kgwilson

I remember that meeting when Trump later reckoned he meant "wouldn't" instead of what he actually said "I don't think there is any reason why Russia "would" Be involved" when referring to Russias involvement in the 2016 election. Then of course his Whitehouse Stenographer quit because she would not support his version and said at the time. Quote "It is clear that Whitehouse Stenographers do not serve his administration, but rather his adversary: The Truth"

The power required for all the electric systems including air conditioning in a car is miniscule compared to that required for its motivation. These are generally run from a completely separate lithium battery system. Sitting in a traffic jam it uses nothing from its drive battery system. The Victorian government is living in last century with such a dumb proposal. Of course roads have to be paid for but the current fuel excise doesn't pay for them anyway & adding a tax on EVs is a disincentive to buying one. Incentives as are now being put in place in NZ and have already been in place in Europe for some years are driving the EV revolution. Range is almost up to 1000km and the price of the latest Tesla to be released next year is aimed to be the same as for an ICE VW golf. Toyotas new solid state batteries will improve range to well beyond 1000km. Despite the governments denial and lack of action by next year we will have electric B doubles up & down the East Coast. The conversion cost is about the same as a diesel engine overhaul & batteries take less time to swap than the required amount of rest time that drivers must take before their next trip. Several centres are being set up, Coffs Harbour being one of them. The savings in ongoing maintenance are huge and the benefits massive with noise and regenerative braking being major factors.

The NZ government has just announced a rebate of $8,625.00 on new and imported used EVs and hybrids on any purchase up to 80k in value & includes at least 1 Tesla model. This will be partially paid for with penalty taxes on new high emitters which includes the likes of Ford Rangers & Toyota Hiluxes, 2 of the most popular Utes which will cost about $3000.00 more. The emissions standard is being tightened so that companies selling ICE vehicles that do not meet the new regulations will be slugged even more. This new incentive is on top of the reductions for EVs already in place due to the Emissions trading scheme. And here we are doing nothing, with no emissions scheme at all, Victoria adding a road tax for EVs & Scumo still rabbiting on about a gas led recovery & how some unknown technology will enable us to meet the 2050 emissions deadline when we are at present one of the highest per capita polluters in the world.

At that level and amount of public scrutiny it is a very long but also very slippery slope. They need a watertight case and anything to do with Trump Inc has more holes and twists than they have yet found so the timeframe will go on forever.

Trump lied his way out of military service and considers that to be a heroic thing. I said here or on another thread that he was and still is a malignant narcissist and as such is incapable of feeling empathy for any thing or any one. To him only one thing matters, himself. I can't decide whether he truly believes all the crap he espouses including the continuing big lie that he was cheated out of the Presidency or whether he knows it is all false but perpetuating it keeps the faith of his rusted on supporting nutters.

Britain didn't have to pay for any of the lend lease equipment provided during the war (that debt was written off) but they did have to pay for equipment left in Britain after the war that was still useful. But from VE day onwards every bit of aid had to be repaid. Britain was totally broke by the end of the war and the last of the lend lease money loaned by the US & Canada in 1945-46 was finally repaid in 2006.

AN bolts are quality controlled and batch identified and tested but that is irrelevant to the Metric/Imperial measurement system comparison. I assume that European metric Aviation hardware is equally quality controlled. I can't imagine Airbus or any other aircraft manufacturer that uses the metric system (practically everywhere in the world except for the US & here), using standard metric high tensile Bunnings bolts that are not quality controlled, tested or unable to be traced.

No different then to the imperial system with SAE, Whitworth, AN, BSP etc.

I don't see why the AN system is simpler? The metric system is not trying to convert imperial to metric eg 1/64 = 0.396875mm, it is metric so dimensions are in metric not a converted imperial measure. Shank length, thread length, grip, head size, thread pitch etc are all metric specs.

The final tally is in. Trumps lies right up till his final speech which included 20 or so is 30,573 an average of 21 a day though they accelerated during the election campaign and post election.

Trump Inc is now toxic. 3 US banks & Deutsche Bank won't go near him & he owes the Germans $420 million & with others 554.8 million. His property business lost 150 million last year, all the golf courses have lost money except Mar a Lago & that only made 2.6 million last year. New York has terminated its contracts and the law firm that represented him on tax issues has pulled the plug as well as 2 other major law firms. The PGA have disowned him and won't hold any tournaments at any of his courses. There are plenty more but the funniest one is that his District Hotel in DC is in a federally owned building so that now makes Joe Biden his Landlord.

