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I think Trump himself is just the frontman in that effort. He’s not a strategic thinker but his instincts, competitiveness and contempt for partnership arrangements plus the inherent acquisitiveness of a real estate developer fit neatly into that scenario. He operates on a more personal level where personal grievances and a desire to dominate govern his behaviour more than any thoughts of implementing a global geopolitical plan. However no doubt that suits those sitting quietly in the background who have those global aspirations very well.

I think that’s optimistic. It’s not happening that fast. They may be running the country into the ground but they are still running it and there’s not a lot an unhappy population can do about that until the mid-terms.

Putin will be eyeing off the Baltic states too in his quest to re-establish the Soviet empire. From his point of view he’s just had one of the best months of his career knowing that the US won’t lift a finger to stop him.

Trump just did an interview with Brian Kilmead on Fox News titled “I’ve had it!”. I can’t post a link at the moment, but it’s worth listening to because it shows just how appalling Trump is as a person and as the leader of the free world. It’s pretty sobering.

There are plenty of nice remote beaches where they could land but they’d be marching for a week before they came across someone to conquer.

No. Surprisingly, Dutton has actually called out Trump for saying Ukraine is responsible for the war. I don’t think he would have risked that if he was PM but he has an election coming up so he’s mindful of his more important audience and contrasting himself with Albo’s approach.

I think Albo and Co are smart to be publicly non-controversial and hopefully more aggressive behind the scenes. It’s unfortunate, but anything that Trump hears that he doesn’t want to hear gets his back up and you’ve suddenly become his enemy. See what happened to Zelenskyy when he said that Trump was living in an information bubble, even though he said he had great respect for the president and the US. It seemed to me that he was only trying to suggest that Trump was being fed misinformation, but Trump took it as Zelenskyy calling him an idiot. Of course that suited Trump very well anyway, because he’s looking for any excuse to shaft Ukraine.

You got that right, Nev.

That is why we have a democracy. Most people are middle of the road and vote that way. That’s why someone like Pauline Hansen is not running the country even though she has a seat in Parliament. That’s also why we currently have so many independents. The gap between extremists will never be narrow because if it was they wouldn’t be extremists.

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Where is the evidence that this equilibrium and balance that you talk about actually exists to either produce some kind of middle ground or cancel each other out? It seems to me to be just an abstract, meaningless concept.

Trump just wants to end the war as quickly as possible and will do whatever it takes so that he can brag that he did it when no one else could. He doesn’t care whether the terms pave the way for Putin to re-start the war in the future or invade some other country, as long as it doesn’t happen on his watch. He doesn’t like Zelenskyy and doesn’t care about Europe. He sees the Ukraine war as just some remote conflict that he doesn’t want to be involved in. His only interest in Ukraine is their minerals.

He’s now called Zelensky a dictator who should ‘move fast’ or he won’t have a country left. Putin is saying that he has now given Trump the correct information about Ukraine. This is not going to end well for Ukraine.

The takeover of the Justice Department by the convicted felon continues:

Not forgetting that the FAA fined Musk over $600,000 for launch safety violations.

Keith Dunstan started it in 1967

He is bringing chaos, not sanity or stability to the economy and immigration, and weakening the US from within at all levels, and internationally as well, to the delight of Russia and China. Putin and Xi can't believe their good luck. Putin will probably give him the Order of Lenin or some such medal when they meet up as a token of his appreciation.

Agreed, and many worked for him in his last administration - something like 30-40 people I recall reading somewhere. They will still be around after Trump has gone, and in the meantime have orchestrated the infiltration at all levels of government of like-minded people. Trump is just their ignorant and self-interested facilitator.

The thing about Project 2025’s manifesto is that it’s not Trump’s work. The long term threat is from those sitting quietly behind Trump who are intent on cementing an undemocratic future for America. Although Trump is an enthusiastic advocate, he is only there for the short term and mainly interested in boosting his own importance and wealth. He’s not a deep thinker.

With Musk and Trump firing several hundred thousand one to two year probationary staff across a lot of different agencies, there will be a staffing, experience and expertise gap that is going to roll through these organisations in coming years. That corporate knowledge and expertise that older staff have will not be transferred to younger people. It’s a very short-sighted policy. It happened in our industry years ago when university entrants flocked to IT and Law, and engineering intake dropped off very significantly. It eventually picked up again but there was a long period when we could not find engineers with 5-10 years experience. That gap took years to resolve.

One person's poetic licence is another person's misinformation these days.

... or slowly either.

I think that pretty much sums it up, especially with Trump calling the shots.

Most Americans seem to think the world stops at the US coastline.

That's simply not true. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/buying-products-and-services/consumer-rights-and-guarantees