NAFF ORF KELVIN

Kelvin Davis wants to see New Zealanders as bilingual in English and Te Reo and able to switch effortlessly between the two languages 'without batting an eyelid'.   To that I say NUTS.   In order to achieve that something will have to give from the school curriculum ... what's it to be Kelvin ... reading, writing or arithmetic?    

The reality is that Maori is not and never will be a mainstream language.    It is restricted to a segment of New Zealand society and will remain so.   Great to have if you want it but clearly it falls into the 'could have' rather than the 'must have' basket.  Already there are issues with children coming out of kura kaupapa total immersion schools and finding it difficult to adjust to our wider society.   That can lead to alienation and anger.

Davis is trying desperately to appear relevant.   He's not.    He's close to being the first among a long list of 'problem Ministers.    You flew a kite Kelvin, it crashed. 

ZIMBABWE ELECTION

It has gone almost unnoticed in the media but Zimbabweans are voting today in their first election since the ouster of Robert Mulgabe as President.    By my count there are 23 candidates contesting the Presidency with the two front runners being the incumbent President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, representing ZANU- PF (the ruling Party) and Nelson Chamisa from the MDC-T (the official Opposition).   

Zimbabwe, being Zimbabwe, and the polls are all over the place.   The latest poll has Mnangagwa leading Chamisa 40% to 37%.

And in a somewhat bizarre twist yesterday saw Mulgabe declare that he would not be voting for the Party he founded and was instead supporting MDC-T.   Clearly, anything is possible in Zimbabwe.

Ho Ho Ho

Super Saturday

Today is Super Saturday in Australia with four federal by-elections taking place as a result of archaic citizenship laws.  The Veteran provides background here.

I think it is likely Labour will suffer a historic loss of one or two seats.

As a life long Gnat/Lib I'm hoping for such a result, just to see the despicable Shorten squirm.  However, for the Libs it would be better that Shorten wins all four because if he loses just one it is likely he will be replaced as leader by Albanese. 

Polls show Albanese would crush Turnbull at a general election.  Perversely, that's what I'd like to see.  Then the Turnbull cancer might be cut from the body of the party and allow it to return to its conservative roots.

An Albanese led Labor government may well be very good for Australia just as the Hawke/Keating governments of the day.

Priceless

A SON ASKS HIS FATHER FOR A MOTORBIKE

S. Dad can I have a motorbike

F. No, im buying you a Violin.

S. But I want a motorbike.

F. No you are getting a Violin and thats the end of that.

S.ok

After a few month of Violin lessons the father says to the son can you play me something on the Violin? He says sure....

For and Against

The Veteran has run his flag up the mast as an anti-trumper.  Good for him.  What you see is what you get and that's fine.  Adolf makes no secret of the fact he is a pro-trumper.  Likewise, what you see is what you get.

I think Veteran is wrong and I'm sure he thinks I'm wrong.  Some call it agreeing to disagree.

It appears most of Veteran's stance is due to some of the things President Trump says, how he says them, when he says them and where.   No doubt in this particular regard this president is unpresidential in any traditional sense.  (But in many ways, so was Harry Truman.)  The last straw for Veteran was president Trump's off the cuff remarks in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin at the podium.  I did not see them but when Newt Gingrich says they were a mistake and a gaffe then I'll take his word for it.

It has always been my preference to judge people by their actions rather than their words and that is why I am a fan of this president and completely despise his predecessor.

From the start it must be recognised not one of The Veteran's alternative Republican 'presidential' candidates stood a show in hell of winning the 2016 election.  He or she would have been destroyed by the combined weight of Hillary Clinton's illicit $billions, the Obama administration's spying and espionage complex, millions of fraudulent votes from California. the Democrat/ Media propaganda conspirators - rigged TV debates included.

Secondly, it seems to me almost any other Democrat candidate would have won against Trump.

In a nutshell, Trump was the only Republican who could win and Clinton was the only Democrat who could lose.

The world dodged the Clinton/Obama bullet when Donald Trump was elected.  Whatever this president's faults may be, they pale into insignificance compared with those of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Obama was big on mellifluous vacauosity and short on action.  Among other things, he and Hillary prematurely withdrew troops from Iraq, effectively creating ISIS.  They wrecked Libya and turned it over to ISIS.  They screwed up Syria and turned it over to Russia.  They effectively created the migrant crisis which has overwhelmed Europe.  Then they refinanced Iran and gave it the green light to go nuclear.  Some legacy!!  Did otherwise sane people want four or eight more years of that?

