Open Thread – Weekend 15 Jan 2022
1,699 responses to “Open Thread – Weekend 15 Jan 2022”
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Part way through watching the Dr Mike Yeadon video posted by Vicki at 3:54 Friday – wow!
Got to go and get some kip, another work day tomorrow, but I have to watch the rest of that video. The first hour and 6 minutes is enough to blow the whole covid lie out of the water. If you haven’t watched it and shared it already, do yourself and those you care about a big favour and watch and share it.
Will we make any impression on those who can and should stop this entire charade? Maybe, maybe not, but if we don’t do our best to stop it, we’re stuffed.
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Looking at the header artwork for the thread, that’s a pretty intense gaze on the Lady of Shallott!
I always wonder about the models for classical paintings, who they were, how they ended up as models for what became works of art that long outlived them, works now hung in major galleries around the world to be admired by people centuries later.
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US fast food chains are big business in China:
4:50
A consumer group called the China Consumer Association (CCA) on Wednesday called for a national boycott of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) because the restaurant chain is running a toy promotion that drives some Chinese customers into delirious buying frenzies.
KFC launched the promotion to celebrate the 35th anniversary of its extremely successful expansion into China. KFC was the first American fast food company to open restaurants in China, and today it is the most successful by a wide margin, boasting over 7,900 locations in 1,600 cities operated by a corporation called Yum China.
KFC has almost double the Chinese market share of runner-up McDonalds, and over three times as many locations. The main KFC restaurant in Beijing sprawls over 3,600 square feet and seats 500 people.
Kentucky Fried Chicken is, to sum up, a very big deal in China.
KFC’s Chinese locations include some local menu items not sold in American stores, and it runs some promotions unique to the Chinese market. Last week, the restaurant teamed up with a toy company called Pop Mart for its 35th anniversary celebration, offering “mystery boxes” containing special editions of a collectible doll called Dimoo.
Dimoo are plastic dolls of wide-eyed children dressed in fanciful costumes. The KFC Dimoo are dressed up as various items from the menu, plus a Dimoo of the company’s founder and longtime mascot, Colonel Sanders.
#KFC and toymaker #PopMart have joined hands to launch Dimoo&KFC toys, creating a frenzy on the internet, with consumers sharing photos or videos of dozens of fried chicken “family buckets” that they’ve bought to get the toys. #InvestinChina https://t.co/3eXoU0tJ7P pic.twitter.com/gFoddw7CLc
— Invest in China (@investing_china) January 11, 2022
There are a lot of Dimoo to collect, and over the summer a secondary craze of “DIY Dimoo” swept China, as avid collectors began creating their own Dimoo or customizing the existing toys. In China, Dimoo are like Cabbage Patch Kids or Beanie Babies all over again. As with those earlier crazes, some fans are going overboard in their zeal to collect as many as possible.
KFC’s Happy Meal-style “mystery boxes” turned Dimoo collecting into a form of gambling, with huge mountains of fried chicken as the ante. The toys are only included with KFC’s “family bucket” meals, which cost 99 yuan (about $15.45).
The Colonel is apparently not as patriotic as the image suggests.
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Ann Coulter always needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but I reckon she is on the money with this one:
Five underage girls had given police sworn statements that Epstein had sexually abused them, backed by 17 other witnesses, but when Krischer brought the case to the grand jury, weirdly, he allowed only one of the girls to testify — and then attacked her on the stand! (Epstein’s attorneys had helpfully provided Krischer’s office with the girl’s posts on MySpace, where she talked about boys and drinking, the little harlot.)
According to an extensive review by the Palm Beach Post, most of Krischer’s 2,800-page investigative file on the case consists of dirt against the teens — and against the police — given to him by Epstein’s lawyers. (Thanks, Epstein attorneys! Do we owe you anything?)
The grand jurors, who’d been meticulously kept in the dark by Krischer, ended up voting only for a single charge of “solicitation of prostitution” against Epstein in 2006. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years’ probation. No jail time, no record as a sex offender — no criminal record whatsoever.
According to Nexis, only one newspaper, the Palm Beach Post, reported at the time — or ever — that Palm Beach prosecutor Krischer gave Epstein probation for his years of child abuse.
Lotsa big names being covered up here.
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Haven’t been commenting much. The “this country is a shithole” by people who never leave (shades of the “I’ll emigrate if Trump is elected”) and “the International Conspiracy” stuff, repeated over and over and over again, is tedious and boring.
Those who don’t like Australia – stop complaining and piss off. As for the others, I am yet to hear any constructive solutions.
