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Liberty Quote
- Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.
— Madeleine L’Engle -
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/chapter-seventeen-globalization-communism-at-its-core_2795606.html
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For anyone interested in performance, the Giostro della Quintana di Foligno will be on you tube later or for tech savvy , live coverage now . Jousting , flag throwing medieaval music, performers all in beautiful costumes . As I posted previously better than the palio.
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Struth, you need to log into Facebook to see your link. What is in it?
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Insiders
Hunt: “ADF on the ground”.
Now targetting Lebs.
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I had forgotten how monotonous MV is.
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Go syndicate yourself Monty.
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Millions of people have been vaccinated.
Birth rates are nosediving, obviously.
You heard it first at the cat.
Btw Is tenpenny a complete anti all vacc nut job, or not?
Reuters bad, random person with a dashcam infallible.
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Living in Australia be like:
one fine day in the middle of the night
two dead men got up to fight
back to back they faced one another
drew their swords and shot one another
a blind man came to watch fair play
a mute man came to shout ‘hooray!’
a deaf policeman heard the noise
and came and killed those two dead boys.
Almost like a premier’ presser.
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Not working again today, Birdstein?
Oh dear.
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ADF Field Mechanics getting food poisoning from bad kebabs.
News at 11.
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Too many fruitless, Frostie
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Hunt sounds like Bruce McAvaney.
Went to the same St Poofta’s College?
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Birth rates are nosediving, obviously.
There are plenty of child bearing age women who are not getting vaccinated because of this uncertainty.
They are not stupid.
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Now targetting L
ei bs.Much better.
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Notafan, got your will sorted?
You’ve probably got a couple of years left if you are lucky, so no need to get it organised today. It’s Sunday, after all.
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“Millions of people have been vaccinated.
Birth rates are nosediving, obviously.”
Rosie’s clinical trials – completed ✔
Thanks rosie!
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Superglue, gladwrap and a warm bath will sort it rocinante.
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Blinky fish says the Frankenvax is OK.
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Aaaaand the Victorian Government has done it again.
In their haste to avert some imaginary ‘backlash’ against the Islamic community, they have completely jumped the shark.
A letter from the School Principal highlights the issue:
Find a hotspot, co-locate both a testing and vaccination centre right in the middle of it (at the very school in which it occurred), and then have both groups intermingling and socialising for hours as they wait in a queue that extends around the block*. What a brain wave!
Not only that, perhaps have every other chancer from Western Melbourne (who wants a test and/or vaccination) roll up, and queue with the school crowd to try their luck. FMD.
Watch this space. If ‘mystery’ cases start appearing all over the West, Sutton’s going to stand up there, give his trademark stupid look (fully equipped with leftie head tilt), feign ignorant, and declare that extended lockdowns are the only answer to the ‘mystery’.
FMD, even the least conspiratorial person would start thinking that they’re doing this on purpose.
*Reports from people who drove past, though you’re unlikely to see a picture of it in the media. Packed lunches, picnic blankets, fold up chairs, the fucking lot. A real fun day out for the masses!
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-school-has-been-unlucky-one-stop-test-and-jab-pioneered-at-al-taqwa-20210805-p58g92.html
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“Millions of people have been vaccinated.
Birth rates are nosediving, obviously.”
Rosie’s clinical trials – completed ✔
——————————
The Oxford Superputer Big Gestation says the Frankenvax is AOK. Virgil.
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And there are smart well educated women who are planning to have more children who are.
I don’t actually think under 40s need to get vaccinated at all but running around scaremongering about fertility…
Incidentally the Israelis have done research that indicates getting covid might adversely affect male fertility.
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A microscopic virus has pervaded our lives and is currently determining our futures.
Jon Faine
Columnist
***
No John, that would be government.
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“Good morning LL.”
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No….Sancho Panzer is not LL.
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My clinical trials are are good as anyone’s here though.
I’m asking for evidence of your assertions, if the vaccine is causing infertility it should already be reflected in decreasing birth rates.
