The former Dear Leader has received his reward – something a little more prestigious than the weirdly named awards from obscure right wing think tanks he spent some time trotting over to America last year to collect. John Howard will be awarded the “Medal of Freedom” by another soon to be former leader – George W. Bush. Apparently it’s “America’s highest civilian honour”, but I can’t read the name without thinking of all those wingnuts who have “blog[s] of freedom” or whatever.
Anyway, this might be an opportune time to link to a post from Possum – wherein he has crunched some polling data comparing the first year of Howard’s first term with the first year of Kevin Rudd’s. As is his wont, Possum has provided some nifty graphs. A comparison of their respective performances is worth filing away next time the “one term” stuff pops up in the media.
Howard should seek a presidential pardon while at the White House getting this nonsense award along with Blair, Cheney and other potential pardon seekers.
He is now in the same category as Danny Kaye, Donald Rumsfeld, Friedrich von Hayek and John Wayne.
How excitement for him!
They oughta be giving him the Barry Goldwater Award for services to wingnuttery.
A fitting award for the Australian PM who was second only to Barton, Deakin, Watson, Reid, Fisher, Cook, Hughes, Bruce, Scullin, Lyons, Page, Menzies, Fadden, Curtin, Forde, Chifley, Holt, McEwen, Gorton, McMahon, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating in competence.
Add Rudd to that list, too.
“How excitement for him!”
Howard lacks a sense of irony. And always did. It’s in the American tradition.
I hope he didn’t pay for a return flight. They can keep him.
wpd, what did Danny Kaye ever do wrong to deserve to be included in that list of reprobates?
And Doris Day – Hyancinth will either be pleased, or VERY Jealous
Danny Kaye, I’m assuming because oif his work for UNICEF, which is FAR more worthy than what the others got theirs for.
I think I read somewhere that Milton Friedman was a recipient as well.
Apparently part of the reason for the award to Howard is for the preservation of democracy/human freedoms in Australia.
Let’s see – anti-terror laws, Pacific Solution, Workchoices, the Patricks dispute,letting David Hicks languish in Guantanomo, breaching regulations for Centrelink, Aboriginal Intervention, etc, etc, – Oh, shit, I forgot – he’s getting this award from George W. Bush.
Blair is getting one and Rumsfeld has one already, they will look all very spiffy lined up in the dock in the Hague
The only other Australian who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom appears to be Nancy Wake.
Nancy Wake, intrepid resistance fighter, was known as “The White Mouse”.
Now Australia can boast both a mouse and a rat as PMoF honorees.
You also forgot Fraser, terangeree. Say what you like about him (and I have), at least he’s not a racist.
Katz @ 13,
Ratty = The White Rat?
Say what you like about Howard, you can’t deny he’s not racist, despite his own quite unbelieveable spluttering denials about his own racism.
Though I do note nobody on this thread has said H. isn’t racist.
If John Howard won a chook raffle you people begrudge him. The right side of politics has its share of nutters I know but it does seem the Left is far more universal in not just disagreeing with conservative politicians but truly loathing them.
The closest I come to it is having a very dim view indeed of Gough Whitlams economic “prowess” but I don’t feel the need to chuck personal slurs.
I don’t find myself having to smear and personally attack Rudd for instance.
It is something you guys do need to ask about yourselves and the scary part is LP is undoubtedly one of the most civil and cordial left orientated blogs. Its sharply downhill from here.
The rat nonsense says more about you guys than Howard and the vast majority of the time you guys are better than that but the moment Howard or Bush comes into it anything seems acceptable. Yes they made decisions diametrically opposed to your beliefs but that is not license to smear.
Kingsley, that’s not why people smear. It’s why those decisions were made.
If JH won a chook raffle, I don’t think anyone would care. This award represents mates rewarding mates. By almost any objective measure, the Iraq war – the main reason for this award – has been a complete and abject failure. To reward your friend is bad enough, to reward your friend for your shared mistake naturally provokes cynicism.
I believe it was Liberal Senator George Brandis who famously dubbed John Howard a rat.
I choose to use the term in a spirit of bi-partisanship.
If Mr Howard won a chook raffle, I’d be the first to congratulate him for his honest achievement.
Rodent, Katz, rodent.
*Now more like 20, of course.
I stand corrected.
Howard’s rodentine pedigree is longer and stronger than I thought.
As they say, I feel humbled by the opportunity to perpetuate a longstanding Liberal tradition.
Why come on so protective of Ratty, Kingsley@16?
He was never one to shy away from a lefty smear; any smear for that matter. Try this charming little baby for size as a notable ‘for instance’ and let us get on with talking ill of the dead now that a suitable time has well lapsed….
“If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.”
David (unrelated) Irving @ 14: How could I forget Big Mal? It wasn’t intended, so whack him in there as well.
