Trump 2.0

[IFocus]

Jeez you're hard work, you need to put the tamborine back in the union Camry. Lol

Record number of Pacific Islanders now work in Australia helping supply your next meal

This fruit picker is supporting his family in Vanuatu to recover from cyclones. He hopes changes to the Pacific worker program will help him send more money home.

www.abc.net.au

Thought that the Pacific Islander visa scheme was a win win Australia’s near full employment limits available labour farmers are screaming for workers this helps secure the islands against China plus the Islanders do ok great people why would you slag it off?

 

[sptrawler]

Thought that the Pacific Islander visa scheme was a win win Australia’s near full employment limits available labour farmers are screaming for workers this helps secure the islands against China plus the Islanders do ok great people why would you slag it off?

Because as per usual, you were talking BS, to slag off at me, if you don't like being slagged off at, don't do it to others.
But hey I know SFA remember,

As I said in my original post:

Well Australia imports slave labour from the South Pacific to pick fruit and meanwhile the Government borrows money to pay Australians that don't want to pick the fruit, somehow you think that's sustainable?


Which is a true statement.
To which you said::

Go outback all the workers are Euros chasing visas perhaps you could replace them…….

From memory, the Euro workers who are picking fruit are usually trying to extend their visas, they usually work in hospitality when they first arrive, but if they want to extend their stay they have to go bush, commence studying, or leave.

here you go:
Yes, a European backpacker on a Working Holiday Visa (subclass 417 or 462) can extend their visa by completing specified work in regional areas, including farming, for a minimum of 88 days (for a second visa) or 6 months (for a third visa).

I've actually worked in the outback even at the Wiluna orange orchard and there aren't many Euro backpackers, compared to the number of Islanders, the backpackers are working behind the bars in the pubs.
Even in Wiluna.

 

[SirRumpole]

Trump's giving us the kick in the face we need is my thinking.

True. Loyalty to the US in terms of purchases is over.

If other countries have a better deal on pharmaceuticals, defence equipment, ag. equipment, aviation, then we should consider other options.

 

[sptrawler]

True. Loyalty to the US in terms of purchases is over.

If other countries have a better deal on pharmaceuticals, defence equipment, ag. equipment, aviation, then we should consider other options.

Like maybe getting Austal to build our ships, rather than Japan or Germany, oh the irony.

Japan and Germany shortlisted for Australia's next warship program

Australia will begin building its next warships in either Germany or Japan after the government narrowed the field of designs for a contract worth $11 billion over the next decade.

www.abc.net.au

In short:​

Japan and Germany will face off for a massive Australian naval contract after the government shortlisted warship designs from both nations in favour of Spanish and Korean options.

The massive General Purpose Frigate (GPF) project is worth at least $11 billion over the next decade to eventually replace the Anzac-class fleet.

What's next:​

A final decision on the winning design will be made next year with the first warship scheduled to be delivered in 2029.


Meanwhile in the U.S of A

Austal to build US Navy ship in potential $4.8b deal

The Perth-headquartered shipbuilder’s shares soared more than 25 per cent on Friday morning after it secured the lucrative defence contract.

www.afr.com

Austal has secured a contract to design and build a surveillance ship for the US Navy that could be expanded to six more ships, potentially raising the total value of the contract to $US3.2 billion ($4.8 billion).

The Perth-based shipbuilder, which has been co-operating with a fraud investigation in the United States, said the initial $US113.9 million fixed-price contract was to build a T-AGOS 25 class vessel which would support submarines by providing acoustic surveillance.

AND TO TOP IT OFF "BUILD IN AUSTRALIA" AS IF.

Austal should stay independent of foreign frigate builders | The Strategist

It isn’t clear whether Hanwha Ocean is still interested in buying Australian shipbuilder Austal, but the government should oppose such an acquisition by the South Korean company or any other contender for the general purpose ...

www.aspistrategist.org.au

It isn’t clear whether Hanwha Ocean is still interested in buying Australian shipbuilder Austal, but the government should oppose such an acquisition by the South Korean company or any other contender for the general purpose frigate program.

If Hanwha Ocean or one of its rivals bought Austal, in doing so the new owner might also acquire a powerful advantage in a competition that should be based entirely on Australian security considerations. Anyway, there would be a risk for the buyer of the deal backfiring, resulting in ownership of an Australian asset with no major local naval shipbuilding contracts.

 

[SirRumpole]

Like maybe getting Austal to build our ships, rather than Japan or Germany, oh the irony.

Japan and Germany shortlisted for Australia's next warship program

Australia will begin building its next warships in either Germany or Japan after the government narrowed the field of designs for a contract worth $11 billion over the next decade.

www.abc.net.au

In short:​

Japan and Germany will face off for a massive Australian naval contract after the government shortlisted warship designs from both nations in favour of Spanish and Korean options.

