old man emu

Not depressed. More 'forewarned is forearmed'. We oldies might be able to tough it out, but it does not bode well for our kids and grandkids.

Here are some thoughts on the likelihood of a depression in the USA beginning within the next few months

I think that this video would be useful in this thread. I got the impression that it was a balanced explanation.

If tin whistles are made of ton, what are fog horns made of?

It's pretty clear that we are going to be hearing of a lot of decisions that Trump and his associates will be making pretty soon. So I reckon it might be an idea to collect them in one place. Here's the first one I've heard of. Trump to impose 200% tariff on John Deere products manufactured in Mexico. The basis of Trump's decision is that by moving production to Mexico, John Deere is removing jobs from the USA. John Deere's decision is based on the bottom line. This despie John Deere being a massively profitable company already. Also at the moment John Deere is embroiled in a number of consumer initiated civil suits arising from its refusal to release fixes for software bugs in its vehicle operating systems. If something controlled by the software glitches, John Deere technicians are the only ones who have the digital keys to get into the software to debug it. Imagine being in the middle of harvesting many thousands of hectares of crop and you can't continue because you have to wait for a technician to travel from a depot out to the machine in the field. Not only are you up for the cost of the service call, but you lose due to down time.

It's a sign that they are acting on the square.

Not an edit - I was just letting you know that I recognised the source.

When we were worrying about what would happen if Trump lost the election, I suggested that if civil unrest occurred in the USA, then the World economy would be in danger of entering another Depression. Well, he won and we can forget about that scenario and begin to worry about what is going to happen if he imposes tariffs on imports to the USA. While tariffs on imported goods let a country's manufacturers whose production costs are higher that those in exporter countries compete on a equal footing for sales, they generally mean that prices rise in the country that imposes tariffs. On the other side of the balance, the countries which have been exporting will have the level of their exports to the tariff imposing country reduced. Those exporters will still be producing products, but will need to seek markets elsewhere amongst the countries that have also lost market access. The incoming administration has already flagged its economic agenda: lowering taxes, raising tariffs, withdrawing from key agreements and moving away from the rules-based global trade order. These measures could have profound impacts world wide. A big for Australia is Trump’s pledge to impose tariffs of 10–20% on all imports to the US. The US accounts for only 5% of Australian exports, it still ranks as Australia’s fifth-largest export market. The US imports relatively small amounts of our commodities, but it’s a different story for much of our advanced manufacturing sector. Australia exports more than 40% of high-tech engines, 50% of aircraft and space parts and almost 60% of machine tools to the US. While small in absolute volume these are high value items with total export value possibly higher than that of agricultural and mineral exports. Australia will also need to watch the impact of Trump’s policies on China, still our largest two-way trading partner. Large tariffs on China could slow its growth, in turn slowing its imports of Australian exports such as iron ore. And Australia will not be alone in having to deal with the consequences of the tariffs. If Trump raises tariffs on all imports to the US, other countries will almost certainly follow suit. They may also impose new tariffs on trade with countries other than the US. Imposing tariffs on imports was great election rhetoric for the masses, but the consequences won't necessarily make MAGA.

If Cliff is a pedestrian, it can be fatal.

Yul never said a truer word.

While it is true that any loss of life due to traffic collisions is not good, to say that the road fatality number in 2024 is "appalling" shows that you don't remember what the number was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In those years the numbers were regularly over 1,000 in NSW, probably the same in Victoria and proportionally lower in the other States and Territories. Cultural changes brought about by RBT; massive improvements in passive safety of vehicles and better constructed roads have had the greatest effect on reducing the fatality rate, although I wonder if that drop hasn't been at the cost of increasing disabilities in crash survivors. There will always be road transport fatalities. Sometimes they cannot be avoided - such as the results of sudden medical disablement. More often though they are the result of anti-social behaviour by a few drivers. As I see it, those tasked with making road transport safer and introducing countermeasures, fail to analyse the reasons for collisions beyond the old chestnuts of speed, intoxication and fatigue. In most case, those people don't have any training in collision investigation to understand the factors which are driver, vehicle, and road environment.

Friday night is pizza night for me. From Aldi I buy a box of three cheese pizzas and add my own extras. Last Friday it was Hawaiian with bacon pieces and pineapple pieces with extra pizza cheese. Tonight it's going to be barbeque chicken pieces with olives and extra cheese. 15 minutes in the oven at 200 and it's a cheap meal. I think that it costs about two or three dollars per pizza.

But the government does not control prices. Whichever side gets elected next May, it will not have the power to control the boardrooms of Wall Street. We all know that it's Big Business which is syphoning the money from our pockets. Added to that, to a degree, is the constant demand that the government supplies so much in the way of health, education, the various parts of the legal system and so on. Increasing demand for those services demand increasing costs of services and new taxes. Sure, we can vote out Albo and vote in Dutton, but we can't vote out Big Business.

I know that another word for 'apathetic' is laxative.

