The woman is so stupid that she thinks that somehow it is discrimination against gender benders because they won’t get treatment that normal people get. Um no you stupid botch. Normal people don’t need treatments to change their sex.
She is a fat evil kunt, worse than that mad black bitch from georgia and fat as a pig Bragg. She must be first port of call for Trump’s new AG.
Crossie
February 4, 2025 10:21 pm
Liz Storer now agrees with Usman Khawaja. She keeps digging and digging until she reaches Mecca. Just give her a burqa now, why wait.
Last edited 9 days ago by Crossie
Crossie
February 4, 2025 10:27 pm
Yep, Liz Storer is done, no longer belongs on Sky after dark or even in the daytime. She is no longer worthy of polishing even Laura Jayes’ shoes. Liz is now a bigger anti-Semite than Antoinette Lattouf.
Last edited 9 days ago by Crossie
Titus Groates
February 4, 2025 10:37 pm
Received a letter from the AEC today happily informing me that due to an electoral redistribution am no longer in Watson the seat held by Gaza quisling, Tony Burqa.
We are now in Grayndler under the rat-faced Albo-weasel. Another victory for the democratic process!
The quest for the rare earths. Can the RE magnets in windmills be processed back into their constituent products?
I’ve asked before, but no one seems to know.
If so, China has just shot itself in the foot by exporting it to us to use in our factories.
I’m sure if pulverise and reconstitute them in a different, required shape by adding binding agents, it would be possible.
Leave it to BoN to confirm, so far there was no need due to cost effectiveness.
The quest for the rare earths. Can the RE magnets in windmills be processed back into their constituent products?
Yes.
To date there has been limited commercial interest in REE recycling, but with the growing availability of large-scale scrap and increasing demand for EVs and windmills it looks like an industry is starting to form.
However this only recycles samarium and neodymium (the REEs chiefly used in permanent magnets) back into the supply chain – so not a replacement for Chinese supply of the other REEs used in electronics and the high tech sectors.
When you look around at the sheer amount of windmills that are going to be needing reclamation, that seems like an interesting field for at least those two elements.
There’s a mob on the ASX called MTM Critical Metals that have some thing called Flash Joule Heating Technology that claim to be able to take ewaste, coal fly ash from coal power stations, bauxite residue from alumina refineries and pull critical metals from them.
But – the perennial question now – does the process require reasonably priced power to be economic?
John H.
February 4, 2025 11:08 pm
But it was not clear that any of those measures were major concessions. Mr. Trudeau, in a social media post, described actions that were already in progress under his country’s $1.3 billion border plan, including the deployment of additional technology and personnel to the border. Just a sliver of the total amount of fentanyl seizures occur at the U.S.-Canada border, according to federal data.
Mexico had already ramped up border enforcement before Mr. Trump’s tariff threat, and illegal crossings have plummeted. During President Claudia Sheinbaum’s first four months in office, Mexican security forces have carried out major seizures of fentanyl and stepped up operations to locate and destroy clandestine fentanyl labs. Drug fatalities in the United States declined last year after years of unrelenting overdose spikes.
Miracles happen. We’re on the same page. Any idea why Trump is focusing on these issues when the election campaign was about cost of living and housing?
Because it’s not JUST about cost of living and housing. The biggest issue facing America after the Biden years in the Crisis of Government.
People are desperate to see that an adult is in charge and that this will lead to the cost of living and housing issues being dealt with.
I don’t think so. Canada and Mexico have had various plans in place that promise to do something for a long time, but have done nothing about them.
I’m not about to say that Trump isn’t going to engage in smoke and mirrors, but in this case it’s also quite reasonable to suppose that this is just giving an opportunity to operate in good faith.
Lee
February 4, 2025 11:52 pm
I have never heard of this jumped-up parasite on the taxpayers’ teat, Barbara Pocock, before today.
Yet another over opinionated Green who thinks Australians care what she says.
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
February 5, 2025 12:44 am
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
February 5, 2025 12:44 am
Awaiting for approval
Why I bashed the evil Skaf gang rape ringleader in a jail yard showdown. It cost me more time behind bars, but I don’t regret itBy JONICA BRAY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
With, possibly one exception , there’s nothing rare about rare earths. The stuff is plentiful. It’s the refining which is problematic because the process is environmentally poisonous. There’s nothing magical about the refining process: it’s just that no one wants to do it except China. 🙂
JC
February 5, 2025 2:13 am
Population nirvana
Population Decline Trends
Low Fertility Rates: China’s fertility rate dropped to 1.09 children per woman in 2022, far below the replacement level of 2.1. Birth rates have been declining for years, and some regions reported dramatic drops in newborns.
Aging Population: Nearly 20% of China’s population is over 60 years old. With fewer births and longer lifespans, the proportion of elderly is rising rapidly, which contributes to a population decline.
There is nothing they can do about it. It isn’t just the fertility rate, the youth are gone from “lying flat” to “let it rot”, a form of passive protest against the 996 lifestyle. South Korea is at .78 and are so desperate to raise it that youth are giving money to socialize. Japan was the canary in the goldmine on this one. The three countries have one thing in common: extreme competition in schooling and work. That may not be relevant. I read a few studies on this. The strongest argument is counter-intuitive, the more urbanized(ie population density), the lower the fertility rate. There isn’t any one cause for this problem.
Under a true free market, women would earn way less than half of what men do. All the well paid jobs that women routinely do (healthcare, government, teaching, HR) only exist in their number because of taxpayer support and ridiculous IR laws.
If the average woman earnt her true market value (probably around one third the average man) then every woman would be vastly more attracted to these average men.
Combine that with fixing up our anti-male divorce laws, banning women from any education after Year 10 and you would see a massive baby boom.
Just to be sure I would make pre-marital sex a felony too.
Rotters, you have to copy the link address for Garrison into the browser – this is the only way it will display for me. You’ll also need to do the same for Tina Norton’s ‘toons (Garrison’s woife).
Johnny Rotten
February 5, 2025 4:20 am
Thanks Tom.
Johnny Rotten
February 5, 2025 4:22 am
mem
February 5, 2025 5:34 am
The bleating from the climate zealots continues. Even Michael (Hockey Stick) Mann has joined in the chorus. For a scientist he uses a lot of juvenile hyperbole. In the Guardian no less: “We should plan for the worst,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “The keys to the car have been given to the polluters and fossil fuel plutocrats and they intend to drive it off the climate cliff.” Sure Michael.
He’s been telling you for 30 years we only have 10 years to save the world.
Nothing has changed – we still have only 10 years!
Why won’t you listen to these ex-spurts?
China’s spying campaign is pervasive and relentless. Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director, Christopher Wray said, ““The PRC [People’s Republic of China] has made it clear that it considers every sector that makes our society run as fair game in its bid to dominate on the world stage, and that its plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America’s will to resist.”
Now the Chinese are penetrating the Federal Reserve, one of the key financial entities overseeing the American economy. The Federal Reserve spy case was unprecedented in espionage history, but makes perfect sense after the spy ring was broken up.
One day, China will need friends, but no one will trust her because of her history with other nations.
Winston Smith
February 5, 2025 5:48 am
Putting together REE and Chinese tariff? impositions, and the Ukraine/Russia conflict:
Trump Demands Ukraine to Give Rare Earth Minerals to U.S. as Payment for Billions in Aid
President Donald Trump announced Monday that he is demanding Ukraine provide the United States with access to its vast reserves of rare earth minerals in exchange for continued military and financial assistance.
Winston Smith
February 5, 2025 5:55 am
I was going to stop putting up stuff but this one caught my eye and it’s too good to let pass.
Georgia Republican Reintroduces Bill to Make Blocking Highways in Protest a Federal Crime
Don’t make it illegal to block a highway, make it legal to drive through anyone blocking a highway. https://t.co/37OmaERKtM
Winston Smith
February 5, 2025 5:57 am
Dover, I keep getting this error message. Is anyone else getting it?
The page that you’re looking for used information that you entered. Returning to that page might cause any action you took to be repeated. Do you want to continue?
It started a couple of days ago. I don’t see any reason for it and I don’t remember it coming up on any other sites except when it was warranted.
Circumstances:
I keep two NewCat pages open. One to watch, the other is a duplicate that is open at the top for comments. I read the first, then make comment on the second and then refresh for it to enter it at the end of the first page.
Cumbersome but saves me a lot of scrolling.
Interestingly enough, it doesn’t happen with reply comments, just original ones.
Interesting – the error message doesn’t appear if I post in the original page.
I’ve had that message too when having two separate windows open and a comment half composed on one. Dover’s site seems to only like one of you at a time. Fair enough.
Winston Smith
February 5, 2025 6:05 am
Clean sweep of the Top Right Comments box – all 5 are mine.
Are the rest of you asleep?
Nope. Been up since 4am..smashed my wrist last Sat. Can’t sleep much and typing is pain. It’s a cool morning down south so guess people are having a sleep in after the warm weather.
