That is too good a line to be left on it’s blog.

Negative campaigning and image is part of the political landscape in Britian too.

Watching the announcement last night of Mr Blair’s cabinet reshuffle (yes, there is politics going on outside the USA!) I was struck forcefully by a single thought. All the talk was of Tony Blair reasserting his authority in reappointing the strongly Blairite Alan Milburn (read that profile to see how far New Labour have strayed from their socialist roots) and how this counted as a victory in his open secret warfare with Chancellor Gordon Brown. What nobody wondered was whether or not he was the right man for the job. After all, what does his competence matter? What will matter to Tony Blair at the next election is not how well his government has done, but how well his government looks.

If you take the time to read connexions post, take the time to click on Wood’s peice (Wood doesn’t have a way to link up) Richard’s rants are quite tame compared to Wood, who wields words with deadly accuracy. yes, there is good writing going on outside the USA…

Thing is, I’ve been watching the campaign trail with more interest than ever bofre, and from an outsider’s perspective, there’s a lot aboout the US campaign that interests and disturbs me.

One thing that has, in all honesty, been a great source of amazement to me for some years, and which this year struck me about both conferences is the frankly terrifying tendency on the part of partisans of both parties to cast the other side as evil.

You’ve got another political party, who, like you, have for the most part the best interests of their country at heart (only they wildly disagree in their methods of achieving this) and yet, rather than give these people the civility they deserve, you see them as the enemy, attribute to them all sorts of dirty tricks while being blind to the same dirty tricks pulled off by your own party.

And as Australians gear up for their election, the smarmy crassness of political opportunism is a bit much.

It seems to me to first of all be monumentally insensitive and inhuman to immediately frame this terrible attack in terms of its likely impact on domestic politics. Secondly, it seems ill-considered to suggest that these types of attacks could ever be rightfully considered in the context of domestic politics. While I don’t agree with all of it, I find myself returning to this article which appeared in yesterday’s age (speaking about the Beslan terrorists):

Three years after September 11, too many people have become experts at averting their eyes. If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible, targets for their rage.

Already today there are articles suggesting that our involvement in Iraq has made us a bigger target for terrorists. There are articles discussing whether this will improve or impair Howard’s chances at the polls.

And finally!!!!
Jeff Jarvis, picks up on a few other prominent US bloggers who are finally speaking up against the insane mud slinging in the US election.
I don’t know, nor do I give a hoot what party they belong too. What took them so long? Here is a taste of Jarvis on a roll.

The mudslinging continues and bloggers are complicit in the crime.

I was thinking of calling them Manchurian bloggers, for it seems as if some of them (pick your side) are hyp-no-tized to attack on command. In some cases, it’s quite out of character. They just can’t help themselves. They keep attacking. See mud. Must sling.

But that doesn’t quite capture it. It doesn’t grab the glee they have at hurling the dirt.

It’s all crap and they all know it but they’re talking crap rather than jobs or health care or Iraq or terrorism or education or anything that really matters. They’re adding nothing but nothing to the campaign.