Kingsley @ 16: I seem to recall that JWH’s nickname was “the rodent” — which all assume to be a rat. I always thought he was more hamsterish than rattish.
Seems the reason barack Obama and family are staying in a Washington hotel and not Bllair House, as is normal for most President-elects, is because – you guessed it – Bush has handed Blair House over to Ratty, Hyacinth and -wait for it – their entourage.
Even when he’s not our PM Ratty is still an international embarrassment.
btw, who TF is paying for the Howard ENTOURAGE!? Not us, I hope. The fact that he’s celebrating his war crimes and crimes against humanity at our expense is bad enough.
Does anybody know the Bush White House e-mail address – so we can send protest e-mails that Ratty is even getting this award. I would like to circulate it very very widely.
“btw, who TF is paying for the Howard ENTOURAGE!? Not us, I hope.”
Paul, Howard spends around $10,000 a week on staff and rent at taxpayer expense. His and the Hyacinth travel costs will be covered and no doubt his security entourage. My bet is he will cost us well over the half million this financial year what with all the dodgy awards he is picking up in America.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24703555-601,00.html
No, Wake killed actual fascists–Howard pandered to ‘fascists’ to win them away from Hanson.
Howard’s Back II
.
And this time he’s stopped trimming his eyebrows!!!!!!
.
Jeez Mark I didn’t know you wanted to write horror movie screenplays.
Kingsly, Howard would be reviled if he was a member of the Labor Party.
Howard makes Alexander Downer look like Conan the Barbarian.
Nancy Wake by today’s definition would be a terrorist or at the least an enemy combatant.
Nah…she’d be a civilian. You have to be male to be counted as a combatant.
What colour rat? How’s Transparent?
Whoever won the 2008 US presidential election, there was to be a new president.
John Howard couldn’t be expected to be aware that traditionally the incoming president stayed at Blair House prior to his investiture.
But Bush and his administration must have been aware of that convention.
Yet Bush used Howard to flout this convention.
Yet again, therefore, Howard has been the dupe of George Bush. This time as the middle finger of Bush’s parting bird flipping at a world that rejected him and his moronic schemes.
I felt sorry for Howard until I recalled that Howard embraced his relationship that that buffoon, and for too long profited from it.
I hope that both Howard and Bush enjoy their Wilderness Years.
No link but my understanding is Obama wanted to move into Blair House massively earlier than previous president elects and so o fcourse it had been booked for other guests.
In relation to rodent comments I hate to break it to you but it would be very easy for me and other conservatives to put forward policies decisions etc by the Left that we believe are equally odious and start calling Rudd etc rodents .
I’m afraid justifying insults and slurs on the basis that in your opinion Howards policies and decisions were immoral means you’ve failed to make an intelligent argument to justify your actions. Certainly say you believe Howard’s policy on such and such is immoral but calling him a “rat” says far more about you than Howard and displays a lack of faith in your own arguments if you are needing to resort to that.
We could argue the pro’s and cons of the GWOT and immigration policies to the cows come home. Just because you’ve decided you are right and conservative thought is wrong just doesn’t cut the mustard as licence to smear.
I again put it to you guys that as much as I disagree with most of what you say policy wise 99% of the time you rise above this type of behaviour surely it is not too hard to go that last 1% and eliminate this black mark altogether.
I just don’t believe Howard didn’t know Obama, like any other president-elect, was going to move into Blair House before the inauguration. We all know neither Howard nor his mate Bush have no time for Obama. Howard made that pretty clear when he was PM, by egregiously interfering in US domestic politics by virtually calling Obama a terrorist, something I’ve no doubt he was put up to by the Imbecile in the White House.
This latest Howardian display of hubris is not going down at all well in the US.
Tony Blair apparently had the good sense to knock back the offer of Blair House. But not that vainglorious ex-PM of ours, oh, no.
Not only were John Howards policy’s odious, he was dishonest and was caught out.
This man and I use that term loosely,even had Tony Staley the x president of the iliberal party hated his guts.It is sad, it took ten long years of suffering from this man before the Australian people finally woke up and dumped him.
Good riddance to the bastard.
Paul – as I said don’t have the links to back it up unfortunately but my understnding is the Pres elect usually moves a couple of days prior to inauguration ceremony not weeks so this is indeed accidental
Save your time Kingsley. Its bloody obvious the good ol’ boys couldn’t resist a parting kick at the uppity darkie.
It seems at the time Obama requested to move into Blair House, no other visitor had been booked (the details are in the exchange between Carlson and Olbermann).
Good point that with 119 rooms, Howard and Obama could have both stayed there without even noticing each other.
Marlene Dietrich got one of these for singing to the troops in World War II.
Look there’s minor fuss going on in the States about this.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/newshome/5250752
Surely, if Howard was a gracious man he’d pack his bags and check into a nice hotel.
