Do you think it's OK for the president to withhold Congress approved and taxpayer funded aid to try to extort a foreign country into smearing a political opponent of the president?
If you don't think it's OK, what do you think Democrats in the House should do about it?
A. Decided to fight and die on the wrong hill, aand we all know they will lose this battle.
B. IF Democratic party was seen to be fighting for the poor and disenfranchised citizens of their country with even half the energy and time and resources that they have wasted on this pointless exercise and the failed Russia bullshit smoke and mirror conspiracy they would be looking good to take down Trump about now..but of course not, they are just as much part of the problem as Trump is…
"Hundreds of Thousands Are Losing Access to Food Stamps"
Haven't seen the Democratic party or liberal MSM lose their shit over this and give it around the clock coverage..fight it tooth and nail, nope..just more and more and more Russia/Ukraine red scare bullshit, that only useful idiots buy into. unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any shortage of those war mongering nutters.
The Agriculture Department gave its final approval to the first of three rules that are ultimately expected to cut more than three million from the food stamp rolls.
Nice evasion. They are very simple questions, and the first only needs a yes or no answer. You can even pretend it's hypothetical if that makes it easier for you to answer:
Do you think it's OK for the president to withhold Congress approved and taxpayer funded aid to try to extort a foreign country into smearing a political opponent of the president?
If you don't think it's OK, what do you think Democrats in the House should do about it?
Thank you for your honesty that you don't give a fuck about good governance, electoral integrity, corruption and outright misuse of state power for personal benefit.
However, I find it difficult to reconcile your lack of concern about a wannabe authoritarian dictator trying to use the power of the state to set himself up as an actual authoritarian dictator with your outrage about reports covering your favoured dodgy old white men politician idols when those reports fail to be sufficiently adulatory towards your idols.
I'm guessing you don't mean the alt left. So no, I think the point is this analysis (dems are as bad as repubs) no longer suffices and in fact increases fascism.
Tucker Carlson had this champion of the white nationalist replacement theory on his show. More than a few alt left figures knowingly play footsie with a fascist by appearing on Carlson's white power hour.
Those that seem willing to accept fascism as the antidote to neoliberalism would do well to review how fascists usually end up giving quasi-state powers to favoured corporates. Those favoured corporates then become some of the fasces (small sticks) that get bundled together with the strong intrusive state to become the strong bundle of fascism.
Those who object (rightly) to the excessive influence corporates have under neoliberalism ain't seen nuthin'. That gets turbocharged under fascism.
I think it's more that they deny Trump is a fascist (afaict).
So we have the centre-left saying Trump is worse than the Dems and thus not reforming the left, and the alt left saying Trump's not that bad or that the Dems/Repubs are as bad as each other, and thus Trump is in power. Impasse. Obviously the fascists win, but I'm not sure that anyone on the left can take the moral high ground here.
What kind of "reforming the left" do you think should happen and is actually achievable?
Sure if there were 218 AOC clones in the House and 60 in the Senate, there's a shit load of reform that could and would happen. But the electoral reality is there's maybe a couple dozen House districts an AOC clone could win, and maybe 4 states where an AOC clone could win a senate seat.
The sad reality is even after a Dem tsunami election, the 218th House rep is going to be someone like Conor Lamb, the 50th senator will be someone like Kyrsten Sinema, and the 60th senator will be someone like Joe Manchin.
So when Dems do get power, that's why most of their efforts go into simply reversing years of Repug vandalism of things like the food stamp program of the Voting Rights Act, and even feeble inadequate baby steps of progress like Obamacare are such a rarity.
Not supporting Biden would be a start. Let the AOC’s shine.
I’m not so interested in the same old tired TS arguments (I can take either side). I’m pointing to the problem of the left bickering over this while fascism rises.
Who is supporting Biden? Of TS regulars I can think of precisely one Biden supporter (and seemingly likely a former Biden supporter, from their recent comments).
But if Biden ends up being the nominee (dear God, please no), by virtue of the collective choices of the 30odd million Dem primary voters, then sure as shit I will support him in the general election. I'll have my hazmat suit on, but it will be support nonetheless. Because as flawed and reactionary as he is, he will still not be actively regressive, and may actually pull off a tiny bit of progress, if everyone is incredibly lucky.
Sorry, I mean the Dems supporting Biden. Which was a response to the idea that the left in the US could reform. Nothing to do with who to vote for is he gets the nomination.
Yes I can see the desire you have that the Dems do not go for another moderate such as Biden or even Mayor Pete – and I hope that in the final few months the progressive side of the Dems will win out. But having said that I concede that the fact remains, that overall the voting public and the hugely gerrymanded state of American "democracy" does not support a massive swing away from what is now government of the people, by the rich, for the rich.
I take some heart in the rise of women, and activists for more progressive policies, but when you consider that around 50% of males support Trump…. You see the enormous hurdle that any progressive politician must overcome.
“You see the enormous hurdle that any progressive politician must overcome.”
Yes. I think this probably tempers my pragmatic, the Dems are actually quite conservative, side. That there is an upsurge in such women is an incredibly good sign, and suggests that there is something being missed here by conventional analysis.
My comment about Biden wasn’t even so much that he is moderate as the problem of having another creepy dude in the WH. Not that Biden is in the same class as Trump, but I think on this a Biden presidency will be regressive.
@weka Keep in mind, the "Dems" you're talking about are the tens of millions of primary voters all across America, not some secret cabal of backroom plotters.
Interestingly, Biden has a very strong base of support among older black Americans. These are people that have seen times way shittier than now, as crappy as now may be.
Best guess is, they want improvement, not a revolution. Because most of all, revolutions create opportunities for amoral opportunists, and they are most likely to come out worse off.
Personally, I really don't agree with their apparent conclusion their best interests lie with Biden. But I do respect it.
I wasn’t talking about those Dems though. I was referring to the ones in positions of power. In the same way that I might criticise Labour for hanging onto neoliberalism for so long.
I’m not interested in arguing the other side from the position you take. As mentioned, I see that argument as counter productive to preventing fascism.
Former Democratic presidents have a long a sordid history of supporting 'friendly' fascists and authoritarians of one shade or another, so I fail to see your point?
As far as I can see one of the main problems for the progressive Left is that so many good, smart motivated lefties have brought into the DEM smoke and mirror ploy of Russiagate/Trump and taken their eye off the ball, that ball being the project of transformative progressive change as the number one objective. For some reason these easily sidetracked and/or deluded lefties seem to think the beginning of the end of US 'democracy' started on Friday, January 20, 2017, and if they don't think that, then they make a very good impression that they do.
Another centre left free trade neoliberal Dem party in the US, or in the UK or for that matter in NZ is exactly what we don't need at this pivotal moment….the markets cannot and will not provide the answers to the serious questions that need answering right now..but the progressive, transformative radical left can.
Corbyn 2019
Sanders 2020
That is where the beginning of our our real hope lay.
And btw in answer to Joe 90, the reason lefties go on Tucker Carlson is because MSM liberal media has completely blocked any dissenting Left voices from their platforms..so I wouldn’t go blaming them to quickly. And further I see no problem in trying to reach outside of members of your own ideology to invite discourse, and if you have to go on Fox to do that..then do it I say.
Let me restate it. While the centre left and the alt left are arguing over what the left should be (and by arguing, I mean trying to take each other down), the fascists are winning.
The centre right don't you mean. The corporate establishment of the democrat party in the USA is right wing economically and socially – especially policy wise – as represented by people like h.r.c and biden.
The alt left or what ever you want to call it, is arguing if you want to fight trump then do it. This falling for conspiracy theories and doing these b.s side shows whilst people suffer is a waste of time.
If you believe that impeachment is the answer – then your asking the wrong question. The economy is problem and trump and co are just part of that problem.
There is no argument, the transformative progressive Left is the only way forward, the freemarket, liberal third way left are already dead in water (like a chicken without it's head, they just don't know it yet), they already had their turn, and as we can all plainly see, it hasn't worked whatsoever…Obama's legacy is Trump, enough said.
What you don't seem to get (or at lest I haven't seen you acknowledge) is that the 'neoliberal' left has more in common ideologically with the right than they do with a real transformative progressive Left, and will defend their debunked ideology extremely aggressively, as we have witnessed in the UK and the US.
I guess that is why Obama has pretty much said he would try and block Sanders path to the leadership of the Democratic party if that were looking likely.
there is an argument and because of it I’m already thinking what it will be like moderating here next year during two elections.
My politics generally don’t sit easily within the left/right spectrum you are arguing about. So while of course I can see the difference between the neoliberal left and what you call the progressive left, that’s not where my politics begins and ends, and I think that the fight between liberals and lefties is dangerous. I don’t mean that you should stop criticising liberals, I mean that while that fight is happening in tunnel vision, all sorts of other social and politics dynamics are going on and those aren’t being accommodated by the liberal vs leftie battle.
