Politico reports:

After three months of soul-searching about how to revive their party, some Democrats this week believe they have finally found a rallying point following Donald Trump’s presidential victory.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s campaign to dismantle the federal bureaucracy piece by piece at Trump’s behest, starting with the U.S. Agency for International Development, lit a fire under many Democratic lawmakers — several of whom rallied Monday outside USAID headquarters.

But relaunching the resistance to defend one of the least popular corners of the federal budget could be a monster miscalculation — and some prominent Democrats told me they have serious strategic reservations about how their party is fighting back.

When I asked veteran strategist David Axelrod whether Democrats were “walking into a trap” on defending foreign aid, he literally finished my sentence.

“My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID, but my head tells me: ‘Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight,’” he said. “When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: Cut foreign aid.”

The Democrats seem to have no idea which of the hundred things Trump is doing, they should focus on, and bizarrely they pick cutting foreign aid as the one to rally against. That will not get them votes.

And to make things worse they have elected a 24 year old radical millennial as their national vice-chair who has called for the police to be defunded, ICE abolished, legalise all drugs and a top tax rate of 100%! As if that isn’t enough, he has said having children is bad for the environment.

The Republicans may be in power for a very long time.

At the start of the track, near Blackball.

Across a good old DOC swing bridge.

An old gold miner’s hut which is a few hundred metres off the main track.

It wouldn’t be a NZ tramp without wekas.

As we got higher, there was rata in full bloom everywhere. Absolutely beautiful.

This is the historic Croesus Top Hut, just below the new Ces Clark hut.

Ascended to around 1,000 metres above sea level, for this great view.

The Ces Clark Hut. We didn’t stay overnight here, but did have a much needed lunch break. Took around four and a half hours to get up to it.

We decided to take the 70 minute side trip to Croesus Knob, which is around 1,200 metres elevation. Was not kong in distance, but quite steep.

Great views from the top. Could see the Tasman Sea, but Mt Cook was hidden by clouds.

The track ahead.

Around three hours of tramping on the ridge line after Croseus Knob.

Very pleased to see this as one of my boots had started to disintegrate (the surface was very hard and rocky most of the way) and started to clip my foot, giving me a large blister.

Moonlight Tops Hut, where we stayed. Great warden who gave a very informative talk, and unusually has a view which includes in the distance the next hut we’ll stay in.

One of the views from the hut.

Everyone in the hut gathered on the hill to watch the sunset, which did not disappoint. A few wild goats turned up to watch also.

Dinner was a nice curry, and we did a few rounds of cards before bed.

The first days saw tramping of 22.99 kms, 36,164 steps and 1,267 vertical metres ascent. Was pretty tired, and sore, but very satisfied.

Stuff reports:

Te Pāti Māori arrived at Waitangi with a new campaign pledge, and a bold ultimatum. Co-leader Rawiri Waititi announced Tuesday a bottom line for any potential coalition partner, saying there must be a Parliamentary Commissioner for Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

That commissioner would have an extraordinary power, giving it the ability to audit bills and issue a “Tiriti veto” if policy and bills did not comply with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

TPM are at least honest about their intentions. They wish to end parliamentary democracy in New Zealand. Their non-negotiable demand is that an appointed Commissioner will have the ability to veto any law that in their sole discretion they decide is not compliant with the Treaty of Waitangi.

It’s ironic that there is so much focus on how Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, while in New Zealand we have an opposition party that is outrightly campaigning on ending democracy.

Chris Hipkins has refused to rule TPM out on the basis of this policy. It seems given a choice between democracy and a coalition partner – the latter will win.

The only upside to this policy is that it would be very cool to be the Parliamentary Commissioner for Te Tiriti o Waitangi. I would put my hand up for the role. We all know that Hone Heke campaigned against taxes and tariffs, so I would love to have the sole power to strike down taxes I don’t like as being non compliant with the Treaty. Minimum wage laws are clearly not compliant with the Treaty as they interfere with hapu rights, so they would also reluctantly go.

I also imagine that having the sole power to strike down laws would make me very very popular with lobbyists. I’d never have to pay for dinner again – or holidays, or houses, or clothes or well anything.

The only negative thing about the role is the title. Parliamentary Commissioner for Te Tiriti o Waitangi is quite a mouthful. A much better title could be Rex, or Czar, or Pharaoh – from ancient history. Or I could go with Kaiser, Generalisimus, Duce from the first half of the 20th century. Supreme Leader has a nice ring to it also, per North Korea.

Last month saw me tramp the Paparoa Track, made NZ’s 10th Great Walk a few years ago.

There were five of us. We flew into Hokitika and spent the day prior in Greymouth.

We were staying a km or so out of town, so had a nice walk around Greymouth.

The Grey River.

A memorial to all those who have lost their lives in mining accidents on the West Coast. Very sobering with well over 200 names on there, including 65 in Brunner in 1896 and 29 in Pike Rover in 2010. But just as many died in small accidents every year or two. It was only around 1970 that deaths became less common.

