Open Thread – Mon 23 Sept 2024


The Hunt of Diana, Arnold Böcklin, 1896

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Vicki
Vicki
September 25, 2024 5:04 pm

Jim Rickards provides another great analysis:

I. The Steal Begins: Secret Service Put In Charge Of Counting Votes

Democrat efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election are very well documented. In key states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, requirements that mail-in ballots have signatures on the ballot and the envelope that could be compared were ignored. Other mail-in ballots were discarded after supposedly being “counted” so that no paper trail existed.

Ballot harvesting from assisted living facilities and apartment buildings was conducted with no verification that any of the residents actually filled-in their ballots. Other supposed mail-in ballots appeared without creases (meaning they had never been mailed) with 95-1 pro-Biden ratios (statistically impossible).

A ‘water leak’ caused an evacuation of a large vote counting centre in Atlanta so that poll watchers were ejected while the counting went on without supervision.
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife donated hundreds of millions of dollars to assist communities with vote counting efforts, but the money went overwhelmingly to Democratic districts.
It took all of that and more for Biden to eke out a narrow victory.

The idea that the courts rejected the voter fraud claims is false. The courts refused to hear the cases based on procedural grounds such as standing, venue, jurisdiction and laches (waiting too long to bring the claim). That’s quite different from reaching the merits of the claims, which was never done.
The Republicans have improved their game this time around. They have over 500 lawyers on call to deal in real time with fraud allegations, there is no pandemic excuse to deny poll watchers a chance to do their jobs and they’re getting better at ballot harvesting from their own districts. This has forced the Democrats to resort to even more desperate techniques to steal the 2024 election.

One plan is to declare Trump an ‘insurrectionist’ on 6 January 2025, so that his Electoral Votes can be disqualified even if he won the most on Election Day. To back up their 6 January plan, the Department of Homeland Security, (the same people who opened the border) has put the Secret Service in charge of the Electoral College vote count.

This means if Republicans object to certain Electoral Votes on the day they are counted in the Capitol Building (a perfectly legitimate process) the Secret Service can act as goon squads to suppress any objections as an effort to ‘overturn’ the election by ‘election deniers’.

The main job of the Secret Service today is to facilitate the assassination of Donald Trump. If Trump survives to 6 January 2025, their main job will be to help rig the vote at the finish line.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 5:10 pm

Thank God for Panadol.

Headache treatment in the early 1800s. CDC approved too , at the time. 🙂

Bourne1879
Bourne1879
September 25, 2024 5:12 pm

Vick,
Unfortunately the pharmacologist you mention did not get much mainstream media coverage. Even now would be lucky if 5% have heard his name. The reason being if many listened to his views they might become vaccine hesitant. Likewise if mainstream media early on had covered more on vaccine injuries would have created hesitancy.

AZ injuries and deaths became too obvious so they happily threw it under the bus as knew still had Pfizer. Weird how not one Pfizer death has been accepted in Australia.

I see Dr Nick Coatsworth has come out in Daily Mail to speak against the Misinformation Bill.

Black Ball
Black Ball
September 25, 2024 5:40 pm

Well I can start physiotherapy on this dodgy shoulder of mine. Have been doing light duties for a couple of weeks but felt good when the doc said no more sling. Which I haven’t used for a bit in any case.
So now off for a few frothies and chat with the boss about this new set of circumstances.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 6:11 pm

Arnold is a bias looking for a cope.

Humans having nothing else that offers a better signal than financial markets even if one nation is far more dependent than another.

Bertrand seems to ignore the real estate markets in China which are in a severe downturn.

Yesterday’s economic support package isn’t enough.

Crossie
Crossie
September 25, 2024 6:13 pm

Tom

 September 25, 2024 2:37 pm

 Reply to  Bruce of Newcastle

Some bits of civilization still work.

Elon Musk has made his fortune selling glorified golf carts to severely educated simpletons.

I’m dying to find his exit strategy from dumbdom.

I like the idea that the ultra greens who have bought Teslas are now funding Musk’s excursions into space. The very fossil fuel hungry rockets must be pissing off the rich and smug greenies.

Top Ender
Top Ender
September 25, 2024 6:14 pm

COME ON DOWN BRITTANY HIGGINS!

State MP Gareth Ward turned up to parliament just after 4am on a Sunday morning wearing a “T-shirt, underwear, (and) socks,” with a gash on his head and smelling of alcohol, according to a secret security report – with Mr Ward claiming he walked to get a spare key after locking himself out of his apartment, and denying he was drunk.

The Daily Telegraph can now reveal bombshell allegations against the independent MP – who is due to face court next year over alleged sex offences – following a months-long investigation into an incident in the early hours of Sunday July 21.

What is it about Parliament Houses???

Daily Tele

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare
September 25, 2024 6:19 pm

On health matters, I am quite fond of The Glucose Goddess as a communicator about the complex biochemistry of insulin resistance, the cause of much obesity and type 2 diabetes in modern societies – she is a biochemist who can speak in good metaphors, as she does here in an interview on the basics of her approach.

Insulin resistance is a major health issue that we are going to hear a lot more about as the more usual dietetic approach to this illness is challenged.

Top Ender
Top Ender
September 25, 2024 6:20 pm

More on Gareth Ward MP for anyone who can’t get past the paywall, because this boy knows how to entertain the voters:

The July incident is the latest time Mr Ward has been caught in a compromising position.

Ok 1:

In 2020, the then-Families Minister was twice escorted home by police after being found sleepwalking naked.

In a statement at the time, NSW Police said officers had located “naked man standing in the doorway of another unit”.

“After determining that was his residence, (police) escorted him inside.”
Mr Ward, who had earlier been admitted to hospital for a medical procedure, said he did not remember the incident.

“I had a general anaesthetic. I was fine after the operation but when you go to sleep these things hit,” he said.

After all, who hasn’t gone sleepwalking naked?

Ok 2:

In 2017, he was targeted in a blackmail scam in New York after ordering a massage to his hotel room.

Mr Ward said he paid $US100 via an online website for a “normal, standard massage” and denied that he ordered a “special massage”.

The then-Parliamentary Secretary said “very aggressive” African-American men arrived at his room at 10.30pm offering sexual services, demanding money.

They always do that. Nothing to see here.

Ok 3.

Mr Ward was suspended from parliament in 2022 after being charged with a string of offences including rape, indecent assault, and common assault.

Yes indeed. They don’t call him “The Member” for Kiama for nothing.

He was re-elected at the 2023 election.

caveman
caveman
September 25, 2024 6:34 pm

Who had Gene Simmons from Kiss and Twiggy Forest for September, Promoting a battery powered mining truck in LAs Vegas.
Like WTF?

cohenite
September 25, 2024 6:34 pm

Not that it matters since the morons in the msm are leading the alarmist charge to destroy the West but here is a great rebuttal of the greenhouse notion and it’s role in man made global boiling; by my old mate, Aleksandr Zhitomirskiy:

(99+) About the Postulates of the Greenhouse Effect Theory | Aleksandr Zhitomirskiy – Academia.edu

Eyrie
Eyrie
September 25, 2024 6:35 pm

Elon Musk has made his fortune selling glorified golf carts to severely educated simpletons.
I’m dying to find his exit strategy from dumbdom.

I think he used to believe the AGW bullshit. However he has been red pilled severely and I suspect no longer buys into that very much.
Tesla has been very innovative not just in the “electric car” aspect but, in an industry already noted for streamlined mass production, has re-invented design and manufacturing processes.
Musk does slowly sell Tesla shares. SpaceX is worth well north of USD 100 billion and Musk has just over 50% of the votes and has completely upset the old aerospace industry paradigm. While Falcon 9 is made in a former aircraft factory, have a look at Starship. Nothing like an aircraft factory. It is a SHIP YARD.
 “When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships.” Johannes Kepler

Elon is busy building those ships.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 6:35 pm

So interestingly we’re arriving at a situation where “communist China” might be today the best example of free-market ‘creative destruction,’

Dover, Arnie appears to be on hallucinogens.

There are nearly a dozen cases of disappearance of top business executives in recent years. However, the most sensational case was of Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, China’s most famous and outspoken entrepreneur, who suddenly went out of public view in 2020 after a regulatory clampdown started on his business empire.

The mystery behind disappearing business tycoons in China
Compare that with Musk, hated by the left and continues to win.

Seriously, Arnie is a typical frog leftist imbecile who ought to be foraging for snails and frogs..

Indolent
Indolent
September 25, 2024 6:38 pm
Eyrie
Eyrie
September 25, 2024 6:49 pm

Compare that with Musk, hated by the left and continues to win.

He’s being severely monstered by the US Government and various of it’s constituent criminal gangs like the FAA, SEC, EPA etc.
If they thought they could get away with it they would disappear him.

Indolent
Indolent
September 25, 2024 6:53 pm
Cassie of Sydney
September 25, 2024 6:56 pm

It appears there is a push to ban Kellie-Jay Keen from this country. It’s all emanating from the ‘usual suspects’. Keen is due to speak at CPAC late next week.

Those mysterious clean cut music hall Grampian Nazis did a sterling job in smearing people.

Further to the little Johnny Pesutto/Moira Deeming legal imbroglio, a friend has said it best, he emailed me today to say that, after listening to Pesutto on and off this week in the witness box, he’d prefer that the criminal ALP stay in power rather than wimpy Pesutto ever become premier. My friend said that Pesutto is using his incompetence as his defence.

What a shitshow.

I also believe that Jeff Kennett, Matthew Guy, Georgie Crozier and David Southwick along with Pesutto are also to blame for this train wreck.

Roger
Roger
September 25, 2024 7:02 pm

In SFL news, Deeming-Pesutto defamation trial edition:

It was revealed in cross-examination of Pesutto today that Jeff Kennett had promised to deny pre-selection to Lib parliamentarians who provided affadavits as evidence in support of Deeming.

Last edited 8 days ago by Roger
Miltonf
Miltonf
September 25, 2024 7:04 pm

Wow. Kennet’s even worse than I thought.

Roger
Roger
September 25, 2024 7:06 pm

Snap, Cassie.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 25, 2024 7:07 pm
Cassie of Sydney
September 25, 2024 7:08 pm

It was revealed in cross-examination of Pesutto today that Jeff Kennett had promised to deny pre-selection to Lib parliamentarians who provided affadavits as evidence in support of Deeming.

Kennett is a thug.

MatrixTransform
September 25, 2024 7:08 pm

the whole Lib party in Vikko is rooted

these people disgusting … worse than Labor

Pesutto made a complete idiot of himself today

MatrixTransform
September 25, 2024 7:12 pm

Barrister: Mr Pessutto, are you going to take the word of a nazi?

Pesutto: Well, why would they lie?

Matrix: Mr Pesutto, are you retarded?

calli
calli
September 25, 2024 7:15 pm

I don’t understand what’s going on in Victoria. What has Pesutto got on these guys? Is there more to the Deeming story?

Why are they prepared to ruin their reputations over this?

Last edited 8 days ago by calli
Roger
Roger
September 25, 2024 7:16 pm

Kennett is a thug.

And when it comes to Liberal Pary back-room boys at state level, he’s not Robinson Crusoe.

132andBush
132andBush
September 25, 2024 7:30 pm

Rabz

September 25, 2024 1:12 pm

greenfilth:

believe ardently in technological progress 

In which bizarre parallel universe?

They believe ardently in taking humanity back to the dark ages.

I don’t think they believe in humanity at all.

