The Anti-Targ

I wonder what the symbolism is of the flag on the back having just 5 stars and three stripes?

One thing to be aware of is that relative population makes a difference. Because Wellington is the capital city and is one of the biggest cities in New Zealand it feels like a bigger city than what just looking at the population would make you think. Newcastle is a satellite city of Sydney, Wellington is the major city for the southern half of the North Island. I can't speak for how LGBTQ people feel in the places they live but there aren't many places in New Zealand where you can't be out and proud. The world's first openly transgender Mayor and MP (same person) was in a small town a little bit north of Wellington, that was 25 years ago.

Not so fast there bud. I've got a documented family tree that goes all the way back to the 15th century, and it's definitely legit because there were way too many cousins marrying each other for it to be fake. If he can convince a Saudi prince to buy one of his inflated valuation properties for the valuation price can he go for a re-trial?

Well Wellington then. I'm not going to ask what "need" means, but I think Wellington has almost everything people might need from a big city even though it's a small city on a global scale.

Which of course was mostly a narrative pedaled by the oil and gas industry as a way to funnel profits away from coal and into gas. Real global warming activists wanted to skip gas and go straight from coal to fully non-emitting power sources. Real real global warming activists wanted investment in nuclear as well as solar, wind, hydro and geothermal.

If this is all true, no wonder we're headed off a global warming cliff, esp the bit about natural gas not really having lower emissions than coal.

If you need to be in a city of at least 1 million people then I guess your only option over here is Auckland. But if you can downsize and consider points south of Auckland then there are several options. Also the further south you go, so long as you stick to the west side the cyclone risk drops away quite fast. Australians are a bit too fearful of Earthquakes I think. I do think Auckland will become unbearable in a decade or two, it is so humid and that makes the heat so much worse, so it's already pretty unbearable to me.

I have to say, resurrecting the commuter rail line naming fracas from the previous threat, If you are going to name a rail line after an international female sports team why not go to a real women's sport: Rugby. And I defy anyone to say the top international women's teams don't play with recognisable skill. The Black Ferns v Red Roses World Cup final was fookin' brilliant.

A good democracy establishes government that guarantees the long term welfare and well being of all the people regardless of the economic system. A good economic system demands little of a govt to ensure those guarantees because it delivers most of them automatically, a bad economic system demands a lot from the govt to ensure those guarantees. So, capitalism demands a lot from govt because it fails so many people in so many ways, current forms of democracy are incapable of delivering the required government. Also, while labour exploitation is a feature, not a bug, of capitalism systemic racism and sexism are not inherent to it. Those are holdovers from days of yore before capitalism existed let alone became the dominant economic system. What capitalism has done is (in the case of the USA) brought large numbers of white men low, which gives vested interests cover to deny the ongoing effects of systemic racism and sexism. Why not fully hijack the US Pol thread, even if just for a moment? New Zealand generally has a fairly high voter participation rate and it has compulsory voter registration (so no one can dick around trying to purge rolls). With 80%+ voter turn out in the general election being the historical norm, and 90%+ happening a number of times, though the last time was 1984. Also there has been no history of significant attempts at voter intimidation. So compulsory voting in New Zealand is kind of a solution looking for a problem. It could be a solution to a significant problem in the USA though with 2020 being a rather historical high with 67% participation. New Zealand has only dipped below 70% once since 1890. Strangely since MMP was brought in voter turnout has been on a downward trend, which you would think the opposite would happen because in theory in MMP every vote counts (though that's not strictly true) so people should be more motivated to vote. Though perhaps what we're seeing is a general voter malaise as they increasingly see neither left nor right govts really being capable of serving the interests of the people...which takes me back to my point about no democracy being better than C tier

Sadly easier to just carry out extra judicial executions.

I know, but it's one of those jokes that initially makes you laugh, but then makes you feel sad about the underlying truth of it. We may meet some day, since my son has his own fantasy of moving to Queenstown to raise his family and if that nice fantasy ever becomes a reality the pressure will be on to follow so we can see the grandchild(ren) whenever we want. My son got married in Queenstown (in August!, outside!!!) and it's always been his and his wife's favourite domestic holiday destination, summer and winter.

