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Your NZ 
Call me Ishmael...
/ 2nd March 2020Given the way that the GOP and Trump lambasted Obama’s handling of the Ebola crisis in 2014, now that the shoe is on the other foot I’m wondering whether the “very stable genius” in the White House will be demonstrating his own presidential responsibility by embracing everyone who contracts coronavirus in America …
Call me Ishmael...
/ 2nd March 2020Alan Wilkinson
/ 2nd March 2020Offset by rises? Percentage drops rather than numeric given the series rise?
Or just more Lefty propaganda war?
Call me Ishmael...
/ 3rd March 2020Trying to make silk purses out of sow’s ears again, Alan…
But there’s a problem: the Dow had two days of significant losses — 1,031 points on Monday 24th and another 879 points on Tuesday 25th But the Dem presidential candidate debate took place on the night of the 25th, after the American markets closed for the day. So blaming a “lefty propaganda war” for the market slide rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how time works.
If his claim about markets being spooked by the Democratic debate held water, you would’ve expected the Dow to plummet again on Wednesday. But it didn’t. It dropped just 122 points.
It’s a problem for Trump considering how much political capital he’s staked on the strength of the Dow.
Next you’ll be telling us that coronavirus is an internationally coordinated plot hatched up by the Demon-crats to oust Trump.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 3rd March 2020No, Ishmael. None of that is relevant. The point is that if movements are measured in percentages it puts historic and current changes on the same comparative basis whereas raw numbers like yours over weigh current changes where the index raw numbers are high. That, of course, is exactly what your Lefty propagandists want.
Call me Ishmael...
/ 4th March 2020Oh it’s all relevant and you are simply being an ostrich with your head in the sand.
Nevertheless I will play your silly game – ‘suffer the fools gladly’ and all that.
The Dow and S&P 500 each dropped 12% and 11% for the week, respectively, marking their worst weekly performance since the financial crisis. That’s also the fastest ever decline in the Dow
The Dow 30 stock average ended the week down 14%, and 96% of the entire S&P 500 was in correction territory (<10% decline). That S&P500 correction wiped US$3.6 trillion off the market.
A 500 point dead-cat rebound on Monday has of course been wiped out with further falls yesterday.
What we are seeing in the markets is pure liquidation and the most important dynamic driving it is the uncertainty resulting from a president who is a pathological liar and who lacks the competencies to calm a nervous market.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 4th March 2020Can you explain how Trump is responsible for the virus that caused this?
Alan Wilkinson
/ 4th March 2020… or this:
U.S. stocks skyrocketed on Monday, with the Dow setting a single-day point record in a broad-based rebound, after mounting coronavirus fears sent global markets into a week-long swoon.
The powerful rally sent the blue-chip Dow index soaring by more than 1,290 points, which beat the previous record set in December 2018 and snapped a brutal seven-session losing streak. On a percentage basis, the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq both saw their biggest move in over a year.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stock-market-news-live-updates-march-2-2020-003013975.html
Pink David
/ 4th March 2020“What we are seeing in the markets is pure liquidation and the most important dynamic driving it is the uncertainty resulting from a president who is a pathological liar and who lacks the competencies to calm a nervous market.”
Joe, your funny.
lurcher1948
/ 2nd March 2020Its a joy and a damn long wait if PG ever sees and/or ever passes my well thought outposts
Dunedin stuck in the gold rush era is so far away from Wellington, the centre of civilisation, and civilisation,with good coffee and the CANES
Alan Wilkinson
/ 2nd March 2020I have a feeling you deserve the CANES, Lurch. Always promising, never delivering. Go the Crusaders. Again.
Corky
/ 2nd March 2020Easy now…if you saw Country Calendar, it showed Dunedin’s Farmers Market. Damn fine produce and genuine organic eggs. Wellington ferals wouldn’t know good produce and coffee if they tripped over it. Wellington is like their public transport…broken! Like the CANES will be after the Blues Brothers steam roll them on Saturday.😃
lurcher1948
/ 2nd March 2020Corky think you are a CUNT… PG hates me and Wellington THE CAPITAL,CORKY you dont deserve the title ARSEHOLE, small pimple souds better,pimple Corky…something to squeeze
duperez
/ 2nd March 2020So much for well thought out posts and Wellington being the centre of civilisation. Is it possible to get good help there?
