willedoo

Ukrainian General Staff have reported that the Russian Kilo class submarine 'Rostov-on-Don' has been sunk in Sevastopol. It's the submarine that was undergoing repairs after being hit in a cruise missile attack last September while in dry dock. This time it was in floating condition alongside a maintenance barge in Kilen Bay. The attached screen grab from Google Maps shows it before the sinking. It's now 'Rostov-on-Bottom'. The orcs will be p*ssed off after spending ten months and squillions of dollars repairing it. I don't know why they bothered; it was always going to be a (wounded) sitting duck where it was. I get it that it was a 300 million dollar boat and wasn't able to be moved to safer waters for repair, but their logic defies me at times.

Kremlin spokesman Peskov has said the Russian Air Force is fully prepared to combat Ukrainian F-16s.

Rock hard beds and terrible food in the Olympic Village was a criticism by athletes that I heard on the radio.

This is the New York Post taking the p*ss out of Biden, post debate and before he dropped out of the race. Jill Biden did an interview for Vogue which came out around the same time as the debate.

I think it's a mix of both. Rat cunning combined with stupidity.

They'll probably have sensors to deploy an all round airbag when they detect a fall happening.

I can imagine one day in the future exoskeletons for paraplegics will be commonplace. As the technology grows, they'll no doubt get a lot smoother and more agile.

The only way you can serve as president three times is to be a stand-in for less than two years (a part term) and get elected for two terms.

It is. Trump can only do one more term. 22nd Amendment, Section 1: No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

Like a case of piles, he won't be easy to get rid of. If he loses this election, at the 2028 election he will be the same age as Biden would have been going into the 2024 election, so if his health holds it will be like a stuck record. The only thing is that if he loses two elections in a row, his star might start to fade in the Republican Party. But not if If it's a close call and they maintain the stolen election claim. In that case, the legend will continue to grow in their small, confused minds. The other alternative is that he wins the election, the world suffers the fool for another four years, then he can't run again. If that happens, he will still have a lot of sway over the Republican Party beyond 2028, but the next candidate wouldn't have the god/rock star status of Trump. In that case it would be up to the Democrats to beat them on policy. I think it will be a lot of years before the Republican Party returns to it's former self as it was before the crazies hijacked the party. The Republican Party of Reagan and the like is unrecognisable in this current crop of fruit loops.

Here's the cover of the New York magazine. I can see Obama, Biden, Nancy Pilosi and George Clooney celebrating. I don't know who the others are.

This bloke is a paraplegic and carrying the Olympic torch while walking with a robotic exoskeleton.

It's nice when you throw a bit of wood on the fire and there just happens to be some sandalwood in it. Reminds me of all that incense they burn in Bali.

The DC-3 at our local air museum is supposed to be the oldest one in Australia. It was a KLM plane originally flying from Europe to Batavia as Jakarta was known as back then. It then changed to the local KNILM and eventually evacuated out here when the Japanese were occupying NEI. It was under Dutch control for a while until the Yanks commandeered it into the USAAF. They seem to think MacArthur flew on it once. Gough definitely did. I wonder how many times he banged his head on the ceiling.

My general rate is $993 per half year, so $1986 p.a.. The other levies would be fairly similar I'd guess. On an annual basis council levies for environment, transport and arts and heritage amount to $149 p.a. making the annual council component $2135. Added to that council collects on behalf of the state government the state emergency management levy ($119 pa) and the rural fire levy ($25 pa). We don't have town water down my road so that saves a bit more and I don't have wheelie bins so I don't get charged the waste management fee. I think I'm probably the only resident in the whole road that doesn't have bins.

onetrack, are those the rates on an annual basis? The reason I ask is that here we pay half yearly, eg: two rates bills per year for the six month period. I ease the pain by paying them weekly. The council lets you do that via direct bank debit. I think it suits them because they get access to your money earlier and it suits some ratepayers because you don't get lumped with the full bill every six months.

One thing about Obama, he knew how to speak.

