Cat Watching Horror Movie
Cat Watching Horror Movie
See Jo Nova: Renewables Star state “urgently” wants to force two diesel plants back to stop blackouts
JohnH: Sweden has just under half our population. It built a conventional submarine, the Gotland, so stealthy the US navy…
@CitizenFreePress DEMOCRATS HAVE ZERO SELF AWARENESS. Biden announces $1 billion gift to Africa to help the homeless displaced by non-existent…
Matt Taibbi Note on the FBI
Donald Trump announced the first member of his new administration, naming Susie Wiles as his chief of staff.
Morrison is that most despicable of creatures, a fair-weather friend.
Daily Mail.
Florida, United States6 hours ago
Several days ago I saw a video of a young man wearing a Trump tshirt on a plane sitting in a window seat. In the middle seat was an older woman and her husband was in the aisle seat. The woman was verbally attacking the young man and he just sat there trying to ignore her. Then a flight attendant appeared to find out what was going on. The older woman demanded that the young man be moved to a different seat and the flight attendant said no. The older woman kept complaining until a man appeared and told the old woman she and her husband were being removed from the plane and a few minutes later they were. It was very satisfying.
This next Fatty Trump administration needs to be a figurative meteor strike heralding the mass extinction of deep state swamp creatures across the US.
Hopefully the Musk will be too busy ensuring this* to acknowledge anyone’s gender identity.
*And the work of the SpaceX program
Is it too much to hope the plane was cruising at 40,000 feet at the time?
Not that would have been satisfying.
I love it when the left start gobbling themselves up.
Let the recriminations begin, from The Oz….
The Democrats have criticised Bernie Sanders for accusing the party of having “abandoned” working class people, with the Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison saying the Vermont independent’s remarks were “straight up BS.”
The 83-year-old senator issued a damning statement on Thursday (AEDT) saying it: “should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them”.
“First, it was the white working class. And now it is Latino and black workers as well,” he said.
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.”
Here’s the thing, Sanders is right.
There are excellent pieces in the Oz on the Trump victory. I recommend reading Claire Lehmann’s piece, Caroline Overington’s and this…
Democrats pay the price for rampant electoral arroganceHOLMAN JENKINS
Gnashing of teeth by senior Democrats is inappropriate after Tuesday’s loss. A more apt reaction would be a woeful smile, a gentle clap on each other’s back and the words, “Hey, we might have won if we’d taken the thing seriously.”
If, in their vast contempt, Democrats hadn’t tried to wangle a demonstrably senile president’s renomination and re-election. If they hadn’t tried to serve up a last-minute replacement who convenienced certain party leaders, such as the Obamas, without any consultation with the party’s rank and file. Working Americans, when they voted for Democrats, were the backbone of America, saints of small-town virtue. When they didn’t, they were garbage and deplorables.
In a fit of short-sightedness, Democrats committed the idiocy of fabricating evidence that their 2016 opponent, popular with half the country, was a Russian agent. Eight years later, voters seemed to remember that this happened even when friendly media subservients pretended it didn’t.
In 2020 Democrats put forward a candidate and later president who evinced a demonstrable family corruption problem related to Ukraine. They got him elected after the CIA lied and blamed the problem on Russia. Now, when voters hear the words Russia and Ukraine, they wonder if Democratic corruption had a role in landing us in the middle of a war between the two countries.
Let’s try to be sensitive. Democrats and major media figures today are psychologically fragile, especially the latter, who got used to believing elaborately fraudulent things about themselves. Unfortunately, it isn’t practical to assign guardians to each media personality lest they be tempted to do something unhealthy to make the pain of self-discovery stop.
As for Kamala Harris, she won’t be that occasional losing presidential candidate who nevertheless is accorded a status as her party’s leader going forward. She can expect to be jettisoned as an uber-Dukakis, not only because of perceived inadequacy (she lost) but because of the sense of illegitimacy that attended her rise. Her seeming vacuity doesn’t help; she gives no evidence of historical imagination when her party needs it.
Through three successive presidential elections, Democrats became only more committed to using the national-security state (led by the FBI and CIA), the tools of lawfare and censorship, and a compliant media to wage their political fights, to the point of milking the musings of constitutional scholars for reasons to strike an opponent from the ballot without due process.
What criminal renounces his crime after he sees it pay off? If God’s wisdom is revealed in Tuesday’s outcome, Democrats at least will now seek a more honourable path.
The best reason to have hoped for a Harris victory was to spare the nation another four years of open warfare between our corrupt institutions and the antic and untameable Trump. Politely, in the sanctum of our private thoughts, we might expect now for Biden the fate his Catholic faith promises the unrepentant sinner – or at least that he be remembered as the worst president since James Buchanan.
For two years this column lobbied against Biden seeking a second term. It pointed to his obvious motive in seeking to make sure Trump would be his opponent because Trump was the only Republican he might beat.
A year ago Biden might have resigned in favour of Harris so she could test her presidential mettle, compete in an open and normal Democratic primary, and, most important, rescue his Ukraine policy.
GOP voters might have taken the cue that Trump’s era was over too. We wouldn’t have gotten the deluge of criminal prosecutions so crucial to restoring his standing with Republican primary voters. These prosecutions indisputably (the New York Times can stop lying to itself about this) were undertaken to help Biden. As it is, we should consider the US as having dodged a bullet on Tuesday when Trump’s victory was substantial enough that Democrats cannot challenge its legal or moral legitimacy.
I was a Democrat for 37 years by family accident but found my hand writing down “independent” in 2017 upon belatedly accepting that the state where I currently reside has become my home. It seemed a bit of a heavenly joke that Trump was the vehicle for laying before me the swinishness of people like Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff and, later, Joe Biden and his retinue.
My cynicism had perhaps failed me, but the world isn’t Manichean, a battle of opposites. Trump may be a clumsier (and lonelier) liar compared with many of those who were ranged against him, including much of the press.
But his voters by now understand his nature. He beats our establishment politicians at their own game of non-stop cynicism. His opponents might finally ask themselves why.
And Johannes Leak’s cartoon is, of course, superb.
A white woman was filmed being arrested for a hate crime after she allegedly assaulted two Hispanic women for supporting Donald Trump.
The 82-year-old woman, who has not been named, was arrested on Tuesday in suburban Seattle after she allegedly approached MAGA voters Gina Powell and Mary Jennings to ask them why they would support Trump, given the color of their skin.
‘I approached her, and I said I want to know why you’re voting for Trump. That’s the only thing. And. And I said because you’re brown-skinned,’ the octogenarian told police, according to KOMO News.
The woman has not been charged but a judge found probable cause for a hate crime offense, as well as two counts of fourth-degree assault.
Powell and Jennings say they were waving Trump flags with a group of fellow supporters of the Republican on a corner in Edmonds when the woman approached them.
‘I was just shocked at just the presence of mind, and she made it very clear it was my skin color,’ Powell said.
‘And that’s when she shoved me, pushed me back, and I said don’t touch me. And then not even a second, she just popped me right in my chin.’
Powell told 770 KTTH the woman was particularly upset at her shirt, which read: ‘Pro-God, pro-guns, pro-life, pro-Trump.’
The arrested woman told police her response was to push Powell away and admitted she put her hand on her chin and pushed on her shoulder, but insisted it ‘wasn’t hard.’
Jennings then stepped in to separate the women, and says the white liberal ended up punching her too.
‘I said you have no right to touch anyone, and she goes all I did was all it was barely like this, and she punched me,’ Jennings said.
‘But she connected, and you know, it slammed my jaw shut,’ Jennings said.
‘I said you have no right to touch anyone, and she goes all I did was all it was barely like this, and she punched me,’ Jennings said
Bodycam footage captured the moments after the altercation as police arrived on the scene and the accused woman explained herself.
It shows the white-haired woman being handcuffed as she’s led into a police car
Beertruk link to the Mocker at 8:28.
That is a really good point.
Upgrades from Economy to Premium Economy or Business to First are not unheard of, but to leap three classes in a single bound?
Mzzz Hudson from Quaintarse needs to be hauled in and asked for details of how many “three class leap” upgrades are approved and how many involve public servants and politicians.
While we are at it Mzzz Hudson how many 25 year old nobodies with no discernible connection to Qaintarse business interests are granted Chairman’s Lounge membership?
Today’s Leak ‘toon.
And, as I understand it, the details of such upgrades are not required to be entered in the parliamentary register. That an upgrade was received suffices. Not good enough.
Most “nonbinary (120) finishers in race history”, the New York Marathon. It seems there is a new heading for any venture.
Knuckle Dragger
November 8, 2024 8:57 am
As I said the other day, we can expect to see a Secret Service which looks more like Seal Team Six than a bunch of chubby Girl Guide instructors.
There are highly trained and capable people leaving the military every day.
Should be easy.
GreyRanga
November 8, 2024 9:16 am
You need to distinguish between Type 2 (where lifestyle is a contributor) and Type 1 (autoimmune condition where insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas are destroyed) or “other” (often a loss of the pancreas due to injury or cancer).
Top Ender
November 8, 2024 9:27 am
PJ Media have called the lot.
312:226.
Obviously the Oz still regards 17 EC votes as doubtful. Arizona and Nevada.
Interesting article.
Exclusive — RNC Chair Michael Whatley: We Were on Top of Election Malfeasance, Dealt with ‘Hundreds’ of Issues (7 Nov)
The RNC were loaded for bear and were massively prepared this time. Which isn’t to say the Dems weren’t successful in their cheating in some cases, but it obviously cramped them bigly.
And here is Claire Lehmann’s piece from The Oz. She writes about something that is frequently commented on here…
Donald Trump’s second election win marks revenge of the silent male voter
On election day, I caught the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Sitting across from me an elderly woman wore a T-shirt with the image of Trump pumping his fist in the air with the words “fight, fight.” A small “I Voted” sticker was pressed on to her lapel.
She sat with an easy confidence. There were no disapproving glances from other passengers. There was no tension. No conflict. It struck me that in 2024 it was now perfectly acceptable to express support for Trump in a deep blue (Democratically held) city. As I travelled to my destination I wondered: if one could support Trump this openly in New York City, what might support look like in the rest of the country?
A few hours later I attended an exclusive, well-heeled party. I spoke to various professionals who said they had never voted Republican in their lives, but had voted for Trump that day due to his support, in their words, “for the Jews”.
These Manhattanites told me that Kamala Harris was too sympathetic to the “pro-Hamas contingent” of the far Left, and at a time of rising anti-Semitism, they couldn’t bring themselves to support her.
This small group of cosmopolitans represented a contingent far-removed from the stereotypical MAGA voter. And yet listening to their views, it again occurred to me: if I could find such support for Trump in the middle of a Democratic heartland, what might it look like in the rest of the country?
When I arrived at my final stop of the evening – a private underground bar in the Lower East Side of the city – a celebratory atmosphere had begun to explode. The betting markets tipped a Trump win, and online supporters of Harris started to express acceptance of defeat. The beer here had already run dry. It was so bustling that it was hard to move, with young men in their twenties and early thirties outnumbering women by 2:1.
These men were diverse: white, black, Hispanic, Asian. A few wore Trump caps, but the aesthetic was more like a university dorm than a MAGA rally.
“This is the counterculture” one party goer told me. “This isn’t just about Trump,” another said.
“It’s about Vance and Musk. It’s about American dynamism.”
In the coming days, much will be written about working class concerns – issues that have become familiar focal points for those seeking to understand Trump’s support. But while inflation and border policies will have no doubt played a role in the Republicans’ landslide victory, we might also want to look at the sentiments expressed by these young male voters, voters who represent a new and emerging contingent in American politics.