Nelson_Kidd-Players
September 25, 2024 7:31 pm
Miltonf
Miltonf
September 25, 2024 7:35 pm

So does Kennett want a limp lettuce ‘opposition’ that no one with half a brain will ever vote into government? WTF?

Last edited 8 days ago by Miltonf
Indolent
Indolent
September 25, 2024 7:37 pm

This is exactly what they don’t even want you to hear about.

The Silenced Doctor Taking AHPRA To Court – Dr William Bay

Last edited 8 days ago by Indolent
JC
JC
September 25, 2024 7:39 pm

In the West, you get caught in a sting operation headed by Epstein or Diddy and then your owned by the Regime.

How about avoiding sex with underage girls?
The most prominent business exec has had several marriages and relationships, yet Musk has never been accused of abhorrent sexual behaviour .
That’s one of the lamest arguments I’ve seen you put forward.

Last edited 8 days ago by JC
Steve trickler
Steve trickler
September 25, 2024 7:46 pm

What a totally f8cked up situation. Images have to be pixelated on the tube, yet children are exposed to the raw images at school.

—-

Avi:

We have a CRISIS in our schools

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 7:49 pm

I reckon that it more true of the China sceptics. 

Sure, which is why Beijing came out with a large economic support package. That’s because the economy is booming.

Setting that aside, he’s summarising someone there and it’s a view I’ve heard before. Time will tell who’s right or not.

Compare Jack Ma to Elon Musk.

132andBush
132andBush
September 25, 2024 7:54 pm

It is actually a very smart move by the Russians if it was them. You immobilize a carrier group at an important time by hovelling it’s oil refueller. You also increase its vulnerability. And you do this without bringing about a massive escalation.

And for exactly how long do you think this will be kept secret?

A torpedo suggests a rather large, mid sized or smallish “boom”, the crew would know what happened.

Talk about cope.

Pogria
Pogria
September 25, 2024 8:03 pm

Caught a bit of Blot earlier. He was rabbiting on about the three greatest leaders of our current time.
Javier Milei. check.
Giorgia Meloni. check.

Vlodomir Zelensky. W.T.F#CK!!!

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 25, 2024 8:10 pm

Mark Dreyfus to address Israeli counter-terror summit on October 7 anniversaryBen Packham
39 minutes ago.
Updated 7 minutes ago

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus will represent the government in Israel on the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, as Australia’s Jewish community warns “depraved” protesters to stay away from local vigils.
Mr Dreyfus, Labor’s most senior Jewish MP, is scheduled to ­attend a major counter-terrorism summit at Israel’s Reichman University from October 6-8, delivering a keynote address.
Scott Morrison will also address the Shabtai Shavit summit, and ­Coalition frontbenchers Andrew Hastie and Claire Chandler will attend memorial services.
Mr Dreyfus was asked to attend the summit by Anthony Albanese but the Attorney-General’s office cautioned the trip would be dependent on updated security advice amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Lebanese-based Hezbollah militants.
The Jewish community in Australia is planning memorial events across the country on October 7, and a candle-lighting ceremony in Sydney the night before. Details of the events are tightly held amid fears pro-Palestine groups will seek to disrupt them.
Anti-Israel groups are planning national rallies this Sunday, with a “Protest 365 days of genocide” march scheduled for October 6 in Sydney.
https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/79fd70729fb5dbbee7c51d3339584f57
A flyer for a planned anti-Israel protest on October 6, 2024
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin said the plans gave an insight “into the depraved mindset of the pro-Palestine movement”.
“These people responded to the invasion of Israel by a hybrid force of terrorists and Gazan civilians, and the slaughter, torture, plunder and abduction of every Jew they could find, with unbridled jubilation,” he said.
“Only those with no humanity and no decency could react to atrocities in such a way.
“This past year has been the most challenging in the history of our community, and any attempts to desecrate any ceremony where we honour our dead and call for the release of those still alive would be utterly shameful.”
His comments came after hundreds of protesters draped in Lebanese flags and Palestinian scarves chanted their support for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah ­terrorist group outside Sydney Town Hall on Tuesday night. The Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, which backs coming ­rallies, declined to comment.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 8:12 pm

I’m not accusing Musk of anything. I was alluding to how influential people are compromised in the West. 

Why are you alluding to something that never occurred. I didn’t say you accused Musk of something. I brought up Musk to contrast against Ma as both have moved against the government of the day. I also said Musk hasn’t been accused of sexual abhorrent acts.

I just find it astonishing that you seem to believe China’s economy is in good shape and is performing specularly. It’s not. This doesn’t mean the US is performing well with a chronic deficit and debt problem made worse by Hiden, but it’s in better shape than China.

132andBush
132andBush
September 25, 2024 8:13 pm

As long as they need. It’s not like they haven’t kept any secrets regarding past incidents.

I missed that satellite imagery you said you posted, can you re-post please?

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 25, 2024 8:15 pm

For instance he explains why the stock market is really not that important in China

Which is of course why China just pumped up their stockmarket today with an infusion of funny money. 😀

China Fires A Monetary Bazooka… It Won’t Be Enough (25 Sep)

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 8:35 pm

I don’t think they or I have argued that China isn’t facing difficulties or structural readjustments.

Who is “they”? Arnie Bertrand? Have you switched to different pronouns? 🙂

Let’s stay focused on the topic. Arnie presents a highly skewed view of China.
Arnie implies that because the Chinese stock market is smaller, it is less vulnerable in a downturn. He overlooks the fact that financial markets, regardless of size, are often indicators of economic health.
He also suggests that China’s business environment is more of a free market than the U.S., ignoring that the U.S. hosts the largest and most advanced capital markets in the world.
Businesses fail in the U.S. daily—just look at Boeing recently.

In contrast, not toeing the regime’s line in China can land you in jail without trial.

If Epstein and Diddy were named Wang and Hua and had close ties to the CCP, they would still be attending the CCP plenary.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 25, 2024 8:36 pm

This Sydney tradie told his wife they would visit family abroad. Instead, he allegedly abandoned her in PakistanBy Amber SchultzSeptember 25, 2024 — 7.50pm

Listen to this article
3 min
A Sydney tradie has been charged with human trafficking after allegedly tricking his wife into travelling to Pakistan and abandoning her there without her passport.
Ali Rahimi was arrested on Wednesday morning following a nine-month joint investigation by the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The 29-year-old has been charged with one count of exit trafficking, a form of modern slavery in which women are deceived or coerced into leaving Australia and prevented from returning, an offense which carries a maximum penalty of 12 years’ imprisonment.
Wearing a faded black jacket and grey shirt, the Auburn-based tiler was granted bail at Burwood Local Court on Wednesday afternoon.
Police will allege Rahimi told his wife Sohalia they were travelling to his home country Afghanistan and then on to her home country Pakistan to see family in July 2023, and retained control of the pair’s tickets, passports and visas during the trip.
Rahami then allegedly said he was going back to Afghanistan to visit friends, leaving her in Pakistan without her passport. She later discovered in September 2023 that he had returned to Australia alone, police say.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 8:37 pm

What has never occurred?

see above

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
September 25, 2024 8:38 pm

I should have included this in my 1981 Carnravon post. Wilson and his family fed my brother and I on multiple occasions … for free.

We were tucked in the back corner of the front bar at the Port Hotel.

His entire family are wonderful people. Mum was behind the bar serving drinks.

It’s been 20 plus years since I spoke to them. Wilson would probably remember me.

I was the young chap doing bombies in the pool and sending water everywhere.

I copped a monumental spray from Wilson. STOP IT!

Good times.
.

Sancho Panzer
Sancho Panzer
September 25, 2024 8:41 pm

NFA

 September 25, 2024 2:55 pm

Leigh Lowe

Your face looks worse than if a cat shat on it.

Your a gormless f*ckwith.

Going to America to collect the reward for his death?

Be about your style

I couldn’t agree more.
Who does this LeeLow guy think he is?
Two questions:-
1. Have you perfect the fraud scheme on Aboriginal welfare schemes yet?
2. Did you daddy gag when he was … you know … “fishing with you”?

Muddy
Muddy
September 25, 2024 8:41 pm

Steven Hayward over at Powerline has a post heading which includes the phrase ‘toxic elites.’

I love it.
It’s about time we utilised adjectives as much as our pro-poverty, extremist opponents.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
September 25, 2024 8:42 pm

Eyrie

 September 25, 2024 4:30 pm

I reckon we are somewhere between 8 and 18 on the Kahn scale.

8 – 18 levels:

  • Harassing Acts of Violence
  • Dramatic Military Confrontations
  • Provocative Breaking off of Diplomatic Relations
  • Super-Ready Status
  • Large Conventional War (or Actions)
  • Large Compound Escalation
  • Declaration of Limited Conventional War
  • Barely Nuclear War
  • Nuclear “Ultimatums”
  • Limited Evacuations (20%)
  • Spectacular Show or Demonstration of Force

I don’t see any of these levels currently shown.
Mind you, one of the criticisms of Khans work was that it was subjective and difficult to quantify. No scenario was going to progress from step 1 to step 2, then 3. It would jump around a fair bit.
I think you may be mistaking political posturing for the real thing.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
September 25, 2024 8:42 pm

 Carnravon 

…Carnarvon

132andBush
132andBush
September 25, 2024 8:54 pm

As long as they need. It’s not like they haven’t kept any secrets regarding past incidents.

It seems the Big Horn had been looking after two carrier strike groups up until very recently, in other words an unusually high tempo of operation.

I’m betting it was a breakdown and/or crew fatigue. It’s not the only USN ship to have a grounding in recent times.

USN does have a very stretched ability to keep carrier strike groups fully supplied however.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 8:54 pm

Okay, but does the last comment help you to appreciate Arnie’s economic opinions have less value than used dental floss.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
September 25, 2024 8:59 pm
Muddy
Muddy
September 25, 2024 9:02 pm

My response to 132andBush’s 7:30 p.m. post (itself a response to a Rabz comment), re the Greenfilth:

They believe in a Master Class. Not a master race, which is far too broad, but a Master Class: Themselves. A cadre of the ultimate moral humans, driving the unwashed, the unworthy, and the unacceptable to a pre-destined fate. A Dalekian fate.

John H.
John H.
September 25, 2024 9:12 pm

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Beare

 September 25, 2024 6:19 pm

On health matters, I am quite fond of The Glucose Goddess as a communicator about the complex biochemistry of insulin resistance, the cause of much obesity and type 2 diabetes in modern societies – she is a biochemist who can speak in good metaphors, as she does here in an interview on the basics of her approach.

Insulin resistance is a major health issue that we are going to hear a lot more about as the more usual dietetic approach to this illness is challenged.

I’ve read enough about insulin resistance. Unfortunately measuring insulin is not covered under a full blood count. Last week a surprising report regarding one cause: a “molecular mesh” that prevents insulin finding the receptor. A proxy for insulin resistance: fasting glucose challenge.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 9:17 pm

JC, this started off with Arnaud summarising someone else’s opinion but you made it all about him.

I’ve seen this argument before. Did Arnie say he disagreed with it or any part of it? In any event it’s crap anyway.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 25, 2024 9:22 pm

Big Horn would be near the carrier group. 

The oilier is unnecessary for the carrier of course, since USN carriers are nuclear. The support vessels aren’t though, especially the Arleigh-Burkes.