Some wild goats were happily grazing by a main road.

A view of Greymouth from the other side of the Grey River.

The Pike River memorial.

We finished with a tour of Monteith’s Brewery, followed by dinner there. My 2nd great grand-uncle was one of the founders of Monteith’s, so it was of special interest to me.

Then a relatively early night’s sleep, in preparation for Day 1.

Stuff reports:

A man who threw hot water on his neighbour before slamming his arm in a door has had his tenancy with Kāinga Ora terminated. …

The neighbour said he suffered burns to the side of his face, and numerous cuts to his arm, hand and fingers that required 49 stitches and led to long-term damage to two fingers and his thumb.

The tenant should not only be evicted, but be in court.

Saffill rejected the characterisation of himself as problematic or hostile and said his neighbours had made false accusations and exaggerated claims about him.

He said he had made prior requests for relocation but had been dissatisfied with the properties he had been offered, describing them as unsuitable.

What a sense of entitlement. He is lucky enough to have a state rental at 25% of his income. He terrorises his neighbours. And then he gets picky when offered alternative houses to live in.

A guest post by Lucy Rogers:

As I have written elsewhere, the bias and unfairness of postmodernism (which is what “wokeness” is, although I prefer not to use the term in public discourse) in relation to the Palestine/ Israel conflict does enormous damage to the credibility of the Palestinian cause in the eyes of Israel’s supporters in the West. This is for multiple reasons, among them that reports of Israeli human rights abuses are not believed. I for one do not believe a word that (for example) Amnesty International has to say about Israel.

Another damaging consequence however is that anyone who does say anything about Palestinian mistreatment is assumed to be “virtue signalling”. I want to preface this article therefore with the caveat that I am truly not posturing here. If I wanted to be liked I would just publish this article in (say) The Dominion Post, who would in turn refuse to publish any criticism I made of Hamas. (That is not speculation: the Post published Max Harris’ article praising Hezbollah for its “social services”, and refused to publish my response.)

In fact, that is one of the main points I want to make in this article. It is possible to criticise much of what Israel does from a place of sincerity, and in fact it is critically important not to allow the intellectual dishonesty of the likes of Max Harris to harden us to genuine Israeli human rights abuses. I say that as someone who has protested the Max Harrises of this world weekly over many months precisely because of their hypocrisy and disingenuousness. 

But the truth is that Israel is committing human rights abuses against Palestinians. There is a lot to cover and I hope perhaps to write a subsequent post or posts about other matters whether on Kiwiblog or for Liam Hehir, however I shall focus exclusively today on drawing attention to settler violence in the West Bank so as not to risk trying to cover too much ground.

I think that Palestinian Christian and peace activist Ihab Hassan, who is deeply critical of Hamas and regularly condemns antisemitism, is a trustworthy source. He reports that settlers are stealing land and killing Palestinian civilians all over the West Bank. Here are some examples, all of which date to 2025 alone:

• Settlers attacked Al-Mlihat and set fire to the mosque: https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1885856639590305821
• Settlers invaded Masafer Yatta, Hebron, setting Palestinian homes and cars on fire and attacking civilians: https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1883191247734775912
• Settlers attacked Sussia, Hebron, where defenceless villagers threw stones at armed settlers: https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1882170743708176775
• Settlers stormed the village of Al-Funduq, Qalqiyah, in what Hassan describes as a “pogrom”: https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1881100172324643198 Palestinians were then confined to their homes and only Israeli settlers’ cars were allowed to use the main road. 
• Settlers attacked Sinjil killing civilians including elderly men and a woman with intellectual disabilities, and severely injuring others including a 14-year-old child with severe burns. A family home was set on fire by the settlers: https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1882106274290262407
• Settlers set fire to five Palestinian homes in Jinsafut intending to burn civilians alive with many trapped inside: https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1881431993323487356
• Settlers broke into the house of Ghassan Najjar in Yatma, Nablus and pepper sprayed him and caused him severe head injuries: https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1880641408719368661

This is with the full complicity and support of the Israeli army. On 18 January 2025 Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, ordered the release of every Israeli settler held in administrative detention (who only numbered six anyway) for violent crimes against Palestinians: https://www.timesofisrael.com/katz-says-settlers-in-administrative-detention-to-go-free-ties-it-to-palestinian-release/ That means that there are currently zero settlers held in administrative detention by Israel as punishment for killing civilians and other atrocities directed at Palestinians.

According to a Palestinian man I met while counterprotesting in Auckland, these kinds of attacks have been happening weekly since Donald Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, which emboldened the settlers. He says that settler violence is radicalising Palestinians and forcing them to support Hamas, because the Palestinian Authority cannot or will not stop the settlers and Palestinians think they have no other option. In other words, the examples I have provided are only a tiny handful of the overall number of settler attacks, which could number in the thousands.