On the home front they presided over a stagnant economy, strangled by over-regulation.  I still laugh at the brainless Nobel winning economists who declared solemnly 'it is not possible for GDP to exceed 2.0% annually.' Obama is the only American president in history to have presided over eight years in which annual GDP growth did not for even one year exceed 3%.

If one wants to look at the significant achievements of the Trump administration one can go no further than yesterday's retort from S o S Mike Pompeo to a hapless Democrat senator- 'You'll need to back a truck up and we'll load them on.'

The US economy is roaring - tipped by some to be heading for 5% GDP this year; unemployment is at record lows; black employment is at record highs; large income tax reductions are in place; military spending is boosted; the Democrat/ Media conspiracy is exposed; the flood of illegal immigrants has declined to a trickle; the real friends of the US, shunned by Obama, are remade welcome and the enemies of the USA are reminded they are indeed enemies.

Just as the 'trade war hysteria' from the left reached fever pitch last week, a sort of free trade agreement with the EU was announced.  Along with a mutual goal of zero tariffs (excluding motor vehicles), an interesting aspect includes increased sales of soybeans and gas to the EU. (Wasn't it just last week that the Media and all lefties were demonizing the President for insulting the leaders of the EU?  Wasn't it just last month they were denouncing Trump for the loss of soybean exports to China?)  And so much for the Russian collusion hoax.  Trump just undercut Putin's European gas strategy.  Wait til all those oil and gas fields closed off by Obama start producing.  Trump is going to drown Putin in American oil.

Best of all, when Legbut cooks his 'oeufs et bacon du matin' he can kneel and thrice thank President Trump.  Once for the genetically modified soybeans used to feed the hens producing his eggs, second for the same soybeans used to feed the pigs he eats and third, for the low cost American gas he uses to cook his dejeuner.  Quelle domage!

I prefer a doer who is verbally clumsy from time to time rather than some smooth talker who smooches around the world, studiously avoiding any issue which might ruffle a few feathers, while sucking up to his country's enemies.

Ruffle ruffle, I say.

THE 'ANZAC' RELATIONSHIP REACHES A NEW LOW

I am reluctantly forced to agree with the Oz commentator who had it that the ANZAC relationship had reached a new low.   This per courtesy of St Jacinda and her grandfather little helper whose diplomatic skills rival that of President Trump.

It wasn't enough for the Labour Party here to do the dirty work on behalf of the ALP and ask questions in our parliament concerning the citizenship status of Barnaby Joyce ... an incident that caused the Australian Foreign Minister to opinion that she would find it very difficult to trust a NZ Labour government.

It wasn't enough for St Jacinda and WRP to attempt to embarrass the Aust government over their treatment of illegal immigrants held in detention centres nor our failure to recognise the ongoing role of the Australian boarder protection force in ensuring illegal immigrants trying to reach NZL are turned away in international waters.     

Neither was it overly smart to complain about the Oz decision to deport non-citizens who fail the government's 'good character' test especially given that 45% of those deported have already been before the Courts back here.  One can fairly ask how long it will be before the law catches up with the remainder ... bottom line ... these are not good people and one can understand why the Oz government wants quit of them.

And one can have some sympathy with the Oz view that NZL is not pulling its weight in defence with our expenditure measured in GDP terms only half that of Australia (and on a par with that of Tanzania). One can fairly argue that NZL has a essentially bi-partisan defence policy with successive administrations of all strips and colours determined to spend as little as possible with their collective mantra being 'defence on the cheap'.

And then to cap it all orf we have motormouth Peters claiming this week that Oz should change its flag because it looks like ours and that we got there first.   A view hardly likely to go down well in Canberra even if it were true ... it ain't.   The Oz flag was chosen from entries in a competition held following Federation and first flown in Melbourne on 3 September 1901.    It was formally recognised and legally defined in the Flags Act 1953.    The NZ ensign (not flag) was adopted on 24 March 1902 (six months after Oz) but was not recognised as our national flag until 79 years later with and the passing of the Flags, Emblems and Names Protection Act 1981.   WRP was in Parliament at that time but was probably too busy preening himself in front of a mirror to recall that sort of detail.

My point ... I agree the trans-tasman relationship is at an historic low point due entirely to the inflated egos of two lightweight politicians who just can't contain themselves.     

Friday's Fulminations

There is mild moderation.  Normal rules of blogger etiquette and courtesy to blog hosts will apply.with serious transgressors being thrown out.

Unfortunately our system does not allow your comments to show up in the blog post itself.  Just in the comments section.

Visitors might consider the wisdom of using moderate language.

Regards

Adolf'

EXCUSE ME

Mr Goofy, Hanoi Jane is more obnoxious, offensive and deserving of a gag order.  Not that I would deny her right to free speech, even though she would appear from her public persona to be first in line to dictate who should and should not be heard.

