horrible

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declined to name the price of common consumer items – including rapid COVID tests – and batted away allegations of explosive text messages during a bruising encounter.

Mr Morrison delivered a bold speech to the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday

It was his first major speech of the year, in which he attempted to frame the Coalition as sound economic managers and emphasised Australia’s recovery from the pandemic, ahead of a likely May election.

Mr Morrison also vowed to cut the jobless rate to something with a “three in front of it this year”, while keeping taxes low and cutting red tape to drive investment.

volodymyr

The underlying issue is this: NATO promised not to expand eastwards. It has done so repeatedly. It is never called out for this.

In a stunning and unexpected outburst this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the press that his country’s current problems came from the West rather than the East.

The fears of a looming war were built on news stories that Russia had troops on the border it shares with the country — but this was not unusual, and there had been a similar assembly of soldiers a year ago, he said.

The truth was that the threat level had not changed, he told a press conference this week.

Furthermore, the real threat to Ukraine was not Russia, but the “destabilisation of the situation inside the country” he told journalists.

The cause of the panic was the press itself, Zelensky said.

butterfly

Life is about chemicals that have found the ability to duplicate themselves and fight for the resources available in the environment. Planet Earth has lots of life. 

If you don’t believe that life is about chemicals, try to get pissed or drink some poison. Kids, don’t try this at home… You will soon find out that life is about chemicals. 

Hold your breath for a minute and you soon find out you need a simple chemical — a molecule we know as O2 in huge quantity to sustain our life. Meanwhile we could not live without H2O — another chemical which makes around 70 per cent of our body. Water. Meanwhile should you breathe pure oxygen for too long, you could damage your lungs...

media

As he embarks on an election year, there is a question about whether Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s media communications strategy, which has served him well for a long time, is fit for the current political environment.

The strategy is predicated on the proposition that Morrison is the government’s prime political asset, to be protected as necessary and exploited where possible. Doubtless this is a legacy of his “miracle” win in 2019. 

To this end, it has four central elements.

help...

NSW Treasurer Matt Kean hit out at Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Mr Frydenberg over the weekend for not “stepping up” and contributing to a new billion-dollar program aimed at helping smaller enterprises facing a significant drop in turnover in January.

“I’m very disappointed, I was hoping to make this announcement standing next to the Prime Minister today and the Treasurer [Josh] Frydenberg,” Mr Kean said.

choice

Biden got his first chance to change the makeup of the high judicial body after its eldest member, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 83, announced his resignation.

An overwhelming majority of Americans participating in a poll want US President Joe Biden to review more candidates for a soon-to-be vacancy in the Supreme Court, not only Black women, a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll reveals. Some 76% disliked the idea of limiting the candidates to a single group, while only 23% answering the questionnaire backed Biden's plan to do so.

easy...

There is no safety, as in times past when the Fed was draining money out of the economy and could just flip back to pumping money in, because the Fed is running the outflow pump fast and furious, and the Fed has no option for reversing the pump or even just stopping it this time around.

This time is different — very, very, VERY different, and I’ll tell you why!

Why the Fed MUST keep tightening as stocks crash

blinken

While the media focus on the Russian ‘invasion’ narrative, we are actually witnessing the end to Washington’s unipolar moment.

Coverage of the Ukraine ‘crisis’ by both Australian media and politicians highlights that we, and the broader Western world, have become addicted to our own propaganda. It confirms that the mainstream media have become little more than narrative managers. Of most concern is that the internalisation of this propaganda effectively limits the ability of the Western powers to resolve the ‘crisis’ without conflict or much more likely humiliation. That humiliation will come about in the formal recognition that the US unipolar moment has ended.

marcet 

Let’s say you have more chance of understanding quantum mechanics than understanding “economics”… 

Say that the concept of atoms started in ancient Greece with philosophers like Lucretius and Epicurus. For about 1400 years this concept was abandoned because god had created the world in six days and we did not need to know what curry paste the old guy in the sky had used to boil Eve from Adam’s rib…

One of the rule of thumb was expressed in Corinthian 11: 27

So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

obscene...

There is something grossly obscene when a billionaire maverick businessman can boast he is already running the most expensive political campaign in Australian history.

Unvaccinated mining magnate and property wheeler-dealer Clive Palmer has already spent several millions on multi-media advertising, blitzing our major print media, TVs, radio, billboards and smart devices with his spurious message that he is the nation’s liberator.

“Freedom, Freedom, Freedom” are the catchcries of his trademark black and yellow messages with the statement “We can never trust the Liberals, Labor or Greens again”.

trick

Almost five years ago, when now-Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was the federal environment minister, the Coalition solemnly promised to protect the iconic Great Barrier Reef.

Back then, one renowned expert on the Reef, water quality researcher Jon Brodie, said that overdue pledge was “too little, too late”.

Fast forward, from April 2017 to now, and the same government has unveiled a plan to spend an extra $1 billion on the Reef.

not a lot...

US President Joe Biden announced that Washington would boost its military presence at Russia’s doorstep with more troops that would be moved to the countries in Eastern Europe in the near future. The US leader made the remark while speaking to the media on Friday evening.

Biden gave updates on the situation in Ukraine after he emerged from Air Force One.

Asked about if he had already decided “how soon” he “would be moving US troops to Eastern Europe”, Biden reportedly said that he would sent a small number of American servicemen to the region “in the near term.”

“I'll be moving US troops to Eastern Europe in (or he possibly says and) the NATO countries in the near term. Not a lot,” CBSNews’ Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang reported.

scomo

Tame’s critics came from the right, and they attacked their target’s alleged rudeness rather than dealing with the legitimacy of her approach.

Some of the commentary about Grace Tame’s reaction upon meeting the Prime Minister at The Lodge has been disappointing but unsurprising. 

Parnell Palme McGuinness in The Sydney Morning Herald said it looked like “childish disobedience” and suggested Tame had “squandered her time on political sniping”: her term as Australian of the Year had begun “with a roar but ended with a whine”. Queensland senator James McGrath called her comments “political, partisan and childish,” and implied she should hand back her award.

toon

The cartoon above has been mischiefed by Gus Leonisky. Moir's cartoon today shows either Moir has been instructed by his masters (the publishers — THE SMH) to fudge the reality or he has lost his sense of understanding. Unless he's coming to an age where cartooning retirement is a possibility... But it's possible it's an old cartoon from 2014 that has been recycled without any update of political present. The original posted in comment below...

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!

evolution

February 1 marks two years since Scott Morrison announced the Australian border was effectively being closed to Chinese nationals or non-citizens who happened to have spent time in China.

Promising this “temporary measure” would be reviewed in a fortnight’s time, the PM also revealed Australia’s official travel advice for China had changed to “do not travel”.

While there were fears over the spread of coronavirus, Morrison was keen to assure all that everything was under control. “There is no basis for alarm,” he said.

It feels a lifetime ago. For those who have lost family or friends either to the pandemic or to the mental toll of lockdowns, it must be even worse.