I’m still a little rocky in one foot after burst aneurism in brain and stupidly went to toss an empty crisp packet at “the cricket watcher” who had neglected everything else for hours, and fell heavily backwards onto kitchen tiles. There’s probably a moral in this but it has passed me by.
Oh mem,
blessings for a speedy recovery.
I can empathise.
I hope the cricket watcher helped you onto your feet immediately, and not during a commercial break.
Nasty, mem.
My sister – nearly 80, has tiles all through the lower floor of her house. Tiles are just so unforgiving. They really need to sell that monstrosity and get a single story fully cushioned and carpeted house.
Regular Paracetamol, mem. Don’t wait until you get pain because then you’re fighting an uphill battle.
Tumbles when older are no joke, Mem. Hope you do a lot of rest and recovery now. With Winstons’s script for pain relief.
I am in waiting room to see surgeon about my busted coccyx, twice injected and still troublesome. An own goal of course, fall on ice in the Arctic Circle and then dogsledding, now Indian rickshaws on bumpy alleyways and two Safaris and much plane travel have all added extra stressors to the original fracture. Organising surgery.
Think hard and long, Lizzie, about surgery. Keep getting opinions. I have a dear friend whose life has been ruined by spinal surgery that nobody can now do anything about.
Have a quick look of Dr. Ian Harris’ book, “Hippocracy”. Harris is an orthopaedic specialist and also Prof. at UNSW. He is not too popular with much of his profession because he thinks much of orthopaedic surgery is ill advised.
Don’t think I am unsympathetic with coccyx pain. As I think I mentioned to you – some years ago, when I was still riding horses, I had a terrific fall directly on to my coccyx . I really know the aching discomfort, although you should be better after the length of time since the accident.
I know you’ll think I’m crazy or haven’t suffered as you have, but in my experience, pain management is largely a psychological issue.
If you ignore the pain and focus on something else, the subjective amount of pain you feel diminishes significantly – this is why some people appear to have a “high pain threshold”. It’s not that it doesn’t hurt (and sometimes a lot), it’s just that it’s WAY worse if you pay attention to it.
As in the old story of the soldier who is shot in the shoulder but continues to fire his weapon and even drags his injured mate to safety, while demanding said mate is treated first, and does that with no complaint at all. But when the same guy has his foot trodden on in the shower, the howls are loud and long.
Or more prosaically, how you only notice how uncomfortable your seat is when the movie finishes.
Tom and I were posting just after 4.00 am. Tom at 4.10 am and Me at 4.20 am.
Winston Smith
February 5, 2025 6:21 am
From the Epoch Times: Chinese Links to Alleged Undersea Cable Sabotage in Europe, Asiahttps://www.theepochtimes.com/article/chinese-links-to-alleged-undersea-cable-sabotage-in-europe-asia-5802356
In the last year and a half alone, there have been no fewer than 13 gray zone incidents in which submarine cables have been cut in what are believed to be acts of sabotage. The bulk of these alleged acts of disruption have been attributed to vessels from either China or Russia and have occurred in the Baltic Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
Like the ship stuck in the Suez Canal – Chinese testing techniques for when war breaks out.
I hope our excellent security folk have left enough time free in their Grampian Nazi work to prepare to arrest and confine all enemy aliens the day war starts – especially the thousands of trained ones ready to hack/disable our infrastructure systems from air traffic control to sewerage pumping stations.
The BBC continues to blame everything on climate change, the fires in LA, the flooding in Australia and elsewhere, and I half expected them to do the same for the school shooting, a rare event in Sweden. Perhaps they just need more time to come up with that link.
I did, but some do not – and often other posters don’t include them.
Just think of it as my caring, sharing, good deed for the day.
I’m storing upthumbs for when I kark it, because God knows I’ll need them.
The UN should be shut down. It’s just a front for the socialist majority.
Wally Dalí
February 5, 2025 8:15 am
Carrying water for Labor, Their ABC helpfully explains how wonderful everything will be in the workers’ paradise, the sunlit uplands of free* full-time kindergarten.
I can’t be buggered doing the googling, but I’d love to see the correlation between spending early childhood being handled by strangers and incidences of ADD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, and LGBTQIAP.
The old missus works at a kindergarten and also child care for the local shire. This is getting rolled out incrementally in Victoria soon. Maybe next year where she works.
She reckons its a terrible idea. Four year old kids aren’t up for that. 15 hours a week is plenty.
Wally Dali “correlation between spending early childhood being handled by strangers and incidences of ADD,ADHD, OCD, ODD, and LGBTQIAP.” and the challenge of quickly having to learn how to ‘read’ changing numbers of non family adults and how far you can trust them, how they have to be ‘played’/ ‘manipulated’ for your survival (too strong??) in out of home care?
I really cannot comprehend how tough it must be for kids under four.
Is it a little easier for kids who are cared for in their own homes, in their family home, their own ‘territory”?
What impact does day care have on forming the trust required for a long term relationship, and then the decline in the birthrate?
What impact does day care have on forming the trust required for a long term relationship, and then the decline in the birthrate?
The former question I would instinctively answer as a definite possibility, the latter question as a definite “shmaybe”. The amount of children who grow up in abusive parental/guardian relationships and who then go on to healthy married lives, may carry emotional scars but I can’t see it affecting birthrate.
A bit of a slow news day today by the looks of things. Not so slow in these parts – youngest grandchild starts school today and photos have been flying around the ether. Those shiny shoes and well pressed shirt won’t last too long!
Another milestone passed for the family, and all my lovely babies have been left behind in the pages of photo albums. I’ll turn around once or twice and they’ll be sending me their graduation photos.
As much as I hate losing them to school, I absolutely love the first day!
Many photos and happy or nervous little faces.
Always the odd screamer to liven up the morning. 😀
Beaut pic of our five year old basically non-verbal autistic grandson in his first day at school gear. He’s been having intensive intro-to-school therapy and calm-down meds. I hope he makes it but I do have doubts. In those big boy shorts his little legs look stick thin and his face is anxious. He’s one quarter Asian and a frail little soul, nearly toilet-trained. He is developing more normally now but it is still slow. We hope to see him more often soon now he is less speedy, to give the parents a break. He can show us his things from big school. He loved the photo from Scotland of grandpa with a big bird sitting on his head.
due to an electoral redistribution am no longer in Watson the seat held by gaza quisling, Tony Burqa. We are now in Grayndler under the rat-faced Albo-weasel. Another victory for the democratic process!
Titus, beware – this will present you with an infuriating dilemma when casting your lower house vote in the feral erection, as I discovered in 2010.
If the final runoff count is between albansleazy and the greenfilth candidate (as it was in 2010) you will end up having voted for one of them if you cast a legitimate vote. Funnily enough, the final runoff last election was between albansleazy and the gliberal candidate – but good luck predicting who’ll be in the final runoff this time.
I’d suggest voting informal, regardless, unless you’re happy to have your vote potentially go to one of those two forkwits.
Such is the idiocy of compulsory preferential voting.
If the final runoff count is between albansleazy and the greenfilth candidate (as it was in 2010) you will end up having voted for one of them if you cast a legitimate vote
Yep. You can vote or you can Cock & Balls. You have no way of knowing who the final runoff will be between at the time of voting. Half the time Antony Green will not know during the election coverage.
The whole point of shifting some Watson voters (likely ALP) into Grayndler is to shore up Albanese from an inner city green insurgency, as those green voters are moved to another electorate.
Now there is candidate agency to replace a fair chunk of the staff with AI. Compiling numbers and stats for which there are formats and formula, producing lists, forms etc. Analyzing results. An Elon could probably reduce it to 20% of current levels and also improve efficiency.
How deep is the rot?
Jo Nova lifts the lid on USAID, which is being shut down right away.
———————————————————————–
All aid agencies are also nests of spies, including our own (don’t ask me how I know this.) That includes all government and most non-government ones.
Where USAID overstepped the tacitly accepted mark is when they moved into ‘progressive’ social policy initiatives, and also activities which actively undermined official US foreign policy.
The aid industry is also notoriously bad at delivering assistance on the ground. Aid workers drive air conditioned SUVs and stay in expensive hotels while allegedly helping some of the poorest people on the planet.
The turning off of the tap will impact well-remunerated employees much more than the people they are supposed to be helping.
Mate of mine saw similar on a few ADF deployments. AusAid in East Timor didn’t do much apparently except hold raucous drunken parties & cruise around in said 4WD’s.
Now it makes sense why Ilhan Omar is so upset that Trump is pausing USAID funds.
The country she’s representing in Congress received over $2 billion from the U.S. since 2022.
Together with Qatar, USAID is number one source of terror in Middle East and Sub-Sahara.
Their recent shipment is arrived to Syria, Tartus harbor. They will convert and modify those Toyota Trucks for next planned war in Middle East with the help of USAID.
Benjamin Netanyahu can’t stop smiling (and occasionally laughing) as he feeds the shouty, interrupty, mostly female media chooks with President Trump in front of the winter fireplace at the White House.