Cassie of Sydney
September 25, 2024 9:29 pm

In today’s Oz, Janet A has written a blistering piece excoriating the BCA and woke businesses and corporates. Whilst I enjoyed reading her piece, and of course I agreed with almost every word she wrote, there’s nothing in her piece that we here on the Cat, over the years, haven’t said about virtue signalling woke corporates and the BCA.

The Cat IS always ahead when it comes to opinion.

John H.
John H.
September 25, 2024 9:33 pm

132andBush

 September 25, 2024 7:54 pm

It is actually a very smart move by the Russians if it was them. You immobilize a carrier group at an important time by hovelling it’s oil refueller. You also increase its vulnerability. And you do this without bringing about a massive escalation.

And for exactly how long do you think this will be kept secret?

A torpedo suggests a rather large, mid sized or smallish “boom”, the crew would know what happened.

Talk about cope.

It struck me as an incredulous idea. Modern torpedoes are designed to break the spine of the ship.

Indolent
Indolent
September 25, 2024 9:55 pm
Dr Faustus
Dr Faustus
September 25, 2024 9:59 pm

In USNS Big Horn news:

US Navy Oiler Runs Aground, Forcing Carrier Strike Group to Scramble for Fuel
Apparently, the original news source.

With absolutely zero mil-value-add, this sounds like a massive systemic US logistical cockup. Like everyone else, I’ve no idea how the Big Horn rudder compartment was damaged, but, unless it was a sooper-special very, very gentle torpedo, nobody would be in any doubt that an explosion had occurred.

In other ArmChairPundit news:

The 2024 October Suprise (and revenge on Israel/Great Satan) may be Iran withdrawing from the NPT – blaming Israel and the US for their ‘horrible behaviours’, while offering to climb down as equals – and changing the ME nuclear calculus forever. With general quiet approval and tacit support of those who hate the West.

Looking at Iran’s nuclear program through an energy prism, there is zero technical reason for (massively expensively) enriching uranium to 60% U238 other than to present a threat of two weeks to Bomb Grade.

Time to shine, Ayatollahs; before your poxy proxies are turned to mince.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 10:05 pm

I’ll say this Dover. This is an interesting take from the dude Arnie linked to.

Most people I meet with in Europe and Asia assumes that if Trump wins in November, foreign policy under Trump 2.0 will be a replica of Trump 1.0

But in Trump 1.0, the inner sanctum was made up of Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence…

In Trump 2.0, the inner sanctum seems to be RFK Jr, Elon Musk, Tulsi, JD Vance…

Surely that should make for very different outcomes?

Dick Cheney knows it will make for a different outcome! Am surprised that so many investors seem to be missing this…

With Musk, Tulsi and RFK it will be a very different administration than the one we saw in his first term.

If there is another Mar a Lago summit with a solid agreement, it could also quieten shit down in the MidEast too.

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 10:11 pm

More from RFK
And this is what could get us to the golden age.
FMD I hope he wins.

At the end of 2016, the National Debt was $16 Trillion. As we near the end of 2024, it’s $35 Trillion. Are the streets and highways of America now paved with gold? Where did the extra $19 Trillion go? How many new hospitals did we build? How many new Schools? How many new state-of-the art food processing plants?

For more than three decades Washington has engaged in a series of open-ended conflicts with unattainable political-military objectives; armed struggles disguised as crusades for democracy that were designed to achieve American military hegemony. Thirty years later, the outcome is a world full of nations brimming with hatred for the American People, a ruined economy and a military establishment that American men refuse to join.

Former President Donald Trump recognizes the tragedy of the warfare state said so quite clearly: “The United States should not reject cooperating with Russia and China, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump said. “Doing business with China is a good thing, but you need a fair deal. Doing business with Russia – they have so much raw minerals… We can do great business and keep everybody happy,” Trump said during a rally in Flint, Michigan. He reiterated that he had good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. On September 16, Trump said in an interview that he does not consider Russia and China enemies of the United States. He promised to get along with these countries if he gets elected as a president.”

If President Trump pursues this path he will save America and win the Nobel Peace Prize!

Boambee John
Boambee John
September 25, 2024 10:13 pm

Re the USNS Big Horn, if it was hit by a torpedo, it must have been a very small torpedo. Those things are designed to sink ships, not put small holes in them.

I recall a description of one Soviet torpedo in the 1980s: “It’s a real ship killer.”

JC
JC
September 25, 2024 10:24 pm

Polling must have them worried. Kamaltoe is going on MSNBC for a one on one interview.
They must be hitting the cheat margin limit.

KevinM
KevinM
September 25, 2024 11:20 pm

Boambee John
September 25, 2024 10:13 pm

Re the USNS Big Horn, if it was hit by a torpedo, it must have been a very small torpedo.

Mr Allnut, can you make a torpedo?
Asked by Rose Sayer.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
September 26, 2024 12:32 am

I’m easily entertained. Smiles galore from people in the street.

Cash!

Cash 2.0 Great Dane at the Simi Valley Spring Street Fair 2024 (11 of 12)

NFA
NFA
September 26, 2024 3:17 am

How’s the US$ going JC?

Germany has thrown in the towel.

Steve trickler
Steve trickler
September 26, 2024 3:25 am
Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 4:00 am

Johannes Leak. Kapow!

Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 4:01 am
Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 4:02 am
Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 4:02 am
Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 4:03 am
Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 4:04 am

Gary Varvel. Brilliant.

Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 4:05 am
Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 4:05 am
KevinM
KevinM
September 26, 2024 4:24 am

NFA
September 26, 2024 3:17 am

How’s the US$ going JC?

Germany has thrown in the towel.

How so?

Miltonf
Miltonf
September 26, 2024 4:33 am
Steve trickler
Steve trickler
September 26, 2024 5:07 am

How is this for a story. Mum and Dad got divorced and we moved to Perth to live with Oma. Mum enrolled me at the local school.
I opened the door and their she was. My teacher from Carnarvon! We hugged. She was my second mum.

Memories.

KevinM
KevinM
September 26, 2024 5:21 am

Milton, read this link on your post, it’s even more disturbing.

Beertruk
September 26, 2024 5:37 am

Today’s Tele from the Bolta:

ISRAEL AGAIN DEMONISED MERELY FOR SURVIVING

ANDREW BOLT
26 Sep 2024

Those bloody Israelis have just started yet another war. Or so I hear from journalists curdled by our toxic victim politics.

Much of the coverage is stunning in its ignorance – or omissions.

Exhibit A: The ABC announces “Israel unleashes heavy strikes on Lebanon”. No, this is not an attack on Lebanon. Israel is instead firing back at the Hezbollah terrorist army that’s overrun a third of that country.

Exhibit B: Sky News UK tweets that “Hezbollah has been provoked like never before by Israel and may be tempted to unleash its firepower”.

No, it’s exactly the other way around. Israel has been provoked by Hezbollah firing 8000 missiles and rockets in just the past year, and now unleashes its firepower.

But up bobs our Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, demanding Israel stop: “Escalation is in no one’s interest”.

Really? As I said seven months ago, after speaking to leading Israeli military experts and politicians, Israel would eventually hit back at Hezbollah because it has a country to save.

This war with Hezbollah didn’t start last week, when Israel detonated up to 5000 booby-trapped pagers which Hezbollah had issued to its fighters.

Hezbollah, funded by fascist Iran, has been attacking Israel for years – attacking Lebanese Christians, too, as it turned Beirut from the “Paris of the Middle East” to another Middle Eastern slum.

It’s built an army of up to 100,000 men, separate to the Lebanese army, and hidden an armoury of more than 120,000 missiles and rockets, all destined for Israeli targets.

Since October 7, it’s fired dozens of them almost daily into northern Israel, forcing 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes. One missile killed 12 Druze children in an Israeli playground.

But Israel’s leaders feared even worse. It knew Hezbollah also had plans to do its own October 7 on Israel, but bigger.

Was Israel meant to endure all this forever?

Wong says Israel should negotiate, as if it’s possible to make a genuine deal with Islamist terrorists who’ve vowed to wipe Israel off the map as an abomination.

Look what happened to the deal the United Nations reaffirmed in 2006 to keep southern Lebanon free of Hezbollah military and weapons up to the Litani river.

The UN even sent peacekeepers, yet that area now bristles with Hezbollah.

Not that many reporters see the con. TV reporters now groan that Israel is bombing homes of Lebanese civilians, without them notice something odd about the footage of several such attacks – footage I’ve shown on my Sky News Australia show.

There’s often the initial explosion from an Israeli missile, followed by a chain of explosions as Hezbollah missiles, rockets and bombs hidden inside go off.

Don’t these journalists wonder why Hezbollah would store explosives right next to people’s homes?

The answer is easy. Like Hamas, Hezbollah doesn’t mind Israel killing Muslim civilians. Hamas doesn’t even build bomb shelters for its people.

That’s because every dead civilian is terrorist propaganda to get western journalists and politicians to attack the wicked Jews.

So it’s Israel, not Hezbollah, that sends Lebanese civilians warnings on their phones to stay 1km away from Hezbollah sites.

Long lines of cars now snake out of Hezbollah strongholds. I’m sure Israel still accidentally kills civilian men, women and children, but do journalists actually check Hezbollah claims of war crimes?

America’s ABC, for instance, reports: “Lebanese journalist’s home hit by Israeli strike during news interview”. I’ve seen the footage of Fadi Boudaya being blown off his chair. Israel targeting a journalist!

What’s not reported is that Boudaya heads a Hezbollah propaganda arm. The Iranian regime’s official mouthpiece, the Islamic Republic News Agency, says his “Maraya international magazine takes steps in line with Resistance policies”.

This anti-Israel spin isn’t just ignorance. It’s also a product of the West’s cancerous culture of victimhood, where the poor are always the victim, never the authors of their misery. Israel, being rich and Western, must of course be the villain. That it’s clever and rich enough that it kills more fighters than it loses is seen as just more proof that it’s evil.

That’s why Israel cannot even be forgiven now for defending itself from an enemy that’s fired thousands of rockets into its towns.

As if. The only time the Left really sympathised with Israel was just after millions of Jews were slaughtered. When Jews fight back, not so much.

But Israel isn’t into being the victim any more. It would rather fight than die, whatever Penny Wong may say.

Israel latest p18-19

On point and in the print media.
Where it needs to be.

Beertruk
September 26, 2024 5:50 am

Bolta in today’s Tele continued:

ACTIVISTS WANT BENEFITS WHILE DELIVERING ALL THE BLAME

Andrew Bolt
26 Sep 2024

Jim Everett is one of the Aboriginal activists who still don’t realise how things have changed since Australians voted No to the Voice.

Many Australians have had it with racial division, with chancers playing the race card. And now they say so.

Yet there’s Everett, poet and former Aboriginal Liaison Officer in Tasmania’s government, refusing this week to turn up to a court hearing on charges over an anti-logging protest.

This court had no say over Aborigines, declared Everett: “The colonial court of Tasmania has no jurisdiction over my actions to protect Palawa law in country”.

Everett has boasted he has an “Aboriginal passport”, issued by the so-called Aboriginal Provisional Government, but his rejection of our colonial system goes only so far.

He also keeps an Australian passport “so that I can get money, jobs, Centrelink, the age pension”.

So Everett doesn’t want colonial courts, but does want colonial money, colonial jobs and all the rest. He rejects our rule of law, but wants the riches it produces – including Aboriginal activists.

This is an important point, because Everett represents a wider faux-rejection of Australia and its Western civilisation.

States like Victoria even want to negotiate “treaties” with people identifying as “First Nations”, as if they, too, aren’t Australians. The Albanese government appointed a “First Nations Ambassador”, as if Aborigines now need their own diplomatic representation.

