Posts by Kyle Matthews
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On an happier note, McCain is surely toast now. Letterman tracks a huge lie as it unfolds.
Heh. Excuse me senator. You seem to have glued your pants around your ankles. Was that intentionally stupid or stupidly intentional?
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Those are both excellent points. Yet they didn't sustain that political damage just six weeks from a general election, did they?
I think a comparison between the smacking law change and support for WP also needs to consider the fact that politicians (often anyway) stand for parliament to change things.
You might be willing to take a hit on an issue with the public to make the law change. Advancing society and all that.
I can't see any benefit to match up to the hit of supporting WP. It's either a shocking choice this close to the election, or there's something we don't know.
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From Wikipedia (my emphasis):
The Shield holder at the end of each season is required to accept at least seven challenges for the following year. All home games during league play, but not during knockout playoffs, in the Air New Zealand Cup or Heartland Championship are automatic challenges. The remaining shield defences must be made up of challenges from unions in the other domestic competition. For example, since North Harbour, an Air New Zealand Cup team, held the Shield at the end of the 2006 Cup season despite losing their home quarter-final to Otago, they were forced to defend the Shield against Heartland Championship teams during the 2007 pre-season.
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For starters, you choose to pick on Japan, not North America despite the fact JAP are ranked hire than the US.
I'm not picking on anyone.
My comparison isn't between Japan and USA/Canada, it's between a potential Japanese franchise and existing franchises in the super system. Even if their team had the entire Japanese national team in it, it would still struggle against most Super 14 teams, and they'd catch a fair few poundings.
The situation would probably be worse for a North American team, but that really wasn't something that interested me.
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Oh, I don't know... I've long said that Helen Clark is an awesomely intelligent woman, but like a hell of a lot of awesomely intelligent people she chokes on the words "I was wrong..." And who among us, if we being perfectly honest, hasn't found ourselves on a self-inflicted hiding to nothing out of sheer bloody-mindedness?
Yeah, see I could see possible reasons for her being neutral etc, and struggling to come out against him.
But she, and Michael Cullen, have been supporting him in many ways, and attacking, in particular the privileges committee and the SFO. That's not struggling to say "I was wrong", that's making a definite choice to come out fighting for him. I can't see any advantage to the strategy. It will be a very interesting chapter in her memoirs if she reveals it.
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It really has been a sad state of affairs, and I hope NZ First get slapped at the ballot box severely.
I think Labour has played it badly as well, which is a shame. Helen Clark seems to be better at managing the dodgy stuff in her own party (or at least, she used to be good at it), than outside. I wonder if it'll come out at some stage why she's made the decisions that she has, I can't see any logic for her support of Winston Peters and her refusal to have even vague confidence in the Privileges Committee, Owen Glenn, and the SFO.
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I was too totally freaked to think that coherently.
Yes, I was thinking more of the crazy trucker rather than the scared shitless young person on the side of the road.
As in 'how do you do something that stupid and think of it as just a joke'?
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All rules are internal. Australia just relaxed theirs for overseas players (depending on the length of the player's contract. So if Japan said they would let 10 of the 15 starters be foreign then so be it.
Ah OK.
Assuming that it stayed that rules are only internal, it would be interesting to see how Japan approached it. For Japan to be competitive they'd need to bring in a fair number of foreigners. But on the other hand, it would be no good for their domestic competition if it didn't provide spaces for local players to move up into. Surely part of the reason for moving into Japan (hopefully it's not just all about money) is to improve the strength of Japanese rugby.
Could I cheer on George Smith or Nathan Sharpe if they were Chiefs? ... actually, yes I could.
I think you could, but not as much. I think our rugby has very strong nationalistic and identity ties with it. Partially because we play so much international/test rugby, which is the pinnacle of the sport. That's not necessarily the case in a lot of other sports (ice hockey, baseball, NFL, NRL league) that are franchise based - the competition that the franchise is in is the leading competition in the world.
You'd also be worried if half the super 14 locks were foreigners, what that meant for NZ rugby in the locking department (or whichever position).
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He let off a few shots, just over my head, laughed maniacally and drove away...
This thread is asking for Russell to start up a 'really fucked up things that happened to me when I was young' topic of the month.
Apart from anything else, hullo, truck, licence plate, police, sirens, "sir did you fire a shotgun at a young woman at the side of the road?"
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What, they're not secured on any property at all and the mortgagee has no income and no prospect of any?
I suspect that isn't the case and it's more that they're underperforming and are maybe worth 50-70% today and potentially more in the future.
Ah yes, you're probably correct there, they will have the properties. So maybe their $700 billion bailout will leave them with a $400 billion asset.
They are picking up the worst of the mortgages. So these will tend to be the ones where house values were massively inflated (the radio show talked about 300% increases over 7 years I think) due to a fake housing boom driven partially by the stupid mortgages, and where the owners have just walked away from the property and aren't able to be found anymore.
The government won't get the ones where the owners are struggling hard to pay off a mortgage that is too big for them - the companies will keep those ones if they've a reasonable chance of making it through.