Even Jon Stewart got some jokes in during The Daily Show. Howard has finally arrived!
Jeez Kingsley, if yer so worried about pointless invective detracting from observations about politics and culture, I can point you to many blogs where it’s far worse than here. Try Tim Blair’s comment threads for starters. No doubt you’ll be on there in a flash castigating other commentators for their sustained abuse of Rudd. Not. By the way, have you heard of the expression ‘concern troll’?
“Even Jon Stewart got some jokes in during The Daily Show. Howard has finally arrived!”
Or even Australia for that matter. I’ve spend quite a bit of time in the States over the last decade and unless it’s an hot new Aussie actress/model or US tourists taken by crocs on FNQ, you wouldn’t know from their media we even exist. They don’t know much at all about Australia and they just don’t care.
I bet even the doorman at Blair House is calling Howard “Mr Dundee”.
Indeed Nabs, and that would surely confuse ATO officials hot on the trail, but that doorman obviously couldn’t have set eyes on Hyacinth.
Pathetic really, the ongoing sycophantic efforts of Ratty towards the shattered remnants and so called luminaries of the GOP: booted out of office by his countrymen and losing his own seat-the ultimate FU for a PM-and there he is craving attention and sustenance like a rat with bubonic plague; carrying on like a pork chop; like some narcissistic 5 year old deprived of his favourite toy, ie the Australian polity.
We should be blizzarding Obama’s email to get him declared persona non grata by the end of January, but OTOH, we don’t really want him back do we?
(As with the UnReverend Falwell, if Howard ever had an enema, his remains could be buried in a matchbox.-[thanks for that one Hitch])
Nah, the doorman at Blair House would call Mr Howard “that short, cheap dude who keeps talking to me about some cricketeer called Don Bradley.”
Amazing! after eleven years of strenuous effort to put Australia up with A-list countries in the good old Us of A,
Ratty destroys it all for a one-night stay in a presidential palace. I can’t think of another Aussie, not even the occasional crime-boss, that so many Americans have told to get out of their country so quickly.
Howard led the liberation of the E Timorese. So I guess that makes him a “rodent” through and through. At least for those for whom Howard-hatred is a defining feature of their own political personality.
But of course, Howard’s only there for one night. Two days before the Inauguration. You reckon that’s accidental?
Even the President of Columbia, who is in office, btw, and is president of a country reputedly in the clutches of cocaine drug lords, and is probably receiving his medal for faking evidence about alleged (very alleged) Chavista terrorist supporters, had the good sense to knock back a room at Blair House.(Ratty and Blair are in good company – remember the non-existant WMDs?)
Seems like they’re all getting a medal for lying, so in a way, its very appropriate.
WTF were Ratty and Mirs. Ratty thinking? Did the little twerp really think he was so important he could upstage Obama’s Inauguration?
Oh, probably, but then we all know what he’s like
Only after being dragged kicking and screaming from his and Dolly’s Jakarta lobby position, mainly by Australian public demonstrations of anger against the violence of TNI and its proxies.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7659
(And when it was over Ratty tried to erase the memory of his and Dolly’s lies and cowardice with triumphalism and by having himself declared “deputy sheriff” of the US–somewhat reminiscent of “Flashman” that is.)
“Howard led the liberation of the E Timorese. So I guess that makes him a “rodent” through and through. At least for those for whom Howard-hatred is a defining feature of their own political personality.”
Of course it wouldn’t have anything to do with the resources found there would it.?
I have a definite recollection of the Howard Government doing over the East Timorese for their natural gas resources.According to recently released archives it was those same natural gas resources, btw, that persuded the Fraser Government to recognise Indonesian claims on East Timor.
“I have a definite recollection of the Howard Government doing over the East Timorese for their natural gas resources.According to recently released archives it was those same natural gas resources, btw, that persuded the Fraser Government to recognise Indonesian claims on East Timor.”
Correct.If Howard hadn’t been given the green light by the U.S. administration, we would have done F.A. Howards Kokoda, what a laugh. I will lay on my death bed and still cringe, when I think of that supercilious grin Howard has.There isn’t a word in the English language that fully describes this odious piece of work.
That he will be on the public teat and probably his family no doubt for the unforeseen future, is a scandal.
In the spirit of taseless and bitter leftist name calling, I see Howard as more ‘Les Patterson’ than Mr Dundee.
Obama most likely had a dim enough view of Australia and its appalling treatment of the indigenous population from the start. Pile onto that the Howard accusations of his terrorist affiliations and now the theft of his reasonably expected accomodation, for family, and you have our country off to a very bad start.
Indeed, the president elect may well, alternatively, dub our spluttering, sycophantic, roving diplomat, “Man of Steal”. We should, anyway, because he is clearly cleaning up the taxpayer, big time, at every opportunity.
