Pedant Winston says “Rout” not “Route” 🙂
Open Thread – Weekend 13 May 2023
- Open Thread – Mon 25 Nov 2024
- The more you gets the less you eats
- Open Thread – Weekend 23 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 21 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Mon 18 Nov 2024
Worse than NZ? Yikes. That’s a wake up call if ever there was one.
Good to see the UAE have moved swiftly to make arrests in the murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan. Rumours abound…
It was only a short while ago when you thought Trump was great, and now look at you, Dover. You’re…
Excellent stuff Crossie. Quadrant is a bloody good cause because it doesn’t get funded like the Lefty causes.
Wow!
What no Welcome to Country in this thread? Should be compulsory.
All I said was, that Halibut was good enough for Jehovah.
Good Moaning
First! Oh, damn. There must have been a shortcut.
The expulsion of Moira Deeming from the Liberal party is so insanely ridiculous it takes Persutto and his 19 witch burners into competition with the Salem mob.
Congratulations to the Men dressed as NATZIs who sabotaged the womens meeting a wonderful outcome presumably unexpected but satisfying all round.
You’re welcome!
Johannes Leak.
Mark Knight.
Peter Broelman.
David Rowe.
Patrick Blower.
Andy Davey.
Graeme Bandeira.
Christian Adams.
Peter Brookes.
Michael Ramirez.
Matt Margolis.
Tom Stiglich.
Chip Bok.
Al Goodwyn.
Lisa Benson.
Another college footballer has career derailed by false allegations.
Prosecutors dropped the charges late last year in the case of Matt Araiza participating in an alleged gang rape.
This week it was revealed why.
He’d left the party an hour before the alleged rape took place.
Trumps town hall has certainly made the corruption of the Biden family into a third rate news item.
Paywalled at the Atlantic.
THE ABORTION ABSOLUTIST
Warren Hern has been performing late abortions for half a century. After Roe, he is as busy with patients as ever.
By Elaine Godfrey
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/dr-warren-hern-abortion-post-roe/674000/
Any Cats subscribe? and can repost?
Hard hitting reporting from Axios on the Biden Whitehouse.
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/food-fight-white-house?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
My cattleman nephew and I have come up to the Burdekin to visit his brother’s cotton partnership.
He was originally operating in Northern NSW but became collateral damage when NSW Govt/ABC eco fascists destroyed Cubby Station.
It’s an extraordinary operation which so far has held at bay the clown worlds of James Cook University and Turnbull’s $0.5b international reef grifters.
The cane and cotton farmers appear to be very well organised. The ridiculous woman in Brisbane has apparently realised that attempting to destroy agriculture in Nth QLD is very bad politics and has tugged on the lead.
James Cook has reverted to it’s principal role of wierd beards floating around in boats with pretty undergraduates and producing outlandish papers that everyone ignores.
The reef grifters are far more dangerous because of the powerful Federal legislation that Morrisson failed to overturn.
The farmers have so far defeated the ‘run off is destroying the reef’ myth and have techniques for restricting grifters access to their properties, but the situation remains dangerous.
Most threatening are the Southern greenies who are in semi-permanent residence, and are very well funded. They channel nonsense claims to the Greens and Labor which are seized upon by those limited intellects as gospel.
Despite their apparent success the rural lobby are very concerned that now that Labor believe themselves to be invincible they will go the whole way against rural industry up here.
I have become a rapid convert to the case for a separate state of North Queensland.
The salty tears!
Anderson Cooper: ‘You Have Every Right Never To Watch CNN Again’ After Trump Town Hall (13 May)
The chaos going on at CNN after Wednesday night’s town hall featuring former President Trump is the gift that keeps on giving.
“It was a total debacle and I’ve never been more ashamed to work at CNN,” one prominent on-air talent told The Hill on Thursday. … “And CNN aired it all. On and on it went. It felt like 2016 all over again. It was Trump’s unhinged social media feed brought to life on stage,” Darcy ranted. … Following the event, hosts Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper were absolutely beside themselves – with Tapper seemingly on the verge of tears.
…
And on Thursday, Cooper apologized to the network’s audience, telling viewers they have “every right to be outraged.”
“You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again,” said Cooper. “But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away? If we all only listen to those we agree with, it may actually do the opposite. If lies are allowed to go unchecked as imperfect as our ability to check them is on a stage in real time, those lies continue, and those lies spread.
As far as I can tell Trump told no lies at all. But the Left can’t understand that. They’re so deep into fantasyland that they can no longer see the real world any more.
Blackout Bowen’s Australian future!
AUSTIN, TX — In an absolutely genius move, Elon Musk has announced a plan to save at least 22% on Twitter executive salaries by hiring a female CEO.
RTWT
Dorothea Bowen.
I love a solar country
A land of sweeping blades
On our rugged mountain ranges
No droughts and flooding rains.
Yalie hurls the word “racist” at Senator Cruz, he responds
Young America’s Foundation
Vicki Campion:
Hello…
John Pesutto says “everything’s on the table” to make the party electable in 2026.
Including abolishing local branches, reportedly.
Bons: They never stop. Just checked the morning inbox and found this press release from the Nature Conservation Council (NSW). Apparently, it makes more sense to “invest” squizillions developing Gaia-friendly schemes to stash water in aquifers rather than build a wall across a stream., ie., a dam. Oh, and don’t forget water-purification plants, with all their opportunities for supping deep from the trough of public monies and subsidies:
Dams don’t make water, they kill rivers and downstream communities
The Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales (NCC), the state’s leading environmental advocacy organisation, has today criticised the misinformation being spread by members of the northern NSW agricultural elite, and members of federal and state of parliament, in relation to the cancelled Dungowan Dam project.
“Dungowan Dam would have done nothing to address Tamworth’s drinking water issues and would have had a devastating impact on downstream communities”, NCC CEO Jacqui Mumford today.
“The productivity commission called the dam ‘a case study in flawed decision making’ and NSW Minister for Water Rose Jackson made clear that Infrastructure Australia, Infrastructure NSW, and several other NSW Government agencies have suggested the project not proceed.” Mumford continued.
“This mentality we see from certain sections of the agricultural industry that the solution to any water issue in inland Australia is to build a massive dam, and if you are downstream then too bad, is outdated and has to stop.”
“Dams don’t make water, they just kill rivers and hurt downstream communities.”
“In Europe and the United States they are tearing down dams and investing in smart new technologies, including managed aquifer recharge and water purification.”
Tamworth Regional Council is looking into a water purification plant that would provide thirsty abattoirs with a new water source, freeing up valuable drinking water for the community.
“The solutions to water scarcity in the Peel catchment are simple. Purifying water for use in local meat works will do more for Tamworth’s future than digging a hole and praying for rain” said Mumford.
“We also need to change the laws to stop overextraction, purchase more water, and invest in regional communities. That way, enough water will flow through the Murray Darling Basin to provide clean drinking water to every town, to rivers that inland Australians can enjoy, and ensure our precious plants and animals don’t go extinct.”
Statement ends
Media contact: Clancy Barnard
E: [email protected] Ph: 0438 869 332
LOL, the “surplus” that m0nty the fat fascist was gloating about on Tuesday turns out to be the result of an accounting trick.
The same trick, if used by Morrison/Friedchickenburger, could have produced a larger surplus for them. I wonder did Treasury ever suggest it to them, or did they save that one for their Labor maaaaates?
America Surrenders
Love the Bee!
Tom, unfortunately she is also the current Chairman of the WEF’s Taskforce on Future of Work and sits on the WEF’s Media, Entertainment and Culture Industry Governors Steering Committee.
And she is (0r was) also a proponent of content moderation on Twitter.
Not sure this is Elon’s brightest move.
Congratulations are in order for VIC opposition in relation to treatment of Moira Deemin. Never before has a party gone against the obvious sentiments of its supporters in such a spectacular way.
Whether it be comments here, in online mainstream media or Twitter they have totally peeded off their base.
Pesutto is totally done as misjudged how damaging the issue has been.
Oh.
The only trick I knew they were capable of was minimising my tax refund.
Enough is Enough
Calvary Hospital began operating in 1979, invited by the Commonwealth Government (1971).
It has operated for 44 years and has 76 years left on its 120-year lease.
The ACT Government will pass legislation in order to compulsorily acquire both the buildings and land of Calvary Hospital. They aim to build a new public hospital, estimated to be $1B.
Nobody should be dispossessed of their land and property without consultation. The ACT Government is doing exactly this – contravening lawful property rights.
Bat poo is ruining things for him.
Watch: ‘Pests & grime are reducing the efficiency of solar panels seeing power bills skyrocket’ – ‘Dust, pollen, insect & bat droppings…mold, mildew’ covering panels (12 May)
Wittgenstein@backtolife_2023
Pests and grime losing Queenslanders big energy savings from solar panels
Source: 7NEWS Australia (YouTube)
6:15 AM · May 12, 2023
Bowen will have to import more people from the third world to wash down all those solar panels more often. I wonder how much precious water is used for this duty?
Disney shares sink nearly 9% after the company reports streaming subscriber losses
Disney shares were at 178 at this point two years ago, now at 92.
Why it’s almost as if people aren’t buying what Disney is trying to force on them. Imagine that.
Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021 Education workshop schedule
The workshops will provide an overview of the Act, along with guidelines and regulations, and are being held across WA.
A good chance to peek inside the locked filing cabinet next to the toilet in the basement behind a locked door marked “beware of the Wagyl”…
And a good chance to kick some heads too, I’ll be there with bells on.
The World Today
I gave in to my husband’s threesome dream — as his 40th birthday gift
these are not the marxist scum you are looking for
Meme
Leak’s on the money. Drumgold had a particularly bad week. As in do not pass Go do not collect $200 bad. The Logies thing was quite funny but may well be true. A mates father was a Family Court judge and was returning to Perth up the pointy end of the Canberra – Melbournibad – Perth flight and was seated next to Baby John Burgess who at that stage was hosting the top rating 5pm show Wheel of Fortune. The judge turned to him and said, “What do you do?”.
While I was doing Economics I asked another guy what he was doing over Easter? “Playing football”. “Good one. Who do you play for?” “The Eagles”. Turns out it was Paul Peos who later gained some infamy as a player agent.
New Twitter She-E-O has also expanded the character limit to 1 000 000, because, sometimes, you’ve just gotta get something like really big off your chest, you know?
… love the Bee. Distressed at the amount of junk ads it carries though- I suppose short-form comedy is hard to attract the paying subscribers the way that longer podcasts can.
Janet A has been unflinching and forensic in the reporting of the Knickerless/Lehmann imbroglio, particularly the ACT inquiry….
Sofronoff Inquiry exposes a deficit of trust
Trust is central to our criminal justice system. Trust between police and prosecutors. Trust between prosecutors and defence lawyers. Trust that a defendant has in court. The trust a judge must have in lawyers appearing in a trial. And our trust as a community that the criminal system will treat all citizens equally and fairly as it searches for truth. Each of these relationships depend on trust.
Each is central to the public board of inquiry into how Australian Federal Police and the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions dealt with the investigation, prosecution and subsequent events around the rape allegation by Brittany Higgins against Bruce Lehrmann.
After the first full week of hearings led by inquiry chairman Walter Sofronoff KC, with Erin Longbottom KC as counsel assisting, we, as a community, have reasons to be concerned about some serious trust deficits.
Before looking at those, it must be said that given the forensic testing by Longbottom, even an angel would say at some point that in hindsight I should have handled one part of an investigation, or that part of a trial, or that part of the ensuing media storm around a national scandal, a little differently.
