Too True

Mmmmmm

Tickld

Sloganising, We Love Thee

The Leftist’s Dictionary

Video of the Week

Keeping Track

Phil, Andre, and Barack

Jibe of the Day

No doubt this story has prima facie racist overtones, because Mitt Romney related it and he is white.

President Obama went to the bank to cash a check and he didn’t have his ID. And the teller said you’ve got to prove who you are. 

He said, “How should I do that?” She said the other day Phil Mickelson came in, he didn’t have his ID but he set up a little cup on the ground, took a golf ball, putted it right into that cup so they knew it was Phil Mickelson. They cashed his check.

And then Andre Agassi came in. And Andre Agassi didn’t have his ID either. He put a little target on the wall, took a tennis ball and racquet– hit it onto that target time and again. We knew that was Andre Agassi so we cashed his check.

And she said to him, “Is there anything you can do to prove who you are?” And [Obama] said, “I don’t have a clue.”

And she said, “Well, Mr. President, do you want your money in small bills or large bills.”

“Clueless”.  Sounds like a winning title for a movie. 

H/T National Journal

Making Sport For All

Extraordinary Politicians

Politicians are past masters at making sport for the nation.  They tell themselves, of course, that they are performing Very Important Work, which in a few rare cases may be true.  And given that a large swathe of our population believes that the gummint is a minor deity it is no wonder that it swoons and gasps at the ruminations and peccadilloes of our pollies. 

Pollies are somewhere between used car salesmen and a B-grade comics.  They become more interesting as their comedic skills increase.  When they get to the point of being stupidly caught in their own nets, it can become mildly entertaining in a Three-Stooges kind of way.  But when they get us belly-laughing, they come close to earning their salaries.  After all, at that point they are dolling out the best medicine.

We have just recovered from the laughter and bemusement around the office which accompanied one pollie portentously proclaiming that he believed the momentous issue of the day was to accomplish a redivivus of the extinct moa.  The infamous Trevor Mallard has done this sort of thing before.
  Remember his nuclear cerebral explosion when he proposed just a few months before the Rugby World Cup starting in Auckland that what was needed was a stadium plonked in the middle of the harbour on stilts.  Here is a man who gives new colour to human eccentricity.  One commentator was not so kind.  He thought Mallard at his moa moment resembled a chap who had been let out for a day.  Naturally, Parliament–the place where all the pollie-comics gather for their own version of a celeb-roast–had its best event in months.  Mallard and his moa were top billing.  The best one-liner of the day was when the pre-historic Winston Peters managed to climb to his feet and one pollie-wit commented, “Look, a live moa.” Peter’s was rendered speechless, thus rendering him  him more intelligible than usual.

Since it is election year, pollies making sport for the people has moved up a gear.  The latest offering is uproarious.  We have commented previously on the delicious irony of a true class warrior, a veritable Boadicea of the Left who claims she was born that way, a true defender of the working stiff, has decided to return to politics in an attempt to get back into the nation’s House of Comedy.  She has missed the laughs.  So, in desperation, Ms Leila Harre has become the political leader of a new party owned and funded by one Kim Dotcom, temporary New Zealand resident, fugitive from justice, filthy-rich capitalist, and exploiter of vulnerable employees and contractors.  Ms Harre has never felt so much at home.  It’s an hilarious pairing of two who richly deserve each other.

Now it has been alleged that  Dotcom’s NZ residency application was approved under political duress.  Some money-hungry, dirty, grubby politicians wanted his money, and so pushed to get officials to approve his application.  All that’s a bit close to the bone for Ms Harre, who has been forced to adopt a holier-than-thou tone, and state that she believes the residency for Mr Dotcom ought not have been granted!  What?  Now Harre is arguing that Dotcom’s presence in New Zealand is immoral and the fruit of corruption, but she will take his money and pathway back to the House of Comedy anyway.

But, it does not end there.  Poor old Dottycom has had to cast around to find some way to deflect the sniffy criticism from his new protege, so his spin on the story is that the whole affair has been a mega conspiracy.  He has been hounded by authorities.  Since it is the US which has indicted Dotcom on criminal charges, it is the terrible colonialist overlord, the United States which placed pressure upon the NZ Government to approve Dotcom’s residency application because–wait for it–extradition out of New Zealand back to the US was likely to be granted.  It’s easier to extradite out of New Zealand, solemnly intones Dotty.

