Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
From Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online:
The truth about Iraq is that, for all the tragedy and the loss, the U.S. military performed a miracle. After nearly seven years, a constitutional government endures in that country.
It is too often forgotten that all 23 of the writs for war passed by the Congress in 2002 — from enforcing the Gulf I resolutions and stopping the destruction of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, to preventing the Iraqi state promotion of terrorism, ending suicide bounties on the West Bank, and stopping Iraq from invading or attacking neighbors or trying to acquire WMD — were met and satisfied by the U.S. military.
It is also too often forgotten that, as a result, Libya gave up its WMD program; Dr. Khan’s nuclear franchise was shut down; Syria left Lebanon; and American troops in Saudi Arabia, put there as protection against Saddam, were withdrawn. Perhaps a peep about some of that—especially the idea that in an oil-short world, Saddam Hussein might have been more or less free to do what he pleased again in Iraq. (The verdict is out on Iran; playing a genocidal Hussein regime against it was morally bankrupt. Currently, Shiites participating in consensual government could be as destabilizing to Iran in the long run as Iranian terrorists are to Iraq in the short run.)
Furthermore, the destruction of al-Qaeda in Iraq helped to discredit the entire idea of radical Sunni Islamic terrorists, and the loss of thousands of foreign radical Islamists in Iraq had a positive effect on U.S. security — despite the fallacy that we created them out of thin air by being in Iraq.
Kurdistan was, prior to 2003, faced with the continual threat of genocidal attacks by Saddam Hussein; today it is a booming economy.
All that would have been impossible without U.S. intervention.
With a bit of help from Australia and others.
Brandt has signed up with Labor after Bob Brown was promised a carbon tax. Wilkie has signed up with Labor after he was promised a renovated hospital in Hobart.
Tony Abbott now needs to be absolutely clear about three things.
Firstly, the Liberal party will not be buying votes. It will not be making infrastructure or funding promises to independents or anyone else, if those promises come at the expense of other Australians.
Mr Abbott needs to make it clear that funds will allocated in line with policy and need. There will be no sweetheart deals. He will not be pressured into making unreasonable promises to a few, which the many will have to pay for.
Secondly, there can be no unconditional promise to remain in government for the full three years. Such a promise would be unreasonable at any time. It is completely unreasonable at this time.
The Greens and their Labor buddies will control the Senate. It is almost certain they will use that power to block supply or stop or delay crucial legislation. If the Liberal party is able to form government, it will only govern with the consent of the Greens and Labor.
That is not a situation in which a party and its leaders can responsibly promise to stay in government for a fixed term.
Finally, Tony Abbott and the Liberals must now emphasise, over and over again, the fiscal responsibility of the Coalition, the consistently better economic results under a Coalition government.
The Liberals may still lose this election, and if they do, the country will find itself suffocating under a staggering level of economic incompetence.
The next few years will be dire for small business, for the mining and manufacturing sectors, for rural and remote communities – for everyone who actually produces useful, valuable goods and services.
I hope Tony Abbott can still win. That would save us from the worst of the combined malice and ineptitude of a Greens/Labor alliance.
But if not Tony, then at least lose with honour.
I know Andrew Bolt (and a thousand other people) have already posted these videos:
But the contrast between the practice of the uncaring right wing despoilers and ravagers of the environment and the gentle earth loving supporters of Obama is just too great too pass without comment.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that the fundamental difference between right and left, or conservative and progressive if you prefer, is a willingness to take responsibility.
In 2009 Greg Sheridan wrote a brief and thoughtful, if confronting, article about the Rudd government’s misuse of the office of the Governor General.
The article was not primarily about Quentin Bryce’s political views, but about the then Prime Minister’s willingness to use any means, even obviously inappropriate means, to lobby for a seat for Australia on the UN Security Council, something that was widely seen as potentially adding weight to Mr Rudd’s assumed personal UN ambitions.
Even earlier, in 2008, Andrew Bolt had questioned aspects of Quentin Bryce’s speech at her swearing-in, and these words in particular:
I promise to be open, responsive and faithful to the contemporary thinking and working of Australian society.
Which Andrew interpreted to mean:
Contemporary thinking for Bryce will be what the Left agrees it is, whatever the more conservative majority may say in opposition.
Certainly the Governor General has spoken out on political issues rather more freely than we have been accustomed to, and has consistently spoken from a leftist perspective, on issues such as the 2008 apology for the ‘Stolen Generations’, and on global warming.