And there would be a significant amount of reporting.
Oh and struth you really are a nasty little man.
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calli says:
August 8, 2021 at 7:48 am
I am referring to the management of Covid, of course. All handballed down the line.
Continuation of a long established process. Think of the AAT, HRC, Immigration Review Tribunal, Their ABC, and many more such “independent”, “non-partisan” unaccountable bodies that have been established by politicians too gutless to take seriously the responsibilities they sought so eagerly.
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Hunt going for gold in the Frankenvax rollout!
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Mater, any word on when Jeroen will announce he is ‘throwing the book’ at the School?
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Dilemma.
Do I join Frosty in giving Rosie a whack and look like a dick?
Or keep quiet when I so want to egg it on?
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Incredible but unsurprising. BigPharma has form.
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No….Sancho Panzer is not LL.
***
Dr BG said it was bespoke.
But I think the spelling is too good.
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Speers: Sneaky announcements by the Libs.
“Mean and tricky” is their speciality.
Fact check; true.
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It’s not beyond the realms of possibility those independent, non-partisan bodies are there to recommend alternatives so OTT, the politically difficult ones appear benign.
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As if they haven’t got enough problems in SW Syderney.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T9nR_PBVkzg/YQfpa0hymUI/AAAAAAAA7UA/yoNNo41anOgFWDwpeVoaJQOproOZ-yq9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s960/147173163_10158251496888512_445065747071745617_n.jpg
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PvO; Under 40s need the Frankenvax.
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This is all turning into a nightmare for Rosie, as she realises she’s been had, and most likely will be dead within four years.
This was known and explained to her before she got the jab.
Probably talked some breeding age daughter into getting the jab as well.
You don’t want to be terrible Nanna killers like struth and his 6 string oldy eliminator?
Still not free, just a lot more people dying of the jab, while she shit herself, hysterically believing all she was told about Italy and New York, it now works out the Alberta government in a court of law, cannot prove the existence of the virus, yet the flu disappeared.
Oh noes……
Where were the men in your life, Notafan?
God knows we tried to warn you here.
To the point of fiercely arguing with you.
Where were the men?
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“What we are seeing is people using that reasonable excuse to go out and purchase food, takeaway, coffee, to then go on and collocate and gather for an extended period of time,” he said
Oh no.
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What’s funny is how easily the ethnic adoring, racism hating victorian and nsw government led their dumbo population by the nose into supporting these campaigns of terror by running a ‘dog whistling’ campaign as they’d call it blaming it all on ethnics.
And so you have these dumb situations where anti lockdown people simultaneously rage against the government for imprisoning everyone, and ethnics for ‘forcing’ the government to imprison everyone. As if they weren’t going to anyway!
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Or keep quiet when I so want to egg it on?
Just wait. Woezee has its own self destruct button.
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Join Frosty.
I’m pretty happy with him calling me insane, tbh
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I asked a question, Notafan.
I did not make an assertion.
I asked if any one knew of anyone who has fallen pregnant after having the jab.
That hit a nerve with you.
Why is that?
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More ‘But you knew that’ news:
‘Lockdown set to be extended in Victoria
Victoria has recorded 11 new cases overnight, none of them in isolation during their infectious period, as NSW resists pressure to go harder.’
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We had two persons at Noosaville who not only refused to check in with the check-in app, then refused to wear masks and then decided to have an argument with police
Oh no!!
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Noyce new shiny blog, with some retro features. Noyce.
Wot does this big red button do?
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Given that it was organised and run by DHHS themselves, that might be a little out of line.
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Good on the mussies.
Showing Australians how to do things.
If only the Aussies could find their balls, but their sacks are covering their eyes.
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Boambee John says:
August 8, 2021 at 8:55 am
Haven’t scanned yet, so not sure if it has already been referenced, but there is a great article at Quadrant On-Line by Peter Smith about the abrogation of responsibility to unelected bureaucrats by our elected “representatives”. He focuses on the CHOs/CMOs, but the principle is much wider.