Assuming your genuine. You must not have noticed that being pretty ok with what Trump did in Ukraine, is not the same as being happy with all forms of corruption.
No, I can in fact read Andres comment and it makes very broad accusations amounting to a smear. Actually your characterisation is probably more broad than what Adrian doesn't worry about also.
Do you think it's OK for the president to withhold Congress approved and taxpayer funded aid to try to extort a foreign country into smearing a political opponent of the president?
A:
in the overall scheme of geo politics, no I don't care, in fact I don't give a fuck about that.
I quoted the comment that I can't see being "smeared", given how contemptable it already is. How about you tell me what you're clutching your pearls over?
Thank you for your honesty that you don't give a fuck about good governance, electoral integrity, corruption and outright misuse of state power for personal benefit.
Because that seems a pretty accurate characterisation of Adrian's response. Not a smear at all.
Or maybe it was the idea that not caring about the corruption of the repug administration helps nazis? That's not a smear, either: the white house has stephen miller and had that breitbart fuckofascist in it, too. They kidnapped children with no way of returning them to their parents. People are dying. They literally put people in camps with insufficient water and sanitation. Dolt45 has given full pardons to war criminals that even the US military was prosecuting. Not "careless with bombs" criminals, "slits throats of unarmed and wounded captives" criminals. So no, that's not a smear, either.
Here is my take on the whole fiasco and the apparent lack of spine being displayed by those Repugnants in Congress :
1. The Ukraine scandal is clear impeachable conduct by Trump and should result in his removal from office. However, it won’t. That’s because the thing at the heart of the Ukraine scandal—an attempt to steal an election—is a thing that’s just A-OK with the GOP.
2. Let’s face it. Stealing elections isn’t just something that’s OK with the GOP; it’s the only way they have to stay in power and they’ve been doing it for DECADES. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, illegal campaign contributions, outright lies/slander of opponents. You name it.
3. Russian election interference and, now, trying to coerce Ukraine to interfere, are just natural extensions of what the GOP has been doing all along; it’s cheating, and the GOP are cheaters. They’re not going to convict Trump for that. They’re going to pat him on the back for it.
Holy crap…do you guys actually realize that if we were living in 1955, you are exactly the types who would have been passing on perceived and baseless information about your fellow citizens to the FBI that would have destroyed their lives…how does that make you feel?
My tribe may be a bunch of jerks, but they don't kidnap children at the border and then adopt them out because no paperwork was kept of who were the actual parents.
Your tribe, just like the other tribe, is led by gaggles of jerks who unleash heinous shit on humanity. Fuck you all for the waste you engage in/support/excuse.
Mueller's investigation showed the oaf's lickspittles were too stupid to actually manage collusion, even though their own emails showed they were all for it.
So they're guilty of being too stupid to collude with a foreign government? These emails…you've got a link to their contents right? And they'll show how they wanted to enter into a conspiracy with the Russian government and (presumably) also lay out in exquisite, painful detail the process of them falling flat on their own faces, yes?
If you don't have that, maybe you'll provide a feasible explanation of how it is that the indictment of Russians who will never set foot in the US fits in with the indictment of precisely zero US nationals for collusion/conspiracy with those self same (or other) Russian nationals.
The emails from 'junior'…they were in relation to that UK music promoter, yes? The one who freely admitted to making shit up? And the meeting that took place involved a Russian lawyer (forget her name) trying to get traction on the Magnitsky sanctions – it's in her testimony. (Correct me if I'm wrong on any of that and provide the content of the emails you referenced before – not a dumb arse google search page, cheers.)
I haven't ever suggested that collusion is a prerequisite for interference. I haven't ever said there was likely no interference from foreign actors in the US elections either (Russian or otherwise).
How sad. And you have to remember that the father of the Food stamp program was a republican Senator from Vermont.
He was way ahead of his time of course. In 1966 he proposed to Lyndon Johnson the very simple solution to the Vietnam War.
" He said that if a face-saving device was needed to pull out of the fighting, President Johnson should simply ''declare the United States the winner and begin de-escalation.''
On its face, the suggestion seemed simplistic. But in 1973, after the Administration of President Nixon had negotiated a Vietnam pullout plan that would obviously lead to an eventual Communist takeover in South Vietnam, Mr. Aiken could say: ''What we got was essentially what I recommended six years ago – we said we had won, and we got out.''
And now a former Democrat, today claiming to be a Republican is scrapping his other great idea.
Impoundment of funds was regarded as completely normal from the formation of the US until 1974. Thus it was there, and used, for almost 200 years. It was only in Nixon's time that it was banned.
Almost every President since, and an awful lot of candidates think that act should be repealed and things should revert to the previous approach.
For a while Clinton had a line item veto which did something similar but the Supreme Court threw that out.
The difference is the personal political benefit aspect of Donny Dotard's Ukraine extortion scheme. Previous quid pro quo arrangements where funds were withheld were to extract something that was in the US national interest. Whereas now, even Repug senators that are so far up Drumpf's ass they can shake hands with Hannity aren't even trying to argue the Ukraine extortion was for some kind of US national interest purpose.
I too suspect the number of minds that will be changed is a tiny fraction of the usual polling margin of error. But it will harden the view among the 52ish% of Americans disapprove of his job performance that on no account should he be given a second term.
I fear it is going to have the other effect. It might cause the opinion in those who have supported him in the past to veer around to one that says that the Democrats are trivialising the act of impeachment and trying to do it for something far below the "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" mentioned in the Constitution.
Look at what happened with Bill Clinton. The impeached him for, finally, having an affair and lying about it. He was impeached but it was a joke by that stage and he was acquitted in the Senate. I fear the same thing will happen here and it will strengthen Trump for next year.
God knows, I thought that Trump would be a disaster as a President and he has turned out to be even worse than I feared. I think that if he is re-elected we are going to get a nuclear arms race starting up. Trump has no concept at all of the role the US has had and anyone who thought that the US would help protect them is going to abandon ship. I can see South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and The Philippines among the countries that will start seriously looking at developing such weapons. After all the US under Trump won't help them if they are attacked. In the Pacific, as well as The Philippines I'll bet Taiwan is worried about an invasion because Trump won't help out. He abandoned the Kurds, staunch American allies though they were, because he simply doesn't care.
I want the Democrats to elect a competent centrist. To hell with Bernie and the others on the left. I want someone who can, and will beat the imbecile currently in the White House.
The Clinton impeachment sure does hang like a spectre.
But one significant difference is that Clinton's misconduct was in no way related to his duties of office, unlike the present case.
Remember it grew out of the second or third investigation into Whitewater the moved onto anything and everything they could possibly think of – travel agents, Vince Foster. The impeachment didn't even talk about the actual abuse of power, a powerful man taking advantage of a star-struck young subordinate (maybe coz that was just viewed as a perk of being a powerful man?), just that Clinton didn't spill everything about it when he was asked. Investigations has been going on for years turning up nothing, so people were pretty fatigued.
Whereas the current case is about a clearly proven case of actual abuse of the power of office, for his personal interest and the detriment of the national interest.
There's also plenty of credible people arguing that Clinton's impeachment cost the Dems in 2000, that without the impeachment Gore would have won handily and the Dems possibly taking the House.
While the current impeachment has is pretty much split the American public down the middle – actually there are slightly more in approval for impeachment than against – this is a different situation to that of Clinton, where it was a matter of sexual morality and lying about it, This goes right to the heart of the Constitution – bribery and corruption and in some eyes a far more serious matter worthy of Impeachment. I do not think the argument that this will have a flow on effect of increasing support for the Presidency will occur in this case. The lack of support for Trump has been pretty much the same throughout the past 3 years and if anything has been tracking south. It is never more than 40%. As the effects of the so call "tax cuts" kick in the average American can see that the so called great economy that Trump continues to bluster about is not for them and there are many polls that show his support in swing states is well below what is was in 2016.
The main problem as I see it is that it is now less than 11 months to election day. Wouldn't it be better for the Democrats to fight the election on the basis of what they will do for America rather than the focus being on a quarrel that no-one understands about what did, or did not, happen in a country that very few citizens of the US would be able to find on a map?
Like it or not a very large number of US people revere the office of the Presidency. If they don't understand why he is under what can be seen as partisan complaints they are likely to adopt the "My President. right or wrong" attitude if they think that the President is being attacked for what they do not see as particularly important reasons.
I hope I am wrong. However I worry that Trump will survive because those who voted for him in 2016 will gather in behind him if they see those eggheads and pointy headed East Coast liberals trying to drag down The (drum roll) President of The United States (salute).
It's almost certainly in the interests of the candidates to, at most, only refer to the impeachment obliquely in terms of things they won't do and what qualities they'll restore to the office.
