What the parties lack is not a solution but the will to seriously address the issue because they’re beholden to vested interests which benefit from it.
This goes to the Judith Sloan piece I posted this morning about the way policy is now formulated, who benefits and who pays (not just in monetary terms but in declining quality of life).
They rule for themselves and their supporters. Hopefully their arrogance – which is equal to their ahistorical stupidity – doesn’t come back and take a good bite out of their fat arses.
Knuckle Dragger
July 2, 2024 5:15 pm
Predictably (the Tele, apologies if posted earlier):
A 14-year-old was charged with planning a terror attack at a Sydney school less than a year before he allegedly stabbed a man outside the University of Sydney, but the charges were dismissed.
Uh huh:
The teen was charged over what sources said were plans to carry out an alleged ‘Christchurch-style’ attack last September, but The Daily Telegraph can reveal they were dismissed in Surry Hills Children’s Court on mental health grounds in February this year.
The standard Radio Rental defence, now applying to people yet to hit their mid-teens.
It is understood the teen was put into a deradicalisation program under the Department of Community and Justice.
Oh, huzzah!
He’s either radicalised or mental. Either way, he should never have been roaming the streets.
You can guess it was about them not finding a hooker locally who did “just the thing they wanted”, if you like.
The evidence is that they were not able to meet the ridiculous and massive regulatory and similar barriers. 2.6% margins while being attacked for the consequences of collectivist monetary policy is just icing on the cake.
JC
July 2, 2024 5:19 pm
Dutton is useless and actually as much of a negative to the Right as Morrison.
He only supported the NO vote in the referendum when it became low risk. In fact, it was Jacinta Price who led the opposition and won it for the NO side.
He was supportive of trying to sting Twitter over the stabbing incident and therefore agreed with curtailing our rights to free expression. He made glowing comments about the E-Safety Commissioner bint.
Now he supports more government interference in our grocery purchases.
He’s a former cop and should be nowhere near the levers of power. He needs to go.
Agree that Dutton is not a good match for a free-loving people however, who else is there that can motivate the conservative electorate? Everyone who has any guts or nous is a Senator.
Barry
July 2, 2024 5:25 pm
Coles and WW are paying suppliers too much. Cartel like behaviour including stocking exactly the same lines, agreeing to not pressure suppliers, tacit uncompetitive actions like not parallel importing, laws against grey imports, trademark laws, suppliers with too much cartel market power eg dairy, over regulation of food safety, global suppliers effective monopolies. Coles and WW are happy clipping the ticket but not performing their role which is to represent customers in the fight against supplier power. More competition is the only answer.
I’m no supporter of the ColesWorth duopoly but how do you do anything about them stocking the same lines .. ? ..
They are both in the same business .. bit difficult to stock food from other manufacturers .. After all, there can only be so many operations that manufacture food items .. I realise they, like Aldi, can specify different packaging but in the end the contents come from the same manufacturers .. unless they are importing …. then you get the howls of “buy Oz” .. so ano win situation …….
You don’t. That’s the point. Lack of competition in the whole supply chain is the root cause. Solve that, and all the points above go away. You don’t fix things by working on Coles/WW. You have to remove all the statutory limitations that lead to low competition. Aussie steak is cheaper in Japan than here. The only actor powerful enough to do that is the State.
JC
July 2, 2024 5:25 pm
There are solutions, JohnH.
Stop increasing wages through legislative fiat and allow the market to decide. Open up the labor markets.
Increase the supply of housing by removing all sorts of imposts and assorted taxes on construction. Ensure that in a country the size of continental US and twice as large as Western Europe provides ample land for housing.
Remove obstacles to increase supply of electricity by not closing down coal plants.
Eliminate all obstacles in the production of oil&gas.
There’s much more, but there’s a start.
Reduce immigration, Not eliminate it, but reduce the numbers.
There are no genuinely skilled people out there. All are employed and well paid where they are. What we need to do is scale down immigration even more to 10% of the current rate and simply train our own tradies.
We don’t need immigration – we’re already choking on the surplus that is coming out of our ears. Educate our own, or send them OS to finish their training with strict provisos they come back here.
If an immigrant has returned to the country they came from and claimed danger because of etc – send them back. They’ve come here under false pretences – in other words they lied. And send their families back as well. We already have the records, we know who is doing it, deal with them and help solve our housing problem.
If we can adopt collective punishment against Germany and Japan we can do it with the rest of them.
JC
July 2, 2024 5:28 pm
Coles and WW are happy clipping the ticket but not performing their role which is to represent customers in the fight against supplier power. More competition is the only answer.
It’s illegal in Australia for the big supers to arm twist suppliers.
See my response above. There are no genuinely qualified migrants of that calibre, all those claiming the skills are frauds. Let’s just train our own and pay them well.
John H.
July 2, 2024 5:30 pm
Roger
July 2, 2024 5:14 pm
Neither party has a solution to cost of living.
What the parties lack is not a solution but the will to seriously address the issue because they’re beholden to vested interests which benefit from it.
This goes to the Judith Sloan piece I posted this morning about the way policy is now formulated, who benefits and who pays (not just in monetary terms but in declining quality of life).
Roger cost of living is a problem across the OECD. You’re right about vested interests but that is not national vested interests, it is global vested interests. Apart from that a law preventing retired politicians occupying high flying commercial positions is worth a thought. Think tanks they can join but most of them lack the intelligence for those roles.
It is surprising how many politicians state they are doing it for the country and when they retire they don’t go into non-profits or community organisations, rather positions with huge incomes and influence. Lying ass wipes.
The Left has swatted me 3 times trying to kill me, I get death threats all the time, they’ve cut the heads off rabbits and thrown them over my fence, they’ve called animal control on me and lied about me abusing my animals that I love and have saved, they lie about me running over Smiles – and every major leftist news organization has written hit piece after hit piece calling me every name in the book, which is all Lies – and Wikipedia lies about me with every word.
The funny thing is – they think they can break an old country boy like me with their lies.
LMAO – Talk to the paw. I haven’t yet begun to fight.
All of this against little old catturd2? He really must be over the target.
Roger
July 2, 2024 5:39 pm
Roger cost of living is a problem across the OECD.
So are the policies that led to it, John.
You’re right about vested interests but that is not national vested interests, it is global vested interests.
It’s both. Domestic real estate developers and large businesses both benefit from high immigration, for example.
Last edited 7 months ago by Roger
John H.
July 2, 2024 5:41 pm
JC
July 2, 2024 5:25 pm
There are solutions, JohnH.
Stop increasing wages through legislative fiat and allow the market to decide. Open up the labor markets.
Increase the supply of housing by removing all sorts of imposts and assorted taxes on construction. Ensure that in a country the size of continental US and twice as large as Western Europe it provides ample land for housing.
Remove obstacles to increase supply of electricity by not closing down coal plants.
Eliminate all obstacles in the production of oil&gas.
There’s much more, but there’s a start.
Reduce immigration, Not eliminate it, but reduce the numbers.
The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn’t exist. Wages are already not keeping up with cost of living and your proposal will make that worse.
The housing supply is a labour and materials supply problem. The size of a country is irrelevant, it is proximity to employment opportunities that matter. It is also a NIMBY problem because local councils won’t allow rezoning for more apartment complexes.
Coal plants are old and will close. Build gas plants and do what WA did, secure local gas supply.
30% of doctors and 20% of nurses are overseas trained. We don’t have enough skilled labour here. Immigration needs to be cut but solving the housing problem will take several years and a huge increase in skilled labour intake.
Stop paying dead money for Centrelink unlimited benefits … cut people off after six months and see wage inflation moderate and need for most imported labour die off.
We have a system now with around 1M doing nothing and a large & growing bureacracy enabling a lifetime on benefits to be “normal” while we import hundreds of thousands of Uber drivers … And then there is NDIS as well.
Justice Sotomayor is an evil, stupid kunt; she has literally unleashed the hounds of the demorats with her hypothetical scenarios about Trump using SEAL teams to assassinate his rivals.
O’Bummer used drones to kill US citizens overseas.
JC
July 2, 2024 5:46 pm
The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn’t exist. Wages are already not keeping up with cost of living and your proposal will make that worse.
It’s impossible for there to be real increases in wages without corresponding increases in productivity. Increases in nominal wages simply fuels inflation.
It’s why real wages in Australia were stagnant and now begun to fall.
Not if you are in government employ or certain unions that government allow to screw everyone. Government is the cause of all inflation one way or another.
John H.
July 2, 2024 5:56 pm
More competition is the only answer.
The problem with competition is that the winners become so powerful they can crush any opposition. A recent example. Aldi was advertising cheap oranges, within a couple of days Coles was advertising the same. Coles can take the momentary hit. In any domain once domination is established it is very difficult to cause their downfall. They might do stupid things like fail to read the trends(Kodak) but mostly when dominance is established it remains. IBM tried to overthrow Microsoft Windows with OS Warp. They spent a fortune and it was a complete failure.
The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn’t exist. Wages are already not keeping up with cost of living and your proposal will make that worse.
It’s impossible for there to be real increases in wages without corresponding increases in productivity. Increases in nominal wages simply fuels inflation.
It’s why real wages in Australia were stagnant and now begun to fall.
The best and most frequent way to increase productivity is reduce labour costs.
I suppose I am stupid here, but I’ve never understood percentage wage rises. Why not give everyone a $3000.00 a year increase. All a percentage increase does is widen the disparity from bottom to top. I suppose I am now a communist.
“aktually, theres only about 160 people employed by the live sheep industry”…
After Ive informed him of his family tree missing a few branches hes come back with “thats the right figures”.
So he walked into my trap.
Then why is the government shutting down such a value adding sector? At about $1,000,000 per full time employee?
What the parties lack is not a solution but the will to seriously address the issue because they’re beholden to vested interests which benefit from it.
One of the largest changes resulting in increased cost of living is that real estate markets have become globalised.
And real estate in Western nations is much more attractive than real estate in China, maybe because it’s freehold.
During the official visit of the Ukrainian delegation to Paris in early June, especially for the Zelensky couple, Bugatti Automobiles, together with the Paris dealership, organized a pre-premiere display of the new Bugatti Turbillon hypercar (the public premiere took place two weeks later, on June 20). According to a dealer representative, Zelenskaya was delighted with the new car and placed a pre-order, thus becoming the buyer of the first of 250 cars planned for production.
French journalists were able to obtain a copy of the invoice for Zelenskaya’s new car. To the base price of almost 4 million euros, almost 500,000 euros worth of options were added. Zelenskaya will receive her car in 2026.
That story is bullshit. The invoice had a BSB number. French banks don’t use BSB numbers. You need to be more discerning with these conspiracies.
Knuckle Dragger
July 2, 2024 7:23 pm
You need to be more discerning with these conspiracies
Not another satire site unwittingly posted by the uber-spammer, surely?
JC
July 2, 2024 7:47 pm
Seriously, that’s his name?
Bloomberg Technology
JPMorgan names Nazim Ali head of the technology vertical for Asia for its private bank as it expands engagement with technology entrepreneurs in the region
Knuckle Dragger
July 2, 2024 7:54 pm
Oh Dear, How Sad, Never Mind news (the NT News):
High Country killer Greg Lynn has been the victim of a sickening jailhouse attack.
Faeces and urine were thrown at the high-profile detainee inside the Metropolitan Assessment Prison, days after he was convicted of murdering Carol Clay in the Wonnangatta area of east Gippsland in March, 2020.
This is what happens when you kill the elderly. Crooks have parents too. The screws are obviously very distraught as well:
“Corrections Victoria takes all incidents very seriously and refers all allegations of criminal activity and serious incidents to Victoria Police for investigation,” the statement said.
Liora Argamani, 61 years old, mother of rescued hostage Noa Argamani, has passed away after a long battle with brain cancer. Throughout her battle with cancer, she also fought tirelessly to bring her daughter home. On June 8, Noa was rescued in a heroic IDF mission after being held hostage by Hamas terrorists in Gaza for 8 months. Fortunately, Liora was reunited with Noa before her passing, and her dying wish came true.
Liora was born in Wuhan, China. She married her Israeli husband in the mid 1990s and converted to Judaism, taking the name ‘Liora”. Liora means ‘my light‘ in Hebrew. Clearly a providential name because Liora, despite her cancer, remained a burning light that refused to be die whilst her daughter, Noa, was held captive by Nazis in Gaza. Now that Noa has been brought home, Liora’s light has finally extinguished and she’s finally at peace now.
re: Trump’s immunity.
On the one hand, obviously the president should not be an unaccountable king above the law.
Luckily, that is not exactly what Justice Roberts found. The president can’t be prosecuted for exercising their constitutional powers. So if Orange man did something unconstitutional he can be prosecuted for that still.
There’s just no chance a court will be convinced that “fight like hell” was anything more than a colourful metaphor that was well within character for Trump. He didn’t order a break-and-enter at the Capitol, nor a coup, simple as that.
“This scarecrow of a suit has, over the course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out.”
“ThePresident may not be prosecutedforexercising his core constitutionalpowers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts,” the decision reads.
So yes the official acts got some sort of lesser protection in the same judgement.
This is so funny.
Susan Sarandon’s daughter married for the second time, and no one took any notice.
A quick email to Daily Mail and bang!, ooooh, Eva Amurri doesn’t care about the mean comments about her wedding dress. What do you think?
Justice Sotomayor is an evil, stupid kunt; she has literally unleashed the hounds of the demorats with her hypothetical scenarios about Trump using SEAL teams to assassinate his rivals.
One of the more bizarre “judgements” I have ever heard.
The Dimocrats are losing what remains of their tiny little minds.
Pogria
July 2, 2024 8:21 pm
Cats from WA,
do you know anything about this? Is this for real? Does it matter, or do you reckon it’s meh?
Asking as an East Coaster who has yet to visit WA.
One of the more bizarre “judgements” I have ever heard.
The Dimocrats are losing what remains of their tiny little minds.
It’s hilarious. For four years now they’ve been running with the hoax that the corpse has one of the most agile minds in the world. They then send him into a debate early, and all of America finds out the Demons, along with the corp media, have been running the lie that the crook is fine.
Immediately after the debate, the media acted surprised and called for his resignation. Now some of them have begun to walk this back, suggesting dementia should stay on.
The media appears to be more demented than dementia.
When you think you’re gaslighting the nation but you’re really gaslighting yourselves.
JC
July 2, 2024 8:42 pm
The best line in the history of debates has to be
“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,”
Zatara
July 2, 2024 8:44 pm
Things must be getting desperate when you release your talking points plan to all your known supporters via email.
On Saturday night, the reset continued with a campaign email to supporters that listed talking points and Biden accomplishments to “Tell Your Friends After The Debate”
Watch for those to appear here, some already have.
The lady is rather – um – well endowed, isn’t she?
calli
July 2, 2024 9:01 pm
the corpse has one of the most agile minds in the world
This is a true statement.
It popped in and out of his skull regularly, did cartwheels and pirouettes despite copious amounts of brain freezing icecream for more than four years. And managed to control the dribbling and widdling – a masterful performance.