This despicable process started back around the 1970s, when politicians decided to give politically difficult decisions to “independent”, “non-partisan” bodies, the AAT possibly being one of the first. Since then there has been a plague of anti-discrimination, immigration decision, curriculum development and similar bodies which take essentially political decisions, allowing those actually elected to take such decisions to hide behind a shield of unaccountable bureaucrats.
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The point is correct, but the history is not.
Australia has a long history – almost going back to Federation – of establishing statutory corporations and offices which effectively made and administered policy, both at State and Federal level. The argument made for them has always been the need to insulate decisions from the grubby and grasping hands of elected politicians.
WWI kicked off the first round, and WWII gave it a big boost. They are very hard to dislodge – witness the ludicrous Potato Marketing Board or whatever it was called in WA. It was only abolished a few years ago, as a result of rebellion by a courageous potato grower who refused to buckle under to this wartime austerity measure and made them look like idiots.
When I was a uni student in the 1970s, we Pol Sci students used to joke that our dream job would be Chairman of the Indian Hemp Stabilisation Board.
Smart politicians always kept a reserve power to rein these unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in. They really dropped the ball with the ABC legislation, which means that the Minister has no effective defence against being pilloried and lied about except budget cuts. He or she can be sure that colleagues will always back down about anything more than cosmetic measures; real reform or abolition is simply impossible at the moment.
It is always tempting to ascribe whatever we are unhappy about in the polity to hippies or some other relatively recent trend, but very often the reasons are older and more universal. Powerful statutory corporations and offices are a feature of Westminster democracies in particular, although they are popular in other systems as well.
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struth says:
August 8, 2021 at 9:21 am
Notafan, got your will sorted?
You’ve probably got a couple of years left if you are lucky, so no need to get it organised today. It’s Sunday, after all.
This kind of personal nastiness is unnecessary.
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And now Richard Wilkins coming up with a report on morning TV about Bunnings trying to vaccinate their employees. Imagine that chain being sent to bankruptcy. Won’t happen of course, be nice to see
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This is absolutely an excercise in obedience by the new ruling classes.
Like all brittle authoritarians nothing makes them more enraged than people simply ignoring them or worse arguing or mocking their insane labrynth of petty pointless rules.
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lotocoti says:
August 8, 2021 at 9:36 am
when politicians decided to give politically difficult decisions to “independent”, “non-partisan” bodies
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility those independent, non-partisan bodies are there to recommend alternatives so OTT, the politically difficult ones appear benign.
I haven’t seen much evidence of this so far (but it has only been a few decades, so there is still time).
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*chuckles
*at you, not with you
*mong
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A very good morning to everyone except Grigory, Montifa and 🐤
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Surprise | Obama Lied About Scaled Down Super Spreader Birthday Bash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRaW-G_Y4pY
Salty Cracker
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Evil and manipulative: Men using dating strategies to bag high value ladies (roots anyway)
Empowering and totally ok: Women using dating strategies to bag high status males ( sperm/economic donors anyway)
‘Sales funnels’* and high-value men: the rise of strategic dating
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/aug/08/sales-funnels-and-high-value-men-the-rise-of-strategic-dating
Rebekah Campbell remembers the moment she knew things had to change. “I got to age 34 and woke up one Christmas morning on a fold-out bed in the garage of some friends of my parents and was like, ‘I don’t want to live the rest of my life like this,’” she says. “I could see that I was potentially going to miss out on having a family unless I did something drastic.”**
…
“I thought about it the same way for dating: at the top of the funnel I needed to have as many candidates as possible,” she says.
