TBR.cc

Death on PM's watch

This via NZPA, courtesy TGIF Edition:

MEMBER OF PM'S ALPINE PARTY DIES
CLARK-3RD-LEAD 327 words
Aug 14th 2008 10:58pm
Wellington, Aug 14 NZPA - A mountain guide in Prime Minister Helen Clark's alpine party has died near Lake Tekapo in the central South Island today. Police tonight confirmed the dead man was Gottlieb Otto Braun-Elwert, aged 59. Miss Clark is understood to have been involved in resuscitation efforts on him late this afternoon. Mr Braun-Elwert suffered what is believed to be a heart attack, Inspector Dave Gaskin, area commander for Mid-South Canterbury police said tonight. Miss Clark and Dr Davis were reported to be safe in a hut in a remote part of the Lake Tekapo region. Miss Clark's spokesman said there was no danger to Miss Clark or members of the party. Mr Braun-Elwert had an alpine recreation business based at Lake Tekapo and Miss Clark and her husband Peter Davis, keen mountain climbers and skiing enthusiasts, were regular clients of his. Search and Rescue volunteers have reached the hut in the Two Thumbs range in the South Canterbury back country and are preparing to evacuate the party, Mr Gaskin said. "Due to atrocious weather conditions a helicopter which was dispatched from Christchurch has been unable to reach the location," Mr Gaskin said. Mr Braun-Elwert, who had a degree in nuclear physics, immigrated to New Zealand in 1978. As well as taking Miss Clark and Dr Davis cross-country skiing several times, he guided them climbing in New Zealand and in South America. NZPA WGT gt

All hail the risible king

More on the legend of the Obamessiah. Classic.

Anti-smacking Bill is overkill and does violence to parenthood

Found on Kiwiblog:

To all those who insist on focusing on the rather narrow subset of activities governed by the modifications made to s.59 which involve “bashing”, “hitting” etc (insert other inflammatory hyperbolic term here) their kids, maybe a quick reference check to the actual bill / act.

Firstly, it considers use of force.  smacking is only one small subset of this.

Secondly it specifically prohibits any use of force for the purpose of correction. Anyone with a child will quickly tell you that pretty much anything you do for your kids is for the purpose of training them for their life ahead, and this means correcting behaviour.

Try teaching your 2 yr old to brush his teeth without contravening this law.

And for anyone that takes the above statement to infer that I must be abusing my son when trying to teach him to brush his teeth, I’d suggest you get some counselling for some obviously deep-seated issues - oh, and read the law again. I’ve never raised a finger to my son, and I don’t intend to. However whatever I do for my son will be what is best for him, not what suits some politician’s agenda.

And finally, consider what would happen if we took the power to use force for correction away from the police. We wouldn’t be able to enforce law any more. Think of all the money we’d save being able to close all the prisons. The reality is that force IS a solution to some problems (e.g. your country being invaded, people resisting arrest, self-defense and defense of another etc etc etc). We should just accept that, instead of trying to perpetrate the lie that it isn’t. Teaching that lesson to our kids is therefore just one of the lessons they need to learn in life before they become responsible for their own actions.

John Key lobbed some curly questions across the House yesterday:

John Key: Has the Prime Minister noticed the trend that all other New Zealanders have noticed, that her Government does not like the New Zealand public being able to express their view on democracy—they are about to be stopped from being able to exercise their democratic view through a referendum on the anti-smacking legislation at the election, and they are being stopped from exercising their democratic rights through the deeply flawed and cynical Electoral Finance Act—and why does the Prime Minister not just admit that she finds the voters of New Zealand an annoyance?

John Key: Is the Prime Minister aware that to run a referendum outside of election time would cost millions and millions of dollars, or, once again, does she have so little respect for taxpayers’ dollars that she is prepared to have them wasted when she could just run the referendum at election time; or is she running scared of that election?

This is a radical tack rarely seen in Parliament: namely, *representing* the people of New Zealand, rather than nannying them!

