kgwilson

Back to Trump. Many of the MAGA faithful are starting to line up against Trump including his old mates that are ex Fox news. Also British PM Sir Keir Starmer has not pulled any punches by stating he is Fed Up with Trump and appeared to compare him with Putin & that the ceasefire has to include Lebanon. https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360962790/starmer-says-he-fed-trump Trump has lashed out at ex Fox News reporters Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones in a tirade of insults. Owens has hit back with "Time to put Grandpa in a home" & Kelly asking "Why can't he act like a normal human" https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360944966/iran-war Trumps disgusting attacks on anyone & everyone are really getting to a large portion of his faithful & it seems that only the Evangelistic Christian nutters that Hegseth belongs to aren't wavering. He is trying to introduce conscription with automatic registration in the Selective Service System of all 18 to 25 year old males later this year. His erratic behaviour is getting worse by the day & he could go too far & try to cancel the mid term elections with another emergency. Who knows. He has surrounded himself with inept and incompetent sycophants & Hegseth has already got rid of a dozen of the US military's best generals. No wonder they have failed miserably against Iran.

I think they should be banned & all political advertising taken down on election day. I was in NZ for a wedding last month & there were differing opinions of Jacinda Adern. She won a landslide victory in her second term but had become a victim of the very left and resigned early. She handled the Christchurch massacre and Covid very well and became well known around the world. She was a great leader when NZ needed one. The current PM is not a leader at all & the NZ economy is not doing well. Of course it is all Jacindas fault.

What do you call a democracy then? Labour got in with an overwhelming majority and the largest part of the primary vote. Our preferential system is flawed in that your vote may end up going to some party you do not want so you put it down the list. You may not even want the second or subsequent on your list but that's the way the system works. Not only that but the voting paper for the senate is ridiculously long, plus handing out how to vote cards on election day is almost coercion. I have had a foot in both NZ & Australia since the 70s. My wife is born here & lived there for 25 years. I was born there & owned property here for 20 years before we moved when I took redundancy in 2005. NZ used to have first past the post like many other countries & the UK still does. When you have a majority without needing to call on other parties or independents you can get things done easily. The NZ system is far superior in my opinion & it was the result of a national referendum. Mixed member proportional is that 50% of MPs are elected by your primary vote & the other 50% based on the percentage of votes that party got nationally. You have 2 votes, 1 for your MP & one for the party of choice. Often people vote for an MP from a party they don't like but like the person they voted for so they have a bob each way. Political advertising and hoardings are banned on election day. Voting is simple & there is no upper house. Whatever government is in power will not suit everyone for whatever reason. In my opinion the worst governments we have had since i have live here were John Howards last, Tony Abbotts and Happy Clapper Morrisons. NZ,s electricity supply has been around 80-85% renewable for many years given the abundance of available hydro, geothermal & wind. Solar is now making large inroads & the plan is to have 100% renewable electricity by 2030. Nuclear does not produce emissions but the cost is eye watering, the time frame ridiculously long, the waste extremely dangerous, & no-one want a nuclear power plant in their locality.

Trump complains no-one wants to help him when he said he didn't need help. Nato is a defence alliance. An attack on one is an attack on all. It has nothing to do with helping a member especially a malignant narcissist nutcase who attacks another sovereign state with no consultation with anyone except Israel. Now he is complaining that Japan, South Korea & Australia won't help either. Not our war Donny boy. Piss off & lie about something else. Oh and the 48 hours is almost up so tomorrow Iran will not exist. Yeah right.

And they still lost.

Trump thinks America won all the wars including WW2. They haven't won any since WW2 though they did help win WW2. But Hollywood depicts them as the heroes so it must be true. Facts don't matter to Trump. He has lied his way through life & isn't going to stop now. Hegseth hasn't got a clue & thinks his God will make sure he is right & if that doesn't work Whiskey blurs what is right & what is real so he can still feel good & what would 12 experienced & capable generals know anyway. All they did was tell him the truth so they were fired.