Being super agile though, has its drawbacks. It left the building once too often, the doors are now locked and there’s no one home.
Colonel Crispin Berka
July 2, 2024 9:05 pm
Opinion from Henry Olsen / New York Post:
That means the replacement for a Biden-Harris ticket must do three things.
First, it needs to be headed by people young and articulate enough to clearly distinguish themselves from their predecessors.
Second, the new ticket needs to be liberal enough to satisfy party progressives while also appealing to independent moderates.
Third, it needs to include a black and a woman so that these powerful interest groups aren’t shunted aside
Whitmer-Warnock satisfies all three tests.
Also 4) doesn’t zone out mid-sentence, but that was a given.
Can Trump hold off announcing his veep until the Dem replacements have been announced?
Warnock-Whitmer might be the one to watch??
Don’t dismiss the Hildebeast – she’s determined to be the first female US President, and if there’s anything she won’t do, I have no idea what it could be.
She and that husband have probably been responsible for more dodgy deaths of people that could have compromised them, and they know where all the bodies are buried.
Beside which. I put a total of $80 on her at aprox 80/1 (2 differing bets.)
Pogria
July 2, 2024 9:07 pm
Calli,
with the increasing use of the word “Corpse”, to describe Biden, that would make Dr Jill, the “Corpse Bride”.
Extremely fitting.
“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,”
And one of the great own goals of debating history was the Dimocrats insisting on muted microphones.
The best possible way to expose an opponent’s inherent weaknesses is to give them enough rope to hang themselves.
Trump’s “long rope” is his excessive ebullience and jumping all over an opponent verbally. OK, it plays well to the base, but turns off any marginals.
Dementia Joe’s noose is his fumbling and bumbling and, worst of all, the dead air.
The muting of microphones simultaneously played down Trump’s weakness by eliminating interruptions and hung Biden out to dry when he became lost for words.
With open mikes, a 2016 Trump would have jumped all over Dementia Joe and possibly masked his now obvious mental deficiencies.
Very good observation. Trump really does need to learn from this – that he does best when he is more measured and constrained, without losing his acute quips and direct gee-ups to the base and newcomers.
JC
July 2, 2024 9:16 pm
So true, and the other big mistake was to split the view. Every time the corpse was talking there would be Trump moving and pursing his lips, and pulling subtle faces with the occasional look over.
Same rules for any further debate. Trump should insist on it, including the split screen.
Zatara
July 2, 2024 9:21 pm
David Aaronovitch, who presents BBC Radio 4’s “Briefing Room” programme, tweeted:
“If I was Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security”
After a rapid barrage of responses which included people pointing out that he had probably just committed incitement to violence under UK law, he deleted it and responded:
There’s now a far right pile on suggesting that my tweet about the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity is an incitement to violence when it’s plainly a satire. So I’m deleting it. If nothing else though it’s given me a map of some the daftest people on this site
It was satire, so you deleted it, and it was all the “far right’s” fault. Got it.
The cosseted left actually think this sort of talk, absolute incitement, is OK. They get completely hurt and surprised when they get called out for it.
Mother Lode
July 2, 2024 9:23 pm
Gorged to repletion, confit de canard floating on a sea of Bourgogne wine, I would make two observations:
1) There really is no follow up of spirit or liqueur that does not rob you of the splendid interplay of duck and wine
2) FJB
I appreciate the first point might be controversial.
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 2, 2024 9:24 pm
‘Can’t stick at a job’, judge tells top legal agentEllie Dudley
4 hours ago.
Updated 1 hour ago
The head of Australia’s largest Aboriginal legal service has been condemned by a judge for failing to hold down a job, sparking fresh criticism of his appointment, and raising serious concerns about his competence.
North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency chair Hugh Woodbury has faced growing calls to step down after The Australian revealed he bashed his pregnant partner by standing on her stomach, pushing her to the ground, slamming her arm in a door and calling her a “c..t” in front of their two-year-old child.
Coalition MPs have also raised questions over whether Mr Woodbury, who handles about $30m in federal government funding a year despite having no official legal qualifications, has the appropriate background to restore the embattled organisation after it was last year forced to suspend services in Alice Springs due to a staff exodus.
In sentencing remarks during Mr Woodbury’s abuse proceedings, Northern Territory local court judge Greg Borchers described Mr Woodbury as “someone who doesn’t stick at jobs”.
“I am not sure how I am to consider that you have had so many jobs, but you have never stayed at one,” Judge Borchers said when sentencing Mr Woodbury in October 2020.
“You come to this courthouse, as you have, Mr Woodbury, almost each and every legal practitioner in this court house has one job, as a legal practitioner. You have had so many jobs and you have never stuck with any, apart from a long period of time with Parks and Wildlife.”
Before working at NAAJA he had spent time managing Aboriginal hostels, working as a fencing contractor, labouring, working in a bank, and held positions within the Federal Circuit and Family Court and the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service.
“I don’t know why, but that’s a record of someone who doesn’t stick at jobs,” Judge Borchers said.
Mr Woodbury was fined $200 and sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond. No conviction was recorded.
The sentencing remarks revealed Judge Borchers was hesitant to convict Mr Woodbury because “a conviction in itself is a serious sanction and it does have an effect upon people’s futures”.
“I do accept that you may, at some stage, wish to consider entering a legal course,” he said.
He also did not convict Mr Woodbury “because of the attitude to your wife, who says that you are very supportive of her”.
“You are a good father and that you need some help,” he said.
South Australian Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle criticised the appointment of Mr Woodbury, and said there was an issue within community-controlled organisations where senior management are appointed because of their heritage.
I’m fed up with unshaven men who sport scruffy beards that make them look as if they’re about to pull a knife and scream allah akbar.
Just putting that out there.
The only person who does this whom I can tolerate looking that way is Sky news host James Macpherson. He has a perennial unshaven fluff, neither a trendy ‘unshaven’ five-o’clock shadow look, nor any sort of beard.
James’ doesn’t have good skin, perhaps he has to eschew shaving.
Anyway, I like him very much. Funnily enough, that unkempt look suits him. He looks approachable and actually is so, as I’ve briefly met him. On Sky he’s incisive and not afraid to tackle the big issues head on. As linchpin of The Late Debate, as the ‘older generation’ there, he can be very amusing.
Wally Dalí
July 2, 2024 9:37 pm
North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency chair Hugh Woodbury has faced growing calls to step down after The Australian revealed he bashed his pregnant partner by standing on her stomach, pushing her to the ground, slamming her arm in a door and calling her a “c..t” in front of their two-year-old child. ….. Mr Woodbury was fined $200 and sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond. No conviction was recorded. The sentencing remarks revealed Judge Borchers was hesitant to convict Mr Woodbury because “a conviction in itself is a serious sanction and it does have an effect upon people’s futures”. …..
The Sanctified Generation. Women and children most affected, God help them.
Mother Lode
July 2, 2024 9:42 pm
I really think, at this point, that the best the Dims can hope for is to let the shambling aphasic old tard lose and then make the point forever more that Trump’s victory over a flatulent colostomy bag of a homonidae was an empty one.
As I have opined before, the Dims would do well to let America resuscitate and replenish its blood supply before sinking their fangs in and exsanguinating her. Again. Truly she be bled near white now and could not sustain a Dimocrat class more that a couple of years as she is.
Where would the Dims have been if Reagan had not let the Republic take a desperate post-Carter gasp and begin to knit its tissues and soul. Seriously, imagine if Carter’s America had been allowed to be the basis of America’s future!
bons
July 2, 2024 9:52 pm
TE. I have just been reading your commentaries on Malta.
You are making me fat!
A Brit colleague and I were detached to Munich for four months.
We hated it.
It was a boarding school populated by goody goody two shoes pomposities who spent their whole time looking over each others’ (and our) shoulders.
Our escape was to take the train to the airport on Friday afternoons to seek out the ‘last minute’ offers taped up on the corridor walls. Malta was often on offer and became our favoutite.
Broiling under a Mediteranian sun on the terraces around the Grand Harbour scoffing enormous bowls of the richest pasta in the universe and slurping buckets of Malta wine was absolutely irresponsible, but it did innoculate us against the forthcoming week in kraut central.
Pasta, nuclear puree, thick cheese, veal and chicken, rich red – no wonder that they are such happy chaps.
The best and most frequent way to increase productivity is reduce labour costs.
Thats not the measure of productivity.
Sack some people, automate, increased productivity for the remaining staff. That happens.
The increased productivity theme ignores the reality that productivity enhancement is limited in some domains. There are only so many bricks that can be laid in an hour, but there is a machine that can do that much more quickly. Customers can only be served one at a time and AI is already taking some of those jobs. I caught a snippet of a program about a factory in Poland that makes prefab houses. It is very efficient and it requires much less labour than traditional methods. The saving grace for many workers is declining fertility leading to labour shortages.
Sancho Panzer
July 2, 2024 9:55 pm
JC
July 2, 2024 9:16 pm
So true, and the other big mistake was to split the view. Every time the corpse was talking there would be Trump moving and pursing his lips, and pulling subtle faces with the occasional look over.
And the reverse.
When Trump was speaking (and, incidentally, arranging his words in such a way that they sounded like English sentences), Hiden looked like he had gone into power-save mode.
The slack-jawed vacant stare into the middle distance.
Or, as Jon Stewart put it, “his resting 25th Amendment face”.
Sancho Panzer
July 2, 2024 9:59 pm
BobtheBoozer
July 2, 2024 9:27 pm
I’m fed up with unshaven men who sport scruffy beards that make them look as if they’re about to pull a knife and scream allah akbar.
Sack some people, automate, increased productivity for the remaining staff. That happens.
This method really works!
Had one staff who was constantly using their phone instead of working, back answered continually, snarkily questioned everything, agitating disquiet among the crew, culminating in her asking a serious question: “Why are we expected to work fast?”
I sacked her, sharply & without notice.
Instant & sustained improvement by the remainder of that team
Despite being one person down they’re doing more, doing it better, & doing it faster.
Top Ender
July 2, 2024 10:10 pm
Indeed Bons, the people on Malta do seem very happy.
Big feast day weekend, for St Peter and St Paul if I got that right. Enormous explosions from fireworks for about 30 minutes; much eating and drinking and lotsa flag waving in the little village of Rabat where we’re staying.
The Maltese also seems intent on having a lot of babies. Three and four per family wherever you look.
Kohler warned of Mr Trump’s disregard of climate change He said Australia should prepare for second Trump presidencyStop winning me over, I already love the magnificent bastard! ABC star issues an urgent warning to Australia about Donald Trump
Alan Kohler is starting to look more and more like an absolute tit. Plus I’ve always hated his moronic both-buttons-done-up jacket wearing- seriously, a sign of brain death if ever there were one.
ABC finance reporter Alan Kohler has warned of the consequences to Australia when it comes to climate change if Donald Trump is to be re-elected as president.
So not just an “ABC star” but a climate expert has spoken.
Stop winning me over, I already love the magnificent bastard!
That is a keeper.
Ta Walli. 🙂
Last edited 7 months ago by Beertruk
Top Ender
July 2, 2024 10:19 pm
A visit to the Malta Air Museum.
Small and privately run, but worth it.
Main attractions: two fighters which fought in the ferocious air wars around Malta in WWII – a Hurricane and a Spitfire; and two Gloster Meteors. Several other aircraft, and they are busy bringing back to life a few more.
Did they manage to preserve any of the three Gloster Gladiators – Faith Hope and Charity?
I remember them from my early days and the efforts of the ‘Ohio’ tanker and her valiant efforts to get to Malta at the height of the battles.
Funny how the details come back – the Tanker Ohio had welded construction instead of rivetted, which enabled her to withstand the concussion of the near misses and one of the sailors was able to use a bucket from the side of the ship to scoop water for ?fighting a fire, it was that low in the water. Forgot the name of the book – probably Malta Convoy or something similar.
Winston, I thought they had a Gladiator that was a composite of the three Faith, Hope and Charity planes on display. I read that a fair while ago, though.
JC
July 2, 2024 10:19 pm
Sack some people, automate, increased productivity for the remaining staff.
Productivity isn’t about sacking people; it’s about getting more output by reducing the cost/time of inputs. It could mean sacking people at the micro level, but then it may not. If it meant sacking people, the rate of unemployment would have been close to 99% since the Industrial Revolution. But, as you appreciate, it hasn’t meant that at all. In fact, productivity actually complements employment elsewhere in the economy.
The increased productivity theme ignores the reality that productivity enhancement is limited in some domains.
Sure. Absolutely. However, productivity enhancement, if it’s wide enough, will impact all incomes and not just the ones at the center of innovation. Think of something as simple as hair cuts. To a large extent, productivity increases in hair cutting have barely nudged. It’s done with scissors, as it was 300 years ago. But a barber’s wage isn’t the same as it was 300 years ago. That’s because productivity improvements in the industrial economy have enabled barbers to be paid at continually higher rates.
I’ll give you another example. When AI was first introduced, the CEO of Microsoft cam out and said AI’s impact on his firm would see large numbers of people being let go. About a year or so later, he took that back and completely reversed his view. He suggested that while there would be displacement, demand for workers could actually increase because Microsoft would be able to afford to have workers explore areas that needed more focus while AI did its thing. In fact, he added that AI would actually cause demand for more workers. He’s basically summarizing what’s been going on since the Industrial Revolution.
What about this latest one, via Alpha News, in which Omar stands smiling while former Somali Prime Minister Hassan Khaire states, according to the translation, that “the interest of Ilhan are not Ilhans, it’s not the interest of Minnesota, nor is it the interest of the American people, the interest of Ilhan is that of the Somalian people and Somalia.”
It’s something happening in Australia as well – people who have been elected to the Senate are representing others than the Australian people, and to their detriment. But how do we stop it?
Huh? Why would someone not be on their list?
They seem to want all of us dead.
Wally Dalí
July 2, 2024 10:38 pm
The best and most frequent way to increase productivity is reduce labour costs.
But the most bestest, but increasingly illegal way, is to link labour reward to that productivity.
Case in point: grapevine pruning season starts soon. The best years had pay running at piece rate, just like picking buckets at harvest time- the handy chaps got stuck in, the girlfriends who could live with maybe being on 75% of comparable stuck around, the useless or grumbly pissed off. All the fun of vintage, with no great rush, day after day- conversation got less ditzy, toilet breaks got rationalized, we’d do an extra hour if the weather was nice or if it looked grim for the next day.
I followed the stats in vines/man/hour pretty closely accross the patches, based the rate on past years, set a rate going into each patch with the understanding i’d bump it up if it proved unrealistic- it never did- everyone got faster accross the season, I constantly pruned back the rate/vine as we went because i could see it getting eaten up, and still everyone ended up earning more per hour as the days went on. Only had to send a few kids back through for a tidy-up once or twice, the pain of the oppurtunity cost sharpened them up toot sweet. Questions from the crew became a shedload more sensible and focused on itcomes, everyone got proactive about maintaining gear. I was under budget, and raced through ahead of schedule. Great times.
