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Amazing how ugly celebrities really are:

Proverbs 24

⁷ Wisdom is too lofty for fools.
Among leaders at the city gate, they have nothing to say.

ᔥ comments and Keeping Stock

Shane Jones and his apologists around the blogosphere have made much of the compassion of not sending a man back to China where he would have allegedly been executed and his organs harvested. There has not been shred of evidence produced to support that contention, but it seems that Shane Jones now infamous compassion only extends so far…to Labour party donors.

Just a few months before the Bill Liu case Shane Jones was faced with another compassionate case, that of an Iranian women who was now a christian being forcibly repatriated to Iran [emphasis mine]:

A last-ditch attempt to stop the deportation of an Iranian Christian has been rejected by Associate Immigration Minister Shane Jones.

Mr Jones will not overrule an Immigration New Zealand decision to deport 25-year-old Birkenhead resident Bahareh Moradi.

His decision writes off the last chance Miss Moradi had to stay in New Zealand.

Her three brothers live in New Zealand. All have refugee status.

The Moradi family had applied for the deportation to be put on hold until after a High Court judicial review of Miss Moradi’s case in July.

That request was turned down by the High Court in March.

As the North Shore Times went to print, Miss Moradi was waiting to be sent to Iran by immigration officials.

It is feared going back to Iran could be dangerous because she has become a Christian.

Under Sharia law, converting from Islam to Christianity is a sin and can be punished by death.

Her pastor at St Aiden’s Presbyterian Rinny Westra is shocked at the minister’s decision to uphold the deportation order.

In that case Shane Jones went with the officials advice and upheld the deportation order. The apologists for Shane Jones need to ask how come he had compassion for a Labour party donor but not for a Christian Iranian women, who actually faced death under sharia law rather than the fanciful claims of a Labour party donor.

ᔥWashington Post

It looks like Obama’s support for gay marriage did absolutely nothing to his support…if anything it slightly improved.

There’s been a dramatic zero-point shift in the polls since Obama came out for gay marriage.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) May 21, 2012

As it happens, today is the first day that all of the polls included in the Real Clear Politics head-to-head average were taken fully or mostly after May 9th, the day President Obama endorsed gay marriage. As of this morning, they show Obama with a 1.7 percent lead. Looking back at the Wonkbook Dashboards, on the morning of May 9th, however, Obama had a 0.2 percent lead in the RCP head-to-head average. So since coming out for gay marriage, his numbers have slightly improved.

A 1.5 percent swing in the polling average isn’t nothing. But it’s not much. And it’s certainly not clear it was caused by Obama’s comments on gay marriage. What we can say is that for all the hubbub, and all the column inches devoted to gaming out the political fallout, Obama’s announcement led to little evident movement in the polls, and what movement there has been has been in his favor. That doesn’t mean gay marriage can’t matter later in the campaign — if it increases turnout among Ohio evangelicals, or leads to much-improved superPAC fundraising for Obama, it could have an impact on the election without having a major effect in national polling — but for now, it doesn’t appear to be changing many votes.

In trying to explain away his rank hypocrisy for accepting freebies from Sky City to the rugby world cup, David Shearer has trapped himself in a lie.

The Labour Leader claims:

“He accepted the SkyCity ticket before he knew about the convention centre deal.”

Well that is interesting.  Because the Convention Centre proposal was announced by John Key on June 12, 2011.

The RWC didn’t get underway until September, 2011.

Shearer had plenty of time to decline or return the tickets, and so did all the Labour hypocrites who accepted freebies from Sky City and were benefitting from gambling proceeds.

Labour has yet again been hoist by their own petard.

David Shearer ‘interrogated’ Shane Jones over the weekend. He told Larry Williams on Monday that he wouldn’t stand Jones down, then he went further on Tuesday saying Jones had done nothing wrong:

So why was Jones stood down? What new information did David Shearer receive?

And if Jones is stood down, what about Cunliffe? Jones has specifically singled Cunliffe out to share some of the blame…

Whatever verdict is handed down by the court today in the Bill Liu case, there are many, many unanswered questions for Labour and David Shearer who’ve known since 2008 that this whole sordid affair would eventually come to light.