This makes a mockery of claims by some of her friends, including Tony Fitzgerald, QC, that Quentin Bryce is so impartial that after havng known her for nearly fifty years, he still has ‘no inkling of her political persuasion.‘
I haven’t know Quentin Bryce for nearly fifty years. I spoke with her for about five minutes at a dinner at Government House in Brisbane a few years ago. She struck me as a graceful, capable and intelligent woman.
But her comments on disputed political matters make it very clear where her sympathies lie. That is a pity, because it brings her ability to act impartially into question.
It is a nonsense, for example, to claim that any concern about possible conflicts of interest is ‘a storm in tea cup.’
Bill Shorten, Quentin Bryce’s son-in-law, is a Labor politician. This has lead to calls for her to recuse herself from any decisions about who should form government after the recent Federal election.
It is not just that Quentin Bryce’s son-in-law is a Labor politician. As others have pointed out, political connections as strong as those of Bill Hayden or Paul Hasluck were not seen as undermining their ability to act appropriately as Governor General.
Quentin Bryce is a sensible woman. Mostly.
I think she would try to make the right decision, without regard to the feelings of her daughter Chloe, or of Chloe’s husband Bill, even though Bill may well be a future Labor leader. Possibly in the near future.
But just as justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done, so for the dignity of the office of Governor General, decisions must not only be made impartially, they must be seen to be made impartially.
Quentin Bryce’s willingness to involve herself in political debate has made that a problem.
From Family Security Matters writer Fiona Kobusingye, co-chair of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda:
I wish I had a shilling for every time someone told me spraying homes with DDT to prevent malaria is like using Africans in evil experiments. I would be a rich woman.
That claim is a blatant falsehood. Even worse, it hides the many ways poor Africans really are being used in environmental experiments that cause increased poverty, disease and death…
Bluntly put, environmentalists are using African parents and children in anti-DDT experiments. Against all the evidence from decades of using only nets and drugs and maybe other insecticides, they want to keep ignoring DDT as a long-lasting spatial insect repellant. They want to keep us doing what has at best worked only partially, on the assumption that maybe it will work better next year – or that a 30% malaria reduction is good enough.
They are playing with our lives. So are the government agencies, health NGOs and others who support their policies. This is wrong and immoral. And it is only one of the ways they use Africans as experimental laboratory animals. They are also denying us access to other modern technologies that can improve and save lives…
600 million people in sub-Sahara Africa live on two million shillings ($900 USD) or less per year. Nearly 700 million never have electric power for lights, refrigeration, schools, shops and clinics – or have it only a few hours per week. Millions die from diseases that would be prevented, if they did not have to burn wood and dung, and had safe water, better healthcare and higher living standards that reliable, affordable electrical power would bring.
But environmentalists constantly block coal, gas and hydro-electric power plants. They want us to live in experimental societies where people get whatever limited electrical power can be generated day to day with wind turbines or solar panels. They pressured the World Bank to reject loan applications for power plants in Ghana and South Africa, and support President Obama when he says Africans should focus on wind, solar and bio-fuel power, instead of fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, they live in wealthy countries, with all the electrical power they need. With the health, opportunity and prosperity electrical power brings. With freedom and mobility that cars and fossil fuels bring. With blessings most Africans can only dream of.
There’s more, and it’s all worth reading.
I haven’t always been a fan of Michael Kroger, or at least, I regretted the apparent division between him and Jeff Kennett, and the harm it did the Victorian Liberal party.
But boy I am a fan now.
We really do need more politicians and business people to stand up to the arrant nonsense peddled by people like Wayne Swan, who, never having run a business themselves, and having no idea how to do so, ceaselessly lecture those who do, and who therefore generate tax income, employment, and useful goods and services.
via Tim Blair:
Amidst the deafening and ceaseless talk about environmental sustainability, Australia seems to have lost any reality based sense of the need for a sustainable balance between production, taxation and expenditure.
By Walter Starck on the Quadrant website.
All over the world developed nations have created more government than their increasingly uncompetitive, over-regulated, over-taxed economies can support. Deficit spending is epidemic and borrowing is reaching the limits of capacity to even maintain payments on interest. Increasing numbers of local, state and national governments are running on empty. Unpaid bills, layoffs and cuts to welfare and essential services are spreading. Financially desperate governments seem determined to seek and destroy any remaining pockets of economic viability via increased taxation and regulation.
While better off than most, Australia is not immune to this global malaise. We too suffer from chronic balance of trade deficits, unsustainable government commitments and proliferating bureaucracy strangling any productive activity. Australia has the highest house prices in the world, the highest level of personal debt, the steepest increases in food prices of any OECD country over the past decade and a declining manufacturing sector that is now the smallest in the developed world.