Virulent outbreak of sarcasm

The always trustworthy and balanced Dim-Post made a shocking report: Blogger Implicates Clark in Toilet Paper Theft

Prime Minister Helen Clark has been accused of ‘high level involvement’ in the mysterious theft of a twelve-pack of super-absorbent toilet rolls belonging to political blogger Calvin Snail.

NZConservative responded with its own stunning revelations:  Blogger implicates Key in Power Outages

Moderate Centre-Left Wing Blogger "Dillsy" yesterday published irrefutable proof that John Key and National were directly behind the power outage across Wellington, in a deliberate ploy to embarrass the State Owned Enterprises that provide energy to the country, and by implication, Helen Clark.

Over in the States a high profile convert to the New Atheism gushes: The Loser Letters

An open letter to those spokesmen for the New Atheism who have labored mightily these last few years to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice, and to liberate the rest of our Species via Science and Enlightenment!
(more on this one tomorrow)

I'm Goff and she's off (the ghost of Palmer)

Back in March, Investigate magazine carried a front cover story about the likelihood of a leadership spill within Labour this year and concluded there would not be one.

The reasons are spelt out in this extract, which other commentators have now picked up on:

"Goff and Cullen, on the other hand, come from Labour’s conservative political right wing, as does Police Minister Annette King, Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove and Health Minister David Cunliffe. For the Right to rebuild Labour, this group needs the Left-wing to be routed at the next election. Nothing less than a National Party blitzkrieg will sweep clean Labour’s stacked party list MPs like Wall, trade unionist Darien Fenton, Maryan Street (both gay and a former unionist), Lesley Soper or Charles Chauvel.

"For this reason, it’s in Goff and Cullen’s interests to leave Clark in place as the increasingly damaged political leader representing the increasing damaged Labour left, because the bigger the fall, the bigger the clean-out.

"While Labour’s backbench may want Goff to take over, and may even deliver him the numbers to topple Clark, Goff is generally considered too smart to accept the poisoned chalice of leading an unpopular three-term government into defeat.

"There is little doubt that Goff could probably save a few MPs from losing their seats, but the risk to him under the current party list arrangement would be the continued predominance of Labour’s left, who would then bide their time and topple Goff in favour of a more “suitable” leader from within their own ranks.

"And Goff will be wary, too, of senators offering laurels ahead of the vote, given that Helen Clark pulled the same stunt on Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer in 1990. The details are in Brian Edward’s hagiography of Clark published seven years ago, where former press gallery journalist Dick Griffin remembers Clark coming to see him:

It will require a near miracle for Labour to win this year's election, and Labour doesn't believe in miracles. But the jockeying for position on the list this year will be a battle for the future direction of the Labour party over the next ten years.

Goff's public decision to throw his hat in the ring is a signal to his supporters that they need to commence battle now behind the scenes, as a change of leadership in the New Year without changes in the MP line-up will be meaningless.

One final thing. History has a funny way of repeating itself. In April 1989, Labour's deputy prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer also refused to rule out a leadership challenge, for the first time.

First election campaign TV ad released

Look what turned up in our media inbox this morning:

State Services Commission knew of fake Ph.D

News is breaking that the State Services Commission was aware of irregularities with Mary Anne Thompson's qualifications when she was appointed to the Immigration Service role in 2004.

The then State Services Commissioner, Michael Wintringham, made a judgement call. I am presuming under the "no surprises" doctrine that SSC seems to hold to that the relevant Minister would have been advised.

Absolute Drubbing

Reports are emerging from parliament buildings of a Doomsday Poll for Labour, with the gap between the two main parties stretching to more than 25 points and plunging the Clark administration below 30%.

The poll is due for release this weekend, but if these figures are confirmed it shows Labour's closing of the gap in early April has not only been hit by a massive below-decks explosion, but that the torpedo strike may be terminal.

UPDATE: The Nielsen poll for Fairfax this morning has National on 56% and Labour on 29%, a gap of 27 points. It predicts a National election landslide based on those numbers.