Paul “Weeman” Hinton has jumped onto Sunday’s Facebook page and posted this comment.

Quite apart from the outrageous lies he told on the show which I will cover in a separate post about Sunday, this comment is really beyond the pale and needs to be addressed.

He complains about me posting about his dodgy secondary business called Hunger Strike, despite that very term featuring in the emails that Matt Blomfield provide to Sunday and that they showed on screen.

“Weeman” made out on the show that his run in with Hell was over a Hell branded caravan, and only that caravan. This is not strictly true. Hell and “Weeman” did have an issue over the caravan particularly his propensity to operate the caravan and not declare the revenue from it for his franchise calculations. Then of course there was the involvement of this caravan and the missing $13,000 that Warren Powell gave to Matt Blomfield and Paul Hinton to settle up the KidsCan issue.

After the Hell branded caravan was bought off “Weeman” and paid for, apparently over $60,000, Paul Hinton then set about creating Hunger Strike caravans. Hell subsequently found out that the caravan they paid over $60,000 for did not have gas compliance.

Paul Hinton created several “Hunger Strike“caravans while still a franchisee and stocked those caravans with what he described as “tasty treats”. What that really meant was Pizzas made with Hell recipes, Hell ingredients, supplied from Hell suppliers to his Hell franchise but never booked as revenue under his Hell franchise agreement. Paul Hinton was essentially operating in competition to Hell Pizza using their products and their intellectual property. Not only that he intimated to venue operators that he was an official Hell outlet, especially at Mt Smart Stadium. He even towed and operated the caravans from a Hell branded ute.

Paul Hinton, it appears, never told the Sunday programme or John Hudson this, despite it being published on my blog weeks ago. Paul Hinton lied by omission and in the process made the Sunday programme complicit in the lies because of their poor research.

When Hell Pizza discovered what Paul “Weeman” Hinton was up to they decided to initiate termination action. But Paul Hinton was already wanting to sell the franchise, but I doubt he told Sunday that.

Recent photo of Paul Hinton wearing a Hell jacket

The more I look into the murky cash for citizenship scandal engulfing Labour the more interesting the coincidences that keep on coming up

Did you know that the eminent QC that Shane Jones based his decision to grant citizenship to Bill Liu:

However, after considering submissions from officials and from John Billington QC on behalf of Yan, he based his decision on “humanitarian grounds” which he could not expand on until the court case was over.

This presumably is the same eminent QC also representing Dover Samuels in this matter?

 “See my lawyer!” spat Dover Samuels down the phone.

“One question, did you receive a donation from Bill Liu before 2005 –”

“I’m not prepared to answer any more of your questions! You can see my lawyer, John Billington!”

Oh dear…conflicts, murk, coincidences…inquiry?

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

Labour has again been caught out in a blatant double standard.

The MPs Pecuniary Interests Register tabled in Parliament yesterday, shows Labour MPs were the recipients of significant hospitality from Sky City – despite their rabid opposition to a new convention centre and over-the-top claims about problem gambling.

Labour MPs accepted more free tickets to RWC games from Sky City than any other Party.

Even David Shearer accepted some tickets, which would make these comments about ‘pokie machines’ blatantly hypocritical.

Labour leader David Shearer received 12 free tickets to various games – two for a pool game came from Sky City. He was a guest of Sky TV at the final and Telecom at the opening ceremony.

This especially interesting because David Shearer subsequently enjoyed a nice fireside dinner at the home of Sky TV lobbyist with the CEO as well. I broke that story and at the time Shearer weaseled out of it, perhaps now in light of his accepting largesse from Sky TV we should re-visit that dinner.

Shearer’s new position appears to be that pokie machines and Sky City are very bad – although me and my mates are happy to accept the freebies they pay for. He also has the position that although he enjoys corporate hospitality and home dinners and fine wine with the corporate lobbyist and CEO that they never speak of business.

ᔥ Kiwiblog

Apparently it needed a scientific study to show they are jerks. They are also sanctimonious and probably vote Green.

Other groups who science will show are jerks due to their holier than thou attitudes are:

Hybrid Car Owners
Town Planners
Home Birth Midwives
Green Party Members
Opponents of Gay Marriage