Sorry Numbat---Hitler was left-wing. Read http://www.oz-aware.com/leftistmind1.htm and then apologise...

Amen to ozaware and bozzie...
couldn't say it better myself

Actually Numbat..i can add to it.
I would not be 'bought' by a $600 family allowance boost.. nice as it was to receive it.
I was not 'panicked' into voting liberal because of the children overboard affair..

If anyone was, I would doubt their political intuition. The picture is MUCH bigger than those things.
Actually..I voted for some christian party :) which preferenced Libs

Raimond Gaita is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Kings College, University of London, and Professor of Philosophy as the Australian Catholic University. He says the following:

"Two days after the American elections I was at a conference at Dartmouth College, an Ivy league liberal studies college in New Hampshire. Some of the most distinguished academics from Harvard, Princeton, MIT and elsewhere attended. The topic was the future of liberal education. It was perhaps not surprising, therefore, that many of the people who attended the conference said that Bush's victory had sent them into "shock", "disheartened" and "bewildered" them, and made them "unsure about what to think about their country...On the last afternoon, a man commented on the claim that a liberal education was intended to make people think. If that is true, he asked, why are the beneficiaries of such an education so unanimous in their political opinions?

"I believe that the majority at the conference at the conference were right to be incredulous that a president who was incapable of presenting a coherent account of the reasons why he invaded Iraq and how this was linked to the war on terror could be re-elected, especially now that over 1000 American troops and (apparently) around 100,000 Iraqis have been killed. They were right to be dismayed that Bush's majority was in part secured by people, like Bush himself, who preach the sanctity of life, who apply the concept with ferocity to abortion and stem cell research, but who seem untroubled by the fact that the country went to war in a cloud-cuckoo land of conflicting justifications led by a government that cares so little for the people its soldiers have killed that it refuses to estimate their number..."

("Breach of Trust: Truth, Morality and Politics" by Raimond Gaita, Quarterly Essay No 16 2004)

NUMBAT....
I think that we should be able to come to some common ground on this issue.
Lets take 'mean spirited lying John Howard' for a start.

May I know at least one specific (and noteworthy) instance of his being 'mean spirited' and of 'lying'.

Then.. can you show me for example, a long serving past Labor leader, who never lied or misrepresented facts in order to promote the interests of his party ?

As Jesus said "He who is without sin, may cast the first stone"

LIBERALS IN SHOCK
Grace... doen't it make u ask 'why' ? Is it possible that these liberals are just plain out of touch with the American public ?
Perhaps the 'world' has moved on since they began to think they were the centre of the ideological universe ?
Perhaps many Americans are thinking more strategically ?
I don't know why I keep hearing 'they don't care about the Iraqi lives' nor do I know where this 100,000 keeps coming from, nor do I know 'which' Iraqis it is supposed to represent. I fail to see why people just pluck numbers out of the sky when they also admit that the coalition is not prepared to make an estimate. If they wont estimate, how can the other figure be accurate ?
Seems to raise more questions than it answers.
As for Iran.. wellll.. read their history .. see what they did to Jerusalem and Christians. It was far worse than the blood bath perpetrated by the Crusaders, but I only ever hear about the 'brutal crusades' rather than the Persian Genocide of Jerusalem earlier.
I draw all of our attention to the fact that it has only been 60 yrs since the last great world conflict. There have been periods of peace much LONGER than this, and I guess the same factors are at work now as were at work then.. 'human nature'
.. and now for the obligatory 'bible verse' :)

1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4.1-3)