Posts by AndrewH
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Hard News: Trump's Dummkopfs, in reply to Russell Brown,
"There have been polls this year that had black voter support for Trump at zero. And at his worst levels, after the DNC, he was winning in just one demographic: white men."
Oh, fuck off. That's one helluva lot of white men voting in a bloc to reach his polling numbers.
I honestly can't believe how condescending you are - it IS Brexit again. An upper middle class and above are making out like bandits while the lower classes are progressively and consistently reamed. While the published stats are so thoroughly juked there's serious discussion of the economy being in recovery.
Trump is terrible, no doubt or question about it.
But the moronic HRC TINA verbiage is simply pathetic. Fine if you support HRC, just don't pretend she's in any way virtuous - she's a disgusting exemplar of everything that's wrong with US politics. Corrupt, a compulsive liar, devoid of any empathy or sense of morality. A fucking political turd circling the bowl, in the gravitational embrace of her grotesque "charitable foundation".
If you had the courage to admit you just don;t get it about Trumps supporters (and Brexit) I'd have some sympathy, but your condescension is just awful.
Russell Brown - student hero. has somehow morphed into middle class, Auckland property owning wanker. -
Hard News: DNC 2016: Beyond weird, most…, in reply to AndrewH,
Kunstler is on form: http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/odious-versus-tedious/
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Hard News: DNC 2016: Beyond weird, most…, in reply to AndrewH,
probably just an accident.. I bet she doesn;t even want their support.. as if.
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Yep, Trumps beyond the pale, Putin's evil, Hillary's the best we've got.. FFS, pathetic.:
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/25/robert-kagan-and-other-neocons-back-hillary-clinton/ -
Hard News: The war is still with us, in reply to Alfie,
The Bush neoconservatives were looking for a middle east country to become a “model” for capitalism, one whose economic transformation would serve as a catalyst to inspire other Arab-Muslim countries to join the democratic/neoliberal wave.
Alfie, that is just plain bollocks. There was certainly a natural alignment between neocons and the profit-seeking Halliburton/Cheney that made the latter easy to co-opt, but as Karen Kwiatkowski http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0310-09.htm observed" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20140226163127/http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0310-09.htm observed first-hand from within the machine, the primary motivation was pure neocon ideology, which had bugger-all to do with profit.
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Hard News: Housing, hope and ideology, in reply to BenWilson,
All good points, the financial ones abetted by the banks ability and incentive to lend against residential housing at multipliers vastly higher than, say, for business lending.
My underlying points were really around - since the Housing NZ stock is substantially inadequate, then a large-scale, aggressive approach to building was likely to be far more cost-effective than any piddling-round-the-sides "market-driven" solution. Though I agree the sense of urgency seems to be lacking.
Which is an interesting question in and of itself - WTF has that gone. A few decades back, the US put men on the moon in the space of a few short years and using the processing equivalent of a couple of pocket calculators. The difference was they WANTED to. As a society we just don't seem to want in that way any more.
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Hard News: Housing, hope and ideology, in reply to BenWilson,
I disagree Ben. Yes, land price is a factor but certainly not the single biggest. Multi-tenancy construction gives efficiencies in land use, in permitting and approvals, in services delivery. We're just largely stuck in a pavlova paradise construction model of individual houses.
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Hard News: Housing, hope and ideology, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
in addition - as is fairly common for buildings of significance - run an open design competition. There are a vast number of people with skills and talent who don't happen to be in the GETS process or wherever these things would typically get done.
The guy I sit next to at work won a design competition for a super-yacht as an amature designer and the boat has since been constructed to spec and sold (I kid you not). There is that level of untapped skill and ability (which could have been applied to Christchurch as well). But jeeze mate - cutting out Fletcher Building? Hell, that's practically socialism.. -
Hard News: Housing, hope and ideology, in reply to Jim Cathcart,
And even the labour issue could be mitigated by employing some 21stC construction materials and techniques. Solid panel prefab in large factories (China if necessary) to be knocked together at site. Use of internal cladding that isn't Gib, ie doesn't require a vast amount of fussy finishing only to be easily damaged.
I strongly suspect that even a Lockwood-style construction would be far quicker and cheaper when purchasing the material in volume (from offshore if necessary - our local stock is vastly overpriced). -
Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I get where you're coming from Chris, but I don't entirely agree with it. Just because the GFC didn't leave Western countries with the economies of Ethiopia doesn't mean it wasn't a cataclysmic financial event for them. And while you're right, the truly authoritarian states are worlds apart from where we are, they didn't start out as functional western democracies (well, OK maybe East Germany did..).
My point is that at an emotional level I think the threat to Western democracy is much greater than is typically reflected in coldly logical arguments. I intuit and attach significance to events in that way. It's a massive problem trying to articulate that sense in almost completely rational forum like this one. And of course i might be wrong - I can't present an argument that would stand up in court to defend it.I think that's part of the issue with Dylan's demands for "more proof". We're all amphibians (for the sake of a metaphor) and the temperature just went up a couple of degrees. Everyone's entitled to come to their own conclusions in their own time, based on the amount and standard of rational argument that each demands.
But here's my take - Western democracy is heading well down the path the path of fascism. In another 5 or 10 years it'll be absolutely blindingly incontrovertibly obvious in the same way global warming is. And there will still be deniers, even as the process speeds up. As for the idea we need to "nip it in the bud", that's insane. Since 9/11 the process has been entirely one-way and there are zero signs of it reversing.
For myself, I've hardly been able to read a paper since the election, since it became crystal clear that THE FACTS DON'T MATTER. At all. What matters is power and control of mind share, and for all the pain this causes the left, no-one (that I've seen) has offered an effective counter-program.