This is a dead-end movement fed by endless counting of scabs and scars, not blessings.

Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo was at it again yesterday, still blaming colonialism for all the dysfunction we see in Aboriginal communities: “These things are not to do with Indigenous culture”.

Really? None of the violence, domestic abuse and child neglect that’s worst in remote Aboriginal communities – where Aboriginal culture is strongest – has anything to do with Aboriginal culture?

This fashion of damning and rejecting colonial culture is a fraud. Many activists I see pushing the new separatist agenda seem to me to be enjoying the fruits of colonialism while hating the tree.

I see black-identifying academics in comfortable university jobs. I see the nattily-suited Mayo – actually with substantial Filipino, Dayak, Polish, Jewish and English ancestry as well – flogging his latest book. I see race-baiting Lidia Thorpe, paid well as a Senator, lolling in the Qantas chairman’s lounge. I see Everett, insisting on his right to welfare benefits no Aboriginal “nation” had.

None strike me as serious. They rage against society, but would do more good by giving thanks for the luxuries in which they now recline.

KevinM
KevinM
September 26, 2024 6:10 am

Quite rightly so.

Satin is made from synthetic fiber and is not breathable. Pure silk on the other hand is breathable and temperature regulating which means it would keep you cool on a hot night and warm on a cold one.

461323661_1973038513116413_1278355659472384631_n
Beertruk
September 26, 2024 6:14 am

What a bloody clown show.
The Paywallion today:

Biden’s UN curtain call lays bare his biggest foreign policy blunders
Adam Creighton
26 Sep 2024

President Joe Biden’s swan song at the UN on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) amounted to little more than a futile attempt to dress up his foreign policy failures across the past few years.

The surge in international conflicts, of course, can’t all be sheeted home to the Biden administration, but the world has become an undeniably more dangerous place since he came to office.

America’s prestige has sunk, both inside and outside the country. The share of Americans who think the rest of the world looks on their country with optimism has halved from 79 per cent 20 years ago to 42 per cent this year, according to regular Gallup surveys.

In highly populous countries such as India, China and Bangladesh, most of Africa and the Middle East, most voters view Russia at least as favourably as the US, which is a shocking indictment given Moscow’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Prabowo Subianto, the incoming president of Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation, jetted off to Moscow in late July to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The central problem here for the US is its increasing hypocrisy on foreign policy issues, with the gap between the Biden administration’s rhetoric and its behaviour becoming wider and wider.

In his farewell address to the UN, Biden urged Israel to negotiate a ceasefire with its enemies in the Middle East, at the same time calling on the world to keep backing Ukraine in its war against Russia. Setting aside the fact the Biden administration is providing the Israeli and Ukrainian governments with vast and seemingly uncapped quantities of ammunition, how can it sustain this apparent double standard?

The Russia-Ukraine war has gone on much longer than the Middle East conflict, killed many more people and, arguably, presents a far greater risk of a nuclear confrontation. But apparently it is Israel that should make greater efforts to make a lasting peace with its neighbours.

As is the case with most US presidents, Biden’s UN speech sought to present his foreign policy decisions as motivated by the high principles of democracy, peace, sovereignty and the rule of law.

But even a cursory glance shows it is related far more to US self-interest. The US has no interest in a wider war in the Middle East into which it could be drawn to protect Israel. It does have an interest, however, in “weakening Russia to the point where it can’t do the things it has been doing”, as US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has said. And what better way to do that than paying another country to do the fighting? This is brutal realpolitik; certainly not the actions of a selfless global power, concerned with the maintenance of liberal internationalism.

“Full-scale war (in the Middle East) is not in anyone’s interest. Even as the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible,” Biden said in his UN speech.

Earlier this month, former US State Department mandarin Victoria Nuland intimated what Ukrainian negotiators have already revealed: that the US and Britain pressured Ukraine to tear up a tentative April 2022 peace treaty with Russia on terms that, in hindsight, look favourable.

Of course this is how powerful nations behave. But genuine attempts for global peace surely would benefit if the US dialled down the hypocrisy, which can only infuriate its closest allies.

In 1972, when Biden entered the US Senate, the world had to put up with constant claims of America’s moral superiority. After all, the US was by far the richest and freest nation, comprising about a third of the global GDP in purchasing power terms.

Now that share has fallen to 15 per cent, while the stark ideological divisions of the Cold War have withered away. Indeed, the US is starting to look more like Europe, even China, with its burgeoning national security apparatus frequently found to be spying on citizens and foreigners alike.

Many US states, including the largest ones, sought to copy China’s totalitarian response to Covid-19. The free speech protections that so distinguished the US look set to be watered down in the event Kamala Harris wins the presidential election in November. Her vice-presidential running mate, Tim Walz, already has signalled a government crackdown on so-called misinformation.

This month, unnamed intelligence officials revealed that Washington was concerned about the possibility Russia could sever undersea cables, which must have triggered guffaws in Moscow. This, after the US had (at the very least) advance knowledge, according to The Wall Street Journal, of the biggest act of industrial sabotage ever – the blowing up the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines.

In what must have prompted further hilarity around the same time, Washington scolded Russia for interfering in US elections after the US Justice Department alleged a few so-called right-wing commentators had accepted a little under $US6m from state broadcaster Russia Today via another US media company.

Moscow’s purchase of a couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Facebook ads ahead of the 2016 election was probably money better spent in a bid to influence a presidential election where the two major parties spend tens of billions of dollars.

Moscow’s and Beijing’s piddling, primitive efforts to influence the US election pale in comparison to American efforts across decades to influence other countries’ elections, extending to toppling democratically elected governments not to Washington’s taste.

The US has even admitted to spending $US5bn between 1991 and 2013 in Ukraine, an astonishing sum in local currency terms, for “building democracy”. In a famous 2018 interview on Fox News with Laura Ingraham, former CIA director James Woolsey flat out admitted the US meddled in other countries’ elections and continued to do so “only for a good cause”.

None of this is lost on the rest of the world. A Pew survey from June last year found 82 per cent of people in 23 nations thought the US interfered in the affairs of other countries.

In short, the US should stop insisting it’s the pope of all nations, and acknowledge that it is motivate by self interest. The moralising, supercilious US foreign policy establishment hated Trump as president because he sought to establish good personal relations with the leaders of Russia, North Korea and others. “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” he said to a stunned Bill O’Reilly in 2017, refusing to insult Putin as president.

For all its faults, the US remains a benevolent empire. But, ironically, it could burnish its influence by dialling down the hypocrisy as it navigates an increasingly complex and dangerous 21st-century landscape.

Rosie
Rosie
September 26, 2024 6:36 am
Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
September 26, 2024 6:38 am

Be gone Satin. You have no power here.

God bless those faithful Polyesterbeterians.

Rosie
Rosie
September 26, 2024 6:38 am
Rosie
Rosie
September 26, 2024 6:40 am
Pogria
Pogria
September 26, 2024 6:42 am

There are people in our world who would suck the blood from leeches, and hollow spectators who applaud the same as performance art.

Damn! Muddy. That is one of the greatest one-liners I have ever read or heard.

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
September 26, 2024 6:43 am

Thoughts and prayers news (the Tele):

A twisted killer who was serving a three-decade jail sentence for the violent slaying of a 16-year-old boy has been stabbed to death in prison.

Aymen Terkmani is understood to have been set upon by an attacker inside Lithgow Jail on Wednesday afternoon, who stabbed him with a sharp weapon.

Prison officers tried to perform first aid on Terkmani as he may bleeding in his cell, before an attempt was made to fly him to hospital in a helicopter but he died en route.

The 31-year-old was jailed for a minimum of 33 years for the horror murder of Mahmoud Hrouk in 2015, in which he lured his victim to a vacant home in Sydney’s west and sexually assaulted him, before bashing him to death.

I pray this bloke got a toaster cord up the date before he got shanked.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 26, 2024 6:45 am

Speaking of ships damaging their rudder when going aground, this one is still trying to get to a port, any port. There just this tiny problem though.

Massive Russian ship packed with explosive cargo closes in on London (25 Sep)

An enormous damaged Russian cargo ship carrying 20,000 tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate has ‘anchored’ off the Kent coast just miles from London and seemingly heading for the English Channel.

The MV Ruby, which was refused entry into the Baltic Sea by Danish authorities earlier this week, has travelled south and is now just a few miles from the English coast and the Thames Estuary. …

According to the Marine Traffic site, the Russian ship is now heading for Malta, but according to the newspaper Malta Today a spokesperson for the transport ministry said it would not be allowed to dock on the Mediterranean island if it is carrying the explosive cargo.

Confirming the Russian ship had asked for servicing help, they said: “The ship will only be allowed to port in Malta if it empties the cargo, if not, it will not be allowed to enter Maltese territorial waters.”

You can see why ports might be a tad leery of letting dock a ship loaded with enough ammonium nitrate to cause a nuclear-sized explosion…

Rosie
Rosie
September 26, 2024 6:46 am

“Syria under Assad and Lebanon under Hezbollah have become two of the world’s biggest drug trafficking dictatorships “-
Two links
https://x.com/SpencerJJoseph/status/1838942790983524537?t=XcL0d8LMMDKOyvw4P_WqMw&s=19
https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/hezbollah-a-worldwide-criminal-organization

Rosie
Rosie
September 26, 2024 6:48 am

Any bets Australian black market cigarette trading and the mysterious fires at tobacco shops have links to southern Lebanon and or the Bekaa?

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
September 26, 2024 6:51 am

Bruce of Newcastle
 September 25, 2024 9:57 pm

A thousand tonnes of kero would be enough for something like twenty missions for the entire air wing. That amount of kerosene would be a drop in a bucket in a carrier.

It’s the fire risk – not the space available that is the first consideration.
IIRC, the USN lost a carrier during WW2 due to two factors. The overstocking of fuel for the aircraft, and the specialisation of the fire fighting teams. The ?Kamikaze took out the vast majority of the firefighters, and because it was assumed they’d deal with the fires, the crew weren’t trained up.
Scratch one flattop whose name escapes me even though I can see the photograph of the vessel burning in my memory.

Vicki
Vicki
September 26, 2024 7:03 am

Just a light drizzle out west here. BOM gets it wrong again. The BOM girlie on breakfast TV primarily talking about Sydney which is getting a bit of coastal drenching but contradictory report on what rural NSW can expect. Admittedly it can change rapidly & we use YR which is generally accurate.

Beertruk
September 26, 2024 7:03 am

Winston Smith
 September 26, 2024 6:51 am

Scratch one flattop whose name escapes me even though I can see the photograph of the vessel burning in my memory.

Winston, here?:

Scratch one flattop

Sorry Matey, I was having TOO MUCH fun… 🙂

I do have a few of these.