To bring in “leads”, Campbell signed up for online dating platforms such as eHarmony and Tinder, and tasked friends with matchmaking duties. She created a list of the traits she wanted in a partner. To vet candidates, she had screening calls with potential dates before meeting them. And to ensure a “controlled experiment”, she met her suitors at one of the same two venues every week. Campbell documented her strategy in the book 138 Dates, out now through Allen & Unwin. (The approach paid off – after three years of dating, Campbell met her now-husband.)***
…
FDS advocates dating multiple men simultaneously, cutting suitors off at the first red flag and, as Campbell did, conducting pre-date interviews over the phone. The goal is to filter out anyone who is not, in FDS parlance, a “high-value man”.****
…
While female dating strategy has been compared to pick-up artistry for the way it “gamifies” dating, Savannah believes FDS “isn’t about trying to manipulate men into trying to behave a certain way … it’s more about finding a man who is comfortable with you having boundaries and standards, and who understands how to treat a woman.”*****
*I Know, Phrasing!
** Empty egg carton approaching!!
*** Boy didnt he pick a winner, Arbys fan
**** Let me guess, he just happens to have a lot of high value assets
***** Because Im worth it!
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“I’m asking for evidence of your assertions, if the vaccine is causing infertility it should already be reflected in decreasing birth rates.”
I’m not asserting the vaccine causes infertility. I’m asserting they are on record as saying that THEY DON’T KNOW. That’s the point numbskull.
THEY DON’T FKG KNOW, yet still are pushing the vaccines out on the public and threatening to punish if people don’t take it. Just because you took the vaccine , it doesn’t mean you were injected with all the vaccine knowledge and test data as well. From what I can research, no vaccine Co has published it’s trials on animals for public viewing either.
And FYI “millions of people have taken the jab” isn’t a clinical trial for fertility affects of the vaccines.
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Interesting moment when the police commissioner points out two people dared to “argue with police”.
But in the abscene of democracy and parliament who else are we meant to argue with? Do we ring Jeannette Young personally and ask her to rescind her personal edicts and orders to the police?
Obviously not.
So there are two layers of authority here Jeanette Young -> Police. So a democratic people lacking any democracy, in that process people must argue with the police because there is nobody else.
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“This kind of personal nastiness is unnecessary.”
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Agree.
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As much as these vaxxxines may be dangerous or deadly, I believe once vaccine passports have been accepted they can really go to town.
Chris Sky explains in 2020. (Australia gets mentioned).
https://twitter.com/TheRightMelissa/status/1422705381890007040?s=20
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So there are two layers of authority here Jeanette Young -> Police.
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Under Emergency legislation anyone can be the the Minister’s “agent” IIRC?
Old mate with the new job with the black uniform for the dead’uns cart?
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Sorry to hear about your health issues, MV.
Hospitals are not a place I want to be at the best of times, but particularly not in a pandemic.
Nevertheless, you are still a crashing bore. 😛
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Noosaville. Could this be an uncontrolled breakout of liberty?
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Makka says:
August 8, 2021 at 9:08 am
“Does anyone know of any couple that have conceived after the jab?”
ATAGI (who constantly change recommendations for AZ based on what the Govt needs);
“Do COVID-19 vaccines cause infertility?
There is no scientific evidence to support this. None of the COVID-19 vaccines currently under review by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) cause sterilisation/infertility.
Good point, makka. Excellent point. Who knows how many 60 plus year women have been left infertile by AZ.
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Awesome places the gruinaid suggests ladies look for life advice.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/p01xdn/theres_absolutely_nothing_wrong_with_using_a_man/
The reason why a lot of men nowadays struggle in the dating world is because beyond money, many of them simply don’t have anything to offer. And now that women are able to make their own money, the true uselessness of men is being revealed. So if it’s money he’s offering, or equivalent benefits, take it. And when there’s opportunity to take more, even from multiple men, go ahead and indulge. And you’ll find that once you’ve striped past all the layers and facade of their resources, there’s nothing left there but an empty, decaying barrel. Feel free to leave that for the birds to pick at. Your work there is done.
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MV?
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Insanity:
NSW COVID lockdown impacts businesses including the Watkins Family Farm | 7NEW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZND2fu1WTk
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The producers of Outsiders stop their weekly program just to hear PalaceChook announcing another moronic and totalitarian lockdown.