Corky
/ 3rd March 2020I thought Pete would have moderated.
Kitty Catkin
/ 2nd March 2020Lurch, both of those parts of the anatomy serve useful purposes.
Corky
/ 2nd March 2020Sean Plunket’s petition is up to 33,000. I think more people signed a petition to get rid of Mikey. Says a lot, doesn’t it?
https://www.change.org/p/justice-minister-andrew-little-abolish-the-right-to-silence-in-cases-of-child-abuse-in-nz?recruiter=1043449411&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition
Kitty Catkin
/ 2nd March 2020It shows how many dislike Mike Hosking. I assume that that’s whom you mean, although no one seems to call him that but you.
Corky
/ 3rd March 2020No, I was talking about Mike Myers.
Kitty Catkin
/ 4th March 2020I thought that you must be talking about the time when 76,000 people signed a petition to have Mike Hosking removed from presenting something to do with the then election; was it the debates ?
Corky
/ 2nd March 2020How dumb is the world? This dumb.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/02/corona-beer-owner-suffers-455-million-revenue-loss.html
duperez
/ 2nd March 2020Looks like an exciting week coming up. On being asked Clare Curran admitted having a cannabis conviction from years ago. The lynch mobs will be out.
Nikki Kaye and Chris Bishop said they had tried cannabis but didn’t enjoy it. That’s all a bit ‘I didn’t inhale’ and if they didn’t enjoy it somehow the deed wasn’t as bad as if it were enjoyed.🙃
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/119955220/dunedin-south-mp-clare-curran-admits-cannabis-conviction
Duker
/ 3rd March 2020Tried it but didnt enjoy it…thats a common response from those who have never smoked tobacco before either, and actually makes sense.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 3rd March 2020Excellent journalism:
https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2020/03/living-in-silence/
Corky
/ 3rd March 2020Gun shop owner and importer dealt to for being outspoken.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/119950757/gun-city-owner-david-tipple-charged-by-mpi-over-unloading-of-sea-containers
Duker
/ 3rd March 2020Just goes to show how law abiding these gun retailers can be . Not.
Who knows what they had in there that an inspector would pick up on ? Not like hes importing blankets or something innocuous.
Kitty Catkin
/ 3rd March 2020He isn’t being charged with being outspoken, he’s being charged with breaking the law about having someone present when these things are unloaded, just as anyone else would be if they did this.
Corky
/ 3rd March 2020Of course he’s being charged for his outspokenness:
”According to the charging documents the offences occurred between May and December 2017 and in June 2018.”
Unlike Kitty, I know what a bond store, custom inspector, and opening containers entails.
Kitty Catkin
/ 3rd March 2020He is being charged, according to your link, with various offences including bio-security ones. It has nothing to do with being outspoken. As the details are all there, it’s no credit to you that you know them. Anyone could google these things, anyway. I am aware of what customs inspectors do, and anyone who’s known to import guns can’t be surprised when the containers that they have brought in are checked. Did the fool think that customs would think that the containers didn’t have guns in them ? He has been in trouble with the law for other such offences, you’d think that he’d learn.
Where does being outspoken come into it ?
Corky
/ 3rd March 2020Dear oh, dear… I thought my post would give a clue. Sometimes you must look past the obvious.
Kitty Catkin
/ 4th March 2020Your post/s simply show that you haven’t any idea that he is being charged with breaking the law by opening containers in a bonded warehouse* without a customs official being present and breaking biosecurity laws by allowing his staff to dispose of the packaging. You may not have realised that the link told the whole story, but it does.Have you read the link ?
His unlovely views don’t come into it, nor does his enormous Gun City sign which was near one of the mosques and in full view of anyone driving through a busy crossroad. The law was unable to do anything about that, but he did eventually remove the extraordinarily insensitive and offensive sign and replace it with another one that wasn’t quite so crass.
Had he not high-handedly gone against the import and biosecurity laws, he wouldn’t have been charged with breaking them. He’s been in trouble with the law before, he ought to know how these things work. I know how these laws work. A longtime importer should know by this time.
How do you think that his supposed outspokenness comes into this ?
