TVNZ's trivia

The whole Stephanie Mills moustache incident raises two simple points:

1. How the media, including Paul Henry, is willing to talk about a Houstache (well Cactus Kate coined it so why not use the term), but not the drivel being spouted from the mouth directly below it. THAT is what is truly disturbing

2. The anger surrounding what is a rather childish pointing out of what is true.

Paul Henry seemed very agitated about it. He doesn't go to Wellington enough, Wellington has many women with facial hair. Each to their own of course. It's like men with facial hair, it's absolutely vile to me (I presume most men with it couldn't give a damn about what i think anyway) and I am slightly less trusting of ANYONE with facial hair. It's rarer for women to have facial hair, so I assume (since I've spent most of my life shaving facial hair daily) it is a choice, and the person with it likes it that way.

Whether to comment on it or not is another point. However, in a free liberal society the choice to do so should not be restricted, neither should be the choice to respond.

The Hand Mirror is understandably upset, because a woman is being judged on her appearance, not what she said. Catherine Delahunty equally so spouting nonsense that "She must never think that her work, her achievements, her wisdom and her analysis will be enough to be respected. Not unless she looks like Barbie" forgetting Margaret Thatcher went through much much worse, was treated appallingly by the Conservative Party, and changed so much. Of course, she doesn't count, I've yet to see too many "Barbie like" successful women in politics or business.

So how about this, wouldn't it be nice if Paul Henry ripped into Stephanie Mills for talking sheer nonsense next time? Oh and it's funny how Alison Mau is being seen as a kind of hero for finding Henry's behaviour vile, when she is hardly a journalist of any calibre.

The enemy marches on London

For many protesting the upcoming G20 summit in London, it was a chance to vent frustration at the recession. They are blaming free market economics (where?), the stupid lending behaviour by banks (which they presumably wouldn't want to let fold), and the government for not regulating people borrowing and lending. Reports that it is an unprecedented coalition of various groups are absolute nonsense. It is the usual group of statists, adding a bunch of destroyers (anarchists) as well.

Let's take what some are saying:
Actionaid: "We urge the G20 to lift the veil of secrecy that makes it easy for companies to avoid tax. This would allow developing countries to claim the money that they are owed, so they can use it to build hospitals, dig wells and employ teachers" In other words more government and NO idea about the corruption and theft that developing country governments engage in.
Trade Union Congress: Wants a fairer and greener place. Fair means "take money from those who have it to give to those who don't". Given this organisation spent a good part of its history promoting the progressive Sovietisation of the UK economy, it hardly has credibility.
Save the Children: Wants to take more money from you for the poor. No idea how to create it of course.
Stop Climate Chaos Coalition: Wants to take more money from you to subsidise "green jobs" and "low carbon economies", presumably like Cuba and North Korea. Ignoring how much a recession kills off consumption of carbon based fuels.
Plan: Wants governments to listen to what young people have to say, which typically is "spend more money from the magic money bank", until they get jobs and start appreciating where governments take money from.
Salvation Army: Wants to take more money from you for the poor.
WWF: An organisation you thought was about wildlife, actually wants "equity", so wants more of your money taken.
CND: Wants disarmament, implicitly wants NATO expansion against Russian imperialist threats to stop (I thought it's funding from Moscow ended years ago). Vile sympathisers for authoritarianism.
Stop the War Coalition: Another vile far leftwing sympathiser group for Islamist terrorists.
It has long wanted to leave Iraq to Islamist terror groups, leave Afghanistan to the Taliban, let Israel be overrun by Hizbollah and Hamas and engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament.
British Muslim Initiative: See Stop the War Coalition.

None of this mob say what they want, other than to thieve more with the tax system, and withdraw militarily from the world.

More disconcerting are the anarchists who explicitly call to "Make Capitalism History". These angry little children want to storm banks and start a revolution.

Their "manifesto" is described on a website as follows:

-Can we oust the bankers from power?
-Can we get rid of the corrupt politicians in their pay?
-Can we guarantee everyone a job, a home, a future?
-Can we establish government by the people, for the people, of the people?
-Can we abolish all borders and be patriots for our planet?
-Can we all live sustainably and stop climate chaos? Can we make capitalism history?

The answer are (in theory):
Yes
Yes and replace them with your own.
Possibly yes, but it will be none of anyone's choosing.
No, you will establish a new dictatorship.
Yes (good luck with that one)
No, not without a fight.

You see bankers are being advised to dress down and avoid work next week, because the City of London Police and the London Metropolitan Police can't guarantee their safety - nice that.

The G20 will be a waste of time, largely because most politicians there are clueless as to why their own interventions precipated the crisis. However, far more dangerous are the insane destroyers out to destroy capitalism, without having any moral alternative (if any alternative). Hopefully most stay at home, don't do any violence and are largely treated with the contempt they deserve.

Sadly nobody will be protesting as to the grand theft that government have engaged in for years - because those protesting not only agree with government theft through taxes, but want more.

Earth hour's onanistic vileness

Oh yes, the sheeple in the relatively free rich world (and even the relatively unfree middle income world like China) will have a jolly ol' time switching off our lights for an hour. Makes you feel better a bit of enforced poverty doesn't it?

All cities in North Korea will be joining in, like they do every day for a while, at random hours in fact. Most people there would be amazed that there is the Hour of Power in counter protest. If only North Koreans could choose.

Tim Blair has an excellent commentary about how this silly little protest is going. He says the fact the Soccerroos are participating is proof soccer is gay.

However I'll leave my final comment to the Competitive Enterprise Institute

"we are pointing out what Earth Hour truly is about: it isn’t pro-earth, it is anti-man and anti-innovation. So, on March 28th, CEI plans to continue “voting” for humanity by enjoying the fruits of man’s mind. "

I'm doing so tonight as well.

UPDATE 1: The Ayn Rand Institute describes it as "The lights of our cities and monuments are a symbol of human achievement, of what mankind has accomplished in rising from the cave to the skyscraper. Earth Hour presents the disturbing spectacle of people celebrating those lights being extinguished. Its call for people to renounce energy and to rejoice at darkened skyscrapers makes its real meaning unmistakably clear: Earth Hour symbolizes the renunciation of industrial civilization."

One more reason why Auckland shouldn't be a supercity

The Stuff Poll

You want any of those people governing part of your money? Your land?

No - the incompetency of Auckland local government is NOT because it is fragmented, it is because it tries to do far too much, and far too many who get elected (and who manage it) have a competency deficit.

Hopefully Rodney Hide will dump the idea as comprehensively as the government that called for the Royal Commission was dumped at the last election.

Then scrap the ARC - yes it gets rid of the obvious body to lead a supercity.

After all, the ARC barely existed not very long ago, and almost all of what it does is destructive to Auckland's prosperity, or can be better carried out elsewhere.

That ought to be the report Rodney Hide seeks next from DIA. It would be a pilot for the rest of the country.

The way to hell says Czech PM

That's what he thinks of the Obama print money and fiscally abuse unborn children plan to stimulate the US economy says the BBC. See, the Czech Republics knows a bit about hell, as the allies left in the strangling embrace of Stalin and Chris Trotter's beloved Soviet Union for 40 years, rolling some tanks in halfway just to remind everyone of who was boss. The Czech's know a bit about the difference between freedom and statism, which given the Czech Republic's current (6 month) Presidency of the EU is good news for the EU (for now).

Czech (outgoing) PM Mirek Topolanek considers the size of the US budget deficit and the long list of protectionist "Buy America" provisions in the print money and fiscally abuse unborn children plan to be disastrous, as it follows just the same creeping path of protectionism that damaged the global economy in the mid-late 1930s.

He also says the EU is uninterested in pursuing any more of additional stimulus package to follow the US.

Now whilst this comes on the eve of another announcement, wouldn't you think the world would be better off, with Mr Topolanek's term as PM ending, appointing him instead of Helen Clark to run a bloated corrupt and lazy UN megabureaucracy?