I had the pleasure of Cameron Brewer‘s company at a looong lunch at the Auckland Club a while back — a gaggle organised by David McEwen. (Thanks again, David.) He’s an ebullient, engaging guy — and pretty clean-cut, it seemed to me. Just like his well-designed billboards, one of which I spotted yesterday. I may [...]

Last night I was packed into a school hall with a bunch of my neighbours — not because we’d been evacuated from earthquake-damaged homes like the afflicted of Canterbury, although they were on our minds — as part of the audience of a very clever, well-written and well-delivered ‘romp through the pages of our history’. [...]

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’. [...]

Oh boy! The first ever ‘All-Conservative Email Service Provider’! YOUR NAME@Reagan.com Don’t miss out! [snort] Send Michael Reagan $35, get a Reagan.com e-mail address! by ALEX PAREENE Salon.com 30 Jul 2010 For the low, low price of $35 a year, you can trade in your tired old “free” Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail e-mail address [...]

http://www.slate.com/id/2258126 Very funny.

I can’t see what, exactly, makes this six-month-old story worthy of a front-page splash… Nonsense. Last line of the ‘lead story’: News of his daughter’s arrest has come at an unwelcome time for Phil Goff, who replaced former prime minister Helen Clark as Labour leader when she stood down in 2008. Polls have had him [...]

America: the land of free speech. And ad hominem political attacks. Watch this campaign ad (below the fold to stop the YouTube script slowing this page load), and count the bald, slanderous, (defamatory?) statements. Pretty robust stuff. I wouldn’t dream of saying things like that unless I had evidence (even nailed-tight proof) for the statements. [...]

Remember Helen Thomas ‘retired’ after her ‘Jews should go home (to Poland and Germany) comments? Now the argy-bargy about which news organisation should get her front-row seat at the White House media briefing room is getting interesting. Fox News (bleurgh) thinks they should because they gracefully conceded CNN should get one in 2007. They’ve dissed [...]

Well. I’ve just spent much of the holiday weekend devouring this book: Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House (Mark Halperin and John Heilemann) The review extracts on the jacket promised me ‘Absolutely gripping’ and ‘Fantastically detailed …incendiary’ and ‘Sleazy, personal, intrusive, shocking — and compulsive.” All true. If you’re interested in [...]

A nice bit of (historical) perspective, and reminder just how truly corrupt the Nixon administration was … No, this isn’t “Watergate” (and never will be) Republicans have fantasized about a Democratic “Watergate” for decades. Can they still remember the real thing? by Joe Conason | Salon.com As Conason points out, shallow comparisons are often trotted [...]