Now, it’s impossible. Workers must be provided with a minimum hourly equivalent, which I have to factor in to the overall job cost- it coddles the mugs, but more dangerously dilutes the reward to the troupers. The role of the supervisor then also gets de-fanged.
It’s barely worth the bookwork.
The union movement has much for which it should be held accountable. I sank tonnes of effort into trying to fight the minimum hourly rate in the hort award.
Total waste of time, not one of the Fair Work Commissioners grasped the reality, instead falling for the emotive bleats of “.. evil farmers use piece rate as a way to pay staff $80 per week”
Their ABC is not without culpability in that decision, as bimbette reporterettes straight out of j’ism at uni were aghast to see uni educated west european backpackers, “girls like us”, actually (ugh) being expected to actually work before they’d be paid.
Is there a more overly romanticised activity than growing grapes? I listened to a mate’s wife bitch about the useless locals around Margaret River. They had paid some huge sum to have their vines netted only to find out weeks later it hadn’t actually been done. The locals must laugh their tits off about this.
Two bereaved creatures finding comfort in each other. You can’t tell me that animals don’t feel love and loss the way we do. I’ve known too many animals to ever say that.
Very good – “Nigel Farage may not know how to deal with the problems, but he’s the only one talking about them.”
(Actually I’ll disagree with Matt – I think he does.)
But the issues are Immigration and the Muslim problem.
Without actually attracting much of an increase in support from 2019, Labour is a dead cert for Government – and 97.3% for government with a majority somewhere between ‘huge’ and ‘extremely comfortable’.
The existential battle now is between the Tories and Reform.
In the UK these are toxic accusations, however the Conservatives are so badly on the nose that may not matter much. Late polling shows that whether Reform replaces the Tories as the ‘party of the Right’, or fizzles, is within the survey margins of error.
The one thing that is not in doubt: Britain is neck deep in scalding shit – with the tide coming in.
Sancho Panzer
July 3, 2024 1:06 am
Sad but true Dr F.
A fair bit of the blame can be laid at the feet of air-head Boris and timid Theresa.
They win a massive majority and pinch a swag of Labour stronghold seats and what is the reaction?
“Hey, let’s try to look a lot more like Labour!”
Boris was the fool, led by his own emotional attachment to his young Green wife. If only he’d dumped the greenery, apologised for Covid responses, got rid of net zero and promoted a revitalisation in the north, then he’d be a hero leading the Conservatives to a great victory in two days time.
Just yesterday’s man now.
Sancho Panzer
July 3, 2024 1:12 am
I wouldn’t have to lie awake solving the problems of Brit politics if my freakin’ blood glucose would behave.
Grrr.
pfft, Try a displaced fracture of the coccyx, 18 months into it now.
I’m giving the ameliorative treatment of injections and physio a go first, as they insist one must, but I am already planning surgery for early 2025 when we return from London via a tour of northern India. Can’t have the surgery earlier anyway because who wants to be post-operative on the spine while in India, where all sorts of pathogens roam free?
Sancho, is your blood glucose level actually keeping you awake?
John H.
July 3, 2024 1:57 am
Sancho Panzer
July 3, 2024 1:12 am
I wouldn’t have to lie awake solving the problems of Brit politics if my freakin’ blood glucose would behave.
Perhaps you need a Semaglutide, the latest drug craze for weight loss. A couple of days ago I read a review of the potential benefits of that drug for preventing protein aggregation in the grey stuff. It wasn’t addressing that drug specifically but mentioned the target of the drug, which if elevated not only helps prevent aggregation but potentially can resolve “type 3 diabetes” a term used to refer to insulin resistance in the brain.
Yes, Bob & Sancho, I’ve been reading around this and looking into it as well. Certain bloods of mine came back close to pre-diabetic and I want to put a stop to that now.
There are side effects of course. I’m cautious.
Top Ender
July 3, 2024 3:22 am
Postcard from Malta
Guest post from Mrs TE
We have loved Malta. Yes, definitely trying to “sell” it to you. Put it on your bucket-list. So interesting, quaint, fabulous architecture, clean, great food, music, festivities, countryside, very devout, 100’s of cathedrals, bells ringing, Malta flag flying everywhere, beaches, infrastructure, prices very reasonable.
In some parts, it is like going back 50 years – small workshops, dress, shoes, I bought some sausages from a butcher who had been there since 1850. Most importantly, lovely HAPPY people. The family unit – three generations seems important, babies in prams everywhere; laughing, drinking, hugging…
Just before we arrived, the Feast Day of St Peter and Paul had begun and there had been a music festival in the local park, where they ate lots of fried rabbit. There are now no rabbits on the island, but they farm them.
The next day I caught horse riding events, which turned out to be a trotting race, featuring young boys racing up a hill with tiny horses – TE thinks Shetland ponies. Last night there was a huge gathering at the local cathedral near us in Rabat. The church at the square was packed; all lit up, with a band and all the families mingling.
Most people were wearing red t-shirts celebrating the 250 years anniversary of a saint. Others then arrived holding lots of balloons and religious banners and flags. The band played and mostly men sang, jumping and wildly gesticulating. It was fun to watch. For much of the time here, strangely daytime as well as night-time, fireworks have been going off and the echo around the limestone buildings is deafening. Bells are constantly ringing.
Very much enjoyed what time we had, and going back seems like even more of a good idea following your recommendations and those well-recounted adventures.
Couldnt agree more. We stayed in old Valetta and it was a fabulous week of food, museums, history, bells, the saluting battery, the gorgeous Grand Harbour views at every turn and much fun. Could have easily done another week.
If you get to Valletta, try the Ravioli Pappani and Pappani’s restaurant. It’s easily the best meal I had in the six weeks I was away. I wanted to marry the chef. Female or no, I wanted that recipe.
Was an explosive bolt or cartridge ever used to start up a piston engine aircraft?
Yes, explosive cartridges were used to start piston-engine aircraft, and one of the most notable systems employing this method was the Coffman engine starter. This ingenious device, often called a “shotgun starter,” was widely used in the 1930s and 1940s for aircraft and armored vehicles.
The Coffman starter worked by using a cordite cartridge, similar to a shotgun shell, which, when fired, produced high-pressure gas. This gas would then drive a piston or a geared mechanism to crank the engine and initiate the starting process.
The system was particularly advantageous in remote or harsh environments where traditional electric starters might be unreliable or carrying heavy batteries impractical.
Several notable aircraft utilized the Coffman starter, including some versions of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine used in the Supermarine Spitfire, as well as the Hawker Typhoon and Hawker Tempest, which employed the system to start their powerful Napier Sabre engines. The Coffman starter’s reliability and simplicity made it a popular choice during the war years.
The concept of using explosive cartridges for engine starting wasn’t limited to piston engines. It was also adapted for early jet engines, where the high-pressure gas from the cartridge would drive a turbine to start the engine. This method provided a quick and effective way to get engines running, especially in field conditions where other starting methods might be less feasible.
Also the JU 52, among others. (The only reason I knew this was that one of the many transports into the Stalingrad pocket had a new pilot who turned the engines off on landing, and while he waited for the aircraft to be unloaded, the engines froze solid on him.)
calli
July 3, 2024 5:07 am
Thanks for the Malta travelogue, Mrs TE! Loved it.
And now I want to visit more than ever.
It was a relatively quiet day in Venice. As in busy but not vilely so. We taxi-ed in from Mestre. Always stayed on the island before, but not this time. Some shops have closed for good, many old favourites still open, like the mask and linen shops. And, of course, the calligraphy shops.
My dear friend, the winged lion, still sits atop his pillar. And Saint George still vanquishes the dragon on his great pedestal.
A change since last time – bubble bummed trout pouters taking endless selfies against the glorious backdrop. Almost impossible to get a good, quick snap and move away for others to do the same. So much for modern, self absorbed womanhood.
In Mestre…a very noticeable population of Chinese, and the ubiquitous weirdbeards and their letterboxed property.
Enjoyable travelogues, Calli. Travel really brings home how much the world around us, one we thought we used to know, has changed.
Top Ender
July 3, 2024 5:09 am
Postcard to Malta #2 Out of all of the many countries I’ve been to in the Mediterranean, Malta is the best. It’s a mix of architecture and history dating back thousands of years, with empire and era buildings piled sometimes on top of each other. It has survived to the present day without burying the past, but managing to attain modern amenities in the Western style: everything works. Electricity, water supply, roads, shops, technology – all are here and they work all the time. However, you can walk down streets that still bear the marks of the bombings of WWII, and just around the corner is a mighty fortress dating back a thousand years, and ancient Valetta Harbour is one of the most beautiful in the world.
I paid a visit to the Malta Air Museum. Small and privately run, but worth it. The main attractions were two fighters which fought in the ferocious WWII air battless around Malta in WWII – a Hurricane and a Spitfire. They also had two Gloster Meteors jets. Several other aircraft, and they are busy bringing back to life a few more.
We visited several other museums and walked the city walls. It was not only WWII that saw tremendous battles here, but also spirited defence by the Hospitaller Knights, who commanded the island for hundreds of years, with the main event a huge attempted Muslim invasion culminating in the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. Many of the houses and walls bear testimony to all of this. Some of them have graffiti dating back hundreds of years – you can make out three masted sailing vessels for example. (Many thanks to local historians Keith and Dennis who walked us around and explained so much) We spent almost a week in Valetta, and then moved to Rabat, staying in an excellent old four-storey old-made-new apartment. It was rather in a Rapunzel’s castle style: one lounge room on the ground floor; then up a winding staircase to the first bedroom, up again to another, and up again to the kitchen and a rooftop terrace to eat on. The house was right next door to a pub hosting a wedding on our first night. Interesting – Western music, inc Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra, and then a lot of old Maltese standards. We spied down into the courtyard and worked out the couple are in their 50s. Then followed some traditional Italian and maybe Maltese – and then the ambulance has turned up and was carting away a groovy grannie in an oxygen mask. The next night featured an 80th birthday. Fortunately the local ordinance said the music must be turned off at 11pm, so all good.
We also made a visit to Gozo, one of the five islands of Malta. Fairly much the same, but it did have ?gantija; one of the more prominent “megaliths” – Stonehenge-like monuments dating back some 5,000 years. It was a ferry ride there and back, past some of the prominent guard towers which have served the lookouts for enemies for ages – a reminder that here in the middle of the Med battle was always feared.
England went the ‘diversity route’ in a soccer tournament a few years ago and it backfired spectacularly on them.
The England fans were not happy and didn’t hold back
It sometimes so hard being old enough to remember how very different it all used to be. We all grieve for a lost past, but sometimes the grief is extreme.
I suspect it has ever been thus, for most times have produced their tumults and great changes and have challenged seemingly enduring truths. We need to learn to accept and not obsess in order to continue on and gain comfort from those things that we can help to remain the same, or which we can improve.
James Morrow 3 Jul 2024 Sometimes it is the little details that are the most?telling.
Did you know that First Lady Jill Biden used to have her own walk-on music to be played whenever she entered an event, much like Hail to the Chief is played for her?husband?
Washington journalist T. Beckett Adams broke the story in 2022, back when it was the sort of item that might feature at your local pub trivia’s US politics round on a slow night.
Adams reported that in 2021, Mrs?Biden’s office instructed the ceremonial US Marine Band to come up with a tune they could fire up whenever she took the stage.
The piece was a first. Never before had a first lady asked for her own official “theme song”, to be played by the official US Marine Band.
What the band came up with was bizarre – a bleating, blatting trumpet number that sounded like a Year 6 brass ensemble warming up.
Much to the relief of the Marine players, the work was quickly shelved once Adams started asking questions about it, threatening to out the First Lady’s sense of self-importance.
Yet seen in the context of the past week, the brief episode of what was known as “Fanfare for the First Lady” looks increasingly like a piece of foreshadowing.
Behind the scenes, as Democrats melt down about their candidate’s debate performance last week and the fact they can no longer gaslight voters about the President’s condition, Mrs?Biden is said to increasingly have “main character syndrome”.
Not only is she in love with the trappings of office, but Mrs Biden increasingly sees herself as the Democrats’ co-candidate for 2024.
Thus the recent images of her swanning around fundraisers in the Hamptons and ditching her husband to chat up Emmanuel Macron at a D-Day state dinner in France.
This sense of entitlement was also on display on Monday as the latest edition of American Vogue hit the stands, with Mrs Biden on the cover in a white Ralph Lauren coat dress saying: “We will decide our future.”
Inside, the profile opens thusly: “If?you want to know what power feels like, try to get yourself driven around in a motorcade.”
The author of the piece gushes: “Flashing police chaperone lights form a perimeter as you blaze down an empty highway, waiting cars backed up on entry ramps as you pass … rules don’t apply.”
Is it any wonder that Jill Biden – and the rest of the Biden family, which contains more than its fair share of grifters – reportedly urged the President to stay in the race when they gathered at Camp David this past weekend?
As a last-minute note added to the online version of the Vogue profile put it, Mrs Biden told the magazine: “We would not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president … we will continue to fight.”
And why wouldn’t they?
After all, once out of office, Mrs Biden may still get a Secret Service detail when she goes to the supermarket, but that’s about it as far as the trappings of power will go.
No wonder she wouldn’t let her husband recover from last week’s debate debacle in private, instead offering utterly clueless encouragement in front of the cameras shortly after.
“You did such a great job!” she shrieked in front of a crowd of rattled?supporters.
“You answered every question!”
Three more stars on his Big Boy President chart and Mr Biden gets an ice cream, presumably.
Stories have also emerged about the extent to which Mrs Biden has controlled access to the President, using a small in-group of advisers to shield even fellow White House staffers from knowing the true extent of the commander-in-chief’s failings.
It goes without saying that this is a terrible state of affairs.
The list of global crises that could kick off at any moment would fill this page three times over, yet Mr Biden is?increasingly compromised and said?to be only “at his best” between 10am and 4pm for what is a 24-hour-a-day job.
At the same time, the First Lady is?running a routine that runs somewhere between Madame Mao and Edith Wilson, whom it later turned out all but ran the country after her husband, then-president Woodrow Wilson, had a stroke in?1919.
Not only is the First Lady committing what increasingly looks to be an act of elder abuse in pushing her husband to stay in office and in the race, with six months to go until Inauguration Day, she is also putting the security of the West in jeopardy.
From a kindergarten teacher awarding a participation ribbon to everyone:
No wonder she wouldn’t let her husband recover from last week’s debate debacle in private, instead offering utterly clueless encouragement in front of the cameras shortly after.
“You did such a great job!” she shrieked in front of a crowd of rattled?supporters.
“You answered every question!”
Three more stars on his Big Boy President chart and Mr Biden gets an ice cream, presumably.
And if anyone doesn’t think the Marines didn’t hideous-up that fanfare on purpose, they don’t know Marines.
Steve trickler
July 3, 2024 6:10 am
Therapeutic and salivating stuff watching these clips and you learn so much.
