He said the government’s fixation on jobs and growth had had some positive outcomes – higher company profits combined with tax concessions mean investors have done well, and jobs growth has resulted in more people being employed – but the glaring hole is the forgotten middle who have not seen commensurate wage rises. This is placing a drag on the economy and financial stress on wage-earning households.
Mussolini’s Dream is a step closer in America (ODT)
The Media Trump likes to quote (ODT)
via Fake Newsman: Anti-Iran Forbes “Writer” is a People’s Jihadi Front (TYT Video)
It’s still Trickle Down Economics (ODT)
Australia’s Ghetto Australia’s Shame will be on the historic record. (ODT)
A few days ago, this supposedly apolitical head of the Department of Home Affairs took the extraordinary step of ringing Senator Rex Patrick to tell him to watch his words after the Senator issued a press release criticising the media raids.
“The overall trend has been clear for some time with the Government clearly working up a suppression trifecta: routinely obstruction and delaying freedom of Information applications; persecuting whistleblowers such as Witness K and Richard Boyle, and now using the police to intimidate journalists.”
Apparently Mike took exception to the following as he felt his character was being attacked:
“There is no doubt that Coalition Ministers and senior bureaucrats have no love of media scrutiny.”
Gee, now why would anyone think that.
His boss, Peter Dutton, infamously said “Some of the crazy lefties at the ABC, and on The Guardian, Huffington Post, can express concern and draw mean cartoons about me and all the rest of it. They don’t realise how completely dead they are to me.”
How dare they criticise him for wanting to fast-track refuge for persecuted “white” South Africans.
But he’s not alone in trying to avoid criticism and scrutiny.
via Pull your head in, Mike – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Today, the licence to use the flag on items of clothing is held by WAM Clothing. This was granted by Thomas in October 2018.
One of the owners of WAM Clothing, Ben Wooster, is also the director of a company called Birubi Art. Last year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission brought legal proceedings against Birubi for its production and sales of boomerang and other souvenir products featuring visual images and symbols of Aboriginal art, all of which were produced by artisans in Indonesia.
The Federal Court found that by representing these works as hand painted or made by Aboriginal Australians, Birubi had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. A hearing on the penalties and orders against the company will be held this Friday, but it is already in liquidation, which could limit the impact of any orders.
via Explainer: our copyright laws and the Australian Aboriginal flag
Trump admits to his view of Life, and Elections all’s Fair so that’s why there is no Collusion or Obstruction. Unless you get caught and even then you plead NOT GUILTY (ODT)
President Donald Trump said that he would accept information from a foreign government on his opponents in the 2020 presidential election and suggested during his interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he also wouldn’t need to alert the FBI.
Trump’s remarks to ABC are alarming considering the special counsel’s Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Stephanopoulos reminded Trump that FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress during a hearing that the FBI would want to know if a foreign government was trying to influence a U.S. election.
However, Trump disagreed with Wray.
“The FBI director is wrong because, frankly, it doesn’t happen like that in life,” he said.
Trump Says He Would Accept Dirt On 2020 Opponent From Foreign Government | HuffPost Australia
Donald Trump claimed that he struck a new mystery deal with Mexico which he refuses to tell the American people about. It’s a secret, he says.
Mexico has already denied much of what Trump stated as fact.
Many political pundits and politicians predicted that he would never go through with his proposed 5% tariff on Mexican goods if they didn’t stop the flow of migrants into America. Even many of his Republican devotees were furious at his tariff threat, especially since the taxes were not tied to trade agreements but instead tied to his anger at his failures on his singular political issue.
During a press pool spray Tuesday, Trump took it further by mocking the press and Americans with this moronic exhibition of decadence.
“Right here is the agreement It’s very simple, it’s right here,” Trump said, acting more like a carnival barker than an actual United States president.
Trump then removes a piece of paper from inside his pocket.
“And in here is everything you want to talk about.”
“Done.”
“It’s done. It’s done. It’s all done.”
Josh Marshall writes, “President Trump is being pressed to back up claims he has a secret agreement for Mexico to buy billions of additional American agricultural goods, a claim Mexico denies. Trump later explained that the secret deal ‘goes into effect when I want it to.'”
via Trump Mocks Americans With His Hidden Deal Trick | Crooks and Liars
Captain Pia Klemp, 35, told Basler Zeitung on June 7 that her upcoming trial in Italy for years of efforts with the civilian lifeboat “Iuventa” that saved at least 1,000 lives will take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Klemp faces up to 20 years in prison, but, she said, whether or not she ends up in jail—she would challenge any conviction in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France if necessary—the damage has been done.