It's also a dynamic that will probably hurt the candidates that are also sitting senators, ie Warren, Sanders, Booker, Klobuchar, because they will have to be in DC participating in the trial. Whereas Biden and Buttigieg can keep completely out of it.
But as for leaving it the voters, I'm with the idea that the things the FakeBronze Fuhrer has provably done are such egregious violations of his oaths and duties that there's no choice but to go ahead with impeachment. Because if you just let it slide because there's an election soon, then even the idea of impeachment becomes meaningless, and presidents basically become unaccountable kings for four years.
Unfortunately the Trumpers and Trumpettes will always be with us, as will the alt right "religious" conservatives – who support this adulterer, because he has promoted todate 170 ultra right wing (and in many cases completely unqualified) people to the role of federal and district judges. A position they will hold for life, and which will affect the judicial system in the US for decades, thereby allowing ridiculous laws passed by conservative administrations to perpetuate for a lifetime.
eg: Alabama Abortion Law temporary blocked – but in the future such action will have no hope of being successful if Trump has his way:
The current estimate of the size of the Trump base is around 28 – 32% of the voting public. This is where the Republicans only hope for re-election lies, and why they have cravenly given up all sense of a moral compass, because they realise that should they turn against Trump that sizable proportion of the voting public will turn against them. But as you can see – it is not a majority. Their only hope to the White House is through again winning the swing states that they only won by a handful of votes in 2016. (around 11,000 votes in one state and not much more in the other 3). It was in these swing states that Russian intervention was the most prevalent, and there has been little to no action by the Trump Administration to prevent such action happening again. Indeed 2 top cyber security officials are due to leave their positions early next year!
Two top government officials with broad cybersecurity and election-integrity portfolios have announced they are stepping down this month, a loss of expertise in a critical area less than a year before the 2020 presidential election.
Amy Hess, the executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation will depart for a job as the chief of public services in Louisville, Ky.
Jeanette Manfra, the most senior official dedicated exclusively to cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, will leave her post at year’s end for a job in the private sector.
… Senior U.S. intelligence officials have warned the elections are likely to be targeted online by Russia and other foreign adversaries following Moscow’s success in disrupting the 2016 race.
Ms. Hess’s exit comes barely a year after she assumed her current jobat FBI headquarters after previously running the Louisville, Ky., field office. She took the job following a leadership turnover at the FBI cyber division earlier in 2018, as several top executives departed for lucrative private-sector jobs amid concerns about flagging morale.
Mieke Eoyang, vice president of the national security program at the centrist think tank Third Way and a former Democratic intelligence staffer in Congress, said there had been “tremendous turnover of senior cybersecurity personnel” during the Trump administration. Leadership changes, she said, were often more disruptive in the cybersecurity area because the government’s approach to the issue is less institutionalized than in other areas, such as terrorism.
Seth Meyers take a look at some of the Trump appointments that are now being pushed through the Senate by Moscow Mitch McConnell – who refused to allow any under Obama.
Indeed this is about all that the Senate is currently considering – the House have passed around 400 Bills in the past year up to the Senate where McConnell causes them to lie unconsidered. This is the great travesty of the Repugnants in power. If any one is worse than Trump it probably has to be McConnell. At least he knows what he is doing.
Unfortunately, the idea is not originally mine. If only I could remember where I first saw it to properly attribute it. Prob'ly yet another case of a man stealing intellectual property from a woman then getting credit for it.
I was interested in what Adrian personally thinks.
I am really not interested in what Aaron Mate thinks, it became clear to me long ago that whatever place he's coming from, it has at best a tenuous connection with reality. And I'm especially not interested in sitting through a fifteen minute verbal wankfest to get content that would take at most 2 or 3 minutes to absorb if it were presented in a written format.
So the result of your disinterest is a dishonest question pushing the MSM meme, hmmm looks like you are the one with " a tenuous connection with reality." maby get out more?
That Tinyfingers Tantrump was extorting Ukraine to smear a political opponent by withholding congress allocated and taxpayer funded aid is proven over and over and over again by the sworn testimony of those caught in the middle. Some of it very reluctant sworn testimony provided by Don the Con's allies he had personally appointed to those positions in the middle.
Transcripts of that sworn testimony are in the public domain, if you're interested you can go read them yourself.
If you want to pretend that's some kind of deceptive MSM meme, rather than proven fact, then hey, that affects your credibility not mine.
Jimmy Carter sold his farm to avoid any allegations of corruption. trump has from day one taken money via his business from foreign governments – with the Saudis topping the list.
If pelosi and co had their act together they would have got him on this ages ago. Rather than the whole russian conspiracy theory we had to suffer through.
The grey speculative bits added to the transcript are a pain. Mind you without the propaganda – how could they get you to think the right way.
trump is an idiot, sheesh he just really is a t.v. reality star in over his head.
Pelosi definitely was reluctant to impeach (I suspect mostly because the repugs will find him "not guilty" if he shot somone on live TV, on fifth avenue, and then tweeted why he did it). I think the deciding factor was when his corruption wasn't just personal financial gain, but it started to involvefederal funds, foreign governments, and all the rest.
Still does not explain the months of conspiracy theories.
The same proponent of the conspiracy theories is telling more porkies about about Sanders these day. If only she accepted the fact she lost because she was shitty candidate, with shitty policy, representing 40 odd years of failed economics – who ran a shitty campaign.
We might actually be in a position to oppose trump well – rather than half assed and divisively.
You appear to be giving a rather distorted view of Jimmy Carter selling his farm.
You seem to be implying that he sold it when he became President. He did not. He put it into a trust. That was run so poorly that when he left office the business was heavily in debt and he then sold the business. That was after he left Office and would be equivalent to Trump selling up in 2021 after he, hopefully. loses the Presidential election next year.
It doesn't really matter whether you put you property into a trust or not. It has to be a trust where you have no idea what is in it for it to matter.
As long as Carter knew he still owned a peanut farm, and he did, he could have taken actions that affected his property for the better.
The fact that it was poorly run doesn't matter. That simply shows he had lousy judgement in picking a manager. The critical fact was that he still owned the place and things he did for US agriculture policy could affect him.
About the only US official who really cut his wealth off from his actions was Alan Greenspan who was Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006.
He put all his money into 30 year US Government bonds and left it there. Short of actually giving everything to charity before he took office that seemed about the only possible way of removing his assets from the actions that he took in his job.
I don't know why you bother Adrian Thornton, the soft left are still in lala land over this.
Their russians in the corner paranoia has led to quite a few conspiracy theories.
If they actually had a spine, and/or any nous – trump could have been impeached on day one – the bribes he is taking at trump tower from the Saudis are still on going, and hardly anyone is even talking about it. Until now that is.
Good work protesters to ODT about Garrick Tremain's slick cartoon. He could find something funny about the Holocaust but wouldn't because the weight of their adverse judgment would fall on him. Bit he's been making funnies at brown people's plight for quite a time, but when there is a raging virtual plague of measles in Samoa, with new gloomy facts about additional long-term affects on the immune system, to make a quip about the reaction has been enough to silence him, and that should be final. The Editor has personally apologised and so he should.
Vote Lib Dem, get Tory, could be a thing so perhaps not.
Labour and LD have both said no to any coalition although Swinson may offer a confidence and supply agreement to prop up a Tory minority government. If she does, it's either the end of her promise to prevent a hard brexit or the impasse that triggered the election will continue.
But hey, a month ago Swinson reckoned she could win a majority so anything's possible.
Labour and LD have both said no to a coalition with each other? How does Labour hope to win then? LD's refuse to support anyone and Labour govern on a minority of seats?
Those 43 seats are in the Westminster Parliament. They are basically every Scottish electorate in the British Parliament. They aren't seats in Edinburgh's Assembly.
It is a FPP Parliament so party percentages don't tell you very much about the number of seats they will get.
Here is a recent poll that gives the LibDems 13 seats from 14% of the vote. Meanwhile they say that the SNP will get 43 seats and the Breexit Party none. Each Party is expected to get 3% of the vote.
This isn't the same poll of course but it illustrates the fact that percentage of the vote and number of seats aren't really related. It is one from a couple of weeks ago.
Promising, but I still don't fancy Labour's chances. That is why I haven't really taken much of an interest in the election. It is still going to be a bloodbath, and when the dust has cleared, the neo-Thacherites will have complete control of the country. It might not even be until the 2030's that Labour will get back into power TBH.
News reports are saying that bojo's likely majority is slipping fast. Anti tory voters are being encouraged to vote tactically. It's looking like it will be a hung parliament.
The UK are possibly going to face a hot and vengeful Irish border conflagration if Johnson wins and carries on in his Empire-colossus mode or Labour if they win, try to weasel out of anglo-irish-eu agreements so as to get better deals to suit English and Nth Ireland workers in withdrawal agreements.