The city-centred cult of environmentalism puts up dire tales of species loss and climate change as barriers to new resource development, energy production, and manufacturing projects. But these tales frequently have no connection to reality, and draw their ‘facts’ from the popular media.
Like over-indulged children, the non-producers feel neither guilt nor gratitude, but rather a sense of entitlement. To this purpose environmentalism serves an important role. The world of non-producers begins at the shop and ends at the rubbish bin and it largely exists in an urban realm wherein nature has been virtually exterminated. From this viewpoint, only producers despoil the natural environment. Environmentalism affords non-producers a satisfying sense of moral superiority over those who support them. Not surprisingly, it is a popular belief commonly held with great conviction and righteousness.
Anyone who produces anything is seen as an irresponsible exploiter. Our failure to make sensible use of our own fisheries is just one example:
In fisheries the situation is even worse. With the largest per capita fisheries resource in the world, we have the lowest production and our harvest rate is the lowest in the world at only 1/30 of the global average. Our fishing fleet has already been reduced to one-third of what it was two decades ago. All this is entirely because of bureaucratic mismanagement and over regulation. None of it is due to overfishing.
That we now have to import two-thirds of the seafood we eat, and all of it comes from much more heavily exploited resources elsewhere, is unconscionable. That we are selling off non-renewable resources to pay $1.7 billion annually to import a renewable one we ourselves have in abundance, then call this sustainable management and pat ourselves on the back with self-proclaimed status as the world’s best fishery managers, is beyond moronic.
Over the last few years, at both state and federal level, we have seen increased government spending, massive debt, manufacturing hampered, land and other resources locked up, and a failure to build and maintain transport and energy infrastructure.
How is this responsible and sustainable?
At 8.15 SA time, Labor holds Eden-Monaro.
Not a good sign. Since 1972 Eden-Monaro has gone to whichever party eventually formed the government. Maybe it is time for a change.
I was wrong about Melbourne. The Greens will take that seat.
I was right (well, pretty sure at this stage) about South Australia. There was a swing to Labor as predicted, but not enough in the two key marginal seats of Sturt and Boothby for them to take either of those seats.
I hoped the Liberals might retain McEwan. Other than that, the result is pretty much as I thought.
There is still a large number of uncertain seats in NSW and Qld.
The Liberals will come in ahead, but enough to form government on their own?
It may come down to Swan and Hasluck in Western Australia.
At 8.30 SA time, Wyatt Roy has won Longman for the Liberals. Typical snarky comment from Annabel Crabb on Twitter: Wyatt Roy claiming victory now. Parents allowed him to stay up late in recognition of his new status as MP for Longman.
Wyatt seems to be demonstrating far more maturity than the average ABC commentator.
Anthony Green’s latest prediction: Labor: 73 seats; Coalition: 72 seats; Greens: 1 seat; Independents: 4 seats.
He may be right. That would mean a very tight Coalition government.
The ABC still predicting the ALP will hold Lindsay. I don’t think so.
What else? Solomon will come to the Liberals. So will Cowan, Greenway and Macquarie.
Swan and Hasluck still too early to call. Looking like there is a small swing to the ALP in Western Australia.
We may have a result tonight. Going to have a beer. Back in half an hour.
9.00pm SA time. Labor spokesmen seem to be acknowledging they will not be able to form government on their own.
Maxine Mckew speaks very well in response to questions from Kerry O’Brien. Blames change of leadership, poorly planned campaign and loss of credibility over abandoned CPRS after earlier ALP claims it was the great moral issue, etc. Right with all of that. Says the ALP should have clearer about its great economic successes. Ha, ha.
Looking like Swan and Hasluck will come to the Liberals, but Stirling may fall to Labor. Only 25% of the vote counted, though, I’d love to know which booths. I wouldn’t have called that one.
At this stage, it looks like the Liberals will win seventeen and lose three.
Highlight of the night so far – Kerry O’Brien cutting Kevin Rudd off with the words ‘It could go on for some time.’ ROTFL.
Right on Solomon. Another point for me.
Time for another beer.
9.30pm SA time.
Stirling stays with the Liberals. They probably need Corangamite to get over the line.
The ABC is currently calling 69 for Labor and 70 for Liberal. There are five other/independent. Three of those will feel more comfortable with the Coalition.
Six seats are still in doubt. If three go to the ALP, three to the Liberals, the final figures will be Coalition and independents 76, ALP and independents, 74.
On track for the two seat majority I predicted this morning, and I’m calling it for the Coalition.
Even if four of the doubtfuls go to the ALP instead of three, the ALP will not be able to form government.