The ACT Director of Public Prosecutions has been grilled over his suggestion that a political conspiracy was… behind a push to derail the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins. Shane Drumgold has backflipped on his earlier evidence that there may have been a political More
We are not talking about those very human, and minor, misjudgments.
It also should be said that by Thursday afternoon, at least one very serious trust issue was put to bed at the Sofronoff inquiry. It concerned claims by ACT DPP Shane Drumgold that there was political interference in the police investigation of the rape claim.
Few things destroy our trust in justice faster than being led to believe that senior ministers were interfering with the administration of justice. On Thursday, that fear was extinguished fully when Drumgold admitted he no longer believed it.
This early win for trust underlines the importance of the work being done Sofronoff, Longbottom and the team of lawyers at the board of inquiry.
Frankly, the DPP’s claim was absurd. Sensible people would understand that he was dancing at shadows. There was no evidence to support his allegation. But, still, claims of this potential gravity must not be permitted to fester at any level in the community.
That still leaves a host of other profound trust concerns arising from this saga that must be exposed and mended to prevent distrust undermining the administration of justice. The work being done by the Sofronoff inquiry will extend far beyond the ACT and the Higgins case. It will remind us that similar issues that may arise in less high-profile cases need to be exposed, too, for the sake of our trust in justice.
Trust between the DPP and the AFP: Drumgold has accused police of applying the wrong test to charge defendants. He has pointed to particular meetings and accused some of the most senior officers of pressuring him and, in his view, of undermining the prosecution of a rape trial. Statements tendered to the inquiry record Drumgold as describing police as “boofheads”. He accused them, in front of the jury, of having a low skill set.
In his statement, Drumgold said he had grave concerns very early about police misconduct. He said he didn’t normally keep file notes of AFP briefings – which will strike many lawyers as odd, especially in a high-profile rape charge – but in this case he started a “continuous file note” to record those concerns.
When Longbottom presented Drumgold with a copy of his continuous file note on Wednesday, she asked him why he didn’t record his concerns arising from the particular meetings in the file note. Drumgold said his file note was not like Hansard.
True, but one would reasonably expect that a note created to record concerns about police pressure and the like during this investigation would reflect those concerns.
Sofronoff may choose to comment on who was to blame for the breakdown in trust. What matters more is whether these senior AFP officers and Drumgold can work together effectively in the future.
How many other trials, not as high-profile as the Higgins one, may have been similarly affected by a breakdown in trust? This needs to be resolved pronto for people to have faith in the proper investigation and proper prosecution of criminal matters in the ACT.
Trust between a prosecutor and defence: During the inquiry this week, Drumgold admitted he made numerous errors when he fought to keep material from the defence. For example, he said legal privilege attached to a document that formed part of the Moller Report, where police first raised several concerns about the strength of the Higgins case. At the inquiry, he admitted he had not read that document.
He admitted also that his assumption about privilege about other documents was, in hindsight, erroneous. The effect of these errors by Drumgold was to keep information from the defence lawyers that might have led them on trails of inquiry in formulating their defence. In this saga, trust between the defence team and the DPP was hanging by a thread, if it existed at all. Yet, it is critical to a fair trial, and the proper administration of justice, that defence lawyers can trust a prosecutor to disclose to them material that should be disclosed to the defence.
Trust between a judge and barristers: It is essential to our court system and court process that a judge can trust what a barrister says to them in court. That principle carries a steroid-like force when the barrister is the DPP, holding all the power and weight of the state in his hands.
This week the DPP admitted to misleading the court when he told Chief Justice Lucy McCallum that a proofing note the judge relied on to castigate journalist Lisa Wilkinson was contemporaneous and that it was created by his junior solicitor. That part of the proofing note was created at the DPP’s explicit direction to a junior lawyer, in his office, after Wilkinson’s controversial Logies speech.
The DPP also conceded that his direction to that same young lawyer, who was barely six months into his legal career, to swear an affidavit about the source of information concerning legal professional privilege might have misled McCallum when the DPP opposed the defence team’s demand for disclosure of the Moller Report. Both occasions were inadvertent, he said.
Still, these matters raised concern over serious legal issues about trust and competence. One is entitled to ask what the Chief Justice will think next time the DPP appears in her courtroom and makes claims to her. Can she trust the DPP to conduct himself properly, in accordance with his duties as a prosecutor and as a barrister? These duties are owed to the court for good reason. A lack of trust between a judge and a barrister, just as between a defence lawyer and a prosecutor, is diabolical to the proper operation of the court system, and therefore the administration of justice.
Our trust in the criminal justice system: Let’s return now to the community’s trust in a criminal justice system, our trust that the administration of justice is committed to a fair trial and the search for truth. What emerged from the DPP’s evidence this week was a recurring theme that he sought to protect the complainant from harm while apparently unconcerned about the risk to the defendant. Let’s take two examples from this week.
Drumgold said he didn’t want the Moller Report in the hands of the defence because he thought it would be “crushing” to Higgins.
Let’s put all the inflamed passions of this saga to one side and think dispassionately about that state of mind by a prosecutor.
What if material gathered by police points to lies by a rape complainant? Disclosing that to the defence may well be crushing to the complainant. But that is not reason enough to keep material from the defence. Another example. On Wednesday, Longbottom asked Drumgold about his December press statement where he lauded Higgins’ bravery and dignity after announcing he would not retry Lehrmann.
Longbottom: “Did you turn your mind to the impact that statement might have on Mr Lehrmann, who was entitled to the presumption of innocence?”
Drumgold: “Possibly not as much as I should have.”
After Longbottom’s questions led Drumgold to admit that he was unfair to Lehrmann in that public outburst, the DPP doubled down on Thursday by claiming, without a scintilla of evidence, there were 11 jurors who planned to convict Lehrmann. One rogue juror, who caused the mistrial, was the holdout, he claimed.
Is the DPP trying to publicly convict Lehrmann on a hunch, 11-1, using the publicity of this inquiry? Has he learnt nothing?
This raises a final point, one that we rarely discuss. We often talk about needing more victim-centric systems to deal with sexual assault complaints. It is true that we should be concerned to ensure that the system encourages women to come forward with allegations of rape, and that prosecutions result, and guilty verdicts follow where, after a fair trial, a jury has found a defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Reforming the legal system, indeed every workplace and other places too, to facilitate that is important.
The challenge is that until an allegation has been proven in court, there is, in fact, no victim. There is a complainant who, of course, should be dealt with respectfully, compassionately and fairly. But by constantly using victim-centric language, we risk undermining the constant commitment we need to those principles that deliver a fair trial. Routinely, in workplaces and at universities, gender equity and diversity consultants are brought in to overhaul their culture. These consultants use a tool kit predicated on a victim-centred approach.
The risk is that, increasingly, it means forget everything you ever learned about due process, the presumption of innocence or even basic fairness.
It would make more sense that we stop using the term “victim-centric” when dealing with any kind of incomplete legal process. By definition, this term is not objective. It means that a workplace or a university is approaching a matter with a solicitude for, or predisposition in favour of, a complainant, which leads to a loss of objectivity and unfair treatment of the accused. It is only when a fair, open and proper process has been completed and findings of fact or guilt have been made that there is a victim. Only then we can speak about victim-centric approaches.
I raise this issue after listening to days of evidence from the DPP. His concern for victims is laudable and genuine. But after this week, one may wonder whether Drumgold had strayed, even with the best of intentions, and even inadvertently, from acting as an objective minister of justice to acting as Higgins’s lawyer. That is untenable.
Our trust in the criminal justice system depends on a DPP, by his conduct, his decisions and his statements, never veering from that of minister of justice.
Drumgold’s position is now completely untenable.
Too autistic to speak? You must be trans!
Artificial meat could make 25 times more CO2 than real beef
By Jo Nova
It turns out that replicating a cow in a laboratory is not as simple as expected.
A new study points at some very major and potentially very hard to solve problems with laboratory meat.
We can scale up vats of bacteria in factories easily, but animal cells are very different. Muscle cells not only need a sterile complicated broth but they are basically a sitting-duck feast for any bacteria.
Quote of the day:
“USD 2 billion has already been invested in this technology, but we don’t really know if it will be better for the environment,” Risner said.
Think of a cow as being an entire industrial production campus for meat
— to deal with chemical toxins it comes with a customized chemical factory (a liver) and two industrial filter systems (kidneys), and a full immune defense force on a 24 hour watch to deal with the constant flood of microbial contaminants.
Cows also have nutrient intake systems to break down grass into separate chemical components which are stored, transported and chemically tweaked to suit.
All departments are self repairing, and are equipped with their own laboratory testing, messaging and alert service.
The sterile growth conditions of muscle are maintained most of the time in close proximity to dirt and poo.
The biological machinery has been road-tested and refined for a half a billion years. Yet somehow we thought we could replicate all that and do it more efficiently in a couple of decades.
Instead of thirty factories, 200 labs, 2000 trucks and sterilized vats of heated pharmaceutical grade goo, we could just use a cow.
In 2013, the first cultured burger patty cost €250,000.
It’s not enough to kill bacteria in the growth broth, we have to remove the dead body parts of the bacteria too. The outside shell of many bacteria breaks up into is what we call an endotoxin. You may not know it but these are just bad, bad, bad — they are lipopolysaccarides that sometimes leak from our intestinal walls and trigger fever, nausea, inflammation, shivering and shock. So the dead parts of bacteria have to be cleaned out of the broth — which means chromatography, or ultrafiltration, or ion exchanges, and fine membranes. All of which uses lots of energy.
Factory made meat practically eats fossil fuels:
The three red bars on the right are different scenarios for creating growth mediums. The PF stands for Purification Factor (meaning highly purified).
Most men do not enjoy golf with their wife. In fact, actively seek to avoid it.
Biden’s latest climate action threatens US power grid, experts say
The Weekend Australian has previously published that book group threesome story. Of a piece with the dross they put in the glossy from Nikki Gemmel, famous for extramarital bonk autobiography.
Don’t mistake that these people have not left the high and righteous path though-
Druckerman is married to author Simon Kuper, 53, with whom she shares three children.
I won’t tap the sign, but a definite nod in its direction.
Thanks for that Zipster, I enjoyed watching Cruz destroy that lefty bitch with quiet measured comments about the lefts blindness to there own racism.
Wally Dalí says:
May 13, 2023 at 8:32 am
New Twitter She-E-O has also expanded the character limit to 1 000 000, because, sometimes, you’ve just gotta get something like really big off your chest, you know?
… love the Bee. Distressed at the amount of junk ads it carries though- I suppose short-form comedy is hard to attract the paying subscribers the way that longer podcasts can.
Wallim
just use Ad Block Plus on Firefox or Chrome – No Ads on
Biden Says $10 Million Payment From Romania To His Cat Is Totally Legitimate
Also works on Daily Mail on both Chrome & Firefox – declutters – although occasionally Daily Mail object but usually revert when clicks obviously go down
Who is Linda Yaccarino? The World Economic Forum-Aligned Exec Elon Musk Hired as Twitter CEO.
Dan Bongino
@dbongino
There is no border. Biden destroyed it. Along with the value of our money, the banks, the FBI, the DOJ, the energy sector, public safety, national security, and more to come. Biden is a political nuclear weapon.
Don’t count on it. He has the support of the party machine.
A “reform” slated to be pushed through in August will see sitting MP’s having to justify their pre-selection to a party committee. The purges will then begin.