I add in closing that while the focus of this article has been on settler violence rather than the actions of the IDF per se, I was horrified when Ihab Hassan reported today that three Palestinian civilians were abducted by the Israeli army in the West Bank, brutally tortured and beaten for nine hours, then abandoned on the roadside between Nablus and Ramallah blindfolded and bound. Hassan professes firsthand knowledge of these matters and says that the people in question had done nothing to provoke this. The footage is here: 

https://twitter.com/IhabHassane/status/1885832023270363569

There is a proven best method to learn in any course. This does not just apply to childre and young people. One of my life dreams – and I am close to launching it – is a high quality academy for adults. We have learning pathways for young people – but if anyone from 25 – 60+ wants to become good in academics, sports or the arts – the only limit is their commitment, the expertise they access, and the time they can put in. The opportunity is HUGE.

I have had hundreds of people express their regret about giving up music – etc – too early. All neuroscience says they are wrong … they can get on with it now.

For children going to school … it depends much more on the approach of the student – than the teacher (although a good teacher helps!).

This is a fool-proof method (assuming committment and effort). I applied it for a year to learn the drums from Hamish Gee (of The Feelers) for 1 year and the results were astounding. One friend said – when she heard me play – in another room – “that cannot be Alwyn – he does not have a musical bone in his bod”.

Here is a day-to-day to I have always toaught my students:

1. Be well organized for every learning day. Sleep well. Eat breakfast. Have all books and equipment you need for school. Dress well. Start the day with a great attitude. Hug your parents/husband/wife on the way out the door.

2. Look forward to classes. Be positive towards all subjects and all teachers – even when others are complaining. When others are negative – that is a great opportunity. Be the counter-culture. Love the teacher that everyone else thinks is horrible and useless.

3. Pay MASSIVE attention in every class. Make good notes. When you don’t understand – ask questions. This could be during or after class. Understanding in class is so important. FOCUS is everything! Much better to write than to record on your phone.

4. Take all of your subject books home each night and;

– with pencil in hand – review the lesson for the day in each subject. For Math – practice the hardest problems until the lights go on and you go – “uh ha!”

– each night – for one of your subjects – write summary/study notes for the past week.

– then do your set homework.

If you do this process every-day then what you are learning will be in your long term memory and when you get towards exams/assessments you will know things very well already. You will be able to do practice exams/assessments and perfect things. You may not think you are a genius but genius is about effort! You can do it. When exams come up create a great study time-table and stick to it. DO NOT waste study leave.

5. Always aim for excellence/100%! If you aim for the stars and land on the moon it is a great achievement. Aim to master every concept in every subject – from Math and English to all of your options.

As the great Mark Twain said: “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Follow your heart and not trends but work to be the very best that you can be in your chosen field – and be a good human being with a faith and deep compassion for fellow humans.

This is the best time ever to grow up and live – make the most of it.

Alwyn Poole
[email protected]
Innovative Education Consultants Ltd
Education 710+ Ltd
alwynpoole.substack.com
www.linkedin.com/in/alwyn-poole-16b02151/

The Herald reports:

Dunedin’s new hospital will be built on the old Cadbury factory site despite several “construction challenges”, Health Minister Simeon Brown confirmed today.

The Government has also released details of the hospital’s scale, with Brown stating it will offer 351 beds, 58 emergency department spaces, 20 short-stay surgical beds and 22 theatres. …

Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich said he was “as happy as can be expected” with the announcement. 

“What we’ve got is the right structure being built as planned, and that was our message to the minister – step one is to build the structure. Clearly, there are some things we’re not getting all at once, but there’s a clear intention to provide them,” he said.

“I believe they’ve got the price down, and although contractual negotiations aren’t complete, they’ve got it to something workable.

“Thousands of people marched in the streets, and the Government has listened in response.”

This seems a good outcome for the “hospital pass” inherited from the former Government.

The Herald reports:

UFC president Dana White has delivered a stern response to anti-Semitic comments made by one of the promotion’s fighters, but said there would be no punishment.

UFC featherweight fighter Bryce Mitchell drew plenty of attention to his new podcast after making pro-Hitler comments when addressing Elon Musk’s Nazi-like salute at a post-inauguration Donald Trump rally.

Following an event from White’s slap-fighting promotion Power Slap in Saudi Arabiathis morning, the UFC boss blasted Mitchell’s comments.

“I’ve heard a lot of dumb, ignorant s*** in my day, but this one’s probably the worst,” White said.

“Hitler is one of the most disgusting and evil human beings to ever walk the face of the earth and anyone who tries to take an opposing position is a moron. …

Following his comments, many fans and pundits have called for the UFC to sack the No 13-ranked featherweight, but when asked if Mitchell would receive any form of punishment from the UFC, White said everyone had a right to free speech.

“That’s what everyone wants to hear about, punishments. Free speech. I don’t have to love it, you don’t have to love it.