So, why then Mr Dotcom did you seek residency in this country in the first place?  Either you are dumber than a reconstituted moa or you are spinning a lie.  Our money is on the latter, since we are loathe to impugn your intelligence.  In summary, we have a cringe comedy unfolding for our sport: Ms Harre maintaining her sanctimony while sniffily fossicking in your pockets for money, whilst you spin just-so stories that are way beyond belief.

David Brent would be impressed.  There’s no doubt these pollies are talented when they concentrate upon doing what they do best–making sport for all. 

Inglorious Ignominy

More Comedy and Farce

Well, the Politicians’ Circus has most certainly delivered once again.  Riotous entertainment and belly laughs all around. 

We arose yesterday to read that the Mana Party (which mixes Maori separatist superiority and spurious sovereignty claims with far left-wing radical politics, professing undying loyalty to the poor, the dispossessed, and the oppressed) has married up with the Internet Party–a creation of a convicted criminal who just happens to be a multi-millionaire facing extradition to the US to face charges on racketeering.  It was long foreshadowed, but nevertheless does not cease to tickle the funny bone every time we reflect upon the “truth is stranger than fiction” aspect of the political conniptions of our day.

But it has got even more hilarious.
  One Leila Harre, ardent unionist and defender of the rights of working people, has joined the Internet Party as its political leader.  Kim Dotcom, the owner and bank-roller of the Internet Party (and now the Mana Party) has a notorious track record of not paying his staff even the minimum wage, of withholding their wages, and of not paying creditors.  He represents everything the ardent socialists of Mana and Leila Harre profess to abhor and despise–and point to a long track record of grievance mongering to back it up.   

Leila, you’ve got me on my knees, Leila . . . with laughter.  (Apologies to Eric Clapton.)  Once Leila would have been out on the barricades protesting Dotcom’s unjust exploitation of workers and creditors–the essence of Marxist evil incarnate–but now, he’s Leila’s friend, buddy, and all round good guy.  All his former sins have been wiped away and forgotten.  What’s a bit of egregious worker exploitation amongst friend?  Do as I say, but not as I do, eh Leila.

What could possibly have motivated her to make this move?  The same motivation as Hone Harawira has had.  Money.  When politicians are involved–particularly those on the Left–always follow the money.  The money trail will almost always give you the real picture of what’s going down.  For the Left, money represents power and the path to power.  Capital (money) in the Marxist world-view represents power to exploit, control, and rule. And the Left wants it.

No doubt Leila is self-righteously telling herself that while it may be true that in Kim’s hands his money has been misused, in her hands it will be very different.  She will take his filthy lucre and turn it into something pure and white.  Like the One Ring, she will use it for good.  She will use it to stand up for the dispossessed and the poor.  At least that is what the Mana Party think, and Leila seems to have joined them in their delusions. 

Never in the history of human sanctimony has so much hypocrisy been displayed by so few, in the attempt to bamboozle so many.  Thus passes Marxism in all its inglorious ignominy. 

Line of the Day

Shades of Bob Hope

Doug Powers, writing at Michelle Malkin, as he struggles with the Big Cold in the US:

A Coast Guard ice breaker is currently en route in an attempt to free my car from the frigid grip of Boreas:

On Travelocity earlier I clicked the “go somewhere warmer” button and it booked me a room on the Akademik Shokalskiy.

Sir Lecturealot

Disappointed Fan

Maureen Dowd, Op Ed columnist for the New York Times, is presenting herself as someone once in love, but now realising that her spouse has flaws and faults after all.  The romance is slip slidin’ away.

Cat on a Hot Stove

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: October 19, 2013  
New York Times

WASHINGTON — PRESIDENT OBAMA won big.

So why did the moment feel so small? 

