Hard News: Pomp and Circumstance
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Week two of Craig jumping the shark over the NZ election. It's going to be an extenuating three years, friends.
"Excruciating", Giovanni. If I want to be insulted by surrealists, Messers Baiter, Oil and Justice do it so much better.
Stop gargling with venom and that might happen. Seriously, you really need to dial it back - you're looking more like an escapee from Kiwiblog as each day passes.
Mark: Take your own advice -- because that's right out of the Redbaiter book of passive-agressive bullshit. When I start threatening to come around your house and give you a good sorting out, you get to go there.
Folks, I thought the whole episode was rather a silly and over the top performance when Clark was just going about the mundane business of a transition of power. And I'm certainly not taking any hobgoblin pleasure in the idea of a fair number of staffers who are going to be looking for work at a less than ideal time.
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I thought the whole episode was rather a silly and over the top
You still haven't explained how walking down some steps and getting into a car is silly and over the top. Please be more specific about what you think HC is guilty of on this occasion. She sent NZ soldiers to fight in the Global War On Afghanistan. That would be worth plenty of criticism, IMO. But walking down some steps...ah, whatever.
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The difference I'd like to point out is Helen was popular and Nat leaders weren't as you know, and consequently left without choice.
[splutter]
Newsflash: She Just Lost An Election.
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You still haven't explained how walking down some steps and getting into a car is silly and over the top.
Stephen: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall every Nat staffer and the Press Gallery showing up to give Jenny Shipley a tear-stained standing O when she left to resign her warrants. It was a photo op, not a spontaneous outpouring of grief (which I'm sure others expressed privately), and I personally found it somewhat ridiculous. Others obviously beg to differ, but I get a little pissed off at Sofie snarking that I'm on some jihad against Clark.
Hazlitt has a rather nice definition of the diference between cant and hypocrisy: Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for. There was a little too much cant on display for my blood -- because I'm sure there's enormous and genuine respect for Clark among Labour caucus and staff, but not that much -- I'm sure it's just going to be another drop in the ocean once the House starts up again, that forum where a skinned knee is a mortal wound and a noisy fart is the Last Trump.
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Newsflash: She Just Lost An Election.
I don't understand why some of you right wingers are such bad winners. Or perhaps it hasn't sunk in yet. Nine years may be long enough for bad-losing habits to calcify. Perhaps a good dose of castor oil?
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Prime Ministers who left without choice:
Clark
Shipley
Bolger
Moore
Palmer
Lange (OK, quit not dumped, but hardly happy)
Muldoon(and from this point the memory's shaky, historians take over)
Back to the future, also leaving without choice:
Key (2010)
English (2011)
Goff (2020)
President Clark (dies in office, but still re-elected) -
"Excruciating", Giovanni.
Nah, I'll stand by that. Meaning 2 on ze deectionary.
a. To make thin or emaciated.
b. To reduce the strength of.It has a certain precision, I feel all extenuated right now.
Of course I'm also willing to take "boring".
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VW:
I don't normally respond to people who make anonymous posts, but anyway - Two things:
(a) I don't consider myself a winner because National won the election. Philosophically I may be on the conservative side of the spectrum, but I don't back a particular political party. For me that would be in the same category as incest and folk-dancing. And for the record I've voted all over the place over the years. Five different parties over eight elections.
(b) What was bad winner about pointing out Clark had just lost? Don't forget it was in response to a comment that she was popular and other leaders weren't. Which sounded like a bad case of denial. -
__The difference I'd like to point out is Helen was popular and Nat leaders weren't as you know, and consequently left without choice.__
[splutter]
Newsflash: She Just Lost An Election.
I think Sofie's point was that she was able to choose the timing of her own departure from the party leadership.
It is actually a wee while since a leader of either major party left without being rolled by his or her own, isn't it?
Frankly, if Key lasts nine years as Prime Minister, he's more than welcome to a send-off on the steps of Parliament. They can throw in morning tea, too.