“That’s the beautiful thing about this business – for all of you who hate Bryce Mitchell, you get to see him hopefully get his ass whipped on global television.

This is a great response. Total condemnation for what he said, but not sacking him as a fighter because of what he said.

“What do you want me to say about it? You know where I am with free speech. We’re disgusted by it. I think he’s probably one of the dumbest, literally one of the dumbest human beings,” White said, referring to an incident in 2018 when Mitchell injured his scrotum with a power drill.

“I could probably go on for 10 minutes talking about how dumb Bryce Mitchell is, but guess what? Bryce Mitchell has a podcast … that’s the world we live in now. Dumb people and people who are really stupid can have a voice. We don’t have to agree with it. We don’t have to like it.

“I’m giving you mine and the UFC’s position on what he had to say. This is no different than things I’ve said about [UFC middleweight Sean] Strickland. But I will say this: out of all dumb, ignorant s*** I’ve heard in my life, this has to be the dumbest and most ignorant.”

Heh, he isn’t holding back!

At Patreon (paywalled) I analyse who will be the winners and loses from President Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% on China.

Graham Adams writes:

A particular egregious example appeared last week, titled “Stats NZ inquiry clears Whānau Ora of 2023 Census data breach”. 

On the face of it, the story looked like a scoop. The Herald’s Kaupapa Māori editor, Joseph Los’e, said he had seen a leaked 67-page report compiled by policy analysts RDC Group on the allegations made against Manurewa Marae concerning the misuse of Census data collected by its staff as part of a contract with Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA). 

The headline was that they had been cleared of misuse.

Perhaps we should have been told that Doug Craig’s terms of reference excluded “any finding that might interfere with or prejudice related investigations by the NZ Police, the Electoral Commission, the Ministry of Social Development, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner or any other relevant agency; noting that material identified as relevant to such related investigations will be shared with the relevant agency as appropriate.” 

For that reason, perhaps it is not surprising Los’e could record the report “contains no smoking gun related to the attention Whānau Ora and Whānau Waipareira received over the initial allegations“ and that it “makes no recommendations against Whānau Ora or Whānau Waipareira with regard to possible data breaches over the use of Stats NZ information”. 

The Herald article appeared on Sunday morning. Later that day, Stats NZ felt moved to put out a press release itself, no doubt in response to it. The press release didn’t make the Herald’s pages. 

Stats NZ made the point plainly for anyone who might have believed that the leaked RDC report had cleared WOCA: “Determining liability was out of scope of Mr Craig’s investigation. That’s the job of the NZ Police, the Serious Fraud Office and the Privacy Commissioner. We will be sharing Mr Craig’s report and related information with those agencies.”  

Very relevant info.

If the Herald is serious about restoring trust in its journalism, it might also want to make it standard practice to provide context such as the fact Los’e was the communications director for Tamihere’s Waipareira Trust for 12 years before joining the Herald in 2022 as its Kaupapa Māori editor.   

Alternatively, the Herald’s editors could have ensured the story was written by a journalist who didn’t have a long-standing connection with the organisation being covered.  

This would have been the right thing to do.

Labour saw a massive blowout in those waiting for public housing from 2017 to 2022, and now it is down to 2020 levels. This is a good thing.

The Herald reports:

The “doomsday clock” symbolising how close humanity is to destruction ticked one second closer to midnight Tuesday as concerns on nuclear war, climate and public health were jolted by US President Donald Trump’s return.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which set up the clock at the start of the Cold War, shifted the clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been, a week after Trump’s inauguration.

The clock was last moved to 90 seconds to midnight over nuclear-armed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It was originally placed at seven minutes to midnight in 1947.

“At 89 seconds to midnight, the doomsday clock stands closer to catastrophe than at any moment in its history,” said former Colombian president and Nobel Peace laureate Juan Manuel Santos, chair of The Elders, a group of major former leaders.

The Doomsday Clock has become a pathetic joke. It once was very useful – a sole focus on how close the world was to global thermonuclear war, which could well be planet ending. During the age of the USSR, the clock moved between two minutes to midnight and twelve minutes to midnight. It moved rationally in response to events around treaties and the like.

After the USSR collapsed, the clock sensibly moved to 17 minutes before midnight, and really should have stayed there. The chance of a planet ending nuclear war basically ended in 1990. But they felt they had to stay relevant so they started adding in climate change (this is a society of atomic scientists) and other issues and since 2010 have gone from six minutes to midnight to 100 seconds before midnight in 2020. They then struck a new problem – they used to shift it by minutes or half minutes but they had moved the clock so close to midnight, they couldn’t keep doing that so in 2023 they moved it by ten seconds and in 2025 by one second, which is just pathetic. As if 90 seconds vs 89 seconds is meaningful. It’s just a desperate cry for attention, rather than a useful signal to anyone.

Media keep reporting it, because it was legitimately useful for many decades. But now it should just be ignored as the mutterings of cranky doomsayers.