No-one was being charged anything to transit the Strait of Hormuz before Trump with no strategy and his bum boy Netanyahu attacked Iran to get rid of the Ayatollah & blow everything up & supposedly ensure a regime change. They have failed on all counts other than killing Khamenei. Iran now seems more united than ever and they have a huge arsenal of weapons, a huge army and over 90 million people. Whatever plan that Trump/Netanyahu had hasn't pleased the US military as Hegseth has just fired the top Army General to join the more than a dozen others he's got rid of. Iran may have a terrorist supporting regime but the best way to get it to knuckle down & fight back is exactly what has happened. If Trump sends his 50,000 troops in even with their superior weaponry etc they face over 600,000 revolutionary guards with another 300,000 reserves all armed to the teeth with heaps of missiles & drones and about 2000 tanks.

Hegseth has fired the top uniformed Army General Randy George. He has now fired more than a dozen of the top brass Generals & Admirals since taking office. He would have told Hegseth the truth about their failure to deal with Iran that has so far cost over $US39 billion so he was fired by the Alcoholic part time fox news host and Evangelist Christian nutcase.

I was in Israel for a short time in 1973. The Israelis were very hospitable and were under constant threat then. The 6 day war in 67 was the last one then but the world was in the middle of the aircraft hijacking phase at the time. I fully supported Israels position and role then, after the holocaust & persecution they'd been through, to building a state and home for their people. Times, actions and attitudes have changed. Netanyahu is a War Criminal & needs to be prosecuted and jailed. He already would be if the Hamas terrorist attack had never happened. 75,000 Palestinians have been killed and Gaza destroyed. Palestinians are being evicted from the West bank and illegal Jewish settlements set up there. Israel has killed numerous aid workers & press personnel in Gaza with excuses or denials every time that they were targeting Hamas. They has excellent intelligence & the most sophisticated of weaponry but somehow can't get their targets and through the whole conflict still couldn't find Hamas or their hostages. They broke the ceasefire numerous times always with excuses and have now claimed part of Gaza for themselves. Now they are taking part of Lebanon. Without Trumps support this would not have happened who also wants Netanyahu pardoned. Trump has turned the US into a dictatorship with him as president assuming absolute power, achieved by appointing unqualified sycophants to top roles and ignoring all rules of order and decency. He is ignorant, poorly educated & supported by 60 million fundamentalist evangellical christians now called MAGA. He even thinks he was appointed by some GOD he professes to believe in. I have not read any of JAs long rants and don't intend to.

So for $495.00 you get a hole to put stuff in. If you don't pay is the hole filled i n?

Fuel excise is about 50 cents a litre. GST is calculated on the retail price including the excise so an additional 10%. EVs currently pay nothing but hybrids pay whenever they fill up with petrol or diesel. Studies have shown that hybrids don't get anywhere near the economy quoted by the manufacturer. This is partly due to the fact that many hybrid owners don't recharge them regularly. They are already taxing EVs in NZ and it is on the basis of providing an odometer reading at certain intervals. This also occurs with diesel cars but commercial diesel vehicles are fitted with hub meters. Diesel doesn't have excise tax in NZ so it is cheaper at the pump than petrol. Victoria had a short lived tax on EV distance travelled but it was pulled after the court ruled it illegal as only the federal gov't can levy such taxes.

The fuel tax collected by the federal government on the sale of petrol & diesel etc does not go in to roading at all. It goes in to the governments consolidated revenue fund. Some of it is allocated to land transport infrastructure & some goes to other services like health and education. It depends on the government of the day what they do with it. Pretty much all State registration charges go in to transport infrastructure though & EVs pay their fair share of that.

The US has been morally bankrupt for at least 80 years probably more. The debt now stands at $US39 trillion & in 2024 it was 124.3% of GDP. In comparison Australias debt is $AUD 881.9 billion & 32% of GDP. If any company had a debt ratio like the US it would have been bankrupted years ago & investors would have got virtually nothing in the dollar back. Most of the US debt is held internally by the Federal reserve system plus bonds, banks, pension funds & individuals. China, Japan & the UK are the biggest foreign investors. If i were them I'd be seriously looking at cashing up & getting out now.

Yep it's TACO Tuesday. Just another one to add to the list. 4 Corners was interesting last night. It just confirmed that the billionaires club is running the US & to hell with the people so long as they continue to profit in ever increasing amounts.

He's just an uncouth C**t.