JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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____At this minute in 2021, a B double driver on a regular run out of Melbourne to Adelaide piled into the dark tailback of traffic, six kilometres short of the midnight closure of South Australia’s border with Victoria.
____This latest brain burp closure was called at 16:00 SA time the previous arvo. Nobody was tasked to patrol backwards as the line grew.
____Rest Easy Steven____Martyr To Our Panic
151
Raid on USaid will have far reaching consequences. Good
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/02/09/will-bbc-media-action-aunties-international-pro-censorship-charity-go-bust-now-that-elon-musk-has-turned-off-the-usaid-tap/
Having said that there are substantial numbers of good causes that US aid-like British Aid-supports. So hope they won’t be thrown out with the bathwater as dubious causes are cut off.
81
>good causes…hope they won’t be thrown out with the bathwater as dubious causes are cut off.
Trump was asked that question during what they called a “press gaggle” aboard Air Force One mid-flight yesterday.
The answer Trump gave was that applications for genuine humanitarian foreign aid can now be handled by Marco Rubio at the State Department.
121
The UK has a very expensive and elaborate Covid enquiry. The trouble is they are keen on only taking evidence that agrees with their apparently pre ordained conclusions
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/inside-the-peoples-vaccine-inquiry-part-one/
100
A touch of humor to make you smile. A thirty second advert from the American Super Bowl yesterday.
For geezeresses everywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvcpZ-GuOgo
10
I was in a hospital waiting room with the TV on the Superbowl for some reason. Everyone was on their phones or reading a book. One lady asked them to turn the volume down. The nice young lady at reception muted in thankfully.
10
FWIW
Next Eko
“The Machine Fights Back”
“This isn’t about spreadsheets anymore. This isn’t about waste or controls or management. This is about who controls the machine.
Because when you find something like empty fields in Treasury’s payment system, you’re not just finding missing data. You’re finding purpose. When basic controls sit blank while billions vanish weekly, that’s not incompetence. That’s design.
The machine is fighting back.
But this time, it’s fighting years and years and years of gathered light. Now activated.
And summer is coming.”
https://eko.substack.com/p/the-machine-fights-back
50
That was via
“The Trump revolution and the Deep State’s fightback – light versus darkness”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-trump-revolution-and-deep-states.html
10
In the wake
“HOLY CRAPOLA’! Federal Judge Gets Pretty INSURRECTION-Y in NEW Ruling Against Trump Admin (Thread)”
https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/check-out-just-how-far-off-the-rails-judge-went-to-stop-trump-admin-from-auditing-treasury-n2408121
00
And
“Lawfare 2.0: A New York Judge Launches A Coup”
“Where an authority is plenary, no judge may substitute his judgment for the president’s. And yet that is precisely what Judge Engelmayer has done. This is a coup by lawfare.
If allowed to stand, Judge Engelmayer’s order will amend our Constitution by fiat. This is as great an assault on the fabric of our constitutional Republic as our nation has seen since 1776.
Trump’s response must be aggressive and resolute. To vindicate the Constitution, he must declare that the judge’s order is null and void, and he should send a message to the House asking it to impeach Judge Engelmayer.’
Another case of “Those that the Gods wish to destroy they first make confident” coming up?
60
“President Trump Files Urgent Motion to Nullify “Impermissible” Court Order Blocking Treasury Officials from Access to Systems
February 10, 2025 | Sundance | 243 Comments”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/02/10/president-trump-files-urgent-motion-to-nullify-impermissible-court-order-blocking-treasury-officials-from-access-to-systems/
20
One would have to punt on another round of “Streisand Effect” here I’d reckon? –
The rorts so far are from a look at only a few departments. So I’d have thought that such panic attempts to halt the process might have the effect of amplifying the question
“Why? What are you trying to hide in the rest?“
00
FWIW
“An Important Conversation: The COVID Dossier
February 9, 2025 | Sundance | 86 Comments’
U.K Pundit Neil Oliver provides a platform for a very important conversation.”
“As Sasha, Debbie and Neil discuss, regardless of the SARS-CoV-2 origination, what really matters is what the apparatus of the global intelligence community did in the aftermath of what was called a “global pandemic virus.” ”
More at
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/02/09/an-important-conversation-the-covid-dossier/
40
Congress is rethinking the IRA so here is a simple proposal
Erasing the IRA’s “greenhouse gas pollution” words
By David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2025/02/10/erasing-the-iras-greenhouse-gas-pollution-words/
The beginning: “The infamous Inflation Reduction Act is best known for throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at green causes. Along the way it also says repeatedly and falsely that carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases (except water vapor) are pollution.