As monumental and consequential as Trump’s 2^nd term policies and Cabinet picks are, and the scope and pace of the initial Executive Orders are a stark reminder of how much Trump wants to get done and how fast he wants to do it, under the radar somewhat will be a series of investigations that will shed light on many of the most egregious and even audacious acts of the Biden Presidency and of the conduct of the so-called ‘deep state’ and its supporters.

Some of the planned investigations had already begun in the newly Republican controlled House from 2022 to 2024 and, whilst some light was shed on issues such as the weaponisation of government and the corruption of the Biden family, these existing committees will either be continued or beefed up to widen their scope. There will be a raft of new investigations, some will be undertaken by House Committees, and some will be commenced by Senate Committees where the GOP now has control and where some very experienced Senators are chomping at the bit to get to the bottom of many matters. So, this list is approximate only and, in most instances, does not attempt to position where inside each House of Congress each investigation will be conducted. But when you look at what will be investigated, I attempt to flesh out the types of questions that will be asked, the live broadcasts of these hearings I predict will in some instances be explosive when the full truth is revealed.

These are but six of the investigations that will be undertaken. There will be more.

1 – Weaponisation of the Federal Government

This topic has already been the subject of extensive hearings through 2023 and 2024 before the Special Select Committee of the House Judicial Committee chaired by Rep Jim Jordan and quite a lot of material was aired such as the way the Biden Admin used various federal agencies including the FBI to censor conservative speech on social media. Whilst Elon Musk released the Twitter files, this committee brought the key investigators that Musk used to testify to the Biden Admin’s perfidy in this respect. In the 119^th Congress (2025 and 2026), these efforts will be expanded to include questions such as:

• How much coordination was there between the Biden White House and Department of Justice prosecutors and Special Counsel Jack Smith concerning the various indictments Smith filed against Trump?
• Ditto with the New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office and charges laid in the so-called “hush money” case?
• Ditto the New York Attorney General Latetia James and civil ‘fraud’ case her office brought against the Trump organisation?
• Ditto with the Fulton County DA Fani Willis in the Georgia ‘election interference’ case?
• Who made the decision for the FBI to deliberately target pro-life activists and to aggressively file charges against them?
• Who made the decision to allocate FBI resources to the tracking and investigation of conservative parents attending School Board meetings across the nation raising issues of pornography in school libraries, DEI, critical race theory and trans gender use of bathrooms?
• Who initiated the inordinate focus of so-called “domestic terrorists” as a cloak to harass innocent conservative groups?
• Who at the DOJ level made the decision to not prosecute the hugely damaging BLM rioters or the Antifa activists who wrought havoc, mayhem and destruction in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA but then prosecute J6 defendants to the full extent of the law?
• Why did the DC Courts suppress and ignore any and all exculpatory evidence of the J6 defendants, evidence that may have led to no conviction or lighter sentences.

2 – Biden and other family corruption

Significant work was already undertaken by the House Oversight Committee under Rep James Comer and a very thorough and damning report is available. This committee will continue its work and widen its scope to ask:

• Precisely how many companies in Ukraine made payments to Biden family members and how much and what was given in return?
• Precisely how many Chinese companies made similar payments and for what in return?
• What are the connections between favours Joe Biden granted to Ukrainian and Chinese companies and individuals and the payments made to his family members?
• What are the lists of similar payments made by Ukrainian and Chinese companies to members of the Pelosi family, Romney family and other influential political families in the US?
• What other companies in other countries have made payments to the Biden and other families for questionable services?

3 – Origins of Covid, the pandemic response and vaccine related issues

This is such a huge and emotive issue that it may well be split into different committees of inquiry but regardless of the split, the following questions ARE going to be covered:

• What is the role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the escape of the Covid virus?
• What was the full role of Anthony Fauci and his colleagues in Covid so-called “gain of function” research?
• Was the US military involved in anyway via DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)?
• What role (if any) did the secret bioweapons labs in the Ukraine (admitted by Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland under questioning by Senator Marco Rubio) play in the development of viruses?
• How was the Emergency Use Authorization granted by the FDA for the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines without adequate prior clinical trials?
• Why was Remdesivir pushed so hard as a hospital treatment of Covid when it had such a toxic track record?
• Why did the Department of Health and Human Services massively widen the definition of what constituted a Covid death for doctors on death certificates and what impact did this have on the official reported numbers of Covid deaths?
• Why was the sensitivity of the PCR Covid test set to a cycle figure more than double that suggested by the inventor and what impact did this have on the numbers of reported positive cases?
• Why were masks recommended after initially being rejected as ineffective by Fauci and Deborah Birx with no empirical data to back up their use and why did they continue to be recommended or even mandated when numerous peer reviewed studies were published proving how ineffective they were?
• Why were voices of reason and wisdom about the disastrous impact of the lockdowns like those who signed the Barrington Declaration ignored, shouted down and vilified?
• Why were consequential decisions like social distancing and the lockdowns enacted and forced on people with little to no scientific or empirical data behind them?
• Why was the extreme modelling by Nigel Ferguson of the Imperial College London believed when he had proven to be massively wrong on his modelling of previous swine flu, bird flu and mad cow disease outbreaks?
• Why were children kept away from school and locked down at home when they were the least at-risk population for Covid? The emotional, social and educational damage this interruption did to children has been incalculable.
• Why was hydroxychloroquine so disparaged and actively campaigned against despite decades of success as an anti-malarial drug?
• What repercussions are there for the Lancet publishing (then eventually pulling) a falsified study purporting to show that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous in the treatment of Covid?
• Why was Ivermectin not only pilloried and vilified but was frequently blocked as a prescribing option for the treatment of Covid despite a Nobel Prize for chemistry, its decades of safe use and known effectiveness against C19?
• Compared to the other vaccines, why were the Covid vaccines the subject of such ubiquitous pressure to take them: from most medical practitioners/hospitals, from the media, from politicians, from celebrities, from employers and being the subject of giveaways/promotions such as free tuition/million-dollar lottery entries etc?
• Why were so many mainstream, well published and credentialed medical practitioners with ZERO prior history of any vaccine skepticism in so many countries silenced from speaking out about their concerns by the various medical regulatory bodies with threats of dismissal, withdrawal of academic accreditation, license suspension and shaming by peers and colleagues and whose opinions were for a time universally blocked on mainstream and social media?
• Why did the CDC withdraw the Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 after only 53 deaths following approximately 45 million shots (a rate of 1.18 deaths per million) and yet is still allowed a vaccine with 35 deaths per million to remain on the market despite being 30 times more deadly?
• Why did the large social media sites like Facebook, Twitter 1.0, Instagram and You Tube use a number of tactics to silence not only concerned medical practitioners (of the type listed above i.e., not traditional anti-vaxxers) but also many thousands of ordinary people who have tried to tell factual stories of adverse Covid vaccine side effects observed with family members with warning labels, suspensions, shadow banning, de-monetising, de-platforming and outright cancellation of accounts? I have friends who had been subjected to some or all of these tactics.

4 – Anomalies in the 2020 (and other) elections

The whole underpinning of what happened on January 6, 2021, was the belief, held by Trump and many of his followers (me included), that Trump’s narrow victory in the 2020 election was stolen from him by Democrat voter fraud. As long-time readers will know, I posted extensively on various aspects of this electoral malfeasance (here, here, here and here). Once Pam Bondi takes over as Attorney General and Kash Patel as FBI Director, proper resources will be devoted to investigating the myriads of specific and detailed complaints that were ignored by AG Bill Barr, the Washington establishment, the mainstream media, many RINO Republicans and of course were punted by numerous courts.

What will be harder for all of the above to ignore will be a Special Select Committee of the House or the Senate empaneled to investigate this fraud ALONGSIDE indictments brought down by the DOJ after uncorrupted agents investigate the fraud that was never properly investigated. These are but some of the matters that will be aired live on national TV by committees of Congress so impossible to ignore:

• Why so many mostly Democrat controlled courts or appointed judges refused to hear the substance of the large cases over conflicting grounds (lack of standing, lack of timing, moot etc.)?
• Why the 18 bellwether counties across the US that have accurately predicted (usually 18/18 or 17/18) winning Presidential campaigns since 1952 (including Trump in 2016) and yet in 2020 Biden won only 4 but was still ‘elected’?
• Why did over 3,000 precincts in Michigan have impossible vote counts of 80 to 350% with most being around 100%?
• What was the source of the massive ballot drops in the small hours of the morning that went to Biden 90/10 or even 95/5 and tipped Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania from Trump easily winning on election night to narrowly losing 2 days later? Much of the evidence of how these frauds were perpetrated is on camera, the perpetrators just now need to be prosecuted.
• How hundreds of thousands of illegible votes across the battleground states were still counted and how Republican attempts to thwart such illegal counts were ignored, overridden and scuppered?
• How massive chain of custody infractions in key states were allowed to occur?
• How various voting machines ended up being connected to the internet illegally and how much that led to blatant vote reversals of Trump to Biden votes?
• How many ballots were illegally harvested by mules and then still counted?
• How many state election laws were illegally circumvented by Democrat Secretaries of State, County Recorders and even State Appellate Courts to allow the illegal sending then counting of excessive absentee ballots?

Trump’s opponents will mutter that its all spilt milk or water under the bridge admitting to perhaps SOME fraud. The point is that election tipping fraud is a myriad of many small acts of fraud that accumulate to thwart the will of the people and unless the illegal activity is identified for what it is and those who perpetrated it not escape consequences, then elections in some US states will continue to be blighted by fraud.

