Time for your Saturday Night Video Humour.

A State Representative from New Hampshire has been arrested for the third forth time.

Naturally, the media never report a) the party or b) the presidential candidate these people support. But blogs do.

(Answers: A: Democrat B: Obama)

In 1990, Labour lost the election by a landslide. That year, they got a mere 35% of the vote, vs. National’s 47.8.

This year is looking like it’ll be far, far worse than that.

National is on track for a landslide election win with a 27-point poll lead over Labour.

On today’s Fairfax Media poll, Labour faces an election night rout that would oust 14 sitting MPs and deliver National a 13-seat majority.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen is now under huge pressure to deliver an election-winning Budget next week or face the backlash from voters seeking relief from rising pressure on household budgets.

But on today’s result, voters have already written Labour off and it may take more than the modest tax cuts signalled by Dr Cullen to turn that around.

The Nielsen poll for Fairfax newspapers suggests that not just the size but the timing of any tax cuts could be critical, with voters saying they want relief now, even if that puts pressure on interest rates.

Labour have lost their own voters. They’re now just a caretaker government, waiting for John Key’s administration to take over.

Funny thing about Labour’s refusal to remove corruption in a timely fashon.

It gets worse.

So bad, that even the left is aghast. So I quote the ironic statements of Idiot/Savant here, because for a guy who was head over heals for the Electoral Finance Act, he sure hates the end results of a government who encourages corruption.

Unfortunately, it seems the same cannot be said of the Immigration Service. TVNZ last night reported that Immigration’s Pacific division had persistent problems with corruption:

Around 60 people work at the Pacific division. But ONE News has discovered in just three years from 2004, 19 cases of serious offences were proven against staff there, including theft, bribery and fraud. From those 19 cases, nine people were fired or resigned and three were referred to police.

Even one incident of corruption is too many - but this seems to be widespread and pervasive. And it has to be stamped out.As for Immigration, this just rubs it in: the whole department is rotten to the core. Led by a self-serving fraud, agreeing to lie in unison to prevent proper public oversight, and now taking bribes and kickbacks for favours. And they want even more power to abuse? Screw that - they can’t possibly be trusted. The whole department needs a full, independent review to cut out the rot - and once that is done, it needs to be watched like a hawk to make sure it never reappears.

See also comments from No Minister.

The issue they should be chasing is that two Ministers of Immigration knew about the dodgy approvals being issued at this woman’s behest and THEY DID NOTHING ABOUT IT FOR OVER A YEAR.

Why is this so?

But for the fact that their very own state owned TV network exposed the rort, they STILL WOULD HAVE DONE NOTHING.

What are they hiding?

For those who have not read “Absolute Power“, now would be a good time to pick up a copy.

See, this all means a funny thing has just happened. Ian Wishart has gone from being crazy to the most sane man in the country. Only a fool would now suggest that the Clark administration is not every bit (and then some) as corrupt as Wishart claims has proven it to be.

Poneke has given up blogging. Pity - he was a good writer.

But NRT’s comments on it are rather amusing, considering the source.

And so the sewer (who had been turning up recently and leaving their usual turds around, and reacted particularly nastily to Poneke’s recent pieces criticising them) bullies another intelligent, articulate voice into silence. It’s a great loss to the NZ blogosphere, and to our hopes of becoming something better.

This from a guy who calls those who he disagrees with racist, fascist and Nazis on a regular basis. and that’s just for starters. Did I mention misogynistic? Don’t think he reserves his barbs for the right only, he’s also been known to throw turds (to use his terminology) at sections of the left he disagrees with.

Not exactly a position from which to claim moral authority.

As for partisanship, whatever I thought of Poneke’s opinions, one thing that was clear was that they were actually his, rather than being grabbed verbatim from some party’s daily talking points. Like me, he was fighting for his own “team”, not someone else’s (to the extent he was fighting at all, rather than merely making cynical observations). Unfortunately, for some in the blogosphere, any failure to toe their party line makes you a toady and a hack. If you’re not with them all the way, you’re against them - a “partisan” for the other side who must be beaten into silence. And sadly, they’ve won again.

Again, this is the guy who shut down debate on his site because he didn’t like common sense being explained to him. The Labour MP who’s party like he was trotting out turned out to be a complete hypocrite who is quite willing to dish out the very same insult explicitly that she found so very, very offensive when merely used implicitly.