Last edited 7 days ago by Beertruk
Rosie
Rosie
September 26, 2024 7:08 am
Zippster
Zippster
September 26, 2024 7:09 am

Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump, Conservatism, Nationalism, Immigration, and War | Lex Fridman Podcast #445

Lex Fridman

Video Summary### Summary In the Lex Fridman Podcast episode featuring Vivek Ramaswamy, the conversation delves into a variety of pressing political topics, including conservatism, progressivism, government bureaucracy, foreign policy, and immigration. Ramaswamy emphasizes the need for a revitalized conservative vision in America, articulating criticisms of both the current political establishment and progressive ideologies. He discusses the challenge of political narratives and the role of government in people’s lives, advocating for a significant reduction in federal bureaucracy and the termination of what he refers to as the “Nanny State.” The dialogue also encompasses Ramaswamy’s perspectives on foreign relations, particularly regarding Russia and China, and highlights his approach to engaging in open debates with those who hold opposing views. ### Key Points by Sections **Introduction (0:00)** – Vivek Ramaswamy is introduced as a conservative politician and author. – He ran for president and aims to offer a vision for the future of conservatism in America. **Conservatism (2:02)** – Modern conservatism lacks a clear vision and focus on what it stands for. – Emphasizes key conservative ideals: meritocracy, free speech, self-governance, and rule of law. – Urges a revival of America’s foundational values and a national identity anchored in civic nationalism. **Progressivism (5:18)** – Acknowledges the progressive argument that American ideals have not been fully achieved due to historical injustices. – Offers a counterargument highlighting that pursuing progressive policies often rekindles the same problems they aim to solve. **Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (10:52)** – Ramaswamy critiques the DEI framework for sacrificing meritocracy and genuine diversity of thought. – Argues that DEI practices promote divisions rather than unity. **Bureaucracy (15:45)** – Views bureaucracy as a significant impediment to effective governance. – Proposes a drastic reduction (75%) of federal bureaucratic positions to restore self-governance. **Government Efficiency (22:36)** – Stresses the need for government efficiency and accountability, advocating for a substantial cut in government size. – Suggests sending bureaucrats home and rescinding unnecessary regulations. **Education (37:46)** – Calls for rethinking education policy, suggesting that state and local governments should handle it rather than the federal level. – Emphasizes the importance of educational choice. **Military-Industrial Complex (52:11)** – Critiques the current military spending levels and urges a shift towards defending the homeland rather than foreign engagements. – Advocates for a clear strategy to address threats posed by alliances like Russia and China. ### Other Notable Topics – Ramaswamy discusses the need for immigration reform based on honesty and rule of law. – He highlights the importance of rebuilding national identity and pride in American citizenship. – Addresses strategic considerations for U.S. foreign policy in light of global challenges posed by China and Russia. – Ramaswamy expresses optimism about the potential for future political endeavors, particularly if a conducive political landscape emerges. Overall, Vivek Ramaswamy’s conversation with Lex Fridman offers a comprehensive perspective on various issues facing America today, framing his arguments with a blend of critique, vision, and personal anecdotes that reflect his views on leadership and governance.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 26, 2024 7:17 am

What a nice headline!

Entire German Green Party Leadership Resigns over Election Failures as Public Rejects Mass Migration, Climate Hysteria (26 Sep)

The Greens, which currently make up one third of the “traffic light” coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have suffered a severe decline in popularity as the public’s attitude towards issues like mass migration and the green agenda have soured.

This trend has been particularly noticeable among young voters, with the Greens losing a staggering 74.1 per cent of its support among 16 to 24 year olds in Brandenburg, falling by 20 percentage points from 2019 to just seven per cent support among the age group. Meanwhile, the anti-mass migration populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) increased its vote share among young people by 14 points to 32 per cent.

The rampant antisemitism that Greens have revealed this year probably doesn’t help either.

Winston Smith
Winston Smith
September 26, 2024 7:18 am

John H.
 September 25, 2024 9:47 pm

 Reply to  Winston Smith

Winston, would the USN passively detect a torpedo launch?

The oilers rely on other ships for defence – they carry very little defensive or offensive armament, and very little in the way of detection gear.
The oiler wouldn’t know Jack Shit until the torpedo exploded. But passive detection by the escorts? Depending where the escorts are, but yes if they were in a convoy formation, with a couple of subs in attendance, the sound of the torpedo bay being flooded and the opening of the hatch would stand out like the proverbial.
But if – as someone pointed out yesterday – she was between two Battle Groups, she would have been a sitting duck.

1735099
1735099
September 26, 2024 7:19 am

The Kamikaze took out the vast majority of the firefighters, and because it was assumed they’d deal with the fires, the crew weren’t trained up.

That culture (over specialisation) was a part of US military culture 54 years ago.
I hadn’t realised it went back to WW2, although I remember my father (RAAF – PNG WW2) talking about it.
As we stay in the classics, they had all the gear and no idea.

Zippster
Zippster
September 26, 2024 7:25 am

“They’re Lying About Your History” – Rafe Heydel-Mankoo

Triggernometry

Video Summary### Summary In this episode of Triggernometry featuring historian Rafe Heydel-Mankoo, the conversation addresses the politicization of history education, the myths surrounding British history, and the legacy of the British Empire. Heydel-Mankoo critiques contemporary narratives that portray the British as uniquely culpable for historical injustices, including slavery and colonialism, while arguing that the British Empire has also contributed positively to global development. The dialogue emphasizes the importance of accessing original historical sources and critical thinking to build a balanced understanding of history. Additionally, the discussion explores demographic changes in modern Britain and their implications for societal cohesion, alongside the challenges of integrating diverse communities. ### Key Points #### 1. **Corrupted, Politicized History Education (0:40)** – The current educational system promotes a biased narrative influenced by leftist ideologies. – Historians from conservative backgrounds are significantly underrepresented in academia. – The skewed perspectives in education hinder students’ ability to critically evaluate history. #### 2. **Seek Out Actual Historical Sources (4:00)** – To gain a more accurate understanding of history, one should read primary sources, memoirs, and diverse viewpoints. – It is crucial to balance historical narratives by exploring both left-leaning and alternative perspectives. #### 3. **Debunking Historical Myths (5:05)** – There are prevalent myths about British history that need to be challenged, such as the portrayal of Britain as solely culpable for colonialism and slavery. – Historical narratives should not be judged by contemporary standards but understood within their context. #### 4. **Why the British Empire Was Great (7:39)** – The British Empire, while imperfect, contributed positively to many societies, promoting democracy, infrastructure, and the abolition of slavery. – Comparatively, the British Empire was more benign than other empires in history. #### 5. **The Revolution Has Already Happened (11:00)** – Modern society has undergone a cultural revolution that complicates discussions about history and national identity. – Current norms in education and media reflect a shift towards critiquing traditional narratives and figures. #### 6. **Economic Impact of Ending Slavery (12:41)** – The British voluntarily impoverished themselves to abolish slavery, a morally significant but underappreciated act of courage. #### 7. **Surprising Historical Facts (13:24)** – Many students are shocked to learn about the wider context of slavery and the numerous instances of slavery occurring throughout human history. #### 8. **Demographic Changes and Their Effects (Final Section)** – The UK’s demographic shifts present challenges for national unity and integration. – Large-scale immigration has led to isolated communities, complicating societal cohesion. – The discussion calls for a reevaluation of how integration and community-building can be fostered amid increasing diversity. Overall, the episode presents a defense of British history against current critical narratives and a call to recognize both the positive and negative impacts of historical actions, emphasizing the need for balanced and informed discussions about the past.

Diogenes
Diogenes
September 26, 2024 7:28 am

Scratch one flattop whose name escapes me even though I can see the photograph of the vessel burning in my memory.

Getting a few things muddled together. It was Battle of Coral Sea. The burnt out US carrier was Lexington. The DCO on Yorktown saw Lexington burning and realised why/how and suggested purging hanger fuel lines with CO2. Suggestion taken up by the time of Midway, US never lost a carrier thee same way through the war. Japs never caught on to the trick.

Scratch one flat top refers to the sinking of the Shoho.

On USn ships every sailor was trained in damage control. Not so the IJN.

132andBush
132andBush
September 26, 2024 7:30 am

Big Horn would be near the carrier group. The carrier group would be some distance from the coast. Upon what exactly would it have ‘run aground’?

Why?
She’d be running between the fleet and a resup base.

Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 7:34 am

RBA calls time on the headline inflation political racket

Simon Benson, The Australian, 24 2024

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers can forget about a pre-Christmas interest rate cut. Michele Bullock has reiterated everything the Albanese government doesn’t want to hear. Inflation is still running too hot. And it won’t be back into a sustainable band until 2026.

The RBA boss also made the subtle point that even if Wednesday’s monthly inflation data shows better headline inflation figures, it was unlikely to make any difference. In other words, the Treasurer can whinge and moan all he likes but unless the root cause of the problem is dealt with, mortgage holders are going to continue to cop it. And with Newspoll showing housing costs overwhelmingly dominating cost-of-living concerns, this is bad news for Labor.

Bullock has said it before and clearly believes it is worth repeating. It is the underlying inflation trend that needs to be brought under control. This doesn’t need much decoding.

When Bullock said she wasn’t buying into the politics – responding to Wayne Swan’s past commentary – you can bet she was also referring to the Albanese government’s attempts to buy itself better headline inflation numbers through energy subsidies. Bullock isn’t for turning on any of it. The board remained “resolute”, she said, in terms of the inflation problem. Headline inflation is tipped to dip below 3 per cent in Wednesday’s numbers, and well within the RBA’s 2-3 per cent target band.

While Chalmers has set this as the new political benchmark, it isn’t the benchmark that is going to tip an interest-rate cut.

Bullock continues to bell the cat on this political myth-making. “That is important because it’s reflecting cost-of-living relief, it is reflected in the prices that people are seeing,” she said. “It’s not really reflective of the underlying inflation pulse, which is more what are we observing happening with services, really, which is the crux of the matter. Progress in getting underlying inflation down has slowed, and it’s likely to have remained slow in the September quarter.”

Underlying all this is the productivity problem. Chalmers has said this couldn’t be solved quickly yet the government has not articulated a plan to lift it.

“Wages growth has passed its peak, but it remains high relative to productivity growth, which has been weak for some time,” Bullock says.

This is the key to lifting the living standards crisis. So what does this all mean for the political cycle? Even if a December election was still on the cards, it isn’t anymore. Labor will have to sweat on a lot of things going right post-January for a pre-election rate cut. Without one, its prospects will diminish more rapidly than they already are.

Ironically, to guarantee inflation and rates come down would require the government to do the exact opposite of what it is doing – spending. And with an election campaign to think of, the government is hardly likely to do that.

It’s government spending, stupid!

1735099
1735099
September 26, 2024 7:38 am

I found this oldish piece by Gerard hendeson, weitten at the time of the 50th anniversay of the end of Australia’s committment in Vietnam.

Gerard’s contributions are in italics 
He set out to debunk myths, but created a few of his own –

“All Australian men and women who served in Vietnam arrived in that nation at ports or on airfields controlled by the anti-communist government in Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City). There was no invasion.”

Depends what you mean by “invasion”, Gerard. When I arrived in Vietnam I disembarked from HMAS Sydney aboard a landing craft. Nobody was shooting at us, but to any dispassionate observer the activity would have looked very much like an invasion.

When I went out on operations with my infantry unit, we moved through country that was not controlled by the South Vietnamese government. That was why we were armed, patrolled without noise, and put out sentries at night. We behaved exactly like an invading army.

“The conflict between communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam was concluded in April 1975 when the North Vietnamese Army, with assistance of the Viet Cong in South Vietnam, who supported the Hanoi regime, conquered Saigon.”

To call North Vietnamese “Communist” and South Vietnam “Non – Communist” is a gross over-simplification. Vietnam was essentially a war of national liberation, a point made by our current Governor-General (who served in Vietnam as a platoon commander) when he was interviewed by the ABC on 19 March 2012. From the interview with Peter Cosgrove –

EPSTEIN: Does that mean that you think the war was fought tactically wrong or the perception that the perceived communist threat required an Australian response in Vietnam, was that perception incorrect?

