Tuesday, 22 October 2024


Liz Cheney versus Uncle Donny

For years, I’ve suggested an essential method to deciding who to support for president would be based on who you trusted to run a McDonald’s for a day or watch your children for an afternoon. Perhaps intimidated by the former president’s success at the former measure, Cheney suggested at her event with Vice President Harris this weekend that the latter measure would disqualify Donald Trump — who she endorsed in 2020 — as an unacceptable giver of childcare. “If you wouldn’t hire someone to babysit your kids, don’t make them president,” she said to Harris’s laughter.

Among the valid complaints about Donald Trump, many of which I share, this one makes no sense to me at all. Obviously and to the man’s credit he has one of the best relationships any president in the modern era has had with their children and grandchildren, unmarked by any type of dysfunction except in the fever pitch of online leftists.

The Donald Trump babysitting experience only runs into the danger that he will spoil them to the nth degree, ordering them the giant box of McNuggets with all the sauces, teaching them how to hit wiffle balls off the back porch and giving them free reign to watch every Disney+ movie they want to their heart’s content. You’ll come home from the night out with the wife and find them on a sugar and Moana high demanding that Uncle Donny come back again as soon as possible.

An evening with Liz Cheney, on the other hand, is assured to result in them casting paranoid eyes at mommy and daddy, reversing their audio devices to spy on the other rooms and demanding to know if you’re all paid up on your camera-issued parking tickets. You know they’re important for maintaining roads and bridges, right? Just hope she doesn’t try to teach them how to shoot dart guns, or they’ll put your eye out.

The New York Times’s coverage of Trump’s McDonald’s escapade included throwing an unbelievable amount of shade at him throwing salt over his shoulder, suggesting it was an act of paranoia, waste and failure of efficiency. We’re entering the silly season of 2024 when Democrats and their fellow travelers just start to throw everything at the wall, attempting desperately to achieve some kind of stability as their candidate flails toward a likely loss. A winning campaign at this moment would be focused on the economy, security, stability and defending the rights of women. Instead they’re rolling out Liz Cheney, Usher and Lizzo. Given the choice of those three, I’m definitely going for a different sitter.

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CHOGM: UK Government rules out slavery reparations and apology

THE UK Government has ruled out paying reparations to countries affected by the slave trade or making a formal apology.

Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Samoa later this week, amid calls for reparations from Labour MPs and Caribbean governments.

At the summit, leaders will elect a new secretary general for the Commonwealth to replace Patricia Scotland, who held the position from 2016.

All three candidates in the running have called for reparations for countries which were plundered during the slave trade.

But the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson has ruled out compensatory payments and an apology from the Government.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “Reparation’s not on the agenda for the Chogm meeting.

“The Government’s position on this has not changed, we do not pay reparations.

“The Prime Minister’s attending this week’s summit to discuss shared challenges and opportunities faced by the Commonwealth including driving growth across our economies.”

Asked about an apology, the spokesperson added: “The position on apology remains the same, we won’t be offering an apology at Chogm, but we will continue to engage with partners on the issues as we work with them to tackle the pressing challenges of today and indeed for the future generations.”

Five Labour MPs told The Guardian on Monday that the Government should at least be open to discussing reparations. Among others, Nadia Whittome (above) said the UK must open “up a dialogue with those countries whose wealth we extracted, about the impact of colonialism and slavery on their society and how the wrongs of the past can be righted”.

A Commonwealth spokesperson said: “The Commonwealth has historically facilitated frank conversations about difficult issues that have resulted in positive outcomes. Reparatory justice, which is more than just about reparations, may be discussed at Chogm, if any government proposes it. If so, the heads of government will decide how the discussions will proceed.’

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Elon Musk's ex Grimes sparks debate by claiming she became 'way less gay' after getting pregnant

Elon Musk's ex-girlfriend Grimes sparked a debate on her X/Twitter account Tuesday, proclaiming she felt a shift in her sexuality after she became pregnant.

The Canadian singer-songwriter, 36, put out a statement and a follow-up question on the social media platform now owned by her ex.

'I became way less gay after I was pregnant' said the Flesh Without Blood artist, who shares three children with the Tesla CEO. 'My ability to focus on reading and writing went way up, as did my general creativity, but my ability to focus on technical things went *way* down.'