So, no, I can't see anything wrong with it.
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For me that would be in the same category as incest and folk-dancing.
Thought provoking statement of the day...
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I don't normally respond to people who make anonymous posts
Yes, I regret the anonymity. Just a bit of paranoia at the beginning. Jan Farr is my name. I tried to change it, but can't do it. Russell? Is there a way?
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[splutter]
Newsflash: She Just Lost An Election.
Yes, the Labour Party did loose the election but Helen has resigned her job which technically is leaving by choice and in this case ,leaving the office where she worked. Plus I also glimpsed some news re ,the Key Cabinet and if he ever wanted a photo op for his MPs it would have been nice to see some of them but hey at least there will be footage of the man while he's away eh?
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Oh And what Russell said with so much more eloquence than myself. :)
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I don't consider myself a winner because National won the election. Philosophically I may be on the conservative side of the spectrum, but I don't back a particular political party. For me that would be in the same category as incest and folk-dancing.
Eww... I actually think we all won yesterday, living as we do in a country where we changed our government without riots in the streets, a military coup, litigation or an international diplomatic incident. Or all of the above. Now, who's looking forward to seeing John Key lose his APEC cherry at the traditional funny shirt perp walk?
Prime Ministers who left without choice
Simon: The nice thing about living in a parliamentary democracy is that we get to choose when our Prime Ministers sling their hooks -- though we don't automatically have an election if they die, get rolled or resign in office, but I can't see away around that unless we dump the Westminster system entirely. Clark got to choose when she quit the Labour Party leadership, (and I'm the last to say her timing wasn't exquisite) but the Premiership was not hers to relinquish.
And, Verbwrangle, that's not being a sore winner. That's a simple statement of fact -- just as it's an equally factual state she wouldn't have been resigning her warrants at all if Key failed to form a minority government with guaranteed supply and confidence and she could.
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I think the answer Craig, is that it looks like you are the only one who thought it was OTT.
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I think the answer Craig, is that it looks like you are the only one who thought it was OTT.
Yes, and there are parts of the domestic blogisphere where I'm the only person who doesn't think Clark is a Marxist dyke of limitless malevolence. And the world continues spinning on regardless. :)
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Yes, and there are parts of the domestic blogisphere where I'm the only person who doesn't think Clark is a Marxist dyke of limitless malevolence.
Yes, but those people are all morons. I'm not sure you'd say that about PASers.
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But "gargling with venom" is an inspired phrase nonetheless.. :)
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But "gargling with venom" is an inspired phrase nonetheless.. :)
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week
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Not walking down any steps, then..
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. . . a cheap and silly photo op.
Not really. That'd be more in the vein of the hapless Geoffrey Palmer's playing his cornet from the roof of the Beehive, with Paul Holmes tagging along behind like an organ grinder's monkey. As an attempt to showcase Geoffrey's funky side it was a disaster, and because it supposedly bore the stamp of Helen's approval it gave the impression of someone hopelessly out of touch with popular feeling.
Of course Helen went on to confound the doubters, including me. But after nine years she dares to leave by the front entrance? The horror, the horror . . .
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Did Palmer seriously do that? Lordy.
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That'd be more in the vein of the hapless Geoffrey Palmer's playing his cornet from the roof of the Beehive, with Paul Holmes tagging along behind like an organ grinder's monkey
hell, I'd forgotten that. Does it still exist? If so, surely YouTube beckons.
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Did Palmer seriously do that? Lordy.
Apparently he allowed himself to be persuaded to do so. Seems it was a skill he'd acquired in his high school brass band days. Trying to pass him off as some kind of closet Miles Davis had about as much cred as Paul Goldsmith's hagiographic attempt to portray Don Brash as some kind of burn-the-floor ballroom dancer.
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Don Brash as some kind of burn-the-floor ballroom dancer
Heck, youtube beckons there too..
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