At his victory scold in the State Dining Room on Thursday, the president who yearned to be transformational stood beneath an oil portrait of Abraham Lincoln and demanded . . . a farm bill. He also couldn’t resist taking a holier-than-thou tone toward his tail-between-their-legs Tea Party foes. He assumed his favorite role of the shining knight hectoring the benighted: Sir Lecturealot. 

“All of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict,” he sermonized. (We have met the enemy and they are . . . bloggers?) 

Certainly, the House Republicans who held their breath until the country turned blue acted like foolhardy children on what John McCain called “a fool’s errand.”  The country agreed. So it probably wasn’t necessary for papa to preach, overacting the role of weary parent watching the irresponsible kids make their mistakes.

  Sir Lecturealot, who hates selling and explaining and negotiating and cajoling and knocking noggins, always manages to convey tedium at the idea that he actually has to persuade people to come along with him, given the fact that he feels he’s doing what’s right.

Obama says he will now work for an immigration bill and a budget deal with deficit cuts. But as Peter Nicholas and Carol E. Lee pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, the president did not mention his more ambitious goals: hiking the minimum wage, widening access to preschool education, and shoring up bridges and roads.  “Those efforts require bipartisan consensus that may be even more elusive amid the ill will carried over from the budget fight,” they wrote. 

Senator McCain, who excoriated the Tea Party zanies and voted with the president, indicated to The Journal that the president had poisoned the well. “A lot of us are resentful that he didn’t negotiate as hard as we think he could have or should have,” he said. He told CNN that if Obama does not “engage” with his adversaries, “obviously you’re not going to be a successful president.” 

Democrats, too, chided the president for being the diffident debutante.  “This is a town where it’s not enough to feel you have the right answers,” Leon Panetta, the former congressman, Clinton chief of staff, C.I.A. director and defense chief, pointedly told Washington reporters. “You’ve got to roll up your sleeves, and you’ve got to really engage in the process.” 

Senator Dianne Feinstein also urged presidential leadership, noting that Obama “stepped back” partly because he felt “burned” by all the scabrous budget fights. But as Mark Twain said, “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.” 

And if Obama is anything, he’s a cold cat on a hot stove.  Washington is surpassingly nutty right now, but the founding fathers did build a system designed for factional warfare. When sweet reasonableness doesn’t work, Obama’s default position is didactic disdain. He underuses the fear and charm cards. When he first saw the White House movie theater, he was surprised there were so many seats beyond what the first family would need. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, probably would have built a balcony and auctioned off seats, if he could have. 

As Valerie Jarrett told David Remnick in “The Bridge,” Obama’s “uncanny” abilities need to be properly engaged, or he disengages. “He’s been bored to death his whole life,” she said. “He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”  Matt Viser wrote in The Boston Globe that, while Obama soared talking about getting past blue-and-red slicing and dicing, the blue states are getting bluer and the red states redder. In his stateside travel schedule, political meetings, staffing and legislative accomplishments, Obama has cleaved to the blue side more than he has tried to reach out to the red side, Viser wrote. 

After Sir Lecturealot admonished both parties on their divisiveness in his 2010 State of the Union address, Viser said, the president did not have his first one-on-one with John Boehner for another year and a half, and has only met individually with Mitch McConnell twice. 

When the president says “we’ve all got a lot of work to do,” he means Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Obamacare should really be called Pelosicare, as the historian Niall Ferguson noted. And an unyielding Reid made sure Obama didn’t cave as in the past, which had emboldened Republicans to challenge the president this time. Obama is the anti-Lyndon Johnson. 

He thinks he can come down from above, de haut en bas, and play the great reconciler, but you can’t reconcile in absentia. You have to be there. You’ve got to be all over these people.  

The paradox of Obama is that he believes in his own magical powers, but then he doesn’t turn up to use them.  There’s nothing wrong with a president breaking a sweat somewhere beyond the basketball court.

There are several lines in this piece which produce explosions of spontaneous mirth.  The final paragraph is a doozie:  “The paradox of Obama is that he believes in his own magical powers, but then he doesn’t turn up to use them.”  If that is true (presumably Dowd should know), and Obama really does believe he has magical powers (along with his coterie), it would explain a lot about his conduct and management of the presidency.