Those who say things like ‘Australia is a shit streaked piss bowl’ need to lock into reality. In particular, which Nirvana on the planet do they prefer? Amazing how the discussion tapers off when they find out about the rest of the world. Not to mention that Austraslia is undoubtedly in the top five of places to live generally.
I tune out of here from time to time because reading some of the most privileged people on the planet behaving like toddlers (who have no sense of history) indicates better use of time.
Those endless, boring and repetetive comments along the lines of we’re doomed, and the people we don’t like should be strung up (with variants) don’t make for interesting reading.
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“The delivery of the Australian Open last year was a challenge but we got it done and it was a great event and I’m sure it’ll be the case again this year,” Mr Merlino said.
Except that, if you don’t have the world’s best players competing, the title will have all the mystique of a Paralympic Gold medal*.
* Not meant to be offensive, just realistic.
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Haven’t been commenting much. The “this country is a shithole” by people who never leave (shades of the “I’ll emigrate if Trump is elected”) and “the International Conspiracy” stuff, repeated over and over and over again, is tedious and boring.
Those who don’t like Australia – stop complaining and piss off. As for the others, I am yet to hear any constructive solutions.
Those who say things like ‘Australia is a shit streaked piss bowl’ need to lock into reality. In particular, which Nirvana on the planet do they prefer? Amazing how the discussion tapers off when they find out about the rest of the world. Not to mention that Austraslia is undoubtedly in the top five of places to live generally.
I tune out of here from time to time because reading some of the most privileged people on the planet behaving like toddlers (who have no sense of history) indicates better use of time.
Those endless, boring and repetetive comments along the lines of we’re doomed, and the people we don’t like should be strung up (with variants) don’t make for interesting reading.
Agree it’s disgusting and boring- armchair bellyachers. The ones I really loathe are the FIFO critics.
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Regardless of what ones thoughts are regard RATs, it shows that there’s zero accountability when it comes to the CHO’s (again).
I’m reading a research report this morning showing how many RATs are manufactured in Australia & are exported.
There’s a QLD company that’s been making these things since the end of 2020 & scaled up production last year.
They continually engaged with QLD health but were told repeatedly no thanks.
But Jeannette Young gets promoted. -
Mater says:
January 15, 2022 at 6:03 am“The delivery of the Australian Open last year was a challenge but we got it done and it was a great event and I’m sure it’ll be the case again this year,” Mr Merlino said.
Except that, if you don’t have the world’s best players competing, the title will have all the mystique of a Paralympic Gold medal*.
* Not meant to be offensive, just realistic.
Precisely.
Would be interesting to see the #1 up against the winner of the Aus. Open next tournament. -
I assumed Johanna was referring to lack of constructive solutions from the bellyachers.
Probably because there is none. What they have set in motion, cannot be stopped.
As I said yesterday, sit back and warm your hands as Australia burns. Like any fire in Australia, the insanity will need to burn out naturally, or will require an ‘act of God’ to intervene. Like any fire, it can possibly be shaped a little to protect some critical things, but the bulk of the destruction is preordained (and was from the very first
brain fartlockdown).Save your energy for looking after your family, and the heavy lifting which will follow.
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From Glenn Greenwald’s substack this morning.
That the filibuster is an inherently racist tool, a relic of Jim Crow, is an odd position for Democrats to take given that just yesterday, they used the filibuster to block legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Indeed, Sen. Cruz’s bill not only attracted the votes of forty-nine out of fifty Republican Senators (the only exception was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)), but also six Democratic Senators who face close races in 2022 and/or are from purple states: Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), , Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA). That meant that Cruz had 55 votes for his bill — a clear majority. So why did it not pass? Because Senate Democrats invoked the racist Jim Crow relic in order to refuse to allow a vote on that bill unless it first attained 60 votes to close the debate. In other words, Democrats — on Thursday— used the filibuster to block Cruz’s bill despite its having the support of the majority of the Senate.
What makes the Democrats’ conduct here even more notable is the substance of Cruz’s bill that they blocked with the filibuster. Cruz sought to impose sanctions on the Russian pipeline company Nord Stream 2, which is constructing the pipeline that will allow Moscow to sell large amounts of cheap natural gas to Germany and to Europe more broadly. There are few more pressing priorities for the Kremlin, if there are any, than construction of this pipeline. So by blocking Cruz’s bill, Democrats not only used a racist filibuster, but they did so in order to protect Vladimir Putin and a vital Russian company from sanctions.
Will Maddow now say the Democrats are in Putin’s pocket?
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tiresome and defeatist
True on both counts, but not wrong.