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Hospitals are not a place I want to be at the best of times
Any number of Cats would be happy to put you in one.
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Palachook on Sky. Hellworld.
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ZK2A:
“Twenty years work, thousands of lives and billions of dollars and the Afghan Army don’t seem too interested in waging war?”
An interesting side effect of this is the Taliban will now be reasonably well armed with artillery etc and Afghan Army personnel to use them.
All on China’s doorstep.
I wonder if they saw that coming?
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johanna
When I was a uni student in the 1970s, we Pol Sci students used to joke that our dream job would be Chairman of the Indian Hemp Stabilisation Board.
Smart politicians always kept a reserve power to rein these unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in. They really dropped the ball with the ABC legislation
Thanks for the history lesson. Even as an actual Science student in the 1960s I was well aware of the stupidities associated with product marketing boards (the Egg Marketing Board was one prominent in Queensland).
However, my comment was made in the context of Peter Smith’s Quadrant article, and the examples I chose were of statutory authorities which, like the CMOs/CHOs, have the capability to cause real political and social damage. Your example of Their ABC is much more relevant than any number of product marketing boards. If you had wanted to give a more relevant example from history, the Industrial Relations Court in its many names would have been a better one, starting with the Harvester decision.
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Great short read for a Sunday, no prisoners offered or taken!
The Babylon Bee Guide To All The Different Christian Denominations (6 Aug, via Instapundit)
The woke could never satirize themselves like this, which just goes to show they have even less of a sense of humour than Calvinists.
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NQ, yoohoo!
‘Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced an end to South East Queensland’s Covid lockdown, but Cairns will enter its own lockdown after a new case was infectious in the community for 10 days’
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What happened to Ellie last night? She told Bird to ask Sinc for her number. Maybe they have eloped?
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Professor Higgins says:
August 8, 2021 at 10:07 am
MV?</em
One of rocinante's multiple previous names.
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Can anyone enlighten me as to what Taylor Walker said?
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So if it’s money he’s offering, or equivalent benefits, take it. And when there’s opportunity to take more, even from multiple men, go ahead and indulge. And you’ll find that once you’ve striped past all the layers and facade of their resources, there’s nothing left there but an empty, decaying
barreluterusshe could store the cash in there
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It’s amazing how partisanship, fear and stupidity and bloody mindedness has complicated something that isn’t all that complicated.
Trump made vaccines available despite the fact that people said vaccines for corona viruses weren’t possible any time soon.
These vaccines are new and unknown and have risks. More risks than old and proven vaccines.
They require an unknowable level of vaccinations to achieve “herd immunity”.
It’s not hard. Let individuals and their doctors decide whether to vaccinate or not.
Let individuals take on the consequences of their own decisions.
No, it’s not very likely that vaccinations are some huge conspiracy to depopulate the world.
No, these vaccines will not get you back to the illusion of freedom you used to have.
No, once they have power stooges don’t volunteer to give the power up.
No, the vaccines won’t do much to change the course of this epidemic. They come in waves, we’re in the third wave, but because we’re 180 degrees out of phase with the most populated parts of the world and Australians are flooded with UV radiation as individuals with the cov from other parts of the world enter the country it has allowed our dismal political masters and “public servants” to pretend they’ve done an excellent job.
No, most of what they are doing has nothing to do with protecting lives, except as a biproduct of them trying to wrangle the politics of the things they really want to do anyway.
No, I’m not sure we get representative democracy as we know it back after this. Not unless we find a way to shitcan everyone responsible for this abortion.
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I’m just watching the Sunday Footy Show blokes, who are all white, pontificate that we must stamp out racism. Without saying what Walker said. Think it would be important to know so we don’t have these presenters wet their panties.
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BB, I asked here too. No one seems to know. I’ll have to consult the grapevine.
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Paralysed from the shoulders down after the second Pfizer shot but still saying it needs more testing (and funding!) which is probably why the news service picked it up –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aAk36PovnU
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Peter Smith rocks.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/08/the-sell-out-of-representative-government/
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Peter Smith rocks.
