old man emu

Do you think that the Cost-of-Living crisis is something that just suddenly arose from nowhere? That sort of thinking is simply a reliance on short term memory. I watched the following video and it made me think that the current economic situation actually began to develop about fifty years ago. Once again it was the USA which caused the problem.

Well. That was an effort. I didn't have to wait in line for very long, but working out how to record my vote was very difficult due to the number of candidates to select from. I had to mark 10 boxes to complete a valid vote for the Lower House. Numbering the major Parties' candidates was easy, but trying to sort the wheat from the chaff amongst the rest was made difficult because I knew nothing of their alliances or policies. Then I had to attack the Senate ballot paper. Once again, the major Parties were easy to indicate, but then there were all sorts of other groups whose alliances or policies I had never learned of. I simply had to interpret the name of each group to see which ones would get a tick and which ones would miss out. If the Legalise Marijuana party gets in, I'll be stoned.

Aye! There's the rub! once you've tooled up. As it says in the quoted article, there are just about no tool and die makers in the USA, or for that matter in Australia, who could make the tools and dies needed to produce the modern products consumers have been convinced that they need.

Actually the electorate is named in honour of Henry Parkes who is called the Father of Federation. The name was applied to a Sydney electorate from 1901 to 1964, then used for the 1984 election. The name was applied to its current electorate in 2022. The town of Parkes was part of the colonial expansion of the early 19th century, originally founded in 1853 as the settlement Currajong, named for the abundance of kurrajong trees in the local area by the settlers, but was then known as Bushman's (from the local mine named Bushman's Lead). In August 1873, Henry Parkes (later Sir Henry) visited the area and in December 1873 the town was officially renamed Parkes in his honour. (Sir Henry Parkes is recognised as having played an instrumental role in the federation of Australia.) The town's most well-known claim to fame is as the site of the "The Dish", the radio telescope that received the images of the USA invading the Moon in 1969. (What were you dong on that day?) Some others might thing that a better claim is that it is the home of a branch of HARS, the aviation museum.

Another very good explanation from Jerry.👍 What is clear is that the residents have two choices, spend a heap on briefing a legal eagle, with a 50-50 chance of wining/losing, or just pay the bill and cut their losses. This is just another example of people whose expertise in the financial world is not as great as the other party to the deal. Caveat emptor might be the thing to say, but how many of us know the warning signs when entering into big purchasing contracts?

My electorate, Parkes, is the largest in the State with an area of 393,000 sq km and 110,000 electors. Whoever wins this seat can expect to make a motza from the travel allowance.

It is hard to identify what is highest on the list of concerns of young people, since there are so many things they are told about. I'm thinking that what is on their list is not necessarily on the list of the political Parties.

Any report of stupidity coming out of the USA is more likely to be believable than not.

The controversy over the radiation effects of mobile phones came up 20-odd years ago. Experience seems to have discounted the idea of harmful effects. (I have no independent reference for that comment.) Notice that Kennedy referred to high EMR exposure. It is reasonable to say that anything taken in high doses is harmful. Moderation in all things.

I think that this election is being influenced by two things: the Trump effect and the arrival of the younger generation at the polling booths. We have just gone through all the carrying on from the US election and we are suffering from the results. That must surely cause our voters to develop a deeper distrust of politicians. The pork-barreling that has gone on, plus the realisation that no Party can fix the economic situation add to this distrust. The younger generation must worry about the security of their future, both in terms of employment which feeds into the housing problem. There is also the concern over the threat of war in so many places. I don't think that any Party has looked very far into the future in order to develop anything more than quick fix policies.

Tik-Tok, Facebook and Twitter to name three more.

There's no such thing as a fee lunch.

We had a Herc overfly Gilgandra at the start of our mid-morning ANZAC day Service. But these Hercs shoot approaches on our air strip all the time. In 2015 we had a local lad whose an RAAF jet jockey buzz the town before the ANZAC Day service. Set off intruder and car alarms all over town.

Before the advent of renewables, I was strongly in favour of nuclear. But now as I travel about I see the profusion of solar panels both in domestic and commercial situations. I also see wind turbines in many places. Clearly these renewables are the way of the Future. It seems we have the technology for generation in hand. What is needed now are advances in storage technology, which I feel sure are being made. Siso brings up the topic of long distance transmission, but isn't that in place already? As I mentioned earlier, there's a paddock full of solar panels on the edge of my town. Transmitting power from them into the local area surely should not require more infrastructure.