As the DOJ investigations into the perpetrators of the fraud across the swing states target the lower level operatives they will be leaned on to squeal on those higher up the food chain and, over time, the whole sordid corrupt edifice will be exposed and those who carried put the fraud will finally be bought to justice to send a signal that election fraud now will finally be investigated and prosecuted.

5 – What REALLY happened on January 6, 2021?

The then official special January 6 House Committee chaired by Democrats with token Trump hating RINOs like Liz Chaney and Adam Kitzinger thought they’d finally got Trump by orchestrating testimony and evidence to paint a picture of a President out to overthrow the results of the 2020 election by fomenting an insurrection by his many followers at the capital that day. Charges and indictments from Special Counsel Jack Smith were supposed to see Trump in prison for 100 years for his alleged crimes on January 6. The truth is that much of what was presented to the J6 Committee was massaged, manipulated and distorted, counter testimony was suppressed and, in the end, records exculpatory to Trump were destroyed. The Republican House will convene a new J6 Committee that will ask some of these questions:

• Why was exculpatory evidence and witnesses not allowed to be presented or appear at the original J6 hearings?
• What evidence was destroyed by the J6 committee staff and why?
• Why was footage showing Capitol police taking down barricades, opening doors and waving protestors into the building not shown and only the footage showing those who attempted to break in at a different side of the building?
• What was the true number of paid FBI informants and operatives active in the protesting crowd? After initially denying or failing to confirm, the IG Report eventually confirmed at least 26 CHS (Confidential Human Source) there on January 6^th.
• Why was Ray Epps never prosecuted like other J6 defendants when he is on camera both the night before and on the grounds of the Capitol on J6 urging violent and direct action?
• Why, despite having clear footage (that has been shrouded from public release), of the so-called pipe bomber have the FBI failed to make an arrest?
• Why was President Trump’s clear instructions many days before J6 to Washington DC Mayor Bowser and House Speaker Pelosi that the National Guard was needed to bolster security at the Capitol was not only ignored but evidence of this was suppressed at the J6 hearing?
• Why was President Trump’s Twitter account disabled blocking his “peaceful protest” instruction to his followers on J6 and why was this evidence also suppressed at the select committee hearing?
• What evidence is there of collusion between key Democrat leaders to orchestrate many of the events on J6?

6 – Attempted assassination of Donald Trump 13 July 2024

There are so many multiple unanswered questions on this event that will now be examined forensically in the full light of day such as:

• Why did the Biden White House ignore requests for higher level Secret Service protection despite the escalation of known threats?
• Why was a higher quality experienced detail from the Pittsburg Field Office taken off the assignment to protect Trump at Butler, PA in favour of a foreign dignity?
• Why was an understrength, heavily female and inexperienced field detail sent in their place?
• Why was the site not the subject of a drone flyover just prior to the event, a flyover that would’ve discovered Thomas Crooks on the roof?
• Why were SS communication systems not able to communicate with Butler County Sheriff’s Officers and why was this lack of compatibility not discovered and fixed days before the event?
• Why were no magnetometers used to screen participants at the Butler event when they are standard at all major Trump events?
• Why did the SS not remove Trump from the stage as soon as Butler local police alerted the presence of Thomas Crooks on the roof with a gun? The SS stage detail should’ve had Trump off the stage and in a safe place until the shooter had been neutralised.
• The building where the shooter got his shots off was identified in a pre-rally walk around as a location of high risk and a post stander (at least from local police or a SS agent) should have been assigned to be at that location and the shooter would’ve been interdicted?
• Why was Crooks allowed to enter the site with a range finder in his backpack and why was he allowed to roam around using the range finder even after he was reported by members of the public and yet he was never stopped?
• How does a nerdy 20-year-old have his almost non-existent social media accounts and what he had was wiped so fast before investigation and why did he have several foreign bank accounts (including one in New Zealand) and not be on the FBI’s radar?
• Why was Crooks’ body cremated so fast and not subject to a high-level forensic autopsy?
• What role did DEI hiring policies play in affecting the quality of the coverage the SS gave on the day and in general?

Conclusion

The mainstream media and the chattering classes of Washington DC (and then flowing from that the New Zealand MSM and Wellington elites) have persisted with a series of narratives against Trump:

• He perpetuated ‘the Big Lie” over the stolen 2020 election,
• He fomented an insurrection on January 6,
• He illegally took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago,
• He falsely claimed Covid was leaked from a Chinese lab,
• He promoted the use of a ‘dangerous’ treatment for Covid (hydroxychloroquine),
• His response to Covid was poor and cost lives,
• He’s a convicted felon.

