Yes, thank you for confirming that in the UN scenario the ratio of global industrial production is 4:1 in China’s…
Open Thread – Weekend 19 Aug 2023
- Open Thread – Thurs 14 Nov 2024
- Open Thread – Remembrance Day 2024
- The Sweetest Victory
- Open Thread – Weekend 9 November 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 7 Nov 2024
Tough stickers.
Or as the Brits say: Slag tags.
Ben Garrison.
Gary Varvel.
lol, Sancho. I love that term ‘respectfully’. I’ve used it myself in my latest Quadrant article intro, where I want to calm (lol) the eventual furore I know will come from some whom I will proceed to lay into.
And I think you are wrong about my ability to contribute on matters locational. Firstly, being aware of historical spatial patterning and the reasons for it lead well into understanding why certain areas were chosen for immigrant settlement and still are. You gain an insight into who left when immigrants came, which immigrants came, and also, importantly, of who stayed put, all of this creating the ‘pepper pot’ effect in a population mosaic. History always matters. My professorial friend’s work on British immigration shows that. In 2002, when I lectured his honours class on my last sabbatical prior to retirement, I was able to make comparisons to certain Australian suburbs and processes (and I did research all of that then).
Thus, like anyone else interested in immigration, I’ve kept a look-in on the suburbs which were immigrant in my own immigrant youth and which have changed greatly since. And that means, for me, not just relying on newspaper reports but also checking the census, as well as actually visiting these places in recent times. I’ve blogged on Sinc’s Cat about some of these visits, including to make purchases in areas that are heavily Muslim now as well as returning at intervals to my own home territory in Mt Druitt and St. Marys and that whole outer western region.
As for meth-addled suburbs, Sancho I spent two days a week for the first two years after I retired as a trained counsellor on a government-funded telephone helpline for families affected by drugs. The calls were transferred to my home, each call was allotted an hour, which nearly all took, and no sooner had I put the phone down than it rang again with the next caller. The calls noted locations, and I got a pretty fair idea of where locationally the meth-addled and other drug-related miseries existed in large numbers across Australia, as well as how widespread they were too when talking to family members and in what suburbs. We had a call sheet to fill out after each call.
After two years I was burnt out and Hairy pressured me to give away this unpaid voluntary work. It was exhausting. I also have via relatives close and distant a personal familiarity with public housing areas in both Sydney and Newcastle. Not speaking from a lack of experience, Sancho, with societal breakdown. Nor without sympathy for those affected and those who struggle through to lead a decent life.
Mitchell should just go. His show is stale and predictable. And that’s being nice.
Jury’s out on Felgate. He’s good on racing but too much Mr Nice and Uncontroversial to host politics and social stuff. Tony Jones would be better.
I have to go to gym now, after last night’s drinking.
Don’t forget, sweat is your friend. And hydration. Sweat and drink.
Don’t annoy.
It’s what I do.
Oh, yes, he wants it discussed alright.
He wants people to be convinced by and agree with the content of fringe-loon.com he linked to.
But when the inevitable happens and someone starts poking holes in the link, he points to the “I wasn’t sure if it was true or not”.
Did you read the link?
Utter horseshit.
Excellent Substack on Ukraine – found through Indolent’s post from Asia Times on US Intelligence Says Ukraine’s Offensive a Failure
Weapons and Strategy
US Intelligence Says Ukraine’s Offensive a Failure
Report’s conclusion printed in Washington Post
Stephen Bryen
19 Aug 2023
Ukraine has no manpower to replace its strategic reserves. Most of the educated youth who might be drafted either bribed their way out of recruitment or left the country. Zelensky this week fired all the military recruiters in the country. He is trying to enlist the army to carry out recruitment drives in the country, using whatever means necessary. There is talk about grabbing those 40 years or older into the war machine, and many of the soldiers seen in the field appear already over-aged.
Even if Ukraine manages to scrape up men for the army, without training they are more a burden than anything else. Furthermore, scraping the bottom of the barrel brings in unreliable soldiers who may not want to fight. A critical problem for Ukrainian officers and NCOs who not only need to bring recruits up to speed, but also convince them to step into the “meat grinder” and risk their lives. Even now there are examples of units that refused to participate in engagements they regarded as suicidal.
The Russian strategy has been active defense in almost all sectors except one. The exception is in the Kharkiv oblast where the Russians are rapidly advancing and will soon attack the town of Kupyansk, a key railway hub Ukraine needs for running ammunition and supplies to its troops in the northeast. Most observers think Kupyansk will fall in the coming week or so.
Russia says it has not started its own offensive, but is preparing to do so. It has gathered around 100,000 troops in the northeast which could be deployed in a coming offensive. Convoys of equipment have also been seen and filmed, so the buildup process is underway. What is less clear is where Russia is going.
Representatives Andy Harris (R-MD) the co-chair of the Congressional (pro) Ukraine caucus, has reached the conclusion that the Ukraine war is not winnable. Like others, he is talking about the possibility of a stalemate, but it is unlikely Russia will stop until it brings the conflict to a conclusion.
Unlike Ukraine, Russia does not have a manpower shortage and its war industry is now working 24/7 (that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) and seems to producing the equipment needed for the war.
This is not the case at all in the US or Europe which has serious shortages of skilled workers and significant supply chain problems.
Key American defense companies such as Raytheon (RTX Corporation) admits it depends on critical supplies from China. It won’t be long before the Chinese shut that down.
Götterdämmerung in the East
The History of Battle: Maneuver, Part 17
BIG SERGE
17 AUG 2023
Adolf Hitler worked very hard to create the illusion that he had no personal life. It was his great conviction that a leader ought to be seen as having forgone private life to sacrifice everything for the people, and accordingly the details of his leisure, friendships, and intimacies were hidden from public view to create the illusion of a workaholic and ascetic Fuhrer.
Behind the scenes, however, Hitler was a full color and peculiar personality, with a circle of familiars (even if he was somewhat introverted and unwilling to confide fully in others), and a variety of personal idiosyncrasies.
He was extremely hygienic, greatly fond of pastries (he abstained from alcohol and instead indulged in ample quantities of eclairs and strudel), and he was tremendously engrossed by the music of Richard Wagner, in particular Wagner’s seminal work Der Ring des Nibelungen, or the ring cycle.
This is a monumentally long operatic-dramatic production, played over the course of four sequential nights, which depicts a stylized tale of Germanic mythology in which the high god Havi (Oden) and his mortal grandson Siegfried attempt to recover from hostile giants a magical ring with the power to rule the world.
For Hitler, Wagner’s work invoked thematic elements of German greatness and the power of will, and during the early years of his leadership he made a point to make Nazi party functionaries join him at the annual Wagner festival in Bayreuth.
Not all of them were opera fans, and much to Hitler’s chagrin a great many of them routinely fell asleep during the performances.
If they had stayed awake, they might have seen what was coming for them.
The fourth and final sequence of Wagner’s ring cycle is called the Götterdämmerung.
This is a German transliteration of the Ragnarök of Norse mythology, and it depicts the entire world being destroyed in fire and flood after a climactic war between the gods and their variegated cosmic enemies.
Hitler’s favorite opera, like his Germany, ends with a scene of apocalypse, and a Götterdämmerung is exactly what the Wehrmacht found in the east from 1944 onward.
By November 1943, after over 1500 days of war, total Wehrmacht permanent casualties (dead, disabled, or missing) amounted to roughly 3 million men. This makes for a loss rate of just under 2,000 men per day for over four years – a time period which includes the campaigns in Poland, France, the Balkans, North Africa, and the colossal eastern battles of Operation Barbarossa, Rzhev, Kharkov, Stalingrad, Kursk, and the Caucasus.
From November 1943 through the end of the war in May 1945 – a span of 527 days – Wehrmacht losses would be some 5 million men. Thus, over the final eighteen months of the war, German losses were an astonishing 9,400 per day, and although this closing phase made up only a quarter of the war in chronological terms, it accounted for nearly two-thirds of Germany’s total combat losses. And while the Wehrmacht was unequivocally being caved in all over Europe, it remained a colossal and tactically competent force capable of making its enemies pay dearly as it died. The Red Army would suffer 1.4 million killed and missing in 1944 (a year in which it won tremendous victories) and another 630,000 in just a few months of fighting in 1945.
Lol Lizzie. Most thorough overkill I have seen in a while.
I feel the response might have been equally ‘Don’t be a tw*t Sanch, we’ve been around the block and are speaking from knowledge’.
Sancho – As I recall it was Fox executives who were sprung donating to Manchin’s campaign, and that data was extracted by an investigative reporter who looked at publicly available FEC records. I’m not going to look the story up, it’s Sunday and I can’t be bothered.
It is common for employment contracts to restrict employees from bringing their company into disrepute. Whether or not that applies in Fox I don’t know, and I don’t know US law in such cases. I know I had contracts like that with the companies I worked for. Be that as it may it is still dumb for an executive to do stuff which causes material damage to his own company. Been a lot of that lately of course, Fox is not alone in that respect. They have a right to be stupid, yes, but if they had two braincells to rub together they would not be publicly donating to the party that their audience detests. Insulting your own audience is a great way to no longer have an audience.
Old Ozzie’s link to that gay Aboriginal ALPBC social media employee might be the best argument for ALPBC budget cuts you will see all day. And no trigger warning for Andwew Pwobyn, who clearly falls a couple of boxes short.
Were there any other Cats and Kittehs at CPAC?
I met one woman who looked at my name tag and knew me as a writer and commenter on Quadrant where she also comments. She comes onto Catallaxy occasionally but not on the Open Thread, where she said she’d feel intimidated. I encouraged her to try the OT as I also did to Cassie a few years ago now. That one worked!
On https://weapons.substack.com/ excellent recommendatiions on other sites to visit
RECOMMENDATIONS
VIEW ALL 16
Well I must away to that most glorious of sports. Lawn bowls. I say this because it is chess on a green.
Toodles, I shall report back.
Of course, it could just be the ALPBC redundancy policy, “Last on, white off” which applies to anyone with less than 30 years service with a penis.
The Catallaxy OT is not a safe space? Who knew?
An army marches on its stomach
Sustaining the future force in a contested fight
ANDREW GLENN
15 AUG 2023
The Napoleonic Wars saw a period of nearly 20 years of warfare across Europe.
By 1810, the French conquered or forced into alliances nearly all of Continental Europe excluding Portugal, the Balkans, Romania, and the Russian Empire.
To accomplish this, Napoleon assembled the Grande Armée, an unprecedented force of more than 600,000 total troops at its height.
Such a large force, of course, presented challenges in feeding, equipping, and supplying the units. So, Napoleon devised a system of units and logistics that would allow flexibility and speed—the Corps d’Armée.
Back to the Future
Prior to the Napoleonic Wars, armies had regiments as the largest subordinate organization. Cobbling together a force of regiments resulted in a massive, but ponderous force. These inflexible forces faced several the same challenges that face a brigade at a combat training center.
To address this inflexibility, Napoleon listened to Pierre-Joseph Bourcet’s advice in Principes de la guerre des montagnes, emphasizing the need for dispersion followed by rapid concentration of forces at the decisive point before the enemy could do the same.
…a general will do well to divide his army into a number of comparatively small bodies, …which …is indispensable and safe provided the general who adopts it makes such arrangements that he can reunite his forces the moment that becomes necessary.
lol, Chris. Point taken of course. However, the word ‘respectfully’ is a bit of a red flag to this little heifer.
And if I can swap metaphors, especially when she is on her debating high horse. 🙂
Precisely, that’s what I said and that is correct.
He’s voting record indicates he’s a standard Democrat that plays the part to their constituency, no need to read his mind. Same is true of Collins in Maine.
Because he’s polling is terrible, last I saw.
I never addressed what Fox executives did, I really couldn’t care less. They’re dead to me. Not sure who my ‘ballboy’ was last night.
Motherhood statements, like cliches, have the benefit of being true. It means that the interests of countries aren’t simply economic. It means if you are worried about a strategically key resource being denied to you because it is being sourced from a location that is being disputed by your strategic rival it makes sense finding alternatives even if costs rises, in order to free your hand in response, as well as avoiding potential difficulties if that source is immediately lost.
There was very likely more ‘relative peace’ in the 30 years before ’89 than following 30. Economic globalisation was unsustainable without a hegemon running the shop, and that was never going to last.
No, the claim was neocons are exaggerating US dependence on Taiwanese semiconductors in order to cultivate hatred of China and prepare their populations for war. The most sensible solution to this was to relocate this industry at home and/or in other locations that aren’t strategically disputed. That isn’t horsehit, that is plausible and reasonable.
Somewhat like croquet played in the UK with Hairy and his mates who were croquet champs at Cambridge. They played it like a tactical blood sport. No prisoners.
That is what I do. Do you want me to do that for Indolent?
Bowlos certainly fulfill a valuable social function, something not lost on people who enjoy well priced cold beverages. Interestingly, a couple round here have transformed into purely social clubs abandoning maintaining the greens altogether.
I’m not giving up meat or my annual European holiday.
Cassie is very verbal, and I am very verbal. Outliers of our type perhaps.
Women are verbal creatures by nature and inclination. Some more than others. 🙂
It would certainly be presumptuous. Just throwing it out there.
I didn’t say you couldn’t contribute.
I was trying to suggest that you make you contribution without prefacing it with the reference to a couple of units of whatever it was you studied back in the ’80’s.
It is playing the academic authority card over (ahem) “lived experience”.
Let the arguments stand or fall on their merit.
‘Do you know?’: Anthony Albanese grilled on the price of petrol
Anthony Albanese has conceded he does not know how much a household staple costs everyday Australians.
The Prime Minister was asked about basic costs in the wake of a major speech to the ALP National Conference, where he said the cost-of-living was the number one priority for his government.
“Can you tell me what the price of petrol is roughly at the moment?” Sky News host Andrew Clennell asked.
“Well, I don’t go and fill up my car. But it was around about $1.80 last time,” the Prime Minister responded.
Mr Albanese’s answer was reminiscent of his predecessor Scott Morrison, who was unable to say just how much essential groceries, such as bread or petrol, cost when asked at the National Press Club.
Former prime minister John Howard, who Mr Morrison considered a mentor, used to be asked the same question.
To avoid stumbles, Mr Howard would carry with him a piece of paper that outlined the running costs of bread, milk and other household staples.
The average weekly price for unleaded petrol tipped 196.5 cents a litre last week, according to data from the Australian Institute of Petroleum.
Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart recorded an average weekly price of more than $2 a litre, while Brisbane had the cheapest price of 188.2 cents a litre.
Well services are not required until our entry tomorrow, so come back home to Palacechook spruiking the ladies soccer side. Where an unveiling of some photo is of them after the shootout against Les Femmes Bleus. FMD and a handing of the keys to Brisvegas. Just a little over the top.
Very wise. I always have my man nearby so I can make inquiries.
The Chook and her government are at that stage where they appreciate the value of proximity to sporting success.
Robert Kennedy Jnr on Tucker Carlson on X: RFK Jr. explains Ukraine, bio-labs, and who killed his uncle
A long video interview –
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1691228480556429312
The Ring Cycle, excellent performances of the first two operas, especially Valkyrie, at the Bendigo Arts Centre a few months ago. Hitler’s obsession with mythic Germanic themes of power and fate should not detract from the grandeur of these themes, nor the stirring music expressing them. Sadly, of course, some find it unlistenable due to the Nazi interest in it. But these myths are ancient Indo-European stories that should stand apart from any modern usage of them. The music is fitted to the myths, and best seen in that light. It raises the always thorny issue of separating the artist from his/her product and vision.
The artist Caravaggio another case in point (as we’re all art fans here at New Cat).
I guess that, in a world where moral compasses are set by ‘what feels right’, this isn’t an altogether reprehensible position to take.
Like them, I’m anxious that a ‘positive change’ is made for indigenous folk suffering real disadvantage for historical reasons. I just don’t have any idea how to go about that in a way that matches contemporary human rights sensitivity with pre-contact cultural appropriateness with historical realpolitik.
To date, the Yes Case had relied on the bald assertion that the Voice will achieve great things in Closing the Gap.
Notably, this is without any clue being given as to how or what it would do differently to the previously failed attempts. The Calma-Langton report, for example, discusses the bureaucratic Voice processes in fine detail; but quickly brushes over, in fact deflects, the practical details of what is going to be done to quell the grog monsters and lift communities out of sub Third World horror.
Unfortunately, it looks like our genius leaders have led Australia up another dry gully on this one.
If No gets up, courtesy of Albanese humbuggery being sprung, the political response will be screams of racism and disinformation – and the caravan of complaint and disadvantage will bumble along energised.
If Yes gets up, courtesy of Albanese humbuggery not being sprung, the result will likely be ‘buyers remorse’ as the problems continue and the country settles down to the real games of wrestling blames, self-determination, and compensation without responsibility.
Either outcome is going to readjust some moral compasses – but not necessarily in a good way.
Very droll, O trouserless one, very droll.
It only takes a Grouchy and some vague orders to stuff this up.
Good.
It’s working.
That unarguable. What will improve with a No vote however is a focus inevitably being placed harder on auditing where all of the current money goes to and why disadvantage that would be solved by more funding for housing, hostels, schools etc. has not already been addressed.
CPAC put a great deal of emphasis (by acclamation) when auditing was mentioned, and Jacinta made it a key part of her introductory speech to the Conference.
A Kopechne family square off?
Back in the day, one could always watch Ernie Sigley and the lovely ladies of The Price is Right. Alas, this option is no longer available.
I think we may whistle in the wind though for Albo to come down heavily on auditing, even though he may be to some minor extent driven there by necessity. I think the Libs with Jacinta and Warren in the lead on matters indigenous would be very likely to send out search parties for the monies lost.
A reminder,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eARAR2Iv2Ww
It seems to be a thing of academia, to make an argument and also assert why it should be believed due to the qualifications of the writer. Sometimes relevant, sometimes not.
Larry Emdur? WTF?
Here’s a thought.
Maybe he could do it for himself.
Rhymes a bit with a certain war in South East Asia.
Nobody wants to be a rifleman in an infantry battalion,
but without them you can’t take and hold territory.
Hmmmm.
For some reason “KPMG” and “big fee$$” just popped into my head.
Albanese and Labor are preparing for the day after the Voice is defeated
If it wasn’t already clear, Labor’s 49th national conference made it plain: the ALP is now bracing for the Voice to parliament to be lost.
This is not a surprise: the downward trend in support for the Voice has been obvious for months and the most recent Resolve Political Monitor showed that, finally, both the prime minister’s personal standing and that of Labor are now affected.
Two things stood out at the conference: first, the willingness of delegates to privately canvass how Labor will handle the fallout of a loss, and second, Anthony Albanese’s shift in focus in his speeches.
Albanese’s opening conference speech on Thursday contained just two mentions of the proposed Voice but six mentions of the rising costs Australians face, as well as 14 references to affordable housing. And subtly, on Friday, the prime minister promised to “do my best to promote a Yes vote”.
On Saturday – during a set piece on the historic constitutional reform – Albanese rallied the party faithful to the cause. But he also pointedly noted the Voice was not a convenient reform to fight for, but one necessary to pursue as a matter of conviction and that “the idea of a Voice came from the grassroots, it will be decided at the grassroots”.
The subtle distancing of the PM from the proposal is clear.
And Alex Ellinghausen’s extraordinary photographs of Albanese on stage after his speech, alongside Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, are not subtle: the prime minister’s pain is plain.
As one delegate told this masthead: “We are preparing for it. We have to be ready for October 15.” October 15 is the day after the expected (but not yet announced) referendum date of October 14.
That same delegate argued the shift to cost-of-living issues – which is consistently the most pressing issue in polling – had been under way for weeks but was little noticed because in parliament, the Coalition always dragged debate back to the Voice.
It isn’t just a rhetorical pivot that is under way.
None of this is to suggest Albanese’s belief in establishing a Voice has diminished. But rather that after months of bad polls and a sputtering Yes campaign, Labor hardheads are adopting a “hope for the best but expect the worst” stance.
Next month, Albanese will be in Indonesia, the Philippines and then India from September 6 until September 10. The final day of that visit is the last day the prime minister can set the referendum date for October 14.
He won’t announce the date while in Jakarta, Manila or New Delhi, which means he is fast running out of days available on which to announce the poll if, as is widely expected, October 14 is the preferred referendum date.
In effect, the prime minister has two weeks left to decide on a date in October or to push the vote into November.
At this point, the only reason to delay until November is that Albanese and Labor still believe there is still a chance Yes can win, whereas those in the ALP who believe the vote is doomed will push hard to get it over and done with.
“What time is it, Eccles?”
As much as it is a hopeless cliche “gotcha” question it serves to remind us (if it actually needs doing) how much of the interaction that passes between politicians and j’ismists is just MAFS from Canberra.
Nonsense. Genuine academic authority is well-respected here on Catallaxy.
In some areas, I do have that. Not just ‘a couple of units’ in that field, Sancho. No need to diss me, nor my long CV, which also covers a few other fields in over nearly 30 years in academia. If you have no respect for people’s ‘authority’ on certain matters, then don’t listen to the chemists, engineers, medicos, mathematicians or lawyers here, for a start.
The stalker stalks me, ludicrously citing her own impressions of her uncles in Greenacre in her youth and denigrates me in highly personal and ridiculous terms. I defend my position regarding the nature of the immigrant experience and its spatial patterning with reference to census and other material, i.e. statistical demography and some of its precepts such as ‘pepper potting’ mosaics in contrast to overwhelming unicultural predominance, as well as from my own personal experiences.
I wouldn’t have to draw on this extensive background if my comment could have been accepted as a general observation about the lack of extensive ghettos in Australia as contrasted to elsewhere, which I made from experience. But it was NOT. Hence the rise to a more considered defense.
The stalker is a pathetic creature clamouring for attention and deeply missing upticks. Stalking seems to be her main achievement in life. 500 upticks to you now, stalker, if it makes your life any better.
If so it’s because logic has been tossed out the window or other po-mo power games are being played. The qualifications of an academic author are not entirely irrelevant to her research, but they do not establish the truth of her argument (epistemic justification).
zero value add imho, possibly even negative value as it just fills up the threads with stuff to ignore.
Australia “The Stupid” – From the Labor Conference in Brisbane – The platform now includes additional reassurances Australia will not possess or seek to acquire nuclear weapons or build a nuclear power plant.
SWEDEN GOES NUCLEAR
Sweden is making a major move into nuclear energy:
Uranium mining is set to return to mainland Europe as the region seeks alternatives to Russian nuclear fuel and Sweden pushes to treble its atomic energy capacity, the country’s climate minister has said.
Sweden has lots of uranium:
Romina Pourmokhtari, who last year became the youngest cabinet minister in Swedish history at the age of 26, said there was a parliamentary majority behind lifting Sweden’s ban on uranium extraction and opening up by far the largest deposits in the European Union.
As we have been saying for a long time, if you are serious about considering carbon dioxide a threat (I’m not), then the only alternative is nuclear energy:
Nearly 40 years after the completion of the country’s last new nuclear power plant, Pourmokhtari has announced plans to build at least ten large reactors to meet an anticipated surge in demand for zero-carbon power.
“The government is aiming at doubling electricity production in 20 years,” Pourmokhtari said. “For our clean power system to function, a large part of this has to be dispatchable [i.e., reliable] where nuclear power is the only non-fossil option. Nuclear power also has a reduced environmental footprint and requires limited resources in comparison with most energy sources.”
In recent years, Sweden has led the way on several issues. But why don’t environmentalists in the U.S. turn to nuclear power?
Because their real aim is not to reduce CO2 emissions, it is to funnel trillions of dollars away from industries that generally don’t support the Democratic Party, toward industries–wind, solar, and utilities that put profit above their ratepayers’ interests–that do support the Democratic Party.
Our mad drive toward “green” energy will impoverish the middle class, but that is OK, since the middle class doesn’t vote Democratic anyway. And people will die, but since when is that a concern?
Whether the American Left’s refusal to embrace nuclear energy is irrational depends on what you assume their objectives are.
Australia doesn’t have ghettos that are exclusively this or that ethnicity but where are they in Europe or the US, either?
,
Community Notes for the win.
We saw a lot of argument from authority during covid.
We also saw a lot of “experts” speaking with a claimed authority that was outside their field of research or the scope of their professional qualifications.
On 3AW.
Move Tom Elliott to mornings to do politics.
Give the rest of the day over to pets, reality TV and cleaning tips, funded by the Blind Factory, E&S and assorted retirement homes and headstone manufacturers. They are 93.1% there already.
Incidentally, this morning their #1 istandwithdan man, (Nick McCallum) has spent most of the morning on an AFL goal-scoring controversy from last night, leaving no time to cover the Comm Games $$$$$$.
Albo has a plan to spend $5 billion to build some.
He intends to make Australia a world ghetto powerhouse!
Build it and they will come!
Imagine a lowly j’ismist asking Hawkey, a man of the people, the cost of a loaf of bread? Whatever gloss attached to Albo the Houso is well and truly gone. Keep an eye on the numbers Luigi.
DIVERT THIS
Andrew McCarthy’s weekly NRO column elaborates on “The chicanery of the Hunter Biden plea deal.” I find that McCarthy’s columns provide analysis that is available nowhere else (and he is a natural teacher to boot). Unfortunately, however, NRO keeps his columns behind its paywall. It occurs to me that someone might want to contribute the funds necessary to liberate them. It would be a public service.
McCarthy’s column this week runs more than 3,000 words and is divided into five sections after an introductory warm-up. Each of the five sections has a separate heading:
. Weiss Has Been Disappearing the Biden Case for Five Years
. Hiding the Ball from the Court
. Obfuscating Hunter’s Immunity Bath
. There Is No Biden Corruption Investigation at the Biden Justice Department
. Probation Office Shoots Down Weiss’s Inexplicable Diversion of a Gun Felony
The section headings put me in mind of the sequence of section headings that translator Donald Frame supplied for Montaigne’s “Apology for Raymond Sebond” in his translation of The Complete Essays:
. Man’s Knowledge Cannot Make Him Happy
. Man’s Knowledge Cannot Make Him Good
. Man Has No Knowledge
I have wondered about the bilateral diversion agreement on the felony gun charge. If it takes two to tango on such a deal, they tangoed. What happened to it? McCarthy explains in the fifth section:
Hunter and his lawyers are trying to convince Judge Noreika that the diversion agreement and the broad immunity it promises are still valid and enforceable. In the end, he is going to lose, but not because Weiss has suddenly grown a backbone. Hunter will lose because, once again, the court rode to the rescue. It wasn’t the judge this time; it was the Delaware federal court’s chief probation officer, Margaret M. Bray.
While the judge need not sign off on a diversion agreement, the probation office must approve it if the agreement includes probationary conditions, as the one between Weiss and Hunter’s lawyers did. This is because the probation office is responsible for monitoring a defendant’s compliance with such conditions. Routinely, the probation office signs off on diversion agreements. Weiss and Hunter’s lawyers must have figured this one would be rubber-stamped as well. But Chief Probation Officer Bray declined.
How come? It is not a subject Weiss wants to dwell on, but we should. There is no explanation on the record. Yet, we know that Justice Department guidelines instruct that a defendant is ineligible for diversion if he is “accused of an offense involving brandishing or use of a firearm or other deadly weapon.” Hunter is known to have obtained a gun in October 2018 by lying on a required government form about his illegal-drug use. There is video from the laptop showing him brandishing a gun a few days later in a depraved and potentially dangerous scene with a prostitute. Not long after that, because of his carelessness, the gun he purchased after lying on the federal form was lost across the street from a school. (It was later recovered.)
As if that weren’t bad enough, I believe the probation office realized Hunter had to have been handling more than one gun on his autumn 2018 drug binge — and it’s not clear all guns have been accounted for. The gun he purchased after lying on the form is a revolver (described in the diversion agreement as a Colt Cobra 38-special revolver); but the gun in the video from a few days later is not a revolver (it appears to be a Glock). Note, moreover, that the diversion agreement called for Hunter to forfeit “all firearms . . . including but not limited to” the revolver. Implicitly, Weiss was acknowledging that there could be multiple guns at issue. Naturally, the Biden Justice Department doesn’t want to broadcast that fact: President Biden is as demagogic as Democrats get in demonizing law-abiding gun-owners and Second Amendment rights; his son’s felony possession of a single gun — that his Justice Department tried to give Hunter a pass on — is humiliating enough.
Judge Noreika exposed the shameful plea agreement, so now the misdemeanor charges have been dismissed. Chief Probation Officer Bray refused to be party to the appalling diversion agreement, so it too is sure to be scrapped. The commentariat is fantasizing that, with Attorney General Garland having now branded him a “special counsel,” David Weiss will turn alpha-prosecutor. I wouldn’t count on that. Weiss remains a top Biden Justice Department official, and he has methodically undermined the Biden case for years. It’s a better bet that he’s now huddling again with counsel for the president’s son, struggling to come up with more plea-bargain cosplay they can try to sell as real law enforcement.
McCarthy concludes: “Meanwhile, the statute-of-limitations clock keeps on ticking.”
Although Hunter Biden’s lawyers are peeling off from his case, he probably doesn’t need them so long as David Weiss helms the prosecution (as Variety might put it).
Chris
Aug 20, 2023 11:13 AM
To avoid stumbles, Mr Howard would carry with him a piece of paper that outlined the running costs of bread, milk and other household staples.
“What time is it, Eccles?”
And this is how Guv’ment works –
https://www.google.com/search?q=spike+milligan+what+time+is+it+eccles&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBAU906AU906&oq=what+time+is+it+eccles&aqs=chrome.3.0i355i512j46i512j0i512j0i22i30l4j0i15i22i30j0i390i650.13631j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e047fc99,vid:ctM_Rvgjfpo
Roger, I hope I made the case re the demographic locational mosaics involved in the urban/suburban immigrant situation in Australia which do differ to some overseas experiences, although I will readily admit that Muslim and Chinese settlement in recent years may solidify the urban ethnic locations more than in the past. Australia has different patterns overall. The settlement of some ethnic groups in country towns (Woolgoolga from long ago, for instance; they now run a big Curry Festival for tourists) is an unusual patterning studied in the 80’s by an anthropologist I once worked with, and unusual too is the welcome country towns now offer to settlers of very different ethnicity who are prepared to work in meat works and other rural industries.
I do not see the stalker venturing any serious argumentation, simply a stalking attempt to denigrate me. Nor Sancho, for that matter, however well-intentioned he may be. I am not seeking any epistemic justification, Roger, by saying I have a researched interest in urban and regional spatial patterning, only a justification of interest and some expertise. I’ve also worked as an adviser on educational films for The Australian Film Commission (as it was then) showing the differing life experiences of those living in different regions of Australia and made submission to the Law Reform Commission about the difficulties of drawing an impartial jury in certain regional areas, as well as writing a book on changing patterns of life, especially for aborigines, in a rural region of NSW under demographic pressures to kill off rural towns and consolidate services into regional cities.
One’s own lived experience alone doesn’t cut it even though I have plenty of variability in that too.
I really dislike it that attacks made by a stalker impel me to respond in defense of my intellect and expertise. I would much prefer any of that to be shown in other ways but I will not sit by and let a stalker make stupid attacks without saying how wrong she is.
These attacks take up too much of my time in response on this blog. I would be better off writing elsewhere if I am forced by someone’s ill-nature to write academically here. I come here for lightness of spirit, for amusement, for political conversation, not for constant defense of who I am and the validity of what I say.
From old Ozzie:
This is the end result of totalitarianism be it Fascist or Communist. Lives just do not matter in the end.
And I think “Perfesser” Sutton did not earn the title through academic pursuits and was only granted the status of Perfesser upon his elevation to CHO, obviously to add a touch of gravitas and “respeck mah authoritah!”.
Rest assured, “her” in my comment didn’t refer to you, Lizzie & I haven’t been following that particular topic on this thread. It was a general pronoun referring to the context of academia, which I gather you haven’t been part of for some time at least. As my follow up comment may have suggested, some of the female epidemiologists prominent in the covid era here and in the UK and promoted beyond their competence by the media were probably in the back of my mind.
We certainly did. We also saw other experts who provided a different and better researched set of conclusions re lockdowns and other epidemiological matters. We had people like the Queensland Health Minister (now Qld Governor) who had zilch qualfications in epidemiology closing down Queensland, with NSW not much better off in its ‘quality’ medical bureaucrats. And dare I say these experts speaking out against those lesser trained were more authoritative when one considers they voiced from respected institutes in Oxford and Stanford, although they backed themselves up with good science, for institutional affiliations alone can mean nothing much. In that regard, look at London’s Imperial College epidemiological modelling crowd who constantly failed upwards on matters bovine, climatic and then Covid. Hence, The Great Barrington Declaration against lockdowns which I signed in October 2020. Note that in March 2020 I wasn’t perturbed enough about this ‘epidemic’ to cancel my travel plans, and soon enough wrote in Quadrant about unwarranted Covid hysteria creeping in.
All this for newbies to this site; well known to regulars.
Lizzie @ 12.01pm:
Dylan is a fitting winner of the Nobel* for this song alone. I cannot walk on a beach without singing** the fourth verse about the windy beach and forgetting about today until tomorrow. Musical and poetic magic.
* in my opinion. YMMV.
** In my head. Unless the beach is deserted.
And from the Nobody-cares-but-me- file …….
22 hours over 4 dayz, 168 plantpots & 7 garden beds .. weeded .. 3 cactii trimmed back to 6foot high each, 4 bushes trimmed & an hour and a half mowing the park-that-masquerades-as-a-back-garden is ready for the Summer battle-fest ……!
……………………………………….. I is bugger-ed ……!
Should also have an aboriginal, a qwerty and a koala on the board. Got to cover all the bases.
Unions may get a seat at new Reserve Bank table as CFMEU boss pushes through changes on final day of Labor conference (Sky News, 20 Aug)
Calm down Lizzie.
I was just trying to respectfully suggest that there is immediate suspicion here of the “argument from authority” line.
Particularly post-covid, as Roger points out.
I can’t help but get the feeling that, when that card comes out, that the person dealing it is not totally confident of their position and wants to shut down the debate (with a win on points).
But that’s just me.
Isn’t Tim Flannery the personification of
?
His bio mentions the MBBS and Masters of Public Health through JCU.
Did he ever don a white coat at a presser? Just for extra gravitas?
This is the end result of totalitarianism be it Fascist or Communist. Lives just do not matter in the end.
keep the figures down to what folk can comprehend and associate with .. say 1 thru 5 and you get a lot of angst, hand wringing and “Ooooh, that’s terrible” but climb the figures into the 1 000s and up and they just become statistics ….. nuttin’ to see ‘ere .. mooove along, pleeeze! ……….
The way of the world and perfect for pollies & dictators wiv bloodthirsty ambition .!
shatterzzz
Some of us enjoy your musings from Fairfield/”Viet”namatta (My dad when driving a second job for Southern Districts Cabs used to call it that).
I was born into SW Sydney and do from time to time blow through the place again.
So carry on.
lol. Snap, Roger.
Yes, thankfully I escaped Academia over twenty years ago now, when Super kicked in at age 60. No financial benefit in continuing to work and I had constant battles with lefties, who were growing more rampant and difficult, so I was glad to leave.
There is now a special category of researchers known as ‘independent scholars’ found on the website Academia.com where they can publish along with other academics. I would put myself in that category now. You just get new interests, and never stop researching. Story of my time in tenured academia, covering several loosely related fields. Now I specialist in Arthuriana, the legends and their basis and origin, which leads me into debates about the Roman occupation of Britain and its aftermath, which has led me to question seriously the dating of a key early post-Roman document. That is certainly going to be controversial. Be interested in what you think.
Mmmyes.
It goes like this.
Vax-loon spam link.
Vax-loon spam link.
Vax-loon spam link.
Vax-loon spam link.
Outrageous claim. Might be true, might not. But here it is.
Vax-loon spam link.
Vax-loon spam link.
Beautiful cheerleader, 22, dies suddenly.*
Vax-loon spam link.
Vax-loon spam link.
……..
* Motorcycle accident, pre-covid cancer, suicide or skydiving mishap.
It has been claimed that Grouchy was a bit grouchy that day, and chose not to exercise any initiative.
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To be a professor in a German university one generally has to have an earned PhD and the Habilitation, which is like a second doctorate.
That certainly sorts the chaff from the wheat, but it still doesn’t convey the magical authority our media ascribes to “experts.”
I recall helping out with the Latin terms for sermon & epistle but dating is well beyond my area of expertise, Lizzie 😀
I have just opened an academia.com website but haven’t had time and energy to put my already published stuff up there yet, let alone blog there. I don’t want too much involvement, already getting invited to online conferences that I don’t really want to attend. I don’t much want a return to a sort of academia, even if sticking only to Arthurian material.
Tempus celerius radio fugit. Time flies faster than the weaver’s shuttle.
The motto of my daughter’s school; she’s now forty, born when I was forty.
I have limited time left, you get that sort of feeling when over eighty.
He certainly left Nap and Marshal Ney in a spot of bother!
It’s not carbon dating but content analysis and you would be a skilled as I am at that, maybe more so, Roger. You might find my bibliography a bit daunting, though I give URL’s for a lot of it. Bibliography and any footnotes will only appear in any online version; Quadrant policy. I did contact Keith Windschuttle, mentioning your input, and asked to change the term from sermon to epistle in my introduction, and noted elsewhere that, as it was an epistola , Gildas would have been even more hesitant about his competence for the job he’d reluctantly undertaken. So thank you for your contribution, it was both important and helpful.
From the Gateway Pundit:
From the Gateway Pundit:
The Conversation.
That’s the degree I took, which specialised in epidemiological methods, through the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney. It was very tough and full-on back then. Not too sure that the JCU offering would have been anything like as rigorous.
It has been claimed that Grouchy was a bit grouchy that day…
He certainly left Nap and Marshal Ney in a spot of bother!
From .. Napoleon’s Marshals ..Peter Young ..
Napoleon made Grouchy a Marshal on 15 april, 1815 and a Peer of France 2 June and it would be difficult to deny his claim to these honours. He then gave him command of the right wing of the Army of the North, a charge for which his previous experience as a corps commander of cavalry was not necessarily the best preparation. charged with the pursuit of the Prussians after Ligny, he was held up at Wavre.
General Gerard, one of his corps commanders , and a future Marshal, urged Grouchy to “march to the sound of the guns” but even ha dhe done so it is doubtful whether he could have reached the field of Waterloo in time to influence the fate of the day.
In fact, on hearing the news of Waterloo Grouchy effected the withdrawal of his wing in the most handsome fashion, and had the Emperor been in the mood to fight on he might have used the corps as the nucleus of a new army .
Kind of different alright.
It’s also kind of amusing that people don’t seem to acknowledge this monster was a failed artist – a creative type- turned military genius (in his own mind) and a total monster. No association is made with the “creative types” and the horrendous, extremist bullshit they spew out on various platforms.
What time is it Eccles? 3.am. What are you doing with that sack? It’s never too late to be a coalman.
Alamak!
Aug 20, 2023 11:25 AM
Alamak, just scroll past.
Personally I find the links valuable for stuff that rarely sees the light of day, and I use nearly every link supplied.
Done, Sancho. I am floating on a lake of placidity now. 🙂
Professor is a job description not a title for life.
It’s lunchtime here.
We always watch Outsiders over Sunday lunch at home.
Rowan was looking very well and happy at CPAC flogging his books for cash.
Can you change a fifty? I asked, upping the ante to high political tension.
It would be ideal for monsters like Letby to be studied.
There has to be a marker that shows up.
Old Ozzie – weren’t you in hospital for an op? Hope all went well.
Have they let you out already?
The ATO really should hang their collective heads in shame.
This GST scam would have kept going if it wasn’t for banks & accountants alerting the ATO.
Like mass shooters?
The key point is that motive formation in the individual seems to be a forbidden topic of academia.
Social forces, poverty, capitalism, climate change.
OF COURSE.
Racist.
Scuze I delegates (word of the week), but I need to sound off. It’s the ABC again.
What genius in programming promoted a Pakistani comic who arrived here in 2012 to hosting one of the main religion programs on RN, ‘God Forbid’ ?
He goes where the water is ankle deep but is way out of his depth. That must be why he chose this morning’s subject, ‘Is Tik Tok the new religious pulpit ?’
My answer to that question, only if you’re an idiot who hasn’t entered a church for decades and doesn’t know pulpits were chopped up for fuel used in smoking ceremonies years ago.
Tch tch.
I suppose it’s a touchy subject, religion that is, and the ABC tries to divert any critics by making it sound light hearted and amusing with young Sami at the helm.
If only the Gospels came with a laugh track, eh Sami. You make up for that, though.
The CEO of Origin talking to Ross Greenwood on business Sky.
New transmission is vital an’ all that shit. Not long ago government were accusing the sector of “gold plating” transmission infrastructure and now diamond encrusting is barely enough.
It helps not to have a functioning memory to follow the freshly minted “market signals” in this mess.
Which scam do you mean? The gold refiners one? That’s beyond heads hanging it should be Heads of Departments hanged.
No.
His stylist advised that the White Coat didn’t fit with the “smart casual super-cool expert” image they were trying to project.
Although he might have gone white-coat under cross-examination in the planted snail case.
Your talk of the rigours of the German system got me thinking about the “stolen valour” website, which called out guys wearing military medals they were not entitled to.
Do we need something similar for academia?
“Mr Smith appeared on Q&A and did not correct the host when introduced as Doctor Smith. Mr Smith was awarded an honorary doctorate from Weeties University and is not entitled to use the title outside university ceremonial events.”
“Perfesser Jones was cited as an expert in sea level rises in the SMH. Perfesser Jones area of academic speciality is plant propagation”.
“Perfesser Brown was a guest on 3AW talking about inflation. Brown is a Perfesser of economics, so is clueless on the subject.”
That might be why he is often referred to as having been a “house painter”, with the implication that he painted the walls of houses, not artistic representations of houses?
Oh, the shame for the Yartz Communidy to be associated with Adolph!
Which scam is this?
Are you thinking of the Cranston one (which was PAYG, not GST)?
Cranston Minor is up for sentencing this week.
No list is complete without Bad Cattitude
He was 23 when he wrote it. Pure human longing, despair and hope.
Yeah, nah.
Thanks anyway.
It’s being referred to as the TikTok scam as social media influencers were promoting it.
Over 50,000 punters lodged false gst refund claims.
The media refers to as a 4.6bill scam whereas the real number is about 1.6bill.
A solid number of upticks for this observation.
‘Market signals’ have been following the NEM as it drives Australia into the ground.
They are the echos of chortling and snorking from electricity generation and distribution businesses, as they lap up unearned OPM.
Uptick
dover0beach
He recently downed the attempt to federalize abortion laws that would have killed just birn babies,
Next, he’s downed extreme Climate legislation.
Abortion and Gerbiling are two of the few guiding principles of the demonrat party, yet you call him a “garden variety” demon? This is delusional thinking.
You dispute that you never called him a Pelosi demon, but a garden variety is a fine description? You’re not splitting hairs, you’re splitting atoms.
No recognition, but just more mind reading going on. How about the fact that more conservative electorates such as West Virginia would tend to elect more conservative types? No, he’s just pretending, right? That’s because you can read minds and you don’t need any of that silly analysis to links I posted last evening. You know.
Yep.
Then why bother commenting on the core issue that the ballboy suggested with his link the purportedly showed Fox execs donating to Demons when it turned out it was one Demon and that Demon was one a DINO (Demon in name only)?
Of course Motherhood statements are correct because they are so general, so squishy and so unspecific that anyone could read them any way they want. Motherhood statements are meaningless nonsense.
Point to me where anyone even in the life of this blog has suggested otherwise?
Okay, I guess we need to go back to the link:
As I said, this is delusional horsehit.
Oh yea, the good old hair trigger days when we went close to nuclear annihilation several times and the West had to contend with an evil communist empire. They were the halcyon days.
When you lived in NYC, did you ever notice the yellow skull&bones signs plastered to buildings directing people to take shelter in the basement in case of the nuclear attack?
Compared to 1990 plus approx 20 years when the nuclear buttons were mothballed and the world saw economic progress that literally lifted billions out of grinding poverty creating the environment of massive economies of scale and specialization. Can you direct us to anything you said, (say around 2005ish) warning us about the coming mess? I mean if you mufti-izing now, you must have mufti-ized about these issues back then, no? Otherwise Harry Hindsight is a wonderful tool.
Nonsense, the claim was that as per the copy of the tweet I posted above. Respond to that instead what you think it said.
We’ve well and truly reached that point, viz. the “wild” fires here and there, the treatment of the elderly and the young in the lockdowns, the pushing of electric vehicles which are not only known to be unsafe but can randomly blow up a ship or unit block or whatever, the destruction of people’s livelihoods and the environment for “climate change” the active incitement of endless wars, etc.
Just this morning this popped up. How much more indifferent to human life can you get?
Bivalent COVID Shot Extends Benefit in Youngest Kids
And I think “Perfesser” Sutton did not earn the title through academic pursuits and was only granted the status of Perfesser upon his elevation to CHO, obviously to add a touch of gravitas and “respeck mah authoritah!”.
I can’t speak for other fields, but in medicine titles of Perfesser are handed out like lollies at a kiddy party. The title often comes with the job once you become senior enough or just know the right people. One should always be suspicious of medicos who brandish that title. Most docs should know this but don’t talk about it.
I write from personal experience having reliquished mine out of sheer embarrassment as soon as I could when I stopped working. At least I was doing some teaching & research and had a publication record, unlike many others. Several of us used to address each other jokingly as “Perfesser” when we passed in the corridors because we know it was just a w*nk. The only person who took it seriously was the head honcho of the department who used to get quite upset when we did it to him because he knew we were taking the p***.
The left cannot CANNOT leave politics out of anything. I was at the Ferragosto festival in Five Dock with the Big Boy this morning and sure enough there were a gargle of ghastlys with their Yes T-shirts pampheteering the bullshit (all women including the bloke), thank heavens they didn’t come anywhere near me else my rather large, agitated Big Boy might have bopped them one for good measure.
Brownstone Institute on free speech.
The Brilliant Legal Mind of John Sauer
Indolent:
Sounds about par for the course.
Had to hunt this story out.
I seem to recall the ATO might once have had systems designed to prevent this kind of straight up fraud.
Like jumping through a couple of hoops to get an ABN, maybe a stop on large first time BAS refunds, too hard at least a phone call to the intended recipient?
Nothing like automating fraud.
And they can recover it, even if it’s at $10 a week out of people’s centerlink payments.
Why the ATO’s $4.6bn epic ‘Tik-Tok’ GST fraud hit is the real price tag of robodebt
Earlier this year wasn’t there the murder of four or so college students in a boarding house in the rural west (USA), fellow arrested had driven from the east (? Pennsylvania, Vermont?) to do the crime, he turned out to be a PhD student with abnormal interest in the mindset of murderers, having spent a lot of time interviewing murderers in order to elucidate the “perfect” crime. But he got caught. I think his father drove him back home from across the country at one stage. Loner, socially awkward, incel I suppose. Not sure where the court case is up to.
@sancho Herald Sun weekend this weekend has ‘ten things to do in Kyoto’.
Includes eat fluffy pancakes, which comes in at number 3.
Another fine example of biden’s dementia. The real issue is the people propping up this senile, corrupt, treasonous pervert. This is obama’s 3rd term.
Tinta, the Yes mob were out at Rozelle markets yesterday just like they were on just about every street corner on the City to Surf last weekend. They are preaching to the converted in these spaces. Why don’t they get in their Audi and Merc SUVs and go out to St Marys or Wentworthville and preach the love there.
I was sick of the sight of them by the time I left. I did pick up a mint condition “War of the Worlds” LP second hand for twenty bucks at the market, though. It was worth running the gauntlet of the Teal adjacent loons for that.
This stuff sticks to some people’s minds. Suicide research is also bad that way.
Social imitation. I ought to write novels about Extinction Rebellion heroes topping themselves; would probably bag a dozen or so.
Chinese economy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYX1rIe3SaQ
Saw a big street art just off Lygon Street Brunswick yesterday.
‘Treaty’.
Loons always think someone else will be paying.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Aug 20, 2023 1:11 PM
Old Ozzie – weren’t you in hospital for an op? Hope all went well.
Have they let you out already?
Lizzie,
Day Surgery to cut more SCC & BCC out of my body and continue skin rotation from lower down to face & upper body
Anaesthetist had a cold & they were unable to get replacement at such short notice – scheduled for 2 weeks time
Rang me 15 mins before leaving for Hospital & RAT was negative, and here was me going to ask the question when I checked in as to why “RAT Test only on Unvaccinated” – will leave to next attempt
We’re not even Teal adjacent till the next election. More embarrassing than having Julie Bishop as the local member.
Robert Sewell
Aug 20, 2023 12:59 PM
Alamak!
Aug 20, 2023 11:25 AM
Posting a dozen links without comment day after day is very low value add.
zero value add imho, possibly even negative value as it just fills up the threads with stuff to ignore.
Alamak, just scroll past.
Personally I find the links valuable for stuff that rarely sees the light of day, and I use nearly every link supplied.
Robert,
same I also find Indolent’s Links useful – +1
Republican Chris Christie Advocates for More War, More Conflict, More Turmoil, More Weapons, More U.S Intervention
August 19, 2023 = Sundance
Big Picture: Democrats want power, Republicans want money – and when it comes to foreign policy, they are in complete UniParty alignment.
This is the baseline to understand why only Donald J. Trump represents an alternative to the foreign policy worldview of the corrupt DC system. This is also why they hate him and us.
There is no genuine alternative, no distinction between the foreign policy of professional Democrats and the foreign policy of professional Republicans. The nature of each wing of the UniParty vulture flows in complete sync on the issues of U.S. global interests and the multinational beneficiaries who pay for the policies of intervention.
At the absolute core of the issue for Republicans is the money. The financial mechanisms which create a need for outcomes in various nations. The ultimate and biggest pay-to-play scheme, where the policy of the United States is sold to the highest bidder and becomes an outcome of the interests of the multinational corporations. It is maddening to watch this dynamic continue to play out and yet feel incapable of stopping it.
This is part of the value in Donald Trump.
It wasn’t Russia or Vladimir who forced the U.S. government to mandate medical procedures. It wasn’t China or Xi Jinping who denied people the ability to comfort their sick, infirmed and dying loved ones. It wasn’t North Korea or Chairman Kim who arrested parents on playgrounds, chased people from the beach or set about rules saying if you were seated in a restaurant you were safe, but if you stood up the rona would kill you. These were the insufferable fiats of hypocritical politicians right here in the USA.
But seeing as it is Chris Christie making this argument, let me go bigger.
Claim a desire for Middle East peace, set the Middle East on fire with the Arab Spring (Obama Cairo speech). Claim a desire for middle class workers, yet facilitate corporate offshoring. Claim a desire for Israeli security, yet attack Egyptian President Fattah al-Sisi for creating Israeli security. Accept a Nobel Peace Prize, set Libya on fire and kill thousands. Accept a Nobel Peace Prize, then attack Syria. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy.
Champion women’s causes on stage, yet embrace Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood who devalue women. Claim to support democratic elections, then undermine the majority election outcome of the British vote in Brexit. Everything, every – single – thing, about the Obama/Biden foreign policy was an exercise in hypocrisy. There were ZERO foreign policy successes, NONE. What we are seeing now is the same thing with Biden, because it is an extension of Obama’s third term. Hence, JoeBama.
Obama entered into a political agreement with Hillary Clinton to appoint her as Secretary of State. That appointment was purposefully made so that Clinton could graft for the Clinton Foundation and enrich herself beyond imagining… that was the Clinton carrot. The agreement also contained guard rails; Clinton could graft to her heart’s desire, but she must maintain an ideological alignment with Obama’s team mission of diminishing the U.S. on the global scale.
Barack Obama undermined the U.S with his two yearlong apology tour, while Secretary Clinton enriched herself (and family), kept her mouth shut, followed orders and maintained the ideological undermining. Eventually the hypocrisy blew up in their faces, and we saw outcomes like the rise of ISIS and the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi. Outcomes of an ideological doctrine sprinkled with financial graft.
Two large elements played out when Trump was in office. First, economic security is national security. Second, “peace is the prize.”
Through both elements the Trump Doctrine was born, and the effectiveness, while downplayed and ignored, was unmistakable.
It is remarkable to contemplate what might have been… We need to hire President Trump to finish the job.
The Trump Doctrine works, we all saw what happens when you leverage economic power for our own national security interests.
Donald Trump represents the interests of Americans, first!
Hell yes that was embarrassing. Teal is worse.
And I have even worse as my State situation. Volunteered for years for independent Lib Liz Constable; Following her retirement the new Lib member I never met; then he got defeated by a Labor cypher.
He might have more idea of what he’s spent on air travel:
FMD
Greg Kelly: Black Supremacy: some black dude bashing a white sheila over the head with a chair. The chair is now famous and the scum in the msm are saying it is the zeitgeist.
Candidate Ron DeSantis Says MAGA Supporters Are “listless vessels” Who “follow whatever comes down the pike on Truth Social”…
August 19, 2023 – Sundance
Feeling empowered after his boost from Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp, a man of notoriously intemperate disposition, presidential candidate Ron DeSantis begins the process to align himself with the neocon establishment and labeling Donald Trump supporters as “listless vessels” devoid of principle, who simply “follow whatever comes down the pike from Truth Social every morning.”
Appearing with a young millennial wearing a beaver tail on his head, namely Will Witt from the Florida Standard, Ron DeSantis outlines his opinion that the MAGA movement is only driven by the support of President Donald Trump, a person who has exhausted his usefulness in awakening the electorate. As a result, the high-minded superior intellects of the Republican Party now need to step in, reestablish the core values of the conservative movement, and put the squirming MAGA children in their play pens.
You can watch the entire interview below;
I’m just prompting it to the part that best highlights the sanctimonious arrogance of a dim-witted candidate who really doesn’t carry his own policies, only those of the managers and branding consultants that create his talking points. WATCH:
Nedlands? I get a Liars flyer every few months and have to walk around and check the number on my letterbox. Very disturbing.
Startling news in Brisbane:
I fear this sort of phenomenon spreading across the country. Inner city morons dictating to the rest of the hoi polloi. Be afraid.
And we wonder why Australian Taxes are high?
Young mum ditches corporate job to live off Centrelink: NSW woman Shara Owens reveals why she doesn’t regret the move
. Mum Shara Owens said full-time job sent her broke
. The single mum quit job for Centrelink benefits
. The NSW woman claims she is ‘not a government leech’
No mention of the father?
A little Sunday Humour.
“A guy goes to the USDA to apply for a job.
The interviewer asks him, “Are you allergic to anything?”
He replies, “Yes, caffeine. I can’t drink coffee.
“Okay, have you ever been in the military?”
“Yes,” he says, “I was in Iraq for one tour.”
The interviewer says, “That will give you 5 extra points toward employment.”
Then he asks, “Are you disabled in any way?”
The guy says, “Yes. A bomb exploded near me and I lost both my testicles.”
The interviewer grimaces and then says, “Okay. You’ve got enough points for me to hire you right now. Our normal hours are from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. You can start tomorrow at 10:00 am, and plan on starting at 10:00 am every day.
The guy is puzzled and asks, “If the work hours are from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, why don’t you want me here until 10:00 am?”
“This is a government job”, the interviewer says. “For the first two hours, we just stand around drinking coffee and scratching our balls. No point in you coming in for that.“
The Bunnies at real risk of missing the finals.
The Public’s Top if not ONLY Concern…
INFLATION
“The public is not concerned about “Russian aggression,” the Trump indictment, or even the MSM wrench about aliens. No one cares — the average person is struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living. Homelessness is on the rise as people cannot afford shelter. The blank checks to Ukraine are a slap in the face of those begging for help at home. These politicians need to work for us. No one campaigning is going to make a dent in the polls unless they clearly detail how they plan to address INFLATION! And no, the problem is not limited to America. The solution cannot be a universal income, currency, or Great Reset. The economy was strong before they attempted to BUILD BACK BETTER”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/inflation/the-publics-top-if-not-only-concern/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS
The ‘Pollies’, WEF and others are going for – BUILD BACK WORSE.
Crash & Burn anyone?
Seems twice the number turned out for the “NO” launch, as turned out for the “YES” launch.
This is really an economic round up with Nigel Farage, who is good value, as usual.
The beginning of the end for wind and solar?
The Jimmy Dore Show.
Bill Gates Now Determining What You Can Say On YouTube
LOL.
Wind Turbines and Solar Farms are like Strippers. They stop working when you stop throwing money at them.
The Bunnies at real risk of missing the finals.
Not really, they have the bye next week and a far, far better for points aggregate than either the Cowboys,who, if they beat the Dolphins will be on equal points, or the Rorters .. tho given the Rorters 2 points deficit & atrocious points differential there only hope is at their luv by media cheerleading level ……..
Downsizing in Europe and Enemy No. 1 in China. They called him the most evil man in the world, which I find hard to dispute.
George Soros Orgs Are IMPLODING as Globalists PANIC!!!
Oh, OK.
$1.5 bn spread over 50,000 punters is $30k each.
I take it they just lodged claims for input tax credits for stuff they didn’t buy.
Pretty crude.
But effective if you keep it small and hit-and-run.
Err, excuse me.
“Eat fluffy pancakes” is numbers 1 – 4 and 6 – 9.
Numbers 5 and 10 are “wash fluffy pancakes down with Japanese gin”
Can someone this. Correct it if I’ve misunderstood it. The Albanian claims he didn’t know he had an Italian father until about 20 years ago – turn of the century. If that’s the case didn’t he ever question how he ended up with Albanese as a name?
Indolent at 1:49
I dunno.
But then I’m not the one latching onto the death of anyone under 40 to push my barrow.
Can someone explain this…
A living father?
Iirc his mum told him dad died in a car crash.
he did wait until mum died to go looking
Vagabond at 1:57.
Yes, it appears that Universities have agreed to grant Perfesser status to senior public servants because … actually, I have no idea.
Years ago I did a Masters (employer funded), purely as CV padding and that was the only place it was ever mentioned.
As soon as it was done, the institution offered a doctorate.
No thanks.
There is nothing which says “wank” more than the title “Doctor” if you don’t have a medical degree.
Sorry Numbers.
Sorry Jim Chalmers.
Sorry Kevni Rudd.
Oh, so he knew his mother had bonked some Italian fella and hence his name. He reckons he thought he was deadsky. Got it.
Did Elbow ever formally renounce claims on Italian citizenship?
I wonder if Elbow has raised a glass to his hero today?
It’s the anniversary of the Ice Pick that did for Trotsky.
I think he has/had no right to it. Correctly I believe, the Italian state demands the mother has to be of Italian nationality for obvious reasons. 🙂
…. at the very least, the mother has to be.
And that is why I will continue to try to weed out the bullshit.
For your reading pleasure and to help with quality control.
You’re welcome.
This flight was brilliant! Enjoy the ride.
19 Aug 2023
Check out the best window seat in the house from the Pacific Airshow F/A-18F Super Hornet display.
F/A-18F Super Hornet Display | Pacific Airshow
They thought they were being used for non criminal activity?
The accounts were created by the criminal syndicate using the details of Samoan nationals on temporary working visas. The temporary workers received a nominal fee for access to the account and current evidence obtained by the AFP indicates they may not have been aware of the criminal activity.
Bunnies, Cats and Dogs.
It’s a small animal massacre.
Let’s slaughter a few civies in the city.
I guess two can play that game.
Oh, yes there is. There most certainly is.
You emblazon your very own fan site with self-adulation – and a little third party endorsement from someone called Thérèse Rein.
Actually it is the medicos who are the wankers
taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)
Nobody wants to be a rifleman in an infantry battalion,
but without them you can’t take and hold territory.
Or the MG and Scout Group.
Those two in the jet had a massive workout!
My ol’ man being one, who refined his chops as a surgeon in New Guinea from early ’43 on …
Cats, the “Crowding Out” Post is ready to go, but P Smith’s Post from this morning is so important it should not be bumped off just yet.
Looking like Tuesday morning at this point.
Anybody losing to the WEagles at the moment has no right to be playing in September anyway.
The Bunnies at real risk of missing the finals.
I concur.
More than a wee bit peeved in today’s effort against Newcastle.
A bye next week and the last game in the season before the finals is against the Goosters.
The first doctoral degrees were, as explained above, handed out from the university of Bologna in the fourteenth century. And were in engineering and law.
The quacks didn’t get in on the business until the nineteenth century. And then it was the MD, Medicae Doctoris. Nowadays the quacks give each other an Mb bs. Two bachelor’s degrees.
Honorary degrees don’t count for anything much. Neither do degrees in the soggy “sciences”.
An education these days consists of learning the right things to say or write. Whether the things are true, false or totally meaningless doesn’t matter.
I had a chippy living next door who asked if I thought he’d benefit by going to university. I told him it would be a big step down. Unless he did engineering, he’d be getting a large helping of bullshit at a grotesque price.
True. It’s very useful though vs local councils, pubic serpents and lefties in general, particularly if you match it with stuff they feel superior about like climate rubbish or Christianity. Excellent also for blog fights with lefty trolls, they get really hyper. It seems to hit them right in the ego. It’s fun.
Sooo.. Fauna or flora?
One of the few female j’ismists in this country actually pulling their weight.
Takes no prisoners, she does.
As I’ve discovered and subsequently purveyed across the course of my very fortunate life, Doc BG. 🙂
Well, well, well, Doctor Faustus at 4:53.
Where is your stethoscope?
Champ.
There’s this phrase, it’s on the tip of my tongue, that describes a bunch of people who all agree with each other and won’t listen to external viewpoints. I wonder what it is? Maybe he should visit Katoomba, where there’re a lot of ordinary people trying to make ends meet on salaries quite less than his, and there’s also a lookout where you can shout and hear you own words come back at you.
Didn’t he end up supporting and writing portions of the ‘Inflation Reduction’ Act last year incl. increasing taxes and climate boondoggles or have I been in the winter sun too long. He plays the good cop rather well.
How about politicians having to play the more conservative type in order to get elected by more conservative electorates. Don’t you think it more plausible that a conservative would tend to be an Independent or Republican in the last several decades. Is it really an attempt at ‘mind reading’ to conclude that?
I commented precisely as to the part I quoted. I wasn’t taking a side.
No, it was perfectly apt and neither meaningless nor nonsense. It directly countered the problem of the economic costs associated with repatriating strategically important industries, by intimating that countries will bear those additional costs if it is strategically necessary and did that in a single short sentence.
You certainly keep saying that.
Apart from 1962, when the US thought it might be a good idea to locate nuclear missiles in Turkey, yep, relatively peaceful aside from Vietnam. What have we had since 1989? Kuwait, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Now China have been elevated out of grinding poverty and they’re looking to improve their seat at the table, did we really think they would just agree to the US still calling the shots as if it were 1991?
It appears you want me just to reply to what you think it said.
That was impressive!
Pink Floyd “Another Brick in The Wall” performed by The Classic Rock Show (2023) 4K
Blame Lizzo.
Rabz
Last evening, at least I think it was last evening, you made a comment dissing libertarians. This isn’t any counter to that as your free to believe what you like.
(As an aside) Amusingly, I noticed his leadership was pretty stocked with your comment. This is the thought leader who once claimed we buy out imports below cost and Duarte murdering up to 30,000 people was on the right side of history. But I shouldn’t digress.
I always thought of you as a relatively free market type within reason. Has that changed in some way leaving aside the China issues?
If you have, I’m interested in what changed your mind. That’s all.
Dr Pancho – remember, there are two distinct types of Economists. Those that are wrong about everything 93.1% of the time and those that are wrong about everything, all the time.
I’d hope Cats would consider me to be a member of the first category. 😕
There is nothing which says “wank” more than the title “Doctor” if you don’t have a medical degree.
I am old enough to recall that a doctorate was de rigueur as entry into the (then) esteemed arena of university teaching. It was the reason I embarked upon the degree when I completed my honours undergraduate degree.
I also embarked upon the career of “mother and wife” at the same time – with ambitious and naive expectations of quality performance in both! However, I thought that the latter was the most important, and so took almost 8 years to complete & achieve my doctorate.
I don’t regret the arduous job of completing that work, and I certainly do not think that it was meaningless. Like any other major research work, it hones and refines one’s ability to make sense of data. It also shapes one’s understanding of at least one part of the world – whether it be the physical world or the world of ideas.
I have no idea of the rigorous quality of today’s doctoral dissertations. Maybe they are a lot of “wankery.” I just know that, in my experience, the exploration of a particular thesis added a special dimension to my life.
JC – it was a flippant remark made about their* regrettable tendency to allow and/or tolerate the intolerable.
On Economics and the concept of free markets, I am with you.
*Guess who, Cats! 🙂
The Bunnies at real risk of missing the finals.
I’m not a Bunnie sfan by any means but GET REAL! .. FFS!
The Rorters would need to win by at least 80 both last round matches and the Cowboys by 40 each of the 2 games to pass Soufs then hope the Rabbits get beat to NIL their last game ..
Well, probably not the smartest decision having a drone expo at the drama theatre in the middle of a war involving drones on a large scale.
Donetsk City enters the chat.
When bothering to follow Rugby League in my lifetime, the Bunnies have been the team, given I’ve lived within their patch for many years. Some of the NRL teams I’ve followed on that basis:
Wests (sadly no longer with us and now merged with the Tiggers)
The Sea Eagles
The Tiggers
The Bulldogues (my current team)
I really hate the broncos, being indivegetables from North of the Tweed as they are.
So this alone makes him garden variety Demon?
He had it watered down to some extent, but let’s focus on the equally more important issues I posted instead of curve balling this into a new discussion on fiscal rectitude as I’ve frankly never seen you all that interested about the fiscal side.
Leave the “how abouts” and the “plausibilities” as it’s pointless to go into depth about those points and just focus Manchin with you describing him as a garden variety demon when he’s not.
I’m not going to say we should agree to disagree because that’s just a cop. No, I believe it was delusional horseshit and and in my opinion, the repair you’re trying out isn’t working.
It was a very tense time and in fact there were a few occasions when incorrect radar readings could’ve caused a massive kaboom. This occurred on both sides.
Side issues that were never going to cause an abyss. Also, I said relatively peaceful.
Those 25 years were the best the world has experienced and 2 billion people came out of poverty. You consider this to be a bad thing?
Who cares, because in the end the US still calls the shots and no amount of looking around for a new trading bloc, which is laughable, is going to change that. So yeah, the US still calls the shots. China may attack Taiwan out of a fit of deranged behavior and they will have the living shit kicked out of them.
Hey, Miss Personage! 🙂
Rabz
Who’s Arks? 🙂
Okay. I was just checking in to see what had changed.
What aspects of Libertarian are you opposed to? Obviously not referring to the economics side.
You refer to him as “leadership”.
A good Sunday night viewing.
—
Peter Santenello:
Deep in the woods of North Carolina is a man name Joe Hollis who’s lived of the grid for 50 years. Here he’s mastered the techniques of a life tuned to nature, dependent on his natural environment for survival. He also has the largest collection of native Appalachian and Chinese medicinal herbs in the Eastern US. Join me on this most epic look into a lifestyle that is becoming more attractive to many in this rapidly developing world. This is part of our greater Appalachia series:
He’s Lived 50 Years Off the Grid in Appalachia
Of course it was the Ukrainians who started the attacks on cities/civilians. NOT But, to you the only side that should be allowed to do that is Russia, correct? I never recall you balking at the frequent missiles attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Kherson is shelled every day. It’s war. I was amused though that when Ukraine drone striked a military airport in Novgorod yesterday, and damaged a bomber, that Kremlin talking heads all started to squawk “terrorism, terrorism” in unison. Guys, can it, it just makes you sound stupid.
The boy is a Hollyweird personage (presumably), but the Hausfrau, Cats – Sacre Bleu! 🙂
Oh and the bombers then relocated to Murmansk. That was amusing.
You start a war and you get to live with the consequences guys.
I do wonder how the bank accounts were setup to receive the scam funds from ATO – personal accounts would/should not be accepted.
Regarding checks for fake claims, it’s about 2-3 weeks of coding & setup to scan receipts submitted online or via mobile and weed out fake ones. Especially for new companies or companies with little activity.
ATO needs to lift their game in tech.