Makka
Feb 24, 2024 12:09 PM

The Fed’s measure of food inflation from just before covid to now is up over 25%. Meanwhile median household income are down around 6% for the same period.

July 2020 to Jan 2024

The percentage rise between July 2020 and January 2024 is approximately 22.06%.
But weekly wages have also risen.

JC
Feb 24, 2024 12:49 AM

Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees,

St Louis Fed shows July 2020 at $29.11 and Jan 24 $34.70.

Annualized rate of wage growth is 5.15%.

The rise for the entire period is :

St. Louis Fed data, the percentage rise between July 2020 and January 2024 is 19.20%.

It’s a loss, but not an out of this world loss. At least we can say higher management and CEOs comp has more than kept pace with inflation, which is far more important.

I think the accumulated price pain since covid is what is gettiing people’s attention , even if the rate of price increases has moderated a bit. I note too that lower income folks are getting royally pissed with the elites pushing migrant hordes into their midst, creating even more competition.

Renters and mortgage holders have been rooted, which is where I think there’s stress. But in any event, Dementia is getting a lot of flack, so that’s a good thing.

Tom at 12:39 re Woollies.

More like management is being embarrassed by leaks and pushback from disgrunted suppliers and customers.

Firstly, Colesworth don’t give a fat rat’s clacker about suppliers.
And normally they accept a bit of to-and-fro of customers in what is largely a duopoly. They always think they can restore market share equilibrium with saturation advertising and the bait of specials pricing.
Two things are possible here:-
1. Woollies market research tells them the boycott is sticking and customers have permanently shifted; and/or
2. They are getting massive pushback from staff via local shop stewards.

I don’t know how that can be, Roger.

-6%

Award and mini wages were dictated upwards mid year 2023 by 5.75% and 8.7%. The drowning must be in salaries etc, and income related profits in small business. If so, them pain must be huge in that sector.

More like management is being embarrassed by leaks and pushback from disgrunted suppliers and customers.

They have 215,000 people on the payroll, sent out an email, and the management was caught off guard it made its way into the media? They have to be lying. No one could be this stupid.

Typical, makes an abusive comment and not even a hour later it’s claiming the person responding is the cause.

No one could be this stupid.

After their Australia Day merchandise fiasco, I’m not so sure.

Woolworths isn’t the only one pushing LGBTI etc. The coles here had their delivery vans plastered in the pride flag for ages.

Walking to the local to grab a pint of Guinness I had to pass an enormous LED billboard spanning Military Rd (The Bridgepoint footbridge) where I saw an ad for some winery associating themselves to Mardi Gras.

It was a cheapish brand (I say ‘brand’ rather than ‘label’ to emphasise my contempt for their output) but wondered why they thought it a good idea. Then I remembered it would likely be a brand often sold in pubs and sleazy bars.

In fact, drinking aside I will bet there will be pallets of the stuff retrieved, at St Vincents hospital, from having been rammed into rectal rugae – within hours of penetrating perpetrators having paraded mocking the Church and and its Nuns and Priests.

My money would be on number 1.

I think so.
The biggest worry for them isn’t the small group who shout at store managers.
It is the quiet shift of 5% of market share without a whimper.
As I say, they are quite OK with small market share ebbs and flows that they can advertise their way out of and/or throw some loss-leader specials at it (which they “invite suppliers to participate in” anyway).
In any case, they are spooked.
Which is good.

The issue is “Where is the money going?” Find that out and you’ll discover what the problem is.

It’s all going to American oligarchs, Iodine Betty. You know that.

Interesting that no-one seems to have pulled apart this number and questioned it.

I tried to, but it doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Iodine Betty is now trying to discover the money trail.

Just returned from local country show. What a treat. All the usual local cake/vegetable/photographic competitions in the hall – together with the fleece judging. Husband straight away bought an ingenious iron sculpture fashioned around a shovel handle!