They’re both in their element. Trump sees Gaza as a real estate developer’s dream to do something new. Netanyahu says Israel won’t give up on the hostages — and the IDF’s war aims against Hamas.
Last edited 8 days ago by Tom
Indolent
February 5, 2025 9:15 am
The view from the other side. This is an excerpt from a paywalled Washington Post article. The self-delusion is off the chart.
No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly. As we enter Week 3 of President Donald Trump’s second term, the chaos and disruption of his first look quaint by comparison. The country survived Trump 1. Now, it faces a real threat that the harm he inflicts during his second term will be irreparable. The United States’ standing in the world, its ability to keep the country safe, the federal government’s fundamental capacity to operate effectively — all of these will take years to repair, if that can be achieved at all.
This column will concentrate on the third piece of that trifecta: efforts to undermine the basic functioning of government. A unifying theme of much of Trump’s activity since Jan. 20 has been his unrelenting and broadscale assault on the federal workforce. In his first term, Trump railed about what he termed the “deep state” and its seeming ability to frustrate his plans. In his second, he has unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on career employees — one designed to punish those who dared to counter him or his allies; to oust or neuter those with years of expertise; and to set the stage for a new spoils system, replacing seasoned, nonpartisan career workers with compliant Trump loyalists.
“[Trump] is destroying whatever gets in the way of what he wants to do,” Max Stier, the normally mild-mannered president of the Partnership for Public Service, told me. “That includes having loyalty be the primary screen for choosing his direct lieutenants and crushing the civil service and converting it into a tool for his private agenda, as opposed to a force for the public good and the rule of law.”
Contempt for civil servants — sneering at “unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” — is not…
The Washington Post and its feral editorial staff are having trouble adjusting to the new world where no-one listens to them and they have no political power Their life’s work intercepting and reinterpreting every message from politicians to the hoi polloi was ultimately all for nothing.
PS: journalists are so dumb they couldn’t take the hint in opinion surveys that the public think they’re lower than a snake’s arsehole.
Wapo needs to have its licence to print revoked for a fortnight just to let them wake up to the fact they are a bunch of commos and that’s what happens to commos.
to punish those who dared to counter him or his allies
Interesting the WP think that is a desirable trait. The very definition of an unelected bureaucrat. Imagine the WP view if a conservative bureaucrat did that against, say a Hillary Clinton Government.
And it happens here too. A remember a federal departmental secretary at a multi jurisdictional meeting he was chairing openly saying he was going to stymy his Minister’s plans about a particular issue.
I am not sure what is worse, that he was planning to undermine his minister, or that he was comfortable telling bureaucrats from entirely different jurisdictions (and political flavours) what he was going to do.
“We should plan for the worst,” said hockey stick mann, a “climate scientist” at the University of Pennsylvania
Such as the rain that won’t fall never filling our dams and rivers again*?
Has a single catastrophic prediction about gerbil worming made in the last thirty seven years by these preposterous infuriating charlatans ever even come close to occurring?
*A “prediction” which resulted in the erection of various desalination plants across this country, at massive cost to taxpayers, most of which are rarely if ever used.
Well, with a massively growing population and no new dams they eventually will. Of course, the corrosive nature of the input means the bloody things will be effectively rebuilt several times before they will actually be needed at the tail end of the next big drought.
for Brisbane this will be around 2030-2033.
Sure!.
And as our wymminfolk appear to have definite lapses in commonsense and allow some really dodgy bastards to father their children, perhaps we need to have some more arranged marriages.
🙂
““You know who else gave up power and was a fascist?” said Martyn Rogers, a Yale professor. “Hitler. Hitler was a fascist who gave up his power at the end of World War II. Be afraid of Trump. Be very afraid.”
The reality is USAID had us sending $600 million to Pakistan, $3.7B to Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover, $2 billion to the PLO and Hamas after Oct 7, and $3.4B to Yemen whose Houthi regime we’re currently at war with.
In other words, the Democrats have been paying our enemies to ‘sort of’ leave us alone, except they’re not.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is throwing a tantrum over RFK Jr. passing the initial Senate Finance Committee vote, arguing that allowing vaccine manufacturers to be sued is dangerous.
“Vaccine manufacturers often operate on very slim profit margins.
If they get sued repeatedly and successfully, they simply move out of the vaccine space.
We’ve already seen this happen with vaccines in the past.”
To be clear, she’s arguing that Big Pharma should be shielded from lawsuits—even when their vaccines cause harm.
Indolent – two things. One, you’re in gift to humanity mode this morning (or at least to the Cat Family) – thank you – these posts are illuminating. Two, my youngest brother has lived in Boston for 20 years. Married to a Harvard science graduate who works as a science teacher in the public system (was always her goal, and she got the marks so why not). He has retained his sanity, accent, involvement in cricket etc etc. Boston is great to visit. But politically they’re insane. Warren is the norm, not the exception. My sister in law regularly engages my dad in engineering/science/maths discussions (he’s a civil engineer in his 90s, still engineering), and is a dedicated teacher. But politically off the scale. I joke about left wing policy being centred around, ‘boasting rights at the stupid table.’ When I visit Boston I’m always surrounded by scientist of the highest order, the majority working in biotech. And when they talk biotech they’re fine. Anything else – they should be in an asylum.
Ultimately it goes beyond club stupid. It simply gets down to a desire to control others, and a desire to enrichen oneself. Biotech chick at my brother’s wedding earlier this year (guest of the bride) was without a doubt the highest IQ individual (in her technical sphere) I’ve ever been in the company of. But her politics skew her grip on reality. The vaccine development work she is doing is ground-breaking, and her justification of all of the covidiocy controls at the other end of the spectrum. Boston MA in a nutshell.
In his latest newsletter, economist Jim Rickards has outlined why all the naysayers re Trump’s tariff program are wrong. An excerpt:
The case against tariffs as a successful economic model is rooted in two sources. The first is mainstream economists’ obsession with aggregate demand and the view that any barriers to free trade (including tariffs) dampen aggregate demand and therefore reduce wealth creation. This view is often summarised in the claim that tariffs are a ‘sales tax’ on good produced overseas and simply reduce consumption by imposing dead-weight costs.
The second source is the imposition of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs by the United States in 1930, which are said to have restricted world trade and caused the Great Depression to be deeper and longer than would otherwise have been the case.
This one-two combination of weaker demand and historical failure has caused all but a few economists to reject tariff increases reflexively. In this edition of Strategic Intelligence Australia, we explain why tariffs are paid by producers, not consumers, and why high tariffs will create more investment and high-paying jobs in the US. We also explain why the conditions that may have caused Smoot-Hawley tariffs to fail do not apply today and that today’s initial conditions are highly favourable for tariffs.
This is nonsense. If the govt imposes a tariff on, say, cars, consumers pay more for cars and the govt collects and spends the loot on the usual things govt do with money (think extravagance and waste). Does it encourage local manufacturers? Yes, if they can produce and sell at prices below the imported plus tariff prices. This means that local labour and capital are subsidised by consumers. Tariff walls and ADRs and other impediments did nothing to create and efficient local car industry in Aust. This is a simple case. It gets complicated for some other products. Some 75% of inputs to Australian manufacturing are imported and unlikely to have alternative local sources. Tariff then become a straight tax that reduces demand and investment, and wealth and prosperity. For the USA, and also the PRC, with their vast resources and highly productive culture, tariffs are largely meaningless. They hurt importers more than the locals.
A tariff is just a tax (though not in a strict legal sense). My understanding has always been that when you tax something you increase its price and lower its demand. Not sure there is wide dispute around that.
It depends in who has the power in any supply chain. The producer would like to always pass on costs, including a tariff to the buyer. But if the buyer is the one with market power, then it is the supplier that ends up bearing the cost.
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
February 5, 2025 9:43 am
From the Times. Playtime is over, Mo. If Iran assassinates me, they get obliterated’
President Trump left instructions to “obliterate” Iran in the event that he was assassinated by the Islamic republic, he said in the Oval Office today.
Trump signed an order to impose maximum pressure to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. He said he was reluctant to further punish the pariah state and hoped to see relations between the two countries improve.
Asked about Iranian threats to his life, and to other US officials, Trump said: “I’ve left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated. There won’t be anything left, and they shouldn’t be able to do it,” he said. “And Biden should have said that, but he never did. I don’t know why. Lack of intelligence, perhaps.”
Last September Trump said he had been notified by US intelligence of “big threats” from Iran. The US also determined that Tehran tried to “sabotage” Trump’s presidential campaign.
She’s over the line. The committee voted 9-8 along party lines to tick it off. Susan Collins, who has been one of the flies in the ointment for Trump’s nominees on the floor, is on the committee and voted for it. She can hardly now vote against it in a full Senate vote. Even if Cocaine Mitch and Daddy’s Girl from Alaska vote against, that leaves it at 51-49. The Dimocrats need two votes to defeat it.