After watching the butchering of that carcass on the back of the tractor and for them to proceed to bag it up and share it with the village is emotional stuff.
This was a great hour.
—-
Wilderness Cooking:
Secrets Of Wild Cuisine! Discover New Facets Of Taste With Fish And Meat
Shocking news! The News website levels with its readers and says that the disturbing performance by Biden in the debate was not a one-off, but that he has had some 20 worrying events over the past few years!
Most Australians probably don’t follow US current affairs as closely as we do here. If they rely solely on the MSM it would explain why normally sensible people have a bad impression of Trump and no idea that Joe is damaged goods, or that there are so many bad actors in the Dem world.
Ceres
July 3, 2024 6:59 am
“Not only is she in love with the trappings of office, but Mrs Biden increasingly sees herself as the Democrats’ co-candidate for 2024.”
Very apparent early on, that this evil woman had tickets on herself when she insisted she always be referred to as Dr Jill Biden. She has a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware 2007, and taught at a public high school and a community college. A Ph.D not a medical degree.
In the UK these are toxic accusations, however the Conservatives are so badly on the nose that may not matter much. Late polling shows that whether Reform replaces the Tories as the ‘party of the Right’, or fizzles, is within the survey margins of error.
The one thing that is not in doubt: Britain is neck deep in scalding shit – with the tide coming in.
What’s particularly interesting is observing how the UK establishment, particularly the MSM, are spending lots of time smearing, belittling, ridiculing and desperately trying to bring down Farage and Reform. They are all working overtime at the moment, from planting actors in so called ‘stunts’ to trying to paint Farage as some kind of Putin agent. No doubt many ‘Tories’ are behind this, working hand in hand with the far-left MSM to destroy Reform.
Who do I blame most of all? Probably Bonking Boris Johnson. He was gifted a huge electoral majority, yet what did he do? He squandered it. Waylaid by his toffy green girlfriend (what is it with dopey men and their dicks?), her equally toffy grifting green mates, then the disaster of Covid and lockdowns, you could see the disaster show unravelling from early on. Boris’ biggest crime was succumbing to net zero and so his legacy, along with Sunak, May and Cameron, should be ‘net zero seats’.
And no, I haven’t forgotten Liz Truss, a PM for five minutes. Truss, whilst not perfect, was the choice of the Tory base and during her brief tenure, she actually tried to make some changes. For her crimes she incurred the wrath of the establishment and was terminated in a globalist putsch, and that’s how the UK got Sunak.
Farage is desperately trying to save the UK but I suspect it is all too late. The UK, within a few decades, will have an Islamist government, and St Pauls, Westminster and so on, will all be converted into mosques. I know, I know, I’m engaging in hyperbole but you see all of my hyperbole over the last fifteen years has come true.
Cassie, your hyperbole is similar to mine except I’m a bit further along the track of reality than you – either that or I’m more comfortable saying stuff like “Europe has left it too late to stop the Islamic Invasion – it only has the Ethnic Cleansing route to go down. And there’s no guarantee they will win it.”
Remember that at this point in time, our Elite Caste have refused to acknowledge this problem they started 40 years ago, and still refuse to deal with it.
Proof by Kevin M: ?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1
The French “also ran” leftoid parties and spent force Macron are trying every trick in the book to avert a win on Sunday by the National Rally headed by Marine Le Pen. I note the absence of the normal media slavering over the possibility of a female doing well!
Being opposed to uncontrolled immigration is enough these days to get you labelled as “extreme right”. Across the Channel the BBC is working a line that says the UK shouldn’t oppose illegal immigration or demonise those who are “seeking asylum” from terrible things in their home country. Heaven forbid, however, that the regimes in those awful countries should be condemned at the UN or dragged off to the ICC. That’s reserved for miscreants like Israel.
I thought it was a bit rich of them to say that the sacred cow NHS had a lot of immigrants working in it! These are probably not Venezuelan criminals.
Dr Jill has been given another Vogue spread….you gotta laugh. It’s Dr Jill’s third spread in the magazine. Melania Trump, who speaks five languages, is exquisite in real life and was actually a model before becoming Mrs Trump, was never gifted a spread by US Vogue, in fact during the four years Melania was First Lady she was ignored, maligned and ridiculed.
Now normally I couldn’t give a shit, and in fact such stuff is shallow however it’s always worth noting the hypocrisy.
Another hypocrisy is this, I’ve seen the Vogue pictures of Dr Jill and they are very edited, touched up, photoshopped and so on, designed to make the old hag look twenty to thirty years younger. Now remember how Princess Catherine was put through the ringer by the MSM only a few months ago because she lightly touched up a picture of her and her children?
The media and the education system are the enemy.
Gramsci was right.
Take the institutions and the rest will fall into line – prepare for the wukkas paradise!
🙂
Knuckle Dragger
July 3, 2024 7:15 am
this evil woman had tickets on herself
The colossal, staggering front of that woman. The Mount Everest of arrogance.
Not even Michelle Obama demanded her own fanfare whenever she took the stage, and that’s saying something.
She is the paragon, the absolute apex of the ‘You will address me by my husband’s rank’ line used by Byzantine empresses and medieval queens by marriage.
In reality though, she is merely Biden’s latest (and last) root.
She is the paragon, the absolute apex of the ‘You will address me by my husband’s rank’ line used by Byzantine empresses and medieval queens by marriage.
I actually heard that at a Regimental Dinner, second hand, in the Officers Mess at Latchford Barracks.(1990ish) I thought trying to pass oneself off as an officer was a criminal offence? Anyone else have thoughts on this?
lotocoti
July 3, 2024 7:22 am
Was an explosive bolt or cartridge ever used to start up a piston engine aircraft?
Michelle Obama might have interfered with school dinners, Melanie Trump certainly knew she hadn’t been elected but was the gracious ornamental wife but Dr Jill, I remember her getting herself photographed on an international junket reading some important documents, she has certainly inserted herself, and being unelected that’s a Jill dictatorship.
Rosie
July 3, 2024 7:47 am
“We will decide our future” Was that a Freudian slip first lady? Apparently that shoot would have all been organised in April May. She obviously coached hard ‘you answered all the questions!’ While he stood there looking like a stunned mullet. Now her perfectly timed vogue messaging is just a juicy meme source.
damon
July 3, 2024 8:05 am
“Ensure that in a country the size of continental US”
How big is Australia really, if you remove the deserts and other unproductive land?
The land could be made productive pretty much across the continent. But nooooo, that would destroy the “natural”, environment.
Look at what Israel has done with a small piece of desert.
Farmer Gez
July 3, 2024 8:13 am
Spot on Damon
Australia produces about as much food as four mid western US states.
We have little quality soil and even less with reliable rainfall. That’s why building renewables on good land is a crime of monumental stupidity and greed.
I’ve said this about mining on good agricultural land and been cried down for it over the years. Miners always pick the easiest and closed to infrastructure. Good agricultural land is an investment in the future.
Dr Faustus
July 3, 2024 8:15 am
Team Handsome Boy is introducing its Future Made in Australia legislation today, enshrining a $23 billion 10-year cash splash on things that make you go hmm? that support Net Zero and Australia’s Renewable Superpowerdom.
Productivity Commissioners, past, present, and emerging are hooting like gibbons that this will be a colossal misallocation and waste of public funds.
Nonsense, says Treasury (the agency apparently anointed to oversee this historic transformation). The private sector has no idea what ‘National Interest’ is and can’t do the job of securing Australia’s world-leading Green industries without the guiding hand of government.
In many instances, business and investors possess the skills, market information, risk taking frameworks, agility and flexibility to make the necessary and appropriate long-term investments in new markets and technologies.
In those other instances, where business and investors are floundering spastics in the cold cruel world of innovation, a stream of golden winners will be picked by Dr Chalmers and his Top Men.
Under this Kleptocracy, and that describes both Left and Right, Australia is going to go tits up, crash and burn, and whatever else you want to term it as. The Communists will do what they usually do – create a chaotic mess and then use it to force in laws the people would never vote for.
Get ready for a South Pacific Peso of 40 cents.
I’m going through a pile of old receipts/invoices (which has prompted this rant) and realised that a 10 ounce stash of gold I bought in 2017 for $1746/ounce now retails for $3500. I haven’t gained anything – the currency has been debased by 50% (Is that how it works?) over 7 years.
Notice with all this carry-on around Senator “Fat Paycheck” that none in the media have speculated on this whole thing being a set-up by the musso “we is coming for you”politico wing ….
They’ll have tasted the camel dung and noted Luigi & all the infidels are well on the nose so ripe for wiping and with several musso dominated seats in the “pardi” circle why not fan a sandstorm …..!
Sooo, “Fat Paycheck” throws a wobbly and exits the tent .. Luigi “almost” reacts but on opening the fridge door realises the lettuce is too hard and adds more marinate .. Instead of the big “slap” intended he, being “leafless”, blows some “pardi” hot air .. no sacking and the suspension Labor has when they aren’t having a suspension tactic plays out ..
“Fat Paycheck” then ups the ante and playz that time honoured & media luvved .. musso minority victimization card ..
“Oooh”, squeals the Senator, ” They’ve locked me out, I’m all alone, won’t allow me into meetings or chatz around the water bubbler, woe is me, 3 years & $200k + freebies but NO friends”.
The media luv this and, vigorously, shake the palm with, exclusive, frond-overs to the musso political arm who are happy to sway,
” Shock, horror” yells the selected, most outspoken, iman, ” Once again, we, an under-represented minority are being casbah-ed for having, honest, opinions concerning the evils of Jewry” ..
“Time for change we needz our own representation and will be looking at candidates in our “chosen” seats to launch, our beloved, muslim jihad” ..
Media, of course, is lapping this up & adopting their “we luvs all RoP so won’t you come for us last” attitude by expecting, the, now elevated to, Mahdi “Fat Paycheck” to take the “hump” and change oasis to form her own musso luv tribe & wave the scimitar across, what is regarded as, Luigi’s sandland(s) ……..!
Cos one thing the media will guarantee will be the upcoming Mahdi “Fat Paycheck” will be elevated above the “corporal”, Chlamydia & the “teals” when it comes to political “victim” publicity ..
Not even a 251, one eyed lesbian, domestic violence candidate could top an aggrieved musso wommenz ( tho it would be a close call) .. !
Yep, it’s the same playbook they’ve been using for 1400 years – do something to push the envelope, then start the waterworks when pushback happens.
We are ruled by stupid, gutless, ahistorical cowards from both left and right.
JC
July 3, 2024 8:34 am
“Ensure that in a country the size of continental US”
How big is Australia really, if you remove the deserts and other unproductive land?
Oh, about the size of Western Europe.
lotocoti
July 3, 2024 8:36 am
Meanwhile, in the formerly united Kingdom, Gammon Man Bad looks like he’ll be getting a seat at Westminster.
The only people who are voting for Farage, were never Clactonians in the first place. They’ve all come down here to create their own little Brexit White Britain safe haven.
“If you saw the picture of the town hall when Farage had his meeting it was all just basically middle-aged White men. There were hardly any women even in the audience.
“You wouldn’t believe the hatred and division it’s now whipping up in this town again. It’s vile down here.”
Murdering trannies is first on his evil and hateful agenda. Apparently.
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
July 3, 2024 8:36 am
Wheatbelt locals baulk at Bullwinkel, call for new Federal seat in State to be named ‘Beard’ Dylan CapornThe West Australian
Wed, 3 July 2024 2:00AM
The family of a WWII nurse killed by Japanese soldiers in a 1942 massacre have lead calls to name WA’s new Federal electorate after their aunt, rather than the sole survivor of the horror — Vivian Bullwinkel.
Relatives of Toodyay-born Sister Alma Beard, one of 22 Australian nurses killed on Bangka Island in 1942, made a submission to the Australian Electoral Commission to rename the vast seat — which stretches from Perth’s eastern suburbs to Northam — “Beard”.
The Beard family letter was one of dozens that flooded the redistribution process, calling for a name change to the new seat of Bullwinkel — added to WA because of population growth — arguing the previous namesake was not born in the State.
Lieutenant Colonel Bullwinkel, who was a prisoner of war in WWII, was the sole survivor of the Bangka Island massacre in Indonesia, pretending to be dead as 22 colleagues were gunned down around her in the sand.
Nieces and nephews of Sister Beard wrote that while the change would not diminish Lt Col Bullwinkel’s service to WA, it would recognise her strong desire to honour the victims of the massacre.
“We consider naming this Division after Alma Beard would honour the memory of a local victim of a war crime, particularly a nurse, who were so often overlooked for their dedication and service during war,” the family wrote to the Commission.
“Her mother (our grandmother) later received a letter from Vivian Bullwinkel, the sole survivor, telling how Alma’s “brave conduct in her hour of crisis has added lustre to the service which she so nobly carried on”.
“We also think Vivian would be happy to see her friend honoured in such a way. We are Alma’s nieces and nephews, her direct surviving relatives. Aunty Alma’s story has always been an important part of our family history from our childhood and an inspiration to us all.”
A local historian told media at the unveiling of a Toodyay memorial to Sister Beard in 2022 that some of her last words had been to Lt Col Bullwinkel: “Bully, there are two things in life I’ve always hated, the Japanese and the sea, and today I have ended up with them both,” she said.
Premier Steven Miles has slapped down demands for the man at the centre of investigating the Callide Power Station explosion to front budget estimates for a political grilling.
The LNP has written to the state government urging it to compel forensic engineer Sean Brady to appear at Budget Estimates this month to answer questions about his probe into the 2021 power station explosion.
Dr Brady’s work has taken three years, with only a redacted draft report released last week after part of it was sensationally aired in the Federal Court.
It cited maintenance problems at Callide Power Station, leading to a week of pressure on Energy Minister Mick de Brenni, who said he was misled by CS Energy.
LNP energy spokeswoman Deb Frecklington has called for Mr de Brenni to request Dr Brady’s attendance at the budget estimates hearings to explain his three-year probe into the Callide explosion.
“The Callide cover-up is one of the biggest ministerial cover-ups in Queensland’s history,” she said.
“They did everything in their power to bury the independent expert report so Queenslanders would never know the truth.
“Labor must allow Sean Brady to appear before budget estimates.”
Mr Miles quickly dismissed the demand and said Ms Frecklington’s calls “fundamentally misunderstands” the purpose of estimates.
“The estimates process is an opportunity for MPs to ask questions of the government – Dr Brady is a consultant,” he said.
“He’s an expert in his field, but he is not a part or a spokesman for the government so it would be inappropriate for the opposition to try to call him to the estimates process.”
A witness list is provided by the government for the two-week estimates process, giving Labor, LNP and crossbench members the chance to ask questions of bureaucrats and ministers.
Mr Miles also addressed a question about whether Mr de Brenni’s failure to follow-up the advice of CS Energy’s chair and CEO – and revelations he had not sought answers about the cause of the explosion – suggested he had been ignorant.