Nothing about the young men I spoke to appeared particularly conservative or “right-wing”. Yet it was easy for them to explain why they voted for Trump. And if we zoom out and look at broader cultural trends, it should be easy for us to understand too.
If we take a macro perspective, we see that such young men have never known a culture in which males are not routinely described as “problematic,” “toxic” or “oppressive”. Going to university, and working at modern companies, they live in a world of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies – many of which promote an insidious and pervasive form of anti-male discrimination. Yet to talk about it in public invites social ostracism. To criticise DEI is to risk being called a Nazi.
These young male voters know about theories of patriarchy and white supremacy, but they have never known a culture which celebrates the Great Man Theory of history.
Thomas Caryle’s nineteenth century framework for understanding the past is seen as an anachronism, not worthy of serious thought. Today we acknowledge historical figures not for their feats, but for their crimes. Whether it is due to slavery, colonisation, racism or sexism, we tear down the monuments of our past, while building no new heroes for our future.
The problem with this way of viewing the world is that it is alienating and self-defeating. It is also wrong. By any objective standards Elon Musk is a great man of history, who is influencing the course of human civilisation for generations to come. As one partygoer told me: “He caught a f..king rocket with mechanical chopsticks.” Yet despite these achievements, Musk is more likely to be scorned than celebrated by the Democratic establishment.
This tension between achievement and resentment explains much about our current moment. Musk builds space rockets and electric cars. Trump builds skyscrapers and golf courses. Both men represent what was once celebrated in American culture: the capacity of exceptional individuals to reshape reality through force of will. The young men I met that night in Manhattan weren’t just voting for Trump’s policies. They were voting for a different view of history and human nature. In their world, individual greatness matters. Male ambition serves a purpose. Risk-taking and defiance create progress.
This is why the Trump victory transcends conventional political analysis. It represents more than a rebuke of border policies or inflation rates.
It signals a resurrection of old truths: that civilisation advances through the actions of remarkable individuals, that male traits can build rather than destroy, and that greatness, despite our modern discomfort with the concept, remains a force in human affairs.
The elderly woman on the subway, the Manhattan professionals, and the young men at the underground bar all sensed this shift. They saw in Trump not just a candidate, but a challenge to the orthodoxy that has dominated American institutions for a generation. Their votes marked not just a political preference, but a cultural correction.
As the final results came in that night, it became clear that what I witnessed in New York was playing out across the nation.
The election wasn’t just a victory for Trump.
It was a victory for a way of seeing the world that many thought dead: one where individual achievement matters, where male ambition serves a purpose, and where great men still shape the course of history.
Amen.
A few points….
I can’t speak for others but here’s what I want, I want to live in a society that celebrates the talents of both male and female, enough with this toxic femininity. Toxic femininity is destroying the West.
And further to the genius Musk, I believe if he hadn’t bought Twitter back in early 2022, then we would not be celebrating Trump’s resurgence. Elon Musk has singularly helped to save free speech, he has singularly helped to save America, and he will help save the West.
Finally, further to the left crapping on about Trump’s non-existent insurrection in 2021, well they can suck lemons, because we’ve now seen Donald Trump’s….
RESURRECTION
Oh the splendid irony!
From Cassie’s link at 10:50.
I thought exactly that during her “concession” speech when I saw her doing those awkward arm waves like a marionette with elastic strings and declaring “We will continue to fight!”
In the immortal words of Tonto abandoning the Lone Ranger as the hostile Indians came over the hill … “Waddya mean ‘we‘, Paleface?”.
I could almost see the shepherd’s crook coming from stage left to haul her off.
Modern leftist power is based on myths and lies. It is dependent on perverse weather beliefs, psychologically corrupting racial and cultural theories and witless anti-Western self-loathing.
Liberty Quote.
Remember the brutal claim of orphans tethered for predators some weeks ago…..
Check this out!
Roger
November 8, 2024 11:10 am
It certainly isn’t.
A quick look at Qantas airfares for Sydney to London return in March 2025 shows that Economy is around $2,500 and First Class is close to $20,000.
A benefit of $35,000 for two tickets.
But bottle of Grange.
Dutton should do what Latham did over snouts at the trough Parliamentary Super in 2004. Once he announced that he would scrap it if elected Howard had to follow suit.
If Dutton said upgrades would be outlawed, Luigi would simply have to fall in behind, or look like the grasping trougher that he is.
Copped my first blister of the third age of Trump- went up to the servo to pick up the paper yesterday, young peroxided and tatted bird, who knows I touch in with the other servers about the God Emperor etc, was there on her own, and visibly filthy.
There’s some bird in the Oz with the headline “World braces for uncertainty” on the top banner.
What “uncertainty”? What “world”?
Well, it’s evidently the “world” of the UN, the UNRWA, the IPCC, the world of the Socialist Internationale, the DNC, the ALPBC, the world of BlackRock, Vanguard, E&Y Pacifica, the world of YouGov, Facebook and Google. The world of vapourised borders, untouchable powers and debased plastic money.
What “uncertainty”?
Well, here’s some certainty- the Israeli hostages in Gaza will be avenged, the Democrats’ bombing and buy-in of Ukraine will be finished, the rampant grab of industry and assets by the parasites of the Paris Accord will be strangled, energy and products will be cheaper, labour and currency will regain value, innovation and excellence will replace cronyism and centralised command.
…I haven’t read the column, but somehow I sense that these obvious certainties are immaterial to the willfully witless writer.
PJ Media is reporting that the Republicans have picked up PA in the Senate, giving them 53 seats and a buffer against potential bedwetters frustrating the legislative programme.
In the House the Republicans now have 214 confirmed seats. They are ahead in the Alaska seat, the two unconfirmed Arizona seats and four unconfirmed California seats. The Democrats are ahead in four California seats, two Oregon seats, one Washington seat and one Maryland seat. If the Republicans keep their lead in those seats they will have a majority in the House.
Mike Davis (Trump’s Attorney) to Letitia James:
“We will put your fat arse in prison for conspiracy, Sweetheart”.
Now that is how GOP lawyering should sound.
Just freaking wonderful news.
They need to watch the remaining house seats and the continual problem with late night dumps like what happened in the Nevada senate seat earlier. Funny that.
Rugbyskier at 12:04.
Excellent!
Having a buffer in the Senate would be fantastic, not leaving a single Cheney/McCain type with a golden spoiler vote.
The margin in the House might only be 3-4 in a 435 seat legislature so relatively thin.
But I think the landscape has changed since 2016. The Never-Trumper RINOs are on the wane and Tuesday’s result firmly nails that coffin shut I think.
Big. Big.
I saw a very indignant Cronkite link to her yesterday.
The words were defiant, but the quavering voice betrayed her.
She was shitting bricks.
From The Oz….and there are lessons here for the Liberals.
Identity crisis for Democrats after Trump stole votes from their baseJOE KELLY
The Democratic Party faces a new identity crisis following its comprehensive defeat at the US election, with Donald Trump’s victory smashing the notion that political candidates can bank on winning voting groups based on race or gender.
The former president on Tuesday won the largest share of non-white voters for the Republican Party in at least half a century, delivering a shock result that is being broadly interpreted as a major political realignment.
In the worst defeat for the Democrats in decades, the party lost the argument with voters on both the economy and on culture as Americans rejected a more progressive vision for the future of their society. And it was men who led the revolt.
Experts are now warning the campaign run by Kamala Harris has exposed the weakness of political strategies rooted in shallow appeals to identity politics, with the election outcome casting far reaching consequences for a party which saw its core constituencies eroded.
The deliberate focus by Ms Harris in the final weeks of the campaign on Mr Trump’s moral failings and past mistakes, likening him to a “fascist” and a threat to democracy, also failed to sway American voters who were more concerned about the state of the economy, price rises and the border.
Egged on by much of the legacy media, the Democrats turned the election into a referendum on Mr Trump’s character only to see their convicted felon opponent go on to sweep the swing states, win the popular vote and flip more than 50 counties, with the Republicans on track to win both the House and Senate.
Republican pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights, Patrick Ruffini, said that the “defeat should revive the conversation about a formal repudiation of race and gender identity politics in the Democratic Party.”
Author of the “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP,” Mr Ruffini declared that Mr Trump won “more Black men, Latino, and Asian voters because he appealed to their identity as normal working Americans.”
He told The Weekend Australian that the Democratic Party would need to revise its approach to “woke identity politics” given that “voter groups have unambiguously started to reject the party.”
“The move by college educated voters to the Democratic Party and non-college educated and working class voters to the Republican Party is something that’s been pretty durable and going on throughout the last fifty years,” he said.
To stop the trend, Mr Ruffini argued it would “require something dramatic” from the Democrats. He also said the negative campaign against Mr Trump lacked credibility because Ms Harris “never really established herself” or “gave people a sense of who she was.”
Redbridge director Kos Samaras told The Weekend Australian the US election result should be seen as the final nail in the coffin for election campaigns informed by demographic calculations.
“The demographic wall which the Democrats have been relying on to secure victories for them into the future while enabling them not to pay attention to class politics has fallen over,” he said. “In 2016 when confronted with a clear shift of working class communities away from the Democrats to Trump, their retort was ‘We don’t have to address class politics because demographics alone will remedy our situation in the years to come’.”
“They (the Democrats) need to go back to what they used to do 20, 30 years ago, probably 40 years ago, and represent people economically.”
Sky News host Peta Credlin says the Democrats made the mistake of thinking women are “single-issue” and would blindly vote for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump.
An analysis of exit polls from the November 5 election, tells the story of how Ms Harris lost the election and which constituencies abandoned her. The key trend was Mr Trump winning 45 per cent of the Hispanic vote including a firm majority of Latino men. Just four years ago, Joe Biden won Latino men by 23 points.
Mr Trump was able to flip Starr County in Texas, the most Hispanic county in America where no Republican candidate has won since 1892.
On average, Hispanic communities shifted by ten percentage points towards Mr Trump, with Ms Harris also losing support among Latino women. While six out of ten voted for her in 2024, this was down on the nearly seven out of ten who backed Mr Biden in 2020.
Mr Trump also succeeded at engaging first time voters, winning more than half of this cohort in a reversal of the trend at the 2020 election. He also claimed a majority of white female voters for the third time in a row, (53 per cent) with this result lifting to more than 60 per cent for those without college degrees.
Patti Solis Doyle, the manager of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, was quoted in Politico saying “I do think that the country is still sexist and is not ready for a woman president.”
While African-Americans overwhelmingly supported Ms Harris (about 85 per cent), the data also suggested Mr Trump was able to double his support among Black men in some crucial areas like the swing state of Wisconsin where he was running at about 21 per cent, up from just 8 per cent in 2024.
By contrast, Ms Harris failed to win over women in the same numbers as either Joe Biden in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2024 despite campaigning hard on the issues of abortion and reproductive rights.
Ms Ruffini said the failure of Ms Harris to generate more support from women was a key take-out from the election.
But it was men who mostly did not connect with Ms Harris, with prominent American intellectual Mary Eberstadt and senior research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute writing just days before the election for the First Things journal that young males were leaning more to the right than young women.
The divide between the genders was widening across the spectrum of issues from abortion, gender identity, the border wall and paying student debt with young men tuning into shows by Joe Rogan, Theo Von and the Nelk Boys to receive more positive affirmations of masculinity.
“Identity politics? The bros are over it,” she said. “Today’s New Right, like today’s populism, is powered in large part by a search for male authority, direction, and amour propre, a triad visible to anyone who can spell ‘Jordan Peterson.’”