USAID spent, through political NGOs, USD 41,7 million on Georgian elections. In terms of US/Georgia population ratio, this would amount to USD 3,78 billion foreign money injected in US elections. These numbers are even more grotesque if compared with GDP ratio as well.
And here was I thinking it was the CIA that did things like turf out saint Gough.
mind you, quite possibly quite a few USAID staff are CIA. And SAVAK, once KGB etc etc.
“Steve Milloy @JunkScience
In case you feel sorry for any EPA employees that may be axed, don’t bother. Recall that these are same arrogant and evil creeps who killed 50,000 high-paying coal industry jobs during the Obama years. Each killed coal job supported anywhere from 4-10 other community and related-industry jobs. The loss of these jobs irreparably devastated coal communities, where there is typically little else do but mine coal or support those that do. All of this was for absolutely no reason. Just left-wing politics. I was there. I saw it. I only wish I could be at EPA to hand out the pink slips and turn the lights off. @LeeZeldin @realDonaldTrump @JDVance”
He’s not easy to get along with, but almost always right.
The kerfuffle about PFAS which is currently plaguing the Federal government – read, taxpayers about to pay out big time – is junk science according to Milloy.
A recurring theme is where a scare campaign is raised in the MSM about some evil ‘chemical’, and the ambulance chasers are all over it like flies on shit. Facts disappear in a shimmer of what ifs and maybes and precautionary ‘principles.’
Milloy has been debunking this crap for decades.
Also, never fell for the climate hoax for a second. He was the first critical thinker about it that I encountered.
Yes.
Accompanied by the very smug and dismissive “learn to code”.
A phrase I have been throwing at sooks on Soshul Meeja bleating about DC public Serpents losing their jerbs.
Meanwhile, in Airstrip One, they’re sounding a bit desperate about Our Strength in West Yorkshire, despite the best efforts of the West Yorkshire Polis.
Low Fertility Rates: China’s fertility rate dropped to 1.09 children per woman in 2022, far below the replacement level of 2.1. Birth rates have been declining for years, and some regions reported dramatic drops in newborns.
Aging Population: Nearly 20% of China’s population is over 60 years old. With fewer births and longer lifespans, the proportion of elderly is rising rapidly, which contributes to a population decline.
Seriously, do they need an excuse? Wanting to obliterate the Great Satan is excuse enough, and to their warped minds will earn them Tash Brownie Points.
I don’t think they can obliterate ‘the Great Satan’ with nukes. They won’t have enough and they don’t have a missile that can reach the US. People need to be realistic here.
DB, they don’t care that they don’t have the capability to destroy the US. But they want the capability to hurt it, and perhaps to start WW3.
Iran’s leaders believe the 12th Imam won’t appear until the world is destroyed. They keep repeating that is what they want.
These are not reasonable people.
These are not sane people.
You cannot negotiate with them or appease them.
They intend to destroy all other religions and their followers.
They don’t need to permanently destroy the oil fields. Putting them out of business for a few years is sufficient deterrent, particularly for the Saudis. They already counter-value weapons for Israel. Nukes are just an upgrade there.
They don’t need to permanently destroy the oil fields.
They would of they can.
Hitting Israel with a nuke would be the same to the Mullahs as hitting continental US.
Upthread, you were telling us that Trump is doing everything to speed up Iran building a nuke.
Now, you’re basically telling us that they don’t require nukes for Gulf oil fields or Israel. So, why would Iran speed up building nukes: to hit and destroy Tehran or perhaps hit Tonga or Fiji? Follow a little continuity occasionally.
No, it’s just being reasonable. but ‘they would if they could’ is certainly nonsense. No, what I said is that threats such as these make obtaining nukes more likely than the opposite. And, no, hitting Israel is not the same as hitting the continental US, not remotely the same.
Yes, that’s right, they don’t need nukes to harm Israel or Saudi Arabia, but if that is insufficient deterrent for Israel/ US (its sufficient for the Saudis), as Trump indicates, then a nuclear capacity, directed at Israel (because now the Israelis would need to recalibrate the risk scenario), or at the US also, if they can also develop an intercontinental delivery system, may just do that.
NSW Premier Chris Minns has been forced to defend Housing Minister Rose Jackson over her role in the taxpayer-funded chauffeur saga, claiming she’s been too busy to speak to the public on the scandal.
Ms Jackson has gone dark in the wake of revelations she was a passenger in a taxpayer-funded chauffeur, organised by former Transport Minister Jo Haylen, to attend a three-hour winery lunch.
That’s lame. You’d think with all those young communication staffers they could’ve come up with something a little less silly.
There will be multiple drivers if the abuse of the vehicles is as long as it appears.
One or two drivers can be dismissed/transferred etc without problems – a dozen cannot be.
There will be leakers to the media.
I love the bit:
“I don’t know why Biden didn’t do it. Maybe a lack of intelligence…”
Roger
February 5, 2025 11:13 am
Interior ministers of the EU are reviewing the UN Refugee Convention with a view to trimming their legal obligations to it as they contemplate deporting masses of illegal migrants who have failed asylum tests along with those linked to criminal activities.
It is suggested that they hope to obtain Trump’s support for a review of the 70+ year old document, which is regarded is no longer fit for purpose and subversive of sovereign borders.
The Times (via a leaked document) [paywalled]
Over to you, Mr. Dutton.
Last edited 8 days ago by Roger
Roger
February 5, 2025 11:20 am
NSW Premier Chris Minns has been forced to defend Housing Minister Rose Jackson over her role in the taxpayer-funded chauffeur saga, claiming she’s been too busy to speak to the public on the scandal.
Now that doesn’t pass the pub test.
Whatever the factional pressures are behind the scenes, it comes across as Minns treating voters with contempt.
Labor doesn’t seem to have savvy political operators at the top these days.
Conventional PR wisdom would have been to tear the band-aid off, have a press conference and try to move on.
What Minns is really saying is “She is as dumb as a box of rocks. She’ll fall in a heap at the first question”.
Even so, prepare a scripted statement, workshop a few obvious answers to follow up questions and have Minns ready to step in.
Helen
February 5, 2025 11:32 am
Just watched Bibi Trump presser.
Gazans will be resettled in Jordan and Egypt. Gaza will be bulldozed and owned by USA and rebuilt into a world metropolis – the Riviera of the Middle East.
The Tele is doing some great work.
Yep, which is why I subscribe. The Tele breaks news.
Trump’s DOE investigating five universities –including Columbia – over alleged antisemitic harassment as Biden’s ‘toothless’ efforts ripped
NY AG Letitia James tells hospitals to continue sex-change procedures for minors despite Trump’s executive order
The woman is so stupid that she thinks that somehow it is discrimination against gender benders because they won’t get treatment that normal people get. Um no you stupid botch. Normal people don’t need treatments to change their sex.
She is not that stupid – she is well aware that many of her voters are.
She is a fat evil kunt, worse than that mad black bitch from georgia and fat as a pig Bragg. She must be first port of call for Trump’s new AG.
Liz Storer now agrees with Usman Khawaja. She keeps digging and digging until she reaches Mecca. Just give her a burqa now, why wait.
Yep, Liz Storer is done, no longer belongs on Sky after dark or even in the daytime. She is no longer worthy of polishing even Laura Jayes’ shoes. Liz is now a bigger anti-Semite than Antoinette Lattouf.
Received a letter from the AEC today happily informing me that due to an electoral redistribution am no longer in Watson the seat held by Gaza quisling, Tony Burqa.
We are now in Grayndler under the rat-faced Albo-weasel. Another victory for the democratic process!
Congratulations you no longer have AIDS.
It’s now arse cancer.
Thanks, Moley. I thought I was trying to stay positive.
You’re positively rooted now!
I see CIA, sorry USAID, was sending 63M USD to Al Qaeda, sorry HTS, in Idlib for humanitarian purposes.
They now kill infidels humanely?
The quest for the rare earths. Can the RE magnets in windmills be processed back into their constituent products?
I’ve asked before, but no one seems to know.
If so, China has just shot itself in the foot by exporting it to us to use in our factories.
I’m sure if pulverise and reconstitute them in a different, required shape by adding binding agents, it would be possible.
Leave it to BoN to confirm, so far there was no need due to cost effectiveness.
Yes.
To date there has been limited commercial interest in REE recycling, but with the growing availability of large-scale scrap and increasing demand for EVs and windmills it looks like an industry is starting to form.
However this only recycles samarium and neodymium (the REEs chiefly used in permanent magnets) back into the supply chain – so not a replacement for Chinese supply of the other REEs used in electronics and the high tech sectors.
When you look around at the sheer amount of windmills that are going to be needing reclamation, that seems like an interesting field for at least those two elements.
There’s a mob on the ASX called MTM Critical Metals that have some thing called Flash Joule Heating Technology that claim to be able to take ewaste, coal fly ash from coal power stations, bauxite residue from alumina refineries and pull critical metals from them.
Thanks, Caveman. That’s an interesting technology.
https://www.mtmcriticalmetals.com.au/
Might even be worth a little punt on the market.
