Based on what I’ve read, Gillard seemed to be good at retail politics, but couldn’t make the leap to the national stage. She certainly didn’t inspire loyalty among the Labor MPs, and she messed up badly calling the election before she had actually accomplished anything.

Australia is in better shape than almost everyone else, but Labor doesn’t seem to be able to convince people to give them a shot at governing with a real majority.

It is a much faster ‘game’ in Australia than the US, almost the difference between handball and cricket.

OT: LOL Yeah Bryan… ) Been reading & watching news yesterday & today about Rudd & Gillard. It’s always highly amusing when all the old (mostly failed) politicians come out of the woodwork to voice their opinion (or when the reporters hunt them up). 😀

And just for the record… I said this would happen a just after Gillard and the puppet masters knifed Rudd, on this very blog if I’m not mistaken. 😉 My hope is that Rudd has learned a couple lessons whilst in limbo and will drastically improve his choices of Ministers and his management style. 😉 Labor had no choice though if they want to win the next election. It seems even the puppet masters know this. If Abbott wins, everyone is screwed, even them.

AFR had a nice article: Rudd’s revenge, Gillard gone

ABC News has full coverage (of course) Rudd Returns

It’s like he’s the Prodigal Son! I dunno… It’s gonna be tough to drag back the electorate, though Abbott is his own worst enemy, so unless Rudd screws up badly, he has a chance. Timing will be important, but he will have to convince Regional voters. But that only half the battle, they will have to win back the States and toss out the Lib State Gov’s during their next elections, this is where Labour has lost it over the last 6 years or so. Not a lot of point winning a Federal election when the States can tell him to drop dead and do their own thing for the most part. *shrug*

I guess we’ll see. 😉

Yeah… It’s gonna be interesting! 😀

As soon as I saw Total Information Awareness I knew things were headed this way. They said they stopped it, but that was BS. Rumsfeld was moving money around like crazy. Military installations couldn’t pay their utility bills while Congress was throwing billions at the DoD. Billions of dollars are unaccounted for under the ‘CEO White House’.

Badtux, when Senator Zero voted for retroactive immunity for the telcos, it was obvious he intended to continue what was going on. He just extended a minimal effort to get Congress to sign on as co-conspirators.

Kryten, in the sense that Government of the US once did build things, and those things lasted for decades of service, King would be considered wrong. Given that the government now contracts out everything, they are lucky if the pens work to sign the contracts.

OT: Kryten, I see where Mr Rudd has returned the knife to Ms Gillard. Your politics are much more interesting than ours.

I just watched the Pilot for a new TV series Under The Dome, (created by Stephen King) and it had the typical King jab’s at the USA. The one that made me laugh was:

Joe: What if the government built this thing?
Dale: I doubt it.
Joe: Why?
Dale: Because it works.

And people say King has no sense of humor, or knows anything about reality. 😉 😀

This is the sort of thing that Mack Sennett was noted for and a staple of early local TV on Saturday morning.

This is truly becoming a farce, and distracting from the real problems of what the US is doing to its citizens.

After I saw a guess in comments at Corrente, it struck me that sea air might be nice this time of year. Plenty of time to learn a new language and customs and not worrying about the rest of the world.

He could sail to a neutral country to be picked up for a flight to wherever he was going, and be out of the spotlight.

My guess is that the Wikileaks plane (yes, they have a plane!) is going to be spiriting off Mr. Snowden in the dead of night to someplace that has a direct flight to… well, somewhere else :).