The massive General Purpose Frigate (GPF) project is worth at least $11 billion over the next decade to eventually replace the Anzac-class fleet.

What's next:​

A final decision on the winning design will be made next year with the first warship scheduled to be delivered in 2029.


Meanwhile in the U.S of A

Austal to build US Navy ship in potential $4.8b deal

The Perth-headquartered shipbuilder’s shares soared more than 25 per cent on Friday morning after it secured the lucrative defence contract.

www.afr.com

I would not buy anything from Spain given their previous record. Korea doesn't really have a record in building warships, whereas Japan and Germany....

 

[sptrawler]

I would not buy anything from Spain given their previous record. Korea doesn't really have a record in building warships, whereas Japan and Germany....

Why not use Austal?
Let's be honest they make similar ships, to what is required and isn't the made in Australia the war cry, or is it just about optics?

 

[SirRumpole]

Why not use Austal?
Let's be honest they make similar ships, to what is required and isn't the made in Australia the war cry, or is it just about optics?

If they can do a quality job, then of course use them.

 

[sptrawler]

If they can do a quality job, then of course use them.

That's what I think and the contracts haven't been awarded yet, even if Austal have to gear up at the Henderson plant it would make sense to do so.
I'm surprised the media hasn't asked the question, but hard questions don't seem to be in their repertoire, it's more about sound grabs and sensationalism.

 

[basilio]

A view of Trump 2.0 from Michael Lewis author of Money Ball, Liars Poker and The Big Short,

Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed

John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
President, Hussman Investment Trust

April 2025​

.........
Michael Lewis – the author of Liars Poker, Moneyball, and The Big Short, shares a similar perspective below:

The gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka wrote “The whole is something else than the sum of its parts.” In any form of analysis, the way to draw useful signals is to examine evidence not piece by piece, but in the context of syndromes that convey more information, taken together, than any one piece might convey individually.

In the present context, consider the full syndrome of behaviors we are now observing
eliminating the individuals responsible for oversight
gutting the civil service
installing loyalists at every level of government,
abandoning and betraying allies,
canceling USDA funding toward food banks for the poor – as if the cruelty is the point,
suspending surveillance for Russian cyber-threats,
halting funding for election security initiatives,
announcing third term aspirations,
silencing the Voice of America,
violations of the right of all persons to due process (which throughout history has always cracked the egg by starting with those who are least defensible),
imposing a global tariff structure with no mapping to any logical framework but chaos,
suppressing viewpoints deemed to be “improper ideology”,
pardoning loyalists who violently attacked the Capitol Police,
$5 million one-to-one business meetings,
self-dealing across everything from government agency contracts to self-distributed crypto,
territorial aspirations to annex sovereign countries coupled with thinly veiled threats –

consider the full syndrome, and it should be clear that this consolidation of power has crossed dangerously beyond the ordinary dysfunction of partisan politics.

The Russian-American dissident Masha Gessen described the Russian regime as “consolidation of power for the sake of power, the destruction of civil society, and the creation of a mafia state.” In the words of U.S. intelligence expert Fiona Hill, the system operates as “a highly personalized autocracy centered on a kleptocratic system of governance, based on loyalty and suppression of dissent.” One might consider the possibility that we are ceding every branch of government to people who do not oppose autocrats because they openly admire and quietly hope to become them.

Even in the early moments when we recognize subversion but it doesn’t yet sting, silence is corrosive. One is reminded of Martin Niemöller – “first they came for … and I did not speak out.”

Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. It is not that evil people seize power, but that the system selects for mediocrity and loyalty. The result is a government that cannot correct itself, cannot hear its citizens, and cannot change course without collapse. It lives only to preserve itself.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1973

Authoritarianism is not always born in a coup or with jackboots in the street – it arrives disguised as order, as security, as tradition. It hollows out institutions from within, replaces law with loyalty, and trades truth for narrative. It centralizes wealth and power, erodes the public good, and demands obedience in exchange for stability. What it fears most is accountability – and what it destroys first is the capacity to demand it.
– Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy

Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed - Hussman Funds

In recent years, our most reliable measures of stock market valuation have pushed beyond their 1929 and 2000 peaks, and I’ve described the period since early 2022 as the extended peak of the third great speculative bubble in U.S. history. In my view, that process is now complete. The stock...

www.hussmanfunds.com

 

[mullokintyre]

The Trump chaos may or may not get a circuit breaker.
The biggest threat I see now, is the question of whether the US fed decides to go to war with Trump.
Just how big are Powels balls, and which of the big players eager to get their way has the tightest gip on said balls?
The Fed and its members have a lot of tools at their disposal, and the very serious rationale that they do not want anything to interfere with the massive money printing machine that the FED provides for its owner banks.
Mick

 

[SirRumpole]

The Trump chaos may or may not get a circuit breaker.
The biggest threat I see now, is the question of whether the US fed decides to go to war with Trump.
Just how big are Powels balls, and which of the big players eager to get their way has the tightest gip on said balls?
The Fed and its members have a lot of tools at their disposal, and the very serious rationale that they do not want anything to interfere with the massive money printing machine that the FED provides for its owner banks.
Mick

Can the chair of the Fed Reserve be impeached?