* as they are called in NZ, I believe
Corky
/ 4th March 2020”According to the charging documents the offences occurred between May and December 2017 and in June 2018.”
Kitty Catkin
/ 4th March 2020That is irrelevant; the crimes were still committed. The fact that they were committed 2 or 3 years ago has nothing to do with it. Crimes don’t have a use-by date in NZ beyond which they cease to be crimes. I saw those dates but didn’t bother to comment as they bore no relevance to anything.
Look up the way NZ law works.
Corky
/ 4th March 2020Of course he’s being charged for his outspokenness>>>>>According to the charging documents the offences occurred between May and December 2017 and in June 2018.>>>>>http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/179722/Gun-dealers-struggle-over-assault-charge>>>>> seems to me this guy is picked on. Officials don’t like being made dicks of…suddenly he is charged for historic offences?
Kitty Catkin
/ 4th March 2020If you believe that NZ law works that way, nothing anyone says will convince you of the inanity and wrongness of these views.
Corky
/ 4th March 2020Funny, my link says different.
Kitty Catkin
/ 4th March 2020It doesn’t, of course, but you will argue till you’re blue in the face that it does.
If he stopped committing crimes he’d be in no danger of arrest.
Duker
/ 3rd March 2020Balenciaga floods runway at Fashion Week to highlight climate crisis
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/balenciaga-flood-water-runway-paris-fashion-week-aw20-climate-change-a9369996.html
Ah Paris Fashion Week….
Alan Wilkinson
/ 3rd March 2020The Thunberg effect: making adults act like children.
Pete George
/ 3rd March 2020I thought that Trump had been around longer than that.
Kitty Catkin
/ 3rd March 2020Tehee, quod she, and clapte the window to.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 3rd March 2020Long enough to have defeated a lot of sneering adults, I guess.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 4th March 2020.. or possibly making children act like adults – to their detriment:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/greta-thunberg-mother-malena-ernman-pens-new-memoir-revealing-extent-of-daughters-exploitation
Kitty Catkin
/ 3rd March 2020I have just read that the average profit on petrol is 25c a litre in NZ.
How can it come down by the amount predicted by Labour ? No one can keep a business going if they have to sell the product for less than they paid for it. The garage owners want to make a living, not give away free petrol.
Duker
/ 4th March 2020I doubt. The retail price is around 60% tax, so that would make profits something like 50% of the supply price
Blazer
/ 3rd March 2020wonderful world…beautiful…people..
Corky
/ 3rd March 2020I posted about this a few days ago because common sense told me this was a situation that could go pear shape very quickly. That only one person has lost there life is a miracle.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/child-dies-migrants-rush-cross-greek-turkish-border
Corky
/ 3rd March 2020Just seen other clips of Greek authorities trying to tip up the boats of refugees. That is murder. That is desperation. That is a country ready to go under given the right circumstances.
Gezza
/ 4th March 2020Yes, it’s a nightmare scenario. And it’s got wider implications than just for Greece; it impacts
the EU.
Turkey is daily coming ever closer to its forces getting into direct conflict with the Russians in Syria. That must have awkward implications for other NATO countries.
Putin & Erdogan are supposed to meet this Thursday in Moscow. Erdogan is
pushing for a ceasefire & the re-establishment of a safe zone in Idlib for those rebels Turkey backs & those civilians living there who are opposed to or fearful of Assad’s regime – but Putin is giving full support to Assad & insists that he is legitimately ridding Syria of “terrorists”. He can veto any anti-Assad UN Security Council resolutions & flatly rejects claims the Russians are committing war crimes in Syria.
It’s difficult to see how Greece, Bulgaria & the EU can hold back the flood of 3-4 million Syrian refugees (& economic migrants from places like Afghanistan) that Turkey has up until now been hosting & containing under the 2016 deal with the EU – but who they’re now actively encouraging to head into the EU.
It’s a rapidly unfolding diplomatic, political, economic & social disaster for Greece & the EU. And likely for Turkey as well. Can’t see EU countries wanting to get into direct conflict with Assad’s or Russia’s forces in Syria.
Erdogan is trying to force the EU’s & the international community’s hands to put a brake on Assad, & but Putin & Assad seem to be holding all the aces.
