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Today’s Daily Blog Watch Round-Up of matters that have attracted the attention, assessments, and articulations of this country’s leading bloggers…

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NZ Left Blogosphere

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A most excellent post from a week ago on Kiwipolitico, Lew writes about  Recognising the enemy, in issues surrounding equal rights for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. My abject apologies for missing this beautiful piece of writing. Check out Lew’s closing statements; powerful words, powerful ideas!

QoT follows on from Lew’s blogpost with her own comments in  And ye shall know them by their repetitiveness on Ideologically Impure. You don’t have to be LGBTI to appreciate the simple, universal concepts of universal justice and equality – something which some religious groups need to understand, or be left behind.

Related to this, Brian Edwards asks on Media, Could a reasonable person or a decent human being have voted against the Marriage Amendment Bill?

He also remarks on “the Janus-like quality of so much liberal thinking: permissive of almost everything except contrary points of view“. Check it out  for another take on this issue.

Chris Trotter writes   From Customers To Voters: Drawing The Line Against Energy Profiteers – the battlegrounds are being drawn on Labour-Green’s NZ Power, and Bowalley Road is one of the fronts.  Chris makes excellent points, firing ‘bullets’ of ideas at the neo-liberal enemy and their sycophants.  He sez at one point,

In 2014 the Opposition parties have invited the New Zealand electorate to revoke Mighty River Power’s, Genesis Energy’s, Meridian Energy’s and Contact Energy’s licence to operate as unfettered super-profiteers. As citizens and voters we’ll finally be empowered to follow Teddy Roosevelt’s advice: drawing a line against our energy generators’ social misconduct and subserving them to the public good.

And he’s damned right. 2014 will be a simple choice for voters; do you want cheaper power or not? If you want ongoing power price-rises, please tick the National box. They’ll be certain to accomodate.

Andrew Geddis writes on the Pundit, Running down the clock on electoral reform, that National seems hell-bent on doing precisely nothing about electoral reform. Andrew asks,

Last year, over 6000 of us took the time and effort to engage in debating the future of our MMP system. Would it be too much trouble for the Government to let us know whether there was any point to us doing so?

Indeed.

In thias writer’s  view National has no intention of  implementing  any of the Electoral  Commission’s findings on MMP. Those changes would directly threaten National’s hold on power in 2014. Any changes will have to be implemented by an incoming Labour-Green government.

Sorry, David, Russell, and Meteria – but you guys are going to be Real Busy after you win the Treasury benches.

And now on to the Big. Dumb. Issue. Of. The. Day.

On Pundit, Andrew Geddis wonders in Colin Craig, Chapman Tripp and the Streisand Effect (Updated)  if  Colin “Craig might be a bit over-sensitive about how others see him – and is this a good thing in someone who is wanting to lead a new political movement into Parliament” (quotation marls indicate an actual statement).  Yup, it’s The Civilian/Colin Craig thang.

Colin  Craig’s mortal sin of threatening The Civilian with fire, brimstone, thunderbolts, and a lawsuit has invited  Danyl on The Dim Post to post one of his funniest, satirical pieces yet;  The Dim-Post interviews Conservative Party leader Colin Craig.

Blogger’s Note to Colin Craig: THIS IS SATIRE. IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE REALITY. PLEASE DON’T SEND ME TO HELL. OR SIC YOUR SOLICITORS ON TO ME. 

Ditto on Frankly Speaking, where Frank also points out one of Colin’s own sins – one he has not yet apologised for; Colin Craig confirms he likes cartoons – Christianity is in safe hands

Have a squizz at No Right Turn, where Idiot/Savant writes of  Another lie from the Prime Minister.  It’s a short-and-to-the-point piece – what more can be written about the mendacity of a man like John Key?

Have a look at the one of the two tags/labels of  I/S’s blogpost. ROFLMAO!

On Kiwipolitico, Pablo writes  an excellent analysis and explains why the public is not required to  Trust in spies. It’s brilliantly written and Pablo obviously has a handle at the Political-Intelligence Complex and how it works in this country. And worse still is how someone with worsening memory problems such as our Dear Leader cannot be relied on to provide accountabilty.

Gordon Campbell on lurching towards the centre on power prices makes this strikingly valid observation,

Anyone looking for legacy traces of the late Margaret Thatcher in New Zealand politics will have found them in the government’s scare tactics – “a lurch to the left” – being used to denigrate the Labour/Green plan to crack down on energy price profiteering. What about the government’s own prior lurch to the right – as its asset sales programme opened up state energy companies to price profiteering by private investors?

It is an indictment of  New Zealand’s media that pieces like this are not quoted by journos when they seek out comments by fund managers; share brokers, and other vested (and right wing)  interests, who condemn the Labour-Green proposals to reform the energy sector.

Great Ceasar’s Ghost, people, it’s not hard to do!!!  Flick Gordon an email; ask if it’s ok to use his material; copy & paste – sorted.

And onto The Standard,

• Communicating policy, by Anthony R0bins features a clear, crisp, infographic outlining Labour-Green’s NZ Power policy. I wouln’t be surprised if that inforgraphic, placed into every letter-box in the country, wins a million votes for Labour and the Greens. (And those who want expensive electricity can vote National/Act. Simple, eh?)
• More bloody dodgy dealing from Key. Fer chrissakes, how long is this going to go on for? The guy is as shady as a mafioso’s sun-umbrella. Read what Karol has to say on latest revelations about Dear Leader’s meeting with Ian Fletcher on 17 June 2011;  Fletcher-Key meetings: networks of influence. And don’t forget to click on the link to Andrea Vance’s story in the Dominion. It is damning.
• Colin Craig vs The Civilian, by Anthony R0bins is a neat little assessment of today’s fiasco.  And don’t forget to read the comments – equally doubleplusgood!

• Axe-grinders of the world unite – by Mike Smith, looks at the line-up of capitalist parasites who are aligned with the Tory parasites to knock back NZ Power. New Zealanders are gonna figure out Real Soon Now that you only have to look at the “ticket clippers” to know that we’re being rorted in our electricity bills.

• And this little gem, by karol; Homes for all (1945) . This would’ve been my first choice for Blogpost of the week as it is a heart-warming reminder of some of the good things we’ve lost in thirty years of abysmal neo-liberal “reforms”. Every Labour MP and Minister, post-2014, should be made to view this.

In Tumeke, Tim writes that the Costs of exploitation are  to high to pay;

“...The exploitation of “free” resources (ie. resources confiscated off indigenous people) happens in many countries where the settler-colonists run the state. The exploitation is more obvious when the state forcibly evicts on the land; but on water initiating the confiscation manifests itself in the tresspass needed to enforce it – thus the law change to criminalise protest in the NZ EEZ.”

There is an element of quasi-fascism to this. There may be no black leather uniforms; marching armies; swastika; ranting Leader; or torch-lights rallies – but that’s only because fascism in the 21st century is more subtle; more discreet. More insidious.

But the bad smell is the same.

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Blogpost of the Day

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All Hail the Conquoring Blgger Hero; The Civilian

The front page of  The Civilian tells the whole story;

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Congratulations to Colin Craig for being a total muppet and sending The Civilian‘s web-traffic soaring into the stratosphere. (Can you do the same for my Blog, Colin? My people, your people, lunch?)

Congratulations to Ben Uffindell – Big Ups to you for owning Colin Craig. You have earned a spot in internet history, and a spot in our hearts.

(For Ben’s response to the Legal Beagles, click here: RE: Chapman Tripp legal notice – 23 April 2013 )

*snigger*

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~oo~