“JD Vance, who acts on this insight with more passion than anyone else on the national stage, has achieved the kind of personal and professional successes those young men want. He gets fist-pumps for saying what no one in the blue zone seems even to believe: Vance wants other guys to have those things, too. That’s why hectoring young men of colour, as nannies-in-chief Barack and Michelle have lately attempted, won’t close the gap.”
The identity politics lessons stemming from the US election were quickly realised in Australia, with Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Price, the face of the successful No campaign against the voice referendum in 2023, arguing the result was more evidence that people were voting on issues rather than because of gender and racial allegiance.
“As the US election has shown, people are beginning to wake up the fact that they are allowed to vote on the basis of merit rather than race or any other identity,” Senator Price told The Weekend Australian. “I have long rejected race as the basis for any kind of decision making, whether it be an election candidate, government policy or anything else.”
“I am hopeful that the rejection of race as the basis for decision making will gain traction in Australia as well. This is the kind of approach we need across the board., but especially so when it comes to solutions for indigenous disadvantage.”
In what is being hailed as the greatest political comeback in American history, Mr Trump was able to make deep inroads in key Democratic strongholds across the nation including in New York, especially in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Mr Trump reduced the Democratic margin across the blue state from 23 to 11 percentage points.
In California, the Democratic margin was slashed from 29 to 17 percentage points, while in Maryland the Republicans closed the gap by ten percentage points and by nine percentage points in the state of New Jersey and in Illinois.
In the key swing states, Mr Trump was able to flip a total of ten counties including three in the key state of Pennsylvania, Monroe County, Northhampton County and Erie County, the latter of which is one of the key bellwether counties in America.
In Wisconsin, Mr Trump also won Sauk County, another bellwether that predicted the president for the fifth consecutive time.
Three counties were flipped in North Carolina including Anson County, Nash County and Pasquotank County. Another three were flipped in Georgia including Jefferson County, Washington County and Baldwin County, the latter of which had not been won by the Republicans for two decades.
Delivering his victory speech late on election night with his usual hyperbole, Mr Trump told his supporters that “we’ve built the biggest, the broadest, the most unified coalition.”
“They’ve never seen anything like it in all of American history. They’ve never seen it. Young and old, men and women, rural and urban. And we had them all helping us tonight,” he said. “They came from all quarters, union, non-union, African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, Arab-American, Muslim-American. We had everybody, and it was beautiful. It was a historic realignment.”
Yes, Trump does do hyperbole, but he also does something else, he does truth, and that truth was and is beautiful.
Oh, and I met Mary Eberstadt, a leading Catholic academic and intellectual, and her husband (also an academic) a few years ago where they were here as guests of the CIS. Mary is a remarkable woman, I could listen to her all day long. I can’t recommend her books highly enough. She espouses what many of us here think. She is on my list of favourite centre, centre-right and right-wing thinkers and commentators, Yoram Hazony, Patrick Deneen, Douglas Murray, Sohrab Ahmari, Curtis Yarvin, Steve Bannon, Chris Rufo, Gad Saad, Louise Perry, Theodore Dalrymple, Victor David Hanson, Andrew Klavan, Joel Kotkin, Ben Shapiro, Brendan O’Neill, Heather MacDonald, Brett Stephens, and many others.
The beauty of a solid Senate majority is if – heaven forbid – something should happen to ‘Er ‘Onner Justice Sotomayor (or one of her fellow travellers on SCOTUS) we won’t see a repeat of the Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Coney bullshit.
It wouldn’t work for the first go we had with it after The Man had gone. Both fed up, we left it flashing its previous ‘in distress’ code numbers. Lo and behold, two hours later it had sorted itself out computer-wise and it was merrily washing dishes like a new dishwasher. Hmm.
Early in the service history of the Boeing 767 in 1983, one had a problem with the computers throwing up an error code. The built in test equipment said replace line replaceable unit number xyz. They did that and still had the problem. After quite some time, eventually someone did a master reset after replacing the LRU which fixed the problem.
LOL, another lefty meltdown but this time a Gen Xer fixes it
Won’t take much of Musk’s attention to cut federal government departments. He’ll look at the problem, hire some good people, which he has a knack for doing and turn them loose with orders and look in from time to time to see the depth of the blood and body parts on the floor.
Today we acknowledge historical figures not for their feats, but for their crimes. Whether it is due to slavery, colonisation, racism or sexism, we tear down the monuments of our past, while building no new heroes for our future.
Lehrmann makes an excellent point here. And yes – the “great men of history were…yes, men. Significant women abound, but the majority of great deeds in history books relate to men. It is as it is.
And yes – in the last few decades many of these great men have been vilified by contemporary historians. I could hardy believe it when, a few years ago, I read some bimbo historian slating the conquests of Julius Caesar. Why? Well folks, he was the “oppressor” and the Gallic tribes were “the oppressed”.
Can we hire Musk for a month or so to come to Canberra and clean out our Federal Public Servants. Would be worth it.
We’re going with feelz, right?
Was the recent support package intended to assist an economy currently experiencing an economic boom?
Chinese banks have a very serious balance sheet issue, brought about oversupply in the real estate sector (which is/was 30% of the economy).
Why would neocons lie or exaggerate the problems with the Chinese economy? They’re more likely to be overstating Chinese economic prowess, similar to how some people exaggerated the Soviet Union’s power, in order to encourage more defense spending.
Why would the CCP provide accurate stats?
Seriously important national events have been swamped by all the hoo hah about some American election:
‘Raygun’ retires from breaking after Paris 2024 Olympic Games backlash
So, suffer in yer jocks, Australia.
(TBH, I think the problem actually was “I just didn’t have any control over how people saw me or who I was…”. It certainly looked that way.)
China’s giant economy faces an equally giant crisis of confidence—and a growing deficit of accurate information is only making things worse. Even as the country wrestles with a property crash, the services sector slowed by one measure in August. Consumers are fed up. Multinational firms are taking money out of China at a record pace and foreign China-watchers are trimming their forecasts for economic growth.
The gloom reflects real problems, from half-built houses to bad debts. But it also reflects growing mistrust of information about China. The government is widely believed to be massaging data, suppressing sensitive facts and sometimes offering delusional prescriptions for the economy. This void feeds on itself: the more fragile the economy is, the more knowledge is suppressed and the more nerves fray. This is not just a cyclical problem of confidence. By backtracking on the decades-long policy of partially liberalising the flow of information, China will find it harder to complete its ambition of restructuring the economy around new industries. Like the Soviet Union, it risks instead becoming an example of how autocratic rule is not just illiberal but also inefficient.
More on this
The tightening of censorship under President Xi Jinping is well known. Social-media accounts are ever more strictly policed. Officials are warier of candid debate with outsiders. Scholars fear they are watched and business people mouth Communist Party slogans. Less familiar is the parallel disappearance of technical data, especially if it is awkward or embarrassing for the party. Figures for youth unemployment, a huge problem, have been “improved and optimised”—and lowered. Balance-of-payments statistics have become so murky that even America’s Treasury is baffled. On August 19th stock exchanges stopped publishing daily numbers on dwindling foreign-investment inflows. As the economic dashboard dims, the private sector is finding it harder to make good decisions. Officials probably are, too.
To understand the significance of this shift, look back to the mid-20th century. Witnessing the totalitarianism of the 1930s and 1940s, liberal thinkers such as Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek argued that political freedom and economic success go hand in hand: decentralised power and information prevent tyranny and allow millions of firms and consumers to make better decisions and live better lives. The collapse of the Soviet Union proved them right. In order to maintain political dominance, its rulers ruthlessly controlled information. But that required brutal repression, starved the economy of price signals and created an edifice of lies. By the end, even the Soviet leadership was deprived of an accurate picture.
As China grew more open in the late 1990s and 2000s, its leaders hoped to maintain control while avoiding the Soviet Union’s mistakes. For many years they allowed technical information in business, the economy and science to flow far more freely. Think of Chinese firms with listed share prices disclosing information to investors in New York, or scientists sharing new research with groups abroad. Technology seemed to offer a more surgical way to censor mass opinion. The internet was intensively policed, but it was not banned.
China’s top leadership also redoubled its efforts to know what was going on. For decades, it has run a system known as neican, or internal reference, in which journalists and officials compile private reports. During the Tiananmen Square protests, for example, the leadership received constant updates. Techno-utopian party loyalists reckoned that big data and artificial intelligence could improve this system, creating a high-tech panopticon for the supreme leader that would allow the kind of enlightened central planning the Soviets failed at.
It is this vision of a partially open, hyper-efficient China that is now in doubt. Amid a widening culture of fear and a determination to put national security before the economy, the party has proved unable or unwilling to limit the scope of its interference in information flows. Monetary-policy documents and the annual reports of China’s mega-banks now invoke Xi Jinping Thought. Deadly-dull foreign management consultants are treated as spies. This is happening despite the fact that China’s increasingly sophisticated economy requires more fluid and complex decision-making.
An obvious result is the retreat of individual liberty. In a reversal of its partial opening, China has become a more repressive place. Many Chinese still have liberal views and enjoy debate but stick to private gatherings. They present no immediate danger to the party.
The information void’s other effects pose more of a threat. As price signals dim, the allocation of capital is getting harder. This comes at a delicate moment. As its workforce shrinks, China must rely more on boosting productivity to grow. That is all about using resources well. The country needs to pivot away from cheap credit and construction to innovative industries and supplying consumers. That is why capital spending is pouring into electric vehicles, semiconductors and more. Yet if investment is based on erroneous calculations of demand and supply, or if data on subsidies and profits are suppressed, then the odds of a successful transition are low.
China’s admirers might retort that the country’s key decision-makers still have good information with which to steer the economy. But nobody really knows what data and reports Mr Xi sees. Moreover, as the public square empties it is a good bet that the flow of private information is becoming more distorted and less subject to scrutiny. No one wants to sign a memo that says one of Mr Xi’s signature policies is failing.
After the horrors of the mid-20th century, liberal thinkers understood that free-flowing information improves decision-making, reduces the odds of grave mistakes and makes it easier for societies to evolve. But when information is suppressed, it turns into a source of power and corruption. Over time, the distortions and inefficiencies mount. China has big opportunities but it also faces immense problems. A fully informed citizenry, private sector and government would be far better equipped to take on the challenges ahead.
Two points…
Firstly, will we now see the those two hideous and grotesque millionaire Marxists, aka Mr and Mrs Obumma, exit the political stage once and for all?
Secondly, methinks the old Sniffer is happy with the result.
I note you called it a support package not a stimulus, JC.
It does indeed seem to be aimed at stabilising the banking sector. Customers of some Chinese banks have had their accounts frozen for months. Dozens of banks have been absorbed into larger entities too.
Well here in Vanuatu on our r&r holiday my good wife just commented that I’ve had a grin on my face like a Cheshire Cat for 2 days now.
I wonder why ?
Trust the CCP. Yep
The Chinese authorities are concealing the state of the economyBut the Communist Party’s internal information systems may also be flawed
Listen to this story.
Zhao jian’s article was online for just a few hours on August 16th before censors erased it. To Western readers the content would have appeared anodyne, but to a Communist Party official it was laced with dangerous ideas. Mr Zhao, a respected economist, argued that it was hard to grasp why China’s government was not making more effort to stimulate the economy. The most serious economic downturn in a generation had caused uncertainty about the future to “coil around the hearts of the people”, he wrote. “The logic and constraints of decision-makers cannot be understood by the market.”