I think that the word 'sovereignty' is misunderstood and therefore misapplied. It's definition is not quite clear. In one sense it can mean "state or character of being in power", and in another it can mean freedom from external control. While we argue the rights and wrongs of the concept of terra nullius, we have to remember that King George the Third's instructions to Captain Arthur Phillip included a reminder that Cook, having claimed the land in the King's name automatically made the inhabitants subjects of the King, equal in legal stature to any resident of the United Kingdom. As history has moved on from 1770 and the population has been swelled the Aborigines have remained subjects of the Crown. Threfore, the seeking of Aboriginal sovereignty is akin to all Australians from every ethnic background seeking to end the current constitutional monarchy that we live within. Further, it appears that the goal of Aboriginal sovereignty is to sever the connection between Aborigines and Non-Aborigines from the body of the Nation.

I agree with you that it is not likely to be 'great', and therefore I'm not optimistic for the American people, and the rest of the World. The point I was trying to make was that this time the people in the Inner Circle will be more unified in their goals and approach to Trump than the inexperienced go-getters of the first administration were. I'd say that there will be a steady hand on the helm of the ship of State, but the course it sails might might not keep it clear of rocky shoals.

I really don't know. I don't even think the teams have run onto the field to start the game, or if they have there's only been the coin toss.

Let's look on the bright side. If the World can weather the next four years, we know that Trump can't run again in 2028, if he lives that long. (He'd be 80 and one wonders if his health would allow it.) The question is, what happens if he dies in the next couple of years? What sort of President would Vance be? I think that this time, the Trump Administration will be a bit more professional. It might not be great, but it won't be the mess it was the first time with inexperienced factions trying to gain control over Trump. At least this time he comes into office with a manifesto that his underlings have created.

I must find a pictorial pun and take a leaf out of your bok choi.

The words "reconciliation" and "conciliation", although coming from the same etymological source, conciliare (Latin) "to bring together, unite in feelings, make friendly," have different inferences. Conciliation is the act of creating friendly relations. It is something that should be done on first contact. Reconciliation is the act of causing two people or groups to become friendly again after an argument or disagreement. The problem we face in getting the relationship between Aborigines and non-Aborigines to a mutually acceptable place is that conciliation has never effectively occured. Therefore there can not be any "reconciliation" because there was never a friendship to be broken. IN the 19th Century, Non-Aborigines came onto land which had established boundaries in the Aboriginal "legal" system and simply altered the land use patterns to suit Non-Aboriginal culture, without any attempts to include Aborigines in the process, unless it was to involve them in menial tasks. Very few attempts were made to create relationships that did anything more than discourage violent objection to those alterations. In the 20th Century, Aborigines realised that violent objection was not the answer. During the second half of that century, wider communication with the world exposed Aborigines to the efforts of indigenous peoples in other parts of the World that had been colonised by Europeans to gain equality with Europeans. Those efforts involved the use of political activism, which resulted in the realisation that success would only come from using the systems by which Non-Aborigines ran the society. Now, in the first quarter of the 21st Century, Aboriginal activists use those systems to attain their goals by relying on 'what's good for the goose is good for the gander' and turning the intent of Non-Aboriginal laws back onto Non-Aboriginal systems.

They are all types of advertising slogans. "Make America Great Again" is just another one. How about "It's Time"? It just goes to show that the candidate with the best marketing skills will succeed in modern election campaigns. Australia will be voting in a Federal election next May. The Parties should really be taking heed of the way advertising used in the US election. None of us will give two hoots about name calling and mud slinging if it is used. To harken back to that old TV police show, 'The facts, ma'am. Just the facts.'

I was listening to some commentary this morning and what I gleaned from it was that Trump stated about three things that he would concentrate on, and throughout the campaign he stuck to pushing them. Like it or not, he had a stated policy and he did not deviate from it. On the other hand, Harris never seem to have a stated policy. She tried to push concepts but never said how those concepts would be converted for implementation. Basically you could say that the difference was that Trump employed proven advertising practices which the public was used to, and which concentrated on what was affecting the public in its own domestic situations. Harris' campaign was more 'pie in the sky', and the public wasn't buying her product because it wasn't a solution for their problems.

Except for very serious offences, causing death or commercial drug importation, there is a system of escalation of punishments which begins with a good behaviour bond and move through fines to short "weekend" detention to full time incarceration. So those you might call "petty criminals" who end up in prison have developed a criminal persona that is pretty much set in concrete. Basically it's a case of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. The problem Australia has is that we are signatories to international charters dealing with refugees. That means that once people seek asylum, and it is granted, we can't move them on.

Economically ??????? Have you seen how much we have been ripped off by the operators of detentions centres both here and offshore? But of course, the electorate will never gain access to the contents of the contracts for those detention centres. Also, we'll never know if politicians got a slice of the contract pie. Rehabilitation ???? I dare say that the crimes these detainees have committed are mostly sexual, and committed against strangers. A person whose psyche leads them to do such things is not going to be rehabilitated. Even castration would not prevent future attacks. The urge would be expressed in other forms of sexual violence.