Author Archives: lawofmarkets

Apropos of something this being Woody Allen

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I have just finished Woody Allen’s autobiography, Apropos of Nothing. There have been a number of constants in my life and so far, a love for his movies and his comedy generally has been one of the foremost.

He identifies with the left, but he is a conservative at heart. Everything about his films is representative of the core morality of Western Civilisation. His humour is founded on our Biblical morality. You cannot find anything funny in what he says or writes unless you begin from a solid basis in Biblical morality and the ethics of the West.

I could not recommend his autobiography more.

A $30m contract for three months’ work

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This is what Daniel Andrews was dealing with. From Peta Credlin: Too much we’re not being told about Victoria’s hotel quarantine fiasco. And while who made the decision is important (here’s the answer, it was Dan), more important to me is why he chose some local mates over the ADF.

The Premier’s chief of staff was the first person Eccles briefed on the national cabinet decision to introduce hotel quarantine. Jobs Department head Simon Phemister then put the process in train that led to the engagement of Unified Security, a company not on the list of preferred tenderers, but that somehow won the lion’s share of the work — a $30m contract for three months’ work…. How could Phemister have set up the private security contracts without knowing how this had come to be authorised? What public servants would spend $30m without being clear about the authority for it?

So many questions, so few answers.

The great coronavirus divide

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These truly are a spectacular set of differences of attitude. This is a difference between hysterics (Democrats) and stoics (Republicans), and it goes well beyond the coronavirus. I also don’t think the numbers will converge. There is a difference of such profound consequence between the mentality of the left and the right and that difference may never have been better laid out than here.

Suggested by Bruce of Newcastle and taken from Powerline. And this was the “Best” comment there:

In my lifetime the Democrats have assured me that I would be dead from AIDS if I had unprotected relations only once; that I would be dead from Acid Rain; that I would be dead without mandatory seatbelt laws; that I would be dead unless the drinking age was raised to 21; that I would be dead from a nuclear war started by Ronald Reagan; that I would be dead from coastal floods caused by melting polar ice caps; that I would be dead from George W. Bush’s aggressive Middle East policy; that I would be dead from a worldwide famine caused by global warming; that I would be dead without aggressive regulation of the Internet; that I would be dead unless price controls were imposed upon Big Pharma; that I would be dead unless we made up and played nice with Iran; and now that I would be dead unless I stay home most of the time and continually wear a mask.

With this as well:

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Not to mention this:

Fear is the great motivator on the left. If you vote for a party of the left you really are daft.

Saving Grace

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I will begin with a single statement: if you do not already subscribe to Quadrant, then you should; it is the best political magazine of conservative thought in the world and I read them all. Subscribe here. Here is only part of the reason why.

Both TAFKAS and myself wrote posts in reaction to a Weekend Australia article by Katrina Grace Kelly: Public safety becomes a casualty to the culture wars. This was his: Safety, and this was mine: Australians watching American politics according to The Oz. To understand what she wrote, I will provide the following from Spartacus:

In her piece this past weekend, titled Public safety becomes a casualty to the culture wars, Kelly writes some “unusual” things.  To start with, it was a very odd mashing of Covid management in Australia, the US and the performance of President Trump.

This aside, it is Kelly’s closing paragraph that got to TAFKAS:

“Voters expect politicians to do everything to keep them safe, and many will vote along these lines.”

I just shortened her argument to, “Save me, she begs, save me.” You get the idea.

Then I turned to my latest October Quadrant which I go through end to end and read through every article that interests me, which most do. But not everything, and this was an article I expected to pass over, titled: The Sea. Turned out it was an investigation of the literature in relation to The Sea as a metaphor of danger. And then in the midst of this wonderful article, there was a passage from The Book of Common Prayer, which brought me back to that pathetic article by Princess Grace:

“O most powerful and glorious Lord God, at whose command the winds blow, and lift up the waves of the sea, and who stillest the rage thereof; We, thy creatures, but miserable sinners, do in this our great distress cry unto thee for help; Save, Lord, or else we perish.”

I am afraid Ms Kelly is a lost soul. She has lost touch with G-d; she can think of no other to save her woebegone self from the dangers of life but the Government. There are many lost souls such as herself who seek salvation in the hands of government from whom no salvation can ever be found. She turns to Joe Biden instead. If it weren’t so tragically sad it might be funny. She is a metaphor for our times.

