched arm-in-arm with Kevin Andrews – yet the story appears alongside a poll showing a slump in Green support.
It’s one of the bizarre ironies of this campaign: even as the issues they own become more and more mainstream, Bob Brown’s mob seems to be becoming more marginal.
You’d think the changing political climate over global warming would, in and of itself, propel the Greens into double figures, given that Bob Brown was campaigning about it back when John Howard denied it even existed (oh, hang on – that’s still going on. But, no – as The Age says, the Greens were "polling 8 per cent in early October, but have been on 6 per cent since the campaign began."
The Greens have been vindicated in their opposition to the Iraq war, and their position on WorkChoices reflects the visceral hatred about the IR laws revealed in all the surveys, much more so than Labor’s wishy-washy stance. Yet none of it seems to have done them much good.
Quite simply, people want the Liberals out. And, for most of them, that means a Labor vote. Yes, we all know about preferential voting but, somehow, it doesn’t quite seem real. You want rid of Howard, so you vote for the other bloke. You don’t mess about with 1s and 2s and 3s.
It’s not much consolation for this election but one suspects that, like John Howard in the nineties, Bob Brown will be able to say of the next decade: "The times will suit me."
If the anyone-but-Howard mood leaves little space for a third party, consider the landscape after a Rudd victory. The Liberals will be so preoccupied with fratricidal bloodletting that traditional Toryism will be off the agenda for some time, even as a Blairite Labor Party reveals that economic conservatism coupled with social conservatism equals something pretty damn conservative. In those circumstances, one could easily imagine Brown becoming a focal point for disappointed Rudd voters.

Snowflakes From Hell

WaPo picks through Donald Rumsfeld's emails:

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war...

Under siege in April 2006, when a series of retired generals denounced him and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces, Rumsfeld produced a memo after a conference call with military analysts. "Talk about Somalia, the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists," he wrote.

People will "rally" to sacrifice, he noted after the meeting. "They are looking for leadership. Sacrifice = Victory."

... He also lamented that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims "from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed," he wrote. "An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism."

Well, that might explain John Howard's latest policy.

My Head Hurts

It's always a bit confusing when you find yourself agreeing with opinion articles in Teh Oz. The fact that this piece by Michael Costello even got published (at least without much heavier editing) tells you as much as today's AC Nielsen poll about where this election is headed:

It was always completely bogus to argue that Labor's association with the trade union movement would lead to economic cataclysm.

Consider these numbers. When the Fraser government, of which Howard was the long-running treasurer, fell in March 1983, GDP growth was running at -2.5 per cent a year, inflation was 11.4 per cent, unemployment 9.9 per cent, cash rates 16.7per cent and housing interest rates 12.5 per cent. The profit share was 18.1 per cent and the wages share was 61.1 per cent.

When the Keating government fell in March 1996, GDP growth was running at 4.9 per cent, inflation at 3.7 per cent, unemployment at 8.2per cent, cash rates at 7.52 and housing interest rates at 10.5 per cent. The profit share was 23.2 per cent and the wages share was 55.4per cent.

The numbers tell the story. The Hawke and Keating governments, with the active and constructive engagement of Australia's trade union leadership and membership, rebuilt the economy from the steaming wreckage left by the Fraser government into the powerhouse it still is, despite the dumbed-down policies of the Howard Government. Howard's trade-union bogy is bogus: always was, still is.

To the extent that Abbott's performance this week unpicks the first stitch in the tale Howard is trying to weave on Labor, unions and the economy, it could be one of those memorable moments that campaigns turn [*] on.

And that's in a Murdoch paper, right?

What next? Right-wing US bloggers taking on FOX News? Ouch! The pain...!

[* or "don't turn", more to the point. The rock-solid stasis of the polls over the last year suggests to me that Australian voters have already "locked in" their decision on Howard.]

Conspiracy

So is it time for Kevin Andrews to resign yet? And Mick Keelty too?