COSGROVE: I don’t think the political environment inside South Vietnam was conducive to an enduring democratic state. I think the people in Vietnam across the board, ultimately seemed to prefer self-determination rather than the presence of a large number of foreign troops.

Obviously, Gerard has a different view of the history than someone who participated in it, and has an experience of the military reality.

“The star performer in the Ratcliffe package was Bowden. He complained that he could not get all his reports from Vietnam run on the public broadcaster at the time and provided the following explanation: “At that stage the (ABC) news executives were mostly old newspaper men, a lot of Catholics, and they saw the war as a holy crusade.”

What Bowden reports is accurate. Gerard has obviously forgotten B A Santamaria. Without the influence of the Movement, and the Catholic Right in the DLP, it is debatable whether the Coalition would have stayed in power long enough to send conscripts to a war in a foreign country in peacetime. Tell me, Gerard, when in our history has this been done before or since?

As for ” few, if any, supporters of Australia’s Vietnam commitment regarded it as a “holy crusade” Gerard was obviously not attending Sunday mass in a conservative diocese and listening to sermons about the evils of Communism as I was back then before I was called up.

“This focus on the Vietnam protest movement overlooks the fact most Australians supported the commitment.”

Again, a complete over simplification. There were two issues. One was sending troops to Vietnam, the other was conscription. Support for the commitment was initially strong, but began to wane during and after the Moratorium marches which took place in 1970, the year I was in Vietnam.

Support for conscription was never strong, and when the two issues became conflated, it became apparent very quickly, that community support for the troops was no longer there. That was an untenable situation, and Vietnam veterans suffered almost as much when they came home as they did in theatre. The government in power at the time bears as much responsibility for this situation as the anti war protestors. They conscripted us and sent us – not the protestors.

“As Edwards acknowledges, the US-led Vietnam commitment delayed a communist victory by 10 years — much to the benefit of nations such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. This was also to Australia’s advantage.”

There is another way of looking at this. The continued support of a series of corrupt “governments” in South Vietnam may have simple prolonged the agony, and contributed to the millions of civilian casualties, and the hundreds of thousands who fled the country in boats post the 1975 capitulation.
.
History is sacred, Gerard, especially to those who lived it.

Don’t rewrite it.  

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
September 26, 2024 7:43 am

I get into the office this morning and the automatic news feed that every new has a Sky News story from 21 hours ago clamouring that a Reuters poll shows Kamala has increased her lead over Trump by a further 5% – putting her now at 46.1% and Trump at 40.5%.

Does this poll tell us about Trump and Harris? Or, as I see it, about Reuters?

Zippster
Zippster
September 26, 2024 7:44 am

The Silenced Doctor Taking AHPRA To Court – Dr William Bay

Video Summary### Summary: In this episode of Nugget’s News, Dr. William Bay discusses his legal battle against the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) stemming from his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines and related government policies. He has faced suspension of his medical license for expressing these views, which he argues infringes upon free speech and undermines the medical profession’s integrity. Dr. Bay’s case is significant as it may influence the regulatory framework governing healthcare in Australia and aims to restore freedom of speech for medical practitioners. He expresses concern over the consolidation of regulatory power and advocates for a decentralized approach to healthcare governance, emphasizing the importance of allowing doctors to prioritize patient care above bureaucratic mandates. ### Key Points by Section: **Introduction:** – Introduction of Dr. William Bay, who has faced challenges within the healthcare system due to his outspoken views on COVID-19 vaccinations. – Importance of Dr. Bay’s legal case against AHPRA in the context of healthcare freedom in Australia. **Background:** – Dr. Bay’s current prosecution in the Queensland civil tribunal for criticizing government COVID-19 vaccine policies. – His medical license has been suspended for over two years due to allegations of threatening public health. – Details of his court case, including pre-trial and main trial dates, focusing on the legality of AHPRA’s actions. **Censorship and Healthcare Ethics:** – Reflection on the moral decline among healthcare professionals during the pandemic. – A personal anecdote highlighting the inability to speak freely about potential vaccine-related health issues in a clinical setting. – Formation of the Queensland People’s Protest to address concerns over vaccine safety and healthcare censorship. **Personal Journey and Skepticism:** – Dr. Bay’s skepticism of vaccines and government policies developed over time, influenced by significant events and exposure to alternative media. – Critique of the medical education system’s failure to adequately scrutinize vaccine efficacy and safety. – Discussion on the lack of opposing viewpoints in medical discourse. **Concerns about Regulatory Authority:** – Assertion that AHPRA’s regulatory framework is unconstitutional and lacks proper legal authority. – Allegations that government and regulatory bodies have prioritized public confidence over patient care. – Criticism of the healthcare system’s current structure and the impact on medical practitioners’ ability to advocate for their patients. **Future of Healthcare:** – Dr. Bay’s hopes for a shift towards decentralized medical governance and the restoration of free speech for healthcare professionals. – Emphasis on the need for individualized and localized healthcare solutions rather than blanket national policies. – Advocacy for returning to state-based medical boards to enhance accountability and patient-centered care. **Call to Action:** – Invitation for viewers to support Dr. Bay’s mission for decentralized healthcare and to challenge the current regulatory practices in Australia. – Final thoughts on the importance of free speech and the need for systemic change within the healthcare industry. This comprehensive overview of the conversation encapsulates Dr. Bay’s experiences and the broader implications for the healthcare system in Australia amidst ongoing debates surrounding vaccines and medical censorship.

Rosie
Rosie
September 26, 2024 7:44 am

Lee with some very insightful commentary about Islam.
https://x.com/leekern13/status/1838926814502092874?t=Qwm7rsEC8cCrx4YJ-2S3Gg&s=19

shatterzzz
September 26, 2024 7:47 am

There are at least 15,000 Australians estimated to still be in Lebanon, with the federal government telling them to leave.

? ?How good are Oz welfare benefits if this many folk, most of whom would be on the “rorters” or OAP can retire to Lebanon .. They may have Oz passports but only a Labor gummint would claim they consider themselves Ozzies ………!

Beertruk
September 26, 2024 7:50 am

Bruce of Newcastle
September 26, 2024 6:45 am

You can see why ports might be a tad leery of letting dock a ship loaded with enough ammonium nitrate to cause a nuclear-sized explosion…

Exactly.
I read in a book (sadly I cannot remember the name of the book) that this particular explosion was used to help calculate the blast effects of the atomic bomb during its development:

Halifax Explosion

Last edited 7 days ago by Beertruk
Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 7:51 am

Interesting wording from Kim Williams overnight re the ABC’s inquiry into audio of five gunshots being ‘cut and pasted’ into video in a report on former commando Heston Russell.

Wiliams stated the inquiry will recommend “corrective action.”

Does that preclude disciplinary action?

Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 7:55 am

There are at least 15,000 Australians estimated to still be in Lebanon, with the federal government telling them to leave.

The government has been telling them to leave since at least July.

If we have to send warships to evacuate them – like last time – can we at least bill them for the trouble and expense and deduct it from their pensions?

We can call it “corrective action.”

Last edited 7 days ago by Roger
cohenite
September 26, 2024 7:59 am

So what could Trump offer Putin and Xi?

What he did last time to bring about world peace: Give Xi the run of Mar-a-Lago and bomb the shit out of puttie’s overseas military assets, followed up by a dozen bottles of vodka.

Mother Lode
Mother Lode
September 26, 2024 8:00 am

Wiliams stated the inquiry will recommend “corrective action.”

The ABC will redouble their efforts to confuse, muddle, obfuscate, delay, and misdirect to make sure that no one who ever catches them being dishonest will ever be able to drag it into the full light of day again.

It is almost like having comments!

shatterzzz
September 26, 2024 8:00 am

Police will allege Rahimi told his wife Sohalia they were travelling to his home country Afghanistan and then on to her home country Pakistan

Gotta luv “our” strict boat-folk laws ..
Coming from Afghanistan you’d have to assume this bloke was, originally, an “illegal boatie” but no trouble getting citizenship & then a passport to “visit” the country he fled in fear of his life .. FFS!

Indolent
Indolent
September 26, 2024 8:08 am

@BehizyTweets

BREAKING: Someone just hacked a voting machine within seconds live on PBD’s podcast. He only used a preprogrammed USB stick that gave him total access to do whatever he wanted, including flipping or creating votes out of thin air

“If this would have been an election, I could have gone to the database and for example change the votes.”

PBD: “How much of it could you have changed?”

“Anything, add new candidate who was not even on a ballot, it doesn’t matter, because if you have total control over the system, you can do anything you want.”

Via: @patrickbetdavid

This was such a wild moment. It’s like when Professor J. Alex Halderman used a pen to hack a Dominion machine in front of a federal judge a few months ago. I pray for the day when we will finally ditch these machines and start hand-counting all our votes like a serious country.

Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 8:09 am

Peta Credlin (Paywallian):