By listening to the parliamentary faction that supports Matthew Guy — the recycled former leader who disastrously lost that last state election — Pesutto has actually a) alienated the female vote by opposing the women’s rights Moira Deeming was standing up for at the rally invaded by the Grampians Nazis; b) told all women interested in politics that the SFLs have no room for them.
Like all the lefties now laughing about what a pushover he is, Pesutto thinks wannabe SFL voters are too stupid to work out what he thinks of them.
Pesutto will be either be gone before the next state election or will lead the SFLs to an even bigger loss than the Guy debacle. There’s a reason we label them the Stupid Frigging Liberals.
“The Logies thing was quite funny but may well be true.”
Hmm, not sure about that, I think you’re being too kind. I believe deliberate malice was involved, or at best a casual indifference. Drumgold had done similar early in 2022 when the little Tasmanian maggot and Da Knickerless appeared before the National Press Club and gave a speech where Da Knickerless described herself as a “victim” of sexual assault….DESPITE Drumgold being asked by Lehmann’s lawyer to stop Higgins from appearing. Drumgold was dismissive of the lawyer’s concerns. I’m sorry, but I think Drumgold was intimately caught up in the very contrived and orchestrated political miasma that this sorry saga is and has been from day one.
this caught my eye. We are given the impression that these people are all poor Mexican or Venezuelan refugees, bu in reality, the Southern border is American’s open gateway to the world.
Pesutto, Photios, Textor – the pock marked wall awaits.
Their excessive hubris is a positive. A pool of disenfranchised and outraged party base is prime territory for a well organised and energetic new party with a passionately democratic ideology.
Meme
Losers of the week:
John Pesutto
DPP Drumgold
CNN
Somebody called Harry
Trump’s CNN Townhall has caused multiple head explosions in the left and even on air apologies by hosts. Trump at his best.
I think Victoria is now a one party state. The Liberal Opposition is just there for show, and a show it provides, it’s a rabble. No wonder Teflon Dan has a constant smirk on his face.
As I wrote last night on the old thread, I had a look at the Liberal Party of Australia’s “beliefs” last night. I presume that those beliefs also apply to the Victorian Liberals. On the federal Liberal website, they preface the beliefs with the words “we believe”. The Victorian Liberals website should preface the beliefs with “we don’t believe”……because that’s the truth, they don’t believe in free speech or freedom of assocation.
If I were a betting man my money would be on a bigger loss, assuming Dan isn’t in gaol by then, that is.
Further to the purges mentioned above, Pesutto wants the power to pick “diverse” candidates who have high community profiles. Membership of the Liberal Party is merely a formality that will be squared away by the central committee before the local branch – if it still exists – is told who they’ll be getting.
The actual line of questioning was around the Gold Logie. Mrs Pirate Pete was up for a Silver Logie, which is also gold. Stone the flaming crows as Alf would say. It is also possible Drumgold was just wishing the ground would open up and swallow him by this stage.
And regarding the Chief Justice of the ACT?
The only thing the new model Liberal believes in is that he’s entitled to the perks of office.
Mum of 15-year-old boy caught stealing cars says she can’t do anything about her bad son’s behaviour because he keeps getting let out of juvie
. Boy, 15, allegedly tried to steal family’s Audi
. The same boy has allegedly stolen two cars before
A Toowoomba family woke up as two teenage boys rummaged through their home trying to steal the keys for their Audi, at about 6am on Thursday.
One of the teens managed to flee the scene, but his mate wasn’t so lucky and was captured by the homeowners and held inside the home until the police arrived.
‘The perpetrator told us that they were wanting to steal the Audi,’ the homeowner said.
‘It is out of control, and more people are going to get hurt if they’re left, allowed on the streets’.
His mother, whose identity can not be revealed, told the media she is ‘sorry’ for the victims because she can’t do anything about her son’s crimes.
‘He keeps going to jail, and the people there keep putting him out,’ she said.
Police charged the teenager with one count of entering a dwelling with intent.
He is expected to appear at Toowoomba Children’s Court.
That same teenager was allegedly in a stolen vehicle that crashed through a BP service station near Toowoomba over the weekend.
Last year he was involved in another incident in another alleged stolen car. A 13- year-old was his accomplice who died in that crash.
It comes after two people were charged after an angry mob of nearly 100 people formed at the footsteps of alleged criminals in Rockhampton on Sunday.
My guess is that if any destruction takes place it will be in about 15 years time when she reviews the footage. University students have pretty strong defences against anything that violates dogma.
Spiraling in San Francisco’s Doom Loop What it’s like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed.
Memorial of Our Lady of Fatima – 13th May, 2023
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
This site is very generous today! Every time I give an uptick the post gets 3, makes me feel more powerful.
Do you mean representations made to the Chief Justice as presiding judge? Any adverse findings there would be fatal.
Cat Ladies – Has Helen Mirren’s Face had an Overhaul? – Look at Pic 1 of 91
Knuckle Dragger, I assume you’re flying down to Tennant Creek today for the races.
It’s an amazing fact of Australian history that every second remote town (in a country the size of Europe) not only has a racecourse built 100-150 years ago, but a race meeting at least once a year.
Ever wish you could watch TV on your partner’s BUM? Bizarre ‘streaming undies’ transform your bottom into a green screen
. The ‘Streaming Undies’ turn the wearer’s bum into a screen for films and TV
. Users just need to direct their phone camera at the green screen-coloured fabric
. The designers created them to encourage screen addicts to have more sex
(Don’t get the 3rd one above)
Where’s the father?
(Don’t get the 3rd one above)
From the Comments
– At last! A use for my wife in bed!
– There is no end to the screaming idiocy of the human race!
– Well it would certainly be wide screen!
– Finally! I have been waiting for this forever.
Yeeha!
I sent off an email to the national office of the SFL explaining why I will never ever vote for them again. The executive is responsible for the state of the SFL not the polititians as they are the ones that get selected in spite of cognitive acuity. Probably the reason for selection. Years ago I rang them when Tony Abbott was dumped. Not that I thought Abbott did a good job, he didn’t. I told Zed Siselja that although I thought he did a reasonable job I could not in good conscience vote for a spineless party. Last time I told him I would vote against the party preferencing him last. If the party wants to go green I may as well vote for them. This was not how I actually voted, I wanted him to know how much I loathe the SFL. Not that I would vote for the Liars, the local member is doing more grass roots work than most. As I am now stuck in Canberra I will no longer vote especially as I don’t know where my vote is going before I vote. The preferential system has to go.
Thanks for that Arthurian video, Dot. I’ve just watched it. Won’t say any more on the Cat about all of this till I complete some more writing. For anyone interested I’d recommend the video. It provides quite a good quick account of the complex development of the whole Arthurian corpus and its antecedents, summarising many well known books, documents and theories. It is ideal for those with a casual interest who are seeking a proper overview.
But it stops short in its retrospect at the ninth century Historia Brittonum and doesn’t tackle Gildas at all, which relates to the immediate post-Roman period. That in my view is the main shortcoming with the video, because I believe it is in Gildas’ long sermon in classical Latin that the the real clues about the origins of a major religious conflict surrounding the All Father reside. The stems from my analysis of the name of Arthur as a contracted form of the Old Norse Alfthur (All Father). The misinterpretations about a ‘Saxon invasion’ that Bede and later writers put upon Gildas’ important tract, a misreading which I am textually tracing in detail, allowed the gathering of various elements of basically northern British mythologies into the HB’s creation of what historian Nicholas Higham calls a ‘Welsh Joshua’ to counteract the poor press that Bede had given the Welsh. In my re-analysis of it, the work of Gildas concerns genuine history, but not at all in the way that even now some reputable historians have been led to accept.
No races at TFC* for me today Tom – although I have been part of that particular event’s glorious majesty in previous years.
Small town racing, as is the case with most small town sport, has a beauty all its own.
*As it’s known to the locals. Short for Tennant F-cking Creek.
On the way up to the Burdekin, my nephew arranged for us to pay homage to King Coal with a tour of Hay Point coal terminal, arranged through a mate.
What an extraordinary, enormous facility. The queue of waiting bulkers extends out of sight due to Puzzleduks refusal to allow an expansion of the facility.
The Greens are brainless but more particularly ignorant. They rail against something about which they understand nothing.
I noticed this morning that Trade Minister Don Farrell is claiming “a breakthrough” in seeking to lift Chinese sanctions on some of our commodities. But when you look further, all they have agreed upon is more “talks”. The Chinese appear (to me) to be hanging him out to dry.
But maybe it is just more of the media’s failure to understand anything that is going on. They also fall so easily into government sanctioned “doublespeak”.
Moira Deeming’s campaign Against Trannies is comparable to the Newman Government’s VLAD Laws.
Basically, it’s an attack on everyone, in Brisbane the Cops were pulling people up for wearing leather jackets.
You can imagine what would happen if nutcases like Moira Deeming ever got into Power.
The cops would be turning up at girls sports to check if any of them was packing a dick.
Lezzo madness on stilts.
He’s a mind reader. And I’m very suspicious about that “rogue juror” and those papers given the scrutiny applied to jurors and their belongings.
On Mirren, it’s probably evidence of past “overhauls”. They always catch up, particularly around the eyes and cheekbones. The harsh up-do was a big mistake, something softer would have hidden the pulling tweaks. She had an amazing run though.
Ranga. Accurate commentary. Thank you.
It is a terrible thought that, except for QLD, the SFL are now more dangerous than the Greens.
And QLD is catching up fast.
Had one boat arrival here suggest the $50k USD cash he arrived with could go missing if he could too. Like it wasn’t that big a sum for him.
Funny, most of them were military aged males with the latest gadgets and fashionable clothes.
Wonder if that’s changed much?
The deflating credit bubble could hurt more than just the banks
Low rates have created distortions across the financial world — life insurance companies are now facing issues
Another week, another wave of worry about American regional banks. Thankfully, the level of panic has dropped somewhat since the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation appears to be backstopping the system — by precedent, if not by law.
But the problem now is one of attrition: weakling banks are losing deposits, watching funding costs rise while their loans to commercial real estate and risky companies turn sour.
That means more consolidation looms. And while that is welcome in the longer term (since it is crazy that America has 4,000 plus banks), this could create bumps in the short run.
However, as investors — and American politicians — uneasily watch those banks, there is another sector that also deserves our attention: life insurance.
In recent months, insurance has largely stayed out of the headlines. No wonder: these companies tend to be boring because they are supposed to hold long-term assets and liabilities. Logic suggests that they should win in a world of rising interest rates because they have large portfolios of long-term bonds that they do not usually need to mark to market, meaning they can reap income gains from rising rates without posting losses.
However, their balance sheets are becoming a little less predictable right now. And while this is no reason for investors to panic, it highlights a bigger problem: a decade of extremely low rates has created distortions across the financial world and it could take a long time for these to unwind. That attrition problem goes far beyond the banks.
The issue at stake is captured in some charts buried in the Federal Reserve’s recently released financial stability report. These show that insurance groups held about $2.25tn of assets deemed to be risky and/or illiquid, including commercial real estate or corporate loans, at the end of 2021 (apparently the latest available data).
In gross terms, that is almost double the level they held in 2008, and represents about a third of their assets.
This level of exposure is not unprecedented. Although the proportion of risky assets rose in recent years as life insurance companies frantically hunted for yields in what was then a low-rate world, it was at similar levels just before the 2008 financial crisis.
But what is notable is that there has also been a rising reliance on what the Fed notes as “non-traditional liabilities — including funding-agreement-backed securities, Federal Home Loan Bank advances, and cash received through repos and securities lending transactions”. And those deals often “offer some investors the opportunity to withdraw funds on short notice.”