This is important because it is the first time Congress has said such a thing in law. Alarmists are now claiming that this saying somehow certifies the bogus EPA CO2 Endangerment Finding and requires EPA regulation of GHGs. Technically this is not true but a Court might think it is so we need to get that language out of the law.
Fortunately this false language occurs in ways that make it relatively easy to erase. Repeal of major provisions of the IRA, while highly desirable for other reasons, is not necessary. Repeal is hard but making small changes in language might not be especially difficult when these do not affect the cash flow.”
Lots more in the article. Please share it.
42
Quote from “1984”. Unfortunately the Left interpret 1984 as an operations manual and follow it to the letter.
“Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it’s in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories. Just in that one instance, in my whole life, I did possess actual concrete evidence after the event – years after it.” (2.5.14, Winston to Julia)
20
FWIW
“Top Skeptic of Climate Fanatics Spotlights Studies That Torpedo 5 Decades of Liberal Panic”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/top-skeptic-climate-fanatics-spotlights-studies-torpedo-5/
11
While it might be nice that he is able to get these headlines there’s still the worry that he doesn’t understand the basic science.
40
Kalm Keith,
Is that the basic science of convection? The basic science of black body radiation. The basic science of molecular radiative spectra? The basic science of celestial mechanics. The (rather complicated) basic sciences of winds and ocean currents? Sprinkle in dozens of other basic sciences and the interactions between them all, and I have a feeling that Prof. Lomborg has plenty of company in not understanding the basic science.
It’s people who claim they do understand it that cause the bother.
00
Well, with NSW about to pass its anti-free speech laws, the SMH has an editorial about it. So, do they include the people they label as Naz1s in their ‘society’, for the SMH anyone not Far left is fair game for hate and violence!
“But hate laws should protect all our citizens from vilification and bigotry…. taking it seriously also means doing whatever else we can as a society to ensure no one experiences hate or violence for who they are or what they believe.”
No comments allowed on that one!
40
I was reading a piece yesterday about whether the US is a country that you can have a viable and trusted agreement with. It was in the context of how the Ukraine war might finally end but its really a wider issue than that.
Regardless of what you think about US behaviour in regard to various treaties and agreements you have the wild swings induced with changes of government and the use of Executive Orders which in come cases just override past undertakings. US industry gets caught up in all also of course with the disastrous EV mandate and the on again/off again/on again gas and oil industries.
Maybe just diplomacy played a different way, but credibility and trust must wane at some stage.
20
Mario Nawfal@MarioNawfal
🚨EX-USAID CHIEF SAMANTHA POWER’S NET WORTH SKYROCKETS—FROM $6.7M TO $30M ON A $180K SALARY
Samantha Power, Biden’s ex-USAID chief, saw her wealth explode while earning just $180K per year.
Where did the extra $23.3M come from? And all of this in just 3 years! USAID oversees billions in global funding—was she cashing in?
The public deserves answers. Follow the money.
Source: vBulletin, Inside Biden’s Basement
Elon Musk@elonmusk
10 Feb Replying to @amuse
How did she accumulate wealth that is 100 times her after tax salary?
80
Similar questions on how “AOC” went from broke bar tender to now worth millions in a similarly spectacularly short time from a “non-startling wage base”
50
Deep State May Emerge as Greatest Financial Ripoff in World History
Nothing will be close
I’m no economist or even accountant, but it takes no professional training. just a soupçon of common sense, to see what is emerging from the DOGE-led investigations of the US Treasury and USAID. Yet to come are the Pentagon, the CIA and the FBI, among a host of Beltway others.
The American taxpayer, it is already clear, has been fleeced for decades by this deliberate financial obscurantism at a level beyond comprehension, a significant part of which fits easily under the old category of featherbedding, especially for loyalists of both parties. When it is finally added up, it will more than justify the title of this article.
The Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot here, seemingly having lost their ability to read public opinion. Anger can do that to you. Also they are fighting those nasty little things, facts and truth.
“When DOGE found empty fields in Treasury’s payment system, they uncovered more than missing data. They found a mechanism.”
“Simple things were left blank:
– Payment categories
– Payment rationales
– Basic audit controls
“The kind of fields any small business would require. The kind that let you track where money goes. The kind that stop a billion dollars of fraud. Every week.
