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THEY OPPOSE THE WAR, SO WHY DON’T PEOPLE LOVE THEM?
John Kerry plunges:
Free Fall Guy comes in dead last in poll of top pols’ popularity.
Kim Beazley dives:
Voter satisfaction with Kim Beazley’s leadership has slumped to its lowest level for eight months …
These guys should try another line of work. Like, for example, work.
I’m just not a fan of their deadpan humour. All those mixed up jokes and wrong name stuff is just so university. Let me know when they get some new material… Politicians you say? Well I’ll be!
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 11 28 at 03:29 AM • permalinkOooh what a suprise, the SAS man who criticized the government has been in discussion with the labour party about joining for a few months.
He has been pre selected for a seat here in WA.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200611/s1799585.htmApparently Kimbo knew nothing about it….
Still its better than Wilkie joining the greens I suppose.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 11 28 at 03:59 AM • permalink“Kevin
RuddockRudd and Julia Gillard are being touted as the “dream team”. I am not making this up. The ABC this morning referred to them as such.Gillard with her severe commisar of the collective hairdo, minimum makeup, dressed by the KGB - well, as visually unacceptable to the punter as anybody else you could name. And the voice. Let’s not go there. Bill Leak in yesterday’s The Australian described her visage as like a ‘steak knife’.
Now to Pixie Rudd. Does the word ‘bland’ about cover it?
Kev the foreign affairs tyro, the economics novice, one of the great sayers-of-nothing in out time. Mummbler and mutterer extraordinaire… I know Howard is bland as cheddar cheese too, but he’s a policy powerhouse and has one giant advantage over Rudd.Rudd, because of the arcane machinations of the ALP machine, is forced to try to appeal to two differing and at times, competing electoral bases. The inner city leftoid trendoids and secondly, the blue collar ‘workers’ as the ACTU still amusingly refer to people who do things rather than just sit around and think things.
These two constituencies tear Labor apart and Rudd or any other ALP leader has to grapple with it. As Beasley has shown by his constant dithering and fence-sitting, it represents an almost insoluble conundrum. Howard capitalises on this mightily and I would expect the PM, in his wettest of dreams, to crave the arrival of the Dream Team on Labor’s centre stage. Beasley has been great. The Dream Team will be better. Game On!”.
(—Alan of Sydney over at Bolta)If the ALP want another three years of opposition - and let’s face it, history shows they are averse to any policy or other kind of change - they clearly need to listen closely to the sheilvoyants: ie Chris Sheil, Alan Ramsey, Professor Quiggin, Traceee or anyone who contributes letters or articles to Fairfax newspapers.
BTW: Beazley’s popularity seems to be roughly the same as his belt size in inches. If he is at all serious about being PM, he needs to get on down to KFC and upsize his chances.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 11 28 at 05:22 AM • permalinkKerry needs a haircut, Bomber needs a policy or two and Gillard needs a partner
Posted by surfmaster on 2006 11 28 at 05:36 AM • permalinkTHEY OPPOSE THE WAR, SO WHY DON’T PEOPLE LOVE THEM?
I’ve always thought that idiots are repugnant, myself. But that’s just me.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 11 28 at 10:51 AM • permalinkPaco BTW-I ordered the WWI books that you recommended on another thread and picked them up at the Post Office today (The Two-Headed Eagle, The Emperor’s Coloured Coat and A Sailor of Austria-couldn’t afford the other one). I am looking forward to reading them over my Christmas break. Thanks for the tip.
#36: Thanks, 91B30! I’m going to pick that one up shortly.
In case you haven’t already read them, you may also be interested in George MacDonald Fraser’s fictionalized stories based on his experiences in North Africa after WWII with (I believe) a Scottish unit. The series features the exploits of Private McAuslan, and was published in three volumes of paperbacks, and also in a one-volume omnibus edition (entitled, I think, The Complete McAuslan). Some of these stories made me literally laugh out loud - which was kind of embarrassing, since I read many of them on crowded trains - and Fraser adds an epilogue in which he recounts running into his old commanding officer many years after the books’ publication, and the shrewd old bird correctly identified the real-life models of practically all the characters (I think he even correctly surmised that McAuslan was a combination of two of the men in his unit). And there is also Fraser’s memoirs of his experiences in Burma in WWII, Quartered Safe Out Here, which is one of the best book of war memoirs I’ve ever read.
Paco, I agree. The McAuslan stories have got to be some of the funniest books I have ever read. Fraser served as an officer in the Gordon Highlanders in North Africa and Scotland straight after the War. The individual books are ‘The General Danced at Dawn’, ‘McAuslan in the Rough’ and ‘The Sheikh and the Dustbin’. I haven’t read Quartered Safe Out Here, but will have a look for it. Thanks for the tip.