Most of us consider the election to be a race between Albo and Dutton. Are you implying the Clive Palmer is the dark horse in the race?

Talk about foreign intervention in a country's elections! Have you ever considered how Trump's agenda has influenced the coming Australian election?

I have only just noticed that a solar panel site has been created at the edge of my town. It is shielded from sight by the trees on the boundary of the paddock, and the dark colour of the panels camouflages them. I don't know who owns the site, or if it is just there to serve the town.

You will get as much information from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Knudsen as the video.

Not so much a caveat, but a plan. t would be a brave political party that put its foot down and declared that, come Hell or high water, it was going to pour funds into the establishment of these basic industries, and the training of personnel to create and operate them. However, the Party needs to acknowledge that it expertise is in governing, not manufacturing. Therefore it needs to engage an expert in manufacturing to direct the project. This is how the USA won WWII. Not through military ability, but by throwing a tsunami of manufactured goods at the Front Line. Remember what Churchill said to the American People in 1941, "Give us the tools, and we will finish the job. That was before the USA entered the war, but the idea was put into practice for the aid of the British Empire, and ramped up when the USA came into military conflict with the Empire of Japan. This video is about 45 minutes long, but it shows how one man with expert knowledge fulfilled Churchill's plea.

I'm not a gun nut. I don't own a gun, and see no reason to do so. I do, however, like guns as examples of ingenuity of design. I cannot wait to get my daily dose of https://www.youtube.com/@ForgottenWeapons The presenter is not some red-necked Second Amendment twit, but a person who has a deep love of the history of firearms. His access to many firearms museums and manufacturers worldwide is an indication of the esteem with which he is held in the field of firearms history. His presentations have a serious background, but are given with an air of a friendly chat. I have never heard him sprout any of that rabid Second Amendment stuff. At times he takes a firearm to a shooting range to demonstrate its action, and sometimes he will use a subject firearm in competitions. It is unfortunate that the rules for posting on YouTube prevent him from demonstrating firearms that can operate in fully automatic mode but, in his videos, that does not materially detract from what he is presenting.

I can't disagree with the particular example Nomad has highlighted, but I wonder if we are looking at a sort of 'chicken or the egg" situation. Toolmakers don't have tools to make until there is a factory to use them in. There is no need for a factory until there is a product to make, and the demand for that product. There is ne demand for a product until its price to the consumer makes it worthwhile to purchase. At present, I see the best approach for Australia to take is to value-add to its raw materials. Admittedly that is the bottom of the manufacturing ladder, but I suspect that it is the easiest to start with. Thereafter, it might be possible to develop a manufacturing base that uses those value-added raw materials. Then the need for other skilled trades would develop.

I was watching a video of a bloke restoring a Briggs & Stratton engine and he showed a gasket or something similar that he was going to put into the engine. The part was a genuine B&S part, but clearly marked on it, "Made in China". Apart from the problem of tariff damage to parts supply for Americans, it got me wondering just when did Western manufacturers begin moving their production to China. Was it in the 8s when the mantra of Wall Street was 'Greed is Good'? The kicker is at the end.

Mine! Mine! Mine!

While that part prevents Trump from gaining the presidency, it does not prevent him from gaining the vice-presidency. The Section 1 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States establishes the following: In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. That means that the Vice President becomes President without having been elected to that particular office This is followed up by Section 3 which says, Whenever the President transmits ... his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President. That doesn't specify that the President has to give a reason for being unable to do the job. Obviously it was meant to cover situations where the President was temporarily out of commission, usually due to a medical reason, but there are no restrictions on what made the President decide to declare being unable to do the job. Again, if Section 3 is invoked, the Vice-President virtually becomes the President without being elected to that particular office.

For years Hollywood has been pumping out movies with the the theme based on a post-apocalyptic USA resulting from some sort of military attack or authoritarian take-over. These movies suggested that the situations they depicted were due to the application of violence in some form. The results include the destruction of cities and Law and Order. What is unfolding now in the USA seems to be an apocalypse caused not by attacks on people but attacks on the economic structures on which the US society is based. Cities might not be destroyed, but the people will be reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence. The Law of the Jungle might be invoked.