“No I think the minister has been incredibly clear,” he said.
“The minister was really reassured by those who are appointed to run these government owned corporations for us that all appropriate maintenance had been undertaken.
“At no stage was any maintenance funding withheld … any request they made for such funding was supported and approved.”
Basically giving the unwashed the middle finger. All above board, nothing to see here, piss orf.
Why is the braindead lamestream meeja suddenly getting hysterical about this nonexistent threat posed by nonexistent people?
To deflect from the existence of real actual nayzees in this stinking joke of a country?
Cue spooky muzak …
‘HIERARCHY OF HATRED’
Far-right ‘fear and misery’ a threat
Religious leaders and politicians have slammed the ‘disturbing growth’ of Australia’s neo-nayzees in the wake of October 7 as one of NSW’s top cops says they are ‘toxic’ to society.
(From the Oz)
To paraphrase South Park, “you’ve got the wrong nayzees!” Or Star Wars, “these are not the nayzees you’re looking for (given they don’t exist)”.
Absolutely pathetic, you ridiculous z-grade dishonest dissembling clowns. Lift your game.
Indolent
July 3, 2024 8:54 am
How delusional (or outright dishonest) do you need to be to post something like this?
What the parties lack is not a solution but the will to seriously address the issue because they’re beholden to vested interests which benefit from it.
This goes to the Judith Sloan piece I posted this morning about the way policy is now formulated, who benefits and who pays (not just in monetary terms but in declining quality of life).
They rule for themselves and their supporters. Hopefully their arrogance – which is equal to their ahistorical stupidity – doesn’t come back and take a good bite out of their fat arses.
Predictably (the Tele, apologies if posted earlier):
Uh huh:
The standard Radio Rental defence, now applying to people yet to hit their mid-teens.
Oh, huzzah!
He’s either radicalised or mental. Either way, he should never have been roaming the streets.
The knife to the neck may be a clue here.
Coles, in the last annual report showed sales of $41.5 billion and a net profit of $1.1 billion. That’s 2.6%. Wafer thin.
OK…I’ll repost my reply here:
You can guess it was about them not finding a hooker locally who did “just the thing they wanted”, if you like.
The evidence is that they were not able to meet the ridiculous and massive regulatory and similar barriers. 2.6% margins while being attacked for the consequences of collectivist monetary policy is just icing on the cake.
Dutton is useless and actually as much of a negative to the Right as Morrison.
He’s a former cop and should be nowhere near the levers of power. He needs to go.
Agree 100%. The man is a joke and way out of his depth.
Agree that Dutton is not a good match for a free-loving people however, who else is there that can motivate the conservative electorate? Everyone who has any guts or nous is a Senator.
Coles and WW are paying suppliers too much. Cartel like behaviour including stocking exactly the same lines, agreeing to not pressure suppliers, tacit uncompetitive actions like not parallel importing, laws against grey imports, trademark laws, suppliers with too much cartel market power eg dairy, over regulation of food safety, global suppliers effective monopolies. Coles and WW are happy clipping the ticket but not performing their role which is to represent customers in the fight against supplier power. More competition is the only answer.
I’m no supporter of the ColesWorth duopoly but how do you do anything about them stocking the same lines .. ? ..
They are both in the same business .. bit difficult to stock food from other manufacturers .. After all, there can only be so many operations that manufacture food items .. I realise they, like Aldi, can specify different packaging but in the end the contents come from the same manufacturers .. unless they are importing …. then you get the howls of “buy Oz” .. so ano win situation …….
You don’t. That’s the point. Lack of competition in the whole supply chain is the root cause. Solve that, and all the points above go away. You don’t fix things by working on Coles/WW. You have to remove all the statutory limitations that lead to low competition. Aussie steak is cheaper in Japan than here. The only actor powerful enough to do that is the State.
There are solutions, JohnH.
Stop increasing wages through legislative fiat and allow the market to decide. Open up the labor markets.
Increase the supply of housing by removing all sorts of imposts and assorted taxes on construction. Ensure that in a country the size of continental US and twice as large as Western Europe provides ample land for housing.
Remove obstacles to increase supply of electricity by not closing down coal plants.
Eliminate all obstacles in the production of oil&gas.
There’s much more, but there’s a start.
Reduce immigration, Not eliminate it, but reduce the numbers.
Reduce the immigration numbers by at least 80%, and select carefully. Genuine skills, not nail polishers and hairdressers.
There are no genuinely skilled people out there. All are employed and well paid where they are. What we need to do is scale down immigration even more to 10% of the current rate and simply train our own tradies.
We don’t need immigration – we’re already choking on the surplus that is coming out of our ears. Educate our own, or send them OS to finish their training with strict provisos they come back here.
If an immigrant has returned to the country they came from and claimed danger because of etc – send them back. They’ve come here under false pretences – in other words they lied. And send their families back as well. We already have the records, we know who is doing it, deal with them and help solve our housing problem.
If we can adopt collective punishment against Germany and Japan we can do it with the rest of them.
It’s illegal in Australia for the big supers to arm twist suppliers.
“It wasn’t an arm twist, yer Honour.
It was merely a Chinese burn.”
But are laws enforced or, for that matter, enforceable?
And prioritise carpenters and bricklayers, not dogwalkers and beauticians.
For heaven’s sake!
Snap, see my response to JC at 1725.
And see my response at 9pm.
See my response above. There are no genuinely qualified migrants of that calibre, all those claiming the skills are frauds. Let’s just train our own and pay them well.
Roger cost of living is a problem across the OECD. You’re right about vested interests but that is not national vested interests, it is global vested interests. Apart from that a law preventing retired politicians occupying high flying commercial positions is worth a thought. Think tanks they can join but most of them lack the intelligence for those roles.
It is surprising how many politicians state they are doing it for the country and when they retire they don’t go into non-profits or community organisations, rather positions with huge incomes and influence. Lying ass wipes.
Klaus Schwab Accused Of Sexual Harassment
Andrew Neil – ‘I don’t see how Macron recovers from this’ | SpectatorTV
He doesn’t. Isn’t democracy great?
This is how they operate.
@catturd2
All of this against little old catturd2? He really must be over the target.
So are the policies that led to it, John.
It’s both. Domestic real estate developers and large businesses both benefit from high immigration, for example.
The reason the invisible hand is invisible is because it doesn’t exist. Wages are already not keeping up with cost of living and your proposal will make that worse.
The housing supply is a labour and materials supply problem. The size of a country is irrelevant, it is proximity to employment opportunities that matter. It is also a NIMBY problem because local councils won’t allow rezoning for more apartment complexes.
Coal plants are old and will close. Build gas plants and do what WA did, secure local gas supply.
30% of doctors and 20% of nurses are overseas trained. We don’t have enough skilled labour here. Immigration needs to be cut but solving the housing problem will take several years and a huge increase in skilled labour intake.
Stop paying dead money for Centrelink unlimited benefits … cut people off after six months and see wage inflation moderate and need for most imported labour die off.
We have a system now with around 1M doing nothing and a large & growing bureacracy enabling a lifetime on benefits to be “normal” while we import hundreds of thousands of Uber drivers … And then there is NDIS as well.
Cut immigration and foreign students to sensible levels and the housing ‘crisis’ disappears.
Justice Sotomayor is an evil, stupid kunt; she has literally unleashed the hounds of the demorats with her hypothetical scenarios about Trump using SEAL teams to assassinate his rivals.
O’Bummer used drones to kill US citizens overseas.
It’s impossible for there to be real increases in wages without corresponding increases in productivity. Increases in nominal wages simply fuels inflation.
It’s why real wages in Australia were stagnant and now begun to fall.
Not if you are in government employ or certain unions that government allow to screw everyone. Government is the cause of all inflation one way or another.
The problem with competition is that the winners become so powerful they can crush any opposition. A recent example. Aldi was advertising cheap oranges, within a couple of days Coles was advertising the same. Coles can take the momentary hit. In any domain once domination is established it is very difficult to cause their downfall. They might do stupid things like fail to read the trends(Kodak) but mostly when dominance is established it remains. IBM tried to overthrow Microsoft Windows with OS Warp. They spent a fortune and it was a complete failure.
Yair.. the problem with competition is indeed that it’s competition. Can’t have that. Moar gubernint is da answer!
Have a good night, Cats.
Cold & wet here.
Wood heater taking the edge off it!
Greg Sheridan slams ‘hysterical’ reaction to Supreme Court’s ruling on Trump immunity
The best and most frequent way to increase productivity is reduce labour costs.
I suppose I am stupid here, but I’ve never understood percentage wage rises. Why not give everyone a $3000.00 a year increase. All a percentage increase does is widen the disparity from bottom to top. I suppose I am now a communist.
You can only do that if you reduce all other costs.
Traitor And WEF Devotee Keir Starmer Is Your Next Prime Minister – UK General Election
Having a twatter fight with a mong whos stating
“aktually, theres only about 160 people employed by the live sheep industry”…
After Ive informed him of his family tree missing a few branches hes come back with “thats the right figures”.
So he walked into my trap.
Then why is the government shutting down such a value adding sector? At about $1,000,000 per full time employee?
Roger
July 2, 2024 5:14 pm
One of the largest changes resulting in increased cost of living is that real estate markets have become globalised.
And real estate in Western nations is much more attractive than real estate in China, maybe because it’s freehold.
Or maybe because it’s scarce? Remember those two dancing partners, supply and demand?
Supply rises to meet demand when markets work.
Thats not the measure of productivity.
15 Secretaries Blow Off Congressional Subpoenas While Subpoena Refusal Lands Trump Adviser In Jail
@Bitcoin_Redneck
I’d like to thank Congress for using my Tax money to buy Zelensky’s wife a Bugatti.
Zelensky’s wife purchased the newest Bugatti Turbillon for 4.5 million euros.
She can spend the next 2 years learning how to drive a Hypercar
Awesome stuff.
Let’s face it, lots people are getting rich from the war in Ukraine, and the media is too scared to say anything about the Americans who get rich.
Ever seen an article on the head of Lockheed Martin or Raytheon and what they do and drive?
Of course not
DEI efforts in US Armed Forces ineffective, run ‘opposite of the military ethos’: study
But that’s not in the script!
Norwegian police interact with pali protestor.
Odd how she and her mates speak unaccented English…
Bullshit.
I tend to think the same.
But its one of those wonderful “lie before the truth gets its pants on” stories.
It’s so blatantly ridiculous.
Indolent
That story is bullshit. The invoice had a BSB number. French banks don’t use BSB numbers. You need to be more discerning with these conspiracies.
Not another satire site unwittingly posted by the uber-spammer, surely?
Seriously, that’s his name?
Oh Dear, How Sad, Never Mind news (the NT News):
This is what happens when you kill the elderly. Crooks have parents too. The screws are obviously very distraught as well:
Aaaahahahaa. Yeah righto.
Shit and piss thrown at him? That’s all?
Piss weak, guys.
Do better.
Apparently there is another felon with a connection to Carol Clay in there. What are the chances…
Just in from Israeli media…..
Liora Argamani, 61 years old, mother of rescued hostage Noa Argamani, has passed away after a long battle with brain cancer. Throughout her battle with cancer, she also fought tirelessly to bring her daughter home. On June 8, Noa was rescued in a heroic IDF mission after being held hostage by Hamas terrorists in Gaza for 8 months. Fortunately, Liora was reunited with Noa before her passing, and her dying wish came true.
Liora was born in Wuhan, China. She married her Israeli husband in the mid 1990s and converted to Judaism, taking the name ‘Liora”. Liora means ‘my light‘ in Hebrew. Clearly a providential name because Liora, despite her cancer, remained a burning light that refused to be die whilst her daughter, Noa, was held captive by Nazis in Gaza. Now that Noa has been brought home, Liora’s light has finally extinguished and she’s finally at peace now.
May the memory of Liora be a blessing.
Sad, but wonderful at the same time.
Bless.
re: Trump’s immunity.
On the one hand, obviously the president should not be an unaccountable king above the law.
Luckily, that is not exactly what Justice Roberts found. The president can’t be prosecuted for exercising their constitutional powers. So if Orange man did something unconstitutional he can be prosecuted for that still.
There’s just no chance a court will be convinced that “fight like hell” was anything more than a colourful metaphor that was well within character for Trump. He didn’t order a break-and-enter at the Capitol, nor a coup, simple as that.
Everything is coming up orange. Where’s mUnty?
Replace “constitutional” with “official” and you’re correct. Lawyers will be sending their great-grandchildren & beyond through college on this case …
Jarndyce & Jarndyce
Ackchuallyy… (via Time):
So yes the official acts got some sort of lesser protection in the same judgement.
same as it ever was on constitutional powers, but official vs unofficial could be interesting ….
Catchy little number from North Korea. Please include in Saturday radio show.
https://youtu.be/bj2_py2Ab3k
Not to mention this classic rendition …
I was in the showroom at same time and noticed Madame Z, along with Putin’s gardener and Trumps personal lawyer all buying Bugattis.
True and I have a pic to prove it.
Luckily ones Bentley dealer is more discreet.
Indeed. Mine delivers, COD.
This is so funny.
Susan Sarandon’s daughter married for the second time, and no one took any notice.
A quick email to Daily Mail and bang!, ooooh, Eva Amurri doesn’t care about the mean comments about her wedding dress. What do you think?
LOL LOL 😀
cohenite
July 2, 2024 5:46 pm
One of the more bizarre “judgements” I have ever heard.
The Dimocrats are losing what remains of their tiny little minds.
Cats from WA,
do you know anything about this? Is this for real? Does it matter, or do you reckon it’s meh?
Asking as an East Coaster who has yet to visit WA.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13590561/The-Pier-Hotel-closes-worlds-toughest-pub-shuts-doors-130-years.html
JC
July 2, 2024 7:19 pm
Indolent
Ya think?
Le BSB.
It’s hilarious. For four years now they’ve been running with the hoax that the corpse has one of the most agile minds in the world. They then send him into a debate early, and all of America finds out the Demons, along with the corp media, have been running the lie that the crook is fine.
Immediately after the debate, the media acted surprised and called for his resignation. Now some of them have begun to walk this back, suggesting dementia should stay on.
The media appears to be more demented than dementia.
As someone said
Vote for Trump. It’s a no brainier.
When you think you’re gaslighting the nation but you’re really gaslighting yourselves.
The best line in the history of debates has to be
Things must be getting desperate when you release your talking points plan to all your known supporters via email.
Watch for those to appear here, some already have.
New leaks in the opposite direction too.
Insiders knew his condition well in advance
https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/united-states/numerous-instances-veteran-reporter-carl-bernstein-reveals-sources-close-to-biden-say-debate-performance-not-a-one-off/news-story/1ad3a0715a81296202da1e2d6375ae40
Damn!
I forgot to add the link for the Susan Sarandon article.
Damn you Sacred Hill Shiraz. 😀
Here ’tis;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13590835/Susan-Sarandons-daughter-Eva-Amurri-critics-breasts-wedding-gown.html
The lady is rather – um – well endowed, isn’t she?
