Posts by linger
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dyan: you did exactly what I just did above.
If you leave the "http://" off the URL, it gets autocompleted as being within the publicaddress.net site. Which, strangely enough, tends not to work too well. -
Still on the ad copy (and suitably quantum):
Whether they win or lose ... clearly the best in the world.
(I did briefly consider "Going up against the French ... you'll need a stiff one" but that's probably not usable ;-)
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Thanks Felix... though that response doesn't really inspire confidence, does it. Maybe it's just that I'm used to hearing the same sort of thing from Japanese politicians, but I can't help parsing "...at the moment, I'd say..." as:
"I'm pulling this entirely out of my arse, because we don't have policies, or principles to found them on, and right at the moment I'll say anything that will avoid losing votes".
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Heh. Well, yes, the govt should be called to account for their position on Myanmar. But we should also be asking National (and others) what their alternative action would be.
The question re Iraq that Key has to answer is:
If the US were to declare a pre-emptive war on a state such as Iraq (or Iran, or Myanmar for that matter) tomorrow, what would your response be? To what extent would you support the USA? Key cannot be allowed to wiggle out of answering this on the grounds of it being a hypothetical question, because this is, unfortunately, a situation that any credible future government of NZ needs to have an answer for. We already have a fairly clear idea where Labour stands under Clark. National's position seems only to get murkier with each press release. -
The guy's all over the place
which raises the point:
journalists may feel they have to take a (probably) uncharitable interpretation of a political speech as a way of forcing clarification when a party otherwise refuses to be clear about what their policy is.
If that's an adequate justification for the practice, then I think Craig's objection disappears. -
The difference is that Clark's speech contained within itself the context needed to interpret it correctly. You have to wilfully ignore parts of the speech to get the interpretation you want. Key's utterance didn't contain that context, and so lends itself to uncharitable interpretations. But I agree, it's a helluva stretch to go from there to accusations of 'flipflopping'. (Now, if one were to look at National policies regarding whether NZ should send troops, that might be a different matter.) At worst, all Key's blurt might conclusively show is that he's still relatively inexperienced at political speechmaking (and/or is not yet thinking things through enough before speaking).
The MSM coverage is ... regrettable. What the MSM should aim for on such occasions is to force politicians to clarify exactly what they mean. Instead, too often, they immediately take the least charitable interpretation and run with it. -
I smell someone on Clark and Goff's breath
Ewww.
More seriously: it's somewhat unfair to compare statements made in 2003 (when we got the whole ridiculous "Mission Accomplished" blitz, and, if you defined the opponent as Saddam, he was gone, ergo no war) with statements made in 2007, when we should damn well know better (if you define your opponent as "terror" -- which is what happens in an unfriendly occupation -- then the war never ends).
Clark's Oxford Union speech also explicitly places the action "in 2003".
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...or even
When they're playing the Blues
Try some quality boozeYou could even sample a commentator for 'try'...
(Same stipulation as above, it's still a riff on Jeremy's idea.)
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...or even
When they're playing the Blues
Try some quality boozeYou could even sample a commentator for 'try'...
(Same stipulation as above, it's still a riff on Jeremy's idea.)
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I concur, the "playing the blues" one leaps out as the best so far in case of a loss (and also works for an AB win), though I would suggest some minor tweaking to identify the drinker as the spectator rather than the player, e.g.:
Just what you need when they're playing the Blues:
Whisky Galore.(Should this version actually win, I stress that credit remains with Jeremy.)