[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

Excel­lant arti­cle about the morass in Ger­many by Dan Coats who served as U.S. Ambas­sador to Ger­many from 2001–2005 and U.S. Sen­a­tor from 1989–1999.

With a quick find and replace it could almost be an arti­cle about New Zealand.

A lit­tle over week ago, observers on both sides of the Atlantic and both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum were call­ing Sep­tem­ber 18 a cross­roads for Ger­many: Either Ger­many would choose the path of free-market reform or con­tinue down the path of status-quo sta­tism. But the observers were wrong. Rather than giv­ing Angela Merkel a man­date to change course or Ger­hard Schroeder a man­date to stay the course, the Ger­man elec­torate sim­ply froze in the mid­dle of the inter­sec­tion. And that’s a dan­ger­ous place to be, as any­one who has tried to cross a busy Berlin street knows.

On the polit­i­cal front, it is evi­dent now more than ever that Ger­mans may talk about want­ing reform but they do not want to endure the change needed to bring about reform. For a major­ity of Ger­mans change rep­re­sents not an oppor­tu­nity but a threat—and it’s enough to par­a­lyze a coun­try. To choose the path of reform is to take a risk on the unknown, a fright­en­ing prospect for many Ger­mans. It’s fright­en­ing because Ger­many has lost its con­fi­dence, its sense that tomor­row can be bet­ter than today.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

No need for plas­tic surgery you just need a good air brusher like Glenn Feron.

PC brought this to my atten­tion so I thought I would look through. I was gob­s­macked by the pure skill and genius of this guy.

My per­sonal favourite is this one. And that is the before shot.

I searched and searched, but appar­rently he hasn’t worked on Mrs Peter Davis.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

This from NBR Blog;

The Care­taker gov­ern­ment is not sit­ting on its hands. Late last week it announced a $1 mil­lion hand­out to Pales­tini­ans with­out requir­ing them to give up ter­ror­ism. Mr Clin­ton had this to say at the Global Ini­tia­tive men­tioned above: “When we signed the peace agree­ment 12 years ago, the very next day I had a few hun­dred Arab-American and Jewish-American busi­ness peo­ple together in the [White House] and asked them to invest in Gaza and the West Bank. And they — a lot of them said — stood up and said they would. Then the first time a ter­ror­ist bomb went off, they didn’t. It didn’t mat­ter they were Jewish-American or Arab-American. They didn’t feel they could risk their money.” Mr Clin­ton was double-crossed by Yasser Arafat. Mr Goff still hasn’t learned from his late friend. Ariel Sharon, whom Mr Goff didn’t want to meet, knows bet­ter.

This seri­ous shit….giving these guys a mil­lion bucks when we only have a care­taker government.

Is this the first install­ment for keep­ing the Greens happy out­side of a coalition?

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

No, not Helen…. Unfortunately.

Donna Awa­tere Huata was today sen­tenced to 2yrs, 9mths in jail for steal­ing from a Maori trust set up to help under-privileged children.

Her hus­band Wi Huata was sen­tenced to 2yrs, which he can apply for home detention.

The cou­ple was found guilty of four joint charges of fraud and one joint charge of attempt­ing to per­vert the course of justice.

Awa­tere Huata was found guilty of one indi­vid­ual charge of fraud and not guilty of another fraud charge.

The Seri­ous Fraud Office said the duo stole $82,000 from the Gov­ern­ment funded Pipi Foun­da­tion and then tried to cover up their crime by alter­ing the books and ask­ing peo­ple to lie for them.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

From Rod­ney Hide’s blog

I spoke to a prin­ci­pal of a South Auck­land school yes­ter­day who had had fam­i­lies turn up with let­ters from Taito say­ing please enrol the fol­low­ing children.

Of course, the school con­sid­ered it highly inap­pro­pri­ate to receive such a let­ter of instruc­tion from an MP and Min­is­ter. And on check­ing it was dis­cov­ered the chil­dren had no enti­tle­ment to school­ing in New Zealand.

The fam­i­lies were hugely dis­ap­pointed on being told their chil­dren were not to be enrolled. They believed that their let­ter from Taito was like gold.

The inquiry needs to be widened. Why was Taito Phillip Field writ­ing these let­ters, just how many of them were sent to schools in South Auck­land, and were some of these chil­dren actu­ally enrolled?

It’s no won­der that Helen Clark is try­ing to keep a tight lid on the Taito Phillip Field story. My won­der is why Win­ston Peters and Peter Dunne are let­ting her.

One won­ders if they had to pay some sort of “ser­vice” for the letter.

UPDATE: New­sTalkZB is head­lin­ing the lat­est revelations.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

the Police and LTNZ for wast­ing money on a lame horse called Dont­drinkand­drive.

A horse recruited to deliver an anti-drink-driving mes­sage has been injured and may never make it to the start­ing gate.

The horse was lame, Land Trans­port New Zealand spokes­woman Jan­ice Roden­burg said yesterday.

It beg­gars belief what else will be revealed as a com­plete waste of tax­pay­ers money this year.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Sep­tem­bers win­ners of the Cupid Stunt award.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

El Jefe today released two doc­u­ments from his friends the painters, linked below.