This is a true statement.
It popped in and out of his skull regularly, did cartwheels and pirouettes despite copious amounts of brain freezing icecream for more than four years. And managed to control the dribbling and widdling – a masterful performance.
Being super agile though, has its drawbacks. It left the building once too often, the doors are now locked and there’s no one home.
Opinion from Henry Olsen / New York Post:
Also 4) doesn’t zone out mid-sentence, but that was a given.
Can Trump hold off announcing his veep until the Dem replacements have been announced?
Warnock-Whitmer might be the one to watch??
The Republican Convention is 15-18 July. Trump will have to name his running mate then.
Replacing both Biden and Harris would open a huge can of worms and punch some major holes in party unity to say the least.
On the other hand, pick any two names out of the phone book and they will have better approval numbers than Biden/Harris. So who knows?
Keep the popcorn handy this summer.
Don’t dismiss the Hildebeast – she’s determined to be the first female US President, and if there’s anything she won’t do, I have no idea what it could be.
She and that husband have probably been responsible for more dodgy deaths of people that could have compromised them, and they know where all the bodies are buried.
Beside which. I put a total of $80 on her at aprox 80/1 (2 differing bets.)
Calli,
with the increasing use of the word “Corpse”, to describe Biden, that would make Dr Jill, the “Corpse Bride”.
Extremely fitting.
Cannibal Corpse?
JC
July 2, 2024 8:42 pm
And one of the great own goals of debating history was the Dimocrats insisting on muted microphones.
The best possible way to expose an opponent’s inherent weaknesses is to give them enough rope to hang themselves.
Trump’s “long rope” is his excessive ebullience and jumping all over an opponent verbally. OK, it plays well to the base, but turns off any marginals.
Dementia Joe’s noose is his fumbling and bumbling and, worst of all, the dead air.
The muting of microphones simultaneously played down Trump’s weakness by eliminating interruptions and hung Biden out to dry when he became lost for words.
With open mikes, a 2016 Trump would have jumped all over Dementia Joe and possibly masked his now obvious mental deficiencies.
Very good observation. Trump really does need to learn from this – that he does best when he is more measured and constrained, without losing his acute quips and direct gee-ups to the base and newcomers.
So true, and the other big mistake was to split the view. Every time the corpse was talking there would be Trump moving and pursing his lips, and pulling subtle faces with the occasional look over.
Same rules for any further debate. Trump should insist on it, including the split screen.
David Aaronovitch, who presents BBC Radio 4’s “Briefing Room” programme, tweeted:
After a rapid barrage of responses which included people pointing out that he had probably just committed incitement to violence under UK law, he deleted it and responded:
It was satire, so you deleted it, and it was all the “far right’s” fault. Got it.
The cosseted left actually think this sort of talk, absolute incitement, is OK. They get completely hurt and surprised when they get called out for it.
Gorged to repletion, confit de canard floating on a sea of Bourgogne wine, I would make two observations:
1) There really is no follow up of spirit or liqueur that does not rob you of the splendid interplay of duck and wine
2) FJB
I appreciate the first point might be controversial.
‘Can’t stick at a job’, judge tells top legal agentEllie Dudley
4 hours ago.
Updated 1 hour ago
The head of Australia’s largest Aboriginal legal service has been condemned by a judge for failing to hold down a job, sparking fresh criticism of his appointment, and raising serious concerns about his competence.
North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency chair Hugh Woodbury has faced growing calls to step down after The Australian revealed he bashed his pregnant partner by standing on her stomach, pushing her to the ground, slamming her arm in a door and calling her a “c..t” in front of their two-year-old child.
Coalition MPs have also raised questions over whether Mr Woodbury, who handles about $30m in federal government funding a year despite having no official legal qualifications, has the appropriate background to restore the embattled organisation after it was last year forced to suspend services in Alice Springs due to a staff exodus.
In sentencing remarks during Mr Woodbury’s abuse proceedings, Northern Territory local court judge Greg Borchers described Mr Woodbury as “someone who doesn’t stick at jobs”.
“I am not sure how I am to consider that you have had so many jobs, but you have never stayed at one,” Judge Borchers said when sentencing Mr Woodbury in October 2020.
“You come to this courthouse, as you have, Mr Woodbury, almost each and every legal practitioner in this court house has one job, as a legal practitioner. You have had so many jobs and you have never stuck with any, apart from a long period of time with Parks and Wildlife.”
Before working at NAAJA he had spent time managing Aboriginal hostels, working as a fencing contractor, labouring, working in a bank, and held positions within the Federal Circuit and Family Court and the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service.
“I don’t know why, but that’s a record of someone who doesn’t stick at jobs,” Judge Borchers said.
Mr Woodbury was fined $200 and sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond. No conviction was recorded.
The sentencing remarks revealed Judge Borchers was hesitant to convict Mr Woodbury because “a conviction in itself is a serious sanction and it does have an effect upon people’s futures”.
“I do accept that you may, at some stage, wish to consider entering a legal course,” he said.
He also did not convict Mr Woodbury “because of the attitude to your wife, who says that you are very supportive of her”.
“You are a good father and that you need some help,” he said.
South Australian Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle criticised the appointment of Mr Woodbury, and said there was an issue within community-controlled organisations where senior management are appointed because of their heritage.
National Park dreaming. I wonder if their attendance record is any better than the warfies? It’s funny – till you realise you’re paying for it.
A small window into how we spend over $30 billion a year on aboriginal matters yet zero progress is achieved.
WTF $200 & no conviction for DV.
Judge Borchors needs to explain himself too…
I’m fed up with unshaven men who sport scruffy beards that make them look as if they’re about to pull a knife and scream allah akbar.
Just putting that out there.
That may be controversial, but so is wearing a hat indoors yet some are allowed.
Hmm. – the current commissioner of taxation looks like this.
The only person who does this whom I can tolerate looking that way is Sky news host James Macpherson. He has a perennial unshaven fluff, neither a trendy ‘unshaven’ five-o’clock shadow look, nor any sort of beard.
James’ doesn’t have good skin, perhaps he has to eschew shaving.
Anyway, I like him very much. Funnily enough, that unkempt look suits him. He looks approachable and actually is so, as I’ve briefly met him. On Sky he’s incisive and not afraid to tackle the big issues head on. As linchpin of The Late Debate, as the ‘older generation’ there, he can be very amusing.
North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency chair Hugh Woodbury has faced growing calls to step down after The Australian revealed he bashed his pregnant partner by standing on her stomach, pushing her to the ground, slamming her arm in a door and calling her a “c..t” in front of their two-year-old child.
…..
Mr Woodbury was fined $200 and sentenced to a 12-month good behaviour bond. No conviction was recorded.
The sentencing remarks revealed Judge Borchers was hesitant to convict Mr Woodbury because “a conviction in itself is a serious sanction and it does have an effect upon people’s futures”.
…..
The Sanctified Generation. Women and children most affected, God help them.
I really think, at this point, that the best the Dims can hope for is to let the shambling aphasic old tard lose and then make the point forever more that Trump’s victory over a flatulent colostomy bag of a homonidae was an empty one.
As I have opined before, the Dims would do well to let America resuscitate and replenish its blood supply before sinking their fangs in and exsanguinating her. Again. Truly she be bled near white now and could not sustain a Dimocrat class more that a couple of years as she is.
Where would the Dims have been if Reagan had not let the Republic take a desperate post-Carter gasp and begin to knit its tissues and soul. Seriously, imagine if Carter’s America had been allowed to be the basis of America’s future!
TE. I have just been reading your commentaries on Malta.
You are making me fat!
A Brit colleague and I were detached to Munich for four months.
We hated it.
It was a boarding school populated by goody goody two shoes pomposities who spent their whole time looking over each others’ (and our) shoulders.
Our escape was to take the train to the airport on Friday afternoons to seek out the ‘last minute’ offers taped up on the corridor walls. Malta was often on offer and became our favoutite.
Broiling under a Mediteranian sun on the terraces around the Grand Harbour scoffing enormous bowls of the richest pasta in the universe and slurping buckets of Malta wine was absolutely irresponsible, but it did innoculate us against the forthcoming week in kraut central.
Pasta, nuclear puree, thick cheese, veal and chicken, rich red – no wonder that they are such happy chaps.
Pa – reductionist
Sack some people, automate, increased productivity for the remaining staff. That happens.
The increased productivity theme ignores the reality that productivity enhancement is limited in some domains. There are only so many bricks that can be laid in an hour, but there is a machine that can do that much more quickly. Customers can only be served one at a time and AI is already taking some of those jobs. I caught a snippet of a program about a factory in Poland that makes prefab houses. It is very efficient and it requires much less labour than traditional methods. The saving grace for many workers is declining fertility leading to labour shortages.
JC
July 2, 2024 9:16 pm
And the reverse.
When Trump was speaking (and, incidentally, arranging his words in such a way that they sounded like English sentences), Hiden looked like he had gone into power-save mode.
The slack-jawed vacant stare into the middle distance.
Or, as Jon Stewart put it, “his resting 25th Amendment face”.
BobtheBoozer
July 2, 2024 9:27 pm
Settle down Betty.
I doubt you’re on their list.
Not something you didn’t already know.
https://x.com/MarinaMedvin/status/1807630696610935174?t=TJhu1_mrLrX_3MytTFCIdQ&s=19
This method really works!
Had one staff who was constantly using their phone instead of working, back answered continually, snarkily questioned everything, agitating disquiet among the crew, culminating in her asking a serious question: “Why are we expected to work fast?”
I sacked her, sharply & without notice.
Instant & sustained improvement by the remainder of that team
Despite being one person down they’re doing more, doing it better, & doing it faster.
Indeed Bons, the people on Malta do seem very happy.
Big feast day weekend, for St Peter and St Paul if I got that right. Enormous explosions from fireworks for about 30 minutes; much eating and drinking and lotsa flag waving in the little village of Rabat where we’re staying.
The Maltese also seems intent on having a lot of babies. Three and four per family wherever you look.
Those boomers.
Australia upped the pension age then opened the ndis box.
https://x.com/daveg/status/1807388422249558251?t=5-9AIdR3b8s6wulBZhP7vQ&s=19
Kohler warned of Mr Trump’s disregard of climate change He said Australia should prepare for second Trump presidencyStop winning me over, I already love the magnificent bastard!
ABC star issues an urgent warning to Australia about Donald Trump
Alan Kohler is starting to look more and more like an absolute tit. Plus I’ve always hated his moronic both-buttons-done-up jacket wearing- seriously, a sign of brain death if ever there were one.
So not just an “ABC star” but a climate expert has spoken.
ALPBC star. Nearly as good as getting nominated for a gold Logie.
Stop winning me over, I already love the magnificent bastard!
That is a keeper.
Ta Walli. 🙂
A visit to the Malta Air Museum.
Small and privately run, but worth it.
Main attractions: two fighters which fought in the ferocious air wars around Malta in WWII – a Hurricane and a Spitfire; and two Gloster Meteors. Several other aircraft, and they are busy bringing back to life a few more.
Did they manage to preserve any of the three Gloster Gladiators – Faith Hope and Charity?
I remember them from my early days and the efforts of the ‘Ohio’ tanker and her valiant efforts to get to Malta at the height of the battles.
Funny how the details come back – the Tanker Ohio had welded construction instead of rivetted, which enabled her to withstand the concussion of the near misses and one of the sailors was able to use a bucket from the side of the ship to scoop water for ?fighting a fire, it was that low in the water. Forgot the name of the book – probably Malta Convoy or something similar.
Winston, I thought they had a Gladiator that was a composite of the three Faith, Hope and Charity planes on display. I read that a fair while ago, though.
Productivity isn’t about sacking people; it’s about getting more output by reducing the cost/time of inputs. It could mean sacking people at the micro level, but then it may not. If it meant sacking people, the rate of unemployment would have been close to 99% since the Industrial Revolution. But, as you appreciate, it hasn’t meant that at all. In fact, productivity actually complements employment elsewhere in the economy.
Sure. Absolutely. However, productivity enhancement, if it’s wide enough, will impact all incomes and not just the ones at the center of innovation. Think of something as simple as hair cuts. To a large extent, productivity increases in hair cutting have barely nudged. It’s done with scissors, as it was 300 years ago. But a barber’s wage isn’t the same as it was 300 years ago. That’s because productivity improvements in the industrial economy have enabled barbers to be paid at continually higher rates.
I’ll give you another example. When AI was first introduced, the CEO of Microsoft cam out and said AI’s impact on his firm would see large numbers of people being let go. About a year or so later, he took that back and completely reversed his view. He suggested that while there would be displacement, demand for workers could actually increase because Microsoft would be able to afford to have workers explore areas that needed more focus while AI did its thing. In fact, he added that AI would actually cause demand for more workers. He’s basically summarizing what’s been going on since the Industrial Revolution.
An interesting article about Ilhan Omar.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/ex-somali-pm-rep-omar-doesnt-represent-america-she-represents-somalia/
It’s something happening in Australia as well – people who have been elected to the Senate are representing others than the Australian people, and to their detriment.
But how do we stop it?
Get them to fight each other. Bring up issues that divide them. Propose motions that force them to show their hand.
Payman is a gift.
Edward Snowden – Dissident Journalists Are Being Silenced
Huh? Why would someone not be on their list?
They seem to want all of us dead.
The best and most frequent way to increase productivity is reduce labour costs.
But the most bestest, but increasingly illegal way, is to link labour reward to that productivity.
Case in point: grapevine pruning season starts soon. The best years had pay running at piece rate, just like picking buckets at harvest time- the handy chaps got stuck in, the girlfriends who could live with maybe being on 75% of comparable stuck around, the useless or grumbly pissed off. All the fun of vintage, with no great rush, day after day- conversation got less ditzy, toilet breaks got rationalized, we’d do an extra hour if the weather was nice or if it looked grim for the next day.
I followed the stats in vines/man/hour pretty closely accross the patches, based the rate on past years, set a rate going into each patch with the understanding i’d bump it up if it proved unrealistic- it never did- everyone got faster accross the season, I constantly pruned back the rate/vine as we went because i could see it getting eaten up, and still everyone ended up earning more per hour as the days went on. Only had to send a few kids back through for a tidy-up once or twice, the pain of the oppurtunity cost sharpened them up toot sweet. Questions from the crew became a shedload more sensible and focused on itcomes, everyone got proactive about maintaining gear. I was under budget, and raced through ahead of schedule. Great times.
Now, it’s impossible. Workers must be provided with a minimum hourly equivalent, which I have to factor in to the overall job cost- it coddles the mugs, but more dangerously dilutes the reward to the troupers. The role of the supervisor then also gets de-fanged.
It’s barely worth the bookwork.
The union movement has much for which it should be held accountable. I sank tonnes of effort into trying to fight the minimum hourly rate in the hort award.