The deletion of the article, ironically enough, proved Mr Zhao’s point. China’s army of internet censors routinely purge posts that run counter to the policies of Xi Jinping, the country’s supreme leader. But the realm of what is considered too sensitive has expanded rapidly in recent years, and now includes much discussion about the economy. Academics and pundits who seek to debate seemingly mundane economic matters are silenced. Data that used to be readily available are disappearing from the public sphere. That not only further restricts ordinary people’s already limited freedom to speak their minds, but also harms growth by hampering investment. Most of all, it underscores Mr Zhao’s pressing question: on what basis is economic policy made? What does the government know that ordinary people do not—and how reliable is the information on which it is basing its decisions?
Deviations standardChina’s official economic data have always had their flaws. Li Keqiang, the previous prime minister, once questioned their accuracy. Economists have long grumbled that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) does not provide enough detail about its methodologies. But China-watchers used to assume that the data would gradually become more comprehensive and reliable. Instead the reverse seems to be happening. Recent data on China’s capital account have been so contradictory—there has been a yawning discrepancy of about $230bn between customs and balance-of-payments statistics in recent years (see chart)—that America’s Treasury called on Chinese officials to clarify the figures. The resulting explanation was so convoluted that it only further confused matters. On August 19th, to the dismay of investors, China’s stock exchanges stopped publishing daily data on flows of foreign capital, a critical gauge of sentiment. The numbers will now be revealed only quarterly.
More on this
The Economist
Meanwhile, the data that are made public are ever less consistent with the experience of firms and investors on the ground. The official numbers show that the GDP growth rate has reverted to pre-pandemic level, despite the moribund housing industry and low investment in infrastructure. This is a risible claim, says Logan Wright of Rhodium Group, a consulting firm. “The broader problem is simply that the GDP data have stopped bearing any resemblance to economic reality,” he explains.
The steady contortion of official statistics seems designed to obscure news that might embarrass the government. For instance, in mid-2023 a professor at Peking University said publicly that there were 16m young people without jobs who did not feature in the unemployment statistics because they had stopped looking for work. If they were taken into account, the professor asserted, the underemployment rate for youth would be over 46%. Within a month the NBS stopped issuing data on urban youth unemployment altogether. Then in January it began publishing an “improved and optimised” figure, which also happened to be far lower. Academics and journalists have had relatively little to say on the subject since then.
All hail the economy!Officials’ bold claims about the economy often go unquestioned, at least in public. The government has declared that no one in China lives in absolute poverty any more—the sort of assertion that might naturally invite all kinds of questions about whether the data are correct and the right standards have been applied. Yet there has been almost no debate about the finding in the media.
In much the same vein, subjects of great importance to the economy, but of an awkward nature for officials, receive little scrutiny. The biggest victims of China’s property crash are the 20m-30m households that are thought to have paid for apartments that have never been completed. Understanding who these people are, how they are coping economically and what could be done to help them is critical to reviving the property market. Yet few economists appear to be conducting any research on these cheated millions.
The full economic effects of long, severe and unpopular lockdowns during the pandemic in cities such as Shanghai and Wuhan have never been publicly examined. In several cases journalists and social-media commentators broaching such topics have been jailed. The true number of deaths from covid-19 in China is unknown. A prominent scientist based in Shanghai who was looking into the origins of covid found himself locked out of his laboratory earlier this year. Officials seem much more interested in controlling discussion of the disease than in understanding its impact.
Even ardently pro-government pundits are sometimes silenced if their opinions have not received official approval. In late July Hu Xijin, a nationalist journalist, praised directives on the economy issued at a recent meeting of senior party leaders. But his interpretation of them as a boon for private enterprise apparently ruffled feathers. Posts to that effect were deleted from his social-media accounts, which then fell silent. The party, not content with regulating and managing markets and the economy, seems to be claiming a monopoly on interpreting them, too.
The reticence about discussing the economy extends to private interactions with foreigners. In theory the authorities are courting investors to help stimulate growth. Visiting businessmen confirm that meetings are easy to come by. But discussions lack substance, they complain. The pitches local officials make to attract investment to their region have become vague and formulaic, says one such visitor. There is little detail on local economic conditions. And securing more substantive meetings with regulators has become much harder.
Foreign academics report similar experiences. Universities are keen to hire professors with expertise in industry from abroad to compensate for an exodus of such people during the pandemic. But informal exchanges have become more strained. Visitors with long experience in China say they are able to see old contacts, but that their meetings must be reported to and approved by the authorities. Conducting field work in China has become increasingly difficult, says Huang Yanzhong of Seton Hall University in America, because contact with foreigners could present a risk to local people. “You sense the political environment and you don’t want to get people in trouble,” he says.
These sorts of restrictions also extend to foreign journalists. Many have returned to China after the pandemic to find their interactions with companies closely supervised by bureaucrats. In Hefei, an inland industrial city, big Chinese firms have been instructed not to speak to the press without permission from local authorities. Journalists are asked to submit hour-by-hour travel schedules along with the names and contact details of those they plan to interview. Some diplomats have been subjected to much the same treatment.
For those outside the country, getting access to information about the economy is even harder. The authorities appear to have asked Chinese firms selling corporate data to curb sales of certain statistics to foreigners. For example, one such firm, Wind, stopped providing information on online spending last year to users outside China. A database on corporate ownership compiled by Qichacha, a corporate-intelligence firm, is no longer accessible abroad. The firm also used to provide data on bankruptcies, but now says the information is “too sensitive”.
When a special economic zone in Shanghai set out rules earlier this year governing the use of data, it explicitly banned the transfer abroad of any information on stock prices or market trends, a surprising regulation for what is, after all, China’s financial hub. Stockbrokers are ever more reluctant to hand over analysts’ reports; negative takes on the economy or state policy are becoming rare. Some official data series on industrial output have started to vanish, Mr Wright says. A legal database that appeared online a decade ago is becoming less comprehensive and harder to access, says Rory Truex of Princeton University. When it comes to obtaining data, he says, “Nothing good in China can last.”
Access to China’s universities is also becoming more circumscribed, curtailing one of the main ways in which foreigners and locals alike improved their understanding of the Chinese economy. During the pandemic campuses, like most public spaces, were closed off; special permission was required to enter. But as much of China reopened early last year, some universities stayed shut. To this day visitors need permission in advance to set foot on these campuses. Academics at a number of institutions have been told they must seek approval to speak with foreign press. In a few regions this must be issued not by officials at their university, but by bureaucrats at the provincial level.
Since Mr Xi came to power in 2012 the conditions under which academics operate have become far more constrained. In 2019 several top universities amended their charters to make explicit reference to their loyalty to the Communist Party, which sparked a few small protests on campuses. Last year the party’s oversight committees at some universities began formally merging with the university administration. This, in effect, gives the party day-to-day control over how universities operate. This is a part of what Mr Xi has called “socialist education with Chinese characteristics”, which involves subordinating academic imperatives to the needs of the party. Academic freedom is at one of its lowest points since the Cultural Revolution, a period of fanaticism in the 1960s and 1970s, says Sun Peidong of Cornell University.
Much academic research remains relatively unfettered by political constraints because it has nothing to do with contemporary Chinese society. The government has heaped funding on the natural sciences, engineering and medicine, helping transform China into a powerhouse of scientific research. But the study of anything related to political, economic or social conditions within China, scholars say, has suffered badly under Mr Xi.
China’s universities are full of talented faculty, some of whom are still devising ways of writing about fraught topics. One method is to wrap critical ideas up in a politically correct coating. Corruption, for instance, tends to be too sensitive a topic on which to centre a research project, an academic explains. But a project that focuses on a prominent government initiative could include a portion on how that initiative has been affected by corruption. The crux of the research is in essence buried within a longer paper. Those who read academic papers, in turn, have become accustomed to wading through long reports to find small pearls of insight.
Controversial topics can be discussed as long as they omit any analysis of the central government’s policies. An economist specialising in Taiwan says he frequently writes papers that analyse the stances of the Taiwanese and American governments but simply exclude most information on China’s approach to the topic at hand. Some economic researchers have been able to conduct local surveys on controversial subjects, but have no intention of publishing them now. Instead they are sitting on their findings in the hope that a time will come when it is safe to publish them, Ms Sun claims.
The gradual strangulation of information about the economy is not just vexing for foreign investors and economists. It also raises the same question that Mr Zhao did in his censored article: on what basis do Mr Xi and other senior officials make decisions about how to manage the economy? They are not groping around in the dark. China has long maintained a confidential system for collecting information from academia, the news media and think-tanks. Journalists, researchers and economists are asked to pen “internal reference” reports, or neican in Chinese. These documents are commissioned at all levels of government. Local officials have access to analysis produced by local researchers. Trusted scholars at top universities and think-tanks, meanwhile, produce reports for the most senior leaders in Beijing.
Illustration: Daniel Stolle
Neican can be far punchier than material for public consumption. A report might demonstrate, say, that even though local officials talk excitedly about a boom in whizzy technologies such as AI or robotics, the actual benefit to the economy of these industries is woefully small. Academics and journalists can live something of a double life, producing both public reports and those meant only for the eyes of officials. A reporter at Xinhua, the state news agency, for instance, may appear to be churning out nothing but adulatory drivel, but behind the scenes could be writing explosive articles exposing polluting firms or corrupt officials. It is a privilege to be allowed to write internal reports, says one such author, noting that there is intense competition to do so.
Think-tanks are a mainstay of neican. Under Mr Xi, even as independent think-tanks have been forced to close, state-aligned ones have multiplied. The doors of the last prominent free-market think-tank in China, Unirule, were literally welded shut in 2019, briefly trapping some of its researchers inside. But hundreds of “think-tanks with Chinese characteristics” have been established by city and provincial governments, ministries and even some state-owned firms. Between 2018 and 2020 such outfits nearly tripled in number, from 507 to 1,413. (The fad is fading somewhat: by the end of last year there were only 1,096.) Most of the research they do is for internal consumption only. Their output can give officials a good understanding of the local dimensions of problems like the property crash, says a researcher. Another affirms that he is able to write openly about administrative problems such as the difficulty of implementing government edicts at odds with one another.
Some experts have speculated that China’s vast digital economy provides policymakers access to a trove of high-quality data about firms and consumers in real time. The state is building exchanges where data that companies collect on transactions can be bought and sold. But these platforms are still a work in progress. By the same token, China’s security services run a massive nationwide surveillance operation that by its very nature tracks the movement of people and goods and the opinions expressed by ordinary citizens. But there is no evidence that officials make use of such information to improve their understanding of the economy.
Errors thrive in darknessThe ultimate question is, how much of all this information filters through to the top echelons of the Communist Party? That is hard to say. Authors often brag about the influence of their neican reports, says Mr Huang, but there are no reliable data about who is having an impact on public policy. A researcher says he is informed if a senior official has made a note on one of his reports, but is not told what the note says. The profusion of think-tanks presumably delivers an enormous number of recommendations to different arms of the government. But Bob Chen, an investor based in Shanghai, recently argued on a local podcast called Baiguan that the centralisation of power at the apogee of the party means that the recipients no longer have the authority to push through whatever reforms the reports might espouse.
Moreover, it seems only natural that neican reports would tend to flatter the authorities. A state researcher notes that the more positive his analysis is, the better the reception it receives. That provides an obvious incentive to put an optimistic slant on things. The obverse also appears to be true: the same researcher who said he was free to discuss administrative problems also cautions that he never directly criticises policy edicts from on high.