It is unclear how big this mismatch is, since there are large data gaps — as the IMF noted in its own recent report. For example, “exposures to illiquid private credit exposures such as collateralised loan obligations can disguise the embedded leverage in these structured products”.
In plain English, this means insurance companies could be far more sensitive to credit losses than thought.
But the key point, the Fed notes, is that “over the past decade, the liquidity of life insurers’ assets steadily declined, and the liquidity of their liabilities slowly increased”. This could potentially make it more difficult for life insurers to meet any sudden rise in claims — or indeed withdrawals.
Maybe this does not matter. Insurance contracts are, after all, far stickier than bank deposits. And when the sector last suffered a shock, during the panic at the onset of Covid in 2020, it avoided a crunch by successfully (and quietly) orchestrating “a whopping $63.5bn” increase in cash, as separate Fed research shows.
Fed analysts admit it is unclear exactly how this cash surge occurred, since “statutory filings are silent” about the details. But income from derivatives deals played a role, while the main source appears to have been loans from the Federal Home Loan Bank system.
That is interesting, since it underscores another crucial issue that is often overlooked: it is the mighty, quasi-state entity that is the FHLB which is propping up many parts of US finance today rather than the regional banks. Or to cite the Fed again: “Life insurers are growing more dependent on FHLB funding.” So much for American free-market capitalism.
Such reliance also raises questions about the future, particularly if funding sources do flee, or risky and illiquid assets become impaired, or both. The latter seems highly likely, given that higher rates are already hurting commercial real estate and risky corporate loans.
Three Sydney mothers interviewed about the government’s approval of a new coking coal mine in QLD all feared that it was the death knell of the environment.
“Won’t someone think of the children?” they pleaded.
How do they imagine the steel for those Chinese made windmills they no doubt approve of is made?
It turns out that replicating a cow in a laboratory is not as simple as expected.
A new study points at some very major and potentially very hard to solve problems with laboratory meat.
Hah! I’d like to see them try to replicate a gigantic Angus cross bullock we have, called (euphemistically) “Mary”.
Standing 2m high, with massive hindquarters, our builder asked cheekily , “When are we going to eat Mary?” Fat chance.
Parramatta Girls Home – I remember being threatened with it too! Closed in the 70’s. One of my best friends at Youth Fellowship lived at Pallister at Greenwich. She had been removed from her “family”, not because of her own doing but because she was in “moral danger”.
Poor girl, she only disclosed what that meant many years later.
The E-scooter rider got done for 74 kmph, reported on the news.
Why…it’s almost as if the central bankers haven’t a clue.
Oldozzie, Helen Mirren’s visage has definitely had some uplifting done.
She has previously denied this, but I think she is now at the stage of it being undoubted. She’s turned rake thin, and this always means a facelift unless you want to show facial drag to match the body’s slackening drag. Never get very thin when old is my prescription.
Possibly her surgical work is only in recent years as she looked of fairly normal of visage in The Queen under the added wrinkles for the part, with no more there than some minor cosmetic injectables and careful care as well as normal bodyweight likely keeping her appearance off screen basically youthful at that time.
Agreed. It is inconceivable that a file or collection of papers could arrive unannounced in a jury room. Seemingly swept under the carpet in the grand scheme of things.
Drumgold’s position is now completely untenable.
100 percent true, Cassie.
However, I am starting to think that Drumgold is being set up as the fall-guy in this. I know the enquiry has got a fair way to run, however if Drumgold is hung for this (metaphorically), there are plenty of players deserving his fate.
Will Lucy McCallum endure this questioning? What about Heidi Yates, Wilkinson and her book dealing hubby? Maybe they are nervously watching proceedings or maybe they think Drumgold is the one who will wear most of the opprobrium.
Roger says:
May 13, 2023 at 9:37 am
Ignorance is bliss.
Problem is, the interviewer should not be ignorant.
Apparently it is extremely difficult to translate into Spanish the phrase ‘There is faeces in my bed’.
Por favor.
Lizzie:
My second sister was threatened with the Parramatta Girls Home for being an ‘uncontrollable child’.
She’s a redhead – what did they expect?
?
Tucker Carlson’s TV-to-Twitter move could actually pay off
Here’s the math.
Okay. We still don’t know why Tucker Carlson is out at Fox* but we know where he’s going. He’s setting up shop at Twitter, cheered on by Elon Musk.
Next question: Can he make money there?
To be clear, money isn’t the only reason Carlson wants to be on Twitter. And if he was most interested in money, he probably wouldn’t go anywhere at all in the near future since doing so looks likely to kick off a legal fight with Fox about the remainder of his very lucrative contract. Carlson wants to be on Twitter because he wants attention — both in general and in the runup to the 2024 elections.
But Carlson also likes money, and Fox reportedly paid him $20 million a year. Can he make anything like that on Twitter? I think he can.
My gut says that Musk has already promised Carlson that he’ll pay him as much or more than his Fox paycheck to come to Twitter. After all, if you’ve already incinerated tens of billions of dollars to buy Twitter, why not shovel a few million more onto the fire? Bringing the most popular and powerful host on cable TV news to his platform guarantees we’ll continue to pay attention to Musk. And to Musk, attention is priceless.
Musk, for what it’s worth, says “we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever” with Carlson, and if Musk were a normal person, I’d encourage you to parse that statement for potential loopholes — maybe there’s a verbal deal but not a signed one? But since it’s Musk, who just makes things up, I wouldn’t bother spending energy on that. Maybe he’s telling the truth, maybe he’s not.
So let’s speculate about what Carlson could actually do on Twitter if he wanted to try replicating his Fox show on the site.
Some starting assumptions: Since Carlson wants both money and the spotlight, he’ll want a hybrid approach. Which means Carlson superfans can pay up to watch everything he does, via a subscription offering, and Carlson will also promote free ad-supported clips on the site.
In that case, here’s some very back-of-the-envelope math, made with input from people who used to work at Twitter.
Carlson’s “I’m back” video, which he published Tuesday, has racked up more than 22 million views, but that’s because he’s a news story. Once the novelty wears off, if he could get 3 million views on each of his free videos** and put out four clips a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year backed by ads bought at a rate of $4 for every 1,000 views — you could imagine an ad business that generates some $12.5 million a year.
And if Twitter took the standard 20 percent ad commission it used for its “Amplify” video program, Carlson would net about $10 million a year, before production costs. (If you don’t like those numbers, feel free to swap in your own. If Carlson could average 6 million views, for instance, that gross number would double to $25 million. Also bear in mind that some Twitter ad units are skippable after a few seconds, and those tend to have a 50 percent skip rate, which would dramatically decrease his take.)
What about subscriptions? Here we have to get even more speculative. If Fox could get more than a million $6-a-month subscribers for a Fox + Tucker streaming service, how many could Carlson get on his own? Let’s say it’s 250,000. That pencils out to $18 million a year, minus the 15 percent to 30 percent that Apple and Google charge for in-app purchases made on their mobile operating systems. So, $12.6 million to $15.3 million, before production costs.
Would Twitter take a cut of that? Who knows? Musk has previously tweeted that creators on his platform would keep all of their revenue for the first year they sold subscriptions and that Twitter would take a 10 percent cut after that. Twitter’s subscription FAQ, meanwhile, offers a completely different set of numbers and terms, and Twitter’s fine print currently says that the terms are totally up to Twitter and could change whenever.
callisays:
May 13, 2023 at 9:34 am
DPP doubled down on Thursday by claiming, without a scintilla of evidence, there were 11 jurors who planned to convict Lehrmann. One rogue juror, who caused the mistrial, was the holdout, he claimed.
This is the same claim that Grandpa Ed Simpson makes.
What I can’t work out is how he finds the time to post here when he is still giving evidence to the Sofronoff Inquiry.
You can imagine how two young girls living alone in a rented garage in 1957 and having obvious boyfriends would have been received if the word had got around to ‘the welfare’. Fortunately we put on a good show of being two years older than we were, well-dressed ‘nice’ girls with ‘good jobs’ in the clerical field. Not tearaways from around the milk bars but at Church Fellowship every Tuesday night (where we met those same boyfriends, lol). We didn’t advertise our home circumstances and no-one bothered to enquire. Perhaps too the owner of the garage, a strict Seventh Day Adventist and his family who had themselves lived in the garage and who now occupied the adjacent house, was seen as somehow as in loco parentis for us in the neighbourhood. He ended up being outraged by my behaviour, threatening to evict us, so I had to tell the boyfriend to park his car in another street for our goodnight snogging and cut it back to essentials in my timing so I got in before ten pm. Smoothed it over ok.
Journalistic impartiality…what a quaint concept.
They’re all activists now.
Comrade!
Bons:
That’s fine, Bons, but most want the border to be along the Tropic of Capricorn. That leaves Barcaldine about 70 km south of the border.
Thank you Lizzie… I certainly can.
However, I am a gentleman and will not.
‘Migrant village’ for conservative Americans to be built in Russia – lawyer
Thousands of Westerners want to flee “radical liberal values,” a Russian immigration attorney has claimed
Construction of an “American village” for 200 families of conservative immigrants will start in Moscow Region in 2024, immigration attorney Timur Beslangurov has revealed.
Beslangurov, a partner in the Vista law firm, brought up the new settlement at a session of the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum on Thursday.
“Basically, they are Orthodox Christians, Americans and Canadians who, for ideological reasons, want to move to Russia,” he said.
The regional government approved the construction, but the prospective immigrants are funding the settlement themselves, according to Beslangurov. It will be built in the Serpukhov district, due south of the Russian capital.
Tens of thousands of Westerners would like to move to Russia, the attorney claimed, including people with no Russian roots.
“The reasons are known, it’s the imposition of radical left-liberal values in the West, which basically have no limits. Today they have 70 genders, tomorrow who knows what,”
Beslangurov told the conference. “Many normal people do not understand this, and they want to emigrate. Many choose Russia, but face a huge number of bureaucratic problems related to the imperfection of Russian immigration laws.”
One potential group of immigrants are traditionalist Catholics who are “white Americans with many children,” said Beslangurov, adding that the US government considers them “domestic terrorists.”
A FBI memo made public in February referred to “radical-traditionalist Catholic” believers as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” After 19 Republican state attorneys-general demanded of the federal government to stop its “anti-Catholic bigotry,” the FBI disavowed the document.
That would explain the Peshawari jacarandas.
I wonder if CNN is aware they’re being sacrificed to get the Biden Crime Family off the front page?
Will they accept their fate or lash out in retaliation?
He’s a mind reader.
There’ll be a protocol when the Jury Foreman announces theyt can’t reach a unanimous verdict.
If the score is 6/6, then it’s pointless sending them back to sort it out.
Judge sent them back twice, so, yeah, there was just one holdout.
And I’m very suspicious about that “rogue juror” and those papers given the scrutiny applied to jurors and their belongings.
For sure, there should be an investigation there, have any large sums found their way into his bank account?
Re the liquidity problem in US Life Insurance companies:
I recall Ed Dowd pointing out some time ago that the spike in early age deaths after the introduction of the mRNA vaccines had been significantly felt by life insurance companies.
(“Cause Unknown”: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 (Children’s Health Defense)
by Ed Dowd (Author), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. )
This was one of the earliest markers for a problem with the vaccines.
Vicki: Quite correct.
After his ‘surprise’ tour of the Forbidden City, Farrell is gorging on his own bathwater.
All Farrell has returned with is a loose commitment from Chinese junior minister Wang Wentao to “step up dialogue” and possibly visit Farrell in Australia.
