Posts by Tom Semmens
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The 1860 US presidential campaign featured a fractured Democratic party, a huge and antagonistic sectarian divide, paramilitary groups parading around in support of their party, lots of shots fired at political rallys, all sorts of political violence in local elections, and the main losing Democratic candidate going on to be come a leading general in the Confederate army....
The key difference between 1860 and 2016 is any Trump insurgency would be just that - wild milita groups and crazy individuals might carry out random lynchings and attacks, but Clinton will have full control of and loyalty from the US military and governing apparatus at federal and state level. Nothing like succession, and therefore civil war, will come from this election.
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I couldn't help but think of the premature death of Bruce Jesson, and wonder again what might have been.
RIP Helen Kelly.
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This morning I took the trouble to watch all 46 minutes of Trump's latest frightening, rambling rant at West Palm Beach.
Trump, rather than tacking to the centre, seems to have tacked harder to the fringe as the campaign has gone on. To me, it speaks of a man of no great intellect who is drunk (and I suspect high on cocaine a lot of the time, seriously) on the hype of his own PR.
Crazy times.
BTW, the US could do worse than elect Michelle Obama in 2020. She was great in her most recent speech.
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Karma is a bitch and all that, but I have a tiny bit of sympathy for Trump on this issue. Secretly recorded locker room banter from ten years ago should not be dragged up to attack someone. Folks are right, this is how a lot of men brag to each other in private. If, in an age where everything is recorded, the indiscretions of a private life before entering politics are used as a weapon when in public life no one will will risk the reputational damage of standing for public office. Some might argue that in Trump’s case, the ends justify the means. But Trump is ridiculous enough to be beaten fair and square, not by this sort of scandal mongering.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Russell Brown,
but the chilling part is the pervasive alt-media environment that feeds this poor woman’s paranoid beliefs – and the candidate who embodies them. Literally millions of Americans believe the things she does – are they all mentally unwell?
Sure, there are plenty of sane, angry, radicialised Trump supporters. Which begs the question why didn't Stephanie McCrummen find one of them, instead of some poor crazy woman? It looks like a very cheap shot to me that distracts from the valid points being made.
The radicalising effect of the right wing hate machine has been covered here and here in just Salon, it isn't exactly a newly observed phenomena - and the relentless jackboot stamping on our faces that is the sneering of Hoskings and Henry and all the rest of Newstalk hate radio has had a similar, if lesser so far, effect here. The difference here is, so far, the National party is still the home of most of our media wingnuts.
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I wasn't talking about you!
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And Karangahape will have its own CRL station, plus an official designation as the “edgy and creative” zone.
And gentrifying rapidly, something the station will encourage. K’rd will soon be far to expensive for nightlife that doesn’t feature Edison light bulbs and ironic furniture. St. Kevin’s arcade is a case in point – already, the first fashionable restaurant has moved in, and the tat has started to move out…
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
That Washington Post article picked up by Stuff is a disgrace to respectable journalism. To do a hatchet job on Trump supporters via a mentally ill woman – Melanie clearly has mental health issues, having lost her job after allowing a train to run a red light in what was obviously some sort of pyschotic episode and she is on medication – should be unacceptable to a MSM newspaper. Now, a vulnerable woman will be splashed across the world’s newspapers in order to give the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia something to to gloat over. Sometimes, you don’t need to look very far to see why so many Trump supporters loath the smart arse middle classes.
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Hard News: Friday Music: After the…, in reply to Sacha,
Areas plural.
Well, we shouldn’t deceive ourselves.Auckland is a small city full of low paid people beset with gigantic costs. One area, with several clubs and venues with the potential synergies that would deliver, would probably do the trick- as long as rents were low and the council willing.
One of the biggest problems with nightlife in Auckland is in fact council venues, or more exactly the councils approach to hiring them. The St. James was heavily used precisely because it was rundown and cheap. The minute the council builds or restores anything its restrictive policy of allowing a single caterer collect monopoly rents and apply completely pain in the ass rules designed to suck the fun out of anything (try buying TWO drinks at Vector) more or less rules out using its facilities by anyone except an approved list of the well funded and well heeled.
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If property prices dictate K rd, Newton and Kingsland turn into sterile inner city apartments hipster suburbs serviced by airspace then that is it what will happen. Just ask the owners of Fabric, the latest victim of London's unchecked property market.
But with advent of decent PT, the late night music culture district doesn't have to be downtown or near downtown. Berlins nightlife isn't centralised. For example, it is just as easy to get to Onehunga for most people as it is to get to K'rd, now the train runs there and SH20 runs past it, and there is plenty of cheap places to rent and convert for venues. The thing is the council has to identify an area and encourage it to become a late night music culture district and that would require councils to spend less time listening to any boomers and fretting about the the children and recognise nightlife as organic to what makes city life worth living.