This insanity now has its own microclimate, which prevents external interference. Even those who started it couldn’t bring it under control, even if they wanted to.
If Morrison (or even Andrews) stood up today and said; “It’s no longer dangerous, stop testing and start living”, what do you think the petrified, hysterical Karen’s would do? Ignore that which now defines their lives?
No, the Karen’s need to start getting hungry and being denied their usual comforts before they will start weighting things up in a rational manner. Hence, it’s going to have to reach its logical conclusion.
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I reckon I’ve aged well.
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After two years watching celebrities and sportsmen flow freely across borders, the absurd fuss about Djokovic is just embarrassing.
And I dare say that if they dug into all of their visa declarations, social media posts and prior movements, with the same vigour, things might be even more embarrassing.
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Djokovic breaks Serb quarantine/isolation laws, travels to foreign countries in breach of Serb isolation laws, breaches isolation to attend photo ops, falsifies Australian immigration documentation and covid vax declaration requirements – so after being made fools of in their own courts for attempting to deport Djokovic once, the inept Australian Govt goes all in a second time to deport Djoko on the grounds of…………. fears of inciting anti-vaxxers?!
FMD, the depth of incompetency in this Govt is bottomless.
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“I tune out of here from time to time because reading some of the most privileged people on the planet behaving like toddlers (who have no sense of history) indicates better use of time.”
How do you know how “privileged” people are here? The truth is that you don’t know. People here who read this blog and/or comment have varied backgrounds and occupations…some privileged, some not.
As for accusing posters of “behaving like toddlers”, worth remembering that line when you next have a vicious and spiteful spray at Lizzie.
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Why is everyone so worried about Djokovic’s health anyway? He hasn’t got the bug, but he might get the bug?
He travelled into a State brimming with the bug, he doesn’t have the bug, but he’s being thrown out because he isn’t vaccinated against the bug.
Surely, if the bug was anything to worry about, an elite athlete, in his prime, earning millions of dollars solely from his physical ability, wouldn’t need encouragement to stay away?
It’s a shit show. One that severely insults my intelligence.
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Makka beat me to it. “Health” and “anti-vaxx encouragement” appear to be the grounds of cancellation.
Both idiotic, when there was so much fertile soil there to till.
Did they really want the exploding cigar after all?
And in other news, I see Deadman made an appearance on the old thread. Worth a look.
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Joh had a point about positivity and defeat and privilege.
Something I have to remind myself of daily. Easy in some ways as I look out on a lily filled lake (but don’t have to worry about curses and silly mirrors) and roos lounging in the still-warm bunkers, their ears just above the rim like TV antennas.
I watched Dr Zhivago last night. People have lived through stupider times.
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No, the Karen’s need to start getting hungry and being denied their usual comforts before they will start weighting things up in a rational manner. Hence, it’s going to have to reach its logical conclusion
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Aka – ‘things will have to get worse before they get better’, and fortunately they are, as the corpse of the economy finally begins to noticeably smell (inflation and empty shelves now appearing). At the start, I said ‘ the medical effects will be serious (I was wrong, they weren’t) but the economic effects will be catastrophic (still think I got that one right). Unfortunately, I didnt predict the biggest downside – tyranny, 🙁
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None of the Tennis players have been vaccinated, they’re not stupid, except for Djokovic, who is silly enough to boast about it.
The disconnect between the hundreds of European sportsmen collapsing mid match and the dearth in Australia and the US suggests a different ‘vaccination’ experience in certain geographic locations.
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He did nothing of the sort, he snuck into Australia thru the back door.
So why isn’t he being deported on those grounds, where evidence supposedly exists. Not some spurious concern about potentially upsetting anti-vaxxers? Could it be our laws are so shot full of holes they can’t survive a decent challenge?
It’s looking to me like some tenacious dude with a big checque book has exposed how lawfully pathetic these emergency laws really are. It’s taken a bloody foreigner to expose the sham. Where were our human rights legal champions these last 2 years? They have been in bed with our obnoxious Govts, state and federal.
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“I watched Dr Zhivago last night. People have lived through stupider times.”
Of course they have….sadly human history is replete with worse situations but it doesn’t detract from the suffering and misery of people who’ve lost business through lockdowns, who’ve been separated from family and other loved ones, who haven’t been able to attend funerals because of tyrannical state governments, who’ve lost jobs because of their stance on vaccination (think “rickw”)…and I could go on.
Comparing “times” is relativism writ large. It’s something the left do all the time.
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Cassie, I’m not being relativist, at least not in the way you think.