The Moira Deeming saga now playing out in the Federal Court, in her defamation action against state Liberal leader John Pesutto, is essentially about the long-term gutlessness of the Victorian Liberal parliamentary team.
To Pesutto, Deeming’s real crime is not that she was at a rally gatecrashed by neo-Nazis but that she’s a conservative. That’s why he wanted her gone.
Yet if outspoken conservatives have no place in the Victorian parliamentary Liberal Party, why would any conservative vote for them?
Remember, Deeming is suing Pesutto because to have her expelled from the state Liberal partyroom she claims he described her as an associate of Nazi sympathisers (his descriptor of feminist activists Angie Jones and Kellie-Jay Keen).
Of course Pesutto is now trying to walk all that back, but he’s not helped by the existence of a secret recording from a meeting where this is pretty much said, and the fact he settled out of court with a public apology to Jones and Keen.
What has become clear, though, after a week and a half of hearings is that Pesutto’s antipathy towards Deeming was never about who gatecrashed the rally in March last year. Rather, his real purpose in seeking to remove Deeming was to purge the parliamentary party of a strong conservative woman.
First, because he feared her presence would expose him to criticism in his own ultra-marginal, teal-like seat, because he has misread the fight for women’s rights as a left v right issue when it unites women (and men) across the political spectrum. And, second, because he feared he couldn’t stand up to premier Daniel Andrews’ charge that the Libs were guilty by association with neo-Nazis just because Deeming had been at the gatecrashed rally.
In other words, this whole expensive and drawn-out exercise in washing the party’s dirty linen in public was triggered by Pesutto’s fear of being portrayed as too right wing to govern Victoria; indeed, it’s something he specifically references in the secret recording.
It’s a classic case of allowing your opponents to dictate your actions. And yet another example of the Victorian Liberals being so utterly spooked by Andrews that they end up looking politically paralysed and, frankly, pathetic.
For the record, I should state that before this Deeming row I regarded Pesutto as one of their few viable options to lead a depleted Liberal parliamentary team into the next election. Indeed, earlier I’d been asked to help him to develop a strong opposition leader’s office and a credible political program, which I did.
But when he maligned Deeming as guilty by association and failed to defend the rights of women, he lost me; and, as I’ve made public, I felt compelled to defend the underdog in Deeming.
Since that time, I’ve worked with various party intermediaries to encourage both Pesutto and Deeming to avoid going to court as defamation trials rarely have a winner and this unedifying display we’re witnessing now is the last thing Victorians need when they’re crying out for a change of government.
But, in the end, it’s the leader who has the fundamental responsibility to keep the team together. For 18 months now, Pesutto has defended his original decision to expel Deeming as an alleged neo-Nazi associate on the grounds that to retreat would make him seem weak.
In fact, admitting to an initial over-reaction would more likely have made him seem the bigger man. What’s now set to damn his leadership is that these two serious errors of judgment – first, making a big mistake; and, second, refusing to own up to it – seem to amount to the major character flaw of being incapable of ever admitting to being wrong.
Perhaps Deeming, a brand-new MP, could have handled the rally and its aftermath better. But it was no secret she intended to go; indeed, she spoke about it in the parliament as she urged Labor’s minister for women to attend.
As leader, Pesutto might have told her then that he didn’t support her going; he might have offered her mentorship or suggestions about how best to channel her undoubted courage and support for women’s rights.
Instead, as evidence in court has shown, once Andrews had savaged the Liberals as guilty by association with neo-Nazis, even though Deeming had not the slightest inkling that neo-Nazis would turn up, Pesutto threw her under a bus.
Instead of gritting his teeth and defending Deeming’s right to free speech and excusing her from any blame over the gatecrashers, Pesutto went to water.
The next day he summoned Deeming to a meeting with the four-person Liberal leadership group and had her berated for exposing the Liberals to a smear campaign from the premier.
It was the secret recording of this meeting, made by the Liberal deputy leader David Southwick, that was played last week in court.
In it, Pesutto accepted that Deeming was not a neo-Nazi or a neo-Nazi associate, and further accepted that she had a right to speak freely against biological males invading female-only spaces such as toilets and change rooms, but asserted that these views would be better expressed from the crossbench and invited her to sit as an independent. So, it was less the turn-up of neo-Nazis to Deeming’s rally that had angered Pesutto but Deeming being there in the first place in support of women’s rights.
This was a continuation of the Victorian Liberal establishment’s aversion to anything and anyone that could be described as conservative – even though plenty of old-style leftist feminists such as JK Rowling have been aghast at the erosion of women’s rights in favour of biological men who merely identify as women.
Even in evidence on Wednesday, Pesutto could not outright condemn the example of a male rapist being put in a women’s prison because they now self-identified as a woman.
It is Pesutto’s views that are out of step with rank-and-file Liberals, not Deeming’s; the mere fact Deeming remains a member of the Victorian Liberal Party (as opposed to the parliamentary team) is evidence of her support among the base because it shows that Pesutto doesn’t have the numbers to remove her.
The result of Pesutto’s implacable fight to the finish to be rid of Deeming, not because she’s a neo-Nazi sympathiser but just because she’s a conservative, has divided and demoralised the wider Liberal Party in Victoria without reaping any apparent electoral benefit.
Sure, on some polls, the state Liberals are finally competitive with Labor. But as Peter Dutton has observed, given the longevity and record of the Andrews-Allan government, the state Libs should be at least as far in front in Victoria as they are in Queensland.
That they are not is attributable to ongoing internal division (because if you can’t govern yourselves, you can’t govern the state) and the lack of a clear contest of ideas and policy. Indeed, at the most recent state election the Victorian opposition’s policy was left of Labor on some issues, with the net result that even after the world’s longest lockdowns Labor won a record third term, thus illustrating one of politics’ iron laws: Labor-lite Liberals lose.
As Dutton has shown, even in Victoria the Liberals can be competitive if they create a contest against a bad Labor government and they are now competitive in at least four Victorian seats.
If only Pesutto had shown as much fight against Labor as he has against Deeming.
 

Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
September 26, 2024 8:12 am

As we stay in the classics, they had all the gear and no idea

As with all your other anecdotes, that was from a movie.

Indolent
Indolent
September 26, 2024 8:12 am
Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 8:13 am

Dover, I posted Peta Credlin’s excellent Paywallian column on the Vic Libs’ Moira Deeming disaster at 8.09am.

I would appreciate your approval.

132andBush
132andBush
September 26, 2024 8:16 am

Why?

She’d be running between the fleet and a resup base.

Unless of course you think a single oiler can keep a carrier strike group resupplied indefinitely?
The “Magic Pudding” of fleet resupply vessels, captained by Norman Lindsay.

It’s currently anchored off Oman, where the USN has a resupply port.

But lets go with the all conquering Russian Navy (they’ve done so well in The Black Sea) popping a torpedo up it’s arse, it makes a lot more sense.

Beertruk
September 26, 2024 8:18 am

‘There are at least 15,000 Australians estimated to still be in Lebanon,…’

More than likely ’employed’ on Centrelink payments.

Last edited 7 days ago by Beertruk
Boambee John
Boambee John
September 26, 2024 8:20 am

Winston, re the burning US carrier in WW II.

Probably the USS Franklin, hit off Okinawa. Some 800 of the crew were killed, but the ship was saved and returned to the USA under he own power. The film of Franklin, burning from bow to stern but still under way, is dramatic.

She was scrapped, as the end of the war meant that repair was unnecessary.

USS Bunker Hill was also hit off Okinawa, losing around 400 dead. IIRC, she was repaired and brought back into service.

Another possible candidate was the USS Princeton, hit during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and later scuttled by her own crew.

Last edited 7 days ago by Boambee John
Indolent
Indolent
September 26, 2024 8:22 am
Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
September 26, 2024 8:27 am

Doggo of the week…
Bit of a pineapple head, that’d be the wolfhound tho. Good fun fella to have around! Great colour and shagginess, he’d be dynamite in southern climes on a murky morning.

Eyrie
Eyrie
September 26, 2024 8:30 am

According to one of Denninger’s commenters a USN carrier has up to 20 million pounds of fuel on board. A Super Hornet full fuel load is 14000 pounds so you get about 1400 sorties. Minus the fuel required for the E2D Hawkeye, which will be over the top most of the time unless land based P-8s or EC-135’s/E3’s are providing the coverage. Minus the fuel carried in buddy packs for air re-fuelling and the CAP and the rescue/anti sub helos. Call it about 1000 effective strike missions. Air Group might be 75 Supers so you get about a dozen strike mission per aircraft before the carrier needs more fuel.

Winston, nowadays it is kero, not Avgas. The Navies were very keen to go to all turbine engines for this reason. I’m sure the damage control/fire suppression lessons of WW2 were learned and built in to new designs.

There is a US company which claims it has a process to make jet fuel on board from CO2 from seawater, water and energy from the nukes. Wonder if they have a listing on the stockmarket?

Bourne1879
Bourne1879
September 26, 2024 8:31 am

Great “Oreo” cartoon by Leak.
One of the things Labor won’t like about Twitter is how far and how fast cartoons like that can spread on Twitter. This was especially so during lead up to the Voice.
Same applies to people spreading concerns about the Misinformation Bill.
This is why Labor is so keen to cause problems for Twitter in particular.

Indolent
Indolent
September 26, 2024 8:31 am
Wally Dalí
Wally Dalí
September 26, 2024 8:33 am

And now Iran is getting in on the act.
Meh. If that’s their standard of CGI rendering, I don’t think the God Emperor’s in much danger… apart from his own USSS of course.
And, by the way, I’d have no hesitation calling in a drone strike on anyone checking their messages mid-links…. only after signing the scorecard of course, sporting standards and all that

1735099
1735099
September 26, 2024 8:34 am

As with all your other anecdotes, that was from a movie.

Wouldn’t know – don’t go to the movies, even though they’re free to gold card holders at Birch, Carroll and Coyle.
I have better things to do with my time.
The other comment often heard, was – Yanks – You can tell them anything; sell them anything.
Hence Donald Trump in 2016.
It’s their strange culture.

cohenite
September 26, 2024 8:34 am

Caroline Ellison, the disgraced co-CEO of Alameda Research — convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s defunct hedge fund — will serve two years behind bars for her role in one of the biggest financial crimes in American history.

It’s obvious they’re all demorats because they’re all so ugly:

Sam Bankman-Fried’s ex says the ‘brain is truly bad at understanding big numbers’ as she gets 2 years for FTX fraud (msn.com)

cohenite
September 26, 2024 8:36 am

It’s their strange culture.

To commie rats everything about Western democracy is strange.

shatterzzz
September 26, 2024 8:36 am

An enormous damaged Russian cargo ship carrying 20,000 tonnes of highly explosive ammonium nitrate has ‘anchored’ off the Kent coast just miles from London and seemingly heading for the English Channel.

I’m fairly certain Hasbollocks has a vacant warehouse site in Beirut that would be suitable for the cargo storage …..

Eyrie
Eyrie
September 26, 2024 8:37 am

 Yanks – You can tell them anything; sell them anything.

Australians are somewhat more gullible than that based on the gun buyback and the clot shot takeup rate.

Bourne1879
Bourne1879
September 26, 2024 8:38 am

Good article by Peta Credlin up at the Oz about Pesutyo v Deeming case.

If only Pesutto had shown as much fight against Labor as he has against Deeming.

However noticeable for the fact she does not mention Kennets role.

Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 8:43 am

However noticeable for the fact she does not mention Kennets role.

A notable omission indeed.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 26, 2024 8:44 am

Hehe, using greenie tactics back at ’em.

‘They need to be looked after’: Wild land fight over renewables (Tele, paywalled)

Farmers near Tamworth say the bushland along the proposed route for transmission lines is home to not only a significant koala population, but other threatened species.

Save the koalas!

Rosie
Rosie
September 26, 2024 8:44 am

I reckon it’s okay to engage with Monty on current affairs.
But the putrid obsessional effervescence from Toowoomba?
Why would anyone continue to play that badly scratched broken record.
And people are supposed to be jealous of a Gold Card?
My mum’s got one too, very handy for help around the house and medical treatment.
I wish I had to have my knees replaced because I could get it done for free.
Oh wait.
Don’t you have some grandchildren you can entertain with your anecdotes?

Last edited 7 days ago by Rosie
Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 8:45 am

Biden’s Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo declared “Let’s extinguish [Trump] for good” in an NBC interview on Tuesday.

cohenite
September 26, 2024 8:46 am

It’s a toss up as to which is the most shit infested: the fact the new starmer gov’t is taking so many ‘gifts’; or the same gov’t’s excuses for doing so: Melanie:

Gifts for grifters – Melanie Phillips (substack.com)

1735099
1735099
September 26, 2024 8:49 am

Democrat efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election are very well documented.

That’s the timeworn Goebbels strategy. Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

Post one “credible” document.
?
Fiction posted on Breitbart, TGP and Youtube is not “documentation”, even though there is a thick witted constituency that believes that if they read it in print, or see it on line it must be true.

And remind me, how many unsuccessful court appeals were made?

And which network was sued by a voting machine company and settled to the tune of nearly $800 million to avert a trial in a lawsuit that would have exposed how the network promoted lies about the 2020 presidential election.

Sit down, the dog is pissing on your swag.

Indolent
Indolent
September 26, 2024 8:57 am
Indolent
Indolent
September 26, 2024 9:02 am
Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 9:10 am

Vanguard Australia investment advisers fined $12.9m in the Federal Court for greenwashing one of its funds.

Indolent
Indolent
September 26, 2024 9:13 am

Dr. John Campbell with Marc Girardot.

Bolus Russian Roulette

mem
mem
September 26, 2024 9:15 am

I seem to recall that the Greens movement started in Germany.Hopefully this is signalling its demise.The entire federal executive board of the German Green party resigned on Wednesday after a string of disastrous regional election results as the leftist party is haemorrhaging voters amid growing opposition to core pillars of its platform such as the green agenda, support for the war in Ukraine, and open borders.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/09/25/entire-german-green-party-leadership-resigns-over-election-failures-as-public-rejects-mass-migration-climate-hysteria/

alwaysright
alwaysright
September 26, 2024 9:18 am

Can we have a “Poison Laid” sign when the illiterate one posts toxic garbage.

