Sport - the opiate of the masses for politicians

As the debate ensues about where Auckland's new compulsorily funded stadium is meant to go, it proves there is nothing like talking about sport to inoculate the public about your past faux pas.

Time passes quickly.

It is 15 November and have they paid it back?

No.

Thieving bastards.

When one of them asks you where you think the stadium should go, ask when the Labour Party will pay back the money it illegally spent on its election campaign.

Adults can still all choose to drink

Kudos to both Clark and Brash for voting against changing the drinking age. Not PC’s latest post summarises some of the good reasons why this has happened. It demonstrates that some in Parliament agree that when there is a problem, the answer is not to pass a law against it. Shame the Greens aren't the slightest bit consistent on this.
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When you’re an adult you’re an adult – you accept the freedoms and the responsibility. If its your kids getting alcohol underage then first decide if it is a reason to panic (moderate drinking is hardly a problem), and then why they are doing it.

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Drinking alcohol is not, in itself, a bad thing.

Getting drunk, occasionally, is not, in itself, a bad thing.

Acting destructively towards others and their property when drunk is - but it would be regardless of your intoxication.

Being addicted to alcohol is bad, but it is no reason to restrict access for others.

A culture that treats alcohol as a means to dull the brain, rather than to enjoy the taste of the drink and to relax and be sociable - is also a problem, but it is not the fault of alcohol.

Republicans and Democrats ... if only

Regardless of the result tonight, this should be the future of the Republican party. Check here for endorsed liberty oriented candidates. Check here for the ratings of existing congress members on a scale from authoritarian to libertarian – you’ll see none of the Democrats rank beyond centrist, but many Republicans do.
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This is the heart of what the Republican Party should be about – not evangelical Christianity. The Democratic Party’s equivalent is nothing quite the same, but it would be nice if politics in the US was about debating THAT difference, rather than anti-capitalists vs. Christian evangelism.

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Tonight, the victories of the Democrats will be no victories for individual liberty. A US liberal is typically only liberal on some personal freedoms (usually ignoring drugs and censorship - remember the Clinton administration started proposing internet censorship), but most liberal with other people's money.