I would pay to shut that treacherous bitch up but would stop at protest,  just as I subscribe to the court action to overturn Goof'y's well out of order efforts that sadly turned out to be successful, in denying Lauren Southern's rights to be heard in a venue the citizens of Auckland own and fund.


But its alright when the lefty superior souls do it, right.

ON 'SUPER SATURDAY' IN OZ

The swathe of by-elections due in Australia on Saturday (two in WA; one each in Qld, SA and Tas) could be make or break for Bill Shorten as Leader of the Federal Labor Party.   All five seats were held by Labor.  Four Members were forced to resign following revelations that they held dual citizenship while the fifth called it quits for entirely personal reasons.

It is 98 years since a ruling Party has won a seat off the Opposition in a by-election (18 December 1920 when the Hughes government won the WA seat of Kalgoorlie off Labor) but this time at least two seats are in play with the Liberals leading in the Tasmanian seat of Braddon and the Queensland seat of Longman.     Were Labor to lose either of these two seats then Shorten's leadership could come under serious question given that a recent poll had Labor winning both seats comfortably with Anthony Albanese as Labor leader.

The result in  Longman will hang on the preferencing of One Nation voters.   The Party's 'How to Vote' card has the Liberal candidate at seventh spot with Labor at ten and the Greens' candidate last.

But then, inexplicably, Pauline Hanson, the leader of One Nation, has gone 'bush' for the last ten days of the campaign citing exhaustion (she's actually on holiday in Ireland).   Hardly the actions of a politician on top of her game (or perhaps not).   A cynic might say she went there to escape the fallout resulting from the conviction of Sean Black, former media advisor to One Nation, on two counts of assault and one of rape last week.   Black is due to be sentenced on Friday.   One can understand why Hanson might want to steer clear of any media questioning over his employment.

Saturday night could be interesting.   I will be sitting down to dinner with John Howard that night and looking forward to his take on the action.


  

THIS LADY IS MY KIND OF LADY

Lovely story here about Christchurch resident Lynda McKenzie who was told by the Christchurch City Council that they couldn't insulate her flat (as required by law) because the complex had sloping roofs and exposed rafters and no space for insulation ....

so she said 'nuts to them' and went out and had the job done herself with assistance from her employer and now she has a warm home.

Kudos to Mckenzie who wouldn't take no for the answer.   Kudos too to her employer.   Clearly she is a valued employee.    Big down-tick to the drone Council bureaucrats who couldn't think outside of the square.

And all this per courtesy of a Labour controlled Council.

Ho Ho Ho

The look socialists get when they realise they've run out of 
America's money




An assault revolver with high-capacity magazines and a revolver were recovered at the scene.

Beware strongmen who can’t stop lying warns lying weak man Barack Obama

A Bit of a Spat

There's a slanging match going on between NZ's Little loser and Australia's mouth of the moment, Peter Dutton.   The hapless Little is being buried.




If Andrew Little has half a brain he would advise Mr Dutton NZ will immediately set about applying the same social service restrictions to ex pat Australians residing in NZ as Australia applies to law abiding, hard working, tax paying New Zealanders living in Australia.

That might knock a few arses in.

NOTE THE CORRELATION

Lindsay Mitchell is a respected fellow blogger.   She nails her colours to the wall with her sincerely held belief that the welfare state is unsustainable economically, socially and morally.    Two graphs she has just posted caught my eye.  

They tell a story.   No further commentary needed.

 

CRATS AND SNOWFLAKES COLLIDE, CONFUSION REIGNS.

Some moron seeing a need to appear relevant brings in another rule that a dog on the tray of a ute must be restrained, failure to comply, a fine of three hundred dollars. Thanks a bunch  Andy Knapsack.

Some parents wanting to make their child safe, place a harness and leash on the wild child to effect a similar outcome and snowflakes emerge from everywhere screaming  charges of child abuse.

A friend at Field Days this year noted the previously popular  child restraint making a comeback to emulate what for our rural raised children made so much more sense than removing all possible dangers in an immediate environment that could attract attention from an inquisitive mind

Back to the canine nonsense, I fear the only enforcement will  arise from an already tragic outcome when things go bad, as did prosecutions from an equally moronic Law somewhere around the three quarter mark of last century that made it an offense for a child to ride on a "tractor" back in the day when such practice arose from necessity to have the child in relatively safety on the machine as opposed to under a bloody wheel.
Many hours of my formative years were spent on the footplate of a Caterpillar 'Fifteen', often asleep nestled in a secured wooden box that arrived on the farm with two containers of "Coopers Dip".

