I’ve just set up an album on The Paepae’s Facebook page to collect and display those quirky error messages etc.

Collecting -- click to visit the album at Facebook

Feel free to contribute any more!

Wow, I thought the ‘It came from Wasilia’ profile on Sarah Palin by Todd Purdue was eye-opening. She also came off pretty badly in that book I hoovered up over a wet weekend Race of a Lifetime … but read this piece from the current Vanity Fair – ‘Sarah Palin: the Sound and the Fury’.

Carried forward on a tide of deceit? (image: Vanity Fair - click)

The writer has already come in for attack for his account (what’s new?) and said, that as a Christian who really tried to keep an open mind about Pailn, figuring she’d had a bum ride with the media, he was shocked at the repeated and confirming testimony from people/witnesses who described how she has operated.

Michael Joseph Gross said on “Morning Joe” Thursday. “I couldn’t believe these stories either when I first heard them, and I started this story with a prejudice in her favor.

I have a lot in common with this woman. I’m a small-town person, I’m a Christian, I think that a lot of her criticisms of the media actually have something to them. And I think she got a bum ride, but everybody close to her tells the same story.”

In the profile, Gross paints Palin as an abusive, retaliatory figure with an extreme ability to lie. “This is a person for whom there is no topic too small to lie about,” he said. “She lies about everything.” — Huffington Post

Other quotes from the profile:

There’s a long and detailed version of what they had to say, but there’s also a short and simple one: anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath.

Interesting comment about her ‘team’ protecting her from criticism and questions on a ‘Conservatives4Pailn’ discussion forum: (more…)

Just as well some people have such a GREAT sense of humour!

It all relates to my ‘A little backlash?‘ post here on www.thePaepae.com … where I suggested a possible interpretation of some innuendo-laden bloggings by property spruiker Dean Letfus about holding back dirt on a ‘white knight’ was that they referred to me. [Or maybe it doesn't.]

Yup, it’s not absolutely clear, but a statement today by Dean Letfus seems to indicate (maybe, if I read it right) that there’s another side to this whole thing.

Apparently I wasn’t even on Dean’s mind when he wrote that bizzo in his blog about ‘supposed white knights’ in ‘the industry’ ‘spreading lies’ about him and how he was holding back ‘information’ which had ‘come into my hands’ which he could ‘expose’ to ‘retaliate’ … nope. Not me.

Seems he was talking about a DIFFERENT white knight that he has ‘information’ on that he could expose to retaliate. (Well, if you recall, I did say I couldn’t think what possible ‘dirt’ he could have on boring ol’ me, didn’t I?)

(more…)

image bookgalaxo.com (click)

I saw Andrew Kirtzman’s book BETRAYAL at Wellington airport recently. Striking cover.

We’d already discussed Harry Markopolos’s frustrating experience in Tall poppy syndrome: last refuge of the scoundrel?

Gee, I thought, what has Madoff had to build inside himself to handle this level of opprobrium? (Assuming he IS ‘handling’ the ignominy OK.)

I wonder if any local ‘personalities’ are going to face this kind of attention and pressure as a result of their own downfall.

Seems pretty tough. Actions have consequences, though. I guess.

I don’t know enough to make a judgement about Allan Hubbard, and I point to this only as an example of a journalist, in this case, publishing his (strong) personal opinions … I find that refreshing and encouraging because it’s clear he’s based them on his own considerable research and experience.

Good on you Bernard. (Although, to be fair, I sometimes detect a faint whiff of anti-Capitalism in some of your stuff — just saying. It’s an impression I get. Sometimes.)

Click for video

Watch the video below the fold.
Or read Bernard Hickey’s extensive open letter to Allan Hubbard.
(more…)

ATM: ‘Welcome’. Card in. PIN typed in. Oops, instant BLANK SCREEN. Keypad doing nuttin’. Hmmm.

Looking, looking, then up came the NCR logo white on black. For a loooooong time.

‘Have I broken it? I muttered. I went into the bank and explained my plight.
A teller went and had a look: ‘Oh it’s just re-booting, it won’t be long.’
Um, OK. Re-booting?
Waiting, waiting — held hostage because my card was in the machine. Then, to my surprise, look what I saw:

We apologize for the inconvenience but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this. ...

Windows! Er, not my skill set.

I went into the bank again and said, ‘Hey, look, I know people who use Windows… I haven’t got that sort of time to waste. Can you open the little hatch and get my card for me?’
Sure thing.
I walked away, leaving the bank to get their machine working again. Maybe. Good luck with that. NMP (Not my problem.)

Life’s too short to wait for a computer, eh? (Did you know those things ran Windows? I didn’t.)

See comments for more examples. Add yours, if you want.

Read this blog post from Roger Ebert. Wow.

Click to read this excellent article

In part, discussing the hateful manipulation of segments of the public by so-called ‘moral leaders’ Ebert refers to the billionaire who said closing tax loopholes was like invading Poland. Hyperbole and exaggeration are good indicators of a ‘con’.
Seriously, read it here.

One of the best lines:

Our political immune system has only one antibody,
and that is the truth.

I heard about this charges-laid-charges-dropped-investigation-re-opened circus targeting whistle-blower Julian Assange on the BBC … crikey! Remember TIME magazine’s little put-down about his mental state? Paranoid? Oh really?

'A pathetic attempt to smear' ... (click to watch video at ABC)

This extraordinarily courageous man wears a bullseye on his back. I wish him well.
He’s up against people and organisations who present fake documents/bogus ‘evidence’ and pretend things that aren’t true for a living.

NZ Herald report.

The thoughts I’ve recently shared in these pages about the operations of certain very smooth salesmen have sparked a reaction of sorts. Oh dear. As might be expected, there are indications of some outrage and hurt feelings in the spruiker’s camp … and questions being asked, notably:

White knight and two black rooks (image: freewebs.com/abdnhockeyclub2/)

Ouch! What the hell?

What can we do to get Peter to SHUT UP?

How can we smear this ‘white knight’ to reduce his credibility and defend ourselves from his unflattering portrayal of us as shallow money-grubbing manipulative spruikers?
(What? Too much? OK, maybe they’re not describing themselves as ‘shallow money-grubbing manipulative spruikers’, but you get my drift.)

See, here’s the tricky thing:

Smearing me by innuendo and implication doesn’t really cut the mustard. You need some FACTS.

In a recent self-promotional blog, Dean Letfus took another mealy-mouthed swipe at me (well, maybe me, maybe not, but that’s how I read it). He reprises his sleazy implications that I’m (a) just a nasty hypocrite who is (b) spreading (unspecified, of course) lies about him. Sigh.

His latest attacks on me — by innuendo, not directly — also imply that he has ‘information’ that has “come into my hands about our industry and the supposed white knights in it” (moi?) that he could ‘expose‘ to ‘retaliate‘ … viz: (more…)

On Reuters …

'Privacy' and 'Facebook' ... bwahahaha! (click to read story at Reuters)

Yeah, it’s a cheap laugh, but <snort>…“uncover unnecessary details about his private life” <chuckle>. Oh, poor Mark Zuckerberg. The indignity.

I wonder how it will all work out? Lawsuits can be sooo unpredictable, I’ve learned.