A new book examines why congressional leadership pulled their punches when it mattered most.
Source: Deconstructed: How Democrats Botched Trump’s Impeachment
Tag: Failure
The lack of emphasis on prevention is revealing. Rather than tackle the drug crisis as a demand-side problem, the U.S. and other Western governments pretend that it is a supply-side problem that can be dealt with by using military force against petty drug dealers and peasants who grow the coca plant. Petro’s cry from the heart at the United Nations attempted to call attention to the root causes of the drug crisis:
“According to the irrational power of the world, the market that razes existence is not to blame; it is the jungle and those who live in it that are to blame. Bank accounts have become unlimited; the money saved by the most powerful people on Earth could not even be spent over the course of centuries. The empty existence produced by the artificiality of competition is filled with noise and drugs. The addiction to money and to possessions has another face: the drug addiction of people who lose the competition in the artificial race that humanity has become. The sickness of loneliness is not cured by [dousing] the forests with glyphosate; the forest is not to blame. To blame is your society educated by endless consumption, by the stupid confusion between consumption and happiness that allows the pockets of the powerful to fill with money.”
What Morrison failed to tell us as he cost us $830m in penalties for breaking the contract with France and eloping with the USA and UK. These two lovers are unable to perform. Dutton has signed papers with two limp dicks.
Latest report to US Congress reveals the superpower will struggle to meet its own submarine-building targets for decades
“Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill, a member of the Select Committee, characterized the January 6 attack on our democracy as a “dry run” – implying it could happen again – perhaps successfully. It will happen again – unless we put mechanisms in place to constrain a corrupt president from exploiting the absolute power presently conveyed by the Insurrection Act. That change needs to happen now – before yet another authoritarian – or even the same one – tries another Jan. 6 and succeeds,” he argued.
If true, the deaths of so many generals, alongside more senior Russian army and naval commanders – in just four weeks of combat – exceeds the attrition rate seen in the worst months of fighting in the bloody nine-year war fought by Russia in Chechnya, as well as Russian and Soviet-era campaigns in Afghanistan, Georgia and Syria.
Source: Russian generals are getting killed at an extraordinary rate
The ALP’s Pink Bats were an accident politicized by the LNP with relish. They danced on the dead’s graves while the ALP mourned. 6000 Covid -19 Deaths have been excused by Scott Morrison as nothing really to do with him, “all the world is suffering”. We weren’t and we held the line until we realized Morrison wasn’t going to do anything other than call it “a natural disaster” which we can’t control, and must simply push through. It’s not his fault even when he’s forced to say “sorry”.
But death will lead the stories. That’s what we have been afraid of, either personally, or for vulnerable friends and family. That’s our collective trauma. More than 5.7 million deaths around the world so far. More than 5,900 in Australia.
After two hard-fought weeks of negotiations, the Glasgow climate change summit is, at last, over. All 197 participating countries adopted the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact, despite an 11th hour intervention by India in which the final agreement was watered down from “phasing out” coal to “phasing down”.
Australia’s top media authority has been criticised for failing to investigate complaints made against Sky News over COVID-19 misinformation. Anthony Klan reports. AUSTRALIA’S MEDIA REGULATOR has not published its “quarterly” reports on complaints and investigations for almost a year and in October last year stopped publishing the figures in its annual report altogether.
Source: EXCLUSIVE: Media ‘cop’ hides Sky News complaints data
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s promotion this week of alleged rapist Christian Porter to the important role of acting leader of the House has left many people angry and aghast.
The prime minister has until next May to hold an election. The government has ample time to play catch-up with the rollout. If further outbreaks are contained and the elusive herd immunity is achieved by then, lockdowns will have become a thing of the past. The relief at being able to move on may obliterate current disquiet. Further, in normal circumstances, policy virtue is not necessarily synonymous with political success. The last federal election was an indicator of this. The Coalition triumphed despite a threadbare policy program. In other words, policy prowess is only ever one measure of a government’s success.
Source: Is the COVID vaccine rollout the greatest public policy failure in recent Australian history?
Paul Taucher and Dr Dean Aszkielowicz argue that war crimes justice does not work the way commentators generally suggest it does. AFTER THE SECOND World War, the victorious Allies prosecuted German and Japanese civilian leaders and military personnel for war crimes. The decision to hold these trials was based partly on a belief that the decades prior to the war had seen a genuine awakening among nations that some rules should apply to the conduct of wars and that efforts must be made to avoid devastating conflicts.
Source: The problem with war crimes law and what needs to be done
The latest official figures show Australia’s infrastructure investment has plummeted, reports Alan Austin.
AUSTRALIA HAS BORROWED heavily to weather the recent COVID-induced economic storm. But in contrast to previous major global recessions, it is emerging with virtually nothing tangible to show for the debt incurred.
Source: ALAN AUSTIN: Australia’s low infrastructure spend, despite record debt
The Coalition government’s signature employment policy for young people JobMaker has created just 609 jobs. And thanks to the flawed design of JobKeeper, which shut out many young people from key financial support, superannuation accounts were emptied, for which the young will pay a heavy price down the track. Kathryn Daley, Belinda Johnson and Patrick O’Keefe report.