Tom
Tom
September 26, 2024 9:20 am

Thanks, Dover:

The Moira Deeming saga now playing out in the Federal Court, in her defamation action against state Liberal leader John Pesutto, is essentially about the long-term gutlessness of the Victorian Liberal parliamentary team.

If you scroll back to 8.09am, you can now read in full Peta Credlin’s analysis of the Victorian Liberals Moira Deeming disaster.
?

Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 9:29 am

The entire federal executive board of the German Green party resigned on Wednesday after a string of disastrous regional election results as the leftist party is haemorrhaging voters amid growing opposition to core pillars of its platform such as the green agenda, support for the war in Ukraine, and open borders.

It’s a rapid decline.

Just three years ago the Greens notched up their best result ever in a federal election and formed part of the current coalition government.

Notable too is a split in ‘The Left’/’Die Linke’ (democratic socialists) over open borders with the breakaway anti-immigration/euro-sceptic party ‘BSW’ polling at 10% federally.

Last edited 7 days ago by Roger
Knuckle Dragger
Knuckle Dragger
September 26, 2024 9:37 am

Earlier:

As with all your other anecdotes, that was from a movie.

Then:

Wouldn’t know – don’t go to the movies

Didn’t you escort a crew of reffos you personally rescued from Darwin Harbour in 1976 to the movies, and where you saw off an evil bloke in uniform giving said reffos stinkeye?

Ah yes. That was indeed the story.

Pepperidge Farm remembers, and so do I. Great sport was had.

Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
September 26, 2024 9:39 am

South West Foodbowl invests in next generation with farming and agriculture career awareness daysAnjelica SmilovitisManjimup-Bridgetown Times
Wed, 25 September 2024 3:00AM

Students from across the South West will visit Nannup next month to learn about farming and agricultural careers — with South West FoodBowl organisers to invest in the next generation of food makers.
The South West FoodBowl agricultural awareness days will run on October 17 and 18, and are focused on South West students from primary school through to Year 10.
SWFB president Barbara Dunnet said the biennial event aimed to bridge the gap between farmers and the wider community — and showcase agriculture careers and training opportunities.
“We’ve done quite a few to date, and we’re expecting between 700 to 800 students to come to Nannup,” she said.
“When the students get to Nannup, they have a very intense program where they all visit one farm and we’ve got a heap of activities in town.”
Students will be shown the day-to-day operations, including the use of science on an orchard, the process of haymaking, milking cows, picking fruit and managing a farm.
Other agricultural activities range from seeing truffle dogs to fisheries activities to fencing demos and soil testing.
“That gives them a taste of the potential agricultural careers,” Ms Dunnet said.
Ms Dunnet said teaching young people about farming opportunities was an investment into the South West food bowl and future of agriculture.
“There’s not enough farmers, sons and daughters to provide food,” she said.
“People love food. They love going to restaurants, and they think it’s always going to be there.
“They don’t question food security, which is interesting in Australia, because I think we’re reaching a point where food security is going to be a fairly crucial industry issue.
“We’re importing so much. Those countries that are exporting food, if they’ve haven’t got enough to feed their own people, they’ll shove tariffs on it, and then what’s Australia going to do?”
Don Hancey from WA’s Food Ambassador will be attending to inspire the children to cook with seasonal local produce and build on their awareness about buying local food.
“Don’s going to work with the kids, and he’s also going to provide a dinner for the volunteers in the evening,” Ms Dunnet said.
She said many of the teachers also found the events educational for their own live

Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 9:45 am

More European news:

France to follow Germany by increasing border patrols & expelling illegal ‘migrants.’

The new Interior Minister told the press on Tuesday that France and other like-minded European nations should join forces to compel the European Union to toughen its immigration laws. 

Daily Mail

While this development has been in the works for some time, the announcement comes a week after a French teenager from an affluent Paris suburb was raped. murdered and buried in a park by a Moroccan slated for deportation after spending five years in prison for rape. A judge had ordered his release from detention because the EU deportation paperwork was taking too long to process.

Somewhat ironically, given Brexit, this would leave the UK under Labour as the only country in the region with an open door policy on irregular migration.

Last edited 7 days ago by Roger
Top Ender
Top Ender
September 26, 2024 9:45 am

Meanwhile in the Top End:

A Filipino drag queen, famous for her impersonation of Taylor Swift, is coming to Darwin, with Swifties Territory-wide encouraged to join her massive party.

No link to protect your sanity

Morsie
Morsie
September 26, 2024 9:49 am

Honestly the Vic Liberals are a circular firing squad

mem
mem
September 26, 2024 10:04 am

Remember when Tim Flannery, chief prognosticator for the climate scam predicted no more heavy rains. Just picked this up on on the Elders weather site. The heaviest September rain in half a century has fallen over the Pilbara region of Western Australia overnight, with heavy rain still to come for a majority of Australia’s desert areas.

Widespread falls of 20-50mm fell over the Pilbara and Kimberley on Saturday night and is continuing on Sunday. Some of the standouts in the 24 hours to 9am Sunday have been:

38mm at Newman, its wettest September day in 59 years of records

24mm at Wyndham, its wettest September day in 55 years

18mm at Fitzroy Crossing, its wettest September day in 50 years

23mm at Argyle, its wettest September day in 39 years of records

That’s a lot of flannery’s!

bons
bons
September 26, 2024 10:12 am

Childish behaviour of my part.

I have just binned another biography of J Edgar Hoover. I couldn’t continue with it. Putrid, perverted psychopath.

Irrational futile rage, unrealistic dreams of revenge, and possibly realistic comparisons with our current authoritarian elite were all too much.

I hold a generally positive attitude towards JFK (outside of the bedroom) but his moral cowardice in not standing up to Hoover’s blackmail massively diminishes his legacy. The consequences for criminality, social justice, civil rights and the US political system of this creature’s conspiracies are incalculable.

Interestingly, I experienced the same emotions when reading a biography of Soros. Hoover created a model for immorality. Our contemporary society is replete with Hoovers both public and private.

Top Ender
Top Ender
September 26, 2024 10:17 am

Maaaaate!

Keir Starmer admits: I accepted £20K free accommodation for my son

Sir Keir Starmer has defended moving into an £18 million penthouse owned by a prominent Labour donor during the general election campaign, saying it was so his son could study for his GCSEs without being distracted.

The Prime Minister said the donation-in-kind was to let his family stay away from home during the election to avoid the presence of journalists and protesters outside their north London residence.

It emerged this week that Starmer was given the use of an £18 million apartment in Covent Garden, central London, owned by the Labour peer and donor Lord Alli.

The flat was used by Starmer’s family for several weeks during the general election campaign.

The donation was declared by Starmer and dated from May 29 to July 13 in the MPs’ register of member’s financial interests. It was listed as being worth £20,437.28.

Starmer defended the decision after recent criticism over other donations from Lord Alli, including clothes and glasses.

Glasses?

I’m willing to put a bottle of red on Sausages Starmer not being the Labour leader for the next UK election.

Oz

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 26, 2024 10:19 am

Remember when Tim Flannery, chief prognosticator for the climate scam predicted no more heavy rains. 

Children just aren’t going to know what snow is. At least in Israel anyway.

Hezbollah missile hits Mt. Hermon ski lift (25 Sep)

After hitting a chicken coop and a dairy farm maybe there’s a common thread in this Hezbie stuff. They’re fighting for Gaia! We must eat insects, and not go skiing.

Roger
Roger
September 26, 2024 10:20 am

I’m willing to put a bottle of red on Sausages Starmer not being the Labour leader for the next UK election.

Please…it’s Free Gear Keir.

Vicki
Vicki
September 26, 2024 10:24 am

Well, I have just submitted my submission to the revised (are they kidding??) Bill re “Misinformation”. In actual fact, because of the b—–y short period for submissions (the b——s!) I have just resubmitted my original submission to their first Bill.

But the rigmarole they have concocted to make it difficult is simply unbelievable. I was faced with incorrect passwords and then indecipherable instructions etc etc.

I persisted. I finally was able to download my submission which, incredibly, also downloaded a picture of my cows! There will be hoots of laughter in Canberra. But to hell with them. They can deal with it.

1735099
1735099
September 26, 2024 10:27 am

Meanwhile in the Top End:
?
A Filipino drag queen, famous for her impersonation of Taylor Swift, is coming to Darwin, with Swifties Territory-wide encouraged to join her massive party.

Feeling threatened, old mate?

Vicki
Vicki
September 26, 2024 10:29 am

Meanwhile, husband is once again battling with AGL (who have won the race as the most prosperous of the energy providers!). This time it is the gas bill.

Evidently, the gas meter reads cubic units of gas. This figure has to be multiplied by the heating value (????) & the conversion factor (?????) to derive the usage in megajoules. Does anybody understand this??????

When he queried their Resolutions Manager, he couldn’t explain, but said he would email the answer. It hasn’t arrived.

Bruce of Newcastle
Bruce of Newcastle
September 26, 2024 10:32 am

Yum!

Report: 16 pet cats disappear in Bangor, Maine … which just had an influx of Haitian migrants (25 Sep)

This story really has legs. Cat legs. With cajun sauce.

Vicki
Vicki
September 26, 2024 10:35 am

The entire federal executive board of the German Green party resigned on Wednesday after a string of disastrous regional election results as the leftist party is haemorrhaging voters amid growing opposition to core pillars of its platform such as the green agenda, support for the war in Ukraine, and open borders.

It’s a rapid decline.

When are Australian voters going to wake up to the serious threat that the Greens represent to prosperity?

1735099
1735099
September 26, 2024 10:42 am

I used to think Kennett was just a ratbag.
Scratch and ratbag and find a fascist thug.

Kennett was a Nasho.
He was deemed to be officer material, and ended up a platoon commander (1 Platoon, A Company, 1RAR). He was posted to Malaysia and Singapore.

Despite his reported support of our Vietnam commitment, he was content to serve in a non-operational posting.

Two bob each way Jeff….

1735099
1735099
September 26, 2024 10:45 am

When are Australian voters going to wake up to the serious threat that the Greens represent to prosperity?

What “prosperity”?
The renting generation in the inner city electorates aren’t prospering.
That’s why they vote Green.

Vicki
Vicki
September 26, 2024 10:51 am

The Libertarians are conducting a rally opposing the Misinformation/Disinformation Bill at 11.30am Saturday 28th September at Speakers Corner, The Sydney Domain, Art Gallery Road.

I will be there and hope other Cats can make it.

Eyrie
Eyrie
September 26, 2024 10:52 am

The renting generation in the inner city electorates aren’t prospering.
That’s why they vote Green.

So the Greens can wreck what remains of any Australian industry and its jobs and resulting prosperity? Some body has to make the money to pay for the Welfare state.
Newsflash, Numbers, the Greens voters are well to do Doctor’s wives and others who are comfortable with their economic circumstances to very well off indeed (Also see Teals). I doubt there are all that many impoverished renters in the inner city suburbs. They are in outer suburbs.

  1. I think the punters are stirring, getting ansty. Normally letting politics of either persuasion slide by as we just get…

  2. Great stuff from the past. Visuals and audio are great. —— F r. David – Words Don’t Come Easy

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