In the Let­ters to the Edi­tor of the Herald.

“If Dick Hub­bard allows the Queen Street Mas­sacre I will make it my per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity to see him removed from office”

Leighton Smith

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Nor­mally I don’t com­ment on Auck­land local pol­i­tics unless it is Manukau coz that is where I live. I didn’t “do” Auck­land as that was Aaron B.’s domain. How­ever with him gone I guess it lets me have a lit­tle say.

I have watched with inter­est the saga of the Queen Street mas­sacre. today on the dead­wood ver­sion of the Her­ald I finally got sniff of what is up with this lit­tle saga.

Dick is a….well a dick. He has no spine for any­thing at all, he des­per­ately wants to be the Mayor he told us all he would be. Clearly he is a lightweight.

his coun­cil are a bunch of back stab­bing leftie featherbedders.

Feath­erbed­ders I hear you ask….yep featherbedders.

It seems that the “inde­pen­dent” arborist (Gor­don Ikin) asked to report on the trees the coucil wants destroyed is also the head of the com­pany that won the ten­der to replace the trees….Hmmm if it smells like fish, tastes like fiah it prob­a­bly is fish.

We also find that a truly inde­pen­dent arborist and native tree expert says there is noth­ing wrong with the trees and that the so called “inde­pen­dent” arborist is actu­ally full of shit.

I also have to ask that if Plane trees are so “evil” and should be replaced by poxy cab­bage trees and nikaus why hasn’t the coun­cil started the death sen­tence on all the trees up at the uni­ver­sity or indeed the plane trees in the streets sur­round­ing the dopey mayor’s house….and another thing when is he going to chop down the big wal­nut tree in his front yard.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

I’m in Rotove­gas for the next two weeks, this is the first Xmas in 15 years our whole fam­ily has been together.

My brother works for Hyatt and this is the first Xmas in that time he has been back in NZ.

So far the score is Trout 0 – Wha­le­oil 2

Pic­tures tomor­row. Oh yeah and dial up sucks, but I heard the lodge down the road has a wire­less net­work, mmmm might have to see how secure it is.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Retail­ers have announced what those on the right have pre­dicted all along.

Retail­ers say Gov­ern­ment plans to boost the min­i­mum wage to $12 an hour would cost them $760 mil­lion, just as interest-rate rises begin to bite.

The Retail­ers Asso­ci­a­tion said yes­ter­day that retail con­fi­dence and con­sumer demand were flat­ten­ing because of uncer­tainty about the volatil­ity of real estate and the effect on the econ­omy of offi­cial cash rate rises.

“We have voiced our con­cern to the Gov­ern­ment that this slow­down, if left uncor­rected, will ulti­mately come as a cost to the sec­tor and sub­se­quently have detri­men­tal impact on the country’s social and eco­nomic devel­op­ment,” the asso­ci­a­tion said.

The Reserve Bank has increased the cash rate nine times since the begin­ning of 2004 in a bid to reel in con­sumer spend­ing and put the brakes on ris­ing house prices.

What that really means for all you sim­ple­ton left­ies out there is this J O B  L O S S E S.

Hav­ing a min­i­mum wage actu­ally prices some folk out of the market. 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Accord­ing to Ras­mussen, 64% of Amer­i­cans believe the National Secu­rity Agency (NSA) should be allowed to inter­cept tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions between ter­ror­ism sus­pects in other coun­tries and peo­ple liv­ing in the United States. Only 23% disagree.

Ha, Ha, Ha, ha…..oh stop the ribs are hurting….Ha, ha, Ha…..no more please…..

How on earth could the Democ­rats screw up their read­ing of the peo­ple so badly…oh wait, I know they read their own press releases.

looks like talks of impeach­ment could fade now, espe­cially as Bush would win hands down and deliver those high brow right thinkers on the left another dev­as­tat­ing defeat at the hands of the stu­pid­est pres­i­dent the world has known.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Jack Kelly com­ments on the hyp­ocrites that were loudly reported by the worlds media at the recent con­fer­ence in Mon­treal, espe­cially those crit­i­cal of the US and Bush.

Here are the hyp­ocrites in no par­tic­u­lar order.

Cana­dian Prime Min­is­ter Paul Mar­tin who in his address, took a poke at the United States for refus­ing to sign on to the Kyoto Accord.

The Facts: Since 1990, the base year for Kyoto cal­cu­la­tions, Cana­dian emis­sions of so-called “green­house gases” have increased 24.2 per­cent, while those of the United States have increased by only 13.3 percent.

Slick Willie who declared Pres­i­dent Bush was “flat wrong” that the Kyoto tar­gets would dam­age the U.S. economy.

Only thing is he for­get to tell del­e­gats that, as pres­i­dent, he had described the Kyoto accord as a “work in progress,” and refused to sub­mit it to the sen­ate for rat­i­fi­ca­tion. This was chiefly because in July of 1997, the sen­ate had voted, 95–0, for a res­o­lu­tion say­ing the U.S. should not sign the treaty if it would dam­age our econ­omy, or if it excluded devel­op­ing nations from emis­sions restrictions.