No one outside the highest reaches of power understands exactly what Mr Xi reads and how he acts on the information. China’s economic policymaking has always been somewhat opaque, but this mattered less when growth was strong and policymakers appeared pragmatic. With growth deteriorating and the bureaucracy becoming more ideological, the dearth of good information about the economy is much more worrying. It may eventually become as big a problem for China’s leaders as it is for puzzled outsiders.
Remember the 2016 aftermath and the runup to 2020 when lefties wanted to abolish the Electoral College?
A Fox News viewer texts that, after the 2024 Trumpslide, the Dems want to abolish the popular vote.
Talking of China and it statistics problem – I read a Readers Digest (remember them?) article by a Doc MD who fled the Wukkas Paradise and he said the following:
China is going through the same dilemma.
How does that work? Is the “pardon” itemised or all encompassing?
If it’s the former, all that paper they saved this time around will be used up.
Dr Faustus
November 8, 2024 12:54 pm
Seriously, I didn’t know breaking was a thing, but her attempt at it was piteous, to be charitable.
She should be quiet about it.
calli – I’ve just read that spiked piece by Brendan O’Neill you referred to earlier and it is absolutely bloody hilarious.
Worth reading solely to find out the identity of the “rhyming-slang-in-waiting” not to mention the description of a certain clown known as “Otto English” and all the other laser guided knockout blows administered to the insufferable middle class left wing English wankerati currently bawling into their soy chai lattes.
Magnificent stuff.
KevinM
November 8, 2024 4:51 am
Cleaning up my links I came across some long forgotten blogs, bloodnut blog is still there but not active, wonder how Kae is traveling? hope she is fine
She popped in here with a comment a year or two ago, if I recall. One of the trailblazers of the Australian right-leaning blogosphere!
Wally Dali mused:
Whoah, easy on the certainty, tiger. If it’s not in the published Agenda 47 and the official RNC 2024 platform then you have no great reason to expect it.
Even before it actually happened the election of DJT meant many things to many people. He had policies of course (as linked above) but there was also…you know, the vibe of the thing. The vibes are less certain than policy.
e.g.s
The policy says “We will stand with Israel” but whether hostages get avenged is less clear.
The policy does not specifically mention Ukraine but it could be inferred from “ensuring that our Allies must meet their obligations to invest in our Common Defense and by restoring Peace to Europe.”.
It does not mention the Paris Accord but does promise to “CANCEL THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE MANDATE” and unnamed other regulations.
Nothing about centralised command, but will “END THE WEAPONIZATION OF GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE” which is again a rather vague promise.
It is very early days of the POTUS transition period and his administration’s task list is still condensing out of the campaign ether.
Kae was over at CL’s about a year ago. And speaking of CL, his absence is starting to worry me. I’m all for giving people space to go about their business, but it’s been a while.
If anyone knows but doesn’t want to say, that’s okay too. Details aren’t important.
I read some bimbo historian slating the conquests of Julius Caesar. Why? Well folks, he was the “oppressor” and the Gallic tribes were “the oppressed
Currently wading thorough Caesars Gallic wars.
The translator covers herself in sackcloth and ashes in apology for translating such a bad man.
Also the use of the word “barbarian” is gone – too problematic, never mind thats the word the bloke himself used quite deliberately.
?
American feminists threaten to withhold sex from men – who they are not having sex with anyway!
As a mate (ex military) once said to someone “I don’t make empty threats.”
Fair points, Col Berk.
We know the God Emperor’s instincts tho.
I watched his speech, where has that guy been hiding for the last 4 years?
I think with all the election commentary, I think Paul Murray hit on the head on election night…
The Dumbocrats sliced the demographics vertically every which way to Sunday eg Hispanic/black/uni educated men/women/ other, genX/y/z/boomer etc etc.
Trump saw that Hispanic/black/white etc working men/women had more in common than differences.
calli
November 8, 2024 1:23 pm
My understanding is that the President can pardon Federal crimes.
Granting all encompassing pardons for charges not yet laid or heard is something of a grey area.
I don’t think Bunter is out of the woods.
Gen. Flynn has warned that they will try and shoot Trump again.
Taking a leaf out of Trump’s story – “Here’s a picture of your house” that he showed the Taliban leader back when Trump was calling the shots, I would hope that someone in a shady mode somewhere is making it known that if Trump is shot by anyone at all, you, you and you are on a list.
Remember that chilling song from The Mikado by the Lord High Executioner:
“I have a little list, I have a little list.
There’ll none of them be missed,
There’ll none of them be missed.”
I won’t name names, but there are more than a little list of possibilities.
It’s called fighting fire with fire.
Bit’ve a fiscal problem too.
The Chinese Tax Noose Is Tightening (7 Nov)
Which leads to this story from last week:
China lost 36% of its billionaires to years of economic troubles and crackdowns (30 Oct)
When you see rats fleeing a ship it is usually a sign of something.
Bungonia Bee
November 8, 2024 1:56 pm
I heard Trump tell an interesting story about John Bolton, I think in relation to L’il Kim Rocket Man.
The crux of the story is that Bolton was as mad as a cut snake and would go to war over a mistake in his lunch order.
Trump just let Bolton run riot with threats until he had convinced the opponent he was a dead man if he made the wrong move.
I have always wondered if Trump casually showed Rocket Man an intel photo of him (Kim) sitting in his garden with the none-too-subtle hint that he could be offed on a whim.
The hysterics of the Western MSM in projecting Trump as a short-fuse maniac actually helped.
Why would the same people that called Russia ‘a gas station masquerading as a country’ also suggest that the Russians intend to move westward once Ukraine is defeated? Because internally consist rhetoric is not one of their strong points.
Well I’m feeling so content- nay, absurdly optimistic- that I’m leaving the faithful derg, driving over the mighty winter creek and going to Perf to hit the pricey drinks with old mate. Might even buy a guitar.
Hula Bula Bar, if anyone’s thirsty. I’m the bloke in white suede chelsea boots, oxblood cords and a Deplorables t-shirt.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that Vance is Trump’s insurance policy.
If Trump is killed or incapacitated, they get Vance. Young, tough, articulate, right wing ex-Marine.
And they’ll get him for three terms if I understand the election rules correctly.
The Republicans are now up to 216 in the House. With Alaska yet to declare but the Republican candidate 10,000 votes ahead, they really only need one more of the in-doubt seats for a majority.
I have no idea why anyone here would think the effective counter to a little criticism of the ChinaCollapse narrative is an Economist article. The Economist is one of the chief propagators of this narrative, for heaven’s sake.
He was the oppressor because his culture had developed more powerful technologies, logistics, and organization. It is much easier to defend than attack but they couldn’t stop him. He wasn’t bad, he was better at doing what the Gallic tribes would have done to him if not for his superior cultural heritage. We should be teaching children that the days of conquering others are over and historically that happened because the conquering culture was better equipped than the conquered culture.
In Airbrush news:
• “traitor to the west”
• “problem for the world”.
•“the most destructive president in history”
•“He drags America and democracy through the mud,”
•“He thrives on fomenting, not healing, division. He abuses Christianity, church and bible to justify violence. All aided and abetted by [Rupert] Murdoch’s FoxNews (sic) network in America which feeds this.”
No possibility of being misconstrued.
None.
Ratfakir.
Speaking of such things a bit of creaking is also coming from Russia, although monetary this time, not fiscal.
Russian economy on brink as mortgages explode and home buyers face £752k repayments (7 Nov)
When I bought Cafe Bruce I was paying a mere 14.5%. Tiny!
Same people? Who are these same people? Name the people who made this exact same comment.
I don’t believe Russia is much more than that, considering that 90% of their exports are energy-related, with the remaining 10% consisting of dubious military hardware. But that’s another matter. Just ignore this comment and focus on the following:
Seriously, Australia needs to recall Rudd today.
It’s the only way we can save face, perhaps only a bit of eyebrow and a nostril, but a bit.
The bulldust that he was “building relationships” with the new regime in advance of the election is just that. He’s a liar. That’s why he kept all those posts, thinking that Kamala would win.
The creep’s creep.
Rounding applies I think.
Section 22 of the Constitution.
So, Vance could potentially serve 9.9999 years.
Perhaps you ought to try occasionally to attack the information and opinion instead of the source you don’t like. You, having “no idea” is not an argument, it’s just another way of suggesting you don’t have one
Try it, as it could be more enlightening for all.
Apparently you have to go back to 1936 and FDR to find an election when a party won control of as many things as Trump managed. Both houses, state governorships, popular vote, Presidency, Supreme Court picks, he will have everything his way the next two years.
Unburdened by the past, Trump is about to launch the future.
Maybe not quite, but the most political dominance since FDR is now in the hands of the man they called Hitler.
JC, as your attorney, I strongly advise you not to return home to Melbourne.
Your Suicide Hotline is going to make you a second squillion in NYC.
You know, telling people who are totally hopeless not to cry and that they have a future — and charging them a fortune for 15 minutes of your time.
I strongly advise you to set up the business in Trump Tower. I trust Don jnr will be able to offer you a very competitive office lease rate, even though he will also be deluged by other new business.
Let us know how you go and whether you want us to look after your old place.
Cheers, Tom.
“calli
November 8, 2024 1:44 pm
Kae was over at CL’s about a year ago. And speaking of CL, his absence is starting to worry me. I’m all for giving people space to go about their business, but it’s been a while.”
I always assumed that plenty of people in the blogosphere knew CL in real life.
Maybe I confused him with others like Professor Bunyip?
Worryingly, it’s starting to look like nobody knows him or can even check if he’s OK.
One last thing Dover. The worst possible event triggering an economic slowdown or collapse are balance sheet problems eking out and causing a fall in incomes. It’s the worst form of economic cancer a country can experience.See the GFC.
China has a massive balance sheet problem in the banking system. One way or another the piper has to be paid. And no will to power thing is going to change this – not even criticisms leveled against Neo-cons, the GAE or the Vatican.
Tom
Wrong hotline.
JCs one is a Pee Wee Herman voice chanting “do it, do it, do iiiiiit” over and over.
On ZH;
The Grift Is Ending: ESG Fund Managers Being Told To “Keep Their Lawyers Very Close”
Stick the crooks in GenPop where they can taste what being shafted is really like.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/grift-ending-esg-fund-managers-being-told-keep-their-lawyers-very-close
Fear not.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
Ruddster will be left to run his trannie parties at the embassy whilst he (and possibly Straya generally) is by-passed.
Eventually something will have to give.
Expect to see Kokoda Kev quietly putting the cue in the rack in the early part of next year as the cob-webs form on the White House hotline.
The first sign will possibly be the Donald using Greg Norman or Keith Urban to pass messages to Straya.
Heh.
FBI Employees Terrified of Being Fired When Trump Arrives: He’s ‘Going to Smash the Place to Pieces’ (7 Nov)
Hopefully all the alphabet agency swampies are feeling the same way. And hopefully all of them get booted into the nearest available ocean.
Qantas plane makes emergency landing, grassfire breaks out at Sydney Airport – ABC News
ABC journo Mark Willacy was on the Syd -> Bris flight… so I’m not going to say anything.
I tried to put up a pic after walking past Trump Tower just before lunch.
There was a convoy of black SUV’s parked at the front of Trump Tower. There was another convoy on 56th street, which is the residential entrance to Trump Tower.
The other thing I noticed was dudes looking very solemn just hanging around the general area on the sidewalk watching people, who I’d guess were SS dudes. They’re not fcking around.
Quite so.
Leaving it to now to delete those tweets tells you all you need to know.
The two key points to cleanse the X history were:-
1. when appointed ambassador; or
2. when Trump announced his run.
Laughable to think that he has got to first base with the Trump camp.
Trump has already described Kokoda Kev as “not very bright”.