We voted for DENIAL rather than TRUTH and pay the higest price in the OECD for the privilige to hear it. Raids and outlawing any unions is fine as long as they are left-wing. Associations of White Sumpremecists, Assimilationists, Nationalists etc are fine.(ODT)
Our Prime Minister assures us that the AFP raids of last week had absolutely nothing to do with him. Well, of course not — he and his Government are never responsible for anything.
via MUNGO MACCALLUM: AFP raids are the road to totalitarianism
Andrew Bolt is a journalist and white, but as with Eddie is not that bright.
These last couple of paragraphs do I think reinforce the opinion of David Marr that Bolt is a journalist of little repute. To quote Marr on Bolt read this:
But Bolt’s ugly columns have not cost the Herald Sun much more than a fair dose of embarrassment.
There is in the office of the Editor of the Herald Sun (and dare I say those of other Murdoch newspapers) a four-drawer filing cabinet with a suspension file with a tab and the word “truth” on it. It has not been looked at in many years because it is the newspaper where the truth goes to die.
via He’s the Goodes all right – » The Australian Independent Media Network
So in fact, Trump’s (and Hewitt’s) much-ballyhooed “Great Tariff Avoidance” of last week was just another Trumpian scam.
It was Trump who surrendered, not Mexico.
He was laboring under tremendous pressure from “global leaders, business executives, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and members of his own staff” to cancel his economically devastating tariff threats. And he finally caved — but first he had to magically convert what was indeed an embarrassing defeat into another Trumpian victory.
The swindling just never ends.
Only modus operandi of Trumpsters is to bully their way through any real inquiry with disparagement and slogans they want to take the bat and ball and own it completely (ODT)
The House Judiciary Committee will question Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel John Dean during today’s hearing on the Mueller report.
Dean was an instrumental figure in the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and the Democrats feel he can give the proper context to Donald Trump’s actions outlined in the Mueller report.
Donald Trump fumed in a Tweet:
So as usual, Fox News made sure to put on guests that would trash his rivals’ reputation thoroughly.
On America’s Newsroom, co-host Bill Hemmer introduced the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon to do the honors.
Hemmer said, “John Dean is a star witness Hugo, how about that?”
Gurdon said, “You know, we wrote in the “Washington Examiner” editorial this morning that this is one of the signs that the Democratic investigations into the House have descended from drama into farce.”
He continued, “If John Dean is your star witness and he’s the lead-off batter, it shows how bad things will get. He was described as a master manipulator in the Watergate scandal. He’s a felon and he’s been disbarred. His only role these days is to be a sort of house trained poodle for the Democrats.”
Trump’s childish mockery of his rivals is the norm now for all Republicans.
via Fox News Smears John Dean Before He Testifies To Judiciary Committee | Crooks and Liars
Labor backbencher Ed Husic has called on both major parties to reach a fake news “armistice” before the next election, arguing that political scare campaigns are in neither’s best interests.
The western Sydney MP also admitted Labor was “outgunned and outspent” in the digital campaign waged in the lead-up to the May 18 federal election.
via Labor MP Ed Husic calls on parties to sign fake news ‘armistice’
In the past five years the population has grown by just 8%, but government spending has risen by an incredible 21%. By sheer luck the mining boom has increased revenues by 27% but windfall gains like these are not sustainable.
The Daggy Dad “please like me” tour, backed up by his affable side-kick doing slide shows of endless cherry-picked graphs, is nothing more than an advertising campaign. Their claims of strong economic management are based on unrealistic assumptions about future wage growth and consumer spending and completely ignore Australia’s spiralling household debt.
They are reliant on precarious revenue from resources and seem clueless about the importance of diversifying our economy and building new industries to take up the slack caused by technological disruption and the inevitable demise of the fossil fuel industry.
Dutton in her firing line. Declared the Worst Minister of Health by the AMA he’s transitioned to become the worst in National Security and Immigration.(ODT)
NEW Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration Kristina Keneally has signalled Labor’s intention to hold the Government to account for the chaos in our visa system. This article updates some of the data on that chaos which confirms the Department of Home Affairs continues to struggle. The Department’s funding over the next few years, together with its plans for visa privatisation, suggest the Government has no effective method for regaining control over our air borders.
The problems with our visa system start with enormous visa application backlogs and ballooning processing times (see Table 1 for examples).
The New York Times notes: “… the real affront is to democracy, which flounders in the absence of a free press. It should be self-evident to the guardians of Australian security that rogue soldiers and overreaching surveillance are the true risk to Australia’s security, and that such threats will become far more dangerous if the wall of secrecy is made impregnable.”
via ScoMo embraces police state in a shocker of a week – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Any further drop hasn’t been because of the government. (LNP)
It seems to me there is a concerted right wing push to take us back to the intellectual Dark Ages under the guise of Free Speech reasoned or unreasoned there is no difference. They believe the lecture hall need to be thrown open to debate whether or not Andrew Bolt is an Indigenous Australian. That every aspect of campus life need be deregulated and privatised and a free market reducing Sydney University to a a precinct for shouting babble in which the loudest and most powerful win. So much for the Ramsay Center and why it ought have no place on or in a multicultural campus.
