Posts by Russell Brown
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I don't think the picture of Peters at the Karaka sales is a winner.
Dammit, you may well be right. The TVNZ story says Peters "denied" being at Karaka in 2006, but there appears to be no actual statement from him saying that, just that he didn't meet Glenn there that year, but in 2007. Guyon may have got ahead of himself.
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Letting people take deductions for donations like these undermine the tax base, and in a massively undemocratic way. Are they even charities? Debatable, if you ask me.
We have that here too. Bob McCoskrie insists that Family First is a charity, not a political pressure group. I for one, do not believe him.
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That is the one big thing McCain has going for him, the possibility that he will make a serious attempt to cut back out of control federal spending and corrupting earmarks (both of which have accelerated since the Dems won Congress in 2006).
I guess everyone entitled to faith, but I'm fairly sure the facts don't support the claim of earmarks exploding since 2006. They certainly increased during the period of Republican control of Congress -- from 4000 annually to 15,000.
But while the same offenders on both sides of the House continue to work the system, this NYT story said that the Democrat House last year reduced the number of earmarks by 50% and cut the total cost of pork. The whole system still seems lunatic and borderline corrupt to me.
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Yes I want Obama to win but wouldn't it be nice to have a speech that wasn't pandering to what Americans want - that doesn't have to tick the boxes, that could dare to be angry.
But then all the right-wingers would say that you didn't love your country enough.
As James has noted many of Michelle's stump speeches were far more hard-nosed, and appealed to the economic grievances of (often) poor, black audiences.
As far as I can tell, the "downright mean" line doesn't come from an actual transcript, but from this New Yorker profile, whose author followed her around the campaign trail. The author makes this observation:
Of Michelle Obama’s husband succeeds in garnering the Democratic nomination and then in winning the general election in November, she will be not only the first black First Lady of the United States but also one of the youngest since Jackie Kennedy. Yet, for a potential revolutionary, Michelle Obama is deeply conventional. She exudes a nostalgia, invoking the innocence and order of the past, as much as her husband beckons to a liberating future. Listening to her speeches, with their longing for a lost, spit-shine world, one could sometimes mistake her, were it not for the emphasis on social justice, for a law-and-order Republican.
It's a mature analysis of who she might be, as apposed to the infantile "she hates her country!" characterisation of the winger commentators who have done so much to infantalise political thought in America in the past couple of decades.
She also says:
“It’s not just about politics; it’s TV,” she says, of our collective decay. And, wistfully: “The life I had growing up seems so much more simple.”
Also, her favourite music is Steve Wonder (which explains the playout music) and the Brady Bunch crack wasn't just for laughs. Apparently she actually does have a think for vintage family sitcoms.
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his just in: Tariana Turia dances jig.
Ruling out is fun. Sticking to it is the hard part. It's worth noting that John Key has gone rather quiet about Roger Douglas, who he ruled out even more emphatically. So that's two down already. Who's left? Presumably Hone Harawira could now publicly fart on the flag if he felt so inclined, there's no way Key is going for the "ruled out" trifecta.
Wise, you are.
See:
And, last week:
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Why did Winston say on One News tonight that he was not at the 2006 Karaka Yearling Sales (and therefore could not have met with Owen Glenn) when this photo clearly puts him there?
Getty Images? Who'd expect a fly-by-night outfit like that to now exactly when and where one of its photos was taken?
Seriously, I think that's going to go down as a Blog Epic Win.
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For those that haven't seen Michelle's speech you can see them all on silverlight.net and also get a look at Clinton's speech today on same site.
Well, there's a Fail right off the bat: the "View Now" button is broken in Safari.
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Here's the Hillary speech:
TPM has a digest of the Obama endorsements in it.
Meanwhile, in the bizarro world of Fox News, William Kristol declares it a "shockingly minimal" endorsement of Obama:
I'm not sure that these people actually believe what they're saying. I presume they're hoping their audience does.
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That was exuberantly unequivocal of him just now with Mary Wilson.
Totally. I paused in the act of putting out the recycling to hear the end.
She did well in asking a question that required an unequivocal answer, it must be said.
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I believe the latest count is ten houses on eight properties.
I bet that if he traded them in for two hotels he'd get a lot less grief.
Gold.
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