Grumpy Old Nasho

The tariffs on aluminium and steel wouldn't be much in terms of total cost to Australia because not much of those products go to the US. Albanese would have been brought up to speed by the multinationals that produce them here, with an assertion that they know best how to handle Trump and Albo needn't worry his little head over it. I could tell all along that those tariffs weren't going to affect Australia greatly, and Albo has just reassured us by saying there's no need for Aust to reciprocate. So there you go.

I thought that myself, but it's more than my village gets. Aboriginals in remote locations have helicopters fly in as mobile polling booths, and us whities in here in our villages don't count at all. We should paint ourselves black, then we might get something.

The AEC stipulates 16kms round trip, I'm blowed if I'm gunna travel 74kms total. If they could set up a polling booth for this bloke, they can surely bring one closer to my village.

Because "one more", compulsory voting, was brought in by the major parties, it's not a requirement of the Universe or the Crown, and it can be changed back to voluntary voting, so it's not a permanent fixture with all the BS myths associated with it. It's only the dictatorial major parties and their followers that want it, and they've decreed it a duty of citizens to comply. Who are they to tell to do anything? Before it became compulsory, it was voluntary, for what selfish reason did the major parties change it? Did they hold a referendum? And what about public funding? Where are they going with that? To continually stay in power and rule, that's where. Besides, I'm not making a 74k round trip to the nearest polling booth, or PO mailing box, until I'm promised remuneration for fuel and wear and tear and lunch money.

Makes no difference to me, if something is compulsory, particularly and especially a demand by government decree, then it's dictatorship

So you're saying that compulsorily getting your name crossed of the roll, is not dictatorship?

Compulsory voting is dictatorship, is it not?

Except later on when I reached out to ministers trying to find out if we'd get some compensation for doing what they wanted us to do under duress. Of course they wouldn't, and that's when it kicked in that a bloke really felt like a sucker and a loser. So to me at least, it doesn't matter when I began to feel that way, it was very true, and I'm glad Trump said it because it's exactly how I feel, and my guess is that about 60-70% of other conscripts feel the same way. That group NashoFairGo knows it too.

"Electors who fail to vote at a State election, and do not provide a valid and sufficient reason for such failure, will be fined. The penalty for first time offenders is $50, and this increases to $75 if you have previously paid a penalty or been convicted of this offence. If you do not have a valid and sufficient reason for not voting, you can pay the penalty and that will end the matter. Electors who do not respond to notices or do not pay the prescribed penalty may have the matter referred to the Fines Enforcement Registry and could have their driver's licence suspended." https://www.elections.wa.gov.au/vote/failure-vote Nice!

Yes we were. All of us should have resisted it from the very start. We were too young and naive to understand the consequences of a failing to fight against it. Four predatory animals dragging away a resistant conscript.

I won't be brushing it aside, because it's true, for conscripts, we were absolutely suckers and losers, 100%. One of my main goals in life after discharge was to advise as many young guys as possible not to obey any order to comply with any military conscription, ever. And I did advise, and the word spread with other conscripts also advising young blokes. Patriotism is now dead in Australia. The fed govt is now recruiting foreigners to fill vacancies in the military, but it's costing millions of dollars as an incentive. Us conscripts got nothing, a big fat zero. So trump was quite correct, we were suckers and losers.

You conveniently side stepped my main point. Consider how our veterans were/are treated before criticizing how US veterans are treated. Admittedly I raved on a bit, but it was to describe a few things that I endured to make the point that our politicians were mongrels who refused to acknowledge the difference between "voluntary", and "compulsory", one is by free will, the other is under duress. Need I say any more? Conscripts were treated like they were volunteering, because we turned up and signed papers. And therefore, the politicians saw little or no need to rehabilitate us back into the general community, regardless of how much they will brainwash you now telling you they did everything they could. American veterans are highly respected by their community, and if they get shoved off the government payroll, you can bet they'll be helped in other ways.

Veterans are revered in the US, unlike here in Australia. To our politicians, veterans and ex servicemen are a disease that won't go away. That's how I was treated after discharge, I had no place to stay, no job, no money, I was left destitute, then had to crawl my way back up in a time of recession. Whenever I applied for a job, and wrote down "two years military service" as my last job of employment, I never got those jobs. It wasn't until I omitted that from the job applications, that I started to get jobs. I just never mentioned "military service" from then on. My mate was charitable enough to let me stay at his place free of rent for a while till I started to get back on my feet. Eventually I did, but it was a hard slog, a slog thrust on me because of a very unappreciative Nation and Govt. The veterans sacked in the US will still get looked after, it already said that if you'd bothered to read and listen. But you keep raving on about one side of the story to suit your selfish egos. Be more intelligent for a change. Don't hate for the sake of hating for heavens sake.

You wouldn't believe that distortion of facts, would you? What a rag that UStoday is.

He was of Ukrainian background too. He was a watchmaker by trade, just out of his apprenticeship, and he was put in Infantry. The warmongers killed him off. Typical of govt warmongers, as long as it's not them. His young brother attended the ceremony in Canberra honoring conscripts, many years later. I called his dad the same day, I found his name in the phone book. He was quite astounded that a stranger would go to that trouble. I said I knew his son, and we talked a bit. He was a broken man, being an immigrant after WW2, coming here for safety and a better life.

Please don't blaspheme about Rookwood cemetery. A digger from my platoon in basic training is buried there, killed in Vietnam by a camouflaged booby trap while on a "Search & Destroy" mission.

Telstra is copying Trump now in one of their ads *Beautiful internet starts here* $95/month

If they don't know now, they'll never know. How many cyclones have crossed the coast of Qld? heaps. The politicians don't know what they're doing, except to mouth off how they'll fix things. Without something to fix, they're lost. So there will always be something amiss, so they can show us how they're going to fix it.

You don't think Albo would let an opportunity pass him by do you? If the results of the cyclone are going to be that critical, then both party leaders should join to announce assistance for potential victims as a bipartisan effort, and that way there'd be no point scoring or one sneakingly trying to gain advantage over the other.

Sorry, I spelt "sails" wrong.

The United States is being bled dry by being the Worlds policeman. Why do you think Trump is cutting waste and unnecessary costs?

It looks like the minerals deal will go through. The conflict will halt in a day or two and peace will be restored.

No, I'm saying it shouldn't try to make political mileage out of it.

For Albanese, it'll be about helping victims of the cyclone, making political mileage from peoples' suffering. He'll call the election on that to take the wind out of Dutton's sales. Election dates should be fixed.

Well stand by and watch other people die then, as long as it's not you blokes, that's right isn't it? If Trump was taken out of the equation, Putin would still have field artillery nukes and willing to use them. Then what? Do you believe he won't use them? Just let opposing nations go in with troops to fight the Russians, and see what happens. Alternatively, and again, without Trump, NATO & Co and the US (under someone else), would continue to supply arms to Ukraine, at great long term cost, boosting Zelensky's determination to oust the Russian forces, and destroying more of Ukraine and his people. He'll have to resign, or he may just get sacked by his govt. Trump is virtually out of the negotiations now, and US aid to Ukraine has stopped, so let's see what the rest of the World can do, make or break Ukraine, the latter seems likely.