But – the perennial question now – does the process require reasonably priced power to be economic?
Smoke and mirrors?
I actually was suggesting this above, in relation to Panama at the very least.
Miracles happen. We’re on the same page. Any idea why Trump is focusing on these issues when the election campaign was about cost of living and housing?
Because it’s not JUST about cost of living and housing. The biggest issue facing America after the Biden years in the Crisis of Government.
People are desperate to see that an adult is in charge and that this will lead to the cost of living and housing issues being dealt with.
It’s good publicity to begin with.
I don’t think so. Canada and Mexico have had various plans in place that promise to do something for a long time, but have done nothing about them.
I’m not about to say that Trump isn’t going to engage in smoke and mirrors, but in this case it’s also quite reasonable to suppose that this is just giving an opportunity to operate in good faith.
I have never heard of this jumped-up parasite on the taxpayers’ teat, Barbara Pocock, before today.
Yet another over opinionated Green who thinks Australians care what she says.
Zulu Kilo Two Alpha
February 5, 2025 12:44 am
Awaiting for approval
Why I bashed the evil Skaf gang rape ringleader in a jail yard showdown. It cost me more time behind bars, but I don’t regret itBy JONICA BRAY FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
Public Service Medal to that man.
With, possibly one exception , there’s nothing rare about rare earths. The stuff is plentiful. It’s the refining which is problematic because the process is environmentally poisonous. There’s nothing magical about the refining process: it’s just that no one wants to do it except China. 🙂
Population nirvana
There is nothing they can do about it. It isn’t just the fertility rate, the youth are gone from “lying flat” to “let it rot”, a form of passive protest against the 996 lifestyle. South Korea is at .78 and are so desperate to raise it that youth are giving money to socialize. Japan was the canary in the goldmine on this one. The three countries have one thing in common: extreme competition in schooling and work. That may not be relevant. I read a few studies on this. The strongest argument is counter-intuitive, the more urbanized(ie population density), the lower the fertility rate. There isn’t any one cause for this problem.
the more urbanized(ie population density), the lower the fertility rate. There isn’t any one cause for this problem.
Humans are like pandas, they dont breed well in captivity
The problem is feminism and hypergamy.
Under a true free market, women would earn way less than half of what men do. All the well paid jobs that women routinely do (healthcare, government, teaching, HR) only exist in their number because of taxpayer support and ridiculous IR laws.
If the average woman earnt her true market value (probably around one third the average man) then every woman would be vastly more attracted to these average men.
Combine that with fixing up our anti-male divorce laws, banning women from any education after Year 10 and you would see a massive baby boom.
Just to be sure I would make pre-marital sex a felony too.
excellent points
Take all CCP statistics with a kilo of salt.
John Spooner.
Mark Knight.
Putting her in a BMW SUV is a nice touch. They do seem to attract entitled arrogant drivers with no respect for others.
Mark Knight #2.
Mark Knight #3.
Mark Knight #4.
Brett Lethbridge.
A.F. Branco.
Matt Margolis.
Tom Stiglich.
Gary Varvel.
Henry Payne.
Ben Garrison.
Didn’t work unfortunately. Gives an error message.
Works fine for me, JR. Problem is at your end
Thanks Tom and I will investigate.
Stop whingeing Wodney.
Mrs Stencho Pantyhose, a polite reply is not whingeing. Back on the Hamster Wheel for you.
Rotters, you have to copy the link address for Garrison into the browser – this is the only way it will display for me. You’ll also need to do the same for Tina Norton’s ‘toons (Garrison’s woife).
Thanks Tom.
The bleating from the climate zealots continues. Even Michael (Hockey Stick) Mann has joined in the chorus. For a scientist he uses a lot of juvenile hyperbole. In the Guardian no less:
“We should plan for the worst,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “The keys to the car have been given to the polluters and fossil fuel plutocrats and they intend to drive it off the climate cliff.” Sure Michael.
He’s been telling you for 30 years we only have 10 years to save the world.
Nothing has changed – we still have only 10 years!
Why won’t you listen to these ex-spurts?
Mann is an arrogant, malicious bastard.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/new-us-attorney-district-columbia-busts-unique-chinese/
One day, China will need friends, but no one will trust her because of her history with other nations.
Putting together REE and Chinese tariff? impositions, and the Ukraine/Russia conflict:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/trump-demands-ukraine-give-rare-earth-minerals-u/
I was going to stop putting up stuff but this one caught my eye and it’s too good to let pass.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/here-we-go-georgia-republican-reintroducing-bill-make/
From the comments:
Dover, I keep getting this error message. Is anyone else getting it?
It started a couple of days ago. I don’t see any reason for it and I don’t remember it coming up on any other sites except when it was warranted.
Circumstances:
I keep two NewCat pages open. One to watch, the other is a duplicate that is open at the top for comments. I read the first, then make comment on the second and then refresh for it to enter it at the end of the first page.
Cumbersome but saves me a lot of scrolling.
Interestingly enough, it doesn’t happen with reply comments, just original ones.
Interesting – the error message doesn’t appear if I post in the original page.
I’ve had that message too when having two separate windows open and a comment half composed on one. Dover’s site seems to only like one of you at a time. Fair enough.
Clean sweep of the Top Right Comments box – all 5 are mine.
Are the rest of you asleep?
Nope. Been up since 4am..smashed my wrist last Sat. Can’t sleep much and typing is pain. It’s a cool morning down south so guess people are having a sleep in after the warm weather.
How did you manage that, mem?
Are you getting enough pain relief?
I’m still a little rocky in one foot after burst aneurism in brain and stupidly went to toss an empty crisp packet at “the cricket watcher” who had neglected everything else for hours, and fell heavily backwards onto kitchen tiles. There’s probably a moral in this but it has passed me by.
Oh mem,
blessings for a speedy recovery.
I can empathise.
I hope the cricket watcher helped you onto your feet immediately, and not during a commercial break.
Nasty, mem.
My sister – nearly 80, has tiles all through the lower floor of her house. Tiles are just so unforgiving. They really need to sell that monstrosity and get a single story fully cushioned and carpeted house.
Regular Paracetamol, mem. Don’t wait until you get pain because then you’re fighting an uphill battle.
Tumbles when older are no joke, Mem. Hope you do a lot of rest and recovery now. With Winstons’s script for pain relief.
I am in waiting room to see surgeon about my busted coccyx, twice injected and still troublesome. An own goal of course, fall on ice in the Arctic Circle and then dogsledding, now Indian rickshaws on bumpy alleyways and two Safaris and much plane travel have all added extra stressors to the original fracture. Organising surgery.
Hope all turns out well for you Lizzie.
Think hard and long, Lizzie, about surgery. Keep getting opinions. I have a dear friend whose life has been ruined by spinal surgery that nobody can now do anything about.
Have a quick look of Dr. Ian Harris’ book, “Hippocracy”. Harris is an orthopaedic specialist and also Prof. at UNSW. He is not too popular with much of his profession because he thinks much of orthopaedic surgery is ill advised.
Don’t think I am unsympathetic with coccyx pain. As I think I mentioned to you – some years ago, when I was still riding horses, I had a terrific fall directly on to my coccyx . I really know the aching discomfort, although you should be better after the length of time since the accident.
BTW I think Harris is still practicing. I would get an opinion.
I know you’ll think I’m crazy or haven’t suffered as you have, but in my experience, pain management is largely a psychological issue.
If you ignore the pain and focus on something else, the subjective amount of pain you feel diminishes significantly – this is why some people appear to have a “high pain threshold”. It’s not that it doesn’t hurt (and sometimes a lot), it’s just that it’s WAY worse if you pay attention to it.
As in the old story of the soldier who is shot in the shoulder but continues to fire his weapon and even drags his injured mate to safety, while demanding said mate is treated first, and does that with no complaint at all. But when the same guy has his foot trodden on in the shower, the howls are loud and long.
Or more prosaically, how you only notice how uncomfortable your seat is when the movie finishes.
The moral being don’t waste your energy just throwing an empty crisp packet.
Meat tenderisers are better.
Goodness, mem! Be so very careful. Says I – who regularly fall when trying to get over a fence because my right hip is buggered and won’t rotate.
Tom and I were posting just after 4.00 am. Tom at 4.10 am and Me at 4.20 am.
From the Epoch Times: Chinese Links to Alleged Undersea Cable Sabotage in Europe, Asiahttps://www.theepochtimes.com/article/chinese-links-to-alleged-undersea-cable-sabotage-in-europe-asia-5802356
Like the ship stuck in the Suez Canal – Chinese testing techniques for when war breaks out.
I hope our excellent security folk have left enough time free in their Grampian Nazi work to prepare to arrest and confine all enemy aliens the day war starts – especially the thousands of trained ones ready to hack/disable our infrastructure systems from air traffic control to sewerage pumping stations.
Oops! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-05/victoria-berrybank-wind-turbine-collapse/104895810
I’m no engineer but I would reckon that a few hot days might have slightly expanded the structure, then followed by a strong breeze would do the trick if there was cribbing on the joins.