Hehe. US Press tell ex-Rodent whatshisface to get a room.
Howard booking into the “Backpackers” would be social climbing.
joe2 @ 51,
Fair go. Les Patterson is funny.
Kingsley I don’t normally call Howard ‘the rodent’ or any other cute name. I loathe and despise him as an amoral, self-serving grub who committed our nation to a war of aggression and made us complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and the immiseration of millions of others, just to serve his own selfish interests. Howard based his career on dishonesty and systematic exploitation of the most unsavoury aspects of people’s characters. He is our very own epitomisation of the banality of evil.
My contempt is for the man and his motives, not his political decisions.
From LeftyE’s link
“Mr Howard has stressed that he is staying there for just one night.”
Even more reason, I would have thought, why he would (indeed should) have offered to move to a hotel when he became aware of it. The fact that he hasn’t…
So, what exactly do you think Xanana Gusmao did in 1999? Sell choc-ices on the beach at Dili?
Doing a quick google search most articles such as this
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1004502/latest-from-wire/
mention that the Obamas indeed have requested an EARLY acomodation at Blair House.
So we have a situation where Howard was properly offered accomodation at Blair House then the Obama’s request to move in weeks earlier than normal and its apparently all John Howard’s fault. It’s apparently even a conspiracy by Bush to insult Obama.
This is exactly what I mean some of you who are by and large pretty calm and collected ordinarily succumb to this sort of thinking whenever it involves Bush or Haward.
Some of you pointed out some nasty things get said about rudd at Tim Blairs. I’m sure sometimes they do, so what. How does that constitute licence to smear Howard?
Interesting that Mark has posts up on Gaza wishing both sides would see reason and plenty of people quite reasonably agreeing with him and yet we have this sort of mentality in relation to Howard and Bush at the same place.
To repeat a well known saying, Kingsley:
“Some of you pointed out some nasty things get said about rudd at Tim Blairs. I’m sure sometimes they do, so what”
So you implied that it was only the left that do that.
Keep it up Kingsley. If you achieve nothing else you’re posts have been making me laugh.
“Keep it up Kingsley. If you achieve nothing else you’re posts have been making me laugh.”
Ditto.
@ Kinsley
I don’t blame John Howard at all for this. We all know Janette would spank him if he tried to move to a common hotel.
Ken Lovell @ 55,
Couldn’t agree more.
Kingsley,
One of the reasons I like calling Howard Ratty is because it annoys RWDBs. To the point that when I called him that in a letter to the local paper some time ago one of Armidale’s better known RWDBs publicly remonstrated with me about it in the Armidale Mall. Now that’s what I call a successful agitation. My only objection to the term is it sometimes obscures all the disgusting things Howard did while PM.
“Fair go. Les Patterson is funny.”
True, Paul, but you have to admit that Howard is further developing the role of an excruciatingly embarrassing ambassador who splutters, sucks up and over-indulges. While its not funny, for the reasons Ken nails so well, he is certainly giving old Les a run for his money in the current cringeworthy stakes. Though Dolly is still in with an outside chance.
Kingsley tap-danced the following upon the board of keys:
Old chap, did you miss Shaun’s link? Here is the relevant part of the interview for you:
JWH was, apparently, the third on the list, after Blair House was offered to the other two recipients of the medal — Tony Blair and Alvaro Uribe. Blair is staying at the British Embassy, and Uribe also declined the offer of Blair House. Uribe’s political history is, to say the least, , interesting, with explicit links to an organization which the US State Department classes as a foreign terrorist group (they’re number 42 on the list).
But as I’m beginning to ride off on a tangent, I’ll stop at that.
Oh, yes, I readily admit all that, joe2. OMG, I’m getting nasty shivers up the spine the way one does when one hears creeaking chalk on a blackboard just thinking about the little turd.
I cannot believe that he & his are still trotting out the “nobody told John” defence – too funny (at least it is now that he’s out of office).
I can, boo. Its a reflex lie. He’s done it so many times that he probably no longer realises he’s doing it.
I’m with Dazza @62: going into baghdad streets would be way safer than getting between Hyacinth and the chance to be on the receiving end of some old fashioned new-idea-type Pomp and Circumstance: 119 rooms, that’s what I call a doll’s house to play dress ups in.
David Rowe gave us a puzzling and disturbing image of what the PM’s have to deal with.
According to the website Agmates Rural News, Australa’s favorite zokor is advising Barney Joyce to move to the House of Reps.
My view of JH is the same as Lovell@55’s.
Having said that, unpleasant as they are, they are only 2 people, and Blair House has 119 rooms. How come there wasn’t room for another 4 people?
But it’s Blair House for Zokor, Mrs Zokor, and entourage. At the Australian taxpayer’s expense, of course.