"The analysis of almost 30,000 voters, for the pro-EU Best for Britain campaign, also finds that tactical votes by as few as 40,700 people in 36 key seats could prevent Johnson from forming a majority government."
Anyone who has a muppet in the family who will argue over the death penalty at xmas – good timing by the intercept. These four pieces are a heavy read, but they just lay bare the injustice and utter stupidity of the death penalty.
I didn't click to hear Boris talk about the measurements applying to inequality when some have IQs higher than 100 yet are fuckwit, moronic lowlives and in some cases, in Parliament.
The right’s belief in the existence of intrinsic, ‘natural’ hierarchies of humans is a real thing. It's always the bullshit rationalisation they trot out in some form or another to excuse inflicting avoidable suffering on their fellow citizens.
For the conservative/patrician right, hierarchy is based in the family you come from, the school you went to, the firms you worked for and who you know. For the neoliberal right, natural hierarchies are revealed (like God’s grace) by success in the market – if you make money it is because you are of intrinsically of higher merit or intelligence. And for the fascist/identitarian right, it is based on race, religion and culture – though this is usually disguised by talk about “western civilisation” or some such thing. Individuals can obviously believe in mixtures of all of these classification systems – there are tensions among them, but they also intersect.
The only thing that counters these sociopathic right-wing trash is the moral conviction that humans are completely equal in their capacity for joy and suffering.
The IQ measurement was useful in the 20th century in sorting out who was to be regarded as second rate, now it is everyone who hasn't got money and the right attitude of conformity to whatever group has been allocated.
EQ and study about human values and how to be in a world of machine-technology addiction should be the main study. All else can be looked up. Knowing stuff hasn't done us much good as in the last century – important, vital, things have been ignored. So education itself won't save us – discernment might.
EQ:
Self-awareness. Self-awareness is the ability to accurately recognise your: emotions, strengths, limitations, actions and understand how these affect others around you. …
Don't run working girls and boys down. They have a hard job – just regard them as if they were sportspeople operating in a different field. Sports people are respected – why shouldn't people who are active in the sex field?
I think that Donald and Boris are lesser than working girls and boys; they have to deliver or look out and rarely live in luxury. They are often too busy paying the ultimate controller over their drug dealer in crack? who might be from Dons and Boorish’s peer group.
Action Group for Palestinians of Syria say at least 3,708 Palestinians have been killed during the Syrian civil war, and 1,673 are being held in Assad regime abattoirs. At least 477 Palestinian-Syrians have been tortured to death in those abattoirs since 2011.
During the siege of the Yarmouk camp Assad forces and allied militias killed hundreds of Palestinian refugees with indiscriminate barrel bombs and elephant missiles.
Refugees, and who made them such? The Syrian civil war is a awful bloody mess, and it will continue being such until outside forces like Saudi Arabia, England, Russia and the USA stop arming the disparate groups.
Assard is a prick, nothing changes on that front.
Gaza is not at war with Israel, and the Great March of Return is a peaceful protest. Stones gets thrown sure – but in two short years the casualty lists are huge. In the thousands. Including disabled people in wheelchairs, journalists and medics. Not forgetting children, and pregnant women.
UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations said on Saturday that denuclearization is off the negotiating table with the United States and lengthy talks with Washington are not needed, the starkest statement yet emphasizing the gulf between the two sides ahead of a year-end deadline set by Pyongyang.
Pie to Boris: "You are a microwave meal Prime Minister … a microwave meal full of shit, no nutritional value at all, just an unremarkable turd waiting to happen…"
Boris Johnson, who looks like something you’d keep your pyjamas in, and who no reasonable person would choose to lead them into a chorus, has a strangely hunched demeanour; perhaps from all the time he spends crammed inside married women’s wardrobes, like a randy jack-in-the-box. This confused sex yeti has been booed by nurses: people who can remove a dressing, examine a festering wound, and still look up at you with a smile. Has any party ever elected a new leader so tired and dated? With a delivery best approximated as a living checklist of stroke warnings, his bumbling posho shtick almost resembles buffering, a kind of 3G Wodehouse. He doesn’t even seem to enjoy it; throughout the campaign he’s sported a face that looks as if it’s been kneaded by a baker going through a particularly bitter divorce, and the irony that comes into his eyes every time he crowbars in a catchphrase means that he breaks the fourth wall more than Deadpool. We thought the office of prime minister was what he lived for, his consuming ambition. It’s all been a bit like hearing Tony The Tiger talk about his diabetes.
The late and much missed Clive James wrote: “For years now – all my life, in fact – there’s been something building up in western liberal democracy that should have been foreseeable, but perhaps was too obvious. There will be a penalty paid for prosperity and stability, and the penalty is that the young will forget. Liberal democracy in the west can die of itself. It doesn’t need an enemy, it can create its own enemies.”
Buzz from the Beehive Transport Minister Simeon Brown dutifully issued advice to all road users to keep safe on our roads during the Easter weekend. He encouraged them to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. ...
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealanders recently learned about a new feature film. It will be about former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – and taxpayers will subsidise it to the tune of NZ$800,000. Ardern had nothing personally to do with either the film or the subsidy. But her government’s ...
TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above that was recorded yesterday afternoon above between and The Kākā’s climate correspondent : An independent review panel into the emergency response to Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawkes Bayconcluded “that ...
There are now only a few days left to give feedback on the Draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport 2024-34 (see our earlier post this week on GPS submission guides). As we’ve reported, the GPS is a disaster for Local Government, so we were particularly interested to hear ...
Willis has pledged to go ahead with the debt-funded tax cuts, despite growing opposition from her own supporters worried about appearing fiscally irresponsible. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for ...
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
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While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
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Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
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Tauranga, Rotorua, Wellsford, Onehunga, Westhaven marina – Gavin Strawhan walks the meanish streets of New Zealand in his entertaining debut novel The Call, almost sure to roar into the number 1 position on the Nielsen bestseller chart, its front cover bearing a rave from somebody: “A really good and genuinely ...
"Journalist Aaron Maté shares why the impeachment saga is not resonating outside the Washington bubble."
Good short conversation discussing the obvious major flaws in the logic of impeachment and more with the ever reliable Aaron Mate'…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkQDrYr4EZs
Do you think it's OK for the president to withhold Congress approved and taxpayer funded aid to try to extort a foreign country into smearing a political opponent of the president?
If you don't think it's OK, what do you think Democrats in the House should do about it?
I think the Democratic party has…
A. Decided to fight and die on the wrong hill, aand we all know they will lose this battle.
B. IF Democratic party was seen to be fighting for the poor and disenfranchised citizens of their country with even half the energy and time and resources that they have wasted on this pointless exercise and the failed Russia bullshit smoke and mirror conspiracy they would be looking good to take down Trump about now..but of course not, they are just as much part of the problem as Trump is…
"Hundreds of Thousands Are Losing Access to Food Stamps"
Haven't seen the Democratic party or liberal MSM lose their shit over this and give it around the clock coverage..fight it tooth and nail, nope..just more and more and more Russia/Ukraine red scare bullshit, that only useful idiots buy into. unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any shortage of those war mongering nutters.
The Agriculture Department gave its final approval to the first of three rules that are ultimately expected to cut more than three million from the food stamp rolls.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/food-stamps.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1S8yHAdpkk
Nice evasion. They are very simple questions, and the first only needs a yes or no answer. You can even pretend it's hypothetical if that makes it easier for you to answer:
Do you think it's OK for the president to withhold Congress approved and taxpayer funded aid to try to extort a foreign country into smearing a political opponent of the president?
If you don't think it's OK, what do you think Democrats in the House should do about it?
Are you serious?, in the overall scheme of geo politics, no I don't care, in fact I don't give a fuck about that.
One dodgy old politician trying to smear another dodgy old politician sounds like business as usual for those corrupt old men to me.
Thank you for your honesty that you don't give a fuck about good governance, electoral integrity, corruption and outright misuse of state power for personal benefit.
However, I find it difficult to reconcile your lack of concern about a wannabe authoritarian dictator trying to use the power of the state to set himself up as an actual authoritarian dictator with your outrage about reports covering your favoured dodgy old white men politician idols when those reports fail to be sufficiently adulatory towards your idols.
one side is in denial of neoliberalism and the other side is in denial of fascism. They bicker and meanwhile, fascism appears to be winning.
Only one mob routinely sides with fascists.
I'm guessing you don't mean the alt left. So no, I think the point is this analysis (dems are as bad as repubs) no longer suffices and in fact increases fascism.
Tucker Carlson had this champion of the white nationalist replacement theory on his show. More than a few alt left figures knowingly play footsie with a fascist by appearing on Carlson's white power hour.
https://twitter.com/pdabrosca/status/1186421590965272576
I was thinking of the ‘Trump isn’t so bad’ crowd on TS.
