Posts by Tom Semmens
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I thought Little's response on Morning Report was perfectly coherent. He is opposed to decriminalization and he stated his position as to why honestly. You may not agree with him, but his opinion is rooted in a reasonable view that - unlike Key - is honestly held.
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Thank you for this hot tip
The two NZ surprise silvers, the shooting and canoeing, have both provided the two best moments of the games coverage for me, and both were simple honesty that cut like a tasty, sharp vinegar through the usual saccharine overloaded coverage.
First was the delightful honesty when the gruff Timaru shooting club boss - who was clearly chuffed at Natalie Rooneys medal - said on Natrad words to the effect no one had rated her chances that high, and second when Luuka Jones just said she gritted her teeth and went as hard as she could. Both were honest comments that actually didn't insult my intelligence. YAY!
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I don’t mind the Olympics, some sports I quite enjoy. Then our sports coverage kicks in. Then I hate them and count down the days until this fiesta of puerile patriotic nonsense is over.
Has NZ sports coverage always been this cringingly obsequious and insecure? Or has only occurred since those idiots at Sky took full control? Or is it just suddenly obviously jarring because I don’t live here anymore? It is just so infantile.
Sky rugby coverage has always come from the slavishly hero worshipping Pollyanna school of uncritical hyper patriotism, now it seems everything we do as a country has to be enveloped in a thicket of ridiculous cliches like “punching above our weight” and every medal is greeted with the sort of joy I thought would be reserved for the second coming of Christ. Seriously. It is childish propaganda that just feeds all the tired and pernicious myths about our country.
Our Olympic coverage is about as mature and professional as a school house barrracking for it’s team at a posh school’s tabloid sports day.
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Which book did Hemingway write in Hawke’s Bay?
Death on a Frozen Taupo Road Afternoon.
II see that it is 38 and sunny in Seville today. -
I thought Mack Horton did quite the number on his opponent. I guess he gets to repent at liesure. As the reigning Olympic champion. I play MMO games and get called all sorts of horrid things by Chinese people all the time. Now I can ask them in return if they are all drug cheats like their swimmers.
But it was impossible to dislike Saturday’s opening ceremony.
It was impossible to see with no power in Hawkes Bay, where I am currently on holiday,
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Hard News: On the Clark candidacy, in reply to Sacha,
Whanau Ora only got traction because it provided the National party with a perfect trial for privatising welfare and education services to unaccountable cronies in everything from housing to charter schools to the unemployed. Enabling corruption by giving the right a precedent for handing out public money to your mates is hardly something to be proud of.
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There is a lot of angst about what is essentially a political act of a dying political party desperate to garner some publicity.
The Maori Party was formed to opppose something. It then became to vehicle for reactionary and greedy Maori elites to toady with the established capitalist order using the figleaf of a mythical golden age of tribal nobel savages as its appeal to authority.
The Maori party is limping towards political extinction. This stunt is simply an attempt to get some cheap votes by reanimating the wrong that provided the raison d’etre for the parties formation. It also illustrates the Maori parties central problem. It only ever stood for being against something, and it hasn’t moved on to be for anything, or at least anything it can be proud of.
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So National party voters are more likely to launch spittle flecked ideolological tirades than Labour ones? You only have to read David Farrar or listen to Mike Hoskings to know one side is still fully engaged in the class war.
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Probably by the Russians? I would say certainly. Trump's foreign policy in relation to Eastern Europe is popular in Moscow, and incidentially might just save us all from nuclear war.
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Speaker: Darkness in New York, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Errrr… 2010 called and it wants it’s outburst back.
Tim Kaine is disaster because he represents a fundamentally conservative, status quo presidential candidate swerving back to an Overton “centre” defined by a media/political establishment who are now hopelessly out of touch with the mood of the electorate. Projecting an establishment safe pair of hands via a couple of aging white baby boomers won’t mobilise the young or marginalised blacks to vote. It certainly won’t appeal to Trump’s angry angry supporters who have seen their standard of living decline because of the very things Clinton champions like the TPPA and NAFTA. Whether it be Brexit and UKIP or Corbyn or Sanders or Trump or Le Pen people are showing a hunger for change, not continuity. And they don’t much care if the change agent is a neo-fascist or a socialist.
Clinton’s biggest problem is her political baggage and her attachment to a neoliberal staus quo that is now provoking a populist uprising. She would have been a fine president eight years ago. She is now living in times that have passed her by.
Kaine reinforces the feeling that Hillary represents a failed and passing political order, and Clinton is a hardline hawk who only offers endless war to boot. Working within a broken system and having excellent establishment credentials is just collaborating with a failed elite. Kaine offers nothing to change this narrative. He is an old white guy who simply echoes Clinton’s appeal. Clinton needed to pick someone who offered hope and a postive reason to vote for her.
Whether you like or not, Trump is offering the losers from neoliberalism hope. He is saying vote for me and I’ll whack a 35% tariff on imported cars so they’ll be forced to make them in Detroit. I’ll get rid of all those Mexican workers whose wage competition has pushed you onto subsistance wages, and if Mexico complains to the WTO, well, President Trump will lead a strong America that will tell the WTO to fuck off. And to blindly patriotic Americans living in diminished circumstances that is a sweet, sweet message of change. And on foreign policy, whether or not you think he is a buddy of Putin his signalling that he’ll pull back from US committments to defend ex-Soviet satellite nations on the border of Russia who should never have been admitted to NATO in the first place is a badly needed reality check for an increasingly aggressive Germany and major injection of common sense into an inccreasingly reckless adventurism by NATO in eastern europe.
I don’t want Trump to be president. But his rise points to the central problem, the decadence of the western political elites. If he makes it, it’ll be because a dessicated and out of touch political and media establishment that no longer responds to the interests of the voters has shown itself as no longer fit to even defeat a bouffant charlatan, let alone lead the country.