old man emu

It's been so dry at my place since April that there is hardly anything in the paddocks to carry a fire. I'm even noticing that trees in the paddocks away from the creeks and gullies are starting to die.

It's halfway through summer and the pair of thongs I have ware standing up to daily use quite well. The sole is compressed a bit under my foot, and my son's dog chewed a bit of the sole off, but not enough to make the thongs unserviceable. However, years of experience have taught me that a good pair of thongs can suddenly have a strap broken or suffer some other catastrophic failure. So today I went into town to get a spare pair in case the inevitable happens, leaving me unshod without replacements. So I drove the 75 kms to town and hit Big W and K-Mart. I had no success at K-Mart because they had no stock, but Big W did. Would you beleive that the regular retail price for the pair of thongs I got was only $1.50? Nice! While I was in the shopping centre I had a look for a pair of casual shoes to backup the ones I have been wearing this summer. You could have knocked me down with a feather. A pair I saw was priced at $160.00, and I bet they were pumped out at some Chinese manufactory.

That's easy for you to say.

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." It pays all free peoples to be vigilant to the possible loss of liberties. That means careful monitoring of our system of leadership. Fortunately our Australian system has the means to remove leaders who remove liberties. However that often simply results in placing a similar type in the role.

What the USA is doing is proving that the US style of democracy is a failure. In other countries with true democracies, Trump would have been ousted from power by now.

Oh that we should do the same.

If it was anyone else than Trump, you'd say that this was incredible. Trump orders that a person be extracted from his place of residence by the use of military force. Then the person is transported in chains from his home country to another. There the person is taken before a Court in that destination country and accused of the leader of a terrorist organisation. It looks like the person is done for. However, for the person to be done for, the accusation must be proven. Obviously one thing to be proven is that the organisation at least exists. In a prosecution, every element of the acusation hs to be proven. Don't prove one element and the whole allegation gets thrown out. In the many indictments brought agains Manduro, the alleged terrorist organisation is mentioned 32. The name of this "organisation" is Cartel del al Soles. Unfortunately for Trump, no such organisation exists. The term was created years ago by the Venexualan media to describe government officials who are corrupted by accepting drug money. It's equivalent in US slang is "on the take". It seems that, despite being a totally horrible person, Manduro will walk away a free man. If that happens, and I were him, I'd make a bee-line to a lawyer's office to commence an action against Trump, the US Government, and every individual soldier involved in his detention, abduction, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution. Take a look at this video. The stuff about the prosecution starts at time marker 3:30.

I mistook that to mean that you were originally from Melbourne and moved away.

Yeah, but you emmigrated for a better place to live.

I wonder what law was alleged that Maduro has broken. He has been indicted in a US Court, but what is the jurisdiction of that law? Here is the indictment. https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1422326/dl The last few ages nominate the actual part of a law that it is alleged to have been broken.

Council turns AJ Burkitt Oval into an aquatic centre. Saves ratepayers a fortune.

You lusty Lethario!

The Chairman of the NRMA was quoted today saying that we can expect petrol prices to drop to about 2020 levels simply because there is a it of a glut in the market. He did not atach the cause of that glut to Trump's latest actions. Perhaps EVs are causing a drop in demand, or maybe Trump's tariff attacks on oil producers are causing the producers to sell in other markets. If the USA cannot meet its own domestic demand for sour crude, then we might see lots of Yank tanks abandoned on the side of the road. Look out for the Amish to take over long haul transport!!

Imagine if they built a car with the mechanical engineering knowlege learned over the past 60 years (passive passenger safety, aerodynamics, weight minimisatione etc.) but without the electronic bells and whistles they have been sticking into cars recently. I reckon they would end up with a simple, easily maintained vehicle at a "low" price. Wouldn't matter if it was an ICE or an EV.

Didn't think of those. It was too early in the morning for analytical thought when I posted.