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notices and features - Date published:
5:30 pm, August 13th, 2018 - 20 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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You know, I have it in for National and that wally Simon Bridges as much as anyone, but the lead story on TV3 news tonight was just mind bending in its pettiness, mean spiritedness and a lazy low blow born of even lazier journalism.
The only real news in the story was the one Tova O’Brien was to giddy in her gotcha moment to mention – Bridge’s enemies are now leaking against him.
Which also raises the question – what sort of credible journalist leads the news with a story as a favour to a faction of the National party?
The worst bit of political journalism of 2018, by far.
Wouldn’t expect anything else.
Says much about the culture of that particular newsroom
Which contender for Nat Leader is O’Brien supporting. She clearly is not supporting Bridges.
Bridges has said some very spiteful things lately so he is reaping what he sows. No sympathy from me anyway.
Nationals sycophants in the media are getting nervous, it is slowly dawning on them that the political game has moved on. Hooton standing at the roadside is angry at being spun out and mindlessly picks up rocks and throws them at the grey dawn. The night, spun out by the road to nowhere has been miserable with Hosk shivering and moaning all night that garages can’t be trusted to keep spare tires inflated in ones boot and he is going to do a scathing Herald piece on leftie mechanics. When he gets back that is. Its all that infantile PM’s fault spits Hoots as picks up another rock. Hosk turns the ignition key on and looks at the gauges, shit Hoots he exclaims, we are out of gas as well!
Too true, was listening to hooten throwing another wobbly on the wireless this morning. Thought to myself… they really haven’t recovered since their election loss, some of them should really consider professional counseling,
Meanwhile… have been thinking of a protest sign to paint up for Wednesday….think I’ll use the following…
‘Another national (logo) disaster to repair’.
quite poetic kat
A few more to go with tonight’s header image.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-king-donald-trump-space-force_us_5b6e90c8e4b0ae32af9843f7
What I don’t understand… what the hell is NASA for then? Or has the world’s most ignorant and imbecilic leader entered his second childhood and really thinks there’s space monkeys out there ready to invade Earth? [Ok. I know the answer. He never left his first childhood.]
As for Pence. His credibility is so compromised now he must never be allowed near the presidency chains of office. What to do………. 😯
NASA is supposed to be a civilian agency. Sciency stuff like Earth observation, solar system exploration, aeronautical research and so -on. Sure, a lot of their stuff overlaps heavily with military and is kept pretty quiet, but it really is primarily non-military.
But there already is a military branch primarily concerned with warfare in space, it’s just part of the Air Force called Air Force Space Command.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Command
As for Pence, his credulity is undiminished and his credibility remains exactly where it’s been for a long time, precisely zero.
edit: aww, that’s no fun when you fix your typos
LOL You should have a warning sign on that link Andre! I nearly damaged my keyboard. 😉
A number of aviation forum/ blogs site I visit are taking piss at dumps new Space Command and the yanks at these sites seem to very unhappy (well they don’t have sense of humour when the boot is on the other foot) that the usual suspect countries leading the charge at dumps expense which happens to Commonwealth Nations.
More pork barreling to the Defence Companies and various states as we gotta keep the US Military Economy rolling or should I say blast off or up up and away we go. Especially when they already have the USAF Space Command which seems to doing a alright atm…
USA Space Command is WOFTAFM in my book.
Google didn’t help so the best I’ve come up with for WOFTAFM is waste of fkn time and fkn money?
Best I can come up with for “why space force?” is it’s one of the random thoughts that hit the tangerine turdgoblin at one of his rallies, and he got a woody from the reaction from his cultists, so he’s continued to run with it.
If he gave it any thought at all, he probably thought going to space was just another place you go send people and stuff to shoot at each other. Kinda like Star Wars and Flash Gordon.
But it’s not. Even entertainment like Gravity that tries to kinda get it right way understates how inhospitable it to humans and how hard it is to get anything to the right place at the right time at the right speed. to match orbits and do anything useful.