MSNBC yeap they side with fascist a lot.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-empty-podium-gets-30-minutes-of-airtime
Lets not forget the hours and hours of conspiracy theories pushed by Rachel Maddow.
Or how about the centre left doing this
https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2018/06/20/house-and-senate-democrats-vote-68-percent-and-85-percent-for-massive-military-spending/#25cca6f25101
or this
https://newrepublic.com/article/155793/hell-democrats-just-extend-patriot-act
But the problem is talking on tucker the idiot carson – get a grip on reality – the woke left are a fucking joke.
Those that seem willing to accept fascism as the antidote to neoliberalism would do well to review how fascists usually end up giving quasi-state powers to favoured corporates. Those favoured corporates then become some of the fasces (small sticks) that get bundled together with the strong intrusive state to become the strong bundle of fascism.
Those who object (rightly) to the excessive influence corporates have under neoliberalism ain't seen nuthin'. That gets turbocharged under fascism.
I think it's more that they deny Trump is a fascist (afaict).
So we have the centre-left saying Trump is worse than the Dems and thus not reforming the left, and the alt left saying Trump's not that bad or that the Dems/Repubs are as bad as each other, and thus Trump is in power. Impasse. Obviously the fascists win, but I'm not sure that anyone on the left can take the moral high ground here.
What kind of "reforming the left" do you think should happen and is actually achievable?
Sure if there were 218 AOC clones in the House and 60 in the Senate, there's a shit load of reform that could and would happen. But the electoral reality is there's maybe a couple dozen House districts an AOC clone could win, and maybe 4 states where an AOC clone could win a senate seat.
The sad reality is even after a Dem tsunami election, the 218th House rep is going to be someone like Conor Lamb, the 50th senator will be someone like Kyrsten Sinema, and the 60th senator will be someone like Joe Manchin.
So when Dems do get power, that's why most of their efforts go into simply reversing years of Repug vandalism of things like the food stamp program of the Voting Rights Act, and even feeble inadequate baby steps of progress like Obamacare are such a rarity.
Not supporting Biden would be a start. Let the AOC’s shine.
I’m not so interested in the same old tired TS arguments (I can take either side). I’m pointing to the problem of the left bickering over this while fascism rises.
Who is supporting Biden? Of TS regulars I can think of precisely one Biden supporter (and seemingly likely a former Biden supporter, from their recent comments).
But if Biden ends up being the nominee (dear God, please no), by virtue of the collective choices of the 30odd million Dem primary voters, then sure as shit I will support him in the general election. I'll have my hazmat suit on, but it will be support nonetheless. Because as flawed and reactionary as he is, he will still not be actively regressive, and may actually pull off a tiny bit of progress, if everyone is incredibly lucky.
Sorry, I mean the Dems supporting Biden. Which was a response to the idea that the left in the US could reform. Nothing to do with who to vote for is he gets the nomination.
Which is a separate issue from the debate on TS.
Yes I can see the desire you have that the Dems do not go for another moderate such as Biden or even Mayor Pete – and I hope that in the final few months the progressive side of the Dems will win out. But having said that I concede that the fact remains, that overall the voting public and the hugely gerrymanded state of American "democracy" does not support a massive swing away from what is now government of the people, by the rich, for the rich.
I take some heart in the rise of women, and activists for more progressive policies, but when you consider that around 50% of males support Trump…. You see the enormous hurdle that any progressive politician must overcome.
“You see the enormous hurdle that any progressive politician must overcome.”
Yes. I think this probably tempers my pragmatic, the Dems are actually quite conservative, side. That there is an upsurge in such women is an incredibly good sign, and suggests that there is something being missed here by conventional analysis.
My comment about Biden wasn’t even so much that he is moderate as the problem of having another creepy dude in the WH. Not that Biden is in the same class as Trump, but I think on this a Biden presidency will be regressive.
As always, the money is a serious problem.
@weka Keep in mind, the "Dems" you're talking about are the tens of millions of primary voters all across America, not some secret cabal of backroom plotters.
Interestingly, Biden has a very strong base of support among older black Americans. These are people that have seen times way shittier than now, as crappy as now may be.
Best guess is, they want improvement, not a revolution. Because most of all, revolutions create opportunities for amoral opportunists, and they are most likely to come out worse off.
Personally, I really don't agree with their apparent conclusion their best interests lie with Biden. But I do respect it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/01/politics/joe-biden-black-voters-poll-of-the-week/index.html
I wasn’t talking about those Dems though. I was referring to the ones in positions of power. In the same way that I might criticise Labour for hanging onto neoliberalism for so long.
I’m not interested in arguing the other side from the position you take. As mentioned, I see that argument as counter productive to preventing fascism.
Former Democratic presidents have a long a sordid history of supporting 'friendly' fascists and authoritarians of one shade or another, so I fail to see your point?
As far as I can see one of the main problems for the progressive Left is that so many good, smart motivated lefties have brought into the DEM smoke and mirror ploy of Russiagate/Trump and taken their eye off the ball, that ball being the project of transformative progressive change as the number one objective. For some reason these easily sidetracked and/or deluded lefties seem to think the beginning of the end of US 'democracy' started on Friday, January 20, 2017, and if they don't think that, then they make a very good impression that they do.
Another centre left free trade neoliberal Dem party in the US, or in the UK or for that matter in NZ is exactly what we don't need at this pivotal moment….the markets cannot and will not provide the answers to the serious questions that need answering right now..but the progressive, transformative radical left can.
Corbyn 2019
Sanders 2020
That is where the beginning of our our real hope lay.
And btw in answer to Joe 90, the reason lefties go on Tucker Carlson is because MSM liberal media has completely blocked any dissenting Left voices from their platforms..so I wouldn’t go blaming them to quickly. And further I see no problem in trying to reach outside of members of your own ideology to invite discourse, and if you have to go on Fox to do that..then do it I say.
“so I fail to see your point?”
Let me restate it. While the centre left and the alt left are arguing over what the left should be (and by arguing, I mean trying to take each other down), the fascists are winning.
The centre right don't you mean. The corporate establishment of the democrat party in the USA is right wing economically and socially – especially policy wise – as represented by people like h.r.c and biden.
The alt left or what ever you want to call it, is arguing if you want to fight trump then do it. This falling for conspiracy theories and doing these b.s side shows whilst people suffer is a waste of time.
If you believe that impeachment is the answer – then your asking the wrong question. The economy is problem and trump and co are just part of that problem.
There is no argument, the transformative progressive Left is the only way forward, the freemarket, liberal third way left are already dead in water (like a chicken without it's head, they just don't know it yet), they already had their turn, and as we can all plainly see, it hasn't worked whatsoever…Obama's legacy is Trump, enough said.
What you don't seem to get (or at lest I haven't seen you acknowledge) is that the 'neoliberal' left has more in common ideologically with the right than they do with a real transformative progressive Left, and will defend their debunked ideology extremely aggressively, as we have witnessed in the UK and the US.
I guess that is why Obama has pretty much said he would try and block Sanders path to the leadership of the Democratic party if that were looking likely.
there is an argument and because of it I’m already thinking what it will be like moderating here next year during two elections.
My politics generally don’t sit easily within the left/right spectrum you are arguing about. So while of course I can see the difference between the neoliberal left and what you call the progressive left, that’s not where my politics begins and ends, and I think that the fight between liberals and lefties is dangerous. I don’t mean that you should stop criticising liberals, I mean that while that fight is happening in tunnel vision, all sorts of other social and politics dynamics are going on and those aren’t being accommodated by the liberal vs leftie battle.
Your accepting Andres obvious smear of Adrians position as a basis for discussion?
Andre asked a clear question and got a clear answer (eventually). Dunno how one can "smear" an I-don't_care response to outright corruption.
Assuming your genuine. You must not have noticed that being pretty ok with what Trump did in Ukraine, is not the same as being happy with all forms of corruption.
It's just being happy with a pretty goddamned blatant form of corruption that targets both personal benefit and undermining the democratic system.
No, I can in fact read Andres comment and it makes very broad accusations amounting to a smear. Actually your characterisation is probably more broad than what Adrian doesn't worry about also.
Q:
A:
So your not even going to include the actual smear comment in your quote?
I quoted the comment that I can't see being "smeared", given how contemptable it already is. How about you tell me what you're clutching your pearls over?
Hint, the smear is not in the text you quoted… Though you may be more familiar with the form, when did you stop beating your wife?
was it:
Because that seems a pretty accurate characterisation of Adrian's response. Not a smear at all.