The BBC continues to blame everything on climate change, the fires in LA, the flooding in Australia and elsewhere, and I half expected them to do the same for the school shooting, a rare event in Sweden. Perhaps they just need more time to come up with that link.
Please.
There are several Sporty Beemer drivers here, most of whom don’t fit that description.
Oho, look at Hairy if you must, an excellent but impatient driver who simply doesn’t suffer bad drivers gladly, not at me.
I go with the flow, or ahead of it if I can get there.
That toon didn’t even look like a proper Sporty Beamer to me anyway.
How deep is the rot?
Jo Nova lifts the lid on USAID, which is being shut down right away.
NPR and PBS next, while Kari Lake will take charge of VOA.
She would be perfect for it, she used to work in the media before going into politics.
BB, a link to the Jo Nova site about the USAID and the way it was designed to be a tool of the Deep State..
I hoped that everyone had Jo on their quick links by now.
I did, but some do not – and often other posters don’t include them.
Just think of it as my caring, sharing, good deed for the day.
I’m storing upthumbs for when I kark it, because God knows I’ll need them.
Yes. I do know.
I read her blog every morning – even before the Cats!
The UN should be shut down. It’s just a front for the socialist majority.
Carrying water for Labor, Their ABC helpfully explains how wonderful everything will be in the workers’ paradise, the sunlit uplands of free* full-time kindergarten.
I can’t be buggered doing the googling, but I’d love to see the correlation between spending early childhood being handled by strangers and incidences of ADD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, and LGBTQIAP.
That’s going to put an entire industry – the child minding – on the skids.
The old missus works at a kindergarten and also child care for the local shire. This is getting rolled out incrementally in Victoria soon. Maybe next year where she works.
She reckons its a terrible idea. Four year old kids aren’t up for that. 15 hours a week is plenty.
Wally Dali “correlation between spending early childhood being handled by strangers and incidences of ADD,ADHD, OCD, ODD, and LGBTQIAP.” and the challenge of quickly having to learn how to ‘read’ changing numbers of non family adults and how far you can trust them, how they have to be ‘played’/ ‘manipulated’ for your survival (too strong??) in out of home care?
I really cannot comprehend how tough it must be for kids under four.
Is it a little easier for kids who are cared for in their own homes, in their family home, their own ‘territory”?
What impact does day care have on forming the trust required for a long term relationship, and then the decline in the birthrate?
The former question I would instinctively answer as a definite possibility, the latter question as a definite “shmaybe”.
The amount of children who grow up in abusive parental/guardian relationships and who then go on to healthy married lives, may carry emotional scars but I can’t see it affecting birthrate.
Odd how Sky Oz let go of Erin Molan but chose to keep Foghorn Fool Liz Storer.
Yes, very strange.
Note how the never pair her with Shari on any forum.
Pair Storer with Rowan Dean and there will be real fireworks!
No thanks. Never watch Storer if I can help it.
The WSJ says much the same things about Trump’s tariff campaign as that never-Trumper on Sky yesterday. American Thinker takes the WSJ and shreds it.
The WSJ gets more pathetic every day as they try to pooh-pooh Trump’s trade war – American Thinker
Legacy meja. Part of the problem
…and a nice kitty kat video to get youse all off to a good start for the day…
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1567865343898305
Sorry. Not on Facebook.
Me neither but can still watch it via the link.
A bit of a slow news day today by the looks of things. Not so slow in these parts – youngest grandchild starts school today and photos have been flying around the ether. Those shiny shoes and well pressed shirt won’t last too long!
Another milestone passed for the family, and all my lovely babies have been left behind in the pages of photo albums. I’ll turn around once or twice and they’ll be sending me their graduation photos.
*dusts off hands*
So far all that hard work has paid off in spades.
Well done.
I sometimes wonder if the school yard game British Bulldog wasn’t invented by Big School Uniform Inc to pump up sales.
Osteopaths and surgeons seemed to do quite well out of it too.
Then when the Karens in charge of education banned that game, up popped “rip the pocket off the shirt” game.
As much as I hate losing them to school, I absolutely love the first day!
Many photos and happy or nervous little faces.
Always the odd screamer to liven up the morning. 😀
Beaut pic of our five year old basically non-verbal autistic grandson in his first day at school gear. He’s been having intensive intro-to-school therapy and calm-down meds. I hope he makes it but I do have doubts. In those big boy shorts his little legs look stick thin and his face is anxious. He’s one quarter Asian and a frail little soul, nearly toilet-trained. He is developing more normally now but it is still slow. We hope to see him more often soon now he is less speedy, to give the parents a break. He can show us his things from big school. He loved the photo from Scotland of grandpa with a big bird sitting on his head.
99% hard work, and a dash of luck sometimes, calli.
We’ve had our challenges, just like everyone else. Some of them horrible and life threatening.
My greatest luck is riding on the coattails of other parents who raised marvellous children for mine to marry!
Titus, beware – this will present you with an infuriating dilemma when casting your lower house vote in the feral erection, as I discovered in 2010.
If the final runoff count is between albansleazy and the greenfilth candidate (as it was in 2010) you will end up having voted for one of them if you cast a legitimate vote. Funnily enough, the final runoff last election was between albansleazy and the gliberal candidate – but good luck predicting who’ll be in the final runoff this time.
I’d suggest voting informal, regardless, unless you’re happy to have your vote potentially go to one of those two forkwits.
Such is the idiocy of compulsory preferential voting.
Yep. You can vote or you can Cock & Balls. You have no way of knowing who the final runoff will be between at the time of voting. Half the time Antony Green will not know during the election coverage.
The whole point of shifting some Watson voters (likely ALP) into Grayndler is to shore up Albanese from an inner city green insurgency, as those green voters are moved to another electorate.
And we think the AEC is fair and unbiased.
https://aec.gov.au/About_AEC/files/aec-org-chart-Feb25.pdf
Have a look at how big it is.
I just tried to get some information on their careers and gave up because I couldn’t find nuffin’.
Now there is candidate agency to replace a fair chunk of the staff with AI. Compiling numbers and stats for which there are formats and formula, producing lists, forms etc. Analyzing results. An Elon could probably reduce it to 20% of current levels and also improve efficiency.
If you vote informal your taxpayer subsidy will not go to someone who may need a donation for your primary vote.
A George Alexopoulos toon.
I really like his cartoons. Some of them can be very dark and worrying though. Probably what makes them so powerful.
That was scary!
Trump Signs Sweeping Executive Orders Pulling Out of Several UN Bodies
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Pick to Oversee US Spy Agencies, Clears Senate Committee
Let the good times roll.
Trump Preparing to Shut Down ‘Woke’ Department of Education as Math, Reading Scores Plummet, Show Stunning Lows
Bungonia Bee
February 5, 2025 7:22 am
How deep is the rot?
Jo Nova lifts the lid on USAID, which is being shut down right away.
———————————————————————–
All aid agencies are also nests of spies, including our own (don’t ask me how I know this.) That includes all government and most non-government ones.
Where USAID overstepped the tacitly accepted mark is when they moved into ‘progressive’ social policy initiatives, and also activities which actively undermined official US foreign policy.
The aid industry is also notoriously bad at delivering assistance on the ground. Aid workers drive air conditioned SUVs and stay in expensive hotels while allegedly helping some of the poorest people on the planet.
The turning off of the tap will impact well-remunerated employees much more than the people they are supposed to be helping.
Very well stated and informative.
Mate of mine saw similar on a few ADF deployments. AusAid in East Timor didn’t do much apparently except hold raucous drunken parties & cruise around in said 4WD’s.
Same with UN there.
And, allegedly, Red Cross
Only Trump would have the chutzpah to do it. This is why he is such a saviour for not only USA, but for the western world.
He is convinced God saved him for this job – and this old narcissist may just be right!
@B7frankH
Now it makes sense why Ilhan Omar is so upset that Trump is pausing USAID funds.
The country she’s representing in Congress received over $2 billion from the U.S. since 2022.
Together with Qatar, USAID is number one source of terror in Middle East and Sub-Sahara.
Their recent shipment is arrived to Syria, Tartus harbor. They will convert and modify those Toyota Trucks for next planned war in Middle East with the help of USAID.
39% of their workforce was focussed on J6!
FBI turns over details of 5,000 employees who worked on January 6 cases to Trump Justice Department, as agents sue
Here’s How Many FBI Employees Were Tasked With Taking Down Trump
Benjamin Netanyahu can’t stop smiling (and occasionally laughing) as he feeds the shouty, interrupty, mostly female media chooks with President Trump in front of the winter fireplace at the White House.
They’re both in their element. Trump sees Gaza as a real estate developer’s dream to do something new. Netanyahu says Israel won’t give up on the hostages — and the IDF’s war aims against Hamas.
The view from the other side. This is an excerpt from a paywalled Washington Post article. The self-delusion is off the chart.