Total waste of time, not one of the Fair Work Commissioners grasped the reality, instead falling for the emotive bleats of “.. evil farmers use piece rate as a way to pay staff $80 per week”
Their ABC is not without culpability in that decision, as bimbette reporterettes straight out of j’ism at uni were aghast to see uni educated west european backpackers, “girls like us”, actually (ugh) being expected to actually work before they’d be paid.
Is there a more overly romanticised activity than growing grapes? I listened to a mate’s wife bitch about the useless locals around Margaret River. They had paid some huge sum to have their vines netted only to find out weeks later it hadn’t actually been done. The locals must laugh their tits off about this.
Someone sent me this, purports to be Assange after sitting next to Rudd on the flight back to Oz.
Isn’t all life wonderful, mysterious and interesting?
the lighter penguin has recently started a facebook page for penguins that feel the cold
the darker penguin is wondering why everybody believes the climate change bullshit
Macron and his missus.
hang on Arky … which one is Macron?
The penguin wearing the outrageous blonde wig is his wife.
I just love it, anthropomorphising or not.
Two bereaved creatures finding comfort in each other. You can’t tell me that animals don’t feel love and loss the way we do. I’ve known too many animals to ever say that.
MATT GOODWIN: Why FARAGE is WINNING and SUNAK is LOSING
Very good – “Nigel Farage may not know how to deal with the problems, but he’s the only one talking about them.”
(Actually I’ll disagree with Matt – I think he does.)
But the issues are Immigration and the Muslim problem.
Two days to go in the UK general election – and the traditional dirty pool is being played.
Without actually attracting much of an increase in support from 2019, Labour is a dead cert for Government – and 97.3% for government with a majority somewhere between ‘huge’ and ‘extremely comfortable’.
The existential battle now is between the Tories and Reform.
The Big Guns have been wheeled out, arms twisted, and a second Reform candidate has defected to the Conservatives on the grounds that the “vast majority” of her fellow candidates are “racist, misogynistic and bigoted”.
In the UK these are toxic accusations, however the Conservatives are so badly on the nose that may not matter much. Late polling shows that whether Reform replaces the Tories as the ‘party of the Right’, or fizzles, is within the survey margins of error.
The one thing that is not in doubt: Britain is neck deep in scalding shit – with the tide coming in.
Sad but true Dr F.
A fair bit of the blame can be laid at the feet of air-head Boris and timid Theresa.
They win a massive majority and pinch a swag of Labour stronghold seats and what is the reaction?
“Hey, let’s try to look a lot more like Labour!”
Boris was the fool, led by his own emotional attachment to his young Green wife. If only he’d dumped the greenery, apologised for Covid responses, got rid of net zero and promoted a revitalisation in the north, then he’d be a hero leading the Conservatives to a great victory in two days time.
Just yesterday’s man now.
I wouldn’t have to lie awake solving the problems of Brit politics if my freakin’ blood glucose would behave.
Grrr.
pfft, Try a displaced fracture of the coccyx, 18 months into it now.
I’m giving the ameliorative treatment of injections and physio a go first, as they insist one must, but I am already planning surgery for early 2025 when we return from London via a tour of northern India. Can’t have the surgery earlier anyway because who wants to be post-operative on the spine while in India, where all sorts of pathogens roam free?
Sancho, is your blood glucose level actually keeping you awake?
Perhaps you need a Semaglutide, the latest drug craze for weight loss. A couple of days ago I read a review of the potential benefits of that drug for preventing protein aggregation in the grey stuff. It wasn’t addressing that drug specifically but mentioned the target of the drug, which if elevated not only helps prevent aggregation but potentially can resolve “type 3 diabetes” a term used to refer to insulin resistance in the brain.
Yes, Bob & Sancho, I’ve been reading around this and looking into it as well. Certain bloods of mine came back close to pre-diabetic and I want to put a stop to that now.
There are side effects of course. I’m cautious.
Postcard from Malta
Guest post from Mrs TE
We have loved Malta. Yes, definitely trying to “sell” it to you. Put it on your bucket-list. So interesting, quaint, fabulous architecture, clean, great food, music, festivities, countryside, very devout, 100’s of cathedrals, bells ringing, Malta flag flying everywhere, beaches, infrastructure, prices very reasonable.
In some parts, it is like going back 50 years – small workshops, dress, shoes, I bought some sausages from a butcher who had been there since 1850. Most importantly, lovely HAPPY people. The family unit – three generations seems important, babies in prams everywhere; laughing, drinking, hugging…
Just before we arrived, the Feast Day of St Peter and Paul had begun and there had been a music festival in the local park, where they ate lots of fried rabbit. There are now no rabbits on the island, but they farm them.
The next day I caught horse riding events, which turned out to be a trotting race, featuring young boys racing up a hill with tiny horses – TE thinks Shetland ponies. Last night there was a huge gathering at the local cathedral near us in Rabat. The church at the square was packed; all lit up, with a band and all the families mingling.
Most people were wearing red t-shirts celebrating the 250 years anniversary of a saint. Others then arrived holding lots of balloons and religious banners and flags. The band played and mostly men sang, jumping and wildly gesticulating. It was fun to watch. For much of the time here, strangely daytime as well as night-time, fireworks have been going off and the echo around the limestone buildings is deafening. Bells are constantly ringing.
Wonderful!
Thank you Mr & Mrs TE. Keep the stories coming
Makes me think we didn’t spend long enough there.
Very much enjoyed what time we had, and going back seems like even more of a good idea following your recommendations and those well-recounted adventures.
Couldnt agree more. We stayed in old Valetta and it was a fabulous week of food, museums, history, bells, the saluting battery, the gorgeous Grand Harbour views at every turn and much fun. Could have easily done another week.
If you get to Valletta, try the Ravioli Pappani and Pappani’s restaurant. It’s easily the best meal I had in the six weeks I was away. I wanted to marry the chef. Female or no, I wanted that recipe.
Johannes Leak.
Mark Knight.
Brett Lethbridge.
Christian Adams.
Michael Ramirez.
A.F. Branco.
Matt Margolis.
Steve Kelley.
Gary Varvel.
Chip Bok.
Tom Stiglich.
Lisa Benson.
Gentlemen, start your engines.
————————–
Was an explosive bolt or cartridge ever used to start up a piston engine aircraft?
Yes, explosive cartridges were used to start piston-engine aircraft, and one of the most notable systems employing this method was the Coffman engine starter. This ingenious device, often called a “shotgun starter,” was widely used in the 1930s and 1940s for aircraft and armored vehicles.
The Coffman starter worked by using a cordite cartridge, similar to a shotgun shell, which, when fired, produced high-pressure gas. This gas would then drive a piston or a geared mechanism to crank the engine and initiate the starting process.
The system was particularly advantageous in remote or harsh environments where traditional electric starters might be unreliable or carrying heavy batteries impractical.
Several notable aircraft utilized the Coffman starter, including some versions of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine used in the Supermarine Spitfire, as well as the Hawker Typhoon and Hawker Tempest, which employed the system to start their powerful Napier Sabre engines. The Coffman starter’s reliability and simplicity made it a popular choice during the war years.
The concept of using explosive cartridges for engine starting wasn’t limited to piston engines. It was also adapted for early jet engines, where the high-pressure gas from the cartridge would drive a turbine to start the engine. This method provided a quick and effective way to get engines running, especially in field conditions where other starting methods might be less feasible.
Farmer I knew had a tractor that started that way.
Also the JU 52, among others. (The only reason I knew this was that one of the many transports into the Stalingrad pocket had a new pilot who turned the engines off on landing, and while he waited for the aircraft to be unloaded, the engines froze solid on him.)
Thanks for the Malta travelogue, Mrs TE! Loved it.
And now I want to visit more than ever.
It was a relatively quiet day in Venice. As in busy but not vilely so. We taxi-ed in from Mestre. Always stayed on the island before, but not this time. Some shops have closed for good, many old favourites still open, like the mask and linen shops. And, of course, the calligraphy shops.
My dear friend, the winged lion, still sits atop his pillar. And Saint George still vanquishes the dragon on his great pedestal.
A change since last time – bubble bummed trout pouters taking endless selfies against the glorious backdrop. Almost impossible to get a good, quick snap and move away for others to do the same. So much for modern, self absorbed womanhood.
In Mestre…a very noticeable population of Chinese, and the ubiquitous weirdbeards and their letterboxed property.
Marvellous travelogue, Calli. That has whetted my appetite for Venice, having never visited Italy.
I assume they’re young human females. LOL.
Enjoyable travelogues, Calli. Travel really brings home how much the world around us, one we thought we used to know, has changed.
Postcard to Malta #2
Out of all of the many countries I’ve been to in the Mediterranean, Malta is the best. It’s a mix of architecture and history dating back thousands of years, with empire and era buildings piled sometimes on top of each other. It has survived to the present day without burying the past, but managing to attain modern amenities in the Western style: everything works. Electricity, water supply, roads, shops, technology – all are here and they work all the time. However, you can walk down streets that still bear the marks of the bombings of WWII, and just around the corner is a mighty fortress dating back a thousand years, and ancient Valetta Harbour is one of the most beautiful in the world.
I paid a visit to the Malta Air Museum. Small and privately run, but worth it. The main attractions were two fighters which fought in the ferocious WWII air battless around Malta in WWII – a Hurricane and a Spitfire. They also had two Gloster Meteors jets. Several other aircraft, and they are busy bringing back to life a few more.
We visited several other museums and walked the city walls. It was not only WWII that saw tremendous battles here, but also spirited defence by the Hospitaller Knights, who commanded the island for hundreds of years, with the main event a huge attempted Muslim invasion culminating in the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. Many of the houses and walls bear testimony to all of this. Some of them have graffiti dating back hundreds of years – you can make out three masted sailing vessels for example. (Many thanks to local historians Keith and Dennis who walked us around and explained so much)
We spent almost a week in Valetta, and then moved to Rabat, staying in an excellent old four-storey old-made-new apartment. It was rather in a Rapunzel’s castle style: one lounge room on the ground floor; then up a winding staircase to the first bedroom, up again to another, and up again to the kitchen and a rooftop terrace to eat on.
The house was right next door to a pub hosting a wedding on our first night. Interesting – Western music, inc Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra, and then a lot of old Maltese standards. We spied down into the courtyard and worked out the couple are in their 50s. Then followed some traditional Italian and maybe Maltese – and then the ambulance has turned up and was carting away a groovy grannie in an oxygen mask. The next night featured an 80th birthday. Fortunately the local ordinance said the music must be turned off at 11pm, so all good.
We also made a visit to Gozo, one of the five islands of Malta. Fairly much the same, but it did have ?gantija; one of the more prominent “megaliths” – Stonehenge-like monuments dating back some 5,000 years. It was a ferry ride there and back, past some of the prominent guard towers which have served the lookouts for enemies for ages – a reminder that here in the middle of the Med battle was always feared.
Our last trip to the Adriatic and the Med was a huge reminder of how much we owe to these areas for pushing back against the Ottoman invasions.
How curious. Someone doesn’t like Leak’s cartoon.
The truth always hurts.
No comment, just an observation how the the world changes around us and we hardly notice, or do we?
Canadian soccer team in 1984 and today.
Probably applies to most western European teams too.
England went the ‘diversity route’ in a soccer tournament a few years ago and it backfired spectacularly on them.
The England fans were not happy and didn’t hold back
Crowd has dissappeared….
It sometimes so hard being old enough to remember how very different it all used to be. We all grieve for a lost past, but sometimes the grief is extreme.
I suspect it has ever been thus, for most times have produced their tumults and great changes and have challenged seemingly enduring truths. We need to learn to accept and not obsess in order to continue on and gain comfort from those things that we can help to remain the same, or which we can improve.
The Great Replacement continues.
Today’s Tele:
FIRST LADY IS SWIFTLY BECOMING A LAST RESORT
James Morrow
3 Jul 2024
Sometimes it is the little details that are the most?telling.
Did you know that First Lady Jill Biden used to have her own walk-on music to be played whenever she entered an event, much like Hail to the Chief is played for her?husband?
Washington journalist T. Beckett Adams broke the story in 2022, back when it was the sort of item that might feature at your local pub trivia’s US politics round on a slow night.
Adams reported that in 2021, Mrs?Biden’s office instructed the ceremonial US Marine Band to come up with a tune they could fire up whenever she took the stage.
The piece was a first. Never before had a first lady asked for her own official “theme song”, to be played by the official US Marine Band.
What the band came up with was bizarre – a bleating, blatting trumpet number that sounded like a Year 6 brass ensemble warming up.
Much to the relief of the Marine players, the work was quickly shelved once Adams started asking questions about it, threatening to out the First Lady’s sense of self-importance.
Yet seen in the context of the past week, the brief episode of what was known as “Fanfare for the First Lady” looks increasingly like a piece of foreshadowing.
Behind the scenes, as Democrats melt down about their candidate’s debate performance last week and the fact they can no longer gaslight voters about the President’s condition, Mrs?Biden is said to increasingly have “main character syndrome”.
Not only is she in love with the trappings of office, but Mrs Biden increasingly sees herself as the Democrats’ co-candidate for 2024.
Thus the recent images of her swanning around fundraisers in the Hamptons and ditching her husband to chat up Emmanuel Macron at a D-Day state dinner in France.
This sense of entitlement was also on display on Monday as the latest edition of American Vogue hit the stands, with Mrs Biden on the cover in a white Ralph Lauren coat dress saying: “We will decide our future.”
Inside, the profile opens thusly: “If?you want to know what power feels like, try to get yourself driven around in a motorcade.”
The author of the piece gushes: “Flashing police chaperone lights form a perimeter as you blaze down an empty highway, waiting cars backed up on entry ramps as you pass … rules don’t apply.”
Is it any wonder that Jill Biden – and the rest of the Biden family, which contains more than its fair share of grifters – reportedly urged the President to stay in the race when they gathered at Camp David this past weekend?
As a last-minute note added to the online version of the Vogue profile put it, Mrs Biden told the magazine: “We would not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president … we will continue to fight.”
And why wouldn’t they?
After all, once out of office, Mrs Biden may still get a Secret Service detail when she goes to the supermarket, but that’s about it as far as the trappings of power will go.
No wonder she wouldn’t let her husband recover from last week’s debate debacle in private, instead offering utterly clueless encouragement in front of the cameras shortly after.
“You did such a great job!” she shrieked in front of a crowd of rattled?supporters.
“You answered every question!”
Three more stars on his Big Boy President chart and Mr Biden gets an ice cream, presumably.
Stories have also emerged about the extent to which Mrs Biden has controlled access to the President, using a small in-group of advisers to shield even fellow White House staffers from knowing the true extent of the commander-in-chief’s failings.
It goes without saying that this is a terrible state of affairs.
The list of global crises that could kick off at any moment would fill this page three times over, yet Mr Biden is?increasingly compromised and said?to be only “at his best” between 10am and 4pm for what is a 24-hour-a-day job.
At the same time, the First Lady is?running a routine that runs somewhere between Madame Mao and Edith Wilson, whom it later turned out all but ran the country after her husband, then-president Woodrow Wilson, had a stroke in?1919.