It doesn't matter who makes a political speech in the US. It always has to end with God bless you all and God bless America. Religion, mostly devout Christian ones are so ingrained into American society that when the political spectrum splinters to extremes it does so WITH religion. So you get the ultra right wing with ultra fundamentalist, evangelical and corrupted christian religious nut jobs egging them on and providing what they consider to be legitimacy. There is no separation of church and state even though there should be. Even the statement "In god we trust" seals it although the official seal with an Eagle and motto E pluribis unum (out of many, one) apparently contributed by Franklin is a total anachronism that is now totally meaningless. Well the impeachment process is underway. It will pass congress but likely not the Senate 2/3rd majority required even after the inauguration. All it needs though is a 50% majority to prevent Trump from ever running for office again and will also strip him of many ex Presidential benefits.

The problems in the US have been getting worse and festering since the days of Richard Nixon and even before that JFK hailed as a great American President by most of the world was assassinated. An analysis on the ABC website by Stan Grant makes interesting reading. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-10/us-toxic-politics-started-long-before-donald-trump-arrived/13042856 The US has teetered on the verge of collapse for its entire history. For the most part the lies of previous presidents have been with reference to a specific issue. Trump though has made lying an artform and his malignant narcissism won't allow him to lose, at anything. His final act of outright desperation is his undoing. How he has managed to dupe so many people is unfathomable to me but they somehow saw him almost as a God and of course to the devoutly religious God can do no wrong. The red neck, racist, ultra conservative, religious or just plain greedy ambitious politicians saw him as their saviour and ticket to success as well. Well he's gone. Impeachment is certain but it may still not get past the senate. Jail time should be imposed but I doubt it will. Could he be charged with sedition or other criminal acts like trying to force officials to change the election results. Whatever happens the Trump nutters will be out in force once again and the US will continue to try to tear itself apart as always.

It now looks pretty certain the Trump will be impeached. If he is, he will be barred from running for President for the rest of his days. Once the process is set in motion it will not just disappear on the 20th. There are now enough disenchanted Republicans in the Senate to join Mitt Romney and vote for impeachment once it has been passed by Congress. I'm sure there are enough Republicans who can see that he is likely to form his own Trump party and if that happens they will be decimated at the next election. This of course would be great for the Democrats except that Retrumplicans and Republicans could join forces on many issues. Just before the insurrection riots, polls showed that in Trump heartland states and even amongst Republicans in Georgia 70% still support him. That may have dropped a few points now but for some he can do now wrong. Months ago a TV reporter asked some Trump conspiracist supporters what would be needed for them not to vote for him. When asked if he came out on the street and shot an innocent bystander dead would they still vote for him and they said YES. How do you get through to this sort of fanaticism? 10 grams of lead implanted between the eyes at muzzle velocity comes to mind.

Hitler did it and look what happened. He was even jailed in the 30s & Trump should now be stripped of his office & convicted of sedition. It probably won't happen and this would inflame and embolden his hard core base of rusted on conspiracist nutters. It was good to see the penny finally dropping from some of the far right members of the senate like Lindsay Graham & Pence finally removed his brown nose.

I prefer my 0 day week though sometimes it seems back to front.

The US death toll from Covid-19 is tipped to exceed 165,000 this month alone. Add that to the 362,000 already and you have more deaths than all the wars they have been involved in since World War 1. Hows that for a smart wealthy democracy or should I say a dumb wealthy despotic flawed democracy.

Just when you think it's all over Trump comes up with another scheme and this time the entire 1 hour phone call was recorded. The desperation has now got to the stage of telling the Georgia election officials to find him nearly 12,000 votes which is effectively voter fraud. So if he manages to get this done he will have been right all along only it is him committing fraud. Of course the Republican Secretary of State told him there was none so he tried threatening him. This is better than a real soap opera. This can be added to the multitude of other criminal acts he has committed seemingly with impunity since he found out a sitting president is pretty much immune to prosecution. Well in 15 days time that is all gone. The question is will Biden have the balls to prosecute him early on in his administration. I think not. They may begin putting it all together & then hit him between the eyes in a couple of years but it is the fuxed up rusted on ignorant gun toting supporters that will have to be dealt with as well.