Just my personal view, but any democracy that involves 1) political parties and 2) private campaign financing can only ever be C tier at best. New Zealand still has systemic racism and sexism, chronic intergenerational poverty, homelessness and housing affordability crises, high rates of youth suicide, severe and systemic inequality in access to education, creaking and crumbling infrastructure and paralysis on meaningful climate change action. But I will grant you we do have more than 2 political parties in parliament.

Insofar as some statement about Israel goes, completely flew by the New Zealand 24 hr news cycle, or at least the news feed the algorithm has determined I should be exposed to.

Never! Not until Australia concedes flat whites and pavlovas, and takes back all it's unwanted immigrants ruining our country (possums and wallabies). Canada, well we need to crack that dairy trade nut, then we'll be sweet.

I would say one of the basis of a good democracy is no one having that much power to start with. I think you'd have to squint really hard to see the US democracy as a good democracy, not that I know of any examples of democracies I would call good. In the tier list of all democracies that have existed in the last two centuries don't think there would be a single S-tier democracy and I'm unsure if there would be any A or B tier democracies.

Yes, but Trump / Putin can take those votes to the bank, they're not going to abandon Trump for anything Putin says. Putin would be aiming at pro-Ukraine centre-right voters who really dislike Trump and Biden in pretty much equal measure and who Putin thinks might be able to be a little bit swayed by whatever bullshit that comes out of his mouth. I guess in elections the one who wins the middle ground wins everything, and in the Ukraine war the middle ground is largely on the side of supporting Ukraine, I assume. So if you can convince the middle ground that Russia will do better out of the Ukraine war with Biden as president then you've moved the dial towards Trump a bit. If you believe the House will remain Republican in November President Biden will continue to have a shit time trying to get aid for Ukraine for at least another 2 years. And that would be very bad for Ukraine and great for Russia.

We're so boring, all our commuter rail lines are just named after the terminal station. Though I suspect the Wellington commuter train service is slightly less complex than London's, just a guess.

Cheap at 10x the price.

I would tend to think Putin might be trying the lamest attempt at reverse psychology.

Sadly it is a bit of a fantasy to a greater or lesser extent everywhere. Which is why some sort of action needs to be taken. But it does not need to be as severe as most central banks seem to believe. There is no objectively correct interest rate to set, which is why leading up to decisions banks and economists pretty much make bets, and the central bank committee votes on what number to set, based on what the current number is. They set a number and then wait for a period that is no where near long enough to find out the effect that number is going to have and then they vote to set another number.

They got a Biden subordinate, who won't be convicted in the senate. Big win aye?

Do we have an understanding of what "fail" means in the minds of House Republicans?

Moving off inflation and interest rates to climate change. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2024/02/analysis-world-is-watching-m-ori-climate-activist-mike-smith-s-case-against-some-of-nz-s-biggest-polluters.html This could get pretty spicy.

Like I said, inflation is self correcting in a sound economy with a trustworthy govt that is implementing sensible policies, especially those that help to stimulate supply. So, policies to build more houses when housing is short. Policies that improve energy production and reliability of supply. Policies that make transport more efficient. Policies that don't inflate prices by the imposition of import tariffs. Lots of govt activity and spending can be disinflationary, so there is rarely a need for absolute austerity, more there is a need for re-prioritising spending, and spending more in the areas that help improve the productivity of the private sector.

Eurozone countries can't unilaterally pump up military spending without taking money away from other areas of govt spending or increasing taxes. It would require the EU (parliament?) to sign off on lifting deficit limits for the purposes of military spending to allow Eurozone members to ramp up spending. In contrast non-Eurozone EU members (and Brexit Britain) can make the decision unilaterally and significantly increase their deficits to ratchet up military production. They can then have a think about whether to live with those deficits or moderate them somewhat with taxation or budget cuts in other areas, depending on how they think the military deficits will affect the wider economy, which is really about how the resource diversion of material that competes for military and non-military production causes issues in the wider economy.