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It is incredible to ponder on how obsessed America has been with one individual for the last decade. This republic, this land of the free, has been messed up in the Trump cult of personality. Hundreds of millions of Americans have had their lives upset and f***** with by one, fairly sordid, son of a second rate property developer. Celebrity is the weakness of this people. Their unhealthy fondness for the faux familiarity of celebrity. So much for progress, for the democratic journey over decades and centuries. So much for the American Experiment.Continue Reading

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Private equity investments are bad for health. These American style investments are incredibly unhealthy for the vehicles they, often, drive into the ground. Healthscope: The private equity fail for hospitals in Australia. What private equity does is saddle the thing that they buy with all the debt raised to purchase it in the first place. Then, it liquidates whatever juicy assets in the possession of the targeted investment vehicle. In this case, it was selling all the real estate upon which these dozens of private hospitals reside. This raised billions for the private equity firm. Following this all the hospitals had to pay commercial rents to the new owners of the land. Making operating the businesses more expensive.Continue Reading

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Original Sin is a provocative title for Jake Tapper’s and Alex Thompson’s new book about former President Joe Biden. It alleges that a cover up of sorts took place to largely hide the mental incapacity of Biden for great chunks of his time at the top. Now, the Trump Republican opposition and Fox News continually pointed the finger at Biden’s age as a problem during his time in office – so it was not some big secret. However, it was denied by the Democrats and the White House in particular. Joe Biden’s original sin. The zombie like performance in the June 2024 presidential debate against Donald Trump confirmed the worst fears of some in the Democrat camp that Joe Biden was too old and mentally unfit to go again. Public pressure was brought to bear and Biden pulled out.Continue Reading

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America Matters image Robert Sudha Hamilton

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Americans are having their social media activity checked by US customs and border agents. This is an illustration of how the US has become a fascist police state under Donald Trump. I have written about how China uses a social credit system to rate its citizens’ behaviour and rewards or penalises them accordingly. Many in the US criticise China as a totalitarian state, well the Trump regime is now acting in similarly intrusive ways. The digital world is primarily a record keeping device and the checking of this by security agencies has become their new favourite means of investigating individuals. Free speech and first amendment rights are being routinely trampled on by the Trump regime.Continue Reading

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If I told you that Apple has invested around US$55 billion every year in China since 2016 would you be able to grasp the enormity of that sized investment? Comparisons include the Marshall Plan after WW2, scaled up to into today’s money, which was the US investing in Europe to rebuild it after the destruction of nearly a decade of war. The Apple investment in China is twice this on an equivalent dollar scale. This is how Apple made modern China.Continue Reading

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National Space Council Meeting (NHQ201806180002)

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The Republican Party in the United States has led the way when it comes to drastically lowering the tax rates on the richest Americans. It has come down from some 90% after WW2 to be around the 30 to 40% rate in the current era. Thus, the National Debt of $36 trillion has to be directly impacted by falling tax revenues over decades contributing to the need to borrow to fund government. 36 trillion reasons to despise the GOP and its fundamental role in the economic debt crisis of the US. How can any American justify this huge decrease in taxing the rich at the expense of the country? Republicans have simultaneously been in the vanguard of consistently increasing defence spending over these same decades.Continue Reading

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Football - AFL Multicultural Round Commemorative Ball, Lin Jong, 8 Aug 2015

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Gerard Healy calls for the tag and it has become a running joke. Tag every player, maybe? Could it be because nobody plays on anyone anymore in AFL? The demand for tagging is really a deeper cry for greater accountability? A bit more mano on mano? Funnily enough, ball use efficiency decreases when the tag is applied. AFL mutterings in the manosphere. No kidding, it’s not rocket science but the coaching stratagems are so far up you know where with zoning pinched from basketball that the penny aint dropped. Footy has become the unaccountable game. When I played the game we all played on someone.Continue Reading

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My prediction is that the alleged mushroom poison lady will be convicted and sentenced as a mass murderer. No great shakes, I hear you say. But, and this is the point of this post, I further predict that she will follow in the footsteps of prior Aussie femme fatales like Lindy Chamberlain and Kathleen Folbigg. These publicly excoriated Aussie women were later released and their crimes pardoned on the basis of wrongful convictions. Erin Patterson has all the hallmarks of the Australian predilection for going to town over femme fatales downunder. Nothing excites the media and the locals more than a deadly woman.Continue Reading

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“Once there was a wicked witch in the lovely land of Oz
And a wickeder, wickeder, wickeder witch there never, never was.”

Voldemort has fallen in the seat of Dickson and the divisive Peter Dutton is politically dead. Now, Jim Chalmers decently said he was not one to dance on the grave of a political opponent. However, if you live by the sword you die by the sword and Mr Dutton was an aggressive and polarising figure on the Australian political stage. The Liberal Party has lost the 2025 federal election in a landslide to Labor. Ding dong the Dutton witch is dead. Long live Australia.Continue Reading