Inter­est­ing that the sec­ond state­ment men­tions that she is “a mem­ber of the Labour Party Thai Branch in Man­gere. Mr Field has a good rela­tion­ship with [their] group”

This doc­u­ment some­what con­firms that the Labour Party was well aware of El Jefe’s dodgey deal­ings with Thai over­stay­ers. With paid up mem­bers of the party involved, nobody can claim that the Labour hier­ar­chy was obliv­i­ous to everything.

State­ment by Phong­phat Chaikhunpol

State­ment by Jinda Thaivichit

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

I was just polled by Roy Mor­gan, here is the list of ques­tions as best as I can read my scrawl. my com­ments of the ques­tion are in []

1. Mar­i­juana – should be legal or illegal?
2. Reli­gion in Schools once a week – Yes or No?
3. Am I reg­is­tered to vote?
4. Do I vote, some­times, most times or always? [I almost said “early and often”, the Labour party mantra]
5. Which party would I give my elec­torate vote to? [Strange this one]
6. Which party would I give my Party Vote to?
7. Am I bet­ter off or worse off than last year? [com­pared to what? Men­tally, phys­i­cally, finan­cially?, dumb question]
8. Do I think I will be bet­ter off or worse off next year? [see 7 above]
9. Do I think NZ will expe­ri­ence good times or bad times in the next 12 months?
10. Do I think NZ will expe­ri­ence good times or bad times in the next 5 years?
11. Is it a good time or bad time to buy house­hold items?
12. Do I smoke fac­tory made cigarettes?
13. Do I smoke roll your own cigarettes?

Then there were a whole bunch of demo­graphic ques­tions re: Age, income etc and finally the last two questions;

1. Is NZ going in the right or wrong direction?
2. If an elec­tion was held tomor­row would I vote for NZ First, Labour or National? [Yup, only three choices]

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

If you want to under­stand the Left, the best place to start is with an under­stand­ing of hys­te­ria. Lead­ing left­ists either use hys­te­ria as a polit­i­cal tac­tic or are actu­ally hysterics.

Take almost any sub­ject the Left dis­cusses and you will find hysteria.

So says Den­nis Prager at RealClearPolitics.

He goes on to say the fol­low­ing about;

The war in Iraq: It is not enough for left­ist oppo­nents of the war to argue that the war is a mis­take, was ini­ti­ated due to faulty intel­li­gence, or is being poorly pros­e­cuted. Rather they charge that Pres­i­dent Bush lied, that the war was waged for Hal­libur­ton, and that Amer­ica is engaged in a crim­i­nal and impe­ri­al­ist enter­prise. Each charge is a form of hysteria.

Risks to health: Not every­one who believes the hys­ter­i­cal claims of dan­ger made about sec­ond­hand smoke, baby for­mula, dodge­ball or Bex­tra is on the Left. But the Left leads the coun­try in hys­te­ria over dan­gers to health. That is why left­ist orga­ni­za­tions are gen­er­ally inca­pable of merely say­ing that some­thing is unhealthy. The dan­ger must be described as the killer of hun­dreds of thou­sands and often be ascribed to some mur­der­ous cor­po­rate conspiracy.

Envi­ron­ment: More peo­ple may be attacked by aard­varks in any given year than visit the remote and frozen region of Alaska known as the Arc­tic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). It is the home, how­ever, of vast oil reserves and many cari­bou. Good peo­ple can dif­fer on whether or not to drill for oil there. But the rhetoric of the Left is hys­ter­i­cal. Lis­ten­ing to left­ist orga­ni­za­tions one would think that drilling would bring no ben­e­fit to Amer­ica and would ren­der the cari­bou vir­tu­ally extinct. None of this is true. It is all drama.

Like­wise there is largely hys­te­ria over global warm­ing and the charge that man — espe­cially Homo Amer­i­canus — is the cause of it. The great num­ber of sci­en­tists who claim that we are in a nor­mal warm­ing period or in no major weather change at all are ignored. Only the most hys­ter­i­cal sce­nar­ios are offered by the Left. Wit­ness the rea­sons given for Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina. Yet even The New York Times reported that sci­en­tists are vir­tu­ally unan­i­mous in deny­ing that the hur­ri­cane has any­thing to do with global warming.

Racism: There is no worse charge than racism. Act­ing hate­fully toward peo­ple because of their skin color is among the most vile acts a per­son can engage in. Yet the Left throws that charge around as if it were the essence of the Amer­i­can peo­ple (which, come to think of it, is what many on the Left believe). Most of the time, how­ever, the charge of racism — such as when it is directed at oppo­nents of race-based affir­ma­tive action — is just another exam­ple of hysteria.

Chris­tian­ity: Most on the Left really believe that this coun­try is on the verge of a theoc­racy because George W. Bush is an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, because the words “under God” are still in the Pledge of Alle­giance, and because most Amer­i­cans don’t think mar­riage ought to be redefined.

There are more exam­ples, but these are the ones most read­ily iden­ti­fi­able to New Zealanders.