Or maybe it was the idea that not caring about the corruption of the repug administration helps nazis? That's not a smear, either: the white house has stephen miller and had that breitbart fuckofascist in it, too. They kidnapped children with no way of returning them to their parents. People are dying. They literally put people in camps with insufficient water and sanitation. Dolt45 has given full pardons to war criminals that even the US military was prosecuting. Not "careless with bombs" criminals, "slits throats of unarmed and wounded captives" criminals. So no, that's not a smear, either.
Here is my take on the whole fiasco and the apparent lack of spine being displayed by those Repugnants in Congress :
1. The Ukraine scandal is clear impeachable conduct by Trump and should result in his removal from office. However, it won’t. That’s because the thing at the heart of the Ukraine scandal—an attempt to steal an election—is a thing that’s just A-OK with the GOP.
2. Let’s face it. Stealing elections isn’t just something that’s OK with the GOP; it’s the only way they have to stay in power and they’ve been doing it for DECADES. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, illegal campaign contributions, outright lies/slander of opponents. You name it.
3. Russian election interference and, now, trying to coerce Ukraine to interfere, are just natural extensions of what the GOP has been doing all along; it’s cheating, and the GOP are cheaters. They’re not going to convict Trump for that. They’re going to pat him on the back for it.
Holy crap…do you guys actually realize that if we were living in 1955, you are exactly the types who would have been passing on perceived and baseless information about your fellow citizens to the FBI that would have destroyed their lives…how does that make you feel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w86QhV7whjs&t=66s
??????
What are you on Adrian?
And how does that comment relate in any way to mine?
My team must win. My tribe is righteous. I do no wrong.
My tribe may be a bunch of jerks, but they don't kidnap children at the border and then adopt them out because no paperwork was kept of who were the actual parents.
Your tribe, just like the other tribe, is led by gaggles of jerks who unleash heinous shit on humanity. Fuck you all for the waste you engage in/support/excuse.
Ukrainian interference was bent on preventing Trump from winning. (But hey.)
Russian interference? What was that again? That shown by all that jail time for US citizens on charges of collusion/conspiracy?
Mueller's investigation showed the oaf's lickspittles were too stupid to actually manage collusion, even though their own emails showed they were all for it.
Big indicators of interference are the indictments of Russian nationals for interference.
Cambridge analytica – oh wait 5 eyes buddy should not mention them…
lol
So they're guilty of being too stupid to collude with a foreign government? These emails…you've got a link to their contents right? And they'll show how they wanted to enter into a conspiracy with the Russian government and (presumably) also lay out in exquisite, painful detail the process of them falling flat on their own faces, yes?
If you don't have that, maybe you'll provide a feasible explanation of how it is that the indictment of Russians who will never set foot in the US fits in with the indictment of precisely zero US nationals for collusion/conspiracy with those self same (or other) Russian nationals.
Just for you, Bill:
https://www.google.com/search?q=don+jr+email
Surprised you haven't seen that link before.
As for your apparent belief that collusion is a prerequisite for interference, it's not. If anything, interference is a prerequisite for collusion.
The emails from 'junior'…they were in relation to that UK music promoter, yes? The one who freely admitted to making shit up? And the meeting that took place involved a Russian lawyer (forget her name) trying to get traction on the Magnitsky sanctions – it's in her testimony. (Correct me if I'm wrong on any of that and provide the content of the emails you referenced before – not a dumb arse google search page, cheers.)
I haven't ever suggested that collusion is a prerequisite for interference. I haven't ever said there was likely no interference from foreign actors in the US elections either (Russian or otherwise).
Which leads me to ask: why are you requesting evidence of collusion when Macro's comment was about interference?
🙄
That's very enably of you thornty.
Talking points arrived, huh?
/
https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1202497146643210240
How sad. And you have to remember that the father of the Food stamp program was a republican Senator from Vermont.
He was way ahead of his time of course. In 1966 he proposed to Lyndon Johnson the very simple solution to the Vietnam War.
" He said that if a face-saving device was needed to pull out of the fighting, President Johnson should simply ''declare the United States the winner and begin de-escalation.''
On its face, the suggestion seemed simplistic. But in 1973, after the Administration of President Nixon had negotiated a Vietnam pullout plan that would obviously lead to an eventual Communist takeover in South Vietnam, Mr. Aiken could say: ''What we got was essentially what I recommended six years ago – we said we had won, and we got out.''
And now a former Democrat, today claiming to be a Republican is scrapping his other great idea.
I think they're doing it to stick Bitch McTurtle in a corner thornty.
Impoundment of funds was regarded as completely normal from the formation of the US until 1974. Thus it was there, and used, for almost 200 years. It was only in Nixon's time that it was banned.
Almost every President since, and an awful lot of candidates think that act should be repealed and things should revert to the previous approach.
For a while Clinton had a line item veto which did something similar but the Supreme Court threw that out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds
I doubt that many Americans feel that a President not spending a bit of money that has been approved by Congress is really a hanging offence.
Instead of talking impeachment the Democrats should be going to Court.
The difference is the personal political benefit aspect of Donny Dotard's Ukraine extortion scheme. Previous quid pro quo arrangements where funds were withheld were to extract something that was in the US national interest. Whereas now, even Repug senators that are so far up Drumpf's ass they can shake hands with Hannity aren't even trying to argue the Ukraine extortion was for some kind of US national interest purpose.
I too suspect the number of minds that will be changed is a tiny fraction of the usual polling margin of error. But it will harden the view among the 52ish% of Americans disapprove of his job performance that on no account should he be given a second term.
"But it will harden the view ………"
I fear it is going to have the other effect. It might cause the opinion in those who have supported him in the past to veer around to one that says that the Democrats are trivialising the act of impeachment and trying to do it for something far below the "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" mentioned in the Constitution.
Look at what happened with Bill Clinton. The impeached him for, finally, having an affair and lying about it. He was impeached but it was a joke by that stage and he was acquitted in the Senate. I fear the same thing will happen here and it will strengthen Trump for next year.
God knows, I thought that Trump would be a disaster as a President and he has turned out to be even worse than I feared. I think that if he is re-elected we are going to get a nuclear arms race starting up. Trump has no concept at all of the role the US has had and anyone who thought that the US would help protect them is going to abandon ship. I can see South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and The Philippines among the countries that will start seriously looking at developing such weapons. After all the US under Trump won't help them if they are attacked. In the Pacific, as well as The Philippines I'll bet Taiwan is worried about an invasion because Trump won't help out. He abandoned the Kurds, staunch American allies though they were, because he simply doesn't care.
I want the Democrats to elect a competent centrist. To hell with Bernie and the others on the left. I want someone who can, and will beat the imbecile currently in the White House.
The Clinton impeachment sure does hang like a spectre.
But one significant difference is that Clinton's misconduct was in no way related to his duties of office, unlike the present case.
Remember it grew out of the second or third investigation into Whitewater the moved onto anything and everything they could possibly think of – travel agents, Vince Foster. The impeachment didn't even talk about the actual abuse of power, a powerful man taking advantage of a star-struck young subordinate (maybe coz that was just viewed as a perk of being a powerful man?), just that Clinton didn't spill everything about it when he was asked. Investigations has been going on for years turning up nothing, so people were pretty fatigued.
Whereas the current case is about a clearly proven case of actual abuse of the power of office, for his personal interest and the detriment of the national interest.
There's also plenty of credible people arguing that Clinton's impeachment cost the Dems in 2000, that without the impeachment Gore would have won handily and the Dems possibly taking the House.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/would-democrats-really-face-a-backlash-if-they-impeached-trump/
While the current impeachment has is pretty much split the American public down the middle – actually there are slightly more in approval for impeachment than against – this is a different situation to that of Clinton, where it was a matter of sexual morality and lying about it, This goes right to the heart of the Constitution – bribery and corruption and in some eyes a far more serious matter worthy of Impeachment. I do not think the argument that this will have a flow on effect of increasing support for the Presidency will occur in this case. The lack of support for Trump has been pretty much the same throughout the past 3 years and if anything has been tracking south. It is never more than 40%. As the effects of the so call "tax cuts" kick in the average American can see that the so called great economy that Trump continues to bluster about is not for them and there are many polls that show his support in swing states is well below what is was in 2016.
The main problem as I see it is that it is now less than 11 months to election day. Wouldn't it be better for the Democrats to fight the election on the basis of what they will do for America rather than the focus being on a quarrel that no-one understands about what did, or did not, happen in a country that very few citizens of the US would be able to find on a map?
Like it or not a very large number of US people revere the office of the Presidency. If they don't understand why he is under what can be seen as partisan complaints they are likely to adopt the "My President. right or wrong" attitude if they think that the President is being attacked for what they do not see as particularly important reasons.
I hope I am wrong. However I worry that Trump will survive because those who voted for him in 2016 will gather in behind him if they see those eggheads and pointy headed East Coast liberals trying to drag down The (drum roll) President of The United States (salute).