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From the Weekend Australian:
Politicians have abdicated responsibility for this Covid crisis
STEVE WATERSON
Well, that was worth waiting for. Finally a tiny glimpse of the modelling that has underpinned government decision-making on our Covid response, and very convincing it is too. And unbelievably, literally unbelievably, precise.
Let’s not go through the various conditional predictions of the virus’s impact, especially the “worst-case” scenario, which happily generates a number far short of “everybody dies”, which I would regard as the worst case.
Instead here’s what the Doherty Institute says could happen if we suffered a six-month uncontrolled outbreak with only 60 per cent of the population vaccinated: there would be 737,971 infections and 5294 deaths. Note the super-scientific accuracy: not 737,970 or 737,972 infections; why, that would just be sloppy guesswork.
I’m teasing, of course (it’s one of the few pleasures not yet forbidden in these joyless times), and have no doubt the statisticians are doing their very best with the data; so let’s assume they’re correct that almost three-quarters of a million would be infected, of whom 5000 would die.
Many of us in the anti-lockdown corner are asked how many lives we would sacrifice to see the country open up again, our accusers triumphantly certain there is no decent answer because, as the NSW Premier told us in May, “no death is acceptable”.
She and her interstate counterparts would rather smash our lives and livelihoods in pursuit of their ridiculous, hubristic ambition.
If a foreign power were causing damage on this scale we would regard it as an act of war, when deaths in defence of the country would become acceptable again.
Perhaps we should bite the bullet and say 5000 predominantly old people taken prematurely is a sad but tolerable price to pay for the restoration of our freedoms and the repair of our society – as long as it’s not my precious grandparents. Oh wait, mine have already died of old age, like all my ancestors since humans first wandered out of the African Rift Valley. It happens a lot, I understand. And by the way, those 5000 projected deaths assume we could find no other way of protecting the vulnerable, which is hard to believe.
The Prime Minister’s proud boast is that our closed borders and hyper vigilance have “saved 30,000 lives” since the start of the epidemic last year. More unverifiable modelling; but again, let’s assume he’s right. I wonder how many of the saved have succumbed to other ailments in that time; or will next week’s census reveal a Cocoon-like bubble of healthy nonagenarians, 30,000 strong, laughing at Covid and death in all its other guises?
At best, we’ve dragged their lives out for a few more lonely months sequestered from their families, just as we’ve kicked the whole pandemic a little way down the road, at an almost inconceivable cost. As our leaders and their worker bees finesse their incarceration strategy, in the background the cries of misery grow louder.
The politicians look on, stern-faced and witless, bleating their platitudes about feeling our pain, and urging us to get vaccinated as the only way to escape the shackles on our lives, as though they had nothing to do with the sinister emergency powers they have granted themselves and aimed against us. “A surge in cases has closed restaurants”; “the latest outbreak means tradesmen can’t go to work”; “thanks to some selfish cab driver we must stay at home for the next month”.
No, ladies and gentlemen, the virus hasn’t done this to us; you have, cosy in your luxurious offices with your index-linked financial cushions, surrounded by sycophants and shoving people around like demented puppetmasters.
Perhaps we should bite the bullet and say 5000 predominantly old people taken prematurely is a sad but tolerable price to pay for the restoration of our freedoms and the repair of our society.
It may come as a shock to those snorting and gobbling at the trough of public money, but not everyone makes their living by opening a spreadsheet on a laptop, reaching out to a stakeholder and unmuting themselves on a Zoom call.
There are people who pay taxes (rather than recycle them) by travelling every day to places where they make actual things with their hands, who build home offices rather than work from them.
Some then have the audacity to consider their manual or menial work essential, as though they are under some obligation to put food on the table for their families.