Grimes asked her 1.3 million followers, 'Is this all explained by hormones?'

The SpaceX CEO and Grimes are parents to four-year-old son X Æ A-12 Musk; three-year-old daughter Exa Dark Sideræl; and son Techno Mechanicus, whose exact age has not been publicly disclosed

The Vancouver native, whose full name is Claire Elise Boucher, answered questions from followers who responded to her initial inquiry.

When a follower said that her gay feelings hinged on 'being in a heterosexual relationship' with a less-agreeable partner, Grimes said in response, 'I feel like that [should] make me more gay tho.'

One user told Grimes that the platform owned and operated by Musk wasn't the best place to get good answers on the topic.

'Ask a doctor, X is not the best place, because you'll get 100 different theories,' the user told Grimes, who said she was 'kinda curious [about] the theories' floating around on the subject.

Grimes noted that she 'was reading [about] grey matter loss but improved neuroplasticity associated [with] pregnancy.'

Grimes said her 'testosterone is way down' after a user suggested she get her testosterone and DHEA levels checked, adding that she planned on following up with the doctor about it.

Asked for clarification on what she meant in saying 'by being less gay,' the musical artist said she was 'just less interested in dating girls.'

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Australian councillor says he was forced to fly back to Russia to speak freely

London: A regional West Australian councillor says he has travelled to Russia to speak openly about how free speech is suppressed in Australia and warned he has been persecuted for his views on Vladimir Putin, the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adrian McRae, a member of Port Hedland Council, doubled down on his praise for “Russian democracy” ahead of the three-day BRICS summit in Kazan, a city in south-west Russia, telling journalists he has been slurred as being “pro-Putin” for questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and for praising the Russian electoral system.

McRae, who contested the last federal election as a candidate for The Great Australian Party, founded by former WA senator and conspiracy theorist Rod Culleton, in the seat of Durack, previously travelled to Moscow in March to act as an independent observer for the presidential election.

“The reason we are at 11.59pm on the nuclear military conflict clock, it’s primarily because ... if the world understood what you know, those of us who dare to look outside the mainstream narrative for information,” McRae told journalists on Tuesday.

“If the world understood both sides of the conflict in Ukraine ... and they were able to talk openly and discuss it, then the decency of, I think people all over the world, would not allow their governments to get away with the nonsense narratives that were constantly being spoon-fed through our television sets.”

McRae, whose comments have previously been condemned by Australia’s Ukrainian community and WA Premier Roger Cook, said he had been turned into a villain by Australia’s mainstream media for airing his “informed” opinions, as well for his recent successful council motion, which urged authorities nationwide to immediately stop the use of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

The motion passed by the town’s council, based around 1800 kilometres north of Perth, was centred on an unverified study from Canada in 2023 which found “high levels of residual plasmid DNA present in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 modified mRNA vaccine”.

“The fact that we no longer have any sort of semblance of free speech in our country – I have to come here to Russia to talk in a mainstream way because such a thing will never be permitted in Australia,” McRae said.

“Again, the usual smear is I’m pro-Putin, in the hope that this slur will be enough to make anything that I say across Australia be viewed as some sort of conspiracy or lie, which is quite frightening.”

He said he’d previously travelled to Russia with preconceived media-driven notions about the country and was embarrassed to say that everything he saw “left any democratic and election process that I’ve seen, certainly in my country or anywhere in the West, it in its wake”.

McRae’s latest comments were widely shared on several pro-Russian channels on social media following a weekend interview on Sputnik News, where he applauded Russian state-owned media organisations for “giving an alternate voice”.

Along with John Shipton, the father of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, McRae has travelled as a guest to the summit, the biggest gathering of foreign leaders in Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

BRICS is an alliance started by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The meeting comes 19 months after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest on war crimes charges.

In the same weekend interview McRae quoted Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi political theorist, while attacking mainstream media reporting on the recent Russian election. The comments were first reported by the North West Telegraph.

“I think it was the German philosopher that said: ‘You have to have an enemy figure to create a cohesive society’. And of course, the enemy figure at the moment in the Australian media, in the Australian narrative is Russia,” he said.

In a social media post following his interview, McRae wrote that he was unsurprised the Australian media was acquainted with Schmitt’s work, since it had applied Schmitt’s “Friend & Foe” theories in “a desperate attempt to destroy my reputation”.

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