So much of the NZ rural livestock activity  occurs adjacent to a road and the well trained canine will not leave their commanding position on the deck until  a need for action arises and often when that happens, a quick response will need to be initiated. Valuable time taken to stop vehicle, release seatbelt, open door, emerge, and then unclip the bloody dog, the two mobs that could have been kept apart so  easily will have turned to custard requiring a serious time consuming rearrangement.
Equally there are many children running free in Malls and restraining them before they crash into some little old lady seems a  humane system.

Friday's Fulminations

There is mild moderation.  Normal rules of blogger etiquette and courtesy to blog hosts will apply.with serious transgressors being thrown out.

Unfortunately our system does not allow your comments to show up in the blog post itself.  Just in the comments section.

Visitors might consider the wisdom of using moderate language.

Regards

Adolf'

HAPPY BUT ....

Banks are Banks.   They are there to provide a return to their shareholders (except for Kiwibank which requires regular injections of capital from the taxpayer ... I digress).   I understand that imperative and don't expect too much from my Bank which probably has me red flagged on their computer as a 'freeloader' because I religiously pay off my credit-card debt in full every month.

Last week I had occasion to query an item on my credit-card statement.   After successfully navigating myself through the bank's 0800 query line I found myself speaking to a real person who very quickly resolved the problem.   She then said 'hold on, you may be eligible to receive a 50% reduction on the annual card fee' (of $125).    I said 'tell me more'.   She said that if my Veterans Pension (NZ Superannuation) was being paid directly into my account then I would qualify for the 50% waiver.   I said 'it is and look up my account on your screen for confirmation'.   She said 'You're right and you qualify and there, it's all done'.

Half happy but Grrrrrrrrrrr ... why didn't the Bank tell me that seven years ago when I first qualified for the VP?

TRUMP #3

and just when you thought you had seen and heard it all 'he' does it again.   Asked by a reporter at the Wednesday afternoon Cabinet meeting whether Russia 'is still targeting the United States' the President said 'No'.

Later the White House Press Secretary said that when the President said 'No' he didn't mean 'No' to the question but rather it was 'No' as in 'No more questions'.       The gymnastic contortions of language his aides are having to employ in order to paper over his continuing faux pas are worthy of an Olympic gold medal.

I've said enough about this idiot masquerading as POTUS.    Taking a break from Trumpland to blog about honest reality.

FORTUNATE INDEED THAT YALTA DIDNT HAPPEN IN 2018

With the Red Army within a hundred kms of Berlin and the western allies about to cross the Rhine the political "Big Three" of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met in Crimea at the Lavidea Palace in February 1945 with the military defeat of Germany unable to end in anything other than total destruction of The Third Reich.

One of the monumental outcomes of that meeting was the creation of a Soviet "sphere of political control" in complete absence of any hope of democracy  for the people of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greater Yugoslavia and Albania, all consigned to Soviet domination for the next almost half century.
Austria Italy, Greece, Finland, and even France faced serious threat of inclusion in that euphemistically termed  sphere of influence through agitation from strong communist ideological influence amongst the socialist trade union empowered left.
While devastated Germany was partitioned into four "Zones" each under the control of The US, France, The UK and The USSR with the poor wretches eventually locked into East Germany denied any semblance of democracy as western peoples might define it. The other three "Zones" merged into a free democratic state under a constitutional electoral arrangement similar to that now used In NZ for MMP, with a Capital city in Bonn.

Churchill had serious reservations at this locking in of Soviet Hegemony over eastern Europe but Roosevelt supported Stalin and the rest is History.
Now because Donald Trump didn't call out the nasty little scroat currently in charge of the Russian Federation at Helsinki, he  is being compared to Chamberlain in Munich c1938, the perpetrator of a "Pearl Harbour" disaster c 1941 and the greatest Traitor to ever hold the Office of POTUS.

Sheesh people so Trump fresh from reducing tension on the Korean DMZ sometimes erroneously referred to The 38 parallel didn't stick his neck in a noose at Helsinki to satisfy all the sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome, merely met with the current dictator of Russia and no war erupted,  why don't we just wait and see down the track

References to his throwing the US security services under a bus, give me strength. The conniptions of Obama, Brennan Comey, Rosenstein, Strzok, and Meuller along with the established traitors currently in the Democratic Party, they should all be tossed under the Amtrack express leaving Washington DC.
The almost total politicisation of the DoJ and The FBI leadership as arms of the Democratic Party make it a fairly reasonable desire for the present POTUS to have a strong urge to assist in the tossing.