A 1998 study by the Energy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion esti­mated try­ing to meet the Kyoto stan­dards would cost the U.S. econ­omy about $400 bil­lion a year, mostly by hugely increas­ing the cost to con­sumers of elec­tric­ity, home heat­ing oil, and gasoline.

Toronto Star colum­nist Richard Gwyn summs it up with his com­ment on Paul Mar­tins position.

“We’ve done noth­ing about cli­mate change and about global warm­ing except talk. For us to now preach at oth­ers is pure hypocrisy.”

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Michelle Malkin via Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics gets stuck into the NY Times. Mean­while Sir Humphreys reports a major slump in their share price.

Decem­ber 28, 2005
The New York Times vs. Amer­ica
By Michelle Malkin

2005 was a ban­ner year for the nation’s Idio­tar­ian news­pa­per of record, The New York Times.

What’s “Idio­tar­ian”? Pop­u­lar war­blog­ger Charles John­son of Lit­tle Green Foot­balls (littlegreenfootballs.com) and Paja­mas Media (pajamasmedia.com) coined the use­ful term to describe stub­born blame-America ide­o­logues hope­lessly stuck in a pre-September 11 mind­set. The Times cru­saded tire­lessly this year for the cut-and-run, troop-undermining, Bush-bashing, reality-denying cause. Let’s review:

On July 6, Army reserve offi­cer Phillip Carter authored a free­lance op-ed for the Times call­ing on Pres­i­dent Bush to pro­mote mil­i­tary recruit­ment efforts. The next day, the paper was forced to admit that one of its edi­tors had inserted mis­lead­ing lan­guage into the piece against Carter’s wishes. The “correction”:

“The Op-Ed page in some copies yes­ter­day car­ried an incor­rect ver­sion of an arti­cle about mil­i­tary recruit­ment. The writer, an Army reserve offi­cer, did not say, ‘Imag­ine my sur­prise the other day when I received orders to report to Fort Camp­bell, Ky., next Sun­day,’ nor did he char­ac­ter­ize his recent call-up to active duty as the pre­cur­sor to a ’sur­prise tour of Iraq.’ That lan­guage was added by an edi­tor and was to have been removed before the arti­cle was pub­lished. Because of a pro­duc­tion error, it was not. The Times regrets the error.”

Carter told Times ombuds­man Byron Calame: “Those were not words I would have said. It left the impres­sion that I was con­scripted” when, in fact, Carter vol­un­teered for active duty.

Funny how the “pro­duc­tion errors” of the Times’ truth doc­tors always put the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the war in the worst light.

Not con­tent to med­dle with the words of a liv­ing sol­dier, the Times pub­lished a dis­grace­ful dis­tor­tion of a fallen soldier’s last words on Oct. 26. As reported in this col­umn and in the news pages of the New York Post, Times reporter James Dao unapolo­get­i­cally abused the late Cor­po­ral Jef­frey B. Starr, whose let­ter to his girl­friend in case of death in Iraq was selec­tively edited to con­vey a bogus sense of “fatal­ism” for a mas­sive piece mark­ing the anti-war movement’s “2,000 dead in Iraq” cam­paign. The Times added insult to injury by ignor­ing Pres­i­dent Bush’s trib­ute to Starr on Nov. 30 dur­ing his Naval Acad­emy speech defend­ing the war in Iraq.

After Starr died, Bush said, “a let­ter was found on his lap­top com­puter. Here’s what he wrote. He said, ‘[I]f you’re read­ing this, then I’ve died in Iraq. I don’t regret going. Every­body dies, but few get to do it for some­thing as impor­tant as free­dom. It may seem con­fus­ing why we’re in Iraq; it’s not to me. I’m here help­ing these peo­ple so they can live the way we live, not to have to worry about tyrants or vicious dic­ta­tors. Oth­ers have died for my free­dom; now this is my mark.’”

Stir­ring words deemed unfit to print by the Times.

The Times did find space to print the year’s most insipid op-ed piece by para­noid Har­vard stu­dent Fatina Abdrab­boh, who praised Al Gore for over­com­ing America’s allegedly ram­pant anti-Muslim bias by pick­ing up her car keys, which she dropped while run­ning on a gym treadmill:

” … Mr. Gore’s act rep­re­sented all that I yearned for — accep­tance and acknowl­edg­ment.… I left the gym with a renewed sense of spirit, reas­sured that I belong to Amer­ica and that Amer­ica belongs to me.”

I kid you not.

In June, Debra Burlingame, sis­ter of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, pilot of downed Amer­i­can Air­lines Flight 77, blew the whis­tle on plans by civil lib­er­ties zealots to turn Ground Zero in New York into a Blame Amer­ica mon­u­ment. On July 29, the Times edi­to­r­ial page, stocked with lib­er­als who snort and stamp when­ever their patri­o­tism is ques­tioned, slammed Burlingame and her sup­port­ers at Take Back the Memo­r­ial as “un-American” — for exer­cis­ing their free speech rights.

