From: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article4392846.ece

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child’s very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child’s wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child’s journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

I have just created a new section on the site: Political Profile.

This is something that I have been thinking about and planning for a while.

Political parties have their list of policies and views on things. So why can’t an individual?

I would be interested to see more people think about their political views, or even post them online.

It would be interesting to compare them and also see how they align with various political parties.

Now there is nothing much on my political profile at the moment. It is still under construction. But I will be adding to it in the near future.

This weekend the U.S. Seceraty of State is visiting NZ. It is truely an honour for this country to be hosting such an important dipomat.

Unfortunately AUSA (the students’ association at Auckland University) have issued a media released advising that it is offering a $5000 reward to any student who citizen’s arrest Mrs Rice.

The key reasoning for this is the war in Iraq. In particular the fact that the USA invaded another country aka interferreed in another countrys politics.

What I find quite ironic here is that by trying to citizen’s arrest Rise the students themselves are interferring in the politics of another country. How bizzaire.

There has been a lot of noise in the media recently about Universal Living Allowances for all students.

I am a strong believer in the fact that you go to University to learn and get an education that will better you and the country. I do not believe that you should have to distract yourself away from studies to do part time work to support yourself financially. If the Government wants an knowledge economy of the future they must first fund it.

What I propose is a Universal Living Allowance for all fulltime students as follows:

• To qualify you must be enrolled as a fulltime student in a course with a minimum length of 6 months.
• The student allowance rate should be set at the same amount as the dole.
• Once you have completed your first year on the USL you can only qualify for subsequent years if and only if you pass 75% of your papers in your previous years.
• USL should only be available to undergraduate and honours students. Any research driven post-graduate qualifications should be paid for through scholarships.
• Only University and Polytech students in a recognised post-secondary course should be eligible.

Now I have no idea of how much this would cost. But this is what this country needs. Hand ups to those who deserve it, not hand outs to those that don’t.

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand.

The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand.

The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand.

These now are the walls we must tear down.

Yet again Obama has managed to draw out a huge crowd. Over 200,000 this time - in Berlin. I believe that we are at a major crossroad in our recent history. We can choose, we can choose to continue down the same old path we have been on for the past few years. Or we can actually (well in the U.S. anyway) choose to make a change and elect a leader of the free world who practices what he preaces.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

If you get the chance make sure you watch the videos of both speeches. A true politican at work.

These were two of the top stories on the nzherald.co.nz website on Monday. Solution to Hillary’s woes, move to Zimbabwe debt gone instantly. Plus they need a new President too I hear.

http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?ArticleId=28182

Wow. A policy. And a policy that speaks a lot of common sense. Brilliant.

Powerful, powerful speech. The highlights:

NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) :
I was elected to this Parliament in 1999, and my life changed. I knew that it would. Unlike most members of the public, I had a pretty good idea of what being an MP was like. It was one of the reasons I hesitated to stand. I say “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” It is an intense, 24/7 job. We digest enormous amounts of information, which is sometimes boring, and then we have to make decisions—decisions that affect real people. It means being constantly available to the media, to the public, and to the party. It means scrutiny of every detail of our lives—particularly for a dreadlocked Rastafarian. I stood, I guess, to demonstrate that we do not have to be of this world to be effective in it. Be true to oneself, whoever one may be, and take one’s seat as an equal, whether it is here in the House of Representatives or in the dust of the streets. So when a kid grabbed my arm on the dance floor and asked: “Hey, bro, what’s up in Parliament?”, I considered that to be an honour, because my purpose here has been to represent those who have had no voice here—those held in contempt by too many of us.

I came to Parliament thinking that the members were all a bunch of bastards, and I was wrong. There are many good people here. The very notion that all politicians are dishonest is misconceived, because if we think that politicians are all venal, then we expect nothing from them but venality. We should raise our expectations. We should expect more from question time than a bun fight. I have avoided question time for years if I have not had to be here to ask a supplementary question, because question time is the time when I am most ashamed of being a member of Parliament—question time and general debate—and members all know what I am talking about. We should grow up. This is our national legislature. We should treat it and the positions we hold here with more respect.

But I do not blame just the MPs. The buzzards who sit watching us from up in the press gallery, waiting for the next political corpse to pick over, are also to blame, because they will always report a fight, which is why the pugnacious Mr Peters always gets a headline. But if we stand to talk about anything real, most of them flap their wings and fly away—most of them. I thank the journalists who are here today for being here, too. Maybe corporate media ownership is to blame for the lack of analysis prevalent in the New Zealand media, or maybe it is just contempt for the audience.

…

Some people say that Guy Fawkes was the only politician to enter Parliament with honest intentions. I do not think that is true. Many, perhaps most, MPs enter with honest intentions, but we are compromised by this institution. How many times have Green MPs spoken in this House and had other MPs sidle over and tell us quietly: “We agree with you.”, but have then seen them silenced by their hopes for advancement, for promotion, or sometimes just to stay where they are? My mum used to say that we have to get into the system to change it, and it is true that we need good people working within it, but the danger is that the system changes us as much as we change the system, if not more. And that is why I am leaving after 9 years. For those members of the public who judge the behaviour of others by their own standards, I want people to know there are no perks coming to me. After 9 years it is time to cleanse my soul.

To all members of this House, from the most senior to the newest entrants, I pray for them that they remember the light that shines from within them so that they can light a path for themselves and for others. The problem is not how many people enter this place with honest intentions, but how many people leave with them intact. It is easy to slip. We become bloated by self-importance. People open doors for us, they clean our offices at night, they provide us with advice and support, and they wait on our decisions. I say many thanks to all the people who do that—the friendly security, the select committee staff, advisers, and cleaners. And my thanks go to the fantastic Green Party staff up there in the public gallery who are so critical to the work we do as MPs. You guys rock!

…

One of the first things I did on entering Parliament was buy a watch. Since then I have been shackled to the system. I have been cuffed to the prison bars of time, or at least to the prison that we make of time. This arbitrary Roman calendar disconnects us from the natural rhythms of life and of the planet. So today I remove that shackle, because when I look at the state of our rivers, our atmosphere, and our people I do not need a watch to tell me what time it is.

[Watch smashed with a panel-beating hammer.]