The Daily Blog Watch – 27/28 February 2014

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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 and on-line satirists…

NZ Left Blogosphere

Local Bodies presents a story on the Green Party Candidate For Invercargill 2nd Time,

Hearing the announcement today of the last asset sale and realizing that around 1/2  a billion dollars of taxpayers money has been spent on progressing them all, makes me even more determined that we can remove this dangerous government and replace it with a truly progressive one.

Hot Topic leaps through the looking glass into the world of climate denial,

The resulting exchanges provide an object lesson in life through the looking-glass, that alternative world where warming isn’t happening, climate scientists are colluding in a giant hoax, and the poor old free market is being threatened by gangs of rampant watermelons — great wagon loads of fruit against freedom, leeks against liberty, and carrots against capitalism.

Unfortunately, climate change deniers are like god-botherers – there’s no arguing with them. Facts mean nothing, because for Deniers, it is an act of faith that they alone are right while everyone else is wrong.

Rob Salmond on Polity comments on Williamson on 3D printers, and comes to a rather obvious conclusion….

On The Dim Post, Danyl gives NZ Herald’s John Armstrong a clip around the ear, and a much needed Reality check. Find out why….

Some more great stuff from Savant’s quill and ink on No Right Turn,

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

The latest on Manus Island: staff there were instructed to lie to refugees about their prospects of resettlement….

When the government dropped charges against former Pike River boss Peter Whittall over the Pike River mine explosion, they claimed that the simultaneous announcement that he would pay compensation to the families of the 29 men he was accused of killing was just a coincidence, and that there was no deal. As usual, they lied….

When we’ve won in Texas, the heart of American bigotry, we’ve really won….

The government has announced its plans to sell genesis Energy – and as expected, they’re going to dump it on the market at a fire-sale price…

Today’s Treasury fuckup: they underestimated the number of children living in poverty by 20,000….

If you haven’t already, check out these cheeky memes on Porcupine FarmWe’ll All Be Ruined, is the hysteria surrounding raising the minimum wage!

On Maui Street, Morgan Godfery illustrates how “Property rights for some are property rights for none“,

Writing about anti-Maori propaganda is exhausting. It’s not exhausting in the sense that it’s back breaking work; rather it’s intellectually – and, more importantly, emotionally – draining. I’m often writing against stereotypes that have been a century in the making. Stereotypes that are encoded in New Zealand’s colonial memory.

Gordon Campbell on the Snowden revelations and ACT’s position on incest,

Spying on the likes of China by our security agencies is also an inevitable by-product of treating some of our most important trading partners as security threats. It would be comforting to think that – somewhere along the line – someone in MFAT might have done a cost/benefit analysis as to which perception of China is of more value to this country. Do we gain more by embracing China as a trading partner and near neighbour with whom we should be cultivating friendly relations during the 21st century? Or do we gain more by treating it as a hostile military and security presence in the Asia/Pacific region?

And,

Is incest the end product of libertarianism in full flower? Or has Whyte taken a leaf from Colin Craig’s handbook – whereby a small and insignificant party gets the oxygen of media exposure simply by issuing a stream of controversial statements? Whyte may have concluded that there is no such thing as bad publicity, even when such proposals mainly serve to creep out the electorate. What is underlines is that Prime Minister John Key’s likely coalition buddies after this election – Craig,Whyte and Winston Peters – are a motley crew, indeed.

And it seems that even the NZ Herald has taken a swipe at neo-liberalism! Read Gordon’s piece and have a laugh at Act’s expense!

Fightback reports on Venezuela: The right-wing on the streets – an alternative news story on what’s really happening in that country, and why a democratically elected government is under attack by right wing forces. The One Percent and their slavish sycophants will not give up their privilege very easily.

From the International Socialist Organisation of Aotearoa comes this bit, WINZ: Poverty and Pep Talks – and what stomach-turning thing they found on the walss of one WINZ office…

“…the woman whose policies deliberately fostered mass unemployment in Britain, and whose government ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands, being used as part of a pep talk to convince us unemployment was somehow our fault.”

Scott Yorke is tres naughty on Imperator Fish, as he presents a lesson in  Politics Explained: It’s all about the kids. (Warning – this is not for kids!)

Rebuilding Christchurch involves Barnaby Bennett Part 4: Anchornomics,

If I was to sum up my critique of CERA in the shortest way possible it would with this one sentence: ‘Is that what you meant?’ This sentence is a critical part of any complex process. A person asks their opinion on something, they formulate that opinion into another form – a document, a design, a proposal, a sketch – and then go back to them and say ‘This is what I have done, is that what you meant?’ What normally then follows is a complex, intriguing, and difficult conversation where the questioner explains all the reasons that it is turning out this way, and the questionee reflects on what are the more or less important parts of the original answer. There is iteration, compromise and new ideas are formed.

This is precisely the process that has been missing in the redesign and rebuild of the central city….

And from The Standard,

Tony Ryall has announced that he will not seek re election at this year’s general election.

My heart fucken bleeds for him. (And check out Frank’s riddle on Frankly Speaking, when he asks, What do you call…)

You have to wonder why the Government is continuing with the share float.  It does not make financial sense and it is terribly unpopular.  There is a sense that a combination of ideological belief that the state should not own anything combined with a politically belligerent refusal to back down are the reasons the Government will continue with the float.

What do you call someone who knowingly relies on false information to defend his case?

Bill English.

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Blogpost of the Day

Now Is The Time … For A Game-Changer, writes Chris Trotter on Bowalley Road,

The New Zealand Left suddenly finds itself in the position of the dog who caught the car. For years, slagging off the Labour Party as a bunch of neoliberal sell-outs has been one of the Left’s favourite pub and parlour games. But now, with one of this country’s most effective left-wing campaigners just one door down from the Leader of the Labour Opposition, the Left, like the bewildered pooch for whom the fun was always in the chase, has finally got what it wanted and must decide what to do with it.

Chris adds, “Because the Left has been given an extraordinary opportunity to prove that it still has something to offer New Zealand, but a desperately short period of time in which to do it. If old wounds, old grudges, old defeats (are you listening Jim?) are allowed to get in the way of making this unprecedented situation work to the advantage of ordinary New Zealanders, then it will end in failure.”

Damn right.

 

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Thought for the Day

Who is the world in debt to

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~ Joe Blogger,

“The Daily Blog Watch” Editor, Imbiber of Fine Sugary Drinks,  & Moa-whisperer

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1 COMMENT

  1. Really disappointed to see Pablo using the well known homophobic “All homophobes are closeted” cliche, and even more disappointed to see you guys approvingly reblog it.

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