Ouch!
No comment(s) from CL, despite a massive Trump win and a Ukrainian appointed as Australia’s Cardinal, point to something not quite right.
I miss his insights.
Actually, the armies of Gaul were, in many cases, evenly matched with the Romans. What undid the Gallic/Brittonic and Germanic tribes was something all too human……tribal jealousy and bickering. Unsurprisingly, the Celts bickered among themselves and when Vercingetorix tried to unite the tribes, it was all too late.
The simplistic modern woke wank of ‘oppressor/oppressed’ is simplistic, it was often more like ‘united/divided’.
I miss his insights.
As do I.
I wouldn’t be too concerned as he had a pattern of not commenting for months and then would reappear. He’s very mysterious. 🙂
Closer to home, don’t forget how this Australian government deliberately delayed giving Don Trump Jnr a visa last year.
Remember this…
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil deflected blame on social media, branding Trump Jr. a “big baby” and “sore loser” in since-deleted tweets.
“Now he’s trying to blame the Australian government for his poor ticket sales and cancelled tour,” O’Neil tweeted for less than an hour.
I think we need some good old fashioned karma applied here.
Is there a thread dedicated to the best leftard melt downs?
This is a beaudy!
https://x.com/atensnut/status/1854605155012165847
“Waching my neighbour tear down her Harris/Walz signs.”
(Turn up the volume)
Well it’s my brother’s birthday today so off to raise a glass of frothy Carlton Draught with him. And to belatedly celebrate the most magnificent of wins in any sphere of life, from Donald Trump.
Toodle pip!
Exit polls reveal who voted for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump
Exit polls have painted a clearer picture of which Americans backed which candidate in the race for the White House.
Kamala Harris’ strongest support came from women (53 per cent) and non-white Americans (64 per cent), according to the NBC News exit polls.
She secured her strongest support among Black voters (85 per cent), particularly women (91 per cent), and African-Americans over 65 (93 per cent). Asian and Hispanic voters also predominantly voted blue (54 and 52 per cent, respectively). Ms Harris also secured 86 per cent of the LGBTQI+ vote.
In a twist to the election tale, Donald Trump’s strongest voting bloc wasn’t white voters (57 per cent voted Republican), but Native Americans (65 per cent).
Broadly, Mr Trump’s strongest support also came from white men, middle-aged men, Christian men, Americans who never attended college, and those who live in suburban or rural America.
He did, however, win over suburban white women (53 per cent) which he has historically struggled with.
$70M if they find the plane. Zip if they don’t:
Malaysia Airlines: Search for missing MH370 flight set to resume off coast of WA after ‘credible’ proposal | PerthNow
Scott Cooper
List of people that said they would leave the US if Trump wins.
1. Alec Baldwin
2. Whoopi Goldberg
3. John Legend
4. Chrissy Teigen
5. Rob Reiner
6. Barbara Streisand
7. Cher
8. Nancy Pelosi
9. Hillary Clinton
10. Megan Rapinoe
11. Tom Hanks
12. Amy Schumer
13. AOC
14. Lady Gaga
15. Taylor Swift
16. Bill Gates
17. Jane Fonda
18. Madonna
19. Mark Ruffalo
20. Kim Kardashian
21. Bruce Springsteen
22. George Clooney
23. Hunter Biden
24. Oprah
25. Robert De Niro
26. Samuel L Jackson
27. Miley Cyrus
28. Travis Kelce
29. Bobbi Althoff
30. Rashida Talib
31. Stormy Daniels
32. Dr. Anthony Fauci
33. George Soros
34. Diddy 35. Eminem
36. Ellen DeGeneres
37. Sean Penn
38. Sharon Stone
39. Ashley Judd
40. Tommy Lee
41. Bryan Cranston
42. Billie Joe Armstrong
Bonus Cher will blow her brains out Rob Reiner will set himself on fire Bono vows to drive his car off a cliff
Major point. If Hillary leaves, I would bet money Bill won’t be going.
You have this all wrong. The smart money is on selling them an information packages on how to make it look like auto erotic asphyxiation. That way the insurance still pays out.
It’s not like they aren’t already wankers.
This is pretty funny.
Hilarious.
Sorry chicks.
I amend my objection to female emancipation to only cover chicks living within 15 miles of a city centre.
The rest of youse are welcome to vote.
So, who gets which jobs in a Trump cabinet?
Agriculture – Lee Greenwood? 😛
Commerce – Musk?
Defense – Pompeo?
Education,
Energy – Vivek?
Health and Human Services – RFK.
Homeland Security – Patel?
Housing and Urban Development,
Interior,
Labor,
State – Rubio?
Transportation,
Treasury, and Veterans Affairs – Paulson?
Attorney General – Mark Levin?
Press Secretary – Alex Jones?
Maybe 50 miles, just to be safe.
On the other hand, you can never be too careful.
100 miles.
Great tweet!!!:
“I was at the Barnes and Noble earlier and I asked the clerk if they had the Donald Trump new book on how to deport illegals.”
She immediately said to me “get the f$ck out of here and never come back again.”
I said, “yes that’s the one.”
No kidding, this is the funniest vid for the entire election period. I’ll be waking up laughing.
A frustrated Michael Cohen because people are being mean to him.
I see this will to power thingy comes up again. The thing that will mitigate any collapse is, in the end, the Chinese economy makes things and its productive capacity is huge. This isn’t to say that everything is going well in the economy but I simply don’t buy the imminent collapse narrative.
Anne frank house about to be converted back from a museum to a hiding place.
https://x.com/DanLinnaeus/status/1854721120337006908
What we know so far is that fans were ambushed, 6 reported missing, attackers were armed with clubs and knives, Israelis were thrown into rivers and run over by cars, their passports were stolen and published online, fathers walking with their children were attacked by mobs, women were beaten in the streets, many beaten unconscious, two emergency planes have been dispatched from Ben Gurion airport to evacuate citizens immediately, the local authorities are overwhelmed, medical services are unavailable as local authorities have lost control of the city where thousands of Muslim migrants scattered over Amsterdam are perpetrating these attacks, breaking into hotels, firing incendiary devices through windows and burning Israeli flags.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/assailants-shouting-free-palestine-brutally-attack-israeli-soccer-fans-in-amsterdam/
Dover
Just watch the Cohen vid.
No wonder Jimmy Kimmel is so desperately angered and sad (live tears poor baby) over Trump’s victory. Diddy may be having some company soon;
https://x.com/MattWallace888/status/1854544184671121563
Time for some Pow Wow Chow!
@robinmonotti
Nothing to see here, just Ursula von der Leyen openly acknowledging the depopulation agenda of the Club of Rome…!
HB Bear says he’s not sure Barry thought Kamala could pull it off.
We’ll ignore the phrasing, lol, but here’s my take on Kamala’s enthronement. Obama was certainly late in his support for her, calculating his options.
My pet theory is that Kamala wouldn’t agree to use her Constitutional powers to axe Biden unless she was named as legitimate successor and endorsed candidate for 2025. She would carry though the burden of having metaphorically done in Joe. Also, under this scenario, it was possible she might have faced a new Primary for 2025 pushed for by Obama if he drew back on endorsing her 2025 candidacy. If she had to compete in a new Primary she knew she would lose to someone more capable. And Dr Jill and Biden would not have departed without a public shit show. Not a good look all round so close to an election. Let Biden out to graze as President till the election.
So there was ‘an arrangement’ with Kamala. There would be no Primary, she had the job. They came to Biden to discuss his options; withdraw or be pushed (maybe with a pillow in the night). Obama came in because he had no other option than to support Kamala; she’d pressured them that she would play merry hell about being female and black if they axed him their way and ignored her, for she would be speaking as the first female black President with Biden dead. As VP she had them in her DEI black spider stranglehold.
Dr. Jill wore red quite deliberately to vote, just as Joe considered his options when, with a sense of doing mischief, he put a MAGA hat on. As for the ‘garbage’ call, I think that was just senile Joe taking it out on the voters. He corrected it very quickly. That it caused Kamala electoral grief was something of a bonus for Joe anyway.
Trump’s Landslide Win EXPLAINED
No! He/she/it wants to come HERE!
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1854638671535751228
As I write, there’s a pogrom happening in Amsterdam. Israeli and Dutch Jews are being hunted on the streets by Nazis. Israeli news is reporting that two Jews are missing.
Of course, the perpetrators are leftists and adherents of that nasty putrid ideology called Islam but reports are also suggesting that the perpetrators are being enabled by a politicised Amsterdam police force. Quelle surprise. Same old, nothing’s changed in 80 years.
Bibi has sent a plane. Jews should leave Western Europe.
Trump just let Bolton run riot with threats until he had convinced the opponent he was a dead man if he made the wrong move.
Remember a story from East Timor along the same lines with Australian troops holding up a convoy of withdrawing TNI until they were allowed to search for Militia in the trucks. Things were getting very tense to the point of openly pointing of weapons. A Mexican stand off.
However the light was very low and the Australian commander after threats had been made by the TNI commander to allow them to pass or else asked his opposite number to look through the night vision device he had. The TNI commander quickly noted the infra-red aiming dots from the Aussie troops behind cover all over his men and a LAV25 with its chain gun trained down the length of the column. An order was barked in Bahasa and his men stood down.
JC
November 8, 2024 3:16 pm
Nice.
But I still think the one posted by Rosie of the Latino guy in tears because he is worried that Orange Man will deport his mother-in-law is still the clubhouse leader.
Sanchez, link to Rosie’s vid.
The Cohen vid gets funnier the more you watch it. It will never get old.
JC.
Here it is …
Rosie
November 8, 2024 5:27 am
Lol
https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1854511605448389114?t=I7zA-LbZUuMoVveOiKQUzg&s=19
Andrew Tate gives the celebs who are leaving a send off;
https://x.com/EM_Highlights/status/1854242416821186887
Further to the events in the Netherlands, Gad Saad has just, in the last half an hour, posted this on X, addressed to Geert Wilders…..
Dear @geertwilderspvv
it is time to engage in a mass deportation of people who are antithetical to every Western tenet of liberty and freedom. It’s not about toughen up immigration policies but about REVERSING the suicidal empathy that has plagued the West. This must be done throughout the West or else the problem will forever worsen.
Re Amsterdam, I see that this involves fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv at and following a UEFA game.
Speaking of vids I couldn’t watch the one of the daughter flipping out when she finds her dad has joined the Orange Army.
Anyone got it?
Sanchez
That has to be a parody, or he’s trying to dob in the mother-in-law to get rid of her. If he’s sincere and so stupid that he’s giving out her address like that, he should be deported with her.
Sickening scenes coming out of Amsterdam. The Nazis filmed themselves stabbing, kicking and driving over Jews.
The need to bring back public hangings.
JC
November 8, 2024 4:01 pm
Sanchez
A pisstake.
Dropping the address in three times … just in case you missed it.
This one Sanchez. She actually sounds like a sweet gal who’s been totally brainwashed.
If these clips are fake, I’ll find out soon enough.
Elon Musk Goes To Order Taco Bell Meal, Stops Cold When He Hears 2 Boys Whisper THIS Behind Him
The Nazis in Holland have now broken into the hotels where the visiting Israelis were told to stay for their safety.