Not only is the First Lady committing what increasingly looks to be an act of elder abuse in pushing her husband to stay in office and in the race, with six months to go until Inauguration Day, she is also putting the security of the West in jeopardy.
From a kindergarten teacher awarding a participation ribbon to everyone:
No wonder she wouldn’t let her husband recover from last week’s debate debacle in private, instead offering utterly clueless encouragement in front of the cameras shortly after.
“You did such a great job!” she shrieked in front of a crowd of rattled?supporters.
“You answered every question!”
Three more stars on his Big Boy President chart and Mr Biden gets an ice cream, presumably.
Do First Lady’s have immunity for official acts?!
And if anyone doesn’t think the Marines didn’t hideous-up that fanfare on purpose, they don’t know Marines.
Therapeutic and salivating stuff watching these clips and you learn so much.
After watching the butchering of that carcass on the back of the tractor and for them to proceed to bag it up and share it with the village is emotional stuff.
This was a great hour.
—-
Wilderness Cooking:
Secrets Of Wild Cuisine! Discover New Facets Of Taste With Fish And Meat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJOkAxHCVpw
Shocking news! The News website levels with its readers and says that the disturbing performance by Biden in the debate was not a one-off, but that he has had some 20 worrying events over the past few years!
Most Australians probably don’t follow US current affairs as closely as we do here. If they rely solely on the MSM it would explain why normally sensible people have a bad impression of Trump and no idea that Joe is damaged goods, or that there are so many bad actors in the Dem world.
“Not only is she in love with the trappings of office, but Mrs Biden increasingly sees herself as the Democrats’ co-candidate for 2024.”
Very apparent early on, that this evil woman had tickets on herself when she insisted she always be referred to as Dr Jill Biden. She has a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware 2007, and taught at a public high school and a community college. A Ph.D not a medical degree.
And a very second rate PhD at that, from the critiques I read of her work.
The sort of credential she would have been wise to put on a back-burner, and enjoy the title of Mrs.
She’s impressed by motorcade? That’s pretty shallow.
In the UK these are toxic accusations, however the Conservatives are so badly on the nose that may not matter much. Late polling shows that whether Reform replaces the Tories as the ‘party of the Right’, or fizzles, is within the survey margins of error.
The one thing that is not in doubt: Britain is neck deep in scalding shit – with the tide coming in.
What’s particularly interesting is observing how the UK establishment, particularly the MSM, are spending lots of time smearing, belittling, ridiculing and desperately trying to bring down Farage and Reform. They are all working overtime at the moment, from planting actors in so called ‘stunts’ to trying to paint Farage as some kind of Putin agent. No doubt many ‘Tories’ are behind this, working hand in hand with the far-left MSM to destroy Reform.
Who do I blame most of all? Probably Bonking Boris Johnson. He was gifted a huge electoral majority, yet what did he do? He squandered it. Waylaid by his toffy green girlfriend (what is it with dopey men and their dicks?), her equally toffy grifting green mates, then the disaster of Covid and lockdowns, you could see the disaster show unravelling from early on. Boris’ biggest crime was succumbing to net zero and so his legacy, along with Sunak, May and Cameron, should be ‘net zero seats’.
And no, I haven’t forgotten Liz Truss, a PM for five minutes. Truss, whilst not perfect, was the choice of the Tory base and during her brief tenure, she actually tried to make some changes. For her crimes she incurred the wrath of the establishment and was terminated in a globalist putsch, and that’s how the UK got Sunak.
Farage is desperately trying to save the UK but I suspect it is all too late. The UK, within a few decades, will have an Islamist government, and St Pauls, Westminster and so on, will all be converted into mosques. I know, I know, I’m engaging in hyperbole but you see all of my hyperbole over the last fifteen years has come true.
Cassie, your hyperbole is similar to mine except I’m a bit further along the track of reality than you – either that or I’m more comfortable saying stuff like “Europe has left it too late to stop the Islamic Invasion – it only has the Ethnic Cleansing route to go down. And there’s no guarantee they will win it.”
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Remember that at this point in time, our Elite Caste have refused to acknowledge this problem they started 40 years ago, and still refuse to deal with it.
Proof by Kevin M:
Spot on as always.
—
Mark Dice:
Meet the NEW Joe Biden!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmte3XfTEUg
The French “also ran” leftoid parties and spent force Macron are trying every trick in the book to avert a win on Sunday by the National Rally headed by Marine Le Pen. I note the absence of the normal media slavering over the possibility of a female doing well!
Being opposed to uncontrolled immigration is enough these days to get you labelled as “extreme right”. Across the Channel the BBC is working a line that says the UK shouldn’t oppose illegal immigration or demonise those who are “seeking asylum” from terrible things in their home country. Heaven forbid, however, that the regimes in those awful countries should be condemned at the UN or dragged off to the ICC. That’s reserved for miscreants like Israel.
I thought it was a bit rich of them to say that the sacred cow NHS had a lot of immigrants working in it! These are probably not Venezuelan criminals.
Dr Jill has been given another Vogue spread….you gotta laugh. It’s Dr Jill’s third spread in the magazine. Melania Trump, who speaks five languages, is exquisite in real life and was actually a model before becoming Mrs Trump, was never gifted a spread by US Vogue, in fact during the four years Melania was First Lady she was ignored, maligned and ridiculed.
Now normally I couldn’t give a shit, and in fact such stuff is shallow however it’s always worth noting the hypocrisy.
Another hypocrisy is this, I’ve seen the Vogue pictures of Dr Jill and they are very edited, touched up, photoshopped and so on, designed to make the old hag look twenty to thirty years younger. Now remember how Princess Catherine was put through the ringer by the MSM only a few months ago because she lightly touched up a picture of her and her children?
Not much you can do with the “Corpse Bride”. 😀
*wringer
Love your work tho, Cassie.
The media and the education system are the enemy.
Gramsci was right.
Take the institutions and the rest will fall into line – prepare for the wukkas paradise!
🙂
The colossal, staggering front of that woman. The Mount Everest of arrogance.
Not even Michelle Obama demanded her own fanfare whenever she took the stage, and that’s saying something.
She is the paragon, the absolute apex of the ‘You will address me by my husband’s rank’ line used by Byzantine empresses and medieval queens by marriage.
In reality though, she is merely Biden’s latest (and last) root.
I actually heard that at a Regimental Dinner, second hand, in the Officers Mess at Latchford Barracks.(1990ish)
I thought trying to pass oneself off as an officer was a criminal offence?
Anyone else have thoughts on this?
Everyone should be familiar with the Coffman Starter.
Ponder this fact…..
Women do not have penises.
They do have the equipment needed to get one if they want.
vestigial, perhaps
Michelle Obama might have interfered with school dinners, Melanie Trump certainly knew she hadn’t been elected but was the gracious ornamental wife but Dr Jill, I remember her getting herself photographed on an international junket reading some important documents, she has certainly inserted herself, and being unelected that’s a Jill dictatorship.
“We will decide our future”
Was that a Freudian slip first lady?
Apparently that shoot would have all been organised in April May.
She obviously coached hard
‘you answered all the questions!’ While he stood there looking like a stunned mullet.
Now her perfectly timed vogue messaging is just a juicy meme source.
“Ensure that in a country the size of continental US”
How big is Australia really, if you remove the deserts and other unproductive land?
The land could be made productive pretty much across the continent. But nooooo, that would destroy the “natural”, environment.
Look at what Israel has done with a small piece of desert.
Spot on Damon
Australia produces about as much food as four mid western US states.
We have little quality soil and even less with reliable rainfall. That’s why building renewables on good land is a crime of monumental stupidity and greed.
Pure Evil Gez.
Likewise for building suburbs on the most fertile soil in Viktoristan.
I’ve said this about mining on good agricultural land and been cried down for it over the years. Miners always pick the easiest and closed to infrastructure. Good agricultural land is an investment in the future.
Team Handsome Boy is introducing its Future Made in Australia legislation today, enshrining a $23 billion 10-year cash splash on things
that make you go hmm?that support Net Zero and Australia’s Renewable Superpowerdom.Productivity Commissioners, past, present, and emerging are hooting like gibbons that this will be a colossal misallocation and waste of public funds.
Nonsense, says Treasury (the agency apparently anointed to oversee this historic transformation). The private sector has no idea what ‘National Interest’ is and can’t do the job of securing Australia’s world-leading Green industries without the guiding hand of government.
Not everyone will have read all of Treasury’s Future Made in Australia National Interest Framework. It’s a truly terrifying roadmap for how $23 billion of OPM is going to be shelled out to the Right Sorts:
In those other instances, where business and investors are floundering spastics in the cold cruel world of innovation, a stream of golden winners will be picked by Dr Chalmers and his Top Men.
Hydrogen Barons have captured Australia.
Under this Kleptocracy, and that describes both Left and Right, Australia is going to go tits up, crash and burn, and whatever else you want to term it as. The Communists will do what they usually do – create a chaotic mess and then use it to force in laws the people would never vote for.
Get ready for a South Pacific Peso of 40 cents.
I’m going through a pile of old receipts/invoices (which has prompted this rant) and realised that a 10 ounce stash of gold I bought in 2017 for $1746/ounce now retails for $3500. I haven’t gained anything – the currency has been debased by 50% (Is that how it works?) over 7 years.
Notice with all this carry-on around Senator “Fat Paycheck” that none in the media have speculated on this whole thing being a set-up by the musso “we is coming for you”politico wing ….
They’ll have tasted the camel dung and noted Luigi & all the infidels are well on the nose so ripe for wiping and with several musso dominated seats in the “pardi” circle why not fan a sandstorm …..!
Sooo, “Fat Paycheck” throws a wobbly and exits the tent .. Luigi “almost” reacts but on opening the fridge door realises the lettuce is too hard and adds more marinate .. Instead of the big “slap” intended he, being “leafless”, blows some “pardi” hot air .. no sacking and the suspension Labor has when they aren’t having a suspension tactic plays out ..
“Fat Paycheck” then ups the ante and playz that time honoured & media luvved .. musso minority victimization card ..
“Oooh”, squeals the Senator, ” They’ve locked me out, I’m all alone, won’t allow me into meetings or chatz around the water bubbler, woe is me, 3 years & $200k + freebies but NO friends”.
The media luv this and, vigorously, shake the palm with, exclusive, frond-overs to the musso political arm who are happy to sway,
” Shock, horror” yells the selected, most outspoken, iman, ” Once again, we, an under-represented minority are being casbah-ed for having, honest, opinions concerning the evils of Jewry” ..
“Time for change we needz our own representation and will be looking at candidates in our “chosen” seats to launch, our beloved, muslim jihad” ..
Media, of course, is lapping this up & adopting their “we luvs all RoP so won’t you come for us last” attitude by expecting, the, now elevated to, Mahdi “Fat Paycheck” to take the “hump” and change oasis to form her own musso luv tribe & wave the scimitar across, what is regarded as, Luigi’s sandland(s) ……..!
Cos one thing the media will guarantee will be the upcoming Mahdi “Fat Paycheck” will be elevated above the “corporal”, Chlamydia & the “teals” when it comes to political “victim” publicity ..
Not even a 251, one eyed lesbian, domestic violence candidate could top an aggrieved musso wommenz ( tho it would be a close call) .. !
Bingo!
Yep, it’s the same playbook they’ve been using for 1400 years – do something to push the envelope, then start the waterworks when pushback happens.
We are ruled by stupid, gutless, ahistorical cowards from both left and right.
Oh, about the size of Western Europe.
Meanwhile, in the formerly united Kingdom, Gammon Man Bad looks like he’ll be getting a seat at Westminster.
Murdering trannies is first on his evil and hateful agenda.
Apparently.
Wheatbelt locals baulk at Bullwinkel, call for new Federal seat in State to be named ‘Beard’
Dylan CapornThe West Australian
Wed, 3 July 2024 2:00AM
Comments
The family of a WWII nurse killed by Japanese soldiers in a 1942 massacre have lead calls to name WA’s new Federal electorate after their aunt, rather than the sole survivor of the horror — Vivian Bullwinkel.
Relatives of Toodyay-born Sister Alma Beard, one of 22 Australian nurses killed on Bangka Island in 1942, made a submission to the Australian Electoral Commission to rename the vast seat — which stretches from Perth’s eastern suburbs to Northam — “Beard”.
The Beard family letter was one of dozens that flooded the redistribution process, calling for a name change to the new seat of Bullwinkel — added to WA because of population growth — arguing the previous namesake was not born in the State.
Lieutenant Colonel Bullwinkel, who was a prisoner of war in WWII, was the sole survivor of the Bangka Island massacre in Indonesia, pretending to be dead as 22 colleagues were gunned down around her in the sand.
Nieces and nephews of Sister Beard wrote that while the change would not diminish Lt Col Bullwinkel’s service to WA, it would recognise her strong desire to honour the victims of the massacre.
“We consider naming this Division after Alma Beard would honour the memory of a local victim of a war crime, particularly a nurse, who were so often overlooked for their dedication and service during war,” the family wrote to the Commission.
“Her mother (our grandmother) later received a letter from Vivian Bullwinkel, the sole survivor, telling how Alma’s “brave conduct in her hour of crisis has added lustre to the service which she so nobly carried on”.
“We also think Vivian would be happy to see her friend honoured in such a way. We are Alma’s nieces and nephews, her direct surviving relatives. Aunty Alma’s story has always been an important part of our family history from our childhood and an inspiration to us all.”
A local historian told media at the unveiling of a Toodyay memorial to Sister Beard in 2022 that some of her last words had been to Lt Col Bullwinkel: “Bully, there are two things in life I’ve always hated, the Japanese and the sea, and today I have ended up with them both,” she said.
And what of the other 21 victims?
Queensland news:
Basically giving the unwashed the middle finger. All above board, nothing to see here, piss orf.
@WarlordDilley
This is why President Trump is the GOAT
Trump’s response to Supreme Court ruling
I do love Catturd.
@catturd2
Everyone who believes men can have babies believes in Climate Change.
Hardly a bombshell. More like business as usual.
Bombshell: FBI supervisor alleges bureau improperly pulling conservative agents’ security clearances
I’ve seen dozens of this type of story, up to and including murder.
Illegal Migrant Accused of Raping Teen Released on $500 Bail — Despite Pleas from Border Officials – Truth Press
It’s pretty well confirmation that they’ve been brought into the US to terrorise the local population.
How many is that this week?
Why is the braindead lamestream meeja suddenly getting hysterical about this nonexistent threat posed by nonexistent people?
To deflect from the existence of real actual nayzees in this stinking joke of a country?
Cue spooky muzak …
(From the Oz)
To paraphrase South Park, “you’ve got the wrong nayzees!” Or Star Wars, “these are not the nayzees you’re looking for (given they don’t exist)”.
Absolutely pathetic, you ridiculous z-grade dishonest dissembling clowns. Lift your game.
How delusional (or outright dishonest) do you need to be to post something like this?
@DanielAlmanPGH