It’s purely personal and a way of avoiding self-pity and a defeatist attitude. In the same way I see guys like rickw and others doing their best in the circumstances.
I’ve already been called a Bolshevik at SincCat. Writ large or writ small, I’m pretty sure I’m not.
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Of all the lobbying to adopt leftist tactics the ‘long road’ is left out.
If you are suggesting a reverse ‘march through the institutions’, it’s not going to save us from the ramifications of the Covid insanity.
Even if feasible, that’s a Plough Horse. Covid’s a Racehorse.
That’s a long term strategy. Much hurt to be had before then.
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Another top article in the Oz today by Steve Waterson with his monthly takedown contribution:
There were cynics who doubted the clowns who run this country could maintain their high standards of idiocy into this third year of pandemonium, but here they come again, tripping over their giant shoes as they enter the ring. Buffoons of that pedigree were never going to let us down.
True to their vision, we’re trapped in a miasma of bumbling incompetence, leavened with spiteful, vindictive meddling in our private lives. Polka-dotted bowler hats off to them, I say.
What a wacky week these crazy kids have delivered us. But before we luxuriate in the comic masterpiece of the Australian Open and the government’s removal of reigning champion Novak Djokovic late on Friday, we should pause to applaud the latest jewel in the crown of our leaders’ stupidity: the screamingly funny $1000 fine for not filing your positive rapid antigen test to the NSW government’s gnomes.
The early promise and backbone shown by the NSW Premier suggested he’d fluffed his lines, but normal nonsense programming was restored at the prompting of his Health Ministry halfwits and a couple of Sydney talkback windbags. Their barrage of uneducated blustering and bullying, echoed by the shrieking flock of Chicken Littles that nest in our print media, saw the Premier’s resolve evaporate like the morning mist.
Given his government has no idea who among its subjects has the RAT kits – (I bought a couple of packets a month ago – or did I?) – nor how many they have, or whether they’ve been used, correctly or otherwise, or by whom, or what result they gave, it seems unlikely that any fines will be collected. So, an unenforceable law to deal with an undetectable offence with a mighty but undeliverable penalty. If there’s a more amusing way of inviting contempt for the rules and their creators, I look forward to it.
You can see the appeal, though: at a grand a pop they only need to catch 11 million recalcitrants and – bingo! – that’s paid for the 58 million PCR tests we’ve conducted so far.
Besides, self-reporting has marvellous potential. In some US cities there have been calls to defund the police, but our jokers have gone one better and outsourced the role to the citizens. A simple command to report oneself on pain of punishment – why did no one think of that before?
“Hello, NSW police? I drove home on New Year’s Eve and used a breath-test machine to discover to my horror that I was marginally over the limit. Please suspend my licence for three months – oh, and there’s a cheque for $1500 in the post.”
Meanwhile, infections continue to climb, hundreds of thousands a day, boosted by the eager self-testers who uploaded their results to the health services website. So after nearly two years of kicking it, here’s where the can has ended up.
We should rejoice that the Omigod! variant is less deadly than Delta Force, apparently by 20 per cent, or 10 per cent, or 48 times less virulent, or 97 per cent weaker (I fear I’ve been reading too widely). I have no idea what these figures mean, or how they can possibly be calculated; and their vast range tells me nobody else does either. They’re no more trustworthy than the daily case numbers regurgitated by our media, whose very precision makes them suspect.
Does anyone with the tiniest shred of intelligence really believe we are tracking every infection? I know a dozen people who’ve had positive RAT results but have no intention of throwing themselves into the maw of a health bureaucracy that will order them into isolation. And if my experience is not unique, then there must be hundreds of thousands more live cases out there, many with mild or no symptoms, which means the latest instalment of Covid is even less deadly than we are told.
If so, we are now recording and overreacting to a disease no more dangerous than seasonal flu. The reborn urge to track contacts, to order isolation and quarantine, to mandate daily tests (impossible to source) in order to validate exemptions for critical services, is causing more chaos than at any time since the madness took possession of us.
Helpful messages pop up on phones after a visit to the pub, informing you that when you checked in, someone with Covid was there “around the same time”. Then you are advised to “monitor for symptoms”. Good Lord, now you mention it I do have extreme pain and fever, a sore throat and a blinding headache, plus I’ve lost my sense of smell. Thanks for the tip, NSW Health, I might never have noticed. What a pity you have no advice on how to treat it.
To those businesses that survived destructive and unnecessary lockdowns thanks to the fabulous largesse of our various JobKeeper programs, good luck getting through the pseudo (but every bit as harmful) lockdowns generated by the insane requirement for many healthy staff to stay at home – this time with no financial support.
