Posts by Tom Semmens
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Yes, I would prefer Obama to McCain to be greeting the Aliens in his capacity as POTW. One thing that fascinates me about all this is the vastly improved performance of the Russian army after in debacle in Chechneya. The Georgians obviously thought the Russians wouldn't intervene, and if they did they would be as bumbling as they were in the 1990's.
Clearly, the vast mineral and energy wealth of Russia is flowing into it's military. The Russians are showing some combat finesse, with their powerful artillery and complete command of the air routing the Georgians. looking at the TV imagery, the shots of georgian Armour camoflaged and hiding under trees was so deja-vu. powerfully bring to mind those grainy black and white WWII pictures of heavily camflaged German tanks in Normandy, their crews fearfully scanning the skys for Allied fighter-bombers.
It takes a particularly jaw-dropping stupidity to take on a resurgent big power who is spoiling for a fight, and to do it without an airforce of your own nearly seventy years after it was shown you can't fight a war without an airforce.
Anyway, Russia is back, and it looks more like the Russia of the Tsars, with the sort of expansionist foreign policy that was constantly being checked by the British Empire, than the fear-driven policy of the Soviets.
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Don't be so thick Mr. Ranapia. The 90 days probation period is the sort of thing a sexually predatory male's wet dreams are made of. Its all ABOUT entrenching the absolute power of the boss.
"You know I can fire you without giving reason, don't you?"
Do you really believe that line won't be used to sexually exploit vulnerable women who've already been told they must work primarily as pennance? -
Take a moment to mentally combine this policy with the 90 day probation period.
If National win the election it'll be a matter of months before the media will have the first horror stories of vulnerable solo mum's being threatened with being summarily fired and losing their DPB if they don't reciprocate the bosses advances.
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True to my word, I am refusing to watch the Berlin games of our times. Not that I am missing much by the sound of things, I have a shrewd idea the commentator who called the opening ceremony a militarised Disneyland meeting corporatised communism may have been on the money.
And everyone I know spent all weekend online bitching about McBeth and Quinn, a constant complaining surely soon to be replaced soon with the ritual wailing as our athletes fail to win the number of medals our absurdly over-inflating media have led the vox pops to believe is our right.
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The key to surviving - enjoying even - a wedding is to recognise you are involved in an anthropological event of the ages that is far, far bigger than you are, so just go with the flow. I just go all Jane Austen for the night whilst retaining my critical faculties and trying to work which of the girls are single.
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Actually I/S I don't really think it is particularly nice to secretly record people. But we live in the digital age, where everyone owns a MP3 recorder and the cameras are everywhere. In a wider context then it seems to me it is interesting that this has exploded the day after Russell posted about the assumption of privacy on the internet with the trademe business. I would have thought Lockie and Bill would have realised that in these digital times even a mobile phone can record conversations very well indeed. A technological peril rears it head again then.
But like most technological perils, there is a simple human solution - As Helen Clark said today, the best way to not have secretly taped conversations released in the media is to say in private what you say in public.
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John Key's response is interesting. It seems to me people who are recruited into politics from autocratic or technocratic backgrounds underrate the skill set of the politician. They are not used to having their word or their agenda questioned, and beneath the smooth exterior seems to lurk a corporate authoritarian, who gets angry when impertinent peons go off the coporate message.
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Eight posts already from Craig trying to protect his beloved Tories?
Wow, it must be serious.
No one knows who made the recordings. Not very nice, but thats real-politik for grown ups. We are talking about two tribes going to war over who runs the country, and the prize is to high for anyone to seriously believe the discourse can be carried out like a polite disagreement over God at the vicar's tea party. Anyone who thinks it has not always been so should look up what happened to Colin Moyle.
So it is a bit rich for a party whose main online cyphers (kiwiblog and whaleoil) spend their time encouraging the most disgusting language and abuse toward the person of Helen Clark to get precious over being secretly recorded.
In the race to the bottom, National is at least a big a sinner as sinned against.
The resson these tapes resonate is simple. National has attempted to inoculate any issue with bland and wishy washy "trust us" statements so as to win the treasury benches. This raises legitimate suspicions about just how much the leopard has really changed his spots. National has ridden a wave of "not Labour" popularity for a long time now, and all this palaver is really just its own complacent expectation of a sleepwalk to victory blowing up - finally - in its face.
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Having slept on it, the persistent thing my mind would like to see an additional billion spent on is a program of R&D to develop a suitable electric car (maybe based on the Waikato University e-car?), deploy the necessary infrastructure and manufacturing capability for this vehicle and aim to replace all central and local government car fleets with by around 2025.
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Sound like faith-based Bushonomics to me. Cut taxes, increase spending, borrow from overseas and hope God will save you.