Just think for a moment if the deliberations of the  Big Three had been exposed to political motivations and digital communications across the mass media, the widely revered Roosevelt who was elected to the office of POTUS four times leading to the 22nd  amendment to the US constitution might have had his reputation tarnished.

TRUMP #2

In writing my previous post on Trump being Trump I had seriously considered including a prediction that 'he' would label the reporting of his remarks from the Helsinki press conference 'Fake News'.    I wuz wrong.

It appears the President quickly realised the veritable shit storm his comments had created both at home and abroad and now sez 'he misspoke'.  

That when he said "My people came to me ... they said we think its Russia.  I have President Putin; he said its not Russia.  I will say this ... I don't see any reason why it would be" ... that he should have said "I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia.  Sort of double negative".

He must take 'us' (meaning the world) for fools. 

I have been a consistent critic of Trump (and Clinton).   But I have tried to give him some respect as befitting his office.   No more.    The man is an ego driven narcissist idiot who embarrasses his office every day he occupies it.    Problem is the US Constitution does not provide for the impeachment of an idiot ... if it did Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan and Andrew Jackson would all be goneburger ... while the bar in the 25th Amendment providing for the removal of the President as being 'unfit to serve' is a high one indeed.

America is, for better or worse, stuck with Trump for the next 28 months and America and the western world will be all the poorer for it.

Watch Your Step

Adolf's Spanish lessons today include a section on idiom or sayings. 

Here's a real gem I've never heard in the English language:-

Love is blind but not the neighbours.

'El amor es ciego, pero los vecinos no'

Spanish has a comma before the word 'pero' (but)

Update:

This one was written for David

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king.

'En tierra de ciegos, el tuerto es rey'

.

HAS TRUMP 'OUTCHAMBERLAINED' CHAMBERLAIN

The quite extraordinary (some might say bizarre) press conference  early this morning where Trump exonerated Putin from any wrongdoing in the US Presidential election has been universally condemned from across the US political spectrum.     Trump prostituted himself at Putin's feet with CNN's Anderson Cooper calling it as "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American President".

Some Trumpist apologists will say 'CNN ... so what'.   But it's not just CNN.   When Fox News weighs in also you know Trump has overreached himself big-time.   Not just the networks ... ex CIA Director John Brennan called the performance as "nothing short of treasonous" while conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said Trump's performance was "self serving and grotesque" before declaring "Trump made a fool of himself".  

The final word to U.S. Sen. John McCain who slammed Trump saying“The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate".   The Arizona Republican and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee added that Trump is unwilling to stand up to Putin. “He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the President made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world".     Sage comment.

All this at the end of Trump's European 'tour de force'.    A visit where he sought to undermine the British PM; questioned the US commitment to NATO; called the EU 'the enemy' and managed to walk in front of the Queen.

Trump is not a Republican yet he may go down in history as having near destroyed the Republican Party with his cosying up to Putin.     From where I sit Trump has 'outchamberlained' Chamberlain.



 

How to Make a Prize Prick of Yourself

First, engage is an act of gratuitous publicity seeking by sending your useless underwater recovery vehicle to Thailand, where is was neither asked for nor wanted.   The Thai government, in its polite way, told him to fuck off.

Second, when called out by one of the real heroes of the rescue, accuse the fellow of being a paedophile.       (Hmmmm, Another lefty I know does that from time to time.  I wonder which of Alinsky's rules that comes from?)

Of course, I refer to that darling of the left, Elon Musk, who has moved from being a musk melon to being a musk ox.  Last time I looked 'musk' was an all pervading odour associated with rutting goats.





Maybe car sales aren't going to well?  The man sure as hell needs to fire his PR manager.

ON SHANE JONES

TV1 News ran a story on Shane Jones' Provincial Growth Fund.    Fascinating that 40% of all the money allocated so far has gone to Northland.     Wonder why ....

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that Jones is trying to 'buy' the Northland seat with taxpayers money.    It is with with my tongue only slightly in cheek that I suggest to Matt King, National's incumbent Northland MP,  he should seek a ruling from the Electoral Commission to have all the dosh included in Jones' Election Expense Return when he takes on Matt 2020.

In the news-clip Jones came across as his normal arrogant and bombastic self, pontificating from on high, buttressed be a huge sense of self importance and entitlement.    His lazyness is legend up here and his persona is a massive turn-off to female voters.      

Still, Northland's gain is Northland's gain and we'll take in and run .... now how do I get 'him' to direct a roundabout be installed at Puketona (the junction of SH10 and SH11)?


  

Ho Ho Ho

When NASA started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work at zero gravity.

To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that wrote at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300C. The Russians used a pencil.