Yes, “un-American.” This from a news­pa­per that smeared female inter­roga­tors at Guan­tanamo Bay as “sex work­ers,” sym­pa­thet­i­cally por­trayed mil­i­tary desert­ers as “un-volunteers,” apol­o­gized for ter­ror sus­pects and ille­gal aliens at every turn, enabled the Bush Derange­ment Syndrome-driven cru­sade of the lying Joe Wil­son, and reck­lessly endan­gered national secu­rity by pub­lish­ing ille­gally obtained infor­ma­tion about clas­si­fied coun­tert­er­ror­ism programs.

So, which side is The New York Times on? Let 2005 go down as the year the Gray Lady wrapped her­self per­ma­nently in a White Flag.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Aus­tralian media mag­nate Kerry Packer has died.

Packer, 68, was Australia’s rich­est man and chair­man of Pub­lish­ing and Broad­cast­ing Limited.

His death was announced on the Nine tele­vi­sion net­work, which is owned by PBL.

The TV sta­tion quoted a state­ment from Mr Packer’s fam­ily as say­ing “Mrs Kerry Packer and her chil­dren James and Gre­tel sadly report the pass­ing last evening of her hus­band and their father Kerry. He died peace­fully at home with his fam­ily at his bedside.”

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

‘Unscrupu­lous’ Kiwi hits Canada 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Some bro­ken arse (judg­ing by the car) has been dip­ping his wick some­where the mis­sus found out that wasn’t her.

Hat Tip: Gen­er­a­tion XY 

 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

At our fam­ily Christ­mas eve get together tonight my sis­ter related a lit­tle story about a friend of hers who picked up a chick one night out partying.

After a late night par­ty­ing, they climbed into a cab for the ride back to his place.

Upon arriv­ing con­tin­ued the action that began in the cab and finally moved to the bedroom.

What with a busy night drink­ing and danc­ing the gent con­cerned needed a break and went to the bathroom.

After per­form­ing his ablu­tions he re-entered the bed­room to find his cho­sen lady, chick, skank com­pletely naked on the bed on all fours look­ing over her shoul­der at him and say­ing “Juss Chuck it in Bro” in her best South Auck­land accent.

Now I don’t know about you that would prob­a­bly dead set give me a Mr Floppy and I would prob­a­bly bolt for the door.

Mr Nice-Guy how­ever faced with such in invi­ta­tion just couldn’t resist and did indeed “Juss Chuck it in”.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

The Wai­t­angi Tri­bunal has found that the gov­ern­ment has breached the Treaty of Wai­t­angi in its deal­ing with Te Wananga o Aotearoa.

Of course the Tri­bunal is renowned for dopey lop-sided judge­ments, and this has all the hall­marks of being another one.

In its report released today the tri­bunal says the Crown broke its treaty oblig­a­tions in sev­eral areas.

It had failed to com­plete the part­ner­ship agree­ment and its attempts to restrict the range of courses taught at the wananga was based on “an unduly lim­ited con­cep­tion” of the wananga’s nature that went against statu­tory def­i­n­i­tions in the Edu­ca­tion Act. 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

I always used to think Social Work­ers were kind car­ing souls that helps those most in need…

It seems I must have been wrong, because the Social Work­ers at CYFS have just proved them­selves to be a greedy bunch that will let abused kids go unat­tended to over the Xmas break.

After recently being offered an 11% pay increase, CYFS staff are con­tin­u­ing with indus­trial action in the pur­suit of a 20% increase. Even their union sec­re­tary has labelled this as stupid.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Which Manukau City Coun­cil­lor was sacked from their pre­vi­ous job last year for dis­hon­esty and delib­er­ately fal­si­fy­ing com­pany invoices?

I won­der??? Hmmmm? Which one?

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

New National MP Jacqui Dean has launched a peti­tion call­ing for tighter restric­tions on party pills. Whilst I can see where she might be com­ing from, and can see how it might be a pop­u­lar move, I’m not quite sure the answer lies in tighter restrictions.

Party Pills don’t always pro­duce good results or the legal “high” that users expect. In fact, sev­eral of my friends have com­mented that party pills have worse side effects than the “real stuff”, and there is cer­tainly evi­dence that the pills can some­times cause adverse effects and has hos­pi­tilised what might seem like a lot of peo­ple. But then so does alcohol…

The age for pur­chas­ing party pills is set at 18, but the point Jacqui Dean appears to be mak­ing is that they are still too widely avail­able. With this I would agree with per­haps lim­it­ing them to out­lets with liquor licences and (if not already in law) increase any fines/deterrant in line with that imposed for alco­hol sales.

But if Jacqui Dean is sug­gest­ing ban­ning party pills alto­gether, then I will have to dis­agree with her on there. The rea­son being that there has to be a cer­tain level of per­sonal choice involved where if a per­son wants to put some­thing down there throat that my have neg­a­tive effects, then that is their choice and they have to live with the con­se­quences. The dif­fer­ence between party pills and some­thing like P is that party pills don’t result in users going on wild rages and killing peo­ple. They are also a cheaper and safer means of keep­ing peo­ple away from the pill’s class A broth­ers and sisters.

Good on Jacqui though for tak­ing on a cause which is impor­tant to her and is a con­cern of con­stiuents. At the very least, a review of the party pills sit­u­a­tion will not hurt anyone.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]