Clark and Bolger - political whores

Chris Trotter’s curious comment in his latest column that Helen Clark and Jim Bolger are more similar than either is to Don Brash is not far from the truth. After all, both Clark and Bolger are political whores par excellence. If we look at both their political careers they have actively been a part of some of the most authoritarian and liberalising governments in recent history.
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Helen Clark was Minister of Health in the late 1980s – when hospitals were being closed because of the archaic duplication of facilities across the country, and the health system was starting to face up to a structure reminiscent of the worst local authorities. Mental health was the poor cousin, as nobody got elected to hospital boards promising to increase funding for it. Clark was part of the beginning of the Rogernomics revolution on health care that meant that hospital boards couldn’t keep asking for more money without accountability for what was being bought. Clark was also in Cabinet when Telecom, PostBank and Air New Zealand were privatised, and also when it agreed to implement a flat tax. No doubt she held personal reservations about much of this, but in agreeing to be in Cabinet and a Minister, she wasn’t just a backbencher loyally supporting her party – she was in a position of power, part of the Rogernomics revolution and was widely loathed as small hospitals saw their range of services reduced. She succeeded Mike Moore as leader in 1993 with what has been described as a “Maoist” type of coup, and then worked hard to win the 1996 election.
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Jim Bolger was Minister of Labour in the latter days of the Muldoon government. To his credit he supported voluntary unionism (repealed by Labour, reinstated in the Employment Contracts Act and not repealed by Labour), but he was also in Cabinet while Think Big was being progressed, wage/price freezes, interest rate regulations and continued growth in subsidies. Bolger supported one of the most leftwing interventionist governments in recent history, he was a part of it. After his election as PM in 1990 he led a government that continued Rogernomics, with further privatisations (NZ Rail, BNZ, Radio NZ commercial networks), reductions in state spending, structural reform of the health sector, reductions in welfare. The liberalising policies also saw Bolger fall out with Winston Peters, and start the process of electoral reform with referenda on change options and ultimately MMP itself.
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The 1996 election showed the country what Bolger and Clark are all about. With National roughly maintaining its share of the vote at 33%, Labour’s vote collapsed to 28%, as the “talkback idiot” factor saw NZ First and the Alliance pull in as strong third and fourth parties. National needed NZ First to govern, ACT and United would not be enough. Labour needed NZ First to govern too, as the Alliance was not enough. So after the election, Winston looked like the cat who got the cream, and Bolger and Clark – both whom loathed Winston and his pandering to anti-Asian racism, started strutting their stuff in meetings with him like common K-Road whores.
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Ultimately it was Bolger who Winston screwed, one reason being that while he could have screwed Clark, he also needed Anderton there watching, and that was less than appealing.
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Indeed, Clark and Bolger have a lot in common – they were both desperate for power at any cost. Bolger could have walked away from it all and said – no – the National Party supports immigration and does not pander to populist nationalist politics (or some monosyllabic grunt that the talkback demeritocracy understands). So could have Clark. No.
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Of course, as we all know, Bolger’s marriage with Winston didn’t last and the Nats paid the price in 1999, with Clark storming in with Anderton (and the Greens) to govern.
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In 2005 it was different. National not only could not govern with a ragtag mob of United Future, NZ First, ACT and the Maori Party, but Don Brash had campaigned on NOT entering into government with Winston Peters. He was never tested as to whether he actually would have. Clark, by contrast, could have governed without Winston Peters, and had a choice of support from the Greens and/or the Maori Party instead, but she actively sought out Winston Peters – the man who continues to get support for either playing the “foreigners are dangerous” card or being Maori, and formed a confidence and supply agreement with him.
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This all makes a mockery of the sort of drivel that says that National wants power at any price – Labour is at least as bad and has been willing to sell out immigrant New Zealanders by giving Winston his baubles of power and appointing him Minister of Foreign Affairs, even when it didn't need to.

Saddam's sentence

Idiot Savant at No Right Turn is at least being consistent opposing Saddam getting the death penalty. On top of that he says “Unlike the Nazis, Milosovic, or the genocideres of Rwanda, Saddam did not receive a fair trial according to basic international standards”. I simply do not care – it is beyond any doubt that Saddam was responsible for waging war and engaging in mass murder. He is not a private citizen and does not deserve the treatment of one. I do not want him imprisoned - largely because so many dictators in the past have been imprisoned and over time find their way into other countries or living a sheltered existence, as new governments are too weak to take them on. Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Bokassa among others should all have been put to death.
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I cannot conceive how any human being with an ounce of decency can give a second of consideration as to what happens to that monster. It is not a precedent for hanging murder suspects high - it is of a different scale. The leader of a totalitarian state is a slavemaster who commands life or death upon his subjects - this is supremely despicable beyond words, and well beyond that of an errant citizen who commits murder in an otherwise free society.

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Robert Fisk decries it because Iraq was a US ally in the 1980s. Well it was also a Soviet ally too, but you wont see Fisk damning Russia because the Soviet government is “gone”. The fact that the current US administration is three removed from the one at the time of Saddam’s crimes is irrelevant. Fisk points out that the US turned a blind eye when Saddam used chemical weapons in Anfal and in the war against Iran. Saddam’s war against Iran was supported by the US, UK, France, West Germany and the USSR – in other words, it had widespread support by the international community, against the Islamist regime in Iran. The west chose Iraq as a lesser threat – a point that may yet prove to have been true. Fisk ignores that most of Iraq’s weapons were acquired from the USSR, other Warsaw Pact countries and China in the 1980s – he wouldn’t dare damn them would he? You see Fisk likes applying moral equivalency to the USA over Saddam Hussein and anyone who thinks that this is justified needs their heads read - only a fool would say that the two administrations are morally equivalent.