And these ungrateful wretches, instead of praising the wisdom of their superiors who imprison them in their unfashionable suburbs, have the nerve to march in the streets in complaint, thousands of people engaged in reckless superspreader events that have led to a massive zero new infections.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” wails Shakespeare’s King Lear. Echoing him, our politicians and bureaucrats, parents to their infantilised population, are “disgusted” (NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian) with these “filthy” (NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Gary Worboys) “boofheads” (NSW Police Minister David Elliot), “wankers” (NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner) and “hooligans, dropkicks” (WA Premier Mark McGowan). Treasure the eloquent, statesmanlike rhetoric of these latter-day Ciceros; that’s the way to bring the people along with you in difficult times.
Instead they govern by regulations that grow daily more ridiculous. Sit down to drink, but stand up near a park bench; exercise, but don’t rest; go shopping but don’t browse, even though the sadists at Coles have moved everything you wanted into different aisles; under no circumstances talk to anyone you know, despite the masks that afford magic protection from nanometre Covid dust; the list is a never-ending carousel of hilarity.
The latest inanity from the future governor of Queensland (remember her, the one who did more than anyone else to dissuade people from receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine?) is to warn against online shopping.
“Do you need those people out in the community delivering packages and things?” she asks. No, your excellency, of course not, let them park their vans and bikes and get a well-paid, non-executive board position like your pals do.
What begins as absurdity soon turns dark. In NSW you must carry evidence of your address at all times when outside your home, and produce it to a police officer – “Papers please!” – on demand. You must carry a mask on your person, even to walk the dog around the block. Cold War Berlin-style police checkpoints have appeared on our streets to confirm cars are within 10km of their homes, and their occupants not intending to protest against their rulers. The army is on patrol in areas whose citizens are often refugees from regimes where camouflage battle-dress is rarely a welcome sight.
How many small businesses are you ready to see disappear? How many suicides will you tolerate? How many bankruptcies? Picture: AFP
Do Western concepts of freedom no longer matter in Australia? Is it a trivial matter that we are commanded not to leave our homes? Does it seriously not bother anyone in office that we are being compared – accurately – to North Korea in our legislated refusal to allow our citizens to leave the country, or overseas Australians to return? This is very bad company we find ourselves in.
The politicians say they’re faced with tough decisions, but they’re not making decisions at all. They defend their abdication of responsibility by loftily declaring they are acting on the health advice they receive. They don’t evaluate that advice, mind, they simply follow it.
And it leads always to the same destination: lockdown. It’s “horrible”, Berejiklian said this week, “but we know we have no option”. In Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews parrots her: “There are no alternatives to lockdown”, he said on Thursday. Unless of course you don’t order a lockdown, which I think does qualify as an option, and a much more appealing one.
Lockdowns certainly work in the crudest sense, in that by isolating people you limit viral transmission, but that’s not the point.
It’s the cost-benefit analysis that’s missing, absent from the moment our governments panicked and abandoned our sensible national pandemic plan to follow the brutes of Communist China into a policy of dystopian oppression, to “keep us safe”.
Let’s turn the acceptable casualty question around and direct it to our leaders: how many fruitful young lives are you happy to waste to keep those Covid numbers low?
How many small businesses are you ready to see disappear? How many suicides will you tolerate? How many bankruptcies? How many children should forgo their formative primary education and socialisation? How many deaths from other untreated illness are acceptable to you?
How much sorrow are you willing to impose on your subjects? How many grief-stricken families must bury parents and children without ceremony, like backyard pets? How many tears will soften your stony, self-righteous hearts?
Whether born of stupidity or callousness, the effect of our current aimless course is the same. State against state, city against country, suburb against suburb, office worker against tradesman, old against young, vaccinated against unvaccinated: it is a heartless, divisive and dehumanising policy. And worse, it doesn’t work.
The very people we elect to safeguard our freedoms are shredding them, causing fractures in society that may never be healed.
Surely there are politicians in every party who are silently appalled by this mounting despair and devastation. If their leaders cannot find a path out of this madness, perhaps those others should speak up and think about taking the reins, before the electorate’s frustration turns to fury.