Many people I know (and our esteemed host is part of this group) hold negative views about Trump based partly on belief of these (and other) narratives. Trump was able to prevail at the ballot box despite these narratives partly because the Democrats in office were so bad and the media track record on twisting, distorting and even lying about Trump reached such critical mass that large swaths of the electorate got their news from less biased sources. When you add these investigations and what will come out of them to the actions that will be undertaken by Trump’s no-nonsense Cabinet picks, we are going to witness one of the most consequential periods in US politics in our lifetimes and possibly beyond. What will come from these investigations will be truly earth shattering and show stopping and, most importantly, narrative shifting. There will be incontrovertible evidence of so many things that opponents of Trump’s and the wider conservative movement have had rubbed in his face that the face of American politics will be forever altered. The paradigm shifts and the huge movement of the Overton window that is already starting (e.g. the beginning of the end of trans surgeries and treatments of minors) and will accelerate and will have global ramifications. Buckle up everyone, we are in for a roller coaster ride but for those who have known the real truth for some time, it will be a glorious time of revelation!

The Herald reports:

Labour’s Jan Tinetti’s attempt to criticise the Government’s free school lunch programme has backfired after she laid into a burger made when her party was in power.

An online video, shared to Labour and Tinetti’s Instagram accounts, featured several pictures of school lunches that Tinetti labelled as “disgraceful”. The post has since been removed.

“I think that this is a hamburger. I am not certain, but I am thinking that’s what it is,” she said, superimposed over an image of a burger.

That image, however, is more than a couple of years old, meaning it predates the changes the current Government made to the school lunch programme. It featured in a Herald story in 2022 in which a mother complained about how “disgusting” the lunch was.

Labour was in Government in 2022 when that picture was shared, with Chris Hipkins the Education Minister at the time. Tinetti, who is based in Tauranga, was the Associate Education Minister.

Of the many beautiful own goals of recent times, this might be the most beautiful!

The 67 deaths from the crash between a plane and a military helicopter in Washington DC is a terrible loss of life, and has a huge impact on perceptions of air safety.

Some air accidents are not easily preventable, such as massive mechanical failure. But a collision between a plane and a helicopter should never happen.

It seems clear the pilots of the plane were not to blame. They were landing at an airport where they were cleared to land.

So the fault will either lie with the pilot of the military helicopter or the air traffic controllers (or both).

The left are blaming Elon Musk for the crash as he had called months ago for the FAA Director to resign (over a SpaceX dispute) and the Director resigned on 20 January leaving no head of the FAA. Donald Trump is blaming diversity hires within the FAA. Both attacks seem ludicrous and ill informed at this stage.

Radio NZ reports:

New Green Party MP Benjamin Doyle has taken “full responsibility” after not wearing a seatbelt in the back of a cab on Thursday morning.

They shared video on Instagram this morning, promoting their speech for this afternoon’s third reading of the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress Bill.

It’s clear Doyle is not wearing a seatbelt in the headshot video, which has since been taken down.

The Greens have been complaining that restoring a 100 km/hr speed limit to rural roads will kill people, and then one of their MPs is not wearing a seatbelt in a vehicle. If a car crashes, the chance of death is much much higher from not wearing a seatbelt, than from driving 20 km/hr faster.

But why this is a real case of stupid vs stupid is that not wearing a seatbelt is stupid enough, but to film yourself in the cab not wearing a seatbelt and sharing it on social media is arguably even more stupid.

Stuff reports:

The tenants of two Kāinga Ora homes in Porirua have been ousted after failing to pay the rent, as the public housing landlord implements a harder line on breaches of tenancy agreements.

Kāinga Ora made successful applications to the Tenancy Tribunal in relation to the two properties, where outstanding rent payments added up to over $72,000.

Winnie Alofa Kilisi, who lived at 2 Worcester Place, Cannons Creek, was taken to the tribunal by Kāinga Ora over $41,063 in rent arrears.

That must mean they haven’t paid rent for at least the last 12 months. Of course they should be evicted.

Kainga Ora rents are tied to income. The less you earn, the less you pay. They are no more than 25% of income. Low income earners who are not in Kainga Ora properties often pay more than 40% of their income in rent.

Tribunal adjudicator Jacci Setefano said Kāinga Ora had provided evidence of “multiple attempts to reach a resolution with the tenant, including efforts to communicate and negotiate a repayment plan”.

“Despite these steps, the tenant failed to adhere to any agreements or make meaningful progress toward addressing the arrears,” Setefano said.

The ongoing and substantial rent arrears, combined with Kilisi’s failure to meet commitments, meant Kāinga Ora’s application for termination of the tenancy was justified, Setefano said.

The tenancy was terminated from January 8, and Kilisi was ordered to pay Kāinga Ora $41,063.

Sadly I bet they never get it.

Kāinga Ora applied to have Kilisi’s name suppressed because it may affect her ability to find another place to rent, but Setefano found there were no grounds to suppress her name.

Good. Landlords have rights. They should be able to know if a prospective tenant has a history of refusing to pay rent.

Kāinga Ora told the tribunal that over the past five years it had tried to engage with the Lautafi’s “a total of 71 times via texts, calls, meetings, visits, to attempt to sort out payment of the rent arrears with the tenants, without success”.

71 attempts is far too many. What would be an appropriate maximum before you apply to evict? Perhaps six over three months?