The Liberal Party will be in a better position. It could be a re-run of Peter Lewis’ appointment as Speaker in SA in 2002, but the other way around, with a left leaning independent acting as Speaker for a Liberal government.
The Senate is a mess, and Bob Brown says he intends to use the power the Greens now have to push for carbon taxes and gay marriage.
It looks like Steve Fielding is out of the Senate for Family First in Victoria, but Bob Day is in for Family First in SA.
The ABC is now predicting 74 seats for the Coalition. With three independents likely to ally with them, even if reluctantly, that is a win - 77 to 73.
Not a bad night. Better than I would have hoped a couple of months ago.
Interesting comment from Alexander Downer: I have never known a political leader as determined and hard working as Tony Abbott.
Time for a Milo and off to bed.
… from two hours of handing out how to vote cards in Kingscote (Mayo, SA).
Two things of interest.
1. Someone who thought I was offering her a Labor card said ‘Not without Kevin.’
I wasn’t sure the knifing of Kevin Rudd really would make a difference to the election. It has.
2. The number of people who specifically asked for Family First cards.
I know the candidate for Family First in Mayo. He is a great guy. Honest, intelligent, compassionate, hard working.
He won’t get in.
But the fact that so many people asked for Family First cards makes me wonder whether Bob Day has a chance of taking Sarah Hanson-Young’s senate seat.
That would certainly be a cause for rejoicing in my household.
Finally, the following from the Sydney Morning Herald:
Labor has denied employing dirty campaign tactics in the marginal electorate of Lindsay where candidate David Bradbury is at risk of losing his seat.
Labor campaigners are distributing how to vote cards dressed as Liberals, wearing recplica T-shirts to booth workers campaigning for Liberal candidate Fiona Scott.
The light blue T-shirts are unmarked with Labor branding and are precisely the same shade as their liberal counterpart.
A Labor campaign leaftlet is also styled to look like Greens election material. It is authorised by the ALP but contains no party logo.
Why would anyone vote for these people?
If the Tamil asylum seekers thought they were going to have an easier run in Canada than in Australia, they may be in for an unpleasant surprise.
A poll of 1500 Canadians reported in the Toronto Sun turned up this result:
Asked which statement best described their own opinion on what should be done with the ship, which may include members of the banned Tamil Tiger terrorist group, 60% agreed with the statement: “They should be turned away – the boat should be escorted back to Sri Lanka by the Canadian Navy.”
Just 17% agreed with the statement: “They should be accepted into Canada as political refugees.”
The boat won’t be turned around, though, no matter what most Canadians think:
Martin Collacott was Canada’s highest-ranking diplomat in Sri Lanka during the period when the civil war launched by the Tamil Tigers started in the early 1980s. Collacott says we can’t just turn the boat back.
“We need to follow the process that takes the ones that are legitimate refugees and return the others,” said Collacott.
How many are legitimate refugees is up for debate said Collacott, who noted that the ship, the MV Sun Sea, didn’t come directly from Sri Lanka, but from Thailand where the passengers were safe from any possible persecution from the Sri Lankan government.
If they were all safe from any possible persecution, on what basis can any of them be legitimate refugees?
All right, so I may be embarrassed tomorrow, but here goes.
In primary votes, the Liberals are way ahead. But with preference deals counted, most polls show them at 48% and Labor at 52%.
Tim Blair has all the bases covered, but suggests the most likely outcome is a three to eight seat victory for Labor.
If the polls are right, the overall swing may not be enough to give the Liberals a clear victory.
But the polls may not be right.
Julia has shot herself in the foot over the last couple days with her incessant bleating about how rotten Tony Abbott is, and how Work Choices would be back on Monday if the Liberals win. She looks tired, brittle, and untrustworthy.
I suspect the swing will be slightly stronger than the polls suggest.
But the overall swing is less important than the extent of movement in particular marginals.
Labor will lose seats in New South Wales and Queensland. They seem to be hoping to pick up two in South Australia. Julia is an Adelaide girl.
I doubt this will happen. The Rann government is not as popular as it was, and however Julia may try to distance herself from unpopular state governments, Labor is Labor.
The Greens will not win their seat in Melbourne.
The Liberals will win by two seats.
This may make effective government difficult. But Tony Abbott has shown over the last months that he can command loyalty and draw disparate party elements together. He will be a good Prime Minister.
In the Senate? The Greens will not get the vote they hope for. But the pixies in the garden parties may still hold the balance of power.
Incidentally, and in case you were wondering, I am not a member of the Liberal Party. The only political party I have ever belonged to was the Socialist Workers’ Party. That was at university.
My views have changed since then!