Finally he con­cludes with

No event is free of left­ist hys­te­ria. On the third day after Kat­rina, civil rights activist Ran­dall Robin­son reported that blacks in New Orleans were resort­ing to can­ni­bal­ism. Indeed, most of the news media cov­er­age bor­dered on the hys­ter­i­cal. Not to men­tion the hys­ter­i­cal pre­dic­tions of 10,000-plus dead in New Orleans. [Real death toll is 1086, updated by Whaleoil]

None of this is to deny that the Right also gets hys­ter­i­cal. Some right-wing reac­tions to immi­gra­tion and Terry Schi­avo pro­vide such examples.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

Speak­ing of dodgey MPs…

Which other south-auckland MP has some­what of a fetish for fre­quent dom­i­na­trix therapy???

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

It’s all like a domino effect – once one skele­ton falls out of the closet, so do the rest.

Its seems around a year ago, El Jefe was at the cen­tre of an alle­ga­tion of vote-rigging in the 2004 Local Body Elec­tions, and was also accused of being in breach of the local elec­toral act with a leaflet he sent out.

Dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, it appears that El Jefe sent out a leaflet to Man­gere res­i­dents urg­ing them to vote for local Labour coun­cil can­di­dates. It is alleged that the leaflet did not con­tain the appro­pri­ate autho­riza­tion and was also sent with tax-payer funded envelopes and stamps.

Local Govt Min­is­ter, and El Jefe friend, Chris Carter was asked to act on the issue, but was of course silent and would not com­ment.

Police were also asked to inves­ti­gate but, as expected, noth­ing as been heard since. I won­der why?

Watch this space…

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

Leighton Smith has posted a topic on his web­site titled “All the signs of full-blown Mother Earthism”

This is a bril­liant arti­cle about why spend­ing tril­lions of dol­lars to pos­si­bly lower the planet’s tem­per­a­ture is madness.

Selected quotes are;

MANY Aus­tralians are wor­ried, rightly, by the pos­si­bil­ity that avian flu might infect the nation. They should be just as con­cerned about the dis­ease of Mother Earth­ism which has reached our shores, and is now approach­ing epi­demic status.

One of its most vir­u­lent strains is called Hansenism, after James Hansen, the high-profile NASA sci­en­tist who started the global warm­ing scare cam­paign run­ning back in 1988.

These dis­eases attack per­sons who ven­ture pub­lic opin­ions on mat­ters of envi­ron­men­tal concern.

and

The biggest ser­pent in this Gar­den of Eden is alleged to be car­bon diox­ide, and we must give up our fix. Why? Because it’s caus­ing global warm­ing, silly. And so it is.

The Earth’s com­fort­able (for us) aver­age tem­per­a­ture of about 15C is main­tained that way by the atmos­phere. The pres­ence of small amounts of water vapour, car­bon diox­ide, methane and nitrous oxide – the “green­house gases” which absorb Earth’s out­go­ing heat radi­a­tion and re-emit some of it down­wards – causes warm­ing. Most of the total warm­ing of 33 degrees is caused by water vapour (more than 30 degrees), car­bon diox­ide con­tribut­ing only about 1.2 degrees worth. And of the car­bon diox­ide in the atmos­phere, just 3per cent comes from human sources, which equates to a warm­ing effect of about four-hundredths of a degree.

Against this, com­puter mod­els sug­gest that a fur­ther human-caused increase in tem­per­a­ture of per­haps two-tenths of a degree might be averted.

To cru­cify the world’s indus­tri­alised economies by spend­ing tril­lions of dol­lars for a pos­si­ble tem­per­a­ture drop of 0.20 defies com­pre­hen­sion. The hair­shirt pol­icy exem­pli­fied by the Kyoto accord is a clas­sic non-solution to a non-problem.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

Looks like Mort­gage inter­est rates on on the move….upwards.

And here was I think­ing that only tax cuts would cause this to happen…oh silly me.

ANZ Bank econ­o­mists said yes­ter­day they expected the Reserve Bank to lift offi­cial inter­est rates from 6.75 per cent to 7 per cent on Octo­ber 27, with a “mate­r­ial risk” of another move in December.

The Reserve Bank has been warn­ing of higher inter­est rates for most of the year but has not moved rates up.

“Now there is almost no escap­ing what they need to do,” ANZ National Bank chief econ­o­mist John McDer­mott said.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

[Imported from Whale Oil Beef Hooked on Blogger]

Over in Aus­tralia Julia Gillard, who would one day like to lead the ALP, has out­lined a new Labor vision that includes tax cuts, mov­ing away from “wel­farism” and encour­ag­ing a civil society.

Launch­ing a book on the Labor Party, Ms Gillard urged her party to put the national inter­est ahead of sec­tional inter­ests to become rel­e­vant to all Australians.

Well, well, well, three holes in the ground, A Labor polit­i­can who sees some sense.

For “those who aspire to move beyond wel­fare to work, a cut in tax is not just as good a way of increas­ing a breadwinner’s take-home pay as a rise in wages, it is a bet­ter way”, she said.

Good words that Labour in New Zealand would do well to heed.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]