That's just Obama making excuses for doing sweet F.A. when Putin took Crimea. It wasn't only his weakness at fault, it was the Europeans as well. They slapped Putin's little toe with a wet cabbage leaf which is one way of describing their p*ss weak sanctions that Putin just laughed at. The Russian economy continued to boom and Putin kept building up to what he's doing now. In 2014 Obama and the others sent a message to Putin that read 'We're weak, you're strong, do what you like". The green flag. My apologies to the Obama fans but I have almost zero respect for the bloke.

Regarding the new land valuations: I just received my rates bill and the local council has partially done the right thing by decreasing the cents in the dollar formula for calculating rates. The result is an increase of $365 per year instead of the expected $1,000 increase under the previous calculation rate. They've also increased their pensioner discount by $14 p.a. which makes a net gain to council of $351. The state government pensioner rates discount didn't change. It's one of those things you just have to cop on the chin. The reality is the rates here are still cheaper than in a lot of council districts out the back of woop woop. Those places have cheaper land and cheaper housing but often the rates are quite a bit higher than here on the coast.

The net favourable rating of Trump's running mate JD Vance has gone from minus 6 to minus fifteen in the space of a week. Meanwhile, Trump's appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago didn't go too well.

I was listening to the ABC radio a couple of days ago and they were interviewing a farmer who had lost both legs and had prosthetic legs. He was talking about how he ran the farm and said he didn't consider himself disabled. But in the next breath he said the NDIS supplied him with a worker on the farm. My first thought was that maybe he only considered himself disabled while filling out the forms to get something for nothing. I've known blokes with legs missing and they just carried on without anyone subsidising them. And that's in physical jobs like building and machinery operating. I just thought it was an odd thing for someone to say they don't consider themselves disabled while getting a worker through the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

I'm living in an area that's been inundated by interstate migrants mainly from Melbourne and Sydney. As a consequence, real estate supply cannot meet demand and there's been a feeding frenzy in the real estate market since Covid. That's caused a big spike in State Government land valuations which are based on the unimproved value of the land. My place is fairly typical and increased in unimproved value by $320,000 which puts me at $210,000 over the threshold for paying Land Tax. The threshold of $600,000 is biased against single people as the tax liability is to the individual. For example, as I'm the sole owner of the property, I'm liable for the tax levied on the total amount of value over the threshold. On the other hand, a married couple with joint ownership each get a $600,000 threshold for their 50% share in the property. The resulting difference is that my next door neighbours with a similar property and similar valuation won't be liable until their unimproved property value exceeds $1,200,000, whereas I'm liable once it's over $600,000. If you are living on the property and it's your primary residence, you can apply for an exemption, but there's a catch. The catch is that their definition of a home is a house council approved and registered as a habitable building. Mine doesn't come into that category. It was registered and approved as a shed 28 years ago and I've lived in it ever since but never gone through the red tape to upgrade it to council approval for living. The problem now is that red tape is 50 times more expensive than 28 years ago. The upgrade cost would be in the tens of thousands which I don't have. Depending on how long I live it might be cheaper just to pay the tax which at present rates is the equivalent of $50 per week. Add to that the council rates windfall due to the valuations might add around another $20 per week, so paying $70 per week extra with an age pension income is a sizeable amount out of an already tight budget. Meanwhile with elections coming up, we are hearing plenty of weasel words from governments about the cost of living crisis. They don't practice what they preach. My tactic at this stage is to not apply for an exemption and stay off the radar. If I get a bill from them then I can make a decision from there. There's been no mention of these issues from state government, most likely as we're in the lead up to an election later in the year and the LNP opposition is running their election platform on cost of living and law and order. Cost of living is a hot potato for the Labor state government which is doing poorly in the polls, so my guess is the land tax assessments won't arrive until after the election. It would make no difference which side won the election, they both know how to put their hand in your pocket.

Does that mean you play the record backwards?

It was me not Clinton.

I just remembered something. Once I was listening to 2WEB at work and the man of many mistakes put a record on. As was fairly common, the record played about halfway then stuck on a crack. The static clackety clack sound of the stuck record kept broadcasting for about 40 minutes. Turns out he went out to lunch so it must have been an LP record. After his long lunch break he came back on air, took the record off, declared that it was stuffed and put Slim on. I think it was fairly common to play an LP album while they had lunch.