Lake now trails by just 43,698, which is less than 2%.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/11/breaking-lake-wins-57-7-pm-maricopa-county/
This… is how you enjoy the burning tears and white karen screams;
https://x.com/EM_Highlights/status/1854242416821186887
Only need to find people for the following, the rest can be abolished –
Defense
Homeland Security (fold into sub office of defense)
State (Don’t get us in wars)
Transportation (better take a long hard look at the Interstate commerce clause and limit its purview)
Treasury (Veterans Affairs fold into sub office of defense)
Attorney General
Press Secretary
Whooping cough scare; the AMA won’t ever admit it but more people are losing faith in vaccinations due to the betrayal and tyranny experienced during covid. The AMA were the absolute worst. The MSM still pushing the line that these rotten grubs are on our side.(spit!)
Chris Kenny (who certainly runs hot and cold) gives the ALPBC both barrels over their US election coverage in the online Paywallian (and presumably tomorrow’s Weekend Paywallian). He makes the same point I made about sending Russiagate true believer Mrs Snowcone to Washington.
UEFA are such a bunch of useless loathsome corruptocrat shitheads they’ll probably ban Israeli teams from Europe, rather than immediately banning Ajax and other Dutch teams from European comps – e.g. PSV in the champs league.
If the stories about what’s happening in Amsterdam are correct, then it really is beyond time there were mass arrests and deportations of moozleys from ALL European countries. This shit has to stop. Enough.
What a f*cking disgrace.
From Kenny’s article Bear refers to:-
Wait!
Wut?
A random poll predicting a Kamal-toe win in Iowa.
Didn’t someone here? … who was that?
Yes.
m0nster.
I remember now.
Yep.
m0nster.
Pretty much regurgitated PK’s dreamtime musings right here.
In a “60 Minutes” interview Sunday night, Homan, who was ICE director for a part of former President Trump’s administration, spoke on the GOP candidate’s pledge to implement mass deportations.
When journalist Cecilia Vega asked, “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?” Homan responded: “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.”
useless c*nts
Erin Molan giving a strong monologue on Amsterdam, first and US elections. Targeting the whining celebrities.
Try to catch it if you can on Sky.
A question for expert CAT users of X.
To celebrate the ascent of Orange God to the pantheon of all pantheons, I opened an account with X yesterday. Gave zero information about myself and, for testing, made a couple of quick, short, comments and voted in two polls.
Nothing notable, controversial, clever, witty or in any way remarkable.
But.. Oh joy of joys! Today, in less than 24 hours, I see that I have gained 6 (six) followers. All female, all gorgeous (according to their avatars.. soo… yeah, totally believable), and all with similar numbers of “following” and “followers” on the platform.
The elation at such popularity was hard to contain, a truly humbling experience..
My questions are:
1) Are these Elon’s bots? Deployed automatically to check on new Xers and flag early deviancies, psychos and/or potential FCC threats?
2) Or should I abandon any skepticism. Seize the day. Make a beeline for one or more of these, clearly agreeable and gorgeous beauties, sweep them off their feet with debonair charm and wit, and give them access to my bank accounts?
A radical theory of consciousness | AI researcher Joscha Bach
**Summary:** In this video, AI researcher Joscha Bach presents a radical theory of consciousness, proposing that it can be understood as a simulated or virtual state, akin to software agents rather than as a purely physical entity. He explores the differences between human brains and computers, the nature of consciousness, and the development of mental states in children. Bach argues that consciousness is not complex and rare but rather a fundamental, ubiquitous concept that shapes cognitive processes. He connects these ideas to ancient texts, suggesting that they reflect an understanding of consciousness and reality that is often overlooked. By proposing a view of consciousness as self-organizing patterns akin to software, Bach advocates for a perspective in which living systems are seen as running complex algorithms that govern behavior and perception. **Key Points by Section:** 1. **Introduction (0:00)** – Introduction to the topic of consciousness. – Overview of the radical theory being presented. 2. **Consciousness is Virtual (0:09)** – Asserted that consciousness exists in a simulated state, similar to a dream. – Compared consciousness to constructs like money, which exist virtually but have real effects in the world. – Proposed that mental states are patterns in neural activation rather than physical realities. 3. **Human Brains vs. Computers (1:56)** – Discussed the complexity of human neurons compared to artificial neural networks. – Suggested that creating an AI to emulate a human brain would require an astronomical amount of computational resources. 4. **AI vs. the Organic Mind (3:21)** – Contrasted the operations of digital computers (deterministic, pre-trained) with organic brains (dynamic, self-organizing). – Highlighted differences in how both systems learn and perceive the world. 5. **Self-Organizing Systems (4:56)** – Explained concepts of self-organization in biological and computational contexts. – Introduced ideas from computer science that study how simple systems can evolve into complex behaviors. 6. **Genesis 1 (7:18)** – Interpreted the biblical account of creation as a metaphor for the emergence of consciousness. – Explored themes of consciousness forming on neural substrates and the creation of a mental model of reality. 7. **How Children Develop Consciousness (10:47)** – Described the stages of consciousness development in children and the shift to self-awareness. – Proposed that consciousness is fundamental to learning and cognitive processes in infants. 8. **Natural Software Agents (12:16)** – Defined software agents as causal patterns that can change things without being physical entities. – Suggested that consciousness can be viewed as a sophisticated natural learning algorithm, connecting these concepts to animism. – Concluded that invariance in living beings might stem from the software they run rather than their physical structures. Overall, Bach’s presentation encourages reconsidering consciousness through a lens of software and simulation, aiming to unify concepts of consciousness, computing, and natural systems.
A revamped City Square in Melbourne’s CBD is set to include a permanent smoking ceremony dish along with paving featuring Woiwurrung language.
The Allan government on Friday revealed the final designs for the square, which has been closed for about seven years while work has been ongoing on the Metro Tunnel.
Sky
Bank of England has cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
Australia really is doing it alone on inflation….
Pauline is a third there with donations.
Noice.
For some reason Wally heading to the Hula Bula Bar make me think of Hernando’s Hideaway. Anyway. If you’re in the house Rabz, this photo might be worth a second of your time.
What is the fate of Burke & Wills to be?
m0nster is probably curled up in a fetal position in a corner somewhere.
The Feds raided Alfie Oakes’ Naples, Florida home and farm with a battering ram on Thursday.
Alfie Oakes is an outspoken Trump supporter and owner of Seed to Table grocery store.
The raid was conducted by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service which investigates criminal behavior with the Department of Defense.
BREAKING: Feds Raid Alfie Oakes’ Naples Home and Farm with Battering Ram – An Outspoken Trump Supporter and Owner of Seed to Table (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila
Thanks to big spending Labor governments.
Is Donald Trump Spengler’s Caesar? On The Decline of the West
**Summary:** In the video “Is Donald Trump Spengler’s Caesar? On The Decline of the West,” Johannes A. Niederhauser explores the parallels between Donald Trump and Oswald Spengler’s concept of a “caesarian” figure within the context of Spengler’s philosophical ideas about the cyclical nature of civilizations. Niederhauser presents an analysis of how Spengler sees the progression of cultures through life cycles akin to the seasons, ultimately leading to a phase of civilization marked by stagnation, materialism, and the dominance of money. The discussion raises questions about whether Trump embodies these caesarian qualities and could challenge the prevailing rule of money and technocracy in contemporary society. **Key Points:** 1. **Introduction to Spengler and Caesarism:** – Discussion of Donald Trump as a “caesarian” figure since his election in 2016. – Comparison of Trump to Julius Caesar, referencing Spengler’s ideas. – The analysis is factual and does not endorse or critique Trump personally. 2. **Spengler’s Philosophy of History:** – Spengler’s view that cultures follow a cyclical pattern resembling the four seasons: – **Spring** – Birth of culture and flourishing. – **Summer** – Peak of cultural achievement (e.g., Baroque period). – **Autumn** – Reflection and critique; beginning of decline (influenced by Enlightenment). – **Winter** – Stagnation, shift from culture to civilization, and reliance on technology. 3. **Civilization vs. Culture:** – Civilization (technological and material focus) emerges when cultures exhaust their creative energy. – Emphasis on museums as representations of past cultural achievements rather than new innovations. 4. **Role of Democracy and Money:** – Spengler argues that democracy ultimately serves the interests of money (plutocracy). – Quotes from Spengler highlight how democracy promotes money’s rule while presenting ideals of equality and freedom. 5. **Trump’s Potential as a Caesar:** – Questions whether Trump can break the rule of money, a hallmark of the caesarian figure. – References to Spengler’s writings on powerful leaders who may arise as alternatives to the dominant economic interests. – Discussion of other potential caesarian figures in modern society, such as Elon Musk. 6. **Challenges of Technocracy:** – The future cesarian figure must also contend with the growing influence of technocracy. – Emphasis on the need for a leader to challenge both financial and technological control in society.
Is it just me or is Hendo getting progressively slower at getting the media watch dog out?
@PeterSweden7
The mainstream media got it wrong.
The fake polls got it wrong again.
But the traders betting on the election got it right.
Watch this video that explains how the polls lied
@shellenberger
Many Democrats say they want to understand what happened. Few genuinely do. That’s because, at some level, they know they’re guilty of having participated in a witch hunt in which they falsely accused their fellow Americans, and even their friends & family, of fascism & racism.
I’ve had a young grey butcherbird on my hand three times today. I don’t know if he was the same butcherbird or not, as they’re three of them, but it was nice. Last year’s progeny making their way in the world.
And latest baby noisy miner accepted food from my hand for the first time, in the camellia this morning. By afternoon she was an old friend! They learn quickly. I love my Cafe.
Grub Alex Soros- reeling from clue bat beating;
https://x.com/AlexanderSoros/status/1854616045996458216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1854616045996458216%7Ctwgr%5E0a4f4b75b37c2f913ea43695d22cf52d9fafad7c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Falex-soros-shocked-incumbent-political-order-being-crushed-around-globe
ht/ ZH
Steven Miller, MD, PhD
@SageListener
LMAO
I have to wonder what the outcome would have been if Musk had not acquired Twitter. Have a look at the comparisons. MSM coverage in 2024 was the most skewed this century.
@TheRabbitHole84
What’s notable about the Trump victory is that it happened despite biased Legacy Media coverage.
New Media, like ? and podcasts, helped circumvent the narrative gatekeepers so people could hear the other side.
I’m not sure if this outcome would have been possible otherwise.
I’m not surprised.
In what universe is half a dozen ugly old hags sitting around a table and bitching “news”? Or a pursed lipped albinos, angry lesbians, or explosive fuggly oil bombs fulminating?
The world has moved on from listening to these fossilised carny folk.
That’s a bit harsh on carny folk, calli.
😀
Well, Roger, I see all these outspoken, oily celebrities as court jesters in better suits.
At least the Bard had wise fools.
I loved the tantrum list posted earlier!
Dragon Energy on the Cat this afternoon.
Lysander November 8, 2024 3:01 pm
Exit polls reveal who voted for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump
She secured her strongest support among Black voters (85 per cent), particularly women (91 per cent), and African-Americans over 65 (93 per cent)
More evidence, if any is needed, that after 50+ years of Dems turning black neighbourhoods into rat-infested sh!tholes, blaks haven’t worked out that there is a problem with the DemRat narrative.
Blaks really are dumber than dogsh!t. They fully deserve their living conditions.
No sympathy.
After appearing to adopt/emulate the Poms’ Bazball theory, Straya are quite rightly getting a kicking in the second one-dayer in the City of Hyphenated-Surnames.
Bowled out for 163. The Pakis, batting properly I might add, are 0/102.
I can only imagine as I don’t watch television news, the occasional clip on You Tube excepted. Most of the names mentioned here are outside my ken.
Mexico’s migrant caravan breaking up after Trump victory sows uncertainty
looks like orange Hitler is going to get the house majority too !
a democratic Blitz Krieg no less
Media BAFFLED By Trump Win
Steady on, Gilas…black voters were crucial to Trump winning Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.