Then ambled off the sheep dog trials on the local oval. Just love these. Most of the kelpies were sensational with amazing concentration & athleticism. But the champion was one sheep who had enough of it all & vaulted 5 feet over a black tarp!

Then grabbed a steak sandwich & coffee & walked to the sheep shearing exhibition. This was bl—ly amazing. A bloke (later told us he was 60) sheering a sheep with old fashioned BLADE SHEARS. He talked right through the exhibition about the history of shearing, the process etc etc. There was not a mark or speck of blood on the animal when he finished, & he didn’t use a sling. Later he invited questions & he said that blade shears were still used in South Africa where labour was cheap & they paid only a little more than a dollar or so a sheep. Here, he said, a good shearer with mechanical shears could shear 300 sheep a day & earn up to $1,500 a day. He talked about how long it took to maintain the blade shears etc. It was fascinating & we thanked him profusely. He said both his sons had taken up the trade.

After that we watched some “led” Australian stock horse judging & then some show jumping. Ambled off to the cattle yards to see the preparation of some special breed judging. All the kids from a local rural college were hanging about – some ready to bring a beast into the ring. Local owners great people – “Yeah – just open that gate & have a look at the cattle at the end – she’s apples” .

Back through side-show alley & was reminded by the Historical Society people on their stall nearby to join as I had promised earlier. Unfortunately, I was denied a bit of sport when I found that “the Tool” (Paul Toole) had departed from the Nationals stall before I got there. Damn!

The local town itself was absolutely parked out – there must have been a thousand cars around the town as well as in the precincts of the show. Great to see.

gemma tognini gemma tognini
Pseudo-feminists betrayed by their own ignorance

12:00AM February 24, 2024
86 Comments

If I said the name Asma Mohammed, I doubt many people would know who she is. Truth be told, neither did I until a few days ago.

When looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon an interview she gave to the Saudi state-owned Al Arabiya network on February 15.

Why should you care who Mohammed is or pay attention to what she said? Mohammed was the first wife – now widow – of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that’s why. And what she bears witness to is almost impossible to read.

For the purposes of this conversation, I want to focus on her as a witness to the terrorist regime’s obsession with women. Oh, they presented to the world as holy warriors, but in reality they were sex-obsessed little boys in adult bodies, abusers who kept strings of Yazidi girls as slaves, some as young as 14.

Mohammed described ISIS as a black stain, a group of savages who had “big dreams of conquering Rome”. She estimates Baghdadi kept more than 10 Yazidi girls as sex slaves, one of whom was a child. “All the emirs owned Yazidi women,” she said.

Baghdadi, like a true coward, killed himself via a suicide belt rather than be taken by US forces, killing two of his children and a wife in the process. This was in October 2019. Nearly five years later, one of his widows courageously gives an awful window into what it was like for women under ISIS rule.

Hold that thought for a second while we fast forward to life for women under Hamas since it took over in 2007.

Manar al-Sharif is a Damascus-born, Muslim journalist who spent years living in Gaza, was jailed in Gaza and, incredibly, managed to escape and bear witness. She describes enforced wearing of the hijab. She tells of being arrested and beaten for hosting a dinner party at her home at which both single men and women attended, strictly forbidden in Gaza under Hamas. While in jail she met a woman who, along with her husband, was arrested and imprisoned for making art and selling it to Israelis.

Sharif’s is just one story. But one may as well be a thousand. The bravery it takes to speak up against Hamas – we know no such bravery in this country. We know entitlement, we know historical ignorance and we seem well acquainted with skewed morals.

This week, the Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel published its first report based on survivor testimonies from October 7.

Silent Cry: Sexual Crimes in the October 7 War details the sexual atrocities committed, in the words of witnesses, first responders, coroners and returned hostages.

A copy of the ARCCI report was handed to the UN. As journalist Efrat Forsher writes in Israeli news website Israel Hayom, it details “gang rapes at gunpoint, sometimes in front of family and friends – a practice aimed at sowing fear and deepening oppression and humiliation – castration and mutilation of female and male organs, and ‘insertion of weapons in intimate areas … genital organs’.