At the same time, low and medium earth orbit is kinda the most fragile environment of all. It won’t take many blown-up satellites to create so much space debris that we can’t use that orbital space at all because nothing will survive long enough to do anything useful before getting hit by a piece of junk and disintegrating into another cloud of junk to trash other satellites.
Kessler Syndrome is already a real risk with the amount of stuff we’ve put up there and everyone working together to keep it all out of each other’s way, let alone if some moron starts playing silly buggers.
This opinion piece seems pretty on the money to me …
“It seems evident that the president sees the U.S. military not as an instrument of national power but rather as a symbol of it — which, by extension, makes it a symbol of his own power. This is a dangerous way to conceive of military power for a number of reasons.
Trump’s contradictory ideas about military power have been evident for a while. On the one hand, upon taking office, Trump promised a “great rebuilding” of the military — signing an executive order to that effect at the Pentagon. On the other hand, he complained that the United States could no longer afford to defend allies in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. According to Trump, those allies should go their own way — even to the point of pursuing nuclear arsenals of their own. President Trump has refused to go as far as rescinding American security guarantees, but he has routinely chided America’s allies for insufficient defense spending — most recently at last month’s NATO summit in Brussels — and has questioned the purpose of the alliance.”
https://www.salon.com/2018/08/13/why-donald-trumps-misunderstanding-of-military-power-could-lead-to-disaster/
And if he sees the military as just another contributor to his personal glorification, then adding Space Farce as a whole new branch of the military makes perfect sense.
I fully agree and the general feeling that I’m sort of getting we already have a enough junk up up already as you have mentioned in the lower and medium levels around earths atm without dump adding more to it.
While I was in my study/ Mancave last night, I was skimming through a books trying find something on a totally different subject, but I started to see parallels with Trump and other authoritarian leaders of the modern times as they tend to use the military as some personal glorification and a symbol of their own personal power as you have noted. But the only difference between Trump and the other authoritarian leaders is the US is still a democracy even though some might say in name only, so we still have the checks and balances to contain his use of force I hope which might be wishful thinking atm giving some of his tweets of late which soomer or later some leader will call his buff.
John Minto speaks common sense.
“It’s time to regulate our big banking cartel.
With all the self-flagellation about free speech these last few weeks most people seem to have missed ASB’s record net profit – $1.18 billion. (Net profit means profit AFTER the ASB has done all its dodgy dealings to limit its tax liabilities here – the real profit is much higher).
Across the big four Australian banks we are now seeing annual profits in excess of $3 billion – meaning close to $1000 per year on average sucked from every person in this country.
The banks and neo-liberal politicians would have us believe we are lucky to have such profitable banks because it reflects a stable, strong economy but this is trying to put a fig leaf on a deeply embarrassing reality.
The simple fact is these four, private, Australian-owned banks are acting as a cartel to maintain massive profits gouged from customers rather than competing to reduce the costs to those who bank with them……”
Read the whole article here.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2018/08/13/its-time-to-regulate-our-big-banking-cartel/
I wonder if the minister of the day will take responsibility for this.
“A serial sex offender was given the opportunity to commit violent rapes on fellow inmates after the Corrections Department deleted a warning saying he was not to be double-bunked…
…The Shared Accommodation Cell Risk Assessment (Sacra) tool made recommendations by drawing on a prisoner’s age, security classification, offending history, history of imprisonment, gang affiliation, “physical characteristics”, mental health and other special needs. As a result, a note was made on Katipa’s file expressly banning him from being housed with other inmates.
The warning was inexplicably removed in 2014 and Katipa was again housed with other inmates.”
Warning – Graphic content.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12104889
who was the minister of corrections in 2014?
I love your optimism marty mars. But if any Tory minister took responsibility for their actions, I’m pretty sure the rest of us would probably have an aneurysm.
Yeah, I’m sure Judith isn’t interested in this story let alone responsibility.
Mike Adams of Natural News has gone on the record with a clear false flag warning.
Censorship PURGE points to imminent false flag violence before mid-term elections…
https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-08-10-censorship-purge-imminent-false-flag-violence.html