Farrell, himself a low-level creature of no status to the Chinese, won’t be the lucky recipient of the CCP’s terms and conditions for trade normalisation. If that comes – and if it does, it will come at a terrible cost – it will be delivered directly to Abronese by someone above Wang and below Xi.
ps, that man too, one of the legion in the area who had built their own home while living in the quickly constructed fibro garage, believed that we were two years older than we actually were. Big Sis, an extraordinary young woman herself only just sixteen, was most persuasive about that, and about making me learn to type to keep me out of factory or shop work, the only alternatives. I owe her big time for that. Luckily our high school, attended intermittently, was in Penrith nearly ten miles away, and few who knew us from there, where we both attained the Intermediate Certificate, lived locally. We worried that some who knew our age from our school years could ‘split’ on us out of malice for what was obviously our peculiar family origins. It helped that with a late July birthday I was the youngest in my class; my classmates could be up to two years older anyway.
Defence lawyers should start instructing their clients to accuse every relevant person of assaulting them (police, prosecutor, complainant, journalists) at some point before or after they’re arrested.
Given there’s no need for evidence, consistent stories or even plausibility dragging the system down just might make some normies wake up to the seriousness of the situation vis-a-vis prosecuting he said she said cases.
You know you’re no longer in a small town when the wallopers get called out
for a stolen horse being ridden through the Jockey Club bar on race day.
Hairy recorded from Foxtel the whole of the CNN hour with Trump, we watched it that night.
Trump is Churchillian in his own sense of his rightness and value. The whole thing was a hoot to watch, leftie heads exploding in the partly-rigged audience, but some very respectful questioning was made, and respectfully answered by The Donald for the questions asked allow a litany of his accomplishments to be made, the prelude to how he would return to these if elected. There was also a strong level of roaring support from the entertained crowd. When Trump is in a room or on a stage he absolutely dominates. That wittering woman interviewing him ended up fighting him with her carefully learned ‘objections’ and ‘legal’ points, which he waved away, not falling for the trap of responding to most of them, just knocking out the most egregious ones with some one-line king hits. History rarely throws up such individuals, and we should treasure him. I have concerns he won’t win again, but maybe I can live with those.
Zelensky doesn’t look real flash – on something?
From the Comments
– He is a frequent user of cocaine. In this video he is sweaty and is clearly sleep deprived. The American bombing of the Kremlin, probably means the Russians now see him as fair game for an assassination.
– Well, with the $400 million he’s skimmed off the US’ “donations”, he’s probably bought the finest Columbian nose candy available.
– There are a significant number of Russian supporters on this site sadly.
– Being able to see both sides as who and what they are does not mean a person “supports” either side.
For the record, I trust Zelenskey and his US and EU backers less than I would the Russians. That still doesn’t amount to “support”.
Protest today at 12.00 Parliament steps, Melbourne.
Nayzees vse the Rest.
Please consider young Simon when posting today.
He will have a lot to do when he gets back to the office.
Working through posts about birds etc. is wasting taxpayers’ money.
Keep it to a minimum. Thanks in advance from HR.
That’s nothing. In WA parents threatened you with New Norcia, a remote Benedictine monastery where you were more likely to be put into moral danger by the local monks. Scorching heat, flies, sodomy and the lash, at least in the navy they offer you some rum.
The Staggering Flaws of the Biden Family
We start with a provocative partisan title. We may lose some readers here who can’t or won’t evaluate issues that don’t align with their beliefs. There is a lot of smoke, plenty of facts, and a staggering unwillingness by authorities to connect the dots and resolve the issues at bar. The number one impediment to opening eyes is the fear that the Trump monster lurks in the shadows awaiting an imminent return.
Good government should be non-partisan, competent, and trustworthy. (It hasn’t been for a long time.)
Democrat partisans overwhelmingly populate the vast majority of government departments, and no Republican administration has been able to put a dent in that political slant. Constant leaks have become the story instead of relaying the accomplishments of Republican presidents. Democrats don’t have to use overt bias to enforce a progressive liberal bureaucracy to do their bidding; instead, they step aside and watch a parade of bias and salacious leaks flow endlessly to a media too willing to use unnamed sources. President Trump faced an average of two leaks a day in his first 100 days, and to this day, virtually no one was punished in any government agency, including agency heads, for any leaks to reporters.
Joe Biden is not the captain of our Ship of State; a shadow government pulls his strings.
I cannot view Biden in the context of his record and statements and see him as an able leader.
Many hear the rhetoric saying he is “The Healer in Chief” despite the fact that he is likely the most divisive president in history. In his stump speeches, Biden endlessly denigrates “MAGA extremists” who cast over 74 million votes against him.
His echo chamber seems to believe he can demonize and ignore those voters because they are evil and irrelevant to him; it is this constant theme that exposes his administration as entirely partisan.
“Finishing the Job” is his new campaign cry for a second term, but one has to wonder what “finishing the job” actually means.
Conservatives like myself hardly recognize our country today. Four more Biden years make me feel my next stop might be Dachau. Hyperbolic? I am so vehemently opposed to so much of the Biden agenda and its effect on myself and the people I love, that my only option is to fight back. Should I be considered a danger to Biden’s agenda? Does an FBI entrapment await me as it has others? “Home of the Free, Land of the Brave” raises their hackles.
Five concerns expose the truth of Biden’s corruption:
1. Biden’s mental acuity should be a central issue.
2. The truth of unaccompanied minors (UACs) being brought across our border.Read more:
3. Where there’s smoke, look for fire.
4. Misinformation is being used to achieve political ends.
5. Dereliction of his own flesh and blood.
lol, Chris. We grew up as normal young women of our day. Maybe a little ‘forward’. 🙂
Parramatta Girls Home. Virtual imprisonment with constant sexual abuse, harsh physical work in laundries, allowed beatings, sadistic punishments, and almost no medical treatment. No further education. Basic food and clothing. No freedoms, no loving care. Some girls died, unmourned.
I think we chose the best alternative.
Labor-led Voice committee endorses the government’s proposed referendum wording
So, a committee of seven Labor, one Green, one Teal, and four Coalition – what an amazing outcome.
The other anmazing outcome is that the Coalition is getting set to place a two-bob-each-way bet and support the referendum legislation.
So storm clouds on the horizon, but:
Becoming increasingly likely that Australia will be adorned with the Voice and everything that flows from it.
Let the experiential learning begin.
There was discussion at the time when the Prosecution called Sam Maiden and Lisa Wilkinson as witnesses.
Along the lines of what could their evidence consist of?
Is it possible that they were called to prevent the Defence from calling them?
Robert Sewellsays:
May 13, 2023 at 10:02 am
I wonder if CNN is aware they’re being sacrificed to get the Biden Crime Family off the front page?
Will they accept their fate or lash out in retaliation?
Great minds Winston, I was thinking more that they had been given the nod from the Lizard People to broadcast a bit of Trump magic and take the eyeballs away from the dissolution of the US southern border.
Accidentally, on purpose. Champagne comedy from the God Emperor btw. Poor sacrificial thirtysomething femme in innocent white will have to jump sideways to the lifestyle and homewares division, pronto.
Old Ozzzie:
The failure of the US to physically confront the Democrats over the stolen election, despite the 2nd amendment being put in place for precisely this purpose, has now shown its darker side. Not only has the Left realised the Conservatives won’t fight for their freedoms, it has emboldened them to press even harder in their goal of destroying the United States.
Even if the Right retreats to a divided US, it won’t stop the Left from walking straight after them and doing the same thing all over again.
The problem is that the Conservatives have no will to fight any more. Like all Conservatives worldwide, they are politically and morally, cowards.
There. I’ve said it. Have at me.
Hopefully I’m mistaken, however I’ve a feeling Christwhatafool leans more to the Prostitutto stripe of politics than to the Trump school.
D.C. Democrats Have Gone Full ‘Weekend At Bernie’s’
Democrats have got Feinstein, Fetterman, and Biden all propped up ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’-style — because with a body and an ‘aye,’ the party can go on.
Dianne Feinstein is back at her Senate perch and “ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work.” At least that’s what her colleague Chuck Schumer says. “[I]t’s clear she’s back where she wants to be and ready to deliver.”
Feinstein doesn’t appear to have gotten that memo. After her months-long absence from Congress with shingles, she’s back… ish. “I’m still experiencing some side effects,” Feinstein said in a statement accompanying her return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, adding that she’ll have “to work a lighter schedule.”
That seems like an understatement. Photos of the senator, who will be 90 years old next month, are quite grotesque, as if Getty Images asked AI to generate “a photo of Sen. Dianne Feinstein starring in ‘The Toxic Avenger.’”
But just like “Weekend at Bernie’s,” the real story about Feinstein or Fetterman or Biden isn’t about the corpse so much as about the dudes propping it up; in the Washington version, none of the people orchestrating the ruse are accountable to voters.
Like the administrative state, where Congress delegates its rule-making to ideologically motivated career bureaucrats with nothing to lose, similar power-wielding by staffers and spouses is a disaster.
Who’s really in charge? You never can tell.
While establishment Republicans consistently screw over their own party’s voters with petty attacks of “candidate quality” and hubris, Democrats know the best allies are any in power.
Even if they’re horrible or incoherent or almost dead, they’ll do just fine for holding majorities, passing legislation, installing judges, and keeping the left’s agenda du jour alive.
lol. Hairy was checking up online David Sterling, the Englishman who initiated and led the wild men who later became the SAS as seen in Rogue Heroes. He was sent down from Cambridge in his first year, he declares with some satisfaction at the excellent nature of the man.
One of Hairy’s good friends was similarly a wild man, sent down in his first year from Cambridge too, for riding his motorcycle into Kings Hall and doing wheelies there. It was not appreciated by the Fellows, but applauded by the freshmen who were awed at his display of insouciance in the face of incipient ruin. This friend ended up going troppo in FNQ, visiting us occasionally throughout the 90’s, acting during a period of relative sanity as a Major Domo for us with all four kids at home, occupying a downstairs flat in our large house at that time.
Bons at 7:30am
Couldnt agree more. I lived in Nth Qld for several years. The culture and industry is so far removed from SEQ it may as well be another country. Deserves its own state. Plus another another 5-6 Senators to the Federal Government would be v interesting. Would be a great offset to the nutters coming out of Tassie.
‘Cheating in Broad Daylight’: Aaron Rodgers, David Bakhtiari Blast Dianne Feinstein over Stock Trades
Will most likely involve Australia purchasing another cubic kilometre of solar panels.
Homeless vets are being booted from NY hotels to make room for migrants: advocates
The Death of Women and the Death of Men
I had a few spare minutes today and had time to meet my wife for lunch. I overheard a nearby diner ask his friend “Would you like to split a ribeye?” What man splits a ribeye?
If you are going to do that, just order off the children’s menu, get a soft drink with a lid on top, and grab some crayons so you can draw pictures on the placement.
His friend declined since he was ordering the fish and chips and a glass of Cabernet.
Okay, let’s be clear. I love wine. I took a class just to become a fancy, self-styled wine expert.
But a Cab with fish and chips?
No. Forget the whole red/white problem. If you’re getting fish and chips, you order a tall, frosty beer. Especially at a place that brews its own and makes one helluva IPA. It’s in the Man Bylaws, for cryin’ out loud. Don’t make me call the Rules Committee.
Good Lord, men, what are we doing with ourselves?
All kidding aside, on a darker note, I was at a meeting yesterday. As part of one of my other jobs, I had to go to the main office for the weekly meeting.
A buddy suggested we get lunch, and I needed to make a pit stop before we left. As I exited the men’s room, the door directly across from me, the one to the women’s room, opened. And out walked a guy. And by guy, I mean a guy. He was dressed almost identically to me, minus the blazer. And for that matter, he needed a shave. He smirked and walked back to another office in the building.
At first, I thought to myself, “Dude, at least try. Put on a skirt or something. If nothing else, shave.”
After he was gone it occurred to me: This guy, who was clearly a man, was using the women’s room because he could. And his smirk was a dare to me to say something about it.
Something that would have been an embarrassing moment just a few short years ago was a point of pride for him. Normally, I am not at a loss for some sort of acerbic remark, but this time I was admittedly caught off-guard.
I related the story to my wife over lunch today. She looked downcast. She commented to me: “After all this time, we’ve actually regressed. Women are losing their rights to men.” She continued, “If you ran into a woman in the men’s room, you might be surprised, but you wouldn’t feel threatened. If I came out of a stall in a women’s room and saw that man, I’d be scared.”
She continued: “There are no places left that are strictly for us to have our privacy. No public restrooms, locker rooms, or fitting rooms are ours anymore.”
Scientists discover secret ‘symmetries’ that protect Earth from the chaos of space
Azamat Alin, 41, said he had spent at least $10,000 on the long journey that had taken him from Kazakhstan to Brazil, and then through Central America to Mexico.
The “vietcong” next door to me, boat-folk, moved in around 1983 .. 1st thing they did, and we’re talking “houso” estate here, is pay for building modifications to suit themselves .. never worked, never learnt English and never gone without the latest model cars or household ‘toys” and trips OS, lotz of ’em over the years .. rumour has it they own 2 businesses in Cabramatta .. a car yard & a motor repair shop …..
Not all “boat folk” were poor except when dealing with to CentreLink .. also had a Lebanese family for several years sitting out the Civil War before returning .. turns out they were multi millionaires in Lebanon waiting out the War courtesy of CentreLink & NSW Housing ……..
The only folk who have problems wiv gummint are “whitie” the rest just run rings around them ..!
The loss of a stable empire always begins like this. Self doubt and the creeping seeds of self-destruction.
We are just an outlier, with imported BLM, CRT, Net Zero, The Voice, Gender madness and other hubris.
And yes, we will learn via the same old drear way of poverty and ruin. It’s cyclical.
Worrying sign Australia’s housing crisis is about to deepen: from the Tele
While the nation hand-wrings over one of the worst housing shortages in history, buried in the appendix of Budget Paper 3 was the Federal Government’s official net overseas migration (NOM) forecast, which has been aggressively increased.
NOM is now expected to hit a record high of 400,000 in 2022-23 before falling to 315,000 in 2023-24. Then it will fall to 260,000, where it will stay over the forward estimates.
Thus, the latest budget has locked in a permanently higher NOM that is 25,000 higher than the 235,000 projection contained in the previous budget, the 2021 Intergenerational Report, and the 2023 Population Statement.
For all the claims made by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil that Labor is not delivering a ‘Big Australia’, the federal budget’s latest forecasts certainly say otherwise.
This ramp-up in immigration has been engineered by the Albanese Government via:
• extending the number of hours students can work and the length of their stay in Australia after graduation
• employing 500 people to clear the “one million” visa backlog as quickly as possible
• lifting the annual permanent non-humanitarian migrant intake to a record high of 195,000 (from 160,000)
• easing entry requirements for Indian students and workers
Five Canberra’s worth of population in five years
even more:
The Tele editorial:
Sydney does suffer occasional very serious water shortages. This is undeniable.
But it is also undeniable that Sydney’s shortages are typically ended by water surpluses. Our entire city, in fact, is a poem-like sequential combination of droughts and floods.
More often than not, Sydney has more than sufficient water. And, since the federal Whitlam years at least, Western Sydney has been impressively supplied with full sewage systems.
But, as we reported today, plans to build new housing developments on greenfield land in Sydney’s southwest are being threatened by proposed new water and sewage fees.
According to Sydney Water documents, charges worth up to $92,000 per house could be levied against developers.
Obviously, that sort of massive additional expense – beyond even the already inflated costs of building new Sydney houses – could end some development plans before they begin.
It would also cast Sydney, especially Western Sydney, back into a dire and distant time when its water and sewage availability were not up to proper city standards.
Just dwell on that for a moment. In 2023, new housing here is threatened by prohibitively expensive water infrastructure. It’s as though Sydney is a newly-founded civilisational outpost rather than one of the great world cities.
Moreover, it is as though we’re having a housing crisis just down the road from where one of the planet’s most advanced airports is currently under construction. Nothing about this makes any sense.
his situation also highlights what we might refer to as “pilot errors” in decades of housing planning. None of the difficulties faced in Western Sydney are due to geographical, economic or market factors.
Rather, they are all due to mistakes piled up upon mistakes, and vested interests endlessly seeking positive outcomes only for vested interests.
Tom Forrest, the chief executive of development industry body Urban Taskforce, explains clearly the primary concerns of developers seeking to ease Western Sydney’s ever-worsening housing shortage.
“The developer community has very real fears that additional levies of this size could kill off housing development in greenfield locations on the outskirts of Sydney,” Forrest said.
“We’d end up getting no additional water facilities, no additional housing supply, and an increased problem for the urban areas of Sydney,” he added, “which would be forced to accommodate the additional housing demand from population growth we know is coming.”
We certainly are. The Albanese Labor government plans to embark on a historically colossal immigration program that already appears under strain.
That strain would only worsen if development was priced out of Sydney’s outskirts. And, just as is almost always the case in Sydney, the loudest voices in support of measures that will impact on Western Sydney will come from the city and the eastern suburbs.
It is all well and good for wealthy Sydney to call for a big Australia underpinned by massive immigration.
Unlike Western Sydney, those big Australia advocates only experience the benefits – and none of the disadvantages.
Cycling Race Director Says Trans Athletes Could ‘Kill the Sport’
Michael Engleman, the director of the Tour of the Gila race, where a transgender athlete took home the women’s overall win, said this week that trans athletes could “kill the sport.”
Engleman spoke to The Telegraph where he pushed back on policies allowing male athletes who identify as women to compete in women’s sports. Austin Killips, a 27-year-old biological male, took home the overall win in the women’s category. Killips began racing, and transitioning to live as a woman, in 2019
“This could kill the sport,” Engleman said.
“I know how hard it is to get people to put money into a women’s team, at any level,” he added.
“And now they’re asking, ‘Is this something I can touch?’ What if an athlete says the wrong thing? This is harming the sport. It’s a reality that somebody has to speak about.”
What a bunch of robots!
Google shushes its AI chatbot’s voice bias (Paywallian)
Obviously Mr Pascoe’s next book will outline how the aboriginals developed the world’s first AI chatbot.
Agree.
I said the other day it was almost “too easy”.
Suddenly everyone is talking about Trump/CNN and nearly all the oxygen has been taken from Comers announcements and the border crisis.
Trump won’t care because everyone is talking about him.
I noted the virginal white dress too.
He did a good job but it was basically red meat for the base.
Imagine if someone had interviewed Churchill during the darkest days of 1940 by saying how about that time you stuffed up in Gallipoli, or your Boer war adventuring, and what about that woman you said was a prostitute only nominating her price, or that one who you said would still be ugly in the morning whereas you’d be sober by then? Churchill would have waved his cigar at her and called her nasty too.
And then he would have spoken directly to the people, in their own language, about their own concerns.
even more Tele:
CFMEU slams federal government’s Pacific worker visa scheme
Labor’s expansion of a Pacific worker visa scheme has been branded a “frighteningly dumb” idea by the CFMEU, made only in the name of diplomacy instead of worker safety.
Labor’s expansion of a Pacific worker visa scheme has been branded a “frighteningly dumb” idea by the CFMEU, made only in the name of diplomacy instead of worker safety.
The federal government has allocated $370.8 million over four years to grow the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) visa scheme, which the powerful construction union is concerned will include allowing workers into their industry who aren’t sufficiently qualified.
Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union (CFMEU) national secretary Zach Smith told News Corp workers would be injured or killed and it would put their workmates at risk.
“Only a bunch of diplomats who’ve never set foot on a construction site could dream up an idea this stupid,” he said.
“You can’t just fly in a bunch of unqualified people, train them for less than half a year, and then call them carpenters.”
Mr Smith said Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong should have told the “fools” at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to file the idea “in the shredder”.
“The fact that she apparently hasn’t is a massive concern,” he said.
“The PALM scheme has been a nightmare for thousands of Pacific Island fruit pickers who have been routinely abused, stolen from, and exploited on Australian farms.
“We don’t need that kind of rubbish in construction.”
Mr Smith said where there were “genuine skills shortages” the CFMEU supported migration as “part of the solution”.
“But workers coming from overseas must have all the same rights and protections as workers who were born here,” he said.
A spokeswoman for International Development and the Pacific Minister Pat Conroy said the government had “no plan” to allow “unqualified workers to work on construction sites”, including under the PALM scheme.
“All PALM scheme workers have the same workplace pay and conditions, and meet the same skills requirements, as Australian workers,” she said.
The spokeswoman said the a Detailed Industry Assessment (DIA) document prepared by DFAT in relation to the potential expansion of PALM to construction was from March 2022 under the Coalition government.
“These preliminary assessments were prepared to assess sectoral workforce needs in response to industry interest,” she said.
The expansion of the PALM visa includes funding to strengthen oversight and compliance to protect the migrant workers, while specific skill sectors the scheme could be applied to are yet to be determined.
The CFMEU accused DFAT official of using “flawed analysis” of the industry in its DIA document assessing the possibility of expanding the PALM visa into construction.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton tackles health, energy, migration and more in second budget reply speech
Nuclear power and more domestic gas are key to Australia’s energy future Peter Dutton has declared as he accused Labor of fuelling inflation and failing to tackle the nation’s housing crisis amid soaring migration.
The Opposition leader said the federal government’s budget had not done enough to reduce power prices, groceries and other household bills, warning prices would continue to rise as Labor’s climate change plan put the nation on the “wrong energy path”.
In his second budget in reply speech on Thursday night, Mr Dutton attacked Labor for refusing to consider onshore small and micro modular nuclear reactors as a part of Australia’s “energy mix”.
“We want to see emissions go down,” he said.
“Next generation, small modular nuclear technologies are safe, reliable, cost effective, can be plugged into existing grids where we have turned-off coal, and emit zero emissions.”
Mr Dutton also vowed to get more domestic gas supply into the energy system if elected in 2025.
“With the government against coal and nuclear, gas remains the only viable firming power,” he said
Mr Dutton said Labor’s ‘Big Australia’ migration approach would “make the cost of living crisis and inflation worse”.
“A Coalition government will sensibly manage migration in conjunction with proper infrastructure planning,” he said.
Mr Dutton said he supported the government’s Budget measures related to aged care, new medicines and the NDIS, but did not explicitly back Labor’s $40 fortnightly increase to Jobseeker.
Instead he announced a future Coalition government would increase the threshold for how much a person on Jobseeker could earn before their welfare payment was reduced.
The opposition will seek to woo female voters, middle Australia families and the “working poor” with a suite of measures in “forgotten” areas of health and guaranteeing stage three income tax cuts.
Health was a major focus of the speech, with Mr Dutton committing the Coalition to returning the number of Medicare-subsidised psychology sessions to 20 a year, after Labor slashed the annual amount to 10.
“I want an Australia where we support Australians who are unwell – not an Australia which leaves them behind,” Mr Dutton said.
Women’s health issues were specifically targeted with the recommitment of $4 million for Ovarian Cancer Australia, and a $5m investment to review female-specific health items on the Medicare Benefits Schedule to ensure women had affordable access to services and treatments.
Mr Dutton also revealed the Coalition would move to ban sports betting advertising both during, and an hour each side of, game broadcasts.
“The bombardment of betting ads takes the joy out of televised sports,” he said.
“Worse, they are changing the culture of our country in a bad way and normalising gambling at a young age.”
Mr Dutton renewed his calls for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities and reaffirmed the Coalition’s commitment to reinstating the cashless debit card “in communities who seek to have it”.
If elected the Coalition would also double the size of the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation.
surprise, surprise:
Questions over ‘black-cladding’ businesses winning millions in Indigenous contracts
It’s been revealed tens of millions of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded “Indigenous procurement” contracts have been won by companies not majority-owned and controlled by Aboriginal people.
Tens of millions of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded “Indigenous procurement” contracts have been won by companies not majority-owned and controlled by Aboriginal people.
A Daily Telegraph investigation of the rapidly expanding Indigenous procurement sector and “black cladding” reveals the NSW and federal governments have engaged scores of businesses that would be ineligible in the Northern Territory and don’t meet standards in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
Both the federal and NSW governments have strict policies that require at least three per cent of all public contracts to be awarded to Indigenous businesses, classified as a company 50 per cent owned by an Aboriginal Australian.
But the rules are stricter in the Northern Territory, where the minimum requirement is 51 per cent ownership and control. The tough stance in the Top End is to ensure an Indigenous person has control of the business, and isn’t a figurehead used to get lucrative government contracts. That process is labelled “black-cladding”, and is slammed as a practise used to take money away from legitimate Aboriginal businesses.
Last financial year alone, businesses defined as Aboriginal secured Commonwealth contracts worth $1.6 billion.
Nearly 12,000 federal tenders were awarded to Indigenous companies in 2021-22, compared to less than 2000 in 2015-16.
Meanwhile the NSW government awarded tenders valued at about $480m in 2021-22, five times the amount two years prior.
Much of this money has been paid to enterprises majority owned and controlled by Aboriginal people; but a significant slicehas been allotted to outfits that are not.
These firms have been known to out-bid majority-owned and controlled Aboriginal enterprises.
An analysis of the database of businesses eligible for tenders issued under both NSW and Commonwealth Indigenous procurement policies indicates about one in seven is not majority owned and controlled by Aboriginal people, totalling nearly 500 companies.
Indolent:
I cannot think of one development that this illegal O’Biden/Harris Regime has enacted that doesn’t damage the US in one way or another.
Dump Snowy 11 and use the funds to pump up water from the Shoalhaven, and while about it, start to utilise the water that flows endlessly in all of those great northern rivers of NSW. What a waste.
Solutions abound, it is only the will to introduce them that is the problem.
The white elephant of the desalination plant is a last gasp response, hopelessly expensive. We would be better served by more efficient water storage.
Ask the Israeli’s in as consultants. Or other who live productively in arid lands.
Not sure this is Elon’s brightest move.
Linda Yaccarino, the new CEO of Twitter; maybe she gives good head. A sexist would say. But all seriousness aside, she reminds me of that ratbag from Bud Beer who was so successful. White women are the biggest threat to the West.
There’s a certain repulsive softness about canbra pubic parasites-that never-had-to-work-hard look.
Spoiled it with this Nanny State rubbish, Dutton.
Baris’s recent episode demonstrates Trump firming as nominee and why.
Old Ozzie:
just use Ad Block Plus on Firefox or Chrome – No Ads on
IIRC, isn’t that one a pay/month scheme?
There’s one I may have mentioned previously – bought an endoscope type of camera a while back. But after you install it, it won’t run unless you use their proprietary software. And you have to supply your own CC details before it will run – after you’ve downloaded the software. So God only knows what sort of malware has been stored on your machine.
A sympathetic report on the ABC to discussions of ethics at a meeting of the Islamic Medical Association:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-13/islamic-medicine-end-of-life-organ-donation-sydney-conference/102338552
No problem with that. But can anyone imagine the ABC producing a similar report on a meeting of their Catholic counterparts? If course not: the politburo would flick the switch to ‘these CatholoNazi scum should not only be barred from practising medicine but should be subject to retrospective abortion or compulsory euthanasia.’
I related the story to my wife over lunch today. She looked downcast. She commented to me: “After all this time, we’ve actually regressed. Women are losing their rights to men.” She continued, “If you ran into a woman in the men’s room, you might be surprised, but you wouldn’t feel threatened. If I came out of a stall in a women’s room and saw that man, I’d be scared.”
She continued: “There are no places left that are strictly for us to have our privacy. No public restrooms, locker rooms, or fitting rooms are ours anymore.”
And as much or more than anything else women, especially feminists, are responsible for this bullshit.
Take that as read.
The price, however, will be based around China’s political ambitions to be the alternative global hegemon.
The Global Times explains the CCP’s position:
The Carrot:
The Stick:
For Team Abronese: the political algebra is: Carrot + Stick = Pineapple.
If there’s any political advantage, Australia will be invited to bend over.
As for black cladding if companies, see the report by a brave journo in the Fin Review a couple of weeks ago about taxpayer-funded training and work experience services for Aboriginals in Victoria being increasingly contracted to a company dominated by those well known First Australians John Setka and Mick Gatto.
I would say ?? (da):
Vladimir Putin tells WWII event West is waging a ‘real war’ on Russia
Setka and Gatto would have the contacts to get them into work, if that matters.
It’s unlikely Aboriginal Directors would have that ability.
Two of the latest polls show Trump with commanding lead over DeSantis even in Florida, +18 and +28.
that just means that denizens of the great State of North Australia could still see the great big ugly middle finger the ALP whacked into Barcaldine’s main street from the southern border.
Ed Casesays:
May 13, 2023 at 10:04 am
He’s a mind reader.
There’ll be a protocol when the Jury Foreman announces theyt can’t reach a unanimous verdict.
If the score is 6/6, then it’s pointless sending them back to sort it out.
Judge sent them back twice, so, yeah, there was just one holdout.
And I’m very suspicious about that “rogue juror” and those papers given the scrutiny applied to jurors and their belongings.
For sure, there should be an investigation there, have any large sums found their way into his bank account?
Grandpa Ed
We all know that you are either personally or ideologically (or both) committed to the sacred “cause” of Mizzz Knickerless, but dare to consider that you might be wrong. Consider that the jury might well have been split 11 to one, but the split favoured acquittal. Perhaps the AFP judged the evidence better than did Dumbgold, who shares your commitment?
In that case, there might indeed have been a mysterious deposit into Juror 12’s account, but not for the reason that you suggest.
The problem De Santis has is the entry of RFK jr.
Sure, De Santis can beat Joe, but Kennedy is a similar candidate to De Santis, with better name recognition.
Re the first link, Baris argues, and other pollsters confirm, that Trump is doing better now across a number of demographic segments than he did in 2016 and 2020.
I have two huge problems with these situations:
1. How do the police or DA/DPP ever get this far without checking or intentionally not revealing exculpatory evidence? It’s either wilful corruption or malfeasance, or they’re too stupid to hold their positions.
2. How come false accusers (proven in this case) keep on getting away with it? False accusers must be punished as though they committed the crime they have false accused others of doing. The justice offences provisions we have in NSW/Australia maybe are not strong enough.Falsely accusing someone of murder in a CP state in the US would justifiably be a CP offence itself.
Cough cough, Stirling, Scotsman.
I’d agree dover.
Never thought I’d see him having virtually the entire audience eating out of his hand saying vaGINA on stage during a “townhall” on CNN, literally carrying his twitter receipts around with him.
Robert Sewell says:
May 13, 2023 at 11:22 am
Old Ozzie:
just use Ad Block Plus on Firefox or Chrome – No Ads on
IIRC, isn’t that one a pay/month scheme?
No Free – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus-free-ad-bloc/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb?hl=en-GB
&
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
There’s one I may have mentioned previously – bought an endoscope type of camera a while back. But after you install it, it won’t run unless you use their proprietary software.
And you have to supply your own CC details before it will run – after you’ve downloaded the software. So God only knows what sort of malware has been stored on your machine.
Robert,
I have been using AVG since early 90s – originally on Windows now on iMac and across family MacBooks, IPADS etc and been very happy
I have noted them intercepting malware on realclearpolitcs site quite a few times recently
https://www.avg.com/en/signal/history-of-viruses
Culturally & demographically, the border would ideally run along the boundary of the postcodes defined as “Northern Australia” on the Dept of Home Affairs website.
Quilpie is in, Roma is out. The line starts at somewhere around Gladstone/Rockhampton & curves downward as it tracks to the west.
Lizzie
I think this is the most interesting idea (mine) from the study on the various Arthurs:
The upshot of all of this is that the “Celts” may have simply been the [properly] (proto) Celtic Irish (“Welsh”, “Scots” [think Dal Raita, per Artuir mac Aedan]) fighting against the Celtic Britons and Romanised Celtic Britons (Picts and “Saxons”), being the invaders of Briton!
Comment:
Rodrigo Borgia was actually Arthur!
She was the victim of being randy, inebriated and embarrassed.
Many have been there; few were paid a six figure reward by the Labor Party for it.
Then there was the Hayne case. Effectively, he was tried three times until a DPP got the result that he wanted.
South Africa Lashes Out At US ‘Megaphone Diplomacy, Bullying’ After Arms For Russia Allegations
The South African government has rejected US allegations that it approved of an arms sale to Russia, with President Cyril Ramaphosa having ordered an official inquiry. The presidency’s office said Friday there was “no evidence” currently of such an arms sale, also with the foreign ministry saying there was “no record of an approved arms sale by the state to Russia related to the period/incident in question.”
Further, one of Ramaphosa’s cabinet ministers, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, has blasted Washington’s “megaphone diplomacy” and vowed that South Africa will not be “bullied by the US”.
“It is the US which has sanctions against Russia… they must not drag us into their issues with Russia,”
Ntshavheni, told a public broadcaster. South Africa’s foreign ministry on Friday summoned the US Ambassador in order to lodge complaints and demand answers.
The Kremlin for its part confirmed Friday that President Vladmir Putin had spoken to his South African counterpart by phone.
The two pledged “mutually beneficial ties” after the massive Thursday allegation sent shockwaves across South Africa.
It was only on Thursday that the US ambassador to Pretoria accused South Africa of transferring arms to Russia in a covert naval operation, which further spotlighted President Ramaphosa and his country’s ties to the Kremlin and its position on the Ukraine war. Ambassador Reuben Brigety had told local media on Thursday the US believed that weapons and ammunition was loaded onto the Lady R, a sanctioned Russian vessel that docked in the Simon’s Town naval dockyard near Cape Town in December.
“Among the things we noted was the docking of the cargo ship… which we are confident uploaded weapons and ammunition onto that vessel in Simon’s Town as it made its way back to Russia,” he said, in comments reported by South Africa’s News24. “The arming of the Russians is extremely serious, and we do not consider this issue to be resolved,” he added.
Meanwhile, an unexpected foreign ministry statement was issued later in the day following the US ambassador being summoned. The claim is that the US has “apologized”:
South Africa’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, had “admitted that he crossed a line” and “apologized unreservedly” after he said a Russian ship had picked up weapons in South Africa last year, causing a diplomatic uproar.
But so far there’s been no official confirmation of this exchange from the US side.
Interestingly, the whole episode may in the end push South Africa further into the Kremlin’s corner, given rising public anger over what may be seen as Washington interference in South African affairs, and as part of attempts to humiliate the Ramaphosa government.
“He’s a mind reader. And I’m very suspicious about that “rogue juror” and those papers given the scrutiny applied to jurors and their belongings.”
Umm…yep, it’s curious and adds to the imbroglio. On Sky two nights ago, after Drumgold’s absurd revelation, an ACT criminal defence lawyer excoriated Drumgold’s mind reading revelation. I think Drumgold’s reputation is in tatters.
Keep in mind, Dot, those polls were before the town hall. I’m interested in seeing the bump following the town hall.
All very well and good.
Are they polling swing voters for who gets their vote?
“And as much or more than anything else women, especially feminists, are responsible for this bullshit.”
I don’t disagree.
Wealth doesn’t make you Superman or Captain America. They were likely wealthy because they were sensible, they at least respected their mortality and the gift & miracle of life.
Meanwhile – Egypt ignored US requests to block Russian flights – media
Washington has been trying to fence in Russian military planes, but Al Sisi’s government isn’t playing ball, the Wall Street Journal reported
Egypt has ignored US requests that it close its airspace to Russian military flights, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. This airspace is a vital corridor between Russia and its military bases in Syria.
Multiple American officials asked Cairo in February and March to declare its skies off limits to Russian military aircraft, the newspaper reported, citing US and Egyptian officials. Egypt has not responded to these requests, and flights between Syria and Russia have reportedly continued unimpeded.
Asked by the Wall Street Journal, a US State Department official declined to “comment on private diplomatic conversations.”
Situated on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, Khmeimim Air Base is one of Russia’s most important military facilities in Syria. With Iraq, Jordan, and Türkiye blocking most Russian military flights since last year at the US’ request, Russian aircraft must now fly south over Azerbaijan and Iran, west over Saudi Arabia, and finally back north over Egypt before landing at Khmeimim.
Without permission to fly over Egypt, Russia would be forced to seek a new and far longer route over Africa to reach its forces in Syria by air. Meanwhile, Türkiye’s closure of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to military vessels last year has complicated the movement of arms and equipment by sea.
American officials believe that Moscow is moving weapons from Syria to the battlefield in Ukraine, although this has not been confirmed or denied by the Russian side.
Discounting Ukraine, Egypt is the second-largest recipient of US military aid in the world, receiving about $1.3 billion a year from Washington. Despite only Israel receiving more direct military support from the US, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has not completely aligned his foreign policy with that of Washington.
Al Sisi has deployed troops in Libya and ordered airstrikes against the US-recognized Government of National Accord, all while funding the opposing Libyan National Army, which was aided on the battlefield by Russian military contractors.
The Egyptian president has a cordial relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the country has adopted a neutral stance on the conflict in Ukraine. According to recently leaked Pentagon documents, however, Al Sisi recently dropped a plan to supply arms to Russia and instead agreed to supply the US with artillery ammunition for Kiev’s forces. The decision was made following what the Washington Post termed “a diplomatic offensive from Washington.”
From the Comments
– Regarding that USA financial aid, all that is just mostly 15% off discount coupons to buy USA’s military products.
– Why would anyone abide by the US Whores requests – they think they are the worlds leaders – FAR From It. The BRICS are now leading the world with peace, fiscal responsibility and empathy for humanity. Fk the US
– Egypt has wisely chosen its side. It is not the lunatic stab you in the back demonically driven west. It is with the BRICS consortium!
– Terrorist State America once again telling another country “DO THIS OR ELSE!” so called ‘rules based order’, they made up 3yrs ago out of thin air, just like their funny money, out of thin air.
– The US like the proverbial drowning man clutches at every straw! Good for humanity to see you get drowned.
The thing that I find astounding about the current abomination that is the US government is how they try to bully the world while simultaneously wrecking their own economy and society.
“It’s either wilful corruption or malfeasance”
With both Pell and Lehmann it was the latter.
At some point, the saxon will learn to hate, and the man who wanted to be left alone will realise its time to turn and fight…. but there hasnt been enough ruin in this nation for that yet, nowhere near enough…
https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1657016772866998272
Ted Cruz blows up on reporter who tries blaming him, not Joe Biden, for the massive increase of illegal crossings at the southern border.
“Do you know anything? Do you know anything?… The talking point of the democrats is ‘gosh the problem can’t be fixed.’”
“There’s one little problem with that: It is an utter and complete lie. In 2020, the last year of the Trump presidency, we had the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.”
—————
Other tweets have said it’s hard not to like a based Ted, clashing with Trump hardened the iron.
They also need to poll dead people, voting machines and Chinese printing firms.
Bluey:
That’s the part that should be worrying our Masters, but it’s not.
Especially when you consider they can organise a family to come over when they get citizenship.
Don’t forget the majority verdict rules in virtually all trials and exclusions on what can be cross examined in similar cases, let alone the retrials consisting of a set of rotating accusations or indictments that seem to be playing musical chairs.
It is possible to be convicted by 9/36 people for very serious crimes and be handed a medieval sentence by a judge who likes puffing up their reputation, pursued by incompetent police and psychotic prosecutors.
Let’s not forget Dr Duk’s non-crime traffic offence that the ACT bench dismissed merely as “curious”!
Kaitlan Collins looks like a CCO. (Cohenite Cute Owl)
Respectfully, Duk, I’ve been hearing that for 20 years.
In the boiling frog scenario, the “point” is never reached.
Here’s what I think is happening: So-called ‘conservatives’ in the West (the polite word for rightists and traditionalists) now react to left-wing extremism by retreating into the familial, the private and the remnant-minded. They are no longer interested in the commons, the agora or even – increasingly – the hollowed-out, lawless ‘nation.’
Boambee John:
BJ, you must admit that what the Ed posts here will take very little cerebral activity. That stuff probably gets ghost written by a street vendors monkey.
Still waiting for the NACC’s investigation of Albanese’s payout to Higgins.
I’m sure it’ll make their motor run, their motor run, any day now.
lesbian… psychotic lesbian prosecutors
I’m a GP and I’m sorry – but I can’t afford to bulk-bill you
Sarah Lewis – General practitioner
On Monday, as usual, GPs will turn up to work, and look forward to seeing their patients.
They will check the baby’s ear, discuss a mother’s concerns about their child’s development, have a suicidal patient divulge their childhood abuse, give a cancer diagnosis, help a domestic violence victim, manage diabetes, help a woman plan for a pregnancy, remove a melanoma and discuss end-of-life care.
They will provide patients with a familiar face, a safe place to reveal concerns, and keep many out of hospital.
I qualified as a specialist general practitioner in 2010, and in 2013, I opened my own practice in inner Melbourne. In the same year, a budget-saving measure – the “Medicare Freeze” – was introduced. For five years, there was no increase in rebates.
When the freeze ended, the thaw was slow.
The average rebate rise over the past 10 years is 0.5 per cent, versus health inflation at an average of 5 per cent a year from 2010-2019.
This hit hard and undermined the financial model of owning and operating a viable clinic.
Estimates suggest there has been a 35-50 per cent reduction in real practice income over 10 years.
My clinic’s annual fixed costs are well over $1 million. I’d be insolvent if I bulk-billed.
Except for a few state-funded clinics, GP clinics are largely private businesses, and when you see a GP, the money you pay has to support the entire business– the fees paid help cover the rent, reception staff, nurses, electricity, phones, equipment and more.
The government currently covers $39.75 per 15-minute consultation for every patient. If you have a Health Care Card, a Pensioner Concession Card, or are under 16 years of age, and you are bulk-billed, your GP accepts that amount as payment, and receives an extra $6.60 if they are in the inner city. So the GP receives a total of $46.35 for that consultation.
In Tuesday’s budget, the government announced that from November, the $6.60 extra payment will be tripled to $20.65 for those inner-city bulk-billed patients, so the GP will receive a total of $60.40 for that consultation. It’s a help, and GPs are pleased to see the government starting to inject some urgently needed funds, but it means we are still going backwards.
To have a sustainable business, inner-city clinics need to generate enough revenue to cover their overheads, which vary greatly.
If the fee a GP requires to keep the lights on is around $95 for a standard 15-minute consultation, they will still be effectively losing $34.60 per standard appointment.
This means their private business is providing free healthcare at its own personal cost, and at the risk of the business going under.
This is why the GP bulk-billing rates have been plummeting over recent years – we have been left with two options: charge a fee to cover the difference, or close the doors for good. No business can sustain a persistent loss.
This cash injection is a great start, and will help so many vulnerable people. The bulk-billing incentive is higher in rural and regional areas, and the tripling of this will make a huge difference in the bush, where it is desperately needed.
But the closer you get to the CBD, the higher the rent and other costs. Even with this incentive rise, most inner-city GPs will still not be able to afford to bulk-bill because every such consultation will run at a loss. We want to help people. We care about our patients. We just can’t lose money doing it. The extra incentive payment helps, but when the base rebate is woefully inadequate, it still isn’t enough to bulk-bill the various concession-card holders across the board.
All the GPs I know like to spend time with their patients. I can’t recall the last time I finished a consult in under 20 minutes.
We want to understand each patient’s concerns and address them properly. I can’t do that in five minutes, and for me to bulk-bill, even with this incentive rise, I’d have to see almost five patients in the time I usually see three.
I can’t sacrifice the quality of my care in this way. I love my job and want to help my patients have the best outcomes possible.
Done properly, general practice makes the health system more efficient, reduces hospitalisations and improves health outcomes.
GP clinics are small businesses, and we want to help our patients, but altruism is not a sustainable business model.
Most conservatives will walk quietly into the gulag/oven/gas chamber without ever raising a hand to defend themselves.
All the while crying out “Won’t somebody (not me) do something??!”
Eventually, when the SS come for what guns still remain in Australia, each individual will have the choice as to which end of the gun they hand over…
I’m not, these people hate me, I’m not going to martyr myself to give them help they don’t want, they’d rather that I’d die.
And this is why healthcare is not a ‘right’
Healthcare is a service provided to us by others.
A person does not have the ‘right’ to demand the labour/services of another.
If they can, it means the service provider is a slave by definition.
If people cannot afford healthcare, that is unfortunate.
The solution however, is not slavery…
“Still waiting for the NACC’s investigation of Albanese’s payout to Higgins.”
Doesn’t it have to be referred to NACC? If so, why hasn’t Dutton and the Liberals done so? What are they waiting for? Surely, surely, why aren’t Senators Michaela Cash and Linda Reynolds, both of whom were willfully, casually and gleefully smeared, sullied and impugned by Drumgold and various Labor whores such as Wong and Gallagher, screaming for this payout to be referred to the NACC.
Somebody’s geography sucks. Egypt controls no airspace between Russia and Syria.
Which kind of puts the whole article into the doubtful file.
I’m a GP and I’m sorry – but I can’t afford to bulk-bill you
From the Comments
– Ban Medicare Bulk Bills.
People pay $5 for a coffee and $35 for a Hair Cut.
But want free Doctors…….
– I feel for you. We are happy (well kind of) to pay whatever for an electrician, plumber, architect, retailer, yet a complex healthcare business is held to ransom by government. I’m in a lucky position where I can afford to pay for a GP and I totally get you have business expenses too. Like all of us.
– So often all the ancillary costs of running a business of any kind are ignored. Rent (Including State Govt Land Tax – especially Victoria), rates, super, payroll. Then there is compliance with myriad government regulations, ongoing education and placating the interferers through insurance and box ticking. The same applies for housing.