But then again you have to have a certain sympathy for Obama.  It’s quite possible that he has become somewhat big-headed when those on his coat tails speak with sycophantic tongues, or, then again, maybe in good faith, which would be much worse:

As Valerie Jarrett told David Remnick in “The Bridge,” Obama’s “uncanny” abilities need to be properly engaged, or he disengages. “He’s been bored to death his whole life,” she said. “He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Just so talented, he’s bored to death.  A true god-figure, way above the pay-grade of the Presidency–and  lesser mortals, for that matter–who consequently has been signally incompetent in the conduct of his office.  One fails to find, despite a long reach, such a self-deceived apologia for Obama’s failures: he’s just way too talented. 

These lines from Jarrett and Dowd could have come straight out of Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest, which, of course, is a cutting parody of the ignorance and arrogance of the aristocracy.  But, one suspects, in this case these folk appear to be speaking without any consciousness of irony in the slightest. 

Cartoon of the Moment

 Taking Liberty

Advance Australia Fair

Richie McCaw vs Australia

It’s the day of the final Australian test match and Richie McCaw goes
into the All Blacks changing room to find all his teammates looking
down.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“Well, we’re having trouble getting motivated for this game Richie. We
know it’s important but we’ve just beaten Argentina and South Africa
in consecutive weeks and, let’s be honest, it’s only Australia. We
simply can’t be bothered.”

Richie looks at them and says: “Oh well, the way they’ve been playing
recently, I reckon I can beat these Aussies by myself.  You guys go
down to the pub and forget about rugby.”

So Richie goes out to play the Wallabies by himself while the rest of
the All Black team head off for drinks.
 Many beers later they wonder
how the game is going, so they get the barman to put the TV on for a
minute.

A big cheer goes up as the screen reads New Zealand 7 (McCaw 10th
minute try, con) Australia 0.

He is beating Australia all by himself his teammates yell. A few more
beers and the game is forgotten until someone remembers that it must
be fulltime, so the telly goes back on.

Result from Eden Park: New Zealand 7 (McCaw 10 minutes) – Australia 7
(Sharpe, 79 minutes)

Richie has single-handedly drawn against Australia!

They head back to Eden Park to congratulate him. They find him in the
dressing room, still in his gear, sitting down with his head in his
hands.

He refuses to look at them.

” Sorry, but I’ve really let you down.” moans Richie.

“Don’t be an idiot! You drew against Australia and they only scored in
the 79th minute!” says Kieran Read.

“No, no, I did,” says Richie, “I’ve let you down …  I got sent off
after 12 minutes!”

Letter From China

 When Humour is Forbidden Strange Things Happen

We are all aware that The Onion plays it straight–at least as far as its face is concerned.  It recently awarded the new Korean Dictator the appellation “Sexist Man Alive”.  Read the spread here.

The kicker is at the end of the article, where we read: “UPDATE: For more coverage on The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive 2012, Kim Jong-Un, please visit our friends at the People’s Daily in China, a proud Communist subsidiary of The Onion, Inc. Exemplary reportage, comrades.”

True.  The People’s Daily, which can never play it straight, illustrates how a steady diet of propaganda will eventually tie the bowels up in knots.  It assumed The Onion was playing right back down the wicket and decided to produce a stunning cover drive to the boundary.   It produced its own extensive spread of Kim Jong-Un cultish adoration, with not a funny bone in sight.

City Folk

A Cowboy Named Bud

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes, RayBan® sunglasses, and YSL® tie leans out the window and asks the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?”

Bud looks at the man, who obviously is a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, why not?”

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell® notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3® cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location, which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultrahigh-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop® and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot® that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL® database through an ODBC connected Excel® spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry® and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his high-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet® printer, turns to the cowboy and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”

“That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,” says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?”

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?”

“You’re a Congressman for the US government,” says Bud.

“Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

“No guessing required,” answered the cowboy. “You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already know, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars’ worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t know a thing about how working people make a living – or about cows, for that matter. This is a flock of sheep.”

“Now give me back my dog.”