STEVE WATERSON
COMMERCIAL EDITOR
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“Who knows how many 60 plus year women have been left infertile by AZ.”
Lol, best you can do Dr JC, Md Gyn Obs? Stay in your lane with shares.
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Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced an end to South East Queensland’s Covid lockdown, but Cairns will enter its own lockdown after a new case was infectious in the community for 10 days.
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Could someone please point out to them that the CDC itself has now admitted that the test cannot tell the difference between Covid and the flu. A whole community could be locked down for a week because someone caught a flu.
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Graeme, if you understand global financial systems so well, how come you ended up broke? Just seems an odd juxtaposition.
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However, my comment was made in the context of Peter Smith’s Quadrant article, and the examples I chose were of statutory authorities which, like the CMOs/CHOs, have the capability to cause real political and social damage. Your example of Their ABC is much more relevant than any number of product marketing boards. If you had wanted to give a more relevant example from history, the Industrial Relations Court in its many names would have been a better one, starting with the Harvester decision.
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Of course I had the Harvester decision in mind, but didn’t want to lose my readers with a long history lesson.
My point is that Australian politicians have a very long tradition of shielding themselves from awkward political decisions, not to mention lots of paperwork, by creating statutory bodies or positions.
Most of the time it just whirrs away in the background, but now and then it is dragged into the spotlight, such as with COVID.
I’ve always thought that the argument that bureaucrats are, in the long term, more trustworthy than politicians is pretty thin.
You only have to look at the Left’s takeover of bodies like ICAC in NSW to see what happens when unelected bureaucrats can destroy elected Ministers.
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Thanks BJ at 10:23.
That helps join the dots.
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mh, do we know Graeme is broke?
If he can hold down a job with anyone but Hamas, it means he can control his anti-Semitic ranting when required.
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That’s pretty good.
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Frosty, isn’t Ellie jooish? Seems an interesting match.
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Caller to 3AW just suggested those who’ve had both shots should get a little tattoo as their passport.
Absolute, total insanity is loose in the land.
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rosie says:
August 8, 2021 at 8:51 am
Ten pennies
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-sperm-vaccine-idUSL2N2N42EC
So it IS true. Men can give birth.
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Just checked with Sis who flew up to Cairns t’other week to see her D1.
The Leprechaun Airways pilot tested for the lung pox, so they’re under house arrest, because close contact.
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These vaccines are new and unknown and have risks.
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Aunty comparing the Sinovax and Pfizer in Thailand? – Pfizer has 10x antibodies and Sinovax antibodies are undetectable after a few weeks.
They all sound like a fudge.
At least Trump came up with something to challenge the Couf, but likely optional.
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Beertruk says:
August 8, 2021 at 10:37 am
From the Weekend Australian:
Politicians have abdicated responsibility for this Covid crisis
STEVE WATERSON
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That was an excellent article, matbe there are some real journo’s left
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Glad Presser:
Canterbury-Bankstown worst LGA.
Georges River LGA gold star.
Penrifff LGA now affected.
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Greg Hunt just announced imminent availability of monoclonal antibody treatment designed for the onset of Covid 19. Fantastic, although they are not without side effects, as I understand.
But the CMO also referred ever so briefly to the anti-viral “pill” which is currently being developed & hopefully available soon. THAT is the game-changer.
Fantastic to see Greg Hunt have the guts to announce these, given the mania for vaccination by his colleagues. A good man.
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mole at 9.58:
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Glad: Homebush Frankenvax centre open till 4pm today but thousands of bookings.
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Frost Giant Rebellion says:
August 8, 2021 at 11:00 am
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You don’t just sound like a loon you are a friggin nut case.
Throw yourself in the bin
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m0nty — Today at 10:33
“I respect the right of choice of anti-vaxers. I don’t respect the people themselves.”
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If you really believed their choice to be bad, being a good Catholic, a Christian, you would respect the people made in God’s image, not their ‘bad choices’.
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