I have to admit, I haven’t followed all the poo flinging. That’s mostly because Poneke deleted the post in question. I don’t approve of the way certain blogs work, but I choose to do that by trying to run my own blog to a higher standard. I leave it to my readers to make their own judgment on whether I succeed.

Update: Adolf nails it on WOBH

I can’t say that I’m surprised. When he started off he made that fateful error. The big giveaway. “I’m a non-partisan………” Inevitably that means a bias to the left. The clincher was the cowardly removal of a post and comment thread in which he came under attack. All characteristics of the left…

Indeed. Not that the right is perfect, but were far more tolerant of criticism generally.

The Green Party might be crazy in many most of their policies, but they are not asking us to vote for clowns.

Oh, wait.

(He’s No. 11 on the Green party List.)

If this is true, this makes Obama one of the most evil men in politics in a western society. He joins a very, very short list of politicians who support infanticide.

Bold emphasis mine.

In February 2004, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, sent a fund-raising letter with the “alarming news” that “right-wing politicians” had passed a law stopping doctors from stabbing half-born babies in the neck with scissors, suctioning out their brains and crushing their skulls.

Michelle called partial-birth abortion “a legitimate medical procedure,” and wouldn’t supporters please pay $150 to attend a luncheon for her husband, who would fight against “cynical ploy[s]” to stop it?

But that’s not why Obama’s opponent Alan Keyes said Jesus Christ wouldn’t vote for him.

Obama recalled Keyes’ statement in a recent USA Today opinion piece but omitted his reasoning.

I know his reasoning, because I was there.

As a nurse at an Illinois hospital in 1999, I discovered babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die in soiled utility rooms. I discovered infanticide.

Legislation was presented on the federal level and in various states called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. It stated all live-born babies were guaranteed the same constitutional right to equal protection, whether or not they were wanted.

BAIPA sailed through the U.S. Senate by unanimous vote. Even Sens. Clinton, Kennedy and Kerry agreed a mother’s right to “choose” stopped at her baby’s delivery.

The bill also passed overwhelmingly in the House. NARAL went neutral on it. Abortion enthusiasts publicly agreed that fighting BAIPA would appear extreme. President Bush signed BAIPA into law in 2002.

But in Illinois, the state version of BAIPA repeatedly failed, thanks in large part to then-state Sen. Barack Obama. It only passed in 2005, after Obama left.

I testified in 2001 and 2002 before a committee of which Obama was a member.

Obama articulately worried that legislation protecting live aborted babies might infringe on women’s rights or abortionists’ rights. Obama’s clinical discourse, his lack of mercy, shocked me. I was naive back then. Obama voted against the measure, twice. It ultimately failed.

In 2003, as chairman of the next Senate committee to which BAIPA was sent, Obama stopped it from even getting a hearing, shelving it to die much like babies were still being shelved to die in Illinois hospitals and abortion clinics.

(As chair of that same committee, Obama once abruptly ended a hearing early, right before Scott and Janet Willis, the parents of six children killed as a result of Illinois’ drivers licenses for bribes scandal, were to testify in favor of Choose Life license plate legislation. I was there for that one, too. The Willises had traveled three hours. Reporters filled the room. Obama stalled. He later killed the bill when no one was around.)

So, the reason Keyes said Jesus Christ wouldn’t vote for Barack Obama was because of Obama’s fanatical support of abortion to the point of condoning infanticide.

…Obama insinuated opposition to abortion is based only on religion, lecturing pro-lifers like me to “explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

I don’t recall mentioning religion when I testified against live-birth abortion. I only recall describing a live aborted baby I held in a hospital soiled utility room until he died, and a live aborted baby who was accidentally thrown into the trash.

Neither do I recall religion being brought into the partial-birth abortion ban debate. I recall comparisons made to U.S. laws ensuring animals being killed are treated humanely. I recall testimony that late-term babies feel excruciating pain while being aborted.

Obama stated pro-life proposals must be “amenable to reason.”

I’ll cut off there. Suffice to say that my observation of Obamas idea of “amenable to reason“
is much closer to “here’s my position, take it or shove off” than not.

Obama has finally decided on the rules for the election. I think they forgot to mention voters Republicans clinging to guns and/or religion while in the polling booth.