Posted by AlphaMikeFoxtrot on 2006 11 28 at 03:09 PM • permalinkPaco-thanks once again. If I recall correctly you posted about Fraser in that previous thread, except about his “Flashman” series (which I have to admit that I haven’t read either).
I’m a sucker for historical fiction especially military stories. I adored both the “Aubrey/Maturin” series and the “Hornblower” books. I also liked the “Sharpe’s” books, even though they were very formulaic.
These guys should try another line of work. Like, for example, work.
To paraphrase Neal Boortz speaking about Maxine Waters (the witch from California who wants to outlaw SUV’s), if these peoaple couldn’t get elected to public office, they would be on food stamps.
Well, except for John Kerry, who can always count on the Mrs.
The McAuslan stories are great, as is most of the Fraser oeuvre. The late, lamented friend of mine from college who recommended them got me hooked, even though as a typical college bonehead with no sense of history a lot of it was lost on me then.
But I just got the latest Flashman, and Fraser (who in his Hollywood History of the World claims no political affiliation beyond the opposite of whomever he was covering as a young reporter) goes into a towering rage against modern governments that lie their way into war (I’m paraphrasing). Gee, whom could he mean? You mean no government has EVER lied to its people before? And THIS was a LIE? Gosh!
So I haven’t even gotten to Sir Harry’s latest; the intro cheezed me off too much.
91830,
The books about Otto Prohaska should be a good antidote to the jollity of the Christmas season. I read the first two, and seldom have I ever read such downer books.The Flashman series is good too. They purport to be the memoirs of a Victorian period officer. Flashman is a total coward, but becomes reconciled to defending himslef in later years. Royal Flash was made into a movie, which has the quintessential Flashman line: “Never hit a man when he’s down. He might get up again.”
In Flashman at the Charge our hero muses on the Crimean War (quoted from memory). “I was as close as anyone to the conduct of the war in the summer of ‘54 and I can truthfully tell you that the official view was ‘Well, well, here we are. at war with Russia beside France to protect Turkey. Very good. What should we do? Better attack Russia eh? (pause) Big place, ain’t it?’”
Another good Fraser book is The Steel Bonnets about the reivers of the Anglo-Scottish border. This is a work of history not fiction, although a lot of the stuff reads like fiction. Very readable and interesting. Think Iraq is a mess? Read about the Border. For centuries the only thing that could control the reivers was the Scottish King coming through with an army accompanied by the hangman, and a similar effort on the English side. That didn’t happen very often.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2006 11 28 at 10:51 PM • permalink#45 Michael: There is, of course, a sense of a world vanishing, never to reappear, in the Prohaska series, but I do not think the books are “downers”, in the sense of being relentlessly depressing. There is much humor in the books, even approaching farce on occasion, and the solid history worked into the novels . . . well, as the tiresome phrase has it, “it is what it is”. Another fascinating aspect of the novels - which doesn’t at all touch upon the “mood”, whether humorous or tragic - is the admirable scholarship Biggins displayed in pulling together the facts concerning the arcane technology involved in actually operating the old U-Boats.
Depressing? I simply didn’t find them so. Now, if you really want to talk depressing, what about The Cypresses Believe in God - which, nonetheless, is an excellent novel about the Spanish Civil War. Or perhaps Man’s Fate? Or - my favorite depressing novel - Darkness at Noon?
#47: One last Fraser note before Andrea releases the bees. Mr. American is an interesting novel, and a bit of a departure, for Fraser, in that it is not really historical fiction, but the theme is fascinating: an American prospector, having struck it rich, moves to England, where he is followed by desperados (or was it just one desperado?) from the states, who try to kill him. The action takes place in the years leading up to WWI, and the last chapter includes a hilarious cameo appearance by retired general, Harry Flashman.
I heartily second the reading of anything by Fraser (his history of the riding clans— cattle rustlers in armor—of the Border Marches is unbeatable), but Flashman is also superb political and military history recounted from the view of the scruffiest (and funniest) protagonist imaginable: he was, after all, stolen whole from “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” where he was the villain.
I wasn’t that pleased with Mr. American, PacMaster; it was good, but just too long and lacking in the trademark Fraser wit. Black Ajax was better, a historical novel with a mostly real-life cast. But I actually think it suffered by the intrusion of Harry Flashman’s old man, one of the few fictional characters but, as I recall, key to the plot. This disturbed me since the rest of it seemed as accurate a recreation as you could ask in a novel.
Pleas to apologize: Do NOT follow my link above; it wasn’t a hijack link when I first posted it (maybe because it’s hard to hijack a Mac; I don’t know).
All it was, was a fairly-tame photo of a young man who looks astonishingly like Kerry during his Vietnam days, naked in a swimming pool with a SE Asian female.
I’m very sorry if I caused anyone a lot of pop-up nuisances.
(otoh, I’m not all that sure that anyone even reads my comments here….) :-\
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What ungrateful proles we are.