“This included ‘nails, grenades, and knives. It represents a specific expression of the pattern of targeted mutilation and harm to sexual organs.’ ”

According to the ARCCI report, “When other women are forced to witness the sexual assault, even if they were not themselves victims, they are influenced and subdued by the perpetrator’s power. Forcing spouses, parents, and siblings to witness the sexual assault of a family member is a practice of torture. In many cases, family members are killed when they try to protect their family from sexual assault.”

Something inside me fractures, reading this. I read this and I see the faces of my friends, my mother and my aunt and niece. I see the faces of my neighbours, women in my neighbourhood who I don’t know but recognise.

To the women who continue to champion the Hamas cause, you are complicit.

With every chant of “From the river to the sea” you condemn women and children on the other side of the world to a life you would never want for yourself or your own. There is historic, irrefutable, first-hand evidence of how women are abused under the control of ISIS and Hamas, yet you call for this regime to be legitimised. As for the men among you? You are weak apologists for a regime that revels in the subjugation of women.

You don’t believe Israeli women, Jewish women. Will you believe Muslim women who testify bravely to the same truths, the same endemic behaviours? There is no grey here, only right and wrong.

Let me tell you something that may be hard to hear. In Israel, women in the shortest shorts I have seen in my adult life walk down the same street as a woman in a hijab. A woman can go to the beach in a bikini or not. A woman can choose. She has choice and she has freedom. She has liberty. She is not at risk of being stoned for immorality. Jailed for having a single man in her home. She is not at risk of being forced to cover her hair or her body if she doesn’t want to.

Back to the brave Mohammed and Sharif. Feminism is so pesky, isn’t it? All of a sudden “believe all women” is inconvenient so it’s believe some women; certainly not the women you don’t like, and definitely don’t believe Jewish or Israeli women. While we’re at it, you absolutely can’t afford to believe a Christian or conservative woman. Throw them under a bus as often as you like. But will they believe these two Muslim women? Will you believe Mohammed and Sharif?

The privileged, bored pseudo-feminists and academics of the West are betrayed by their ignorance. Women were kept as sex slaves by ISIS years ago. The Assad regime in Syria had killed more than 5000 women and children by 2020 and now all of sudden these ladies have discovered war? Cowards who enjoy complete sexual, social, financial, religious and political liberty are not raising voices to demand that women in the disputed territories might be free, they are raised in hatred of Israel. For Jews. For Jewish women.

This is an undeniable truth, and we must contend against this hatred until it is no more. And until all women are free.

Also, I note that the bishop of Broome got into some trouble during the week. Men wearing dresses, it’s always men wearing dresses.

That “trouble ” includes rape, and sex offences, some against children. I’m glad you find the subject funny.

The privileged, bored pseudo-feminists and academics of the West are betrayed by their ignorance. Women were kept as sex slaves by ISIS years ago. The Assad regime in Syria had killed more than 5000 women and children by 2020 and now all of sudden these ladies have discovered war? Cowards who enjoy complete sexual, social, financial, religious and political liberty are not raising voices to demand that women in the disputed territories might be free, they are raised in hatred of Israel. For Jews. For Jewish women.

The entirety of the Western left, feminists, alarmists, alphabet loons, racist ratbags, no borders, pro-palli, navel licking, virtue signalling nongs and trannie turds along with cringing, tut-tutting testicle free conservatives should be nuked.

Dover, I was kidding about the CEO, higher management part of the comment.

As I said, there’s stress, because wage gains haven’t compensated for both interest rate hikes and price rises. If you’re renting or have a mortgage toss a coin which one’s hurting (interest rate hikes or price increases) as nominal wages have only comped one of those.

I’ve only ever seen ONE display of sheep being shorn, correctly , with blades, where the blades are razor sharp, and pushed through the wool. All the others I have seen , the shears are used like a large pair of scissors, and the wool snipped off, which isn’t the way to use blades at all.