Australians watching American politics according to The Oz

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This really is one of the creepiest stories I have come across in the papers in quite a while: Public safety becomes a casualty to the culture wars. It’s by Katrina Grace Kelly and it’s in The Australian.

Confession: it is easy to laugh when on the other side of the world, I suppose, but Donald Trump has been a source of great amusement for many years. However, as the mind-boggling events unfolded this week, the smile was wiped from my dial.

Telling people not to be afraid of COVID-19, which he has contracted — although when and where remains a secret — the President checked out of hospital and returned to the White House.

A day or so later, as the US death toll reached 211,532, reports on television claimed Trump was symptom free and had declared his infection a “blessing in disguise”.

This is her central point:

If the leader of any country has only one job, it is to keep their citizens out of harm’s way. Despite any other previous policy triumphs, if a leader doesn’t do everything to keep their people alive in the face of avoidable death, they won’t be appreciated.

I don’t want to get into just how inane I think this is. If you don’t see it yourself, I can do nothing to help you. But it was the sentence that followed that makes it clear just how much, in Jane Fonda’s words, “Covid is God’s gift to the Left”. Here we have, in The Oz:

Polls often are wrong but they have Trump on track to lose the election. If he does, it will be because of his COVID-19 response.

And it will be just because of this safety-first inanity from people of the left such as herself. Save me, she begs, save me. No one is any longer dying, there are other issues that also matter, and many that are much more important. But so far as she is concerned, that is the first priority with everything else a long way distant behind. Here are the first five comments under “Best Liked” and then a few others after that.

“Voters expect politicians to do everything to keep them safe”. No, we expect them to provide information so we can decide for ourselves how “safe” we want to be. It’s time we recaptured the notion of individual responsibility. The thought of big government nursing me from cradle to grave has me more worried than the virus.

Used to like reading your columns Katrina now they are better suited to the Guardian.

Keeping the population safe includes the responsibility of not destroying the economy.

KGK over the last couple of her articles, has shown herself to be a Dan lover and Trump/right hater/disliker. It’s always good to know the perspective from which the authors come. One thing though for KGK, as a person who will relentlessly defend Dan Andrews and his draconian lockdowns, can she please explain how my child in France was in the very same class with another child who was confirmed to have Covid. The Covid positive child stayed away from school for a few weeks and the rest of the class went on as normal with no one else (nor the teacher) getting Covid (and their classrooms is really, really small and packed with students). Compare this with Victoria where there are very very few diagnosed cases (certainly in comparison to France) but no kids going to school for 6 entire months. KGK, can you see why some people may see that there has been a bit of an over reaction by your man Dan? I think KGK ought to check her bias.

A very simple response Katrina. You’re so very, very wrong in your thinking.

“Telling people not to be afraid of COVID-19, which he has contracted.” Am I the only person in the world who understood his words to be along the lines of not letting yourself become too afraid to live and to still find joy in the world despite the times we are living in; but to take care and be responsible. The man has his faults but for just once could anyone report on his utterances with just a small degree of objectivity?

It is the perpetually terrified who have urged politicians to bring us to our knees. Governments cannot keep us safe. In the ultimate scenario it is they that send troops to die to achieve economic and moral objectives. Safety is am illusion. Live under the doona for as long as you like Katrina but the rest of us want to live life.

This is what gets my back up. People who are so quick to blame Trump for the deaths from corona but yet give a free pass to Dan Andrews. Seriously?? The same bloke who let 10000 BLM protesters run amuck thru Melbourne because apparently they couldn’t be policed but yet dragged a pregnant mother out of her home for supporting a Fb post about a protest. What a joke.

Sorry, but most of this is a string of nonsense cliches.

We can’t hide under the bed forever. I think it is eminently sensible advice to say ‘don’t let this virus rule our lives, we must learn to live with it’.

I swear people still peddling this fear campaign must live under a rock.

Australians watching American politics according to the NYT

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If you have had any doubts about the quality of insights found in the New York Times, they can now be put to rest: Australians Watching American Politics: ???!!!!***$%%#. Here’s how it starts:

Australians used to talk about American politics the way they talk about sport — they followed the ups and downs, marveled at the competitor, and tried to game out who would win.