The idea that a question so fundamental to our sense of self as a people would arise on his watch would have been absurd a fortnight ago. But it was inevitable once we learned that a young woman who worked for Morrison’s government had been allegedly raped by a colleague in Parliament House. Inevitable because the Prime Minister’s first instinct was to see the story of Brittany Higgins politically. He sensed the issue would be damaging for his government, and took the short cut of denial. He wanted the public to know he wasn’t told by anyone in his office or his ministry before the news broke on February 15. Illustration: Simon Letch Illustration: Simon LetchCredit:The Sydney Morning Herald He has taken that argument to the strangest place of all, where he says he is aware of rumours on the Labor side, as well as his own, but not the specific allegation of a violent crime against Higgins, committed just 50 metres from his own office. “Once again, the Leader of the Opposition can come to this dispatch box, seek to state these matters and seek to pointscore on them,” Morrison told Parliament on Wednesday. “But the issue that is here is the issue that we all must address. These matters, as we know, are not confined to any one side of politics in this building.” That need to be blameless at all times echoes the self-sabotaging stand he took during the black summer of fires, when he said he didn’t hold a hose, mate. He didn’t start the fires, and it was the responsibility of the states to put them out.
Brittany Higgins exposes PM’s failure to lead
HE’S YOUR PRESIDENT AMERICA (ODT)
via This Humiliating Failure Is Actually Our President During a National Crisis | The Smirking Chimp
Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency, as Max Blumenthal points out in his insightful book “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump,” was made possible not only by massive social inequality and concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of the oligarchic elites but by the national security state’s disastrous and prolonged military interventions overseas.
Stock broker collapse traps $200m from thousands of investors
The demise of Halifax Investment Services has led to the assets of 12,000 accounts being frozen as administrators figure out what went wrong.
“Halifax was the subject of an enforceable undertaking with ASIC in 2013 following regulatory action by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over a slew of concerns about the operations of the business.”
It’s not the first time
When Corporations go to the wall it’s the the “free market” when the economy is rocked it’s the the “free market”. When the economy is on the rise it’s Liberal” good management,” When unemployment is rising it’s the “free market” When welfare is cut it’s Liberal “good management”. Someone seems not to have a clue when 12,000 investors are seperatedfrom their money. (ODT)
Above is yet another example of Tony Abbott’s approach to ‘expert respectability’ $500,000 for ‘no advice’ in 2 years. Perception is all that counts. (ODT)
It was, declared The Australian’s resident theologian Greg Sheridan, “a pivotal moment in modern Australian history”. Was Sheridan referring to the arrival of the First Fleet, perhaps? The end of transportation? The celebration of federation? The landing at Gallipoli? The victory in the Coral Sea?
No, none of the above – something far more important: the Australian National University’s decision to end negotiations to establish a partnership with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. According to Sheridan, the university’s decision means that intellectual freedom at our universities is now imperilled.
This is hyperbole beyond the wildest imagination of even Gerard Henderson, but it shows just how seriously our national newspaper and its right-wing commentariat is fighting its culture wars. What was originally a minor controversy in academia has been blown up into a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. The Monthly
Western Civilization IS being taught at ANU, however, donor bribery such as the Ramsay Centre’s attempt isn’t being given the privilege to run its own tertiary course under the auspices of the ANU. The Ramsay Centre is trying to buy interloper rights to their own specifications taking them outside the bounds of what it is the ANU represents. Tony Abbott is on the board of the Ramsay Centre trying to do what he did with Dr Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Center (which has nothing to do with Denmark) to try to bribe Australian Universities to take on board and give legitimacy to his personal political bias on anti- Climate Change. All he was trying to do is provide respectability for a failing argument that was already being debated anyway. He failed and here he is repeating the same stunt. (ODT)
When one of his carefully selected directors, Tony Abbott, said the Ramsay Centre would be not only about Western civilisation but in favour of it and would have a say over curriculum design and staff appointments, he was merely following the script.
But of course the influence was supposed to be covert, not trumpeted in Quadrant – the idea was that the proposed centre could be justified within the umbrella of academic independence and autonomy, when in fact it could not. The Monthly
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
NEW YORK—Seventeen years of war in the Middle East and what do we have to show for it? Iraq after our 2003 invasion and occupation is no longer a unified country. Its once modern infrastructure is largely destroyed, and the nation has fractured into warring enclaves. We have lost the war in Afghanistan. The Taliban is resurgent and has a presence in over 70 percent of the country. Libya is a failed state. Yemen after three years of relentless airstrikes and a blockade is enduring one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The 500 “moderate” rebels we funded and armed in Syria at a cost of $500 million are in retreat after instigating a lawless reign of terror. The military adventurism has cost a staggering $5.6 trillion as our infrastructure crumbles, austerity guts basic services and half the population of the United States lives at or near poverty levels. The endless wars in the Middle East are the biggest strategic blunder in American history and herald the death of the empire.
It has been 15 years since OIF, and there – in Iraq and Syria – US servicemen remain, wedged between Saudi-backed Sunni Islamists, and Iranian-backed Shia militiamen. Some 4500 American soldiers have already died, with upwards of 30,000 more wounded. And, like a bad sitcom, the US military still spends most of its time fighting spin-off wars (Syria, Iraq 2.0, ISIS, Yemen) of the original Iraq disaster. That ill-fated farce of an invasion either created the conditions, or exacerbated the existing tensions, which inform today’s regional wars.
This is crazy! So what did they do with the rest of the money? It didn’t trickle down!!
truthcommand.comThe Red Cross has failed massively in its promise to Haiti. After the devastating 2010The Red Cross announced plans to build no less than 130,000 homes for survivors of the earthquake, many of whom were left with absolutely nothing.
There was a generous influx of relief from people all across the world, totaling half a billion dollars, but a series of bungling errors has led to the halted plans, while many doubt if the houses will ever be built.
via Red Cross Built Exactly 6 Homes For Haiti With Nearly Half A Billion Dollars In Donations
Drastic corporate tax cuts have one corporate CEO in the Midwest ready to move his company to another state.
Source: CEO Eviscerates Trickle-Down Taxes in Viral Open Letter
olddogthoughts 