Zulu – I am a mere woman & not too technical – but he talked about the enormous time it took to hone the blades. He also somehow disconnected them so that they did not operate entirely like scissors – there was some sort of thong that held them together – sorry if I am vague. The blades sort of sliced through the wool.

It is the quiet shift of 5% of market share without a whimper.

If it’s anything like the beer market you spend years and tens of millions of dollars to gain a couple of percentage points of market share. A lot to hand back in an annual loss. No wonder he’s looking for greener pastures.

Eggs

Walmart largest supermarket chain in Texas.

Dallas Supercenter
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until 11pm
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Marketside Large Cage-Free Brown Eggs, 12 Count

$3.58

29.8 ¢/ea

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Marketside-Large-Cage-Free-Brown-Eggs-12-Count/49463949?athbdg=L1600

Colesworths social licence is on slippery ground. Like the airline duopoly, if you have to fly ultimately you have to choose one of them. Supermarkets aren’t quite there yet.

Interestingly for a long time it was the Coles part of Colesworth that was on the nose. That stint under Wesfarmers seemed to have fixed that. Now it is Woolworths under the Saffies with issues.

vr

Sure, I think having them study and understand something like the relationship (if there is one 🙂 ) between exchange rates and PPP would be good. A good way of showing them how it works and getting a better idea of PPP at the basic level would be the good old Economist’s MacDonald’s Hamburger index. The Economist gives a reasonable account of why they have been reporting it since the mid 80s.

What drives exchange rates is really difficult to explain because exchange rates are a relative value measure and that’s always changing.

Capital flows vs trade flows.

Explaining and studying why a deficit on the capital account could be demonstrating strength rather than weakness.

Dot could have some suggestions.

Eugyppius, the plague chronicler who now comments on assorted public matters at Substack, delivers his verdict on the WHO Pandemic Agreement:

The Pandemic Agreement is above all concerned with expanding and enhancing the prerogatives of the WHO bureaucracy. That is not great, but it is also not world hygiene totalitarianism. The Pandemic Agreement abounds with glittering aspirations for better healthcare, better medicine and better One Health, but from the first article to the last page it is entirely devoid of concrete, practical measures to achieve any of these things. Its primary aim is to bleed pharmaceutical products and financial resources from wealthier countries for the developing world, but with a few exceptions…even this aspect of its agenda seems vague and under-realised. I suspect that this deeply stupid monstrosity will be further attenuated and nebulised before it’s ever put to a vote.

Posting again. 341mph:

341 MPH: Bob Tasca III Shatters Own Record At PRO Superstar Shootout

Interestingly for a long time it was the Coles part of Colesworth that was on the nose. That stint under Wesfarmers seemed to have fixed that.

I suspect Coles is just as odious in its practices as Woolworths but it has a CEO (ex McKinsey & Co.) who is adept at staying out of the news cycle.

which is why Republicans have been slaughtered at the ballot box since Dobbs.

Really?

1. GOP owns the house
2. Senate is 50/50 for all intents and leans GOP because moderate Demons won’t let demon absurdity through the gate.
3. Demons had to cheat in order to win the White House.

states

Governors

1. As of January 9, 2024, there are 27 states with Republican governors and 23 states with Democratic governors.

State senates 851 1,113 GOP majority numbers

State houses 2,430 2,940 GOP majority numbers

Fatboy, where are you seeing this slaughter as it’s not evident in the numbers.

The blades sort of sliced through the wool.

That’s the right way, then.

Colesworths social licence is on slippery ground.

Elbow has their back.

Which means the Shoppies have very sweet deals with both.

Idf winning.
looks like idf action is ameliorating hamas capacity to randomly fire rockets at Israel

Anyone got a link to Ice Age Watch site: fuking google swallowed mine.

I feel like I’ve been to a health spa. Hearing the lamentations of monty is rejuvenating.

You are one sick puppy.