MaureenW
/ 4th March 2020The Democrats have had 4 years to come up with a candidate to beat Trump .. and they’re heading into Super Tuesday with Biden who appears to be suffering from dementia and socialist Bernie Sanders. What’s the bet neither of those end up running against Trump?
Duker
/ 4th March 2020You dont have the faintest idea of how Democrats now ( and Republicans in 2016) come up with candidates.
This IS the process. There is no 4 years of ‘choosing the one’
MaureenW
/ 4th March 2020They’ll be having a brokered convention – that’s how they run Duker, where they can bypass Saunders and Biden should they so choose.
(I never said they sit round for 4 years picking “the one”, you did)
Patzcuaro
/ 4th March 2020Call me Ishmael...
/ 4th March 2020“American citizens need to have confidence in the administration’s response to COVID-19. We need to be sure that science is the basis of any decision—not some Sharpie-induced phantasm of reality. We need to know whether all the “acting” leaders in the Cabinet have sufficient experience and independence to act. We need to be confident that they will tell the president when they think he is wrong.
Americans deserve a president who grasps the complex trade-offs at issue with different potential courses of action. We need to be certain that critical health care decisions are being made for the long-term benefit of all Americans and that the government isn’t downplaying a crisis to avoid its electoral impact.
There is reason to doubt we are prepared. The acting secretary of homeland security cannot correctly identify the fatality rate for COVID-19 as 20 times greater than that of the regular flu. President Trump has, wrongly, assured us that a vaccine is just around the corner, when the best science tells us that it is 12-18 months away. And we can be 100 percent certain that warm weather isn’t the cure, as the president has suggested.
This isn’t about an effort to “bring down the president”—it’s about real threats to real people. The key to a pandemic response is good science, sound managerial experience and leadership credibility. It’s necessary for the country and for the world. Without it, there will be real adverse consequences.”
https://www.lawfareblog.com/planning-coronavirus
Alan Wilkinson
/ 4th March 2020The acting secretary of homeland security cannot correctly identify the fatality rate for COVID-19 as 20 times greater than that of the regular flu.
No-one can because there is obviously not a simple answer even when enough reliable data becomes available. It varies enormously with age, probably also with the quality of available health care and likely other factors like climate, health and immune response.
That’s a silly claim to base an article on.
Duker
/ 4th March 2020Yes. So far only the most severest covid 19 cases are identified, and they couldn’t possibly know about every flu case, especially the minor ones, so they have that unreliable fall back , computer modelling. Flu seasons can vary greatly of course and the widespread use of vaccines can help the elderly and young
Kitty Catkin
/ 4th March 2020Over 80s have a 15% chance of dying of Covid19. I don’t know what the % of people that age who have flu and die of it is.
duperez
/ 4th March 2020I get the point of Stuff editorial director Mark Stevens:
“Plurality of journalistic voices is deemed in the public interest. RNZ is chartered to serve that public interest. It is its purpose to serve an audience, not to compete for audiences; audiences which in one way or another are needed to fund the great journalism created by many organisations and many companies across New Zealand each and every day.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/119996923/rnzs-tonedeaf-ads-are-hypocritical–and-unfathomable
I did get a smile out of the bigger story of the day there though:
Especially after reading the ‘story.’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/119994752/patrick-gowers-kiwi-accent-confuses-bernie-sanders-supporter-at-super-tuesday-elections
Kitty Catkin
/ 4th March 2020I don’t know why he’s there, or why we need so much repetitive coverage of all this; who wants to see a rap artist whom they have never heard of endorsing a candidate whom they won’t be voting for in a country on the other side of the world ? Or see endless footage of crowds waving placards ?
I can’t stand Patrick Gower onscreen or off. I’ve met him a few times and he’s as supercilious oss screen as he is on.
Kitty Catkin
/ 4th March 2020OFF screen
Corky
/ 4th March 2020Poor old, Paddy. He caught up with Bernie in Vermont going for a walk. Paddy introduced himself but Bernie wasn’t interested in some no-rate smuck from Noo Zeeland. 😂
I will say one thing…Bernie looked Spritely.
GO BERNIE. AMERICA NEEDS YOU!
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/03/patrick-gower-meets-bernie-sanders-the-morning-of-super-tuesday1.html