“Here’s what Treasury didn’t want exposed:
“Over $100 billion flowing annually to accounts without Social Security numbers. No temporary ID numbers. No verification. Nothing.
“When Musk asked Treasury officials how much was ‘unequivocal and obvious fraud,’ the answer revealed decades of corruption: HALF”
Given the GNP of the United States, if half is anywhere near correct—and I would bet my proverbial house it is—the title of this article is close to an understatement. We should all demand our money back.
00
With Apologies to Beagles as a Beagle Owner – DemoCraps hunting Musk & Trump
00
The US govt had some 200 treaties with their native people and broke every one.
00
Did anyone hear the contrite waffle that the useless Albo-tross was going on with on radio this morning about his conversation with Trump re the tariffs.
He hasn’t been in contact with Trump since his call to congratulate Trump on his win last year.
20
The Albanese government adopts the foetal position as its core operating principle because it lacks the intellectual horsepower or political courage to resolve, confront, transcend or even acknowledge the contradictions that increasingly paralyse its policies.
GREG SHERIDAN
PM still doesn’t get ‘international order’ has changed under Trump
A radical, epoch-marking change has occurred in the international system of which Australia is a part. A failure to understand this change, even to see it, by the Albanese government, and by much of the wider society, is contributing to Australia’s inability to pursue its national interests effectively.
Let’s illustrate the problem, then elucidate it.
Amid the blizzard of early actions by the new Trump administration, one was very striking. Donald Trump imposed official American government sanctions on those officers of the International Criminal Court who had issued arrest warrants for war crimes against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister and who were investigating Americans for alleged war crimes.
I think Trump absolutely right to do this. Among many grave moral and legal deficiencies in the court’s action, it’s meant only to prosecute officials of those countries that don’t have their own legitimate legal processes. Israel has one of the world’s most robust judiciaries.
But that’s not my point here.
When the court issued its infamous arrest warrants, Anthony Albanese said he couldn’t comment on them one way or the other because he didn’t comment on legal proceedings.
This was both fatuous and cowardly.
40
Peter Dutton & the Liberals could learn a lesson from America. and apply to Canberra/ACT Bureaucrats
As the Wall Street Journal said today – Democrats Stand Up for the Bureaucrats Against DOGE
Whose idea was it to have Chuck Schumer lead a protest outside the Treasury?
Picture it: The Democrats, onetime tribunes of the people, fiercely defending government employees from the taxpayers; the party of the oppressed putting it all on the line to protect federal bureaucrats from the people they’re supposed to serve.
It was a tableau for the ages, one example of the many strange battle lines the Democratic Party has chosen to defend these past few years: illegal migrants over citizens, teachers unions over parents and children, criminals over victims, men-turned-women over girls.
Good luck with that, Democrats. You might want to fire your pollsters.
Choosing to die on the hill of the right of permanent government officials to spend money without hindrance from the president’s delegates is an especially odd decision. I’m trying to picture the voter who is currently sitting at home rooting for the employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the Internal Revenue Service.
So far at least, the Department of Government Efficiency looks like something of a misnomer. It’s early days but it seems less DOGE and more DOGA, a Department of Government Accountability.
Since that acronym doesn’t really work, perhaps it could be called Making American Government Accountable—and you could even save a few hundred thousand dollars by repurposing some red hats.
50
Even fully woke Goolag has now accepted the name change to Gulf of America.
Plus, there’s the inescapable fact that the Gulf touches on two of the three Americas; North and Central.
Certainly, a more compelling argument than the status quo.
20
Air Force One Pilot Announces “Gulf of America” to President Trump on Way to Super Bowl
10
Australia’s oldest wind system is shuttting down: https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-oldest-commercial-wind-farm-to-close-as-cost-of-repowering-is-too-high/
It will be interesting to see the decommissioning process.
The first wind system in Esperance, WA, shut down after only 15 year’s operation.
50
FWIW
“Liberal Magazine: Hitler Knew How to Fund Science, Unlike Trump”
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/02/10/liberal-magazine-hitler-was-better-than-trump-about-academia-n3799682
The author obviously hasn’t read R.V. Jones, “Most Secret War”.
Jones points out that his job in British scientific intelligence was made easier because Hitler hadn’t appointed a German equivalent.
He also notes that a similar position (had it existed) could have been filled by a German post graduate student who had worked with him pre-WW2
00