John Howard was, for whatever reason, what seemed to be a slavish follower of George Bush.

Read this essay called Bad, Worse, Worst to get one person's view on what is wrong with Bush and the American Presidency.

What is interesting about it is the concept that Bush wants government programs to fail so that they can be privatized. To me that is one of the legacies of the Howard government in Australia. Let's hope that under a new government this will not continue.

Here is a sample of the essay:

    A government program that actually and effectively serves the people is an intolerable thing to George, because that is the single best argument against privatization. If we know anything at all after all these gruesome years, it is that Bush simply will not tolerate the existence of any fact or idea that might disrupt the spinning, clanking, gear-grinding clockwork inside that craven pretzel-dented bone-sack that wobbles above his spindled, slumping shoulders. If he doesn't already believe in something, or if something contradicts the popsicle-stick infrastructure of his beliefs, whatever it is can basically go to Hell, because it isn't going anywhere else.

    He vetoed those bills because they were going to work, period, end of file.

Slattery IT had an event tonight at the Sydney Museum. (Great venue by the way!)

After the panel discussion, which was excellent, I went across the road to have a drink with the people who had attended including the panelists.

I got talking to a group - not surprisingly women - and was quite amazed at the vehement support in the group that I talked to for either the Greens or for Labour. Not a bit of support for John Howard in the group.

The media advertising black out starts tonight on paid ads by the parties on mainstream traditional media. So for the next couple of days I am expecting to see every banner on the web being a political ad, and a lot of video.

Roll on Saturday and the election!

And by the way if you want to see something really good watch Bob Hawke explain some home truths about the Howard years. I was talking to a lady at the panel discussion who reads this blog from time to time about my politics. We both agreed: You might as well be clear about where you stand. With information technology the powers that be will find out anyway. My views are very clear. They are not about left or right. They are about right and wrong. And Howard has led this country to a place where the nation's brand equity has been squandered; where our morality is now in tatters, and where the country has been allowed to become corrupt in its abiding interest in self.

I remember when I was about 14 years old in South Africa. A friend's parents took us to see a movie that was about the lack of morality associated with racism. I don't remember the name of the movie, but I remember that it had an effect on me.

Howard couldn't even say, "Sorry" to the aboriginal people of Australia. I am sure he means well. But then that's what Pinochet would have said too, probably.

I am not particularly enthusiastic about Rudd being a fundamentalist Christian either. But change is what we have before us right now. We need to embrace that and take the opportunity.

If Labour gets in, with the Senate balance of power held by the Greens, we have a short window of time available to us in this country to see change take place. If Labour doesn't take the opportunity to maximise the potential of that change they will let us all down. Hopefully it will be change that doesn't take the country further into hock to America.

Facebook is a brilliant way to virally distribute memes.

I was invited to install an app called How Should I Vote

It was created by Get Up and is really a totally brilliant product for everyone in Australia going into the election.

What it does is to filter your beliefs via a number of questions and then matches your answers with the various candidates in your electorate.

The result is that you are provided with your optimum match which means that you get past the clutter of ad spend and rhetoric and get to what would be best for the country according to you!

This is the sort of thing that gives you hope for democracy. And it mush drive the major parties totally mad.

Last night I went to a 50th birthday party.

I got talking to someone about the forthcoming election. This was a guy who was a small businessman who made it very clear that anyone who voted for anyone other than the John Howard candidate in the election next week had to have rocks in his head. He said "why would you vote out the people who have given us the best economic conditions we have ever had?"

Here is the problem with  that concept:

The best economic conditions have come from an commodities boom caused by demand from China for raw materials. We have a lot of raw materials in Australia, so we have done well from selling them to China. The reality is that we have done very little, if any, value-adding to those raw materials, since we dont have any industry in Australia worth a cracker other than the resources sector and retail.

Earlier in the day I went to the APRA AGM.

I was talking to someone after the meeting and mentioned that I was writing another book. The person asked if there was another crisis coming that everybody needed to be warned about (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). I wrote a book about y2k that was a best seller, which people often remember....

I told him that, no I am not writing about another crisis, but, yes there are crises that the country faces.

And this is the other part of the first mentioned conversation that is the problem:

People in this country are still talking about the Liberals delivering this great economic miracle and how we just need to keep standing under the waterfall of profits flowing from John Howard and Peter Costello's masterful management.

But the truth is that during the period of boom, this government has been in Climate Change denial and has not addressed the issues of failing water supply to the farmers of this country.

Without water farmers cant grow feed for livestock or for people. Food shortages mean increased prices. Increased prices mean inflationary pressure.

The reality is that the Howard government has sat on its hands for the last twelve years doing nothing whatsoever about the important strategic issues that face this country. And for the last six of them they have focused on being compliant toadies to the Bush White House.

And what has that given us?

A war in Iraq to help secure oil for America, and not for Australia. A decrease in personal liberty for every Australian, and increased potential for terrorism at home.

Oh, and a continuing and growing greed among the population to get more for me.

Hopefully next Saturday there will be a change of government in Australia, and hopefully when that happens the newcomers will bring new integrity to the role. We certainly need it.

I want to be fair and balanced on this blog, just like Fox News is...

So here is a video with another point of view...

I have been noticing that a lot of new user generated political videos about the Australian election are being added day by day.

I know that there are a bunch of websites aggregating videos about the election, like www.federalelection.com.au . But they are doing the straightlaced counting of the 'official' videos. What I think would be interesting is to be tagging the user created as pro or anti one party or the other and counting both the number of such videos and the cumulative count of the videos.

Here is one video I just came across that I thought was pretty interesting....

This guy is just wonderful.

Enjoy this video.