Courses in Western Civilisation already exist on campus along side studies on Nazism Islam and Revolution. None of which demand the structure within which they are taught needs dramatic changing or any takeover by assimilationists of Right-Wing Culture. The ideas on the benefits of coal and CO2 are already present on Campus as are their opposites. The fact that they have a larger say and want an even greater one is the very reason the tail wagged and keeps on wagging the Liberal Party dog ensuring Australia has no effective government.(ODT)
“Sydney University is a global centre of religious superstition that would make the Spanish Inquisition look like a model of tolerance and empiricism,” Cameron says.
“Free speech would be exhibit A.”
Unsurprisingly, Spence rejects this. It is not clear the two men will ever be able to “disagree well”. But there might be a way to settle things.
Cameron wants to book Sydney University’s renowned sandstone Great Hall and deliver a public lecture on why Trump may be the greatest US president since Abraham Lincoln.
The university says that would be absolutely fine – as long as Cameron pays the venue hire fees, including the costs of any extra security.
But there are some things I think I could do without much harm if I ruled the world and had the power to take on some of the evil on display in the news each day.So, if I ruled the world, I think I would feel morally confident to take some of the following measures (in no particular order of priority) to fight the forces of evil.
Outlaw evangelical parasites
Outlaw usury.
Anathametize the abuse or neglect of children
Strictly enforce cruelty against animals ,
Put a cap on CEO pay
Restrict the number of children
Create a guaranteed minimum income
Set about creating attitudes toward work
Tax the profits of arms manufacturers
Pass tax laws
Criminalize merciless profiteering
Stop glorifying violence
Mandate kindness,
via If I Ruled the World: Dream a Little Dream With Me | The Smirking Chimp
Who is Atlas did he Shrug?
Bernie Sanders says that he’s a socialist and that he loves the New Deal. He doesn’t see any discordance there, and neither do a lot of people who support him.
There’s a famous story that was told when I was growing up about a politician who is asked about his position on whiskey. And he says, “If by whiskey we mean the drink we enjoy to celebrate happy events and toast our friends, I’m for whiskey. But if by whiskey we mean the demon liquor that drives families apart, I’m against whiskey.”
That’s where I am. If by socialism, you mean the New Deal, then by golly I’m in favor of it. Obviously, the New Deal shaded into socialism or social democracy, if you will. But in many ways, it’s a foolish argument, because we have socialism for the rich everywhere. Nobody is actually trying to keep the government out of the market. At least, nobody in Herbert Hoover or Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
Over a million people marched through Hong Kong city streets on Sunday evening in a massive protest against a bill that would allow people to be extradited to mainland China.
via Hong Kong protest: China’s extradition law challenged by over a million people
Trump made clear in an interview with CNBC his frustration with a system that provides political independence for America’s central bank – something most economists see as vital to its credibility. Trump noted that China’s president, by contrast, is essentially also head of the Chinese central bank.
via ‘They made a big mistake’: Trump growing frustrated with ‘destructive’ US Fed
Mexican authorities bear no responsibility for what’s going on. International law protects the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. So does the 1980 US Refugee Act, a statutory basis for granting them asylum.
Unwanted aliens of the wrong race and ethnicity, along with Muslims from the wrong countries, are unwelcome in Trump’s America.
His immigration policy blocks them from entering the US — notably individuals fleeing repressive US-supported regimes in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, three of the world’s most violent nations.
via Trump’s Mexico Deal: Hostage-Taking Over International Rules – Stephen Lendman
One could argue that the promise of wealth and freedom has been lost and is accelerating in the West. China has fed 1.3 billion people via strict social engineering. The West particularly the USA and Australia’s want to be like America is losing that battle and citizens are in fact spiralling into both physical and psychological poverty with governments racing towards increasing surveillance and militarisation. Mao’s legacy lives on but so does the colonial yolk we adopted and it’s becoming increasingly visible. (ODT)
White House officials blocked written testimony from a State Department senior analyst about “potentially catastrophic” climate change because it didn’t “jibe” with the Trump administration’s view, a source told The Washington Post.
Trump has called climate change a “Chinese hoax.” Asked in an Axios interview late last year about his attitude toward global warming, Trump said he believed there has been climate change. “Will it change back?” he asked, making a waving motion through the air with his hand. “Probably. That’s what I think.” He said many scientists “very much dispute” that humans are the primary cause of global warming. He reiterated those attitudes in an interview Wednesday with Piers Morgan.
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