In Response to Mike Hosking Et Al & In Belated and Somewhat Reluctant Defence of "Low-Energy" U.S. President Jo(seph) Biden...

If  'energy' is/were to be considered the be-all-and-end-all of everything, the true and definitive, unerring and all-authoritative 'measure of a (wo)man'...

then you'd surely have to give it hands down; no questions asked; no ifs, buts or maybes even countenanced...

to such 'great and glorious' historical personages as those admittedly high-energy individuals like 

Adolf Hitler - Genghis Khan - Atilla the Hun - Pol Pot - Mao Tse-Tung - Josef Stalin et al.

For, in that one respect, anyhow, they were each and every last one of them head and shoulders above any and every compatriot or fellow earth-dweller of their day, and/or before or since...

But if that's the low bar we've now attained to, the nadir we've inescapably reached...

then heaven/God help us all,  for we'll surely need it; and ipso pronto, as in yesterday and countin'...

Here We Go Again: The More Things Change & the Times Move On, The More They Effectively Stay the Same: Israel and the Palestinians Again at Literal Loggerheads in a Renewed Tit for Tat That'll Surely Lead Up To and Even Into Final End-time Events on Planet Earth...As the Nations of the World At Last Unite - Justly or Otherwise - To Surround the Land of God's Own People To Cut Them Off Once and For All As A Nation...Until God Himself Steps In to Call a Halt to Proceedings, Rescuing A (Biblically One-Third) Remnant of Israelites Thus Delivering His Own True People, Dealing Decisively and Destructively to Their Inveterate Enemies, And Bringing Down a Curtain Upon Life As We Know It, Thus Ushering in the Eternal Reign of Zion's True King...

If Modern-day Western 'Labo(u)r' Parties Opt to Dine Out Upon A Menu of Political Correctness, Cancel Culture, Identity Politics and Virtue-Signalling - Eschewing Those Nations' Great and Glorious Pasts Whereby Great and Glorious Statesmen - Warts & All - and Great and Glorious Principles (Such As Freedom of Speech) Were Generally Embraced and Subscribed to By the Population-At-Large - Let Alone Their Traditional Voting Base - Then Quite Frankly, They Deserve What They Have Coming, And With Knobs On (As the Wag Once Put It): Ruminations in the Run-Up to A British By-Election Even Now Doubtless Taking Place...

P.S. More upon my other (original) blogsite, i.e.

http://davidedwinisms.blogpost.co.nz/ (or .com/).

P.P.S. Having chosen not to listen in to/view media in the meantime, so as not to 'spoil the surprise' (for this old-style political buff/junkie.)

But Should A Globally-Recognized Leader Of This Brave Wee Nation Really Be Bowing and Scraping and Curtsying (At Today's Summit On China In New Zealand) To A Government That Has Likewise Been Shown By One and All To Be Engaging In Unbelievable Persecution, Torture and Even Genocide/Ethnic Cleansing (If THAT Is Actually What It Amounts to) Of Its Own Citizens - Whether Uighur Muslims or Its Large Christian Minority? The Facts Do Seem To Confirm As Much, Which I At Least Find Somewhat Intolerable In the Extreme...

And, no, I'm not herein singling out Jacinda Ardern for especial criticism, for *Helen Clark's (and John Key's) protestations about our fragile trade relationship with the People's Republic are equally reprehensible for what they don't say...

...and, anyhow, there was a day and age in which decent-hearted folk actually believed that moral considerations ever trumped mere economic and financial ones, but evidently that time has long since passed, including evidently for New Zealand's Green Party, a regular grandstander on international human rights, at least when it concerns our Western allies - and especially Israel - but is ever and always utterly missing in inaction whenever it comes to calling out such nations as China, Iran, Pakistan - need I go on?

And as far as John Key is concerned, surely the 'great leaders past' of our once proudly independent nation would've been turning - if not squirming - in their graves when he and his government deemed it appropriate to fly the kiwi flag at half-mast upon the death of one of Saudi Arabia's monarchs, a nation whose own history in terms of human rights is so awful that it could make one's head swim were one to give it overly much consideration...

*Both former long-serving prime ministers of our nation, John Key from 2008 through 2016, and Helen Clark from 1999 to 2008 (before she assumed the United Nation's #3 position).