Guilianis first court appearance in more than 25 years did not go well. He is only there because most of Trumps other lawyers have wisely withdrawn. As expected he made wild claims and produced no evidence, failed to understand normal points of law and even the word opacity. His case had 2 voters named as co-plaintiffs saying they'd been denied the right to vote and it sought to invalidate the votes of 6.8 million people. Of course there was no answer when the Judge said "How can this possibly be justified". It's a complete sham and a sideshow that is eating up cash provided by Trumps crazed supporters and achieving absolutely nothing. There will probably be a comedy TV series about next year.

I'll get back to the original track. US voters have become increasingly distrustful of politicians for years especially those in the rust and bible belts. Their view and influence they felt was being steadily eroded with liberal and socialist ideals and that politicians were all self serving and failing to represent them. Many evangelical or conservative Christians felt their voice had been completely over ruled by the Californian and New York/New England views. While they were Republicans many were also more right leaning and harboured racist and very conservative gun toting views and most are white. Along comes Trump, a business man, a self made billionaire (so he told them) and reality TV star. He said disgraceful things, was shown to have done disgraceful things but he struck a chord with them saying what a lot of them felt deep down but could not say publicly and he was there to drain the political swamp. They elected him. They didn't care about the lies, his dastardly deeds, he was their man. Four years down the track and his malignant narcissism, dishonesty, ignorance and cons have not fazed them at all. They believe him emphatically, all 22,000 times that he has lied are irrelevant to them and several thousand turned up in Washington to support his ridiculous assertion that he really won the election. Now all the media is fake (maybe except Brietbart). These supporters have become fanatics just as those of other despots around the world are. There is no reasoning with them. It is just a bit sad that most Republican senators are still afraid to stand up & accept the facts. So 73 million voted for him but 79 million voted for Biden. A lot of republicans voted for him because they are republicans not because they like Trump. He may have awakened many who were apolitical through his diviciveness and the polls showing he was headed for a landslide defeat but this also galvanised democrats and disaffected republicans to get him out. And they succeeded. Trump showed that he was prepared to do anything to stay in power. What he does after 20 January is anyones guess. He may start his own TV station or leave the country. He will be tied up in lawsuits for years. He may have a tilt at another term in 2024. Meanwhile US politics will get back to something resembling normality with the Republicans running the Senate & Democrats congress so the so called swamp is still there. Biden was considered a poor choice by many but he is experienced, humble and most of all is not a complete a$$hole like Trump.

Maybe that's the last thing Kayleigh McEnany will do. He's taught her to lie as well as he does. The latest is the march by about 5000 super trumpers in Washington DC. They'd been gathering for days from the redneck states & included all the usual suspects like the proud boys. McEnany told the press there were a million of them, 200 times more than were actually there.

The poms are hardly likely to start a nuclear war but they do have the capacity. Their vanguard class nuclear subs are pretty lethal with the new dreadnought class currently under construction thought to be superior to anything else out there and the new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers are second only to the US nuclear carriers and in many ways actually better. These are all being built by BAE systems that arose as the phoenix of the British Aircraft industry & is now the 3rd largest military equipment company in the world and the only foreign company supplying the US military.

That's why USA is classified as a flawed democracy & at No 25 in the world. It crossed the line from full to flawed in 2016. Partisanship & Trump were the main reasons given although it had been declining for years due to declining trust in government.

One thing that always intrigues me is that Americans consider themselves to have the greatest democracy in the world when in fact they rank No 25 under the EIU world democracy index and are actually considered a flawed democracy. The way their system works seems pretty flawed to me as well although I have not researched the Economic Intelligence Units process of determining this. Trump seemed determined to move towards Authoritarianism by garnering support from a fanatical group who cared little for truth and justice but the majority of republicans who voted for him were more concerned about the enemy of Socialism than they were of Trump so turned a blind eye. I was surprised to find out that about 100 million Americans are evangelical Christians and almost all are exclusively republican. This puts them in the same boat as fundamentalist muslims or any other fanatical religious nut job religions. What goes on inside the vocal beer bbq & guns mob heads is a mystery as well. Most Americans I have come to know and those I was in business with when I was there were fine people but there was always an undercurrent that I did not get close to, nor did I want to.

I just listened to Biden speak and he spoke with confidence, humility, dignity and clarity although his stutter did show itself a couple of times. What a breath of fresh genuine air that has not been heard in the past 4 years from the POTUS. If his lead in Pennsylvania gets beyond the 0.5% margin requiring a recount (currently it is at 0.4%) I think he will declare victory. Trumps legal challenges have all been thrown out so far bar the one to get a bit closer to the counters in Philly. I wonder if Trump will try to pardon himself as he reckons he can between now & Bidens inauguration. That will be funny to watch.