The problem with expecting youth to advocate for rights for youth is that the youth themselves rapidly grow up, turn 18, and get the rights that they were fighting for anyway.

Bamboozle them with Jebberish...

That slide set is amazing.

Let’s assume some competency for a change. What if the slide set is achieving its desired effect? What effect does it have? Is this what they were aiming for?

The slide set is an impermeable wall of metrics, graphs, and charts. It appears to have a staggering amount of information. If it is achieving its purpose, its purpose is to suggest that Jeb! has an overwhelming amount of data and analysis; that elections (particularly presidential primaries) are really complicated, and that Jeb! is in control. The general rhetoric would be: we are the clever guys.

You're on the money for attacking Labout about the racist ramifications of its data release. I don't know whether its dog-whistle was intentional or not, but I don't care. If they didn't know, then they're not qualified to comment.

Your attack on the statistical methodology is hysterical, however. The data sets are robust, and so the imputation of ethnicity is robust. 39.5% of homes, vs 9.5% of population. What is up for debate is the cause of that; in the absence of other data, it might be easily acceptable to say that there are no conclusions that can be drawn, but there is other evidence. Pretending otherwise doesn't strengthen your attacks on Labour.

WOTY = hub
WOTD = bubble

What Haraera actually said is quite important; the subject of the sentence was 'they [the family]'. There is an ambiguity around the remainder of the sentence--is Hone describing the person that died, or the person 'they' mourned? The person 'they' mourned is not the person who lived; it is their conceptualisation of that person.

This ambiguity is typical of the language of communities of deprivation, such as the Maori of the Far North. Harawera has shown himself to be someone who enjoys the very basic language of his constituency, and wears it with pride. There is a potential cost to that.

A harsh, and ungenerous reading, sees Hone defending Osama Bin Laden. This has been the attitude of all and sundry, particularly those who are racist, or who want to see Harawera die in a fire. This includes the mainstream press, and I'm a little surprised that it includes you.

The straightest reading is that he was referring to the attitudes of 'them'; that is, the descriptions were of the person who was being mourned, not the person who Harawera might describe.

Not only is that the straightest reading, but it accords with the principle of charity. Similarly, your criticism of Bomber doesn't adhere to this principle. I can't say for the other commentators; I haven't run across the detail of what was said.

The principle of charity is one of the bases of good, reasonable debate. I would generally question whether your blog piece, here, adheres to principles of good debate. It seems ungenerous to people with whom you could have a reasonable discussion, and in the process to misrepresent them.