Even if he really is an Emperor with no clothes.
It's almost certainly in the interests of the candidates to, at most, only refer to the impeachment obliquely in terms of things they won't do and what qualities they'll restore to the office.
It's also a dynamic that will probably hurt the candidates that are also sitting senators, ie Warren, Sanders, Booker, Klobuchar, because they will have to be in DC participating in the trial. Whereas Biden and Buttigieg can keep completely out of it.
But as for leaving it the voters, I'm with the idea that the things the FakeBronze Fuhrer has provably done are such egregious violations of his oaths and duties that there's no choice but to go ahead with impeachment. Because if you just let it slide because there's an election soon, then even the idea of impeachment becomes meaningless, and presidents basically become unaccountable kings for four years.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/27/politics/impeachment-2020-voters-bill-clinton-richard-nixon-trump/index.html
Unfortunately the Trumpers and Trumpettes will always be with us, as will the alt right "religious" conservatives – who support this adulterer, because he has promoted todate 170 ultra right wing (and in many cases completely unqualified) people to the role of federal and district judges. A position they will hold for life, and which will affect the judicial system in the US for decades, thereby allowing ridiculous laws passed by conservative administrations to perpetuate for a lifetime.
eg: Alabama Abortion Law temporary blocked – but in the future such action will have no hope of being successful if Trump has his way:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/us/alabama-abortion-ban.html
The current estimate of the size of the Trump base is around 28 – 32% of the voting public. This is where the Republicans only hope for re-election lies, and why they have cravenly given up all sense of a moral compass, because they realise that should they turn against Trump that sizable proportion of the voting public will turn against them. But as you can see – it is not a majority. Their only hope to the White House is through again winning the swing states that they only won by a handful of votes in 2016. (around 11,000 votes in one state and not much more in the other 3). It was in these swing states that Russian intervention was the most prevalent, and there has been little to no action by the Trump Administration to prevent such action happening again. Indeed 2 top cyber security officials are due to leave their positions early next year!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-u-s-cybersecurity-officials-to-depart-as-election-season-enters-full-swing-11575658194
Seth Meyers take a look at some of the Trump appointments that are now being pushed through the Senate by Moscow Mitch McConnell – who refused to allow any under Obama.
Indeed this is about all that the Senate is currently considering – the House have passed around 400 Bills in the past year up to the Senate where McConnell causes them to lie unconsidered. This is the great travesty of the Repugnants in power. If any one is worse than Trump it probably has to be McConnell. At least he knows what he is doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyds_jalBU
Beautiful turn of phrase, thank you
Unfortunately, the idea is not originally mine. If only I could remember where I first saw it to properly attribute it. Prob'ly yet another case of a man stealing intellectual property from a woman then getting credit for it.
Andre
You ask a dishonest question. instead of actually looking at the clip and understanding what Aaron is saying.
I dont like dishonesty!
I was interested in what Adrian personally thinks.
I am really not interested in what Aaron Mate thinks, it became clear to me long ago that whatever place he's coming from, it has at best a tenuous connection with reality. And I'm especially not interested in sitting through a fifteen minute verbal wankfest to get content that would take at most 2 or 3 minutes to absorb if it were presented in a written format.
So the result of your disinterest is a dishonest question pushing the MSM meme, hmmm looks like you are the one with " a tenuous connection with reality." maby get out more?
That Tinyfingers Tantrump was extorting Ukraine to smear a political opponent by withholding congress allocated and taxpayer funded aid is proven over and over and over again by the sworn testimony of those caught in the middle. Some of it very reluctant sworn testimony provided by Don the Con's allies he had personally appointed to those positions in the middle.
Transcripts of that sworn testimony are in the public domain, if you're interested you can go read them yourself.
If you want to pretend that's some kind of deceptive MSM meme, rather than proven fact, then hey, that affects your credibility not mine.
Here's the nice short factual executive summary of the House report on the matter:
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/12/politics/trump-ukraine-impeachment-inquiry-report-annotated/#executive-summary
Here's the annotated transcript of the key phone call from President Trump to President Zelinsky:
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/09/politics/trump-ukraine-transcript-annotated/
So forget everyone opinions: read through them both and make your own mind up.
Whether Trump is fired through a Senate trial or not, Pelosi is doing her constitutionally-specified job of ensuring that Trump is held to account.
"I stayed at the Trump Tower"
There the bribe – staying at trump tower.
Jimmy Carter sold his farm to avoid any allegations of corruption. trump has from day one taken money via his business from foreign governments – with the Saudis topping the list.
If pelosi and co had their act together they would have got him on this ages ago. Rather than the whole russian conspiracy theory we had to suffer through.
The grey speculative bits added to the transcript are a pain. Mind you without the propaganda – how could they get you to think the right way.
trump is an idiot, sheesh he just really is a t.v. reality star in over his head.
Pelosi definitely was reluctant to impeach (I suspect mostly because the repugs will find him "not guilty" if he shot somone on live TV, on fifth avenue, and then tweeted why he did it). I think the deciding factor was when his corruption wasn't just personal financial gain, but it started to involvefederal funds, foreign governments, and all the rest.
Still does not explain the months of conspiracy theories.
The same proponent of the conspiracy theories is telling more porkies about about Sanders these day. If only she accepted the fact she lost because she was shitty candidate, with shitty policy, representing 40 odd years of failed economics – who ran a shitty campaign.
We might actually be in a position to oppose trump well – rather than half assed and divisively.
I was talking about Pelosi.
Dunno what the hell you're on about.
You appear to be giving a rather distorted view of Jimmy Carter selling his farm.
You seem to be implying that he sold it when he became President. He did not. He put it into a trust. That was run so poorly that when he left office the business was heavily in debt and he then sold the business. That was after he left Office and would be equivalent to Trump selling up in 2021 after he, hopefully. loses the Presidential election next year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/when-jimmy-carter-left-office-his-peanut-business-was-deep-in-debt.html
OK, in trust which he had no control of which was poorly run – so he effectively sold his farm to avoid any notions of impropriety.
The point was he did it to avoid corruption, be it local or offshore – trump has not. trump has a trust – but it's a family run one – from memory.
It doesn't really matter whether you put you property into a trust or not. It has to be a trust where you have no idea what is in it for it to matter.
As long as Carter knew he still owned a peanut farm, and he did, he could have taken actions that affected his property for the better.
The fact that it was poorly run doesn't matter. That simply shows he had lousy judgement in picking a manager. The critical fact was that he still owned the place and things he did for US agriculture policy could affect him.
About the only US official who really cut his wealth off from his actions was Alan Greenspan who was Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006.
He put all his money into 30 year US Government bonds and left it there. Short of actually giving everything to charity before he took office that seemed about the only possible way of removing his assets from the actions that he took in his job.
I don't know why you bother Adrian Thornton, the soft left are still in lala land over this.
Their russians in the corner paranoia has led to quite a few conspiracy theories.
If they actually had a spine, and/or any nous – trump could have been impeached on day one – the bribes he is taking at trump tower from the Saudis are still on going, and hardly anyone is even talking about it. Until now that is.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/saudi-funded-lobbyist-paid-for-500-rooms-at-trumps-hotel-after-2016-election/2018/12/05/29603a64-f417-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html
But hey oil, bribes, and head chopping allies are better than those pesky russians.
quick, check the cupboard
Neither are brilliant addy. The yankistanis don't have to hoose between them.
Yeah, fucking paragons of virtue.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/18/russian-mercenaries-beat-beheaded-syrian-man-leaked-video/
Over your disengious comments where did I say the russians were better – nope, did not happen.
Tiresome.
voters dont trust politicians…now theres a surprise.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018725911/austin-mitchell-this-is-the-most-uncertain-uk-election-ever
The conflicting imperatives personified
Good work protesters to ODT about Garrick Tremain's slick cartoon. He could find something funny about the Holocaust but wouldn't because the weight of their adverse judgment would fall on him. Bit he's been making funnies at brown people's plight for quite a time, but when there is a raging virtual plague of measles in Samoa, with new gloomy facts about additional long-term affects on the immune system, to make a quip about the reaction has been enough to silence him, and that should be final. The Editor has personally apologised and so he should.
To the hour.
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1203351713043775488
For those following the UK elections, an excellent episode of The Listening Post this week…
There's also a fascinating story about purpose advertising, companies playing on our emotions with a particular style of product marketing.
Full episode is 26mins, UK election story is the first one up….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yGCcGHX3j4
Hung parliament?
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party has seen a big surge of support with the Tories advantage shrinking as the parties rally in the last weekend before the general election.
Labour made a huge four-point gain from 30 to 36 per cent between December 2 and 5, according to the latest data from Election Maps UK.
Meanwhile Boris Johnson's Conservatives stayed the same at 42 per cent, narrowing the gap between the two parties.