Sultans of Snide

 Bottom Feeders

Storm clouds are gathering around Rick Santorum–running to win the Republican nominee for this year’s presidential elections.  Santorum is a Christian who takes the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ seriously.  Consequently to the Commentariat and the media, by definition he is stupid, dumb, and dangerous.  The spittle is in full spray.

We blogged recently about the mockery Santorum is starting to face because one of his children was still born and the parents took the deceased child home so that the rest of the family could grieve and make their farewells.  This is being pilloried as a sign of someone of unsound mind.  Weird.  Kooky.

Blogger Patterico opens up with both barrels at the Sultans of Snide.

It could be because, increasingly, it seems that those in public life — especially Republicans — are seen as fair game for criticism of their most intimate decisions. Sarah Palin has a Down’s Syndrome child and is mocked. Rick Santorum brings home his child that died hours after his birth, and is mocked.
First, let’s dispense with the idea that this is objectively bizarre behavior. Allahpundit links advice from the American Pregnancy Association for parents of stillborn children — a situation very much like Santorum’s, whose child died after two hours of life:

After the tests are completed, you will usually have the choice to spend time alone with your baby. You can find comfort in looking at, touching, and talking to your baby. Most parents find it helpful to make memories of this precious time that will last a lifetime…

With the loss of your baby, your family members will also grieve. Your baby is someone’s granddaughter, brother, cousin, nephew or sister. It is important for your family members to spend time with the baby. This will help them come to terms with their loss. If you have other children, it is very important to be honest with them about what has happened by using simple and honest explanations. It is your decision whether you would like the children to see the baby. Ask for a Child Life Specialist at the hospital; these are trained professionals who can help you prepare your children for the heartbreaking news, and prepare them to see the baby if you wish.

So, not only it is not “weird” behavior, it is recommended behavior that helps the other children deal with the loss.

Patterico concludes that the behaviour of the snide smirkers is indecent.  He concludes by railing against those in the Commentariat who would resort to mockery of such personal and private and entirely appropriate actions.

But the problem is not just that some leftists can’t understand the love that some people feel for their unborn children — or for their children who (like Sarah Palin’s son Trig) were born with disabilities. What really infuriates is the contempt they show for parents who make different choices than they would . . . and the smug arrogance with which they pronounce judgment on the most intimate aspects of others’ private lives.

What Robinson has done, and what Colmes did the other day, is indecent. These men would never say such a thing to Santorum’s face. (Or maybe they would — which is possibly even worse.) What sickness has invaded our body politic that people feel free, not only to act the cretin, but to do so on national television while sporting insufferable, supercilious, self-satisfied smirks like those we have seen on the mugs of Colmes and Robinson in recent days?

In short: how dare they? How dare they?!

We have to go back to C S Lewis to answer the question of how such people dare to behave so indecently.  In coaching Wormwood on how to conduct the war against God, Screwtape gives the following advice:

“Flippancy is the best of all.”  Not many people can cut a really good new joke but anybody can be trained to speak as if the good things of this world were ridiculous.  “If prolonged,” he says, “the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy (God) that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter.  It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect, and it excites no affection between those who practice it.”  Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2010), p. 152.

The habit of sneering at what is noble or great has become the weapon of choice amongst the godless.  It is the preferred humour of the dead.  It is the great leveller.  It is the favourite chorus among the damned welcoming new entrants to Sheol.   

That is the answer to Patterico’s question, How dare they?  The Commentariat sneers and mocks Christians and flippantly jokes about all they do, say, and believe because they themselves have been reduced to foolishness.  Unable to argue, reason, dispute or debate–in short, unable to think–they habitually decline to the lowest form of ad-hominem attack.

Postscript: we understand that Alan Colmes has apologized for his snide mockery of Santorum’s family life.  We are thankful and believe his public repentance should be acknowledged.   

Quantitative Easing 101

Clarke and Dawe give us the idiots guide to Quantitative Easing

>The Coming Ice Age

>Don’t Panic

Richard Littlejohn
First published in MailOnline

At last, some good news for polar bears. The world is about to enter a mini Ice Age. Scientists working for the American Astronomical Society are predicting a significant drop in solar activity over the next decade. Last time this happened, between 1645 and 1715, global temperatures plummeted and the River Thames froze over every winter.