The campaign can succeed in imposing these rules on the race only if the news media cooperate. Newsweek signed up for the effort in a cover story that reads like a 3,400-word elaboration of the “distraction” passage of Obama’s victory speech. “The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968,” it says, through “innuendo and code.” McCain “may not be able to resist casting doubt on Obama’s patriotism,” and there’s a question whether he can or wants to “rein in the merchants of slime and sellers of hate.”

Here are the Obama rules in detail: He can’t be called a “liberal” (“the same names and labels they pin on everyone,” as Obama puts it); his toughness on the war on terror can’t be questioned (“attempts to play on our fears”); his extreme positions on social issues can’t be exposed (“the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives” and “turn us against each other”); and his Chicago background too is off-limits (“pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy”). Besides that, it should be a freewheeling and spirited campaign.

Democrats always want cultural issues not to matter because they are on the least-popular side of many of them, and want patriotic symbols like the Pledge of Allegiance and flag pins to be irrelevant when they can’t manage to nominate presidential candidates who wholeheartedly embrace them (which shouldn’t be that difficult). As for “fear” and “division,” they are vaporous pejoratives that can be applied to any warning of negative consequences of a given policy or any political position that doesn’t command 100 percent assent. In his North Carolina speech, Obama said the Iraq war “has not made us safer,” and that McCain’s ideas are “out of touch” with “American values.” How fearfully divisive.

We could take Obama’s rules in good faith if he never calls John McCain a “conservative” or labels him in any other way. If he never criticizes him for his association with George Bush. If he doesn’t jump on his gaffes (like McCain’s 100-years-in-Iraq comment that Obama distorted and harped on for weeks). And if he never says anything that would tend to make Americans fearful about the future or divide them (i.e., say things that some people agree with and others don’t).

This is, of course, an impossible standard. Obama doesn’t expect anyone to live up to it except John McCain.

HT Instapundit.

Actually, this isn’t much different to the normal rules, but they’re just being more rigorously enforced this time around I recon.

Talk about transparent.

He said that instead of 21 days, Zec now had 90 days from the day the results were announced on 2 May to hold the vote.

This means the election should now take place on, or before, 31 July.

The MDC has always demanded that the poll take place within the originally mandated time frame.

But Zec Chairman George Chiweshe told the BBC News website that the previous deadline of 23 May left “insufficient time” for preparations.

Preparations. Yea Right.

Mugabe is not going to give up power. He’s already delayed the second round by weeks, (voting remember was on 29 March) and by the time of this new round, he’ll have bought himself an extra 4 months.

Delays on top of that will dissipate the tension in the populace, there’ll be “delays” (I’d also bet that they won’t be posting the results at many polling stations, in breach of the law that helped the opposition last time) in counting the vote and before you know it, Mugabe will have the best part of another year under his belt.

My guess is that he’ll dismiss the new parliament and schedule new elections under some sort of “emergency” provision and/or arrest Tsvangirai. The new parliamentary elections will be declared invalid, and Mugabe will just “forget” to schedule new ones or keep dismissing those elected and just rule the country himself until he dies.

Suffice to say, this guy isn’t going to give up power, not easily, not at all.

Far too many on the far left take seriously their own hot air about Bush and various members of his administration being evil. Rove in particular has been endowed with extraordinary powers of evil to the point where the emperor in Star Wars looks like a kiddie playing with a train set in comparison.

As the years have past, this bizarre sort of mental illness has shifted further towards the center of the political mainstream - that’s well observed. Sadly, newsrooms have not been exempt from this.

Good news is that, with Rove out of the white house, some people have a chance to get a quick cure for their issues without having to use one of those nice white jackets.

Picking up on the Monday New York Times story by Jim Rutenberg and Jacques Steinberg, “The Pundit Analyzing Obama? Some TV Upstart Named Rove” (Tim Graham’s earlier post on the story), Hume noted how the article reported that Newsweek’s top editor, Jon Meacham, revealed “Rove had been received surprisingly well in the magazine’s newsroom, where he has been a reliable colleague who files his articles on time and works diligently with fact checkers.” After one editor dealt with him, Meacham told the newspaper: “The editor called me and said, ‘This just complicated my world view. I may like Karl Rove.’”

Hm, I guess those fact checkers have plenty of time on their hands given how little they’re used in certain political stories these days.

Come to think of it, given the thousands of errors uncovered in left leaning stories by right leaning blogs, and the fact that even the left is quoted as saying that Rove “works diligently with fact checkers”, shouldn’t that give some of our colleagues on the left pause for thought?