The Liberal Democrats dropped one point to 11 per cent while the Brexit Party crept up one point to four per cent.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1203347824789856256
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/uk-election-polls-labour-sees-190900891.html
how would that be a hung parliament? Either the LDs go with Cons or Labour.
Are the Northern Ireland seats no longer relevant to the outcome?
Only if Johnson needs them.
Vote Lib Dem, get Tory, could be a thing so perhaps not.
Labour and LD have both said no to any coalition although Swinson may offer a confidence and supply agreement to prop up a Tory minority government. If she does, it's either the end of her promise to prevent a hard brexit or the impasse that triggered the election will continue.
But hey, a month ago Swinson reckoned she could win a majority so anything's possible.
Labour and LD have both said no to a coalition with each other? How does Labour hope to win then? LD's refuse to support anyone and Labour govern on a minority of seats?
Oh yeah, what alwyn said, forgot about the SNP. What's the point of looking at Westminster alone?
Those 43 seats are in the Westminster Parliament. They are basically every Scottish electorate in the British Parliament. They aren't seats in Edinburgh's Assembly.
the relevant point here is how the UK govt forms.
They have.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/25/jeremy-corbyn-rules-lib-dem-coalition-happily-signed-austerity-11216622/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/23/jo-swinson-rules-out-lib-dem-pact-with-labour-under-jeremy-corbyn
It is a FPP Parliament so party percentages don't tell you very much about the number of seats they will get.
Here is a recent poll that gives the LibDems 13 seats from 14% of the vote. Meanwhile they say that the SNP will get 43 seats and the Breexit Party none. Each Party is expected to get 3% of the vote.
This isn't the same poll of course but it illustrates the fact that percentage of the vote and number of seats aren't really related. It is one from a couple of weeks ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/27/mrp-poll-conservatives-on-course-for-68-seat-majority
I seem to remember at the last UK election there was much more analysis based on seats. Maybe that will happen in the coming week?
The Lib Dems are dead against Brexit – so going with Boris Conservatives would be off the table? While Labour offers a path to avoiding Brexit.
Promising, but I still don't fancy Labour's chances. That is why I haven't really taken much of an interest in the election. It is still going to be a bloodbath, and when the dust has cleared, the neo-Thacherites will have complete control of the country. It might not even be until the 2030's that Labour will get back into power TBH.
Cheers for the link Joe
News reports are saying that bojo's likely majority is slipping fast. Anti tory voters are being encouraged to vote tactically. It's looking like it will be a hung parliament.
The UK are possibly going to face a hot and vengeful Irish border conflagration if Johnson wins and carries on in his Empire-colossus mode or Labour if they win, try to weasel out of anglo-irish-eu agreements so as to get better deals to suit English and Nth Ireland workers in withdrawal agreements.
"The analysis of almost 30,000 voters, for the pro-EU Best for Britain campaign, also finds that tactical votes by as few as 40,700 people in 36 key seats could prevent Johnson from forming a majority government."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/07/calls-grow-to-stop-boris-johnson-with-tactical-voting-as-race-tightens
Anyone who has a muppet in the family who will argue over the death penalty at xmas – good timing by the intercept. These four pieces are a heavy read, but they just lay bare the injustice and utter stupidity of the death penalty.
https://theintercept.com/series/the-condemned/
I don't think there's a place for it at all, but the US system seems particularly flawed.
Fucking Nazi pig spouts dehumanising eugenics/master race rhetoric.
https://twitter.com/TheLabourLeftie/status/1203030312160284672
I didn't click to hear Boris talk about the measurements applying to inequality when some have IQs higher than 100 yet are fuckwit, moronic lowlives and in some cases, in Parliament.
And people still vote for the guy. The human race forever shoots itself in the foot, it seems.
The right’s belief in the existence of intrinsic, ‘natural’ hierarchies of humans is a real thing. It's always the bullshit rationalisation they trot out in some form or another to excuse inflicting avoidable suffering on their fellow citizens.
For the conservative/patrician right, hierarchy is based in the family you come from, the school you went to, the firms you worked for and who you know. For the neoliberal right, natural hierarchies are revealed (like God’s grace) by success in the market – if you make money it is because you are of intrinsically of higher merit or intelligence. And for the fascist/identitarian right, it is based on race, religion and culture – though this is usually disguised by talk about “western civilisation” or some such thing. Individuals can obviously believe in mixtures of all of these classification systems – there are tensions among them, but they also intersect.
The only thing that counters these sociopathic right-wing trash is the moral conviction that humans are completely equal in their capacity for joy and suffering.
I'm confused. Does Boris like Cornflakes or not?
He does. But you really don't want to know what he likes to do with them.
The IQ measurement was useful in the 20th century in sorting out who was to be regarded as second rate, now it is everyone who hasn't got money and the right attitude of conformity to whatever group has been allocated.
EQ and study about human values and how to be in a world of machine-technology addiction should be the main study. All else can be looked up. Knowing stuff hasn't done us much good as in the last century – important, vital, things have been ignored. So education itself won't save us – discernment might.
EQ:
Shorter, black and brown people don't matter.
https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod/status/1203077816851582978
https://fair.org/home/with-people-in-the-streets-worldwide-media-focus-uniquely-on-hong-kong/
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2444193685703510&id=796085293847699
Boris is only better than a crack whore because he was born to money
I couldn't get it to work as reply to 7
Don't run working girls and boys down. They have a hard job – just regard them as if they were sportspeople operating in a different field. Sports people are respected – why shouldn't people who are active in the sex field?
I think that Donald and Boris are lesser than working girls and boys; they have to deliver or look out and rarely live in luxury. They are often too busy paying the ultimate controller over their drug dealer in crack? who might be from Dons and Boorish’s peer group.
GAZA –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcsEYRt_jGY&ab_channel=RTAmerica
Time to stop buying Israeli goods and services. Fight the apartheid state were it will hurt it – in the pocket.
Action Group for Palestinians of Syria say at least 3,708 Palestinians have been killed during the Syrian civil war, and 1,673 are being held in Assad regime abattoirs. At least 477 Palestinian-Syrians have been tortured to death in those abattoirs since 2011.
During the siege of the Yarmouk camp Assad forces and allied militias killed hundreds of Palestinian refugees with indiscriminate barrel bombs and elephant missiles.
Barely a murmur.
/
Refugees, and who made them such? The Syrian civil war is a awful bloody mess, and it will continue being such until outside forces like Saudi Arabia, England, Russia and the USA stop arming the disparate groups.
Assard is a prick, nothing changes on that front.
Gaza is not at war with Israel, and the Great March of Return is a peaceful protest. Stones gets thrown sure – but in two short years the casualty lists are huge. In the thousands. Including disabled people in wheelchairs, journalists and medics. Not forgetting children, and pregnant women.
So much winning.
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1203483059515002882
UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations said on Saturday that denuclearization is off the negotiating table with the United States and lengthy talks with Washington are not needed, the starkest statement yet emphasizing the gulf between the two sides ahead of a year-end deadline set by Pyongyang.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa/north-koreas-un-envoy-says-denuclearization-off-negotiating-table-with-united-states-idUSKBN1YB0FG
Pie to Boris: "You are a microwave meal Prime Minister … a microwave meal full of shit, no nutritional value at all, just an unremarkable turd waiting to happen…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjUWX6S8iYU
Frankie Boyle:
Boris Johnson, who looks like something you’d keep your pyjamas in, and who no reasonable person would choose to lead them into a chorus, has a strangely hunched demeanour; perhaps from all the time he spends crammed inside married women’s wardrobes, like a randy jack-in-the-box. This confused sex yeti has been booed by nurses: people who can remove a dressing, examine a festering wound, and still look up at you with a smile. Has any party ever elected a new leader so tired and dated? With a delivery best approximated as a living checklist of stroke warnings, his bumbling posho shtick almost resembles buffering, a kind of 3G Wodehouse. He doesn’t even seem to enjoy it; throughout the campaign he’s sported a face that looks as if it’s been kneaded by a baker going through a particularly bitter divorce, and the irony that comes into his eyes every time he crowbars in a catchphrase means that he breaks the fourth wall more than Deadpool. We thought the office of prime minister was what he lived for, his consuming ambition. It’s all been a bit like hearing Tony The Tiger talk about his diabetes.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/07/frankie-boyle-election-countdown-praying-prorogue-next-parliament
The late and much missed Clive James wrote: “For years now – all my life, in fact – there’s been something building up in western liberal democracy that should have been foreseeable, but perhaps was too obvious. There will be a penalty paid for prosperity and stability, and the penalty is that the young will forget. Liberal democracy in the west can die of itself. It doesn’t need an enemy, it can create its own enemies.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/08/brace-yourself-the-flood-of-lies-in-this-election-is-about-to-become-a-torrent