Trump 2.0: The most damaging two weeks in history
No president in history has caused more damage to the nation more quickly. As we enter Week 3 of President Donald Trump’s second term, the chaos and disruption of his first look quaint by comparison. The country survived Trump 1. Now, it faces a real threat that the harm he inflicts during his second term will be irreparable. The United States’ standing in the world, its ability to keep the country safe, the federal government’s fundamental capacity to operate effectively — all of these will take years to repair, if that can be achieved at all.
This column will concentrate on the third piece of that trifecta: efforts to undermine the basic functioning of government. A unifying theme of much of Trump’s activity since Jan. 20 has been his unrelenting and broadscale assault on the federal workforce. In his first term, Trump railed about what he termed the “deep state” and its seeming ability to frustrate his plans. In his second, he has unleashed a no-holds-barred attack on career employees — one designed to punish those who dared to counter him or his allies; to oust or neuter those with years of expertise; and to set the stage for a new spoils system, replacing seasoned, nonpartisan career workers with compliant Trump loyalists.
“[Trump] is destroying whatever gets in the way of what he wants to do,” Max Stier, the normally mild-mannered president of the Partnership for Public Service, told me. “That includes having loyalty be the primary screen for choosing his direct lieutenants and crushing the civil service and converting it into a tool for his private agenda, as opposed to a force for the public good and the rule of law.”
Contempt for civil servants — sneering at “unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.” — is not…
The Washington Post and its feral editorial staff are having trouble adjusting to the new world where no-one listens to them and they have no political power Their life’s work intercepting and reinterpreting every message from politicians to the hoi polloi was ultimately all for nothing.
PS: journalists are so dumb they couldn’t take the hint in opinion surveys that the public think they’re lower than a snake’s arsehole.
Wapo needs to have its licence to print revoked for a fortnight just to let them wake up to the fact they are a bunch of commos and that’s what happens to commos.
Relax, it’s just a “Fundamental Transformation”. WaPo used to be in favour of that.
Interesting the WP think that is a desirable trait. The very definition of an unelected bureaucrat. Imagine the WP view if a conservative bureaucrat did that against, say a Hillary Clinton Government.
And it happens here too. A remember a federal departmental secretary at a multi jurisdictional meeting he was chairing openly saying he was going to stymy his Minister’s plans about a particular issue.
I am not sure what is worse, that he was planning to undermine his minister, or that he was comfortable telling bureaucrats from entirely different jurisdictions (and political flavours) what he was going to do.
Such as the rain that won’t fall never filling our dams and rivers again*?
Has a single catastrophic prediction about gerbil worming made in the last thirty seven years by these preposterous infuriating charlatans ever even come close to occurring?
*A “prediction” which resulted in the erection of various desalination plants across this country, at massive cost to taxpayers, most of which are rarely if ever used.
Well, with a massively growing population and no new dams they eventually will. Of course, the corrosive nature of the input means the bloody things will be effectively rebuilt several times before they will actually be needed at the tail end of the next big drought.
for Brisbane this will be around 2030-2033.
Conflating Michael Mann of fake hockey stick (in)fame with Tim Flannery? Same stupid, different persona?
Lol! is figures serious?
Sure!.
And as our wymminfolk appear to have definite lapses in commonsense and allow some really dodgy bastards to father their children, perhaps we need to have some more arranged marriages.
🙂
How bout just not paying for their upbringing as a start … actions have consequences and all that?
That would be a more practical proposition.
natural justice
Heaven forfend we should have a rule that 99% of societies in history have had.
Obviously our society – which mathematically can’t exist in two more generations – is much more sophistomicated.
Exactly! The Bee.
Trump Becomes First Fascist In History To Reduce Size Of Government
That is hilarious! My favourite part;
““You know who else gave up power and was a fascist?” said Martyn Rogers, a Yale professor. “Hitler. Hitler was a fascist who gave up his power at the end of World War II. Be afraid of Trump. Be very afraid.”
I got a huge belly laugh out of several Democrats had also warned that Trump would soon start World War III by making peace with other nations.
Before Trump purge at USAID, memo warned agency it created ‘vulnerabilities’ doling out foreign aid
Report: Biden Admin Made Improper Payments Totaling $236 Billion in 2023
The Beast Lives On: DEI Is ALREADY Being Rebranded
Sen Dem: If USAID Doesn’t Keep Sending Money to Terrorists, Americans Will Be ‘Unsafe’
In other words, the Democrats have been paying our enemies to ‘sort of’ leave us alone, except they’re not.
Nukem Danno!
11 Insane Things Your Tax Dollars Paid For Thanks To USAID
@EndTribalism
You can’t make this up.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is throwing a tantrum over RFK Jr. passing the initial Senate Finance Committee vote, arguing that allowing vaccine manufacturers to be sued is dangerous.
“Vaccine manufacturers often operate on very slim profit margins.
If they get sued repeatedly and successfully, they simply move out of the vaccine space.
We’ve already seen this happen with vaccines in the past.”
To be clear, she’s arguing that Big Pharma should be shielded from lawsuits—even when their vaccines cause harm.
Some of these people are truly insane.
The old slag is on their payroll. Dirty old woman.
Given the amount she has recieved from Big Pharma over the years, we now know why their profit margins are so low.
She has received at least $1.2 million from Big Pharma, Bernie Sanders $1.9 million.
Indolent – two things. One, you’re in gift to humanity mode this morning (or at least to the Cat Family) – thank you – these posts are illuminating. Two, my youngest brother has lived in Boston for 20 years. Married to a Harvard science graduate who works as a science teacher in the public system (was always her goal, and she got the marks so why not). He has retained his sanity, accent, involvement in cricket etc etc. Boston is great to visit. But politically they’re insane. Warren is the norm, not the exception. My sister in law regularly engages my dad in engineering/science/maths discussions (he’s a civil engineer in his 90s, still engineering), and is a dedicated teacher. But politically off the scale. I joke about left wing policy being centred around, ‘boasting rights at the stupid table.’ When I visit Boston I’m always surrounded by scientist of the highest order, the majority working in biotech. And when they talk biotech they’re fine. Anything else – they should be in an asylum.
Let me guess “I heard on NPR/ read in the Grey lady”…
What could possibly be worse than our society no longer injecting poisons into our babies?
Ultimately it goes beyond club stupid. It simply gets down to a desire to control others, and a desire to enrichen oneself. Biotech chick at my brother’s wedding earlier this year (guest of the bride) was without a doubt the highest IQ individual (in her technical sphere) I’ve ever been in the company of. But her politics skew her grip on reality. The vaccine development work she is doing is ground-breaking, and her justification of all of the covidiocy controls at the other end of the spectrum. Boston MA in a nutshell.
Trump administration pulls funding for endangered California fish at heart of water wars
FBI Stops #Resisting Trump’s Order and Turns Over List of Agents Assigned to Political Persecution of J6ers—AceFBI officials were threatening to resign or simply refuse to comply.
No wonder they wanted to keep the information secret.
The FBI under the Criminal Wray and Merrick Garland devoted one seventh of its entire workforce to tracking down the J6ers and putting grandmothers in jail for years.
One seventh.
If one seventh of the organization can be detailed to political persecution, seems like the FBI could afford to lose one seventh of its staff.
In his latest newsletter, economist Jim Rickards has outlined why all the naysayers re Trump’s tariff program are wrong. An excerpt:
The case against tariffs as a successful economic model is rooted in two sources. The first is mainstream economists’ obsession with aggregate demand and the view that any barriers to free trade (including tariffs) dampen aggregate demand and therefore reduce wealth creation. This view is often summarised in the claim that tariffs are a ‘sales tax’ on good produced overseas and simply reduce consumption by imposing dead-weight costs.
The second source is the imposition of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs by the United States in 1930, which are said to have restricted world trade and caused the Great Depression to be deeper and longer than would otherwise have been the case.
This one-two combination of weaker demand and historical failure has caused all but a few economists to reject tariff increases reflexively. In this edition of Strategic Intelligence Australia, we explain why tariffs are paid by producers, not consumers, and why high tariffs will create more investment and high-paying jobs in the US. We also explain why the conditions that may have caused Smoot-Hawley tariffs to fail do not apply today and that today’s initial conditions are highly favourable for tariffs.
Over to you, Arky.
This is nonsense. If the govt imposes a tariff on, say, cars, consumers pay more for cars and the govt collects and spends the loot on the usual things govt do with money (think extravagance and waste). Does it encourage local manufacturers? Yes, if they can produce and sell at prices below the imported plus tariff prices. This means that local labour and capital are subsidised by consumers. Tariff walls and ADRs and other impediments did nothing to create and efficient local car industry in Aust. This is a simple case. It gets complicated for some other products. Some 75% of inputs to Australian manufacturing are imported and unlikely to have alternative local sources. Tariff then become a straight tax that reduces demand and investment, and wealth and prosperity. For the USA, and also the PRC, with their vast resources and highly productive culture, tariffs are largely meaningless. They hurt importers more than the locals.
