Australian PM John Howard Loses Election

AP:

Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia's combat troops from Iraq.

Labor Party head Kevin Rudd's pledges on global warming and Iraq move Australia sharply away from policies that had made Howard one of President Bush's staunchest allies.

Read the whole story: AP

Comments

[Centaur]

The Aussies finally smartened up and got it right now let's see if this country follows suit.

[shockmagog]

John Howard--before and after:

http://www.emaginacion.com.ar/cym/images/moe.jpg

[MajorKong]

Buh bye!

[robodweeb]

Some think that letting al Qaeda rebuild while the Iraqis jerked us around for five years was a good plan on Bush's part.

We'll see.

[shockmagog]

But-but-but...Sarkozy...

[robodweeb]

A very short "forever"...

"The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2214994,00.html

[VOTER]

THE SURGE AGAINST THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS WORKING!

Republican voters want out of this war. These voters now fear THEIR lovely children and grandchildren may be called into military service to fight in Bush's War Of Choice.

Their decisions changed after Bush's private and well paid armies began being kicked out of Middle Eastern countries. These armies were the only reason a Draft was not activated as they made up 50% of the military forces. Now, all bets are off.

Which one of the GOP warmonger candidates will be the first one to push Bush under the bus, so to speak? They, all, need to begin their flip flopping asap if they want to get even 10 Republican votes.

Our nation owes a great deal to the Iraqi people. For starters we should impeach, exile or imprison Bush and Cheney as war criminals. This can't explain how so many greedy and stupid Americans voted The Killer Chimp into office but it can show deep sorrow for having done so.

It is time for the change to begin and we MUST start before next November's election.

IMPEACH - EXILE - OR IMPRISON!

[leftLibertarian]

LOL! Good Riddance you Fu&k Head. Just wait for next year's elections as other Bush allies like Clinton, Pelosi, and Reid get tromped!

[curmudgeon3]

Here's a slightly abridged comment this writer left on another website...

If there are any Aussiephiles out there perhaps they could enlighten us regarding some of the differences between the election process Down Under versus the Homeland.

A few guesses…

1) Maybe, just maybe, the Aussies DO NOT have a system where corporate cheerleaders for a particular party also have exclusive, unsupervised responsibility to “count” the ballots — ala Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia? And with no oversight — after all this would violate proprietary secrets. The smoking gun? It would appear that the exit polls actually work in Australia, as they seem to do in every other country but the USA.

2) Perhaps Howard and his cronies were not yet able to place their political adversaries under constant surveillance (phone, e-mail, etc.), allowing them to anticipate and quickly counter every move by the opposition Labour Party. Think of it as having the right to place a microphone in the opposing team’s huddle.

3) Maybe corporations are not granted “personhood”, as is the case in the United States, where those who are wealthy can buy their own representatives, senators, vice-president and president. Here our elected officials represent the wishes of their most generous corporate benefactors, not that of individual voters. Can anyone tell us the last time that United Healthcare, Pfizer, Citicorp, Peabody Coal or Martin Marietta have been disappointed by THEIR representatives’ actions?

In fact, if there were some means of investing in corporate campaign donations, it would be a sure path to riches. It is difficult to think of any other investment that produces so much bang for the buck.

Any other ideas out there?

[Nochnoi]

Thank you to the people of Australia for doing the right thing...

Poor Bush...

I wonder if he can find the rest of the countries in his little group on a map... I bet he can't....

[poopdeck]

The apt name is coalition of the quitting.

[Nyland8]

From the article:

"The ploy, in which bogus pamphlets portraying Labour as sympathetic to Muslim terrorists were distributed to voters, caused a furore, overshadowing the last days of Mr Howard's campaign and clouding his final pitch to voters.

Election results showed that that electorate turned away from the government, apparently punishing the Liberal party, which expelled the members responsible, with a swing of 10 per cent toward Labour."

Apparently, hatred, racism and fear mongering to control the votes of the populace is a widespread, even global, tactic of the proto-fascist hawks. Nice to see what it leads to when there is an informed electorate. May our response here be as strong next November.

8

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[Nyland8]

From the article:

"While a move towards replacing the Queen with an Australian head of state is on Labour’s broad agenda, Mr Rudd said in an interview last week that any referendum on a republic was “not a priority” and was unlikely to happen in his first term."

How ironic that while Australia is finally abandoning any ties to the monarchy, we here in the US are fighting the advent of the imperial presidency.

We can only hope the backlash is as strong.

8

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[helonias]

They have joined the coalition of Jesus

[Camarosc35]

It is wonderful when democracy works for the will of the people and in those nations where their leaders' support of this failed Iraq war became highly unpopular they were ousted at election time. The beacon of democracy is about to have a presidential election where it is highly possible it will elect a candidate that would continue these policies in opposition to the overwhelming number of its citizens. How sadly ironic.