This year? It’s more like the discussion of a car wreck involving a neighbor or an uncle.

For months, friends and even strangers have been asking if my relatives are healthy, worried they may have perished in the American coronavirus catastrophe. And this week, after a debacle of a debate and the news that President Trump and Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus, I saw and heard more than just empathy — also shock, dismay, fear, heartbreak and just head-shaking alarm.

Van Badham, a commentator who often writes for The Guardian (and occasionally the New York Times Opinion section), replied to my tweet about Mr. Trump’s positive test result with what many Australians seem to be feeling:

“I just
I can’t
I mean
What
Oh god”

My very reaction and so well put. All the news that’s fit to be ignored.

Might also add in this from Paul Krugman on the NYT editorial page: Trump Is Killing the Economy Out of Spite. So much to choose from but this will have to do:

Last year Donald Trump called Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, a “nasty, vindictive, horrible person.” Actually, she isn’t — but he is.

Trump’s vindictiveness has become a major worry as the election approaches. He has already signaled that he won’t accept the result if he loses, which seems increasingly likely though not certain. Nobody knows what chaos, possibly including violence, he may unleash if the election doesn’t go his way.

Even aside from that concern, however, a defeated Trump would still be president for two and a half months. Would he spend that time acting destructively, in effect taking revenge on America for rejecting him?

Well, we got a preview of what a lame-duck Trump presidency might look like Tuesday. Trump hasn’t even lost yet, but he abruptly cut off talks on an economic relief package millions of Americans desperately need (although as of Thursday he seemed to be backtracking). And his motivation seems to have been sheer spite.

Why do we need economic relief? Despite several months of large employment gains, America has only partly recovered from horrific job losses in the early months of the pandemic — and the pace of recovery has slowed to a relative crawl. All indications are that the economy will remain weak for many months, maybe even years.

How long it takes for recovery to be complete, in spite of all the employment gains already, will depend on who wins the election. Obama-Biden couldn’t effect a recovery following the GFC although they had eight years to try. Not in a single year did the economy grow faster than three percent! You know Einstein’s definition of political insanity about continuing with policies that fail. I only hope we are not given the opportunity to find out for ourselves as the Democrats once again try their Keynesian economic magic.

The buffoon in the White House

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The buffoon in the White House just brokered two Middle East Peace Accords, something that 71 years of political intervention and endless war failed to produce.

The buffoon in the White House is the first president that has not engaged us in a foreign war since Eisenhower.

The buffoon in the White House has had the greatest impact on the economy, bringing jobs and lowering unemployment to the Black and Latino population of ANY other president. Ever.

The buffoon in the White House has exposed the deep, widespread, and long-standing corruption in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Republican and Democratic parties.

The buffoon in the White House turned NATO around and had them start paying their dues.

The buffoon in the White House neutralized the North Koreans, stopped them from developing a further nuclear capability, sending missiles toward Japan, and threatening the West Coast of the US.

The Buffoon in the White House turned our relationship to the Chinese around, brought hundreds of business back to the US and revived the economy. Hello.

The buffoon in the White House has accomplished the appointing of two Supreme Court Justices and close to 300 Federal Judges.

The buffoon in the White House lowered your taxes and caused your stock market to move to record levels over 100 times, positively impacting the retirements of tens of millions of citizens.

The buffoon in the White House fast-tracked the development of a COVID Vaccine – it will be available within weeks – we still don’t have a vaccine for SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola, or a host of diseases that arose during previous administrations.

The buffoon in the White House rebuilt our military which the Obama administration had crippled and had fired 214 key generals and admirals in his first year of office.

The buffoon in the White House uncovered widespread pedophilia in the government and in Hollywood. The buffoon in the White House is exposing worldwide sex trafficking of minors and bringing children home to their families.

The buffoon in the White House. Works for free and has lost well over 2 billion dollars of his own money in serving – and does all of this and much more in the face of relentless undermining and opposition from people who are threatened because they know they are going to be exposed as the criminals that they are if he is re-elected.

I got it, you don’t like him. How special of you. He is serving you and ALL the American people. What are you doing besides calling him names?”
Taken from