It’s hard to watch CNN Europe because they really have to speak to their market, and boy does it show. Walter Rodgers (freshly returned from Baghdad) was just ecstatic after the first debate and was leading into his opinions with things like, “I don’t want to sound partisan but….” (cue laughter from the British anchor) followed by either a Bush putdown or praise for Kerry. It actually made me laugh it was so preposterous. I even spent some time searching CNN.com hoping to find transcripts, but no such luck.

“It looks like the government has stolen the election with scare tactics over interest rates. But why did the Australian public buy into these fears when top economists and Bearnie Frazer said that interest rates would be no different under Labor?

The answer is The Jews. Everyone knows the Jews run the international money market and that they would raise interest rates in order to punish Australia for voting Latham in.

Posted by: orgram at October 10, 2004 at 04:38 PM “

There was a nice healthy streak of anti-semitism in the anti-Howard campaign; read the embarrassing Margo Kingston’s columns on the Sydney Morning Herald web page. Nice to see it get slapped down so decisively…

Just kidding. It’s on page A34. The front page is reserved for the Afghanistan election “debacle” and some unhappy marines in Iraq.

Kerry’s sister went over there, and essentially campaigned against Howard (“You all are facing terrorist attacks since you supported Bush in Iraq”). So Australia is yet another US Ally that Kerry has insulted, and would have difficulty working with as President.

How effective will “Mr. Diplomacy”‘s pitch be, when he’s pissed off nearly all our allies?

Iraq was probably less of an issue than Labor would have liked it to be though. While the decision to be involved probably did not have anything close to majority support (probably not as unpopular as in Great Britain though) any negative inpact it might have had on the poll was offset by three things: the recognition that things were worse under Saddam (even if he did not have WMD); Bali occured before Iraq so there was a recognition that further attacks such as at Jakarta embassy could not entirely been blamed on Iraq (ie we were already a target) and a recognition that even if we were wrong to be involved initially we have to finish the job we started. Overall the economy however was a far bigger issue.

My guess is that it will not have the slightest impact on the U.S. election but a change here would have been given significant spin to try and hurt Bush.

Now its up to you guys to do the right thing in a few weeks time (on Melbourne Cup Day in fact)!

How about a Buy Aussie campaign, sort of a “pro-cott”? Start stocking up on the Shiraz, folks…

That was great!

But I figured out today what Kerry’s plan is.

Only two words too!

Blame Bush!