Trump will find a way.

 

[sptrawler]

Can the chair of the Fed Reserve be impeached?

Trump will find a way.

Well Trump knows all the ways you can't be impeached, they have tried them all on him.

 

[sptrawler]

A view of Trump 2.0 from Michael Lewis author of Money Ball, Liars Poker and The Big Short,

Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed View attachment 197019
View attachment 197020

John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
President, Hussman Investment Trust

April 2025​

.........
Michael Lewis – the author of Liars Poker, Moneyball, and The Big Short, shares a similar perspective below:

The gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka wrote “The whole is something else than the sum of its parts.” In any form of analysis, the way to draw useful signals is to examine evidence not piece by piece, but in the context of syndromes that convey more information, taken together, than any one piece might convey individually.

In the present context, consider the full syndrome of behaviors we are now observing
eliminating the individuals responsible for oversight
gutting the civil service
installing loyalists at every level of government,
abandoning and betraying allies,
canceling USDA funding toward food banks for the poor – as if the cruelty is the point,
suspending surveillance for Russian cyber-threats,
halting funding for election security initiatives,
announcing third term aspirations,
silencing the Voice of America,
violations of the right of all persons to due process (which throughout history has always cracked the egg by starting with those who are least defensible),
imposing a global tariff structure with no mapping to any logical framework but chaos,
suppressing viewpoints deemed to be “improper ideology”,
pardoning loyalists who violently attacked the Capitol Police,
$5 million one-to-one business meetings,
self-dealing across everything from government agency contracts to self-distributed crypto,
territorial aspirations to annex sovereign countries coupled with thinly veiled threats –

consider the full syndrome, and it should be clear that this consolidation of power has crossed dangerously beyond the ordinary dysfunction of partisan politics.

The Russian-American dissident Masha Gessen described the Russian regime as “consolidation of power for the sake of power, the destruction of civil society, and the creation of a mafia state.” In the words of U.S. intelligence expert Fiona Hill, the system operates as “a highly personalized autocracy centered on a kleptocratic system of governance, based on loyalty and suppression of dissent.” One might consider the possibility that we are ceding every branch of government to people who do not oppose autocrats because they openly admire and quietly hope to become them.

Even in the early moments when we recognize subversion but it doesn’t yet sting, silence is corrosive. One is reminded of Martin Niemöller – “first they came for … and I did not speak out.”

Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed - Hussman Funds

In recent years, our most reliable measures of stock market valuation have pushed beyond their 1929 and 2000 peaks, and I’ve described the period since early 2022 as the extended peak of the third great speculative bubble in U.S. history. In my view, that process is now complete. The stock...

www.hussmanfunds.com

Yes, it's an absolute tragedy that it had to come to this, that the disparity in wealth and the public losing that much faith in Government, that they vote someone like Trump in.
How bad must the publics feeling of despair be, that the majority feel they would prefer chaos, over what they had?

It isn't as though they hadn't voted him in once before, so they knew what to expect, it must show how disenfranchised the majority is.

 

[basilio]

Yes, it's an absolute tragedy that it had to come to this, that the disparity in wealth and the public losing that much faith in Government, that they vote someone like Trump in.
How bad must the publics feeling of despair be, that the majority feel they would prefer chaos, over what they had?

It isn't as though they hadn't voted him in once before, so they knew what to expect, it must show how disenfranchised the majority is.

Have the scales fallen from your eyes SP ? Do you recognise that whatever issues one might have had with Biden or the Democrats what Donald Trump is now doing is infinitely more dangerous and far reaching than ever envisaged for the Dems ?

It's not as if the reality of what he is doing has been hidden. That list of outrages is comprehensive but not complete - or final. We aren't even 3 months into this regime. In Australia two of the richest people in the country, Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer are throwing their considerable weight and dollars to supporting a Trump Party movement to move Australia in that direction.

This forum has plenty of people who either enthusiastically support what is happening, no matter what, or seemingly shrug it off as something they can't do anything about or feel uneasy abut voicing their concern. That is as worrying now as it was in 1933

If you go back to the original article by John Hussman a reference is made to Martin Niemoller.

Even in the early moments when we recognize subversion but it doesn’t yet sting, silence is corrosive. One is reminded of Martin Niemöller – “first they came for … and I did not speak out.”

Do you know the full story ? Martin Niemoller was a Lutheran Pastor in Germany who initially supported Adolf Hitler - until it was too late to stop him.
Check it out.