While climate change alarmists insist we are heading for meltdown, the truth is that the world has actually been getting cooler in recent years.

Although the findings from the National Solar Observatory in New Mexico are bad news for the global warming industry, they are not necessarily good news for the rest of us. Politicians are bound to exploit the new evidence for their own purposes . . .

>"The Office" in Real Time

>Awkward

The Dalai Lama as advocate for an oppressed people is to be respected.  As an eastern guru propagating Tibetan Bhuddism, he deservedly wears the sobriquet of  a fool.  No doubt he is a nice bloke in his own way.

Recently, he was involved in one of the more awkward put downs of an Australian interviewer, unintended to be sure, but all the more funny as a result. This guy could become the Aussie Ricky Gervais.  If only he hadn’t started laughing at himself in embarrassment.

Congrats to the Aussie presenter who mocked himself as a result. But its OK, because he “felt better” after  speaking with the Dalai Lama. Yeah, right.

>One of the Better Book Promos . . .

>Paul Henry: Enfant Terrible

Clearly Henry is having fun. It’s salutary to the body politic to have someone who holds a mirror up to New Zealand and shows up just how pompous and self-righteous and politically correct the nation is. We love to see the Commentariate spluttering over their pinot gris and tapas.

H/T Whaleoil

>Forwarded E-mail

>In the Interests of Open Democracy

This appeared in our in-box this morning.

Please sign and send on:

 

As a rule, I don’t pass along these “add your name” lists that appear in e-mails, BUT this one is important.

It has been circulating for months and has been sent to over 22 million people.
We don’t want to lose any names on the list so just hit forward and send it on.
Please keep it going!

To show your support for the MP Hone Harawira and the job
he is doing please go to the end of the list and add your name…

1.  Titewhai Harawira
2.

>Classroom Fun

>Moral of the Story

A teacher gave her class of 11 year olds an assignment: Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it.

The next day,the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories.

Ashley said, ‘My father’s a farmer and we have a lot of egg laying hens. One time we were taking our eggs to market in a basket on the front seat of the car when we hit a big bump in the road and all the eggs went flying and broke and made a mess.”

What’s the moral of the story?” asked the teacher. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!”, Ashley said. “Very good,” the teacher replied.

Next little Sarah raised her hand and said, “Our family are farmers, too. But we raise chickens for the meat market. One day we had a dozen eggs, but when they hatched we only got ten live chicks, and the moral to this story is,”Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched’.

“That was a fine story, Sarah”, said the teacher.

‘Michael, do you have a story to share?” “Yes. My daddy told me this story about my Aunt Shirley. Aunt Shirley was a flight engineer on a plane in the Gulf War and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory and all she had was a bottle of whisky, a machine gun and a machete.

She drank the whiskey on the way down so it wouldn’t break and then she landed right in the middle of 100 enemy troops. She killed seventy of them with the machine gun until she ran out of bullets. Then she killed twenty more with the machete until the blade broke. And then she killed the last ten with her bare hands.”

“Good Heavens”, said the horrified teacher, “what kind of moral did your daddy tell you from that horrible story?”

“Stay the heck away from Aunt Shirley when she’s been drinking.”

>Not Bad

>A Career After Politics?

New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key shot an unscripted, impromptu dialogue with Australian comedian Peter Flaherty, who was in character as Shaun Wayne.

It’s not too bad. It is hard to imagine any Prime Minister within living memory of being able to pull something like this off. According to Stuff,

The unscripted seven-minute video was shot during Napier’s Art Deco Weekend last month as part of a $100,000 campaign to market the city to tourists from the east coast of Australia. . . .

Napier Mayor Barbara Arnott and her staff were delighted with the video but worried that, after Mr Key saw it, he would not approve its release.

After he gave the go-ahead, Mrs Arnott said: “It was wonderful that the prime minister understood very well what we were trying to do. He entered the spirit of things wholeheartedly.

“Peter Flaherty is a very intelligent comic – you have to be intelligent to play a dumb character that well.”

The council hopes the video will go viral on social networks, backing up a big tourism campaign in Australian media.