Daktari's World

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In this blog it is likely that, from time to time, the authors and commenters will criticise government policy, speeches, and political tactics.

We would like to reassert that this is neither explicit nor implicit consent to release any private information about the authors or commenters that is held by any government agency, minister’s office, local government organisation, political party, or any other person, organisation or agency.

For the purposes of clarification this non-consent includes, but is not limited to, the following information:

- benefit status or history;
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- any grants applied for or received; an…

On Q&A on Sunday, Nick Smith claimed that Greenpeace's campaign for a 40% emissions reduction was unaffordable, and cited a report showing that it would have "a cost of about $15 billion per year at 2020", or $60 per person per week.

Keith Ng owns Nick Smith. hopefully the media pick up on this 'error' before the public get the wrong impression...

Cause we wouldn't want that now, would we?

Giddy up

coffee
fire morning goons nice

Image grabbed from Bomber's Tumeke blog - check it out, whilst I don't agree with everything Bomber and co say... I do share their sentiments over whats going on here in NZ. I don't gnerally talk about politics in NZ in any detail here, there are way better brains out there doing so.... so check some of the blogs (loads of links via Tumeke) and read, learn, think and decide for yourself. Mr Key and co, I am sure you feel you're doing what is right by this nation... but bob says NO

War Without Purpose

By Chris Hedges

Al-Qaida could not care less what we do in Afghanistan. We can bomb Afghan villages, hunt the Taliban in Helmand province, build a 100,000-strong client Afghan army, stand by passively as Afghan warlords execute hundreds, maybe thousands, of Taliban prisoners, build huge, elaborate military bases and send drones to drop bombs on Pakistan. It will make no difference. The war will not halt the attacks of Islamic radicals. Terrorist and insurgent groups are not conventional forces. They do not play by the rules of warfare our commanders have drilled into them in war colleges and service academies. And these underground groups are protean, changing shape and color as they drift from one failed state to the next, plan a terrorist attack and then fade back into the shadows. We are fighting with the wrong tools. We are fighting the wrong people. We are on the wrong side of history. And we will be defeated in Afghanistan as we will be in Iraq.

The cost of the …

Imagine you're a woman. This will be easier for some of you than others, obviously. Enjoy the easy, it's about to get harder.

You're widowed, and you've been on your own with your kids for a long time when you meet a man. He's charming and funny. He compliments you and makes you feel better than you have for a long time. There's a very attractive dynamic energy about him. He's got the gift of the gab. Better than any of that, he loves you.

You get married. A bit after that, you have a daughter. He dotes on her: it's pretty
clear he thinks she pukes sunshine and poops rainbows. He's a wonderful father to her. He can't spend enough time playing with her. He doesn't read to her, he tells her stories, wonderful made-up stories about an invisible orange leprechaun called George whose job is to look after her. He'll come home after a day at work and let her ride around the lounge on his back. And alright, he spoils her a bit, but obviously only b…

So what’s wrong with Goldman posting $3.44 billion in second-quarter profits, what’s wrong with the company so far earmarking $11.4 billion in compensation for its employees? What’s wrong is that this is not free-market earnings but an almost pure state subsidy.

Last year, when Hank Paulson told us all that the planet would explode if we didn’t fork over a gazillion dollars to Wall Street immediately, the entire rationale not only for TARP but for the whole galaxy of lesser-known state crutches and safety nets quietly ushered in later on was that Wall Street, once rescued, would pump money back into the economy, create jobs, and initiate a widespread recovery. This, we were told, was the reason we needed to pilfer massive amounts of middle-class tax revenue and hand it over to the same guys who had just blown up the financial world. We’d save their asses, they’d save ours. That was the deal.

It turned out not to happen that way. We constructed this massive bailout infrastructure, and in…

I woke up one morning late last week to the news that taxpayers, already $149 billion in the hole in the Treasury Department's TARP bailout program, are set to lose even more. As rescued banks now try to extricate themselves from the government's control, they must buy back stock warrants proffered at the time of the bailout, which, as the New York Times described it, offer "the right to purchase shares in each of the companies at roughly the price of their shares at the time of the deals."

As it happens, thanks largely to that taxpayer-funded bailout, bank stocks have risen since last fall's meltdown. Selling those warrants, then, should mean a tidy profit for taxpayers. But no such luck, it seems. Almost a dozen small banks have already bought back their warrants, and for a considerable discount -- a mere 66% of their value -- costing taxpayers upwards of $10 million. If this were to continue when giant firms like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanl…