Yeah Dover. The hootie tooties are now a major world power.Cope! I never said it’s a major world power. You…
Open Thread – Weekend 16 Sept 2023
- Hydrocarbons are not dispensable
- Open Thread – Weekend 7 Sept 2024
- Open Thread – Thurs 5 Sept 2024
- Report on Russia and Ukraine
- Open Thread – Mon 2 Sept 2024
Why would Yemen give two-shits about Gulf Arabs?
This is almost too funny.
All Bruce wanted to do was enjoy a little snow time and get his end wet. It is a tragedy.
A gift, most likely, to be returned unopened … duuuuh!
Now that Neutrogena hypoallergenic soap has been discontinued I use Lux Petal Touch. So far so good though it is also becoming hard to find. Might give Imperial Leather a try.
Hope so, Black Ball.
I am a little worried at the mass concerts they want to hold.
People like freebies and the sense of reciprocity might impel a Yes vote back.
A part of me is glad we won’t be in Oz for this last gruelling nail-biting end.
Me noives mightn’t take it.
Dove soap marketing to:
Dear Mrs Beare,
We are writing to request you cease pitching ideas to our new products team.
We lost 3 after they viewed your last proposal, which you thoughtfully provided a filmed segment using what appeared to be a sow pig in a glass coffin, fortunately the steam obscured some of the detail though the grunting and squealing was most distressing.
However we have forwarded on your pitch to p&$nhub who think your idea may be the ” next big thing”.
Wow! Well put.
Eric Clapton is proving to be refreshingly recalcitrant in old age and still playing live despite arthritis and peripheral neuropathy.
Dot.
You have done God’s work this morning by eviscerating the local screecher.
Thanks, mole. Laughed out loud.
Oh dear.
Imaginary photos cited as evidence.
Oh, and your “vapourising steel beams” video?
It is time-stamped 2016 in one segment.
So, yes.
It’s fake.
Lost in all that racial and sexual diversity virtue signalling is the actual product. So often I can’t work out what they are trying to sell, if you don’t see it in the first few seconds of the ad it’s a failure.
Back on the Harvard-Harris poll, how does DeSantis do better if he loses to Biden +4 and Harris +7 in a poll Trump beats Biden +4 and Harris +6?
Very bad CGI, Tickler.
That must be why Bill Clinton is inviting the Pope over for a talk.
Peace in Space: Soyuz MS-24 Lifts off and Docks to International Space Station, Carrying Two Russian Cosmonauts and an American Astronaut
While on Planet Earth the US and Russia are at each other’s throats, disputing a military supremacy in a world divided like never before, and frankly at the very verge of a Third World War. In space, things are different.
One American and two Russian space crew members have just took off aboard a Russian spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on a mission that saw them dock in the International Space Station three hours later.
One Astronaut and two cosmonauts, a symbol of the fundamental unity of our human race, in case anyone has forgotten that.
The Soyuz rocket is expected to follow an ultra-short flight route, making only two loops around the Earth, which will take about three hours, before reaching the International Space Station.
Soyuz MS-24 Rocket Launches From Baikonur Cosmodrome Bound For ISS pic.twitter.com/EWa0SJGqXd
— RT (@RT_com) September 15, 2023
Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness call it a day.
Might give Imperial Leather a try.
I reckon it smells funny.
Palmolive Green is the go. Good enough for Bob and Dolly Dyer, good enough for all.
Thancho @10.02, Nooooooo……… Thancho @ 10.04, double Nooooo…..
Game of Numbers: Russians Are Circumventing Sanctions, and Producing SEVEN Times More Ammo Than US and Europe
For months on end, the mainstream media kept peddling the narrative that, because of the sanctions, not only the Russian economy was doomed to fail, they were also running out of ammo, missiles and all kinds of military equipment.
Unsurprisingly, it was not true.
Daily, news coming from the frontlines showed how the Russian Federation forces were outgunning the Ukrainians in every particular, implementing their ‘attrition warfare’ to incapacitate the enemy forces by slowly destroying both equipment and troops.
Now, the cat is out of the box, and it has been made public that, as a result of the push to circumvent the sanctions, they are now producing more ammunition than the United States and Europe together.
Russian military industrial complex is vastly overproducing all the west in terms of production of weapons, and it is estimated that the Russian ammunition production is seven times greater than that of the West.
The New York Times reported:
“Russia has managed to overcome sanctions and export controls imposed by the West to expand its missile production beyond prewar levels, according to U.S., European and Ukrainian officials, leaving Ukraine especially vulnerable to intensified attacks in the coming months.”
While sanctions did slow Russian production of missiles and other weapons for some six months, Russia rebuilt the trade in critical components by routing them through countries like Armenia and Turkey.
“Russia’s re-energized military production is especially worrisome because Moscow has used artillery to pound Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines, and its missiles to attack the electric grid and other critical infrastructure, and to terrorize civilians in cities. Officials fear that increased missile stocks could mean an especially dark and cold winter for Ukrainian citizens.
Today, Russian officials have remade their economy to focus on defense production. With revenue from high energy prices, Russia’s security services and ministry of defense have been able to smuggle in the microelectronics and other Western materials required for cruise missiles and other precision guided weaponry. As a result, military production has not only recovered but surged.”
Western officials estimate Russia is on track to manufacture two million artillery shells a year – and do it cheaply, too: a Western country spends $5,000 to $6,000 to make an artillery round, whereas it costs Russia about $600 to produce a comparable shell.
They significantly ramp up production, crushing the unrealistic expectation that Moscow would not react to the American curbs.
New movie explores Christian and Jewish perspectives of the Holy Land’s history
Did she finally realise he’s ghay, CL
London Fashion Week kicked off in rather excellent style. Although I was more partial to Helena Christensen in my yoof.
I expect the only recruits they got were transgenders who were looking for the government to pay for their “gender affirming” operations.
Great news. Never forget that this hoax was part of the 2020 election ‘fortification’ operation.
Lost in all that racial and sexual diversity virtue signalling is the actual product.
The ad that stumps me is the one for Cold Power, which features two people dancing about in praise of pristine undies and wotever. One of the actors is a recognisable male, but the other — either an adolescent boy or an androgynous sprite of unknowable age — has me stumped.
Why? Are flat-chested midgets of indeterminate sex a significant marketing demographic?
It is just so typically patronising, ignorant Labor to believe that trotting out a few rired ‘celebs’ will influence solid Australia to vote Yes.
Their concept of our people’s intelligence draws exclusively from soapies which being the limit of their cultural understanding they believe provide a cultural guide for the Nation. Witness for example Swan’s school yard sneering at Jacinta which defined his total ignorance of aboriginal issues but typified Labot’s tactic of substituting bullying for knowledge. A product of their union heritage.
Having said that, the $100m stolen taxpayers’ money and dragooning the whole of Government and sponsored organisations to intimidate the community is genuinely frightening. One can anticipate a total blackout of No case reporting.
The Constitutional Fathers of course would never have conceived of an Australia that is so corrupted that the Government fails to allocate balanced funding to a referndum campaign.
The next referendum needs to be about referendums.
In my darker moments, I fear that yes will get up. They will do something to pervert the process and the truth.
Michael Hill ‘Jeweller’ was annoying but effective:
“Gold Gold Silver Silver Chain Chain Sale Sale!”
DOJ HEAD FAKE: HUNTER INDICTED ON THE FEW CHARGES THAT DON’T IMPLICATE JOE…
On their acting and activism or each other?
Fly little trannie, fly!
As Air Force Fails Recruiting for First Time Since ’99, Biden Wants its Boss as Joint Chiefs Chair (15 Sep)
The Great Sorting commences.
Are they out of hospital yet?
Lily-livered weak knees have no place in my diversity pitches.
Might have been that the ad people were exhibiting their own sexual proclivities. It takes really effort for the smart people to be self-aware.
Nevada has the death penalty.
Cold, calculated pre-meditated murder. All captured on film.
Lengthy screed ahoy!
Indigenous Affairs.
1962:
[Official source].
Opinion:
The remainder of this file contains various correspondence and items of interest, from which Cats with more patience than I might derive relevant statistics.
A quick perusal informs me that the issue of indigenous rights during this period and prior, was more complex than popular culture now tells us. Though I have no special knowledge or experience in this area, simply reading the various policies suggests that they leaned greatly towards the ‘protection’ of aboriginals from the potential for discombobulation that was expected to arise when the latter encountered broader Australian society after experiencing a simpler traditional lifestyle.
That so much effort and public monies were committed to the various (state) indigenous affairs departments/boards, and private (church) establishments, suggest that if genocide had been the official policy, an astounding incompetence was in play at all levels. Surely the easiest and least expensive option if genocide was the desired outcome, would have been to neglect our indigenous population completely?
Though I do not have the evidence to present here, I believe that indigenous war veterans had possessed the opportunity to vote in Federal elections prior to the 1960s?
A slight digression, but also of possible interest is the following:
Namatjira, Albert – Question of ownership of land in Northern Territory
Dated 1951/52, it deals with accusations that Namatjira, despite his status, had been deprived of economic opportunities due to his aboriginality. On the surface (i.e. in the media), these accusations appear damaging to the authorities concerned. However, upon reading the official correspondence, the implication is that it was for the benefit of the famous painter’s own welfare (particularly financial), these decisions were made. As always, the complexity is denied to the public.
Trump would romp it in at the Electoral College right now. He’d be in the 300s.
A remote Air Force base in Alaska is getting its own nuclear reactor
If all goes according to plan, the micro reactor will be online at Eielson Air Force Base by 2027.
On August 31, the Air Force announced that a California company called Oklo would design, construct, own, and operate a micro nuclear reactor at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. The contract will potentially run for 30 years, with the reactor intended to go online in 2027 and produce energy through the duration of the contract. Should the reactor prove successful, the hope is that it will allow other Air Force bases to rely on modular miniature reactors to augment their existing power supply, lessening reliance on civilian energy grids and increasing the resiliency of air bases.
The quest for a modular, base-scale nuclear reactor is almost as old as the Air Force itself. In the 1950s, the US Army explored the idea of powering bases with Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, or SL-1. In January 1961, SL-1 tragically and fatally exploded, killing three operators. The Navy, meanwhile, successfully continues to use nuclear reactor power plants on board some of its ships and submarines.
In this case, for its Eielson reactor, the Air Force and Oklo are drawing on decades of innovation, improvement, and refined safety processes since then, to create a liquid-metal cooled, metal-fueled fast reactor that’s designed to be self-cooling when or if it fails.
And importantly, the Air Force is starting small.
The announced program is to design just a five megawatt reactor, and then scale up the technology once that works. It’s a far cry from the base’s existing coal and oil power plant, which generates over 33 megawatts. Adding five megawatts to that grid is at present an augmentation of what already exists, but one that could make the islanding strategy possible.
P – Also this series.
Jon Voight’s ‘Land of Israel’ Premieres on Newsmax (9 Sep)
I haven’t looked to see what it’s like but Mr Voight is a champion of the right.
The Harm Caused by Masks
A new study suggests that the excess carbon dioxide breathed in by mask-wearers can have major health consequences.
Evidence continues to mount that mask mandates were perhaps the worst public-health intervention in modern American history.
While concluding that wearing masks “probably makes little or no difference” in preventing the spread of viruses, a recent Cochrane review also emphasized that “more attention should be paid to describing and quantifying the harms” that may come from wearing masks.
A new study from Germany does just that, and it suggests that the excess carbon dioxide breathed in by mask-wearers may have substantial ill-effects on their health—and, in the case of pregnant women, their unborn children’s.
Mask-wearers breathe in greater amounts of air that should have been expelled from their bodies and released out into the open. “[A] significant rise in carbon dioxide occurring while wearing a mask is scientifically proven in many studies,” write the German authors.
“Fresh air has around 0.04% CO2,” they observe, while chronic exposure at CO2 levels of 0.3 percent is “toxic.” How much CO2 do mask-wearers breathe in? The authors write that “masks bear a possible chronic exposure to low level carbon dioxide of 1.41–3.2% CO2 of the inhaled air in reliable human experiments.”
In other words, while eight times the normal level of carbon dioxide is toxic, research suggests that mask-wearers (specifically those who wear masks for more than 5 minutes at a time) are breathing in 35 to 80 times normal levels.
The German study, a scoping review of existing research, aimed “to investigate the toxicological effects of face masks in terms of CO2 rebreathing on developing life, specifically for pregnant women, children, and adolescents.” The latter two groups, of course, have been among those most frequently subjected to mask mandates in schools, despite Covid’s low levels of risk for them and the evidence that masks don’t work.
What can breathing too much carbon dioxide do to you?
The authors write that “at levels between 0.05% and 0.5% CO2,” one might experience an “increased heart rate, increased blood pressure and overall increased circulation with the symptoms of headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, dizziness, rhinitis, and dry cough.” Rates above 0.5 percent can lead to “reduced cognitive performance, impaired decision-making and reduced speed of cognitive solutions.” Beyond 1 percent, “the harmful effects include respiratory acidosis, metabolic stress, increased blood flow and decreased exercise tolerance.” Again, mask-wearers are likely breathing in CO2 levels between 1.4 percent and 3.2 percent—well above any of these thresholds. What’s more, “Testes metabolism and cell respiration have been shown to be inhibited increasingly by rising levels of CO2.”
So, high blood pressure, reduced thinking ability, respiratory problems, and reproductive concerns are among the many possible results of effectively poisoning oneself by breathing in too much carbon dioxide.
‘Make the product the hero’, and ‘find the Unique Selling Point’ were the mantras to work with back in the day. Also ‘make them laugh’. Specsaver ads still do it for me. Especially ‘Derrick’.
Sometimes I miss the old days of copywriting as ‘words’ and working with my ‘pictures’ man. Rowan Deane’s reminiscences on that in ‘Corkscrewed’, his paean to the long long lunch, plus all that was in Mad Men, make me glad I was there sharing those halcyon days. A stroke of luck landing an agency job and being ‘noticed’.
Well, they seem to have taken into their notoriously flighty and easily distracted hearts the idea that people must ‘see’ themselves in things to be able to relate to them. Hence the Rubik’s cube families (white daughter and black son with an Asian mother etc) and the absence of straight white couples.
Now they seem not to be advertising to me.
It is as if, after a life time, an incantation has stopped and a spell broken, and now free I am able to listen to my own voice and make my own choices. And my choices are not to buy any old shit.
I wonder if that was a strategic move by advertising companies. Did they deliberately turn their backs on such an enormous demographic?
(The answer is of course not. They know this ‘recognise yourself’ stuff is nonsense. But they also know there are DEI points to be scored. They also know that, while they must treat every identity group as uniquely victimised and in need of affirmation, straight white men are not so crippled or needy that they must be affirmed they just shrug it off.)
Ol’ Jon Voight and Co did a great job in the movie Deliverance.
Might have to look it out one of these days.
The Indispensable Institution
A new book may relax the taboo in policy circles on discussing the importance of two-parent families.
The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, by Melissa Kearney (University of Chicago Press, 240 pp., $25)
The publication of Melissa Kearney’s book The Two-Parent Privilege is something of an event in policy circles.
The economist and polymathic bibliophile Tyler Cowen surmised that it “could be the most important economics and policy book of this year.” Other blurbs from star economists David Autor and Larry Summers are no less admiring. It helps that Kearney is an MIT-educated economist, a chaired professor at the University of Maryland, and an affiliate scholar at the Brookings Institution with the kind of overflowing CV of which most graduate students can only dream.
Cowen calls The Two-Parent Privilege “a great book.” If that’s true, it’s not because it breaks new ground. Kearney’s book is a summary and synthesis—first-rate summary and synthesis, to be sure—of decades of research on the benefits of a childhood spent with both parents.
The gist of the book will be familiar to many well-informed readers: on a wide variety of measures, the average child growing up in single-parent homes is at a disadvantage compared with their two-parent peers. On the most concrete level, single mothers have less money and time to devote to their children, and they are at higher risk of poverty and welfare dependence. On a societal level, the rise of single-parent homes has increased and entrenched both economic and social inequality.
Growing up apart from a father carries considerable risks for children aside from economic hardship. Boys, in particular, are more likely to have academic and behavioral problems without their fathers in the house, and, statistically speaking, the presence of a stepfather doesn’t make their futures look any rosier. Growing up in a single-mother household is associated with poorer college completion, even after controlling for a host of other variables, as well as with diminished likelihood of marrying or staying married upon reaching adulthood.
These well-researched facts have evidently failed to impress Americans. Since the 1960s, the percentage of the nation’s children living with a single mother has only gone up.
Today, 40 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers; that’s double the share in 1980.
In many subgroups, the all-but-universal tie between marriage and childbearing has been completely severed. In the early decades of the transformation of the family, single mothers were likely to have been divorced, but by the 1980s, the majority of single mothers had never married in the first place.
The vast majority of single mothers are not simply skipping the wedding and living with their child’s father in a European-style de facto marriage. In the U.S., cohabiting relationships are fleeting and frequently sequential. Kearney notes that American children are much more likely to experience two or three parental partnerships by age 15 than children in other countries.
That puts kids at a double disadvantage: not only do the children of unmarried parents not live with their fathers; even if they maintain relationships with them (and many do not), those relationships are often strained. Never-married dads are far less likely to remain involved with their children than divorced dads—in part, perhaps, because their child’s mother, or the fathers themselves, have moved on to new relationships.
These trends have turned the U.S. into the global capital of fatherless families.
What makes The Two-Parent Privilege an event is not these observations, but the author herself. Ever since the brouhaha following the 1965 Moynihan Report’s warnings about the rise in single motherhood among low-income blacks, the policy and social science establishment has been loath to engage the issue. This has remained true even as the same family troubles spread to the white and Hispanic working class, and even as evidence mounted that the breakdown in marriage was not only bad for children but also worsened inequality. When a prominent scholar with impeccable center-left credentials like Kearney forthrightly makes that case, she is veering into policy quicksand.
This is a danger of which she is well aware. At professional conferences, her colleagues have reacted to her research with comments on the order of: “I tend to agree with you about all this but are you sure you want to be out there saying this publicly?” Others have told her that she sounded “socially conservative,” implying that she was “not academically serious.”
That the book is academically serious is both its strength and a limitation.
One of the cornerstones of wokism is encouraging criminality.
Therefore, I would like to see an analysis of death penalty sentences in the past 30, including an analysis of recent trends.
One of the things we know beyond reasonable doubt is that
Western judges now tend to be promiscous supporters of criminality and do not give priority to the safety of the community that appoints them.
164,164 signatures so far..
The target is 250,000.
For Cats who haven’t done so yet, here’s where you can put your name on The Pledge against this inVoice bestiality.
I changed to Imperial Leather when Procter & Gamble, the manufacturers of Palmolive, went woke with their Gillette ad. It’s good stuff and a real find. And the individually wrapped bars in a plastic pack with their sticky labels would be disapproved of by environmentalists, which is an added bonus.
the Concorde, the flying bomb.
It wasn’t actually.
John Hutchinson ex BA Concorde has the details on the frog Concorde crash
Easy to find on youtube.
What is Chris Bowen waiting for? If we start now with an order for one reactor for each capital city we will reach that zero emissions target three years ahead of schedule.
One for Bern.
Jets File Restraining Order Against Colin Kaepernick (15 Sep)
😀
Just wow. If people believe this stuff you can’t help them.
“The soulful little kid spoke in an accent straight out of an exclusive city private school most likely sent there by his well-off parents. He sounds nothing like the kids in remote and rural areas.”
Lizzie,
they were my thoughts also initially. Having watched the ad a second time, I don’t even believe the child is aboriginal. Obviously an already-on the-books child model. The hair is too pretty, lacking some of the golden streaks aboriginal children have. He could be Portugese, southern Spanish, even Pacific Islander.
As for the voice, not his, definite voice-over.
How to successfully engage in naval warfare without a navy.
Brown trou’ times for the Black Sea Fleet until they come up
with a way to turn off the real time tactical intelligence spigot.
Maybe this is why the US Air Force is having trouble recruiting.
Funny thing is someone from Amazon reads Instapundit, since the book entry has now been taken down. Quick work!
Gemma Tognini in The Australian today.
It was tougher for a woman to get a start in advertising in 1960 but the general principles Tognini outlines in her article against gender and diversity targets held true even then and still hold now. It is individuals who matter, not categories.
While on the subject of soap, When I moved out of home I started using Imperial Leather. Mum always used Lux. I used Dove for a short while, but the advertising was just at the start of dodgy, so gave it away.
Neutogena for face, now Pears for face. Love Pears. Imperial Leather for the rest. Went through a liquid soap phase for a while, but nothing beats a bar of soap and a thick face washer. Liquid soap can never become as creamy thick as the suds from a bar of soap.
As you were. 😀
BB at 9:19
It is often obvious when the part-time and weekend producers get in the big chair.
They flog their personal agenda hard.
The main objective is to garner lots of “you go girl!” – they are almost invariably girls – on Insta and over cocktails tonight.
And to samurai pursuits!
Elaborate a tiny bit and don’t assume we’re all focused on the war. If the Russians built a defensive wall and the Ukes haven’t attacked it, why is that incredible?
Huh. I haven’t used soap bars for ages. Fair dinkum, if I’ve run out of the liquid stuff and use Wifey’s bar soap, you come out of the shower feeling like a dried log. The thing I also hate about bar soap is that when it gets down to a tiny flat oval shape, you can’t make suds.
Bill, haven’t looked for the Youtube on it, but I recall that the finding was that a piece of metal on the runway from a Continental Airlines plane hit the fuel tanks and sparked an explosion.
The main reason offered for halting the plane’s production was that it was seriously flawed in design, with the fuel tanks exposed and in the wrong place.
Maybe the cost of production and running it had something to do with the end of Concorde too. I never travelled on it, it seemed too futuristic to me, and too expensive for what you got, although good friends of mine used it and loved the quick ‘crossing’ to NY. The footage of its demise on take-off is terrible, all those people heading to their doom. A spate of anti-German jokes also arose about it.
How Stuff Works – Death Star
Mentioned previously on a very old OOT, someone praised the French espionage seriesLe Bureau des Legendes, which is still available, until November, on SBS-on-Demand.
Tight script, complex, inter-weaved plot lines, realistic historical backgrounds and references, truly excellent acting and direction.
All expertly populated by flawed, fallible and relatable characters.. it’s all there and it’s infuriatingly addictive.
Breaking Bad is the only other series which can rival it. It’s that good!
It’s also a good introduction on the intrusion powers of the Intelligence agencies. What Edward Snowden warned us about.
You’ll never look at your mobile phone in the same way again.
Cannot recommend it highly enough.
Not a good idea in Russia to be a doctor to the great and powerful.
Chechen Leader Accused of Burying Family Doctor ‘Alive’ for Poisoning Him (11 Sep)
Putin’s top doctor arrested by FSB after being ‘caught trying to flee Russia’ (9 Sep)
Kadyrov is reported to be in a coma. He did look rather unwell some months ago, but whether any of it is real is hard to determine. Medical practice in Russia does seem a dangerous sport though.
The passengers on the doomed flight were mostly wealthy Germans.
One of my favourite ancients is Publilus Syrus who said:
. Marcus Aurelius also said a fair bit about reputation and honour. Sadly perhaps the human condition must be suffered because the is no single cure, I think loving and being loved comes close.
This may be of interest to some:-
I suspect very long link to survey prevented my first attempt at posting. Will have another crack at posting separately.
In the early 90s recession, there were deals with BA and AirFrance that if you bought business class, they’d give you one side of the ride on the Concorde if you gave away the points. I wanted the points,so I only took the deal a few times. It was an incredible experience. The cabin was no bigger than a 727 or a small 737 these days. If you took a window seat, which I did, you could look out and see the curvature of the earth. Look up, and it was black. Touched the window, and it was warm.
As soon as it began to hit the Atlantic coastline, the plane would just begin its second ascent, and you’d be off. Even the vibration of the turbulence was different. There were no bounces, but just very sharp vibrations.
There is still a Concorde at CDG near Terminal 4. There used to be a model at Heathrow, now displayed at Brooklands.
Whenever I pass through CDG I hope to see it on its stand in the roundabout. A link to a different era of flying and innovation.
A beautiful thing.
Here’s a Youtube on Concorde.
It has the same resonance for me as Houston Space Centre. Ingenuity, the will to do something different, difficult, to succeed.
Also, all the innovations that found there way into everyday life that wouldn’t be here had these aircraft not been developed.
Nope. Problem link. If anyone wants to have a look at the survey: Search Aust. Gov’t; Dep’t Health & Aged Care:- “Preparing for, and responding to, future pandemics and other international health emergencies”
Cassie:
He’s pointing out that he’s pissing on one of the most important tenets of the Church.
Only just discovered the Babylon Bees “Texans moving to California” episodes on Youtube.
Woke vegetarian gun hating pair meeting helpful Texans in episodes like the cookout and gun range. Worth a look if you like meat and guns and don’t like woke people.
Victoriastan noos:
Edie and Patsy were frequent flyers on the Concorde.
Fahrenheit 451 is set in the year 2022 or thereabouts.
Canadian school library removes all books published prior to 2008 (15 Sep)
Inclusivity now means not being allowed to read anything from before 2008.
Black Ball:
I’m not sure about all this. It’s confusing – and I think deliberately so.
About Document 14 – do you have a link to it so I can at least try to understand it?
Visited it in ’93, as well as the Kennedy space centre. Missed a shuttle landing by a couple of days, unfortunately.
“Chief Justice Mortimer found Mr Minack “ignored and downplayed” antisemitic bullying claims, made students feel so “unsafe” they moved schools and led a team of teachers who allowed swastika graffiti to remain on tables, lockers and walls.
She said Mr Minack was “not prepared to be empathetic or sympathetic towards Jewish students, their families, or issues dealing with Jewish people.””
Ahhh, there’s nothing quite like the stench of good old-fashioned progressive Jew hatred, although I’m sure one lurker here feels that Minack, the teachers and the students who engaged in the Jew hatred have…what was that again….ahhhh yes……”legitimate grievances”.
This is a test. This morning, before starting chores, I posted a few comments on various subjects on my iPad. They went into moderation, although they were totally innocuous. They now do not appear on the site.
Hmmm. No sign of being under scrutiny from this post via my computer – maybe something to do with my iPad.
Rather, claiming victory for ‘his people’ over the proles.
I mentioned on one of the vanished posts that husband and I were going to attend a talk by Jacinta Price at a venue in a local regional town, which I named. Is that forbidden?
you can split a television family into it’s constituent components by utilizing what’s called a Post-Modern Prism (PMP)
it was discovered recently that white, in a sense, is actually comprised of a spectrum of primary components including red-heads,
and the discovery of the PMP is credited as the main that Ranga actors are enjoying near full employment at this point in time
the reverse operation also works … if you choose just the right combination of primary components you can re-combine them into near a perfect family
not many people know that
Anyway, it seems Sydney has finally been gifted with some of that good ol’ gerbil broiling.
Much effort this morning dragging myself out of bed to get my run in before 9:00am.
28 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. There should be more of it.
Do you mean Californians moving to Texas, or is it a separate series.
If the former then there is the episode when they move back to California and realise they are now Texan.
worth a second mention.
Mentioned previously on a very old OOT, someone praised the French espionage seriesLe Bureau des Legendes,
If you liked The Bureau (they shortened the name after series 2) then the French plod series SPIRAL is also excellent and worth a look …….. 8 seasons and never loses it’s intensity ….. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477507/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
the French do very, very good plod drama .. another top notcher .. Braquo .. 4 seasons ..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1429534/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_4_nm_4_q_braquo
Advertising has resulted in me not buying various products, so there’s that at least. It’s certainly one of the grate annoyances of modern life.
Fire season well under way in our region. A couple of early grass fires caused by someone welding in a paddock. Today there is scheduled an RFS meeting at our local hall. I hope they discuss the hobby farms in the vicinity where grass is up to your knees. I doubt if the owners even possess a tractor and slasher.
The least popular landowners in the area are a couple of guys who bought an attractive, largely cleared property and promptly planted a forest of eucalypts. Since they didn’t seem to have a watering source, we all thought they would not survive. Not so. There is now a flourishing forest.
BoN – I initially thought that was a piece by the Bee.
Carn’ the Blues!
Long time between drinks.
BB, thanks for putting up that James Campbell column. We await the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments as Luigi and the left are stymied by ordinary voters’ common sense and steadfast refusal to be gamed.
Things will return to normal fairly quickly, if the nation stands firm. But I can’t see Luigi coming back from this, if it really goes down in a heap. His agenda is in tatters – nothing in the cupboard to speak of, except higher taxes and a weaker economy. From day one of this government, the other half has consistently said – “He’s a oncer”. I now am coming around to his thinking.
BBS, I fell asleep last night, so I’ve just watched the replay on Fox Footy.
Magnificent.
PS: Close finishes in finals isn’t just a thing; it’s the modern world and the AFL’s only unwoke contradiction.
The Russians have built three main lines of defense that involve trenches, anti-tank ditches, strongpoints, mine fields, etc. that take advantage of local terrain, communication and transportation lines, etc. They’re built in order to slow down any advance and make it as costly as possible to the enemy. to move. In some spots, killing zones are created around choke points that are recognized as areas that any advance is likely to pass. The area south east of Robotyne is one of these.
The Ukrainians have to get through three of these lines of defense to get to Melitopol, and two of them to get to Tokmak. Defense in depth works by using the territory you defend as part of your strategy. You fight and retreat as the enemy advances, lengthening his communications and supply lines as yours shorten, all the while as their combat ability dwindles from losses. This is why there’s a 3:1 rule for advances so you can cover losses and maintain momentum. The more territory you have to trade the stronger your defense in depth.
Keep in mind, the Russians had forces forward of their main line of defense as forward observers and screening forces. They employ the same tactics here as they do at the other three lines. You resist while you can and then retreat when the weight of the UKR advance is too heavy or you’re being outmaneuvered by superior numbers. For the last three months, the Russians have pretty much kept the Ukrainians in this zone. Robotyne is just ahead of the first main line of defense.
Ukraine have effectively destroyed the force they spent the last 8 months training and arming without even breaching the first main line of defense, and a recent US report indicated that the bulk of Russian forces remained behind the second main line of defense.
That’s why the report is incredible.
BTW, you misread the comment. They aren’t saying the Ukrainians haven’t attacked it. They’re saying the Russians should have allowed passage through these lines even when they never needed to simply because they had three lines to use. Can you see how dumb their claim is?
Feelthebern:
I think we’re about to find out how many Swamp Hooks are sunk into Chief Justice Roberts hide.
The Noers need a response to the Yessers concerts.
Let’s see now ……
How about a race meeting at Flemington ?
The Darby Munro Memorial. The Marcia Langton Handicap.
Tanya is saving us all!
‘Politics rather than science’: Federal policy places Tas salmon farming under threat (Sky News, 16 Sep)
Macquarie Harbour contains about 100 million tonnes of copper tailings from the Mt Lyell Mine. So to squawk about a bunch of fish farms threatening endangered species in the place seems more than a little bit hypocritical.
Okay, thanks Dover.
A little less detail, next time. 🙂
And the proliferation of same sex couples- cuddling, holding hands, not waking up baby, eating a Malteaser etc etc.
Arse covering – protection from bigot labeling.
In “ain’t karma a bitch” news, the ALPFL is being sued by a group of former players because of da waycism.
Here’s hoping they fleece those sanctimonious morons for many, many millions.
Me too, Tom, with five minutes to go… The other half called me but I had the phone on silent.
And I must say that when I saw them run out with white guernsies I was not impressed – white: the colour of surrender. But not this time. We are the Navy Blues!
Janet Albrechtsen in todays Weekend Paywallion (apologies if this has already been posted) : Indigenous voice to parliament: Abuse won’t win new Yes voters
JANET ALBRECHTSEN
12:00AM SEPTEMBER 16, 2023
After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, John F. Kennedy was asked why information about the failed mission was not forthcoming from government. “Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan,” the US president told the reporter.
Kennedy went on to say: “I am the responsible officer of the government.”
It is too early to say whether the voice referendum will succeed or fail. It is not too early, however, for Yes activists to start thinking about their positions. If the referendum does fail, who among them will take responsibility?
Certainly, Marcia Langton will have to assume some of the blame if the referendum falls short. Revelations this week that the high-profile Indigenous activist called Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her mother Bess Price the “coloured help” for conservative think tanks and accused one in every five voters of “spewing racism” cannot have helped the Yes cause. When was the last time abuse won an argument?
It was equally unhelpful to the Yes side when Langton said, last year, that it would be unfortunate if “the debate sinks into a nasty, eugenicist, 19th-century style of debate about the superior race versus the inferior race”. No one has made any such claim.
Langton aside, there are many heirs to Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” strategy.
Earlier this year Bret Walker, one of the country’s leading silks, described concerns about creating a body in an entirely new chapter in the Constitution as “racist”.
Late last year, Noel Pearson – another of the nation’s most high-profile Indigenous Yes advocates – said Jacinta Price’s strings were being pulled by white people. He said Price had her finger on the trigger of a gun loaded with bullets fashioned by white people. He accused Price of “punching down on other black fellas”.
This rank condescension towards an Indigenous woman who has different views to him has surely not enhanced Pearson’s reputation or helped the Yes campaign. No wonder many Australians are wondering how a new bureaucracy will in any way unite the country.
It is troubling that so many apparently smart people have not learned that being dismissive, rude and hectoring towards people with different views backfires. These Yes activists already have firm Yes voters on side. What part of their well-educated brain informs them that dividing people with offensive epithets will win over new Yes voters?
So, I say to my friend and Inquirer colleague Chris Kenny that my deep concerns about inserting a new chapter in the Constitution does not make me “flint-hearted”. It means only that I disagree with him about the legal, political and social consequences of this new body.
For decades, many on the left have made the mistake of treating critics as immoral rather than wrong. It is one of many polarising forces that has made politics utterly toxic, fuelling the rise of Donald Trump and other populists on the right.
Why on earth can’t we simply disagree rather than having wicked moral aspersions cast on our innermost characters?
Along with Pearson and Langton, other Yes activists should reflect on whether their model was entirely at odds with a democracy founded on equality. Their desire for better outcomes for the most vulnerable Indigenous people is laudable. But polls suggest they are not convincing enough Australians that a new bureaucracy, with no responsibilities but only rights to demand things, can alter the status quo of misery and dysfunction. If solutions are obvious then why haven’t they been tried? Could the hurdle be the mindset of so many Indigenous activists who, in all likelihood, will run this new bureaucracy?
Will the Prime Minister take any responsibility if the referendum fails? Will Anthony Albanese understand that Australians deserved better than a campaign that, from the start, was hamstrung by activists who would brook no compromise, and was laced in deception and emotion until the end?
Will the Prime Minister admit that, even as a supporter of a voice for Indigenous people, he should have been more arm’s-length, objective and curious about the voice model that activists insisted on putting to the Australian people?
Will Albanese recognise that a failed referendum, if that comes to pass, has nothing to do with racism but everything to do with maintaining the fabric of a society premised on equal civic rights for every person regardless of race, creed, sex, or time of arrival on our land? Will the political animal inside Albanese understand that, as he stood teary-eyed at the Garma Festival in May last year, millions of Australian households were already experiencing eye-watering cost-of-living pressures? When Albanese recommitted to the Uluru Statement from the Heart at Garma this year, living costs were at record highs, with most Australians listing it as the top priority for the federal government.
Whether the referendum succeeds or fails, there should be a reckoning for corporate Australia. Will pontificating directors and chief executives go back to the drawing board to determine their real purpose – to act in the interests of all shareholders, workers and customers? Patently, it is not their role to hector these constituencies about saying Yes to a highly contestable constitutional change.
Will these preachers for the voice realise that they turned the issue into the perfect vehicle for Australians to vent their frustration about everything that’s wrong with modern wokery?
Long before the voice was on the national agenda, too many causes traded on deception and dishonesty, pressing beloved phrases and motherhood statements into the service of ideological objectives. To take one example, words such as inclusiveness and tolerance are not all they’re cracked up to be in the hands of the censoriously woke. Just ask JK Rowling.
Arguments that the voice is a modest proposal and it is being polite to listen to Indigenous Australians fell flat for similar reasons. There is nothing modest about inserting a new chapter in the Constitution – alongside the one about the judiciary, the parliament and the executive. Politeness is not a reason to alter our system of governance. In any case, Pearson and Langton undermined the authenticity around this call to politeness.
Just as nattering about diversity and inclusion – especially within the big-city headquarters of the taxpayer-funded ABC – means anything other than intellectual diversity, so it came to pass among the Yes brigade.
The treatment of Price and Warren Mundine by so many Yes activists in public and behind the scenes revealed that not all Indigenous people deserve to be heard, let alone listened to politely. Those who worked behind the scenes are well known; they know what they have done to stifle debate and belittle those Indigenous people who didn’t join the Yes side.
The voice captured another common feature of 21st-century wokeness, with its focus on a class of people, to the exclusion of others, showing no interest whatsoever in recognising individual strengths and weaknesses. That translated into a stubborn focus on rights – what can the majority do for this group.
For all of Pearson’s minute-to-midnight return to responsibility, it’s hard to believe that a delicate and necessary balancing act of rights and responsibilities will be pursued by a new elite bureaucracy when none has shown any interest in responsibility over the past 50 years of Indigenous policymaking.
Another feature of modern wokery is the propensity to seek a radical change under cover of warm words. One recent example in the legal system involves talk about being victim-centric while trying to undermine the presumption of innocence.
A similar tactic is being used by voice activists.
Understandably, most people more concerned about cost-of-living and other daily issues have not read the Uluru statement, let alone the swath of academic writings that informs that statement and the voice model.
Just below the surface of the vibe is a radical movement devoted to treaty, sovereignty, reparations. The voice is the necessary first step to giving a small group of Indigenous people the position, boosted by their presence in the Constitution, to make those demands. The co-sovereignty movement has been driven by influential legal academics in Australia, not dissimilar to the critical rights theory originating among high-profile legal academics in the US.
It made sense for Indigenous and legal activists to try to hide this agenda given that many Australians may regard dividing the country with treaties, dual sovereignty and reparations as anathema to our democracy and our governance.
Failure may be an orphan but, if it comes to pass, many people will deserve blame for more than just a lost referendum. Even if the referendum wins, the conduct of many Yes activists has done little to unite the country.
JANET ALBRECHTSEN COLUMNIST
https://twitter.com/i/status/1702726288451183004
Anyone who watches this clip and thinks the coppers are there to protect the citizenry are fools.
Shit and curses…apologies for posting it in ‘bold’…grrrrr…
A Counsellor did her degree at Notre Dame University, graduating 2018. I was much enriched by assisting her write and edit her early essays. Their very good lecturers do not allow them to use citations older than 3 years in the essays.
Was anything written before 2015 that retains usefulness in modern understanding of human behaviour?
Was anything written after 2015 that was not more relevant to understanding human behaviour?
Are not earlier, revelatory seminal papers going to be critical in understanding the refining of current practice?
Will this wipe the teachable moments from the failures of past approaches, in Freud, in Shieldfield, in the innocent first human surgical lab rat for trans? In 7-nilligan and Lindy Chamberlain?
And this is an EXCELLENT university.
No Australian PM has resigned because of referenda being dismissed.
ha ha ha … has anyone asked Bill (the knife) Shorten what he thinks of that?
Bear, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.
We’ll see, said the archbishop to the actress, or, maybe it was the barmaid.
Thanks for the analysis of the Russian defence lines. We get so much pro-Zelensky rubbish in the MSM. It fails to explain the protracted nature of the conflict.
Australians tend to disregard most of it as “over there”. But when the conflict is integrated into the greater view of western trends (sociological as well as strategic) it is a significant strand in the overview of our prospects in the next few decades.
The Ig Nobels are out!
Repurposing dead spiders, counting cadaver nose hairs win Ig Nobels for comical scientific feats (Phys.org, 15 Sep)
Hopefully electrified chopsticks will make it easier to pick up a prawn.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Sep 16, 2023 11:10 AM
the frog Concorde crash
The main reason offered for halting the plane’s production was that it was seriously flawed in design, with the fuel tanks exposed and in the wrong place.
Nothing wrong wrong with where the fuel tanks were located at all. The modifications involved improved protection on the inside of the fuel tanks, strengthening of the landing gear and better tyres.
This ‘you choob’ analysis is very good –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-nALYF73hU
Happy New Year, Cassie.
Lost me there, Janet.
Why can’t journalists talk about Australia without weaving in their idiotic TDS in an attempt to give them traction with the undecided?
Cheap tactics from an otherwise sensible person.
Dot
Nope, my money is on the chance she will have a massive infract as her heart can no longer gain sustenance from her circulating fat. She will survive this (barely) and demand a transplant from a Blak person because otherwise racist. And demands from the surgeons and anaethetists who will do the op, that she drops off some of her weight will be assumed to be Fattist. She will then die and her family will get a payout of hundreds of millions of dollars and move to Marthas Vineyards next to the O’Bamas. Along with the extended family.
Win Win!
Exactly. Add to this that for many months Russia has been building an army adjacent to northern Ukraine of some 500,000+ troops with the supporting tanks and other armour, artillery, rocketry etc.
The heavily resourced but failed Ukr counter offensive is developing into a very dangerous phase IMO. Ukraine has been severely weakened with the carnage inflicted on it’s best trained troops , losing significant amounts of western supplied material. While Russia has kept it’s defensive lines fully intact. IF Putin decides to end the conflict in a single large operation basically trying to take all of Ukraine, what sizable on-the ground-defenses will oppose Russia? Is that when we see NATO intervene on the battlefield , directly engaging Russia? FMD.
Currently reading ..
KL .. a history of the concentration camps by Nikolaus Waschsmann
and had no idea that the camps were a pre-1933 intention and ready to go as soon as Hitler & the Nazi Party were consolidated in power ..
To give an idea of how advanced the plans were this is a large size, small print book and it doesn’t reach the start of WW2 until page 190 ….
The original camps were used to target anyone the Nazis didn’t like mainly communists, religion and opposition parties ..
Himmler gained overall control of the camp system in 1936 and greatly expanded when the Nazis realised they needed lotza labour for their post depression re-build and “free” labour is far cheaper than paid ….. the protection-for-your-own-good, original system was overtaken by the infamous “work sets you free” ideal and expanded to include anyone considered “lazy” ie: on the dole, itinerant workers, gypsies and petty criminals … basically, anyone a Nazi of any level or ilk didn’t like .. of course there were lots of jews interred but prior to 1938 they weren’t targetted much more than the other “deviants” as Himmler classified inmates ….
The book leaves you in no doubt (prior to WW2) that not only was the general German populace well aware of what went on in the “camps” but most agreed with the methods used ..
And this is was all happening long before January 20th 1942 .. the start of the Wannsee conference and the “Final Solution” decision(s) ……
865 pages long and 626 pages before the appendixes, notes & index and I’m 150 pages in sooooo a long way to go yet …….!
The Hun carrying water for the renewable investor sector again today.
Not a mention of the farmers and the millions of hectares they need to exploit in full blown net zero dementia.
Millions of tonnes of food gone and billions of export dollars lost.
Investors of the apocalypse.
Go Apple – Corporate Cringe – LOL
Heel v Babyface –
“Best advert for android I’ve ever seen. Dumping my Apple products like Mother Nature dumps her head in cake.”
https://twitter.com/heelvsbabyface/status/1702296788231700806
Also, everything appears normal on the GOP side at times.
The first few seasons were pretty decent : gripping in fact, but after that most of the episodes were car scenes, either following suspects around or waiting in their cars.
Oops, should be Californians moving to Texas.
No Texan in their right mind would move to CA.
Saw my first No campaigner in the street today. Sitting down by a main raid with a No to Division sign.
Only Yes guy seen was outside church driveway a couple of weeks ago. He was waving his Vote Yes sign so naturally I have him a thumbs down. Do I have to do Hail Mary’s for doing my part to ruin Australia’s international reputation and keep Aboriginals in poverty ?
Bill, haven’t looked for the Youtube on it
Fine, if you don’t want to.
You did post a different one but.
Hutchinson flew them for ages and would know about all things not to do prior to and during getting one airborne so I don’t think his review is a case of a little bit of knowledge being dangerous. He goes through the whole dreadful event.
The runway debris certainly was one of the factors but it’s much more complex. No point in me quoting him when it’s easily available.
Sorry about this crappy link, but an advantage to being an Octogenarian is that I don’t have to worry about it.
https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=cd1083938e41d609JmltdHM9MTY5NDczNjAwMCZpZ3VpZD0xNjMxNGE5ZC00MjYzLTYyMmItMzljMS01OTFkNDNiNjYzYzImaW5zaWQ9NTUyNA&ptn=3&hsh=3&fclid=16314a9d-4263-622b-39c1-591d43b663c2&u=a1L3ZpZGVvcy9yaXZlcnZpZXcvcmVsYXRlZHZpZGVvP3E9aHV0Y2luc29uK29uK2NvbmNvcmRlK2NyYXNoJm1pZD03NEMyNkQwNkY4M0UzNDE5OThBRDc0QzI2RDA2RjgzRTM0MTk5OEFE&ntb=1
Today in history.
Eighty years ago today, the significant Japanese airstrip and base at Lae on the Huon Gulf in Papua New Guinea, was recaptured by the 7th and 9th Australian Divisions.
Their most forward defensive area just to the south at Salamaua, had been re-entered and declared clear, four days previously. Together, these two operations were milestones in pushing the Japanese from the New Guinea mainland, though the war in far northern New Guinea continued until the very end in 1945.
The planning to capture the barge staging area of Finschhafen, near the southeastern corner of the Huon Peninsula, began immediately, though there was a good deal of tension between Australian planners and GHQ SWPA (almost completely American) regarding intelligence estimates of the enemy’s presence at and around Finschhafen. The Australians were proven more correct, and the Japanese put up a strong fight.
One of the least successful elements of the Lae operation (code named Postern), however, was that roughly 10,000 Japanese were allowed to escape the much vaunted (in the press, and talked-up by senior officials) ‘pincers’ of the 7th Division approaching from the west, and the 9th Div from the northeast. About 5,000 of these had evacuated from Salamaua just days previously, and though many weapons and much equipment had to be discarded along the main route of escape through the mountains, and illness and starvation took a substantial toll, enough survivors remained to keep the Australian 5th and 6th Divisions occupied for the following 20 months.
It was impossible in that environment for any watertight ‘ring’ to be set around an enemy concentration, as naively speculated in the press, however, had the enemy numbers been whittled far more effectively at and around Lae, that success may have freed at least some Australian frontline troops at a time when the manpower issue back home was becoming acute.
Leave aside the taxes issue, but you don’t have to even see the homeless or hang around the nasty parts of cities with crime problems. Cal weather is just perfect on the coast the places like Beverly Hills, Orange County, the burbs surrounding SF are really nice. The summer in Texas is unbearable. You just don’t try to avoid the nasty parts, there’s no reason to go there.
On the 1st page of this thread 1 Timothy 2:12 was mentioned a few times.
I put forward here a Catholic answer.
One of the unfortunate characteristics of British and Australian so-called conservatives is who they see as “nice” people, rather than the causes and principles being espoused by conservatives.
Most Australian and British conservatives see Donald Trump as a gauche loudmouth who’d never be invited to their dinner parties because he refuses to give an inch to his ideological enemies, who are currently attempting to have him jailed because he is popular and a threat to their political power.
Unfortunately, people like Janet Albrectsen and John Howard, in this respect, have become apologists for fascists and fascism.
Cassie of Sydney
So what are you going to do when you wake up several weeks later, and after the ‘missing bundles’ of Yes votes, the rejected No votes, and realise the Yes vote has won?
I keep asking this question and so far there hasn’t been one answer to it that is feasable.
Is it because there is no answer beyond ranting in forums, maybe a protest march or two – which I have no doubt will be vigorously dispersed by the Police.
Just back from the shops – Bridgepoint in salubrious Mosman.
When I approached the entrance on the way in there was a Yes-man and a ‘No’ble handing out fliers. I made a wide enough arc to convince the Yes-man I wanted nothing to do with him and told the No bloke I was already voting No.
On the way out I had bought him a small sparkling mineral water – it being a hot day. I gave it to him saying since I couldn’t give him a Qantas flight…
He responded “You know the first rule of flight club?”
Lizzie:
I downticked you for the picture that was generated in my mind.
You owe me several hundred neurons.
That really is the question now. What is going to be done with the reserve the Russians have north and
west(sorry, east). If they worry taking all of Ukraine would result in a NATO response maybe they think a more limited focus on Kiev and everything east of the Dnieper will produce a something better than a frozen conflict but falls short of precipitating a NATO response. Still, I just can’t see NATO being silly enough to enter directly in that scenario and I don’t think Russians want Western Ukraine either. They want enough territory to buy themselves space and capitulation or what is practically the same thing.Just back from the shops – Bridgepoint in salubrious Mosman.
When I approached the entrance on the way in there was a Yes-man and a ‘No’ble handing out fliers. I made a wide enough arc to convince the Yes-man I wanted nothing to do with him and told the No bloke I was already voting No.
Damn! Missed an opportunity. In country for RFS meeting.
Johnny R, that’s the same Youtube video on Concorde that I put up after Bill’s comment to my initial comment.
I’ve watched the whole thing when I put it up, It’s pretty comprehensive. The modifications made improved the safety but the design of the fuel tanks moving fuel around to stabilize weight seems inherently unsafe to me and apparently to the wealthy travelling public also. Perhaps that’s why even after corrections it wasn’t a much favoured plane and is out of production. Cost factors were also relevant, as I noted, as was 9/11, as the video suggests.
Leave aside the taxes issue, but you don’t have to even see the homeless or hang around the nasty parts of cities with crime problems. Cal weather is just perfect on the coast the places like Beverly Hills, Orange County, the burbs surrounding SF are really nice. The summer in Texas is unbearable. You just don’t try to avoid the nasty parts, there’s no reason to go there.
Nope. The weather in Qld is great, too. But I don’t want to live there.
The article regarding the Brighton Secondary College reads as a resounding win to the five claimants
Not necessarily so
They were seeking $1 million dollars each in damages with 20 claims against the school
They received $60,000 in damages with 90% of their claims thrown out/rejected
There have been hundreds of Jewish children come through the school over the last 25 years (dozens every year) but only 5 made claims against the school
The judge threw them some scraps , but not the pot of gold they were looking for
First in Double Bay, now Mosman. I think the No vote is putting its energies into the wrong places. Guess locals voting No and helping out don’t want to travel to outer suburbs. As I haven’t volunteered (too busy getting away) I am in no position to criticise though. Whatever. Seeing the No vote out and about is a good thing regardless.
Was that the ‘sow in the shower’ imagery? I didn’t create that.
All I did was invite people to use their imaginations.
Apparently yours too seems to have gone into overdrive.
lol. Such an imaginative lot! 🙂
Latinos for Trump
(Music clip on youtube).
Bill P. That video is quite illuminating.
Link here John Hutchinson on Air France Flight 4590
Thanks for the heads up.
Makka:
This was the point I made in my infrequent forays into this act of gross stupidity, Russia has form for allowing an attacking army to batter itself senseless against a defensive position and feeding in just enough troops to allow the slaughter to continue, while building up its reserves for the counterattack.
It worked in Stalingrad, and it worked in the Kursk Offensive.
Not really. The humidity in QLD during the summer months is dreadful. Okay in the winter. San Diego has temps of 80F during the day, sunny and cool nights all year round.
The problem areas in the US are concentrated, which is why you don’t see a great deal of pissed off whites yet.
I’ll give you an example. The better areas in NYC are basically untouched with crime infestation. They clean and crime free. No one in those neighborhoods gives a toss about what’s happening in Harlem of the Bronx. They just don’t care. As it should be given the behavior of the Demonrat local and state government.
Whoops they’re…. or the Bronx.
I found this article yesterday very interesting:
THE TALMUD FOR TODAY’S WORLD
by Tevi Troy and Noam Wasserman
9 . 14 . 23
I love living where we are. I’m ageing in place here. It’s a lovely spot.
The climate’s good too, Queensland near the grandies is too hot.
You can learn to ignore the debris of climate hopey-changers who litter our suburb clutching those strangely identifying Merkin, sorry Birkin, bags. You just have to walk on by the unsightly gangland encampments they set up in the cafes and on the local beaches toting their inbred animals around in a Dior harness.
If you do that it’s a pleasant enough place to live. 🙂
Pogria
Sep 16, 2023 8:58 AM
This is the part that distresses me most.
Living in a place that will never offer a chance of meaningful employment or a purpose in life, just vegetating is criminal in my view.
What JC never tells you is that the Upper East Side is neighbored to East Harlem. Once you get close to E 100 and above the mood changes.
He will likely fail again.
Robert Sewell
Sep 16, 2023 11:40 AM
Black Ball:
A few months ago, the National Indigenous Australians Agency released records of the 14 regional Dialogues on constitutional recognition that preceded the Uluru Statement of the Heart.
The document is 112 pages long.
Is this the one you mean?
Confusingly, it begins at the end with “Document 14”, labelled this way because it’s a record of the 14th and final Dialogue held at a resort in Yulara, near Uluru, during which the document known as the “Uluru Statement from the Heart” was released.
Documents one to 13 follow, being records of the 13 Dialogues that preceded it.
I’m not sure about all this. It’s confusing – and I think deliberately so.
About Document 14 – do you have a link to it so I can at least try to understand it?
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-voice/2023/08/paging-the-meaning-of-document-14/
Read Document 14 – ULURU STATEMENT – Pages 87-112
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Sep 16, 2023 1:27 PM
Thanks Lizzie and I didn’t see that you had already posted the video.
I think that the other reason for discontinuing the Concord was that they were running out of spare parts. Why they couldn’t make any more; I don’t know.
Cheers
You spurred me to look one up, Bill. A surprisingly good one it turned out to be.
There are quite a few on Youbeaut but the all seem to tell the same story. The piece of metal and an accident blowing a tyre, which smashed into the fuel in the wing underside. Blown tyres happened a lot on Concorde, which the investigating group ‘solved’ with a better tyre. They also wanted Kevlar lining on the tanks and better electrical wiring. But those fuel tanks were still a design flaw, imo, shifting fuel around in order to generate thrust depending on overall weight (that flight was also overweight) and a tank rupture creating a stream of fuel could still be fired by any ‘leccy spark and melt the wing structures, as happened during the accident.
A beautiful but fundamentally impractical plane.
To be avoid at nearly all costs.
I thought Harlem was.pretty hip now or it was 10 years ago. Haven’t been to NY since 2014.and.it was pretty good then. As much as I could tell from a brief visit anyway.
the design of the fuel tanks moving fuel around to stabilize weight seems inherently unsafe
Don’t all big jets have this?
Mentour Pilot’s perspective is pretty good but I think Hutchinson’s is better.
He flew them.
You don’t want to watch it?
Ok.
The AFR View
Migrant nation is good for jobs
The return of immigration is relieving skills shortages, easing inflation pressures and contributing to the record 14.1 million people in jobs.
The return of immigration is relieving skills shortages, easing inflation pressures and contributing to the record 14.1 million people in jobs.
This week’s strong employment figures are really a story about population and immigration helping deliver prosperity in post-pandemic Australia.
Just over 12 months after the international border reopened, net overseas migration accounted for 81 per cent of the record 563,000 increase in population in the year to March 31.
Separate data showed employment rebounded by almost 65,000 in August while a record-high participation rate held down the unemployment rate at near a 50-year low of 3.7 per cent.
The return of skilled workers, foreign students and working holidaymakers is easing construction labour shortages that were lamented at The Australian Financial Review Property Summit this week.
Yet, some critics have warned against a return to the “Big Australia”.
The reality is Australia’s population of 26.5 million has only just made up the lost ground for two years of border closures.
The population is now in line with where it was projected pre-COVID to be at this stage.
As a frontier economy at the foot of the faster-growing Asia region, Australia should continue to entice talented foreigners to our shores to work and live.
Lost in the global outcry over property developer Tim Gurner’s “truth bombs” on work ethic and productivity at the Summit, was his message on immigration.
“Australia doesn’t work without immigration and if we’re not growing, we’re dead,” he said.
The foreign students and holiday-makers are producing export revenue, as Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledges.
Migrants tend to work more, earn more, are younger and deliver more taxes than the typical Australian. In a more dangerous geopolitical world, a larger population also makes Australia safer.
Outgoing Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe has observed that foreigners want to come to Australia because “this is one of the best places in the world to live”.
As a frontier economy at the foot of the faster-growing Asia region, Australia should continue to entice talented foreigners to our shores to work and live.
The challenge, of course, is building enough homes to house the growing population. Cutting immigration would be a lazy, short-term fix, without unblocking the supply-side bottlenecks in the housing market that are constraining the construction of new homes.
At our Summit, big property developers scoffed at the federal and state government target to build 1.2 million homes over the next five years. It is a worthy goal, but a lot more action is required.
There are not enough construction workers to build the homes, warned Perth developer Nigel Satterley. Burdensome zoning and planning red tape imposed by state and local governments is delaying desperately needed housing projects.
Former Reserve Bank economist Tony Richards estimates that Australia could have built an extra 1.3 million homes over the past 20 years if the zoning and planning system was not so stifling.
Cutting red tape for business and entrepreneurs would also help Australia lift its waning productivity, which has fallen back to March 2016 levels.
Sustained improvements
The independent Productivity Commission has exposed that the only durable way to lift real wages is through sustained productivity improvements.
Latest commission research shows that 95 per cent of workers are getting real pay rises broadly in line with productivity growth, dismissing union claims that workers are not receiving their fair share.
The real problem is that an economy-wide deterioration in labour productivity growth since the reform era dividend of the 1990s has robbed each Australian of as much as $25,000 a year.
This is a reality check for Treasurer Jim Chalmers, as he prepares to release an employment white paper.
The government’s jobs blueprint, due before the October 14 Voice referendum, will outline how Labor will seek to achieve full employment, rising real wages and “job security” for workers.
Yet, Labor’s re-regulation of the workplace heads in the opposite direction, by handing more power to unions, reducing workplace flexibility and blithely admitting that it could send some digital work platforms packing.
Builders know too well how the militant CFMEU frustrates projects and adds to building costs.
To grow in a competitive world and win the global war for talent, Australia needs a laser-like focus on productivity via incentive-sharpening reforms to tax, workplace relations and regulation.
The forces arrayed against each other now compared to then is completely different. Russians then had less in the field then the Ukrainians whereas this is now significantly reversed (caveats given the info).
those fuel tanks were still a design flaw, imo, shifting fuel around in order to generate thrust depending on overall weight.
Are you sure you watched it?
NSW government’s termination of electric vehicle subsidies rebuked by national body for going against public’s ‘best interests’
The Electric Vehicle Council has condemned the NSW government’s decision to end incentives for new EV purchases, saying the policy will impede low-income households from buying “superior cars”.
The Electric Vehicle Council (EVC) has criticised the New South Wales government’s forthcoming decision to abandon rebates on EV purchases, arguing the move will worsen income inequality across Sydney.
Ahead of the NSW state budget announcement on Tuesday, reports revealed Treasurer Daniel Mookhey is set to terminate the current $3,000 incentive for drivers who buy new electric vehicles and funnel the savings into building more base infrastructure.
From January 1 next year, stamp duty will also be reintroduced for new EV purchases along with rebate removals, with the government forecasting $527 million in savings from the move, a large portion of which will then be invested into constructing charging stations in regional areas and for those without access to home charging like apartment dwellers and renters.
Mr Mookhey says the changes will help better distribute government spending benefits across a broader demographic base, but the EVC reasons it will only do the opposite.
“The NSW incentives, combined with more affordable EV imports, were just starting to drive significant uptake in Sydney’s west and the state’s regions,” EVC chief executive Behyad Jafari said in a statement.
“Wealthy people on the north shore will be fine under this change – they’ll continue to buy EVs, because they know they’re a superior option. But less well-off families in the west will be forced to stick to costly gas guzzlers and a time when petrol prices are going through the roof.
“Fewer EVs means dirtier Sydney air, continued reliance on foreign oil imports, higher carbon emissions, and more budget pressure on everyday households. It’s foolish, short-sighted policy from a government that people would have expected more from.”
The subsidies were put in place to incentivise the switch to emission-friendly electric cars, which typically come at a higher price point than their petrol and diesel counterparts.
Under the NSW Electric Vehicle Strategy, drivers purchasing new EVs under $78,000 were exempt from paying motor vehicle stamp duties of $2,500 on average until July 2027 when a new road user charge would have been introduced.
“This important tax reform was in the best interest of motorists by replacing an upfront tax that often stopped people from getting into a newer, cleaner car,” Mr Jafari said.
NSW’s EV policy was expected to increase sales to 52 per cent by 2031 and accelerate movement towards the government’s 2050 net-zero emissions target.
Other Australian jurisdictions each has its own EV incentive in place, with Queensland offering the highest benefit of $6,000 in rebates and 33 per cent discount on stamp duty.
Victoria launched a $3,000 subsidy in May 2021, but prematurely terminated the program in June this year, claiming the incentive had been utilised lower than expected at just 10,000 rebates claimed.
The subsidy program had proved effective, according to data analyses from the NRMA, with the total market share of EVs in Australia increasing from about three per cent in 2022 to 7.4 per cent in the first half of 2023.
From the Comments
– Not one dollar of taxpayer money should be spent on either subsidising EVs or building charging stations. If the cost of the vehicle is too high, then that is a market issue which should be remedied by business not taxpayers. Petrol stations are privately funded by business so if EV charging points are financially viable business will build them.
– Blackout Bowens 2030 EV fantasy is falling in a heap.
– Wonder if Teals are still thinking of trading up to a new EV now there is no subsidy. I bet they won’t want to pay the extra costs. lol . tickle myself sometimes
– Only a fool would buy an EV.
Praise the Lord.
– You would have to be crazy to buy an EV, green energy isn’t going to charge them, that’s for sure.
The problem areas in the US are concentrated, which is why you don’t see a great deal of pissed off whites yet.
Actually JC, I love the USA. We have done several road trips around the states over our lifetime. My favourite general terrain is the eastern seaboard and adjacent rural areas. In 2013 we wanted to see America “in the Fall” & to see the red barns & covered bridges. We rented a car in NY & drove up through Connecticut, Rhode Island, and then into New Hampshire and Vermont. Beautiful, beautiful country.
We drove north into Canada, stayed briefly in Montreal (which we didn’t much like) & drove north of the lakes to Niagara, & then SE down into the Catskills. Once again, different – but beautiful country. After that, further south into Pennsylvania (staying over to visit Amish farm & places open to visitors) and down to Washington. Met some wonderful Americans during this journey.
We finished by driving back NE up the Jersey Turnpike, avoiding NY to drive up into Long Island. Not that fussed about this upmarket area. The train into NY was OK, but negotiating that multi-lanes road back into NY was awful.
But back to the subject of US cities and towns. Driving through the country and staying in major cities, as we have, has given us a good “feel” for the land – and we like it very much. But what has recently much broadened our perception of how people live – and the quality of their life – is actually the 94Life Channel on TV! We watch it regularly. The channel specialises in US home purchases and renovations. It is a real eye opener, in respect to the quality of American building (which Aussie builders often poo-hoo!), but particularly the astonishing beauty of many places that you might not hear of, and are not on the main tourist track. It damn well confirms why the grater part of the world “wants to go to America “ !!!
The main reason Concorde failed commercially was obsolescence.
Its 1960s technology was incredibly expensive per seat to operate. Additionally, it was banned from flying supersonically over land — a ban on supersonic transports (SSTs) that still exists.
New SST projects like Boom are entering the commercial market with the supersonic ban still in place by concentrating the business case on flying over-water routes — of which there are many with strong commercial visability with the Boom SST’s updated technology, using composites, for example, based on business class fares.
A Sydney-New York SST route, for example, could have two stops in Panama and Tahiti that would still enable the current end-to-end trip time of 20-24 hours to be roughly halved.
Harlem traverses the whole island. East is worse than West. East isn’t that bad, but is dicey at night near projects. West Harlem is fantastic in pockets, but has its not so nice side. We lived in West Harlem for a while and never had a problem and by the time we left there were some great eateries nearby.
fundamentally impractical plane.
Not for it’s market.
It would also have sold well without the environmental loons.
‘National hero’: Peta Credlin praises Jacinta Price’s ‘moral courage’
Sky News host Peta Credlin has praised Shadow Indigenous Affairs Minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s “moral courage” for standing up to “noisy bullies” among her peers.
Ms Price fronted the National Press Club on Thursday where she was asked about the impact of intergenerational trauma on Indigenous communities.
She rejected the idea that Indigenous people were suffering negative impacts from colonisation and instead highlighted the “positive impacts”.
“Honestly, for standing up against the misguided separatism that’s made things such a mess in remote Australia, this woman is a national hero,” Ms Credlin said.
BTW it is a great shame that many Aussies just visit LA & Disneyland, or go skiing in Aspen & other ski resorts.
The Moron Generation – just as well their food comes from the supermarket, or their mum.
James Melville
@JamesMelville
“Farming needs to stop”.
Good luck finding food then. – 4 Secs
This man runs Energy policy in Australia.
Saturday, 16 September 2023
Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Perfect Photo of Blackout Bowen with Images of his Idiot Labor/Greens/TEAL Comrades to his right
A little known fact about the Concorde is that, with Concorde’s popularity in the 1960s, air transport’s widebody successor to the Boeing 707, the 747 jumbo, was originally designed to become a cargo transport, with a hinge on the cockpit designed to open so that big cargo containers could be quickly loaded through the jumbo’s nose.
Boeing thought SSTs would make the 747 obsolete as a passenger transport. In fact, the 747’s latest version, the 747-8i, is still in production after almost 60 years on the assembly line, to be finally retired in the next year or so.
The AFR quietly skates over the reality that we get a mix of “talented” and less so, in part at least because of the focus on numbers, rather than exclusively skills. And the indifference to gross cultural differences does not help.
Just finished a bit of sewing*.
About to kick into the ironing.
*Sewing, for the non-self-sufficient, is best done with a level of swearing commensurate with building a deck or changing a tyre on a dirt road in 44 degrees.
Strange World
Billionaire chicken heiress Katie Ingham ties the knot barefoot to girlfriend Ali Rosenberg at exclusive Italian hotel – after siblings married this European summer in Paris and Sicily
Vicki, too right. Upstate NY is great. I’d love to travel all of New England, particular in Fall. My favorite time of year was the period from Halloween to Christmas. Just loved it. Montreal, just across the boarder was lovely too, as was Ottawa. The St Lawrence is a mighty river. It’s a beautiful part of the world. Hard to believe that the Pacific North West is probably even more so.
Its 1960s technology was incredibly expensive per seat to operate. Additionally, it was banned from flying supersonically over land — a ban on supersonic transports (SSTs) that still exists.
That’s about it Tom.
Not that it was a bad design.
Robert Sewell I have it on PDF so here is what Document 14 says:
We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the
southern sky, make this statement from the heart:
Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the
Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs.
This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according
to the common law from ‘time immemorial’, and according to science more than 60,000 years
ago.
This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’,
and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain
attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is
the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or
extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.
How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred
link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?
With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient
sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.
Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately
criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This
cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene
numbers. They should be our hope for the future.
These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the
torment of our powerlessness.
We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own
country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in
two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.
We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures
our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better
future for our children based on justice and self-determination.
We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between
governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.
In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek
across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people
for a better future.
Re the War College paper linked to above:
Does anyone think, outside of a direct attack on the continental US, that they could sustain these losses without civil unrest?
It’s 26 pages long lol. I can email it to you if DoverLord can forward your email to me?
The young man who wants to end farming should be told that boycotts works aka Budweiser, that is, he should himself not partake of any food that comes from a farm. Forthwith.
Who wants to relive a nightmare. 🙂
They used to call 96th street the DMZ.
Yet, some critics have warned against a return to the “Big Australia”.
The reality is Australia’s population of 26.5 million has only just made up the lost ground for two years of border closures.
The population is now in line with where it was projected pre-COVID to be at this stage.
I have always thought that the obsession with population numbers is wrong. The population of Switzerland is tiny in comparison to ours – but it is an economic powerhouse. Israel, too, inspire of its history and political turmoil, continues to excel in many fields.
We continue to export the mineral and agricultural products to the world, but not develop any niche market that would contribute similar value. Oh – I forgot – we provide tertiary education opportunities to the underdeveloped world, but I fail to see how the nation prospers because of it. We are fundamentally a service economy locally, and we now seem to intend on importing foreigners to service.
Honestly, is there any place prettier? Just before COVID we did the train along the Hudson from CT to NY. Never did it before and its just unreal. The rail line runs right next to the river. The Hudson is one mighty waterway.
\
I watched a docco on the moon last week. Placed the Earth and Moon age around 4.15 billion years*.
…so the indigies claim ‘alway was always will be’ is misinformation.
* same timeframe as The next expected Labor surplus.
Well done that bouncer. The blue shirt prick deserved another tonk to the head after spitting on him.
The clip was cut to short.
—
steveinman:
Bouncer vs Drunk Soy Boys
Vicki
Sep 16, 2023 2:30 PM
BTW it is a great shame that many Aussies just visit LA & Disneyland, or go skiing in Aspen & other ski resorts.
Youngest Tribe currently on Once in Lifetime Frequent Flyer Points across US – unfortunatley – meant via AA SYD-LAX -CLT-LGW -total disatser
– No Food other than biscuits or Entertainment LAX-CTL – I Watched on Flightradar24 as they sat on ground CTL as their roamed around airport for 5 hours before, I assume Pilots ran out of hours at 1230AM as Newark was not allowing flights to depart – total chaos and with 200 people swarming counter were lucky to rebook CTL-PHL and Uber to friends place in Princeton Junction – Bags went to Newark
Went up to NYC with Friends for Baseball Game 7 Got Hailed upon, rained soaked and had to leave after 3 innings – thankfully friends kids were able to lend clothes
Trained up to Manhattan and their bags were reunited in their Hotel
JFK-DCA-LAX ex JFK was AA subsidiary & they got stung USD$90 for Luggage – again – No food or entertainment on both legs (Biscuits DCA-LAX)
Thankfully at LAX, 9 year old chundered before Uber arrived to take them to Anaheim and Daughter was able to roughly clean him up
Things now looking better & after couple days will get their RV & head off Palm Springs, Grand Canyon, Las vegas, Yosemite then West Coast – Fingers Crossed – at least QF LAX-SYD on A380 home
Reason for Newark Problems from WSJ today
Staffing Shortage at Air-Traffic Control Means More Cuts of New York Flights
Delays and cancellations could increase without flying reductions, FAA says
A staffing shortage at a key New York air-traffic control facility will continue to disrupt travel through next fall, and airlines will be allowed to cut back on flying in the region for another year.
Airlines were allowed to reduce schedules in the New York area all summer, after the Federal Aviation Administration said that a facility there had only 54% of the fully-trained controllers it needed.
On Friday, the FAA said the facility still doesn’t have enough certified controllers to handle normal traffic levels.
The agency will allow airlines to forgo using up to 10% of their slots or runway timings through Oct. 26 next year at the three major airports serving New York City and for flights between New York and Washington D.C.’s Reagan National Airport.
Without extending the flying cuts, the FAA said it would expect delays and cancellations in New York to increase. Normally, carriers that don’t use their takeoff and landing rights at certain airports risk losing them. The FAA encouraged airlines to trim flying during the busiest, most congested times of day.
Airlines for America, which represents major carriers, said it appreciated the extension.
Despite the reduced flying, the New York area has been prone to significant flight disruptions, particularly when bad weather hits.
United Airlines Chief Executive Scott Kirby said the FAA’s controller shortage is amplifying weather disruptions in the New York area.
“The impact of weather today is several times worse than it was historically,” he said at an aviation event in Washington, D.C., this week. “The same weather that in the past we could have managed though now can cause hundreds of delays—or hundreds of even cancellations.”
Airlines had sought an extension of the cutbacks, saying they needed more notice to be able to plan their schedules. JetBlue Airways Chief Executive Robin Hayes said at the same event that even the 10% reduction hadn’t been deep enough.
“Even on days where we saw industry cancel flights and weather move out, it took a long time to get going again,” he said.
The FAA said it is working with the union that represents air-traffic controllers on a long-term solution to solve what it described as chronically low levels of fully certified controllers at the facility.
She deserved that punch to the head.
—-
steveinman:
Wedding Nightmare: From Classy To Trashy
They’re physically very small countries and intensely populated, which also goes to show that people in close proximity with relatively stable government can do wonders.
If you think about it, Australia is not as sparsely populated as we generally believe. 90% of the population lives in the great cities, which is where the vast bulk of the nation’s GDP is produced.
humans + close proximity to each other + stable government = wealthy citizens.
Investment is a scarce resource. Lot’s of people, even some morons here belittle digging stuff out of the ground or having an excellent agricultural base, but our miners and farmers are the most efficient in the world. These two industries are also very capital intensive.
Also, don’t forget that we do have niche industry. We have excellent specialized engineering firms. They’re small but really good.
That’s okay too as these people pay their full freight and pay with foreign currency. They help keep fees down for Australian kids and importantly their inward bound foreign currency helps hold up the value of the Australian dollar thereby assisting the rest of us to purchase relatively cheaper imports.
A UAW Strike Made in Washington
The underlying cause of the auto walkout is the Biden Administration’s forced electric-vehicle transition.
By The WSJ Editorial Board
Shawn Fain narrowly won election as United Auto Workers president in March on a platform of new militancy against U.S. auto companies. He now has the strike he appears to have wanted, as the union simultaneously struck GM, Ford and Stellantis on Friday for the first time in history.
“This boils down to one thing: It’s corporate greed,” Mr. Fain declared. The UAW is calling walkouts at select plants to minimize how much it has to pay workers from its $825 million strike fund while still causing pain for auto makers. On Friday the union targeted three truck and SUV plants that produce some of the auto makers’ most profitable vehicles.
Mr. Fain wants a larger share of auto-maker profits, but Detroit’s Big Three say his demands would make them less competitive against non-union car makers like Tesla and lead to losses. He wants a 36% pay increase over four years, a 32-hour workweek with overtime for additional hours, the restoration of retiree health benefits, and defined-benefit pensions (rather than 401(k)s) for all workers, as well as cost-of-living adjustments.
The three auto makers have raised their initial wage offers to increases between 17.5% and 20%, plus large one-time payments and improved fringe benefits including time off. But a 32-hour workweek and restoration of retirement benefits for newer workers, which ended when the auto makers careened toward insolvency in 2007, are nonstarters.
In many ways, this strike is made in Washington because of the Biden Administration’s policy mandating a rapid transition to electric vehicles.
The UAW knows that EVs require fewer workers to make and will jeopardize union jobs making gas-powered cars. But the companies already lose money on EVs and worry about making too many concessions to the UAW that will cause them to lose even more as they are forced to build more EVs.
It’s hard to overstate the costs of this coerced EV transition.
The Biden Administration, with California as its co-enforcer, is mandating that EVs make up an increasing share of auto-maker sales—two-thirds by 2032. California and other progressive states plan to ban all new gas-powered cars by 2035.
But last year EVs made up less than 3% of Detroit auto maker sales. Auto makers are increasingly steering profits from their popular gas-powered pickups and SUVs into cranking up EV production and subsidizing their sales to meet the government mandates.
GM and Stellantis in 2021 each committed to spending about $35 billion through 2025 on electric and “alternative” vehicles. Ford last year said it would invest $50 billion in EVs through 2026. Even with the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous subsidies for battery production and for EV buyers, the companies can’t accept the UAW’s demands without putting profitability at risk. Ford lost nearly $60,000 on each EV it sold in 2023’s first quarter.
The companies have already laid off thousands of salaried workers, including engineers, to finance the EV transition. Assembly-line workers so far have been largely spared. But Mr. Fain knows that auto makers will ultimately have to shut down union plants that produce gas-powered vehicles, as Stellantis did a Jeep Cherokee plant last December.
All of this raises the stakes for both sides at the bargaining table. The companies may decide to make greater concessions to buy short-term labor peace, especially if the White House applies political pressure. Yet the strike is reinforcing the message that auto makers should build their EVs as far away from the UAW’s reach as possible, whether in right-to-work U.S. states or Mexico.
Mr. Fain may look like a hero to his members now as he fights the bosses in the C suite.
But if the result is less competitive companies, the ultimate losers will be those same members when their jobs disappear.
And they should direct some of the blame at the misguided industrial policy of the man in the Oval Office.
For the Trump supporters here – you may enjoy this interesting assessment of why Trump can win. There’s not much I would disagree with.
https://open.substack.com/pub/sashastone/p/why-trump-why-now?r=j2j4d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Vicki the tertiary education opportunities we provide are to allow foreigners on student visas to buy property here. There’s over 600,000 of them here. Our governments like the income.
“US Navy ditches recruitment campaign featuring a trannie after finding it was turning potential enlistees off joining”.
The Taliban air force had a similar problem with homo pilots.
Had to turn to press gangs.
Read Document 14 – ULURU STATEMENT – Pages 87-112
Thank you, OldOzzie.
JC – a sanguine assessment of my concerns.
I can’t, however, concede the issue of the OS students. Although it is many years since I was involved in the territory sector, I have observed through secondary avenues the incremental destruction of the quality of our universities. And this is not simply a question of the infiltration of Woke philosophy, post modernism or any of the other diseases.
Granted, the fee-paying OS students have allowed for the saturation of universities with our own young people in tertiary institutions. The latter, however, has contributed to the degradation of the institutions. While I welcomed the expansion of opportunities for working class kids, like so many enterprises, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Many, many kids are languishing in courses that will get them nowhere in the open economy. Meantime, OS students both obtain degrees using dubious assignment techniques, and then successfully use various methods to obtain permanency.
Petros, the pressure built up in Australian real estate is 100% government created. High real estate/ land caused by government policy is poison to any economy.
Big John’s shadow looms large at Princes Park.
The View from the West Side – Paywalled – Long Read
FT – The hard lessons from Ukraine’s summer offensive
The country’s military is enjoying some success but it will be slow-going and requires allies to increase ammunition supplies
“Yes, people tend to want [results] immediately. This is understandable,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a conference in Kyiv last weekend, speaking about Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive. “But this is not like a feature movie, where everything happens in an hour and a half.”
The idea that Ukrainian forces, lacking any air cover, would storm through Russian lines was always going to be more of a Hollywood plotline than reality. But three months into the counteroffensive, Zelenskyy and his government are dealing with the reality that it has not achieved the desired decisive breakthrough — and are girding themselves for a drawn-out war.
Ukraine’s armed forces have made slow but significant gains in the south of the country in recent weeks, including a first puncture in Russia’s formidable defensive line. But some officials in western capitals regret that Kyiv has failed to use the opportunity afforded by western weapons stockpiles and possibly peak political support.
Moreover, the meagre results have exposed divisions between Kyiv and some western officials over strategy.
Some US officials have complained privately to the media that Ukraine had failed during training to master modern operations that combine mechanised infantry, artillery and air defence and were too risk averse in their approach.
Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, have pointed out that American forces have themselves never conducted operations on battlefields like Ukraine’s, without air superiority, against a military the size and calibre of Russia’s, and against some of its most advanced weaponry and military technologies.
“Show us at least one officer or sergeant in the American army who has fired, for example, 5,000 to 7,000 rounds with this [M777 howitzer],” Viktor, a battery commander in a Ukrainian artillery unit, told the FT in eastern Ukraine in July, referring to the US-supplied weapon that has helped his troops more accurately target Russian forces.
Ukraine’s new strategy has had some success, but it will be slow-going at best without a sudden Russian collapse. Crucially, it will depend on Ukraine’s allies increasing production of ammunition and other equipment to sustain an attritional war.
“A poor understanding of how Ukraine’s military fights, and of the operating environment writ large, may be leading to false expectations, misplaced advice and unfair criticism in western official circles,” say military analysts Michael Kofman and Rob Lee in a report on the counteroffensive.
But they, like other analysts, say it is imperative that Ukraine learns lessons from its counteroffensive so that it can continue to push Russian forces back along a 1,000km frontline, possibly well into next year and beyond. At the same time, they argue, Kyiv’s allies must acknowledge the shortcomings in their training and equipping of Ukraine’s forces that have contributed to the disappointing progress.
If US and European leaders are to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, as they repeatedly profess, they will also need to be much more systematic in their provision of artillery, aviation and training.
General James Hockenhull, head of the British army’s Strategic Command, said on Tuesday he did not believe the Ukrainian offensive was a “one-off shot” but that it was imperative for Kyiv’s allies to “continue to provide ammunition, weapons and training” and “if we fail in that task there are significant risks”.
A turn towards attrition
Ukraine is counterattacking in multiple directions. Its main effort has been its southern push from Orikhiv, in the Zaporizhzhia region. It was on the battlefield there that the 47th mechanised brigade, serving as the tip of the spear in the counteroffensive, ran into trouble in the first weeks of the operation in early June.
Slowed by formidable minefields — in some areas up to five mines per square metre, military officials say — the Ukrainians came under attack from Russian helicopters and heavy artillery. Images emerged soon after of western-supplied equipment, including Leopard 2A6 tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, damaged and abandoned. Dozens of troops were reportedly killed or badly injured.
US General Mark Milley told the BBC on Sunday that while Ukrainian forces were now advancing, they maybe had only a month to six weeks left to pursue their counteroffensive before autumn rains set in. It was the kind of comment that irks Ukrainian officials, who point out that southern Ukraine, where the main counteroffensive thrust is taking place, is relatively dry and its winters less harsh than the rest of their country.
“We’re not Africa with a rainy season,” scoffed Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s defence intelligence, at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference in Kyiv last Saturday.
Yet amid the defiance and occasional sniping, there is a greater mood of realism among Ukrainian officials that the war will be a slow grind. The question is whether Ukraine’s western backers, who have dug deep into their weapons stockpiles, are committed to giving the country the support and ammunition over the longer haul.
After early unsustainable losses, Ukraine has pivoted back to a campaign of attrition — wearing down the enemy at the front with artillery and destroying supply lines with long-range strikes — while using small infantry assaults to retake Russian positions.
While some in Nato worry this attritional approach sounds like the old Soviet mindset taking hold, Ukrainian officials and western analysts who have studied this summer’s fighting say it is more adapted to conditions on the ground, including Russia’s heavy fortifications and dense minefields, Ukraine’s lack of air power and the prevalence of drones exposing everything on the battlefield.
The losses amounted to nearly a fifth of the Nato kit provided for the counteroffensive in its opening days in May and June, according to Ukrainian and western officials, and forced Kyiv to pause its operation and rethink its strategy.
Ukraine has kept its focus on the same area but has changed tactics — from attempting to punch through Russia’s fortified defensive lines in a mechanised assault to focusing on a more attritional approach, using heavy artillery to pound enemy forces and clear a path for dismounted infantry to inch forward.
“Attrition makes for poor headlines, but it plays to Ukraine’s strengths, whereas attempting to scale offensive manoeuvres under such difficult conditions does not,” say Kofman and Lee.
Three months on from those early setbacks, Ukraine has the momentum there after piercing the first line of Russian defence at Robotyne in the south and is now trying to widen the breach, with expectations rising of taking Verbove before advancing on Tokmak — both towns in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Securing Tokmak would mark a significant step towards cutting Russia’s so-called land bridge, a crucial supply route connecting its southwestern Rostov region with occupied southern Ukraine and Crimea.
In their second effort, Ukraine’s troops are pushing south from Velyka Novosilka, where they are endeavouring to reach the Sea of Azov port city of Berdyansk. Despite managing to capture a handful of small villages, progress there has been slow and largely stalled since mid-August.
The area around Bakhmut remains a focal point. Russian forces captured the city in May after a 10-month battle that reduced the city to rubble. But the fighting around it never ceased and the Ukrainians have clawed back territory on its northern and southern flanks metre by metre, advancing to the villages of Klishchiivka and Andriivka this week while securing crucial roads around the city.
Only in the Serebryansky forest to the north-east, which stretches east to the strategic town of Kreminna currently occupied by Moscow’s forces, have the Russians been on the offensive. That effort, Ukrainian officials and analysts say, is meant to try to draw Kyiv’s forces from its southern axis and push those in the area west, beyond the Oskil River, a natural defensive barrier and recapture territory in Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, where the Russians were dislodged during the sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensive a year ago.
In these tough battlefield conditions, Ukrainian forces found it impossible to follow Nato doctrine of combined arms warfare — co-ordinated actions by infantry, armour, artillery and air defence. Kofman and Lee say they are best at fighting in small highly manoeuvrable assault units. They struggle to run operations above the level of company (200 men) or even platoon (20-50). But if Ukrainian forces are to exploit any breach in Russia’s defences, they will need to co-ordinate larger forces and for that they need better training.
One of the main lessons of the counteroffensive so far, say analysts, is that western training of Ukrainian troops, typically of five weeks, is too short. It is not adapted to the way Ukraine fights best or to conditions on the ground, such as the impenetrable minefields or fortifications. And it takes place without the omnipresent drones hovering over the Ukrainian front lines.
“If I only did what [western militaries] taught me, I’d be dead,” says Suleman, a special forces commander in the 78th regiment. He says he had trained with American, British and Polish soldiers, all of whom offered “some good advice” but also “bad advice?.?.?.?like their way of clearing trenches. I told them: ‘Guys, this is going to get us killed.’”
Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, analysts at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) who studied a two-week Ukrainian operation to recapture two villages in the south of the country, say in a recent report
that the fighting showed the need for more collective training — to help brigade-level planning and platoon and company commanders.
There is also the question of how Ukraine deploys its more experienced forces. It was criticised by some US officials earlier this year for expending too many experienced troops in a futile defence of the eastern city of Bakhmut. Rochan Consulting, a Polish outfit which also produced a lengthy assessment of the counteroffensive, says Ukraine might have done better this summer had it used experienced brigades equipped with Nato weaponry rather than newly trained ones.
On a more positive note, say Watling and Reynolds, with its Nato-standard artillery, Ukraine has become better at detecting and destroying enemy artillery with counter-battery fire, a crucial advantage that can help offset Russia’s greater number of canons. But Ukraine’s advantage will only persist if its western allies expand production of ammunition and reduce the number of artillery systems Ukrainian forces have to operate. It also needs more mine-clearing equipment and armoured vehicles to protect its infantry.
Lastly, the analysts all note, Russian forces are continuing to learn from their foes and adapting their tactics, whether through dispersing their supply lines, greater deployment of drones or in fending off Ukrainian assaults.
Russia’s “big advantage over 18 months ago is they [now] respect our forces and understand our real power”, says a Ukrainian official.
“In terms of flexibility, we still have the edge on them. They are rather crusty and dusty and [their command structure is] still very vertical — which means they take longer to adapt to changes,” says Budanov, the defence intelligence chief. “We must not underestimate them; we should not think they are stupid. They have made some changes, for example with their massive use of drones. They are adapting, that is a fact.”
With its trenches, artillery barrages and bloody infantry assaults, Russia’s war against Ukraine can often appear grimly reminiscent of the first world war. But it also features transformational new technology.
Underscoring that point, Mykhailo Fedorov, deputy prime minister in charge of technology and digitisation, recounts a recent ministerial meeting held over Zoom. He followed a live feed of the meeting on one side of his screen while at the same time streaming real-time drone footage of Ukrainian forces destroying a Russian air defence system on the other.
“Ukraine is writing new war history and the new drone doctrine,” Fedorov tells the FT.
The power of drones
This summer’s fighting has revealed the vital importance of drones to both sides, for reconnaissance and attack. The war is fundamentally different from previous conflicts because the prevalence of drones means that the battlefield is “totally visible in real time for both sides”, Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy head of military intelligence, told the YES conference. Manoeuvres with armour, in particular, are quickly exposed.
It can take as little as 10 minutes to destroy a column of tanks, he said — from the initial spot, to verifying its location, calling in artillery and striking.
Every Ukrainian unit goes to the frontline with drones of its own, often Chinese-made civilian reconnaissance drones costing a few hundred dollars or so-called first-person view racing drones [operated with a headset], that can carry a high-explosive charge. Ukrainian forces have been burning through drones in extraordinary numbers as they attack Russians lines and equipment and Kyiv is struggling to keep up with demand. Rusi estimates Ukraine is losing upwards of 10,000 drones a month.
Meanwhile, Russian forces have caught up with Ukraine in using commercially made drones and still have plenty of military-grade devices. Russia’s Lancet-3 kamikaze drone — which can track and swoop on its targets autonomously — has proved to be a particular menace, for which Ukraine has no match.
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, former defence minister, says Ukraine is not building enough of its own drones, although it is trying to expand production. “We are in an arms race with a small time span,” he says. “Drones are making other weapons systems completely redundant.”
Fedorov says Ukraine will have increased domestic drone production 100-fold by the end of the year since the start of the war. It created a special headquarters to co-ordinate the mass production of drones and is relying on the free market to deliver, with a multitude of commercial providers pitching their devices to a single procurement platform. Ukraine is also expanding domestic production of component parts.
Ukraine’s advantage over Russia, Fedorov says, is the speed with which information about performance, losses and tactics is reported by frontline drone operators back to his technical teams. “The next stage of development is not the technology itself but the usage,” he says.
While Ukraine is developing its own drone capabilities it still relies on its allies for long-range strikes. Hopes are rising in Kyiv that Washington will soon agree to send ATACMS missiles, which have a range of 300km. This could unlock German approval for its Taurus cruise missile, since Berlin tends to wait for the US to move first on weapon decisions.
Ukrainians argue they have done more damage to Russia’s war machine than it appears with a strike campaign involving drones and western-supplied Himars and Storm Shadow missiles targeting its rear. On Wednesday, Ukrainian missiles struck a Russian navy yard in the occupied Black Sea port city of Sevastopol, damaging at least two warships undergoing repairs in dry docks.
Next year, Ukraine is likely to take delivery of its first F-16 fighter jets. They will eventually help Ukraine contest the airspace, thereby pushing Russian aviation back from the front lines, but not necessarily give it air superiority, say Kofman and Lee.
Ultimately, the course of the war will be decided by how each side manages its reserves of manpower and equipment. “Our big problem is sustainability,” says a Ukrainian official. “It is a war of resources.”
“Ukraine and Russia are in a slugging match where neither side has a decisive advantage. It’s going to be a long war and Ukraine is now in the messy middle part that happens in every major conflict,” says one senior western official.
“Militaries very rarely deliver decisive outcomes, they win battles,” the official adds. In attritional conflicts such as this one, “it’s economies that win wars”.
Things now looking better & after couple days will get their RV & head off Palm Springs, Grand Canyon, Las vegas, Yosemite then West Coast – Fingers Crossed
Our kids (& their kids) did the same trip & loved every minute. Fortunately, it was years ago – before the disintegration of efficient airline travel. The two grandchildren – who were then 9 & 6 – were at the front of the queue at Disneyland & got to open it for that day. They still (at 20 & 17) have no idea what a sought after privilege that was!
For sure, JC. We have 26.5 million people for an area roughly the size of the 48 US states. Land should be dirt cheap here. Too many public servants needing their involvement and pay.
land area
100%b wrong, Humphrey.
John Elliott’s exit as gangster-in-chief at Carlton was a necessary prerequisite for the current generation’s success — helped along by the hiring of Brian Cook as CEO and the foundation of a successful premiership culture after running Geelong and the West Coast Eagles.
It’s taken a while to get there Tom. That’s the point I was making.
Pig’s whistle, son!
Tom
Was there ever a better combo that Bruce Doull and Mike Fitzpatrick?
Bruce Doull and Vin Catoggio.
Vicki
Sep 16, 2023 3:34 PM
Things now looking better & after couple days will get their RV & head off Palm Springs, Grand Canyon, Las vegas, Yosemite then West Coast – Fingers Crossed
Our kids (& their kids) did the same trip & loved every minute. Fortunately, it was years ago – before the disintegration of efficient airline travel. The two grandchildren – who were then 9 & 6 – were at the front of the queue at Disneyland & got to open it
Vicki,
bought them 4 Apple Air Tags and have turned out to be invaluable in being able to direct AA to their baggage location
Also bought cheap kids location watches – Son-in-law should have had one when during Hail/Lightning/Downpour at NYC Baseball game he searched up the yop of the Stadium for some shelter with 6 year old who was feeling ill with his phone out of battery whilst rest headed down to shelter- my daughter was frantically looking for him in pouring rain & hail looking like a demented woman , she said
According to estimates from Zillow, a Seattle-based real estate data company, the value of a typical single-family home in Texas is $257,628,
Assume that is US dollars? From what we see on the US real estate channel that covers the entire nation, the house prices are very reasonable compared to those in our capital cities – or even, these days, in our major regional towns.