Daily review 27/06/2024

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, June 27th, 2024 - 9 comments
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Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

9 comments on “Daily review 27/06/2024 ”

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  1. joe90 1
    27 June 2024 at 7:06 pm

    Particularly vile smoke from the memory hole…

    .

    A 60-year-old former teacher and Act Party general election candidate from North Canterbury has been found guilty on 24 child pornography charges.

    Malcolm Albert Spark of Kaiapoi was yesterday remanded in custody after the jury returned guilty verdicts at the end of a three-day trial in the Christchurch District Court.

    Spark stood for ACT in the 1999 election, winning 584 votes in the Waimakariri seat. He was also on the party list, at No 41

    […]

    The jury convicted him on all the charges: 10 counts of making an objectionable publication and 14 counts of knowingly possessing an objectionable publication.

    The publications related to child sexual exploitation.

    The department's case was that Spark had taken part in on-line chats with girls aged from nine to 15 in 2005, which led to him obtaining images which he put with a summary of what he had learned about the girls during the chats.

    Spark was a teacher, and then a courier van driver, and is now unemployed.

    Spark has had name suppression as the case proceeded, but the interim order was lifted once the jury returned its verdicts yesterday.

    The case came to light after the mother of a North Island 12-year-old girl intercepted a photograph of the man's erect penis, sent over the internet.

    The man initiated contact with the girl through her Zorpia social networking web page when she was 11.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/former-act-candidate-teacher-guilty-of-child-porn/6IIZ4SBUYIJVAUQDJQSDFP64JA/

  2. SPC 2
    27 June 2024 at 7:36 pm

    A quote to prepare us for the Biden vs Trump debate.

    Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is injust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God‐​given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God‐​given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.

    Something that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would have agreed with. Thus a constitution to prevent church and state.

    Instead there emerged the American cult, Manifest Destiny. The Monroe Doctrine and then the James Polk era acquisition of the area from Texas to California. A coast to coast dream land – one of prosperity and posterity.

    https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/manifest-destiny

    The protectionist GOP that opposed the free trade of the south, as much as slavery. The GOP focus on the right sort of workforce (eugenics and a no unions policy). The GOP that led opposition to FDR and his resistance to Japanese and German imperialism. The GOP that then persecuted the secular left via the FBI, HUAC and McCarthyism. The GOP that exploited the southern reaction to Capitol Hill led civil liberties to rebuild its base there (Joe Biden is so old he remembers going to clan funerals for Democratic colleagues and then working across the aisle with their replacements). The time of Moral Majority and then Christian Coalition and then welfare reform. Then the GOP the thousand points of the dark force of the PNAC, team why not stuff up the world to create a scenario for belief in end time war and religion.

    • joe90 2.1
      27 June 2024 at 9:13 pm

      This GOP.

      /

      Three female GOP state senators who tried to protect abortion rights in South Carolina lost primary elections this month to men who ran on anti-abortion platforms.

      Katrina Shealy, Sandy Senn and Penry Gustafson were among a bipartisan group of five women state senators, dubbed the “sister senators,” who filibustered a near-total abortion ban in 2023.

      https://nz.news.yahoo.com/three-female-republicans-tried-protect-155359084.html

    • SPC 2.2
      28 June 2024 at 3:52 pm

      FACT CHECK OVERLOAD

      1.“We have the largest deficit with China.”

      — Former President Donald J. Trump

      False.

      The U.S. trade deficit with China in goods and services was $252 billion last year, the lowest level since 2009.

      2.“He did nothing to stop it. In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in.”

      — Former President Donald J. Trump, referring to the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s preparation to invade Ukraine

      This is false.

      The Biden administration sent William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, to Russia in November 2021 to tell President Vladimir V. Putin that U.S. intelligence knew of his plans to invade Ukraine and warn him not to invade. President Biden also declassified intelligence about Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine in an effort to dissuade Russia from invading and rally allied support for Ukraine.

      Mr. Biden threatened — and wound up imposing — vast economic sanctions against Russia’s economy and political leadership.

      3.“I made great trade deals with the European nations.”

      — Former President Donald J. Trump

      This is exaggerated.