One big take away from this election is that the demographic based politics that the Dems have previously relied upon is on the way out.
Red State has a round up of what’s happened so far in Amsterdam.
Breitbart has an article that says the Dutch coppers were VERY slow to act.
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/11/07/breaking-israeli-soccer-fans-attacked-by-antisemitic-mobs-in-streets-of-amsterdam-in-horrific-footage-n2181713
Induction cooktop update if anybody cares
the installation mongs couldn’t get the carrier bars that the cooktop clips into working because …. mongs
so, it has one carrier rather than two
sits a little proud in one corner and if you press on the corner the damned thing flexes
they gave some long winded explication of why they were so clueless
and then I wished them gone
I’ll fix it myself
ffs
Colesworths are now officially taking the piss on prices.
Meat in their sections are now the same price as the butcher nearby. Guess who is getting a lot more of my business now if the meat is of a better quality.
Like VICPOL, they prefer to beat up their own.
Ridiculous. It’s a cooktop – it has to be level for obvious reasons. Dodgy as.
Wielders has said that he is going to go after the coppers.
All strength to your arm sir.
Freddy Gray: It’s Donald Trump’s world | The Brendan O’Neill Show
the Siemens people complained originally that there were no carriers
trying to dodge warranty while pointing at their idiotic installation manual
the manual also says that if the oven below it isn’t Siemens brand then you have to install a piece of wood between the cooktop and oven
like yeah … nah
the installation mongs said today the Siemens are completely ok as long as there is at least one carrier
these people are idiots
Chermans … ffs
the damned thing is all red LED … like a bloody pinball machine
not f’ken happy Jan
So this dude is a member of Tasmania’s parliament. Caught drug driving, unrepentant about it. He wants a midnight toc go for it I don’t care but was he affected whilst driving? Secondly why is this not a career capital offence like being DUI with alcohol?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-08/tasmanian-independent-state-mp-craig-garland-positive-drug-test/104576386
Eff him, seems some can get away with this stuff on the left. I predict the judge will slap him with a wet lettuce leaf too not only with the DUI drugs but also about the dope found in his car.
Just shoot me.
De Giorgio: “I mean, you have got to ask yourself what a guy is doing with a pet squirrel”.
Journo school teaches them only one thing – Government is always right – even when it isn’t.
Roger
November 8, 2024 7:18 pm
Steady on, black voters were crucial to Trump winning Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.
I was referring to blaks who continue to vote themselves into sh!tville, it takes a special level of mental derangement to fail to see cause-and-effect despite decades of systemic failure
.
There are many, around 3-4 millions of decent, intelligent blaks who are genuinely interested in self-improvement, personal responsibility, family, career etc.. Who clearly don’t wallow into the destructive victimhood narrative that has contributed to a reliable, persistent DemRat voting block which almost succeeded in destroying the USA.
It’s the other lot, composed of the lazy, the unemployable, the borderline, the cretinous, drug-addled, violent, human dregs that I was referring to, “only” 85-90% of Afro-Americans.
F@ck them! They’re clearly beyond help.
Laughing out loud at the American liberals melting down about TrumpHitler, who AOC says is going to start locking up his political enemies.
Of course, it’s pure projection because the DC political establishment and AOC (via US attorney-general Merrick Garland) have already started jailing their enemies like the J6 political prisoners.
The book about political propaganda in the 21st century will be written about the delusions of the American left.
Gilas,
That distinction wasn’t clear to me in the original post.
Thank you for that clarification.
Want to know what a feminist does?
Glorious…
I hope she dies while Trump is still in control.
https://x.com/i/status/1854524379654189172
He he. Mrs Snowcone opens the batting over on the Media Watchdog. Woof woof.
There were a few things at play in the identity/demographic politics which cut against the Dimocrats I think:-
1. Their treating racial groups as blocs who should vote Dimocrat – just because – seemed more nakedly cynical than usual;
2. Selling a middle class Indian as a “woman of colour” trying to pass her off as African American was also laughably transparent;
3. In the last days of the campaign the erstwhile “coolest guy in the room” (Barry Obama) came across as something of a Grandpa Simpson, lecturing young black men as “misogynists” if they didn’t vote for Kamal-toe. That backfired spectacularly.
Come to think of it, when you need to maintain a 90% vote among a particular demographic to win, there isn’t a lot of upside.
A later, more desperate version of:
‘You ain’t black!’
The affected southern black accent on display at her “rallies” (i.e. musical concerts where she was the switch in bait and switch) was even more cringeworthy than her normal ‘voice’.
Further to her middle class background, on her Indian side Harris is Brahmin.
Danger Dan Reviews:
Albanese will want this video banned. Kevin Rudd Donald Trump
Activist Zee Mazloum posted vile Jewish threatsAlexi Demetriadi
35 minutes ago
A social media account connected to an “anti-racism” activist who shared the leaked personal details of hundreds of Jewish creatives said that “Arab Jews can f..k off and die”, vowing that the entire community would be “targeted one by one”.
In social media posts in March, two months after the mass doxxing incident of about 600 Jewish creatives from a WhatsApp group, an Instagram account run by Melbourne-based activist Zee Mazloum warned that none of the community was safe.
On March 15, an Instagram account run by Mazloum posted: “Arab Jews can f..k off and die too. U think ull survive living in Brunswick udumb zios? We know all the Jews in the area and we r gonna target u one by one – business / house / everything motherf..kers. Haven’t y seen the Star of David stickers we pasting? We will set Brunswick free. Until Palestine is free.”
Lawyers acting for Mazloum told The Weekend Australian their client denied writing or posting the comments and Instagram story.
On Friday, after a response was sought from Mazloum, the account had been deleted from Instagram.
The Australian revealed in February Mazloum’s prolific Instagram posts targeting “local Zios”, particularly members of Melbourne’s Jewish community.
On Instagram, Mazloum called Zionists “vile, depraved and disgusting people”, adding they were tired of “peaceful protests”, believing it “time to f..k shit up”.
North Sydney Council on Tuesday cancelled an “anti-racism” event hosted by the Lower North Shore Multicultural Network, which was run by Hue: Colour the Conversation, a consulting firm owned by Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg, who widely disseminated the doxxed details and a close acquaintance of Mazloum. Tuet-Rosenberg is Jewish.
Mazloum is an author for Hue’s anti-racism “inclusive workplace” materials.
The Australian revealed in March that Hue had a contract with the Australian Human Rights Commission to produce anti-racism resources, but which the body later told a Senate estimates hearing was suspended.
After the doxxing, which saw Jewish businesses vandalised, others sent death threats and many more harassed online, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus introduced proposed legislation that outlawed the “malicious release” of personal details, although the provisions as drafted will not be retrospective.
Hue has also been co-running or designing anti-racism programs at some NSW public schools.
One activist running those programs has called Anthony Albanese a “Zio apologist” and claimed Zionists “love to steal”, while Hue itself has said Hamas and Hezbollah are not terrorist groups but rather “armed land defenders”.
The Education Department said it did not have a central contract with the firm.
“We take extremely seriously all reports of racism and religious intolerance or bullying, and are committed to ensuring students, parents, carers and staff can thrive in every school community,” a NSW Education Department spokesman said.
ABCess journo tonight finished his report on DJT’s new administration with ominous warning that there was “uncertainty about Donald Trump’s New World Order.” (emphasis in the original!)
I do hope that is not a hint of conspiratorial ideation happening in the ABCess.
Anyhow we should expect Trump to do what basically what he said, which is impose tariffs targeting particular countries, ditch Paris, have as many foreign leaders singing his praises as he can manage, and to try to end the wars. Doesn’t sound very spooky to me.
Whoops!
So “middle class” would be a massive insult.
The point is the natural enemy of the young black male in the wild would be the 7/11 store proprietor.
That is what they saw being sold to them as one of their own.
In terms of stealing the “natural constituency” voters away from the Dimocrats, I don’t think one can overestimate the role Vance had to play there.
I am listening to Hillbilly Elegy on my long car trips and he has real cut-through in a way “sophisticated urban blacks” like Barry O’Bummer can only dream about. He describes the problems of the rust-belt in a matter of fact way which I think would resonate with those who live it every day.
He manages to articulate those circumstances without blaming those caught up in it, but also without giving them a victimology free-kick either.
And totally colour-blind.
Sancho Panzer
November 8, 2024 8:37 pm
3. In the last days of the campaign the erstwhile “coolest guy in the room” (Barry Obama) came across as something of a Grandpa Simpson, lecturing young black men as “misogynists” if they didn’t vote for Kamal-toe. That backfired spectacularly.
Not sure there was much backfiring. 85-90% voting Dems isn’t much less than the usual 95%.
Truly, these morons are immune to rational thought, they’re beyond help.
50+ years of recidivism is long enough time to conclude that.
No, let them wallow in the sunny uplands of Philadelphia, Chicago, South L.A., SanFran and wherever else they’ve allowed the Dems and the Al Sharpton types to brain-f@ck them with all speed.
Any future GOP contender shouldn’t waste any more time or $$ trying to convert this lot.
As this election has shown, several other electoral groups have been shown to be far more amenable to reason.
From a few days ago. 38yo P Plater mows down kid at Melbourne school. Cops today photographed delivering groceries to driver who still hasn’t been charged.
Few questions:
Anyway story below. If Vic cops are acting as social workers and getting very precious then my BS meter is ringing off the scale.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/melbourne/article-14057507/Victoria-Police-deliver-groceries-crash-driver.html
Maricopa County Election Corruption?
Judicial Watch
Reply to Pogria
There’s a bit of software that plays crow predator sounds and seems to work.
crowbegone.
If they’ve killed that many chooks, it’s worth a try – you can get an mp3 version of it.
Libscum of the uniparty.
https://x.com/LiberalAus/status/1854677737124118943
Libs support the website bans..
Alex Jones Accepts Don Jr’s Nomination To Be The New Press Secretary For The Incoming Trump Administration
https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1854682265617420643
Now that would be prime viewing. I don’t know how they could stop Jones going “off reservation” into all and sundry kooky material. Actually on 2nd thoughts that would part of the attraction heheh.
POTUS-elect Trump has appointed a female Chief of Staff for the first time ever? Clearly he’s a misogynist.
In an ideal world, any Israeli aircraft going to Amsterdam to collect Israeli football fans would have a few of the hard boys from the counter-terrorist squads on board – we’ll teach you Mooslime filth, reverence and respect for the Star of David…you’ll wake up in a cellar in Tel Aviv…
Much spinning on twitter that this was provoked by the behaviour of Israeli fans but clearly premeditated with Israel warning Dutch authorities there was a planned razzia.
https://x.com/SanderSassen/status/1854747993263538251?t=Q2K-jyWXYRlhIdIIqY3Bhg&s=19
“Several days ago I saw a video of a young man wearing a Trump tshirt on a plane sitting in a window seat”
That video is like eight years old.
Still a goody
Voting by African Americans men is shifting red. Slowly but still.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/06/black-latino-voters-boost-donald-trump-election-victory/76084362007/
That MIL deportation video was a joke, I cried laughing at it.
He cuts it three times at least because he obviously started laughing.
That so many took him seriously just made it ten times funnier.
I imagine there would be lots of toys and dummies on the floor at the ABC,SMH and the
AGE on Thursday morning, and maybe a few at the Australian?
I’m having a couple of after dinner single malts, and watching Helen Mirren as Golda Meir. Golda Meir would have taught that Mooslime filth, in Amsterdam, reverence and respect for the Star of David…
What is the best VPN? Asking for a friend