First They Came - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[sptrawler]

Have the scales fallen from your eyes SP ? Do you recognise that whatever issues one might have had with Biden or the Democrats what Donald Trump is now doing is infinitely more dangerous and far reaching than ever envisaged for the Dems ?

It's not as if the reality of what he is doing has been hidden. That list of outrages is comprehensive but not complete - or final. We aren't even 3 months into this regime. In Australia two of the richest people in the country, Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer are throwing their considerable weight and dollars to supporting a Trump Party movement to move Australia in that direction.

This forum has plenty of people who either enthusiastically support what is happening, no matter what, or seemingly shrug it off as something they can't do anything about or feel uneasy abut voicing their concern. That is as worrying now as it was in 1933

If you go back to the original article by John Hussman a reference is made to Martin Niemoller.

Even in the early moments when we recognize subversion but it doesn’t yet sting, silence is corrosive. One is reminded of Martin Niemöller – “first they came for … and I did not speak out.”

Do you know the full story ? Martin Niemoller was a Lutheran Pastor in Germany who initially supported Adolf Hitler - until it was too late to stop him.
Check it out.

First They Came - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't have any issues with Biden or the Democrats, the only time I hear or read anything about U.S politics is on ASF, so that isn't my issue.

My issue is, what is unfolding had to happen, whether it was Trump or Biden or anybody else isn't the issue.

The Western countries are in financial freefall, politicians are just throwing money at each and every cause they think is worthy, without any thought as to how it is going to be funded.

This had to happen sooner or later, fortunately it has happened sooner, it may result in my grandkids having a better future than they were going to get on the current trajectory IMO.

 

[basilio]

I don't have any issues with Biden or the Democrats, the only time I hear or read anything about U.S politics is on ASF, so that isn't my issue.

My issue is, what is unfolding had to happen, whether it was Trump or Biden or anybody else isn't the issue.

The Western countries are in financial freefall, politicians are just throwing money at each and every cause they think is worthy, without any thought as to how it is going to be funded.

This had to happen sooner or later, fortunately it has happened sooner, it may result in my grandkids having a better future than they were going to get on the current trajectory IMO.

Really ? Are you seeing what is happening now with Trumps takeover of the US and destruction of world trade with this trade war as something that will help your grandkids have a better future ?

I agree that our economic systems were going to hell in a handbasket. But I struggle to see how what is evolving now is just creating an economic disaster for (almost) everyone.

 

[sptrawler]

Really ? Are you seeing what is happening now with Trumps takeover of the US and destruction of world trade with this trade war as something that will help your grandkids have a better future ?

I agree that our economic systems were going to hell in a handbasket. But I struggle to see how what is evolving now is just creating an economic disaster for (almost) everyone.

I know you struggle to see what is evolving now, that's why I wont waste my time and yours discussing it with you.
Many of us have been discussing this at length, for a long time on the forum, while you and your affiliated posters have been discussing Trumps horrid personality.

 

[IFocus]

Because as per usual, you were talking BS, to slag off at me, if you don't like being slagged off at, don't do it to others.
But hey I know SFA remember,

As I said in my original post:

Well Australia imports slave labour from the South Pacific to pick fruit and meanwhile the Government borrows money to pay Australians that don't want to pick the fruit, somehow you think that's sustainable?


Which is a true statement.
To which you said::

Go outback all the workers are Euros chasing visas perhaps you could replace them…….

From memory, the Euro workers who are picking fruit are usually trying to extend their visas, they usually work in hospitality when they first arrive, but if they want to extend their stay they have to go bush, commence studying, or leave.

here you go:
Yes, a European backpacker on a Working Holiday Visa (subclass 417 or 462) can extend their visa by completing specified work in regional areas, including farming, for a minimum of 88 days (for a second visa) or 6 months (for a third visa).

I've actually worked in the outback even at the Wiluna orange orchard and there aren't many Euro backpackers, compared to the number of Islanders, the backpackers are working behind the bars in the pubs.
Even in Wiluna.

True statement…. Please check your meds seriously are you saying that the farmers and fruit growers in Oz are employing slave labour? You do understand seasonal work?

 

[sptrawler]

True statement…. Please check your meds seriously are you saying that the farmers and fruit growers in Oz are employing slave labour? You do understand seasonal work?

Well I can go back to where I brought up the fact a while ago, when I alluded to the issue farmers couldn't get pickers while fruit was rotting on the ground and I'm pretty sure you said that the wages are crap and why would unemployed people go out there and also have to find accommodation etc.

Why is it good enough for South Sea Islanders, if it isn't good enough for our unemployed, sounds like slave labour to me.

But you could check your meds, before I do that.

Also let's not forget, it was only a couple of days ago, you said all the fruit pickers were European backpackers, when I mentioned they were South Sea islanders.
Sounds like your having memory issues.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

you lost me at slave labour