How Labour intends to use its position of incumbancy to overcome the EFB

Audrey Young in the New Zealand Herald is reporting that Labour is planning to use pamphlets produced by IRD on "Kiwi Saver" and Work and Income on "Working for Families" as election material.

Apparently Labour Party activists have been advised to distribute this material pointing out that National opposed these measures.

Labour pushed through the Electoral Finance Act by spinning it wasn't fair that the "rich" could "buy" elections.

Last election they sowed the seeds of religious disharmony by slandering  a religious group they disapproved of, mostly because this group promote clean living and family values amongst their members.

This group, as you will recall, used their own money to campaign against the Government.  In the meantime Labour was stealing taxpayers money for their campaign material, including the famous pamphlet containing  the airbrushed image of our Prime minister.

It will take more than airbrushing to convince this voter that the Labour Party stands for anything other than staying in power at all costs and that they a fundamentally  dishonest.

I can't wait until one of their robots comes around to my door to try and convince me that they are worthy of my support.

They will probably leave in tears after the ear bashing they will receive.

Or perhaps I will even manage to get them to see the error of their ways in supporting this bunch of crooks and they will quit.

You never know your luck.

French Secularists cannot tolerate Sarkozy's faith

Nicolas Sarkozy, moderately conservative President of France, is raising the ire of anti-religious secular dogmatists. Chuck Colson wrote in "An Unlikely Messenger: Sarkozy and European Secularism"; religion is no longer a taboo subject in French politics. Sarkozy recalls that French history did not simply begin in 1789 (with the French revolution) -- there was a time when France was a jewel of the Catholic faith.. (remember Joan of Arc?)

For more than a century, what the French call laïcité has been the defining characteristic of French politics and public life. The word, which has no English equivalent, goes beyond the separation of church and state. It is a kind of secularism that tends to see “any strong religious views as a direct threat to [ France’s] freedom and way of life . . .”

Thus, discretion about one’s religious views, especially among leaders, is regarded as “a necessary part of being French.”

Sarkozy disagrees. In a book he wrote before becoming president, Sarkozy declared, “I am of Catholic culture, Catholic tradition, Catholic belief, even if my religious practice is episodic.”

He continued this theme after becoming president. He has criticized removing references to “ Europe’s Christian roots” from the European constitution. In a speech in Rome last December, he emphasized France’s Christian roots. He invoked France’s ancient title of the “Eldest Daughter of the Church.”

He proposed a new version of laïcité, one that “does not consider religions a danger, but an asset.” That is because, according to Sarkozy, when it comes to teaching right and wrong, “the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor.” Well said.

Sarkozy has also stood up for France’s often-beleaguered Jewish community. He recently announced that, starting next fall, French fifth-graders will have to learn the story of at least one of the 11,000 French children killed in the Holocaust.

He defended his plan by blaming the wars of the twentieth century on the “absence of God.” He further shocked French sensibilities by adding that Nazi racism was “radically incompatible with Judeo-Christian monotheism.”

This latter point is not hypothetical for the French president, whose maternal grandfather was Jewish.

Critics are appalled by Sarkozy’s invocations of religion. As one socialist leader put it, “a speech citing God not only on every page, but on every line, creates a fundamental problem for the republic.” Others chide him for disregarding the separation of church and state.

And, of course, they do not hesitate to point out the gap between his rhetoric and his lifestyle.

I wish that Sarkozy’s “religious practice” was less “episodic.” Nevertheless, I am gratified that he is taking on what has been called a “major taboo” in French public life. This may be the first time since the French revolution that a French leader has spoken seriously to the people about God.

A French-born writer, Hilaire Belloc, put it this way, “the faith is Europe.” Without Christianity, Europe would not exist. European secularism and the denial of its Christian roots have cut it off from its own heritage, leaving it vulnerable to the challenge of Islam.
After all, you can not fight something with nothing, which is what a “post-Christian” Europe is left with. That is why I welcome Sarkozy’s message — however unlikely the messenger.

A fascinating debate is underway at BeingFrank.