Good News, Bad News Time

I’m back. Had a great time.

And things have happened over the holiday. Some good, some bad. Let’s start with the good. Sarkozy stared down the strikers in France and won. Chriac must really feel like a EUnuch now.

In France, a country with a tradition of violent mob eruptions dating back at least to its revolution, the street is the ultimate ballot box.

So when its transportation and energy workers struck, costing the French economy $4 billion-plus a week, some thought it might be the end of Sarko’s ability to govern. Surely, they thought, he’d have to bend to the unions’ will, wouldn’t he?

But they underestimated Sarko’s resolve. Nine days into the strike, Monsieur le President forced the unions to back down. And in so doing, he has earned what American hip-hop artists call “street cred.”

On Friday, Sarkozy vowed to go ahead with economic reforms that may help end France’s long economic slide into irrelevance. “I have no intention to stop the reform movement, no intention to slow it down, no intention to forget my promises,” he said. “I made commitments. They will be kept.”

Those phrases echo those made by both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher when they faced similar union-made problems — in Reagan’s case, with air traffic controllers; in Thatcher’s, with the Marxist-led coal miners. Both stuck to their guns and won. Now Sarko’s done the same.

France really needed Sarkozy. He just might be the man to save it from its downward spiral. Australia isn’t so lucky. Now for the bad news.

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.

Rudd has named global warming as his top priority, and his signing of the Kyoto Protocol will leave the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it.

So, they want to sign the worthless Kyoto Accords which achieve nothing except hurt your own economy. No signatory nation has ever met its goals, by the way. Like AGW, it’s just a scam. And they want to pull out of Iraq at a time when it’s stabilizing. Well, gee, kind of a pointless exercise. But that’s what the left is good for. Watch them turn the Aussie Economy around…into the crapper, ala Jimmy Carter. Hopefully the Aussies won’t have to put up with too much BS from these clowns.

Any politicians who make global warming their #1 priority obviously aren’t too concerned with doing anything useful. They must have gotten tips on effective leading from Ray Nagin.

But some things in the next few weeks may hold promise.  Hugo Chavez is holding a referendum vote and he is losing his lead. Of course, that makes him want to threaten voters. This is what you get when a leftist gets in power.  A nut job who wants to be president for life. (see Robert Mugabe). Let’s hope the people of Venezuela manage to vote this creep out before he solidifies his power.

UPDATE: Bush beat the Australians and is removing way more troops than they are from Iraq. They only have about a 1,000 troops there.  So Rudd’s making a rather theatrical gesture by removing them.

Hud,

The whole of Australia voted for change.  We all have to vote here, and it wasn’t based entirely on Climate Change or Iraq.  In fact, the latter had very little to do with the result.  This election was about leadership, and the people wanted a new direction for the country.

The Howard government introduced some new and very unwelcome labor laws which, along with the leadership issues (he was to step down after 18 months, and the replacement wasn’t such a favourite of the Aussie public), was the main reason he lost the gig.

I know Kyoto has its problems, and the Australia Labor Party’s (ALP) environmental policy has too. But in general there wasn’t a lot of difference between the two parties policies for this election. 

The ALP may be more left than the Howard’s Liberal Party, but much like the US, we’ve fallen into the unfortunate de facto two party system where, when it comes down to it, they’ll sell out to appease the status quo, and become much like one another. Central-right, central-left, whatever.

Nonetheless, don’t pass judgement on our new government based on first glance.

Posted by  on  11/25  at  05:12 AM

Thanks. I’ll keep an eye on things. I just get tired of the shrill rhetoric from some of the Aussie press. And the climate change stuff taking center stage, makes them seem frivolous.

Posted by  on  11/25  at  08:58 AM

I hope it doesn’t come down to killing fields in Venezuela….

Posted by Macker  on  11/25  at  08:25 PM
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