In Victoria, the legal fun looks set to continue, featuring backflip after hilarious backflip. With their inept, confused and torturous mishandling of what looked, no matter what side you favour, to be a simple visa decision, the PM and his ministers have turned the modest success of his “Where the bloody hell are you?” campaign to attract overseas tourists into a triumphant “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” drive to dissuade them from coming.
News reports worldwide have focused on the battle to protect Australia from a Serbian tennis ace. I don’t know if we’re the laughing stock some critics say we are, but I doubt there are many potential visitors racing to their travel agents after viewing the fiasco we’ve created.
Lawyers say hard cases make bad laws; but bad laws also make hard cases. Some of us have clung from the start to the belief that an Australian passport holder should be allowed to enter Australia at any time, and that Australians should be allowed to move unchallenged around their nation. Many didn’t want our international borders to be closed at all, although the hysteria that discarded the world’s carefully prepared pandemic contingency plans put an end to that foolish dream.
So if those who have opposed the country’s brutal border closure now adopt the PM’s “rules are rules” platitude (as though the rules were dropped here from outer space, rather than born of his own unseemly and unending panic), we are valuing the internal coherence of a bad system over our desire to see a measured, reasonable response to an unvaccinated person seeking entry to a country where almost everyone is vaccinated.
Djokovic came here for our entertainment, and to enrich himself and his trophy cabinet, not to infect Australians with a disease he doesn’t have or to spread his simple-minded anti-vax message. The “Gotcha!” reaction to a couple of trivial form-filling errors and the embarrassing interview process he was subjected to show how thoroughly Covid paranoia has penetrated our institutions.
It’s not clear to me why anyone would fraudulently claim they hadn’t been to Spain in the fortnight before heading to Australia. I don’t believe such a visit is prohibited by our entry laws, which are designed to capture travel to more problematic places than the Costa del Sol.
Nor do I see why a multi-millionaire globetrotting celebrity, in a sport famous for mollycoddling its stars like newborn babies, would be filling out his own online visa application, doubtless one of dozens his minders arrange for him each year.
Trouble is, the principles of fair play are so much more difficult to defend when the super-entitled “victim”, backed by a phalanx of clever lawyers, is such an absolute tosser, and not that lovely Roger Federer. Maybe we should have another yes/no question on the visa application: Are you a dickhead? But until we do, we should not have indulged the mob howling for the expulsion of the world’s No.1 tennis player from what may be the only globally significant sporting event we will host this year. Anyone who believed Djokovic was more of a threat to public health than any of the thousands who would pay to watch him play is an idiot. He doesn’t dive into Young & Jackson for a post-game beer during the tournament; and, more importantly, he doesn’t have any Covid to transmit.
I imagine you have to be profoundly obsessive and self-centred to excel in any individual sport, although Djokovic does seem to wear an extra layer of charmlessness. His gloating Instagram post that he had secured a medical exemption to enter this hermit kingdom stung anyone impacted by our travel restrictions (and I speak as one of them, forbidden to visit my dying father or attend his funeral).
Nevertheless, Djokovic’s obstinacy may have done some good. He deserves no credit for it, as his motives were primarily mercenary, but perhaps his immigration farce will persuade a few more people to question the benefit of continuing these pointless prohibitions, though I won’t be holding my breath.
In a proper big top, the clowns appear between performers of genuine talent: tightrope walkers, lion tamers, trapeze artists, jugglers; but our cavalcade of stupidity looks set to go on and on, with no relief and no skills on display. If we’ve learned one thing from our politicians during the pandemic, it’s that a circus composed of clowns and nothing else is no laughing matter.
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he shoulda been barred for Life.
Then wtf wasn’t he? I loathe the dude but if after all the clear supposedly legal breaches he has committed, this should be a cut and dry case. Yet clearly it is not. Meanwhile,ever present govt incompetence is on display showing when challenged they can’t legally enforce the laws we have been chained down with for 2 years. In that respect, perhaps we should be thanking Djoko for bank rolling this demolition.
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Ed Case says:
January 15, 2022 at 8:34 am
What about that lineswoman he hit fair in the face with a fucking tennis ball traveling at 200 kph at the U.S. Open?
He got away with that, he shoulda been barred for Life.Crap Ed?
Lineswoman was a diversity hire and couldn’t dodge a tennis ball coming her way on a tennis court.
Ever played at the net in men’s tennis Ed?
I used to hit the ball fair at the head of any twit who crowded the net.
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