      Mr. Trump engaged in trade negotiations with the European Union during his presidency and the talks culminated in a limited agreement in August 2020. That deal was much smaller than what people typically refer to as a trade deal, and it did not shift the balance of trade in the United States’ favor. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services with the European Union grew steadily over Mr. Trump’s term to $146 billion in 2021 when he left office, up from $89 billion in 2017

      4.“Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke, they had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything, no money for terror.”

      — Former President Donald J. Trump

      False.

      Even under sanctions that were imposed by the Trump administration, Iran’s economy plugged along. It wasn’t strong, but it wasn’t broke, and it kept trading with many nations. Mr. Trump made no mention of the fact that his withdrawal from an Obama-era nuclear deal freed Iran to resume nuclear production.

      5.“We’re no longer respected as a country. They don’t respect our leadership. They don’t respect the United States anymore.”

      — Former President Donald J. Trump

      This lacks evidence.

      The concept of international “respect” can be subjective, but what hard data exists shows that President Biden enjoys more approval overseas than does Mr. Trump.

      The latest international poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, released earlier this month, found that “Biden is viewed more positively than his rival.” In a poll of citizens in 34 countries, 43 percent said they have confidence in Mr. Biden “to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” while just 28 percent said the same thing about Mr. Trump. In 24 of those countries, Pew found, Mr. Biden rated at least five points higher than did Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump fared better in only two: Tunisia and Hungary.

      6.“Economists say that’s going to cost the average American $2,500 a year or more.”

      — President Biden on Mr. Trump’s proposal to increase tariffs on most American imports by 10 percent

      This is exaggerated.

      Estimates of the impact of an overall 10 percent tariff vary, but one recent analysis by the right-leaning American Action Forum estimated that a 10 percent tariff could impose additional annual costs of up to $2,350 per American household.

      Another analysis by the Peterson Institute of International Economics found that if Mr. Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on all goods and a 60 percent tariff on China, it would cost a typical household in the middle of the income distribution about $1,700 in increased expenses each year.

      https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/27/us/biden-trump-debate-fact-check

    • SPC 2.3
      28 June 2024 at 4:13 pm

      7.“He wants to raise your taxes by four times.”

      — Former President Donald J. Trump

      False.

      Many elements of the 2017 tax cut that Mr. Trump signed into law will expire in 2025, and Mr. Biden has proposed some tax increases on high-income earners and corporations. But this does not amount to a quadrupling of taxes.

      The 2017 tax cut is expected to reduce the average tax rate by 1.4 percent in 2025, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a left-leaning Washington think tank. Most in the top 5 percent of income would see the greatest change, by 2.4 percent.

      Mr. Biden has also consistently said that he does not support raising taxes on people making under $400,000 a year and, in his latest budget, proposed extending tax cuts for those making under that threshold. Mr. Biden’s proposals would increase the average tax rate by about 1.9 percent, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis. The top 0.1 percent would see the biggest increase, of about 13.9 percent, while the low-income filers would see a reduction in taxes. That is no where near the 300 percent increase Mr. Trump warned of.

      8.“But Social Security, he’s destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them onto Social Security.”

      — Former President Donald J. Trump

      False.

      Mr. Trump has this backward. Undocumented workers often pay taxes that help fund Social Security. But, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office once noted, “most unauthorized immigrants are prohibited from receiving many of the benefits that the federal government provides through Social Security and such need-based programs as food stamps, Medicaid (other than emergency services) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.”

      https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/27/us/biden-trump-debate-fact-check

  3. joe90 3
    27 June 2024 at 8:44 pm

    Keating's shiver….

    .

    (CN) — For the last century, Hollywood has imagined a future where robots are indistinguishable from humans. That future could be here closer than you might think.

    A group of Japanese researchers say they have figured out a way to bind "engineered skin tissue," grown in a lab, to moveable solid objects, including the bodies and even faces of humanoid robots.

    […]

    This new creation, a robot face that has the capability of human-like expressions, such as smiling, can also heal itself, much like real skin, according to a paper Tuesday in the journal "Cell Reports Physical Science," of which Takeuchi was the lead author.

    https://www.courthousenews.com/humanoid-robots-could-be-here-sooner-than-you-think/