A tariff is just a tax (though not in a strict legal sense). My understanding has always been that when you tax something you increase its price and lower its demand. Not sure there is wide dispute around that.
It depends in who has the power in any supply chain. The producer would like to always pass on costs, including a tariff to the buyer. But if the buyer is the one with market power, then it is the supplier that ends up bearing the cost.
From the Times. Playtime is over, Mo.
If Iran assassinates me, they get obliterated’
President Trump left instructions to “obliterate” Iran in the event that he was assassinated by the Islamic republic, he said in the Oval Office today.
Trump signed an order to impose maximum pressure to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. He said he was reluctant to further punish the pariah state and hoped to see relations between the two countries improve.
Asked about Iranian threats to his life, and to other US officials, Trump said: “I’ve left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated. There won’t be anything left, and they shouldn’t be able to do it,” he said. “And Biden should have said that, but he never did. I don’t know why. Lack of intelligence, perhaps.”
Last September Trump said he had been notified by US intelligence of “big threats” from Iran. The US also determined that Tehran tried to “sabotage” Trump’s presidential campaign.
Gosh, he is good at Realpolitik. Such a move would not even occur to most politicians.
“Go on Iran….make my day… do it & my people will wipe you off the face of the earth….”
Nice idea, but can a sitting president give orders after his death?
JD would do it.
It would be an act of war if Iran did, so it would be an appropriate response.
And Pete Hegseth.
“in the event of…”
The last one. Whathisname did.
She’s over the line.
The committee voted 9-8 along party lines to tick it off.
Susan Collins, who has been one of the flies in the ointment for Trump’s nominees on the floor, is on the committee and voted for it.
She can hardly now vote against it in a full Senate vote.
Even if Cocaine Mitch and Daddy’s Girl from Alaska vote against, that leaves it at 51-49. The Dimocrats need two votes to defeat it.
Thank God! Or Trump.
A minute’s silence please.
I’ve never seen a picture so pathetic. (Even if it’s AI generated.)
I’m so old I can remember when furrin interference in elections was a bad thing.
Very, very bad.
The worst.
And here was I thinking it was the CIA that did things like turf out saint Gough.
mind you, quite possibly quite a few USAID staff are CIA. And SAVAK, once KGB etc etc.
Who did you think runs USAID?
“Steve Milloy @JunkScience
In case you feel sorry for any EPA employees that may be axed, don’t bother. Recall that these are same arrogant and evil creeps who killed 50,000 high-paying coal industry jobs during the Obama years. Each killed coal job supported anywhere from 4-10 other community and related-industry jobs. The loss of these jobs irreparably devastated coal communities, where there is typically little else do but mine coal or support those that do. All of this was for absolutely no reason. Just left-wing politics. I was there. I saw it. I only wish I could be at EPA to hand out the pink slips and turn the lights off. @LeeZeldin @realDonaldTrump @JDVance”
Milloy is a hero of mine.
He’s not easy to get along with, but almost always right.
The kerfuffle about PFAS which is currently plaguing the Federal government – read, taxpayers about to pay out big time – is junk science according to Milloy.
A recurring theme is where a scare campaign is raised in the MSM about some evil ‘chemical’, and the ambulance chasers are all over it like flies on shit. Facts disappear in a shimmer of what ifs and maybes and precautionary ‘principles.’
Milloy has been debunking this crap for decades.
Also, never fell for the climate hoax for a second. He was the first critical thinker about it that I encountered.
Go, Steve! 🙂
Yes.
Accompanied by the very smug and dismissive “learn to code”.
A phrase I have been throwing at sooks on Soshul Meeja bleating about DC public Serpents losing their jerbs.
I suggested to my accountant yesterday that they should learn to pick and bale.
Chortles all round.
FIRE THE LOT!!!!
Meanwhile, in Airstrip One, they’re sounding a bit desperate about Our Strength in West Yorkshire, despite the best efforts of the West Yorkshire Polis.
Ours is 1.5 and over a quarter of our population over 60. China also has bump incoming as alphas move into childbearing age.
Perhaps the answer is executing everyone over 65 years of age. That should fix the ‘problem’ of an aging population.
‘No man, no problem’.
Trump is giving Iran every excuse to obtain nukes.
They’ve been doing that for years before Trump came along.
Yes, previous administrations have also given Iran every excuse.
Seriously, do they need an excuse? Wanting to obliterate the Great Satan is excuse enough, and to their warped minds will earn them Tash Brownie Points.
I don’t think they can obliterate ‘the Great Satan’ with nukes. They won’t have enough and they don’t have a missile that can reach the US. People need to be realistic here.
DB, they don’t care that they don’t have the capability to destroy the US. But they want the capability to hurt it, and perhaps to start WW3.
Iran’s leaders believe the 12th Imam won’t appear until the world is destroyed. They keep repeating that is what they want.
These are not reasonable people.
These are not sane people.
You cannot negotiate with them or appease them.
They intend to destroy all other religions and their followers.
Their threats will obviously be directed against Israel and the Gulf oil fields. I’m surprised you omitted this.
I was responding to Calli’s claim about the Great Satan. And they don’t need nukes for the Gulf oil fields.
Why wouldn’t they need nukes to permanently destroy the the oil fields? You left out Israel.
They don’t need to permanently destroy the oil fields. Putting them out of business for a few years is sufficient deterrent, particularly for the Saudis. They already counter-value weapons for Israel. Nukes are just an upgrade there.
Is this babble for the sake of it?
They would of they can.
Hitting Israel with a nuke would be the same to the Mullahs as hitting continental US.
Upthread, you were telling us that Trump is doing everything to speed up Iran building a nuke.
Now, you’re basically telling us that they don’t require nukes for Gulf oil fields or Israel. So, why would Iran speed up building nukes: to hit and destroy Tehran or perhaps hit Tonga or Fiji? Follow a little continuity occasionally.
No, it’s just being reasonable. but ‘they would if they could’ is certainly nonsense. No, what I said is that threats such as these make obtaining nukes more likely than the opposite. And, no, hitting Israel is not the same as hitting the continental US, not remotely the same.
Yes, that’s right, they don’t need nukes to harm Israel or Saudi Arabia, but if that is insufficient deterrent for Israel/ US (its sufficient for the Saudis), as Trump indicates, then a nuclear capacity, directed at Israel (because now the Israelis would need to recalibrate the risk scenario), or at the US also, if they can also develop an intercontinental delivery system, may just do that.
Trump Asked Point Blank Why Musk Was Given Access To Payment Systems At Treasury
Trump withdraws from the U.N. Human Rights Council: ‘It’s not being well run’
Trump Shares His Reaction To China’s Retaliatory Tariffs
LOL.
NSW Premier says embattled minister too busy to face questions about chauffeur scandal (Sky News mainpage headline, 5 Feb)
That’s lame. You’d think with all those young communication staffers they could’ve come up with something a little less silly.
I bet the driver will end up being unpersoned. Even if they had nothing to do with leaking this egregious behaviour of the ALP superprivileged.
There will be multiple drivers if the abuse of the vehicles is as long as it appears.
One or two drivers can be dismissed/transferred etc without problems – a dozen cannot be.
There will be leakers to the media.
The lunching ladies of Labor can’t speak when their mouths are full and their arses planted on your savings.
Too busy? Was she out for a drive?
Trump Issues Extreme Warning To Iran They’ll Be ‘Obliterated’ If They Attempt To Kill Him
That is outstanding; that is a leader.
I love the bit:
“I don’t know why Biden didn’t do it. Maybe a lack of intelligence…”
Interior ministers of the EU are reviewing the UN Refugee Convention with a view to trimming their legal obligations to it as they contemplate deporting masses of illegal migrants who have failed asylum tests along with those linked to criminal activities.
It is suggested that they hope to obtain Trump’s support for a review of the 70+ year old document, which is regarded is no longer fit for purpose and subversive of sovereign borders.
The Times (via a leaked document) [paywalled]
Over to you, Mr. Dutton.
Now that doesn’t pass the pub test.
Whatever the factional pressures are behind the scenes, it comes across as Minns treating voters with contempt.
Labor doesn’t seem to have savvy political operators at the top these days.
Conventional PR wisdom would have been to tear the band-aid off, have a press conference and try to move on.
What Minns is really saying is “She is as dumb as a box of rocks. She’ll fall in a heap at the first question”.
Even so, prepare a scripted statement, workshop a few obvious answers to follow up questions and have Minns ready to step in.
Just watched Bibi Trump presser.
Gazans will be resettled in Jordan and Egypt. Gaza will be bulldozed and owned by USA and rebuilt into a world metropolis – the Riviera of the Middle East.
It is probably too hot for a Trump branded golf course for much of the year. Looks like it gets too cold too?
It has a belter climate than Melbourne. But then again, where doesn’t?
My BiL was a keen golfer.
One of my brothers was a golfer.
They play in any weather.
There’s probably one in Hell.
I know there’s one in Wilcannia.
Dudes going to build a wave pool.
That might work – make it a bit like Beirut was 60 + years ago?