SayWhatt

Loving it already, bud! :)

Whomever needs to okay this, for the love of all that is holy, please give it! This is a thing of beauty!

Seriously though, Spinners, you never fail to outdo yourself with your Wh-Ifs!

Man... if we ever 'solved' bushfires in this country, I'd hate to think of the angry insect life we'd discover. I'm pretty sure we've built this country atop a Zerg hive.

Americans: "THOSE WASPS ARE HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE AND WILL KILL US ALL!!!!" Australians: "Why are the Yanks losing it over those tiny wasps??"

Jesus, my grammar has been atrocious, too! lol.

My bad, Erik. I misread your question as a statement, even though I quoted you, which is a touch embarrassing.

Whoops, sorry Sky High, that frustration wasn't directed at you but the that specific sentiment which is being bandied around here, despite it being thoroughly, thoroughly debunked. I cannot emphasise enough that it's simply not true and is only being propagated by those who have a political/ideological axe to grind, like the former deputy PM, hence my linking to him, and the other 200 or so links I added to back up my statements. And before anyone suggests I'm impartial or hold some kind of pro-greens bias, I haven't been interested in them for almost a decade now (whenever it was Bob Brown stepped down, like, 2011/12), quite the opposite, in fact. Their current starting line up gives me the shits. As a party, they tend to do more to damage and undermine themselves, despite stand out individual performances by some of their MPs See, we're going to have to differ here. I never said the PM was responsible for the fires, just that his response has been abysmal and tone deaf-- and this is a common consensus across the public, media and social media landscape here (not that I pay attention to the last one). He is renowned for being a pro-coal/anti-climate change proponent. He once brought a lump of coal in to parliament to taunt the opposition and profess his dedication to it. He's known for not taking threats to the environment seriously (I mean, he appointed a guy to the Environment portfolio who is an self-avowed 'anti-greenie' and young Earth creationist who believes the Earth is less than 12000 years old), I mean, it's the brand he's cultivated for himself. He nailed his colours to the mast a long ago on the subject. Nevertheless, dire warnings were given. The CFS/RFS made multiple attempts from August through December to get a meeting with the PM to discuss how thoroughly under prepared they were for this upcoming fire season and release state and federal funding to acquire more fire fighting platforms before it was too late, but he blew them off every time. He left to go on holiday weeks after the fires began, despite being extremely critical of the Victorian Police Commissioner for not being at her post during the Black Saturday fires. The government has shown more interest in 'trimming the fat' from public sector department, including cutting significant funds from emergency response services, to create a budget surplus few outside his party are interested in, and trying to pass a religious discrimination bill (which took up the bulk of his energies in Nov/Dec), that again, few outside his party want, than taking the fire threat seriously. But the thing that's really stuck in the public's craw was the fact that he, the PM of this country, decided to go on holiday when he should have been here at his post during a national emergency. Also, as I said previously, the PM's very clumsy, every-wrong-choice-possible response since begrudgingly coming home has not helped matters. But that is why people are angry here. Speaking of BS, so far my two 'favourite' conspiracies I've been reading about in non-Australian forums/news sites, etc, is that a whole bunch of people have been running around, starting these fires. To the best of my knowledge only 2 or 3 people have been arrested for deliberately starting fires (One in NSW, one in Tassie and possibly one in Victoria), and some kids started a fire in Qld. Later when the forensics crews have a chance to do their thing, we'll know more. The other conspiracy (and this one is fantastic!) is that these fires are being caused by volcanoes and lava flows. I mean, the last volcanic eruptions on the mainland or Tassie are measures in the tens of thousands to millions of years ago, but sure. 'Volcanoes'. :eyeroll:

This is an categorically untrue. Utter bullshit is also accurate, if a shade inflammatory. This is a narrative that came directly from a clown of a politician who's renowned for spurious, partisan claims and threatening to shoot Johnny Depp's dogs, and is currently being fostered by an arch-conservative lobby group here in Oz called the IPA as a means of countering the massive outrage at the PM's abysmal, tone deaf handling of the situation, because when the country is facing the worst fire season in it's history, why not play politics? /s. It's an attempt to place the blame at the feet of the Greens party for being the impediment to carrying out back burning and other fire prevention methods generally put into effect before the fire season starts. There's one small but critical problem with this: The states have the responsibility of implementing these fire prevention plans, and the Greens hold no power in any of the states-- there are no Green state premiers or state governments in ruling coalitions with the Greens, nor do they have the ability to prevent these policies from being enacted. Whilst responsibility for this is in the hands of the state governments (the Federal government can allocate emergency funding/resources to assist), a couple of states have found themselves distinctly underprepared (ie, NSW & Qld). So straight off the bat, this narrative doesn't even pass the smell test. It is true that in parts of NSW, several of back burnings were prevented, but this was due to significant budget cuts to the Country Fire Service by the NSW state government (something in the order of AUD $73 million in total) that slowed down it's fire prevention implementation to a crawl. The shortfall in manning, and funding caused delays in the fire prevention plans being enacted, and when the CFS finally found the resources to actually implement these back burnings, conditions were too dangerous for them to go forward with them safely. So while a stack were taken care of, a whole bunch weren't. There's a relatively small window to undertake back burning before Summer, and it's completion was missed thanks to unwise 'bureaucratic realignment' immediately before the fire season began. The anger being levelled at the PM, on the other hand, is well deserved. The government was warned repeatedly that the fire conditions were already catastrophic in November, that fuel loads were excessive, that weather conditions would exacerbate the situation, that the CFS was undermanned and underfunded, but these warnings were ignored. Additional assistance, including offers from New Zealand and Canada were initially rebuffed by the PM in early December with the PM stating that the CFS everything they needed and 'want' to be there, despite former leaders of the CFS/RFS unequivocally rejecting this (one of their big complaints was the local air support was entirely insufficient in the face of the threat)-- oh, and this guy. Just over a month after the fires began devastating NSW and QLD, the PM went on holiday to Hawaii, but told his office not to disclose his whereabouts, but he was busted on the beach and took photos with, and was heckled by Australian tourists (the tourists were asked not to share these photos because of the 'bad optics', which guaranteed they eventually were). He resisted calls for his return for more than a week as the damage from the fires passed 2 million hectare mark (we're currently at the 6 million ha/16 million acre mark), then eventually after his return, he was heckled out of multiple devastated towns. His deputy was already on the nose by labelling critics of the government's handling of the fire response as "inner-city raving lunatics" and a few ideological warriors have tried to join in , which only angered more people. And this is before his office released a video about his government's response to the emergency which turned out to be a party political ad, or how the 'donate' links in his bushfire addresses he was sharing on social media, were for his party, and not any of the many fire fighting causes that are currently raising money for fire fighters. In short, Australians are livid at the PM's inept response to a national emergency. It's like he's made every possible wrong choice one could make in the situation and shown a complete lack of leadership and good judgement. It's not a petty left/right thing (although some in the media are trying to frame it as such and are being hounded down from all quarters), but an abandoning your post during an emergency thing, especially when the guy who's our PM was very vocal in his criticism of the former Victorian police commissioner daring to have dinner in the Melbourne CBD during the Black Saturday fires. Oh, and while all this was happening, the NSW emergency services minister decided to go on holiday to Europe whilst everything was on fire, and the defence minister buggered off on holiday to Bali even while the proposal to activate ADF reservists was being readied. Seriously, you can't make this shit up!

Well, we thought we were getting the Invincible when the decision was made regarding paying her off, and you know how that went. 🤷 Speaking of the PLAN's Type 001A, just saw this a short while ago. Now called the Shandong, and now 'in-service', which in Chinese parlance doesn't mean in service but completed testing and accepted but not fully operational. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/17/asia/china-aircraft-carrier-shandong-intl-hnk/index.html

lol, see, told you he'd respond. So glad to know I'm not the only one who does this. I did the same with the prototype F-14D on the Intrepid in NY during my first trip to the US. Even filmed it to taunt my bud who's a huge Tomcat fan.

Yeah, that's right. Australia gave the PLAN a HUGE boost to their carrier program when we sold her off for scraping and never bothered to check-in on it. Not our finest hour...

Two additional things, A: I've seen the articles from Fox and Sinclair media you've shared from time to time. You don't have leg to stand on, Stumpy. (plus it was still, like, 3am EST when it was posted, so the US networks weren't awake yet) No.3: Not suggesting they're going to try to confiscate them. But even bringing it up is a real FU from Erdogan to the US. He's really leaning into this whole 'frenemy' thing, and by not responding to these continued aggravations, it's making the US look impotent by being either unwilling or unable to respond, even if the response from the administration was a token rebuff, at least it's something. I know the political turmoil in Washington is a huge distraction for the administration (123 tweets on Friday, a new personal record!), but this kind of thing demands a response. Even a middle-finger emoji in a tweet would be something. And F: I'm actually a little surprised the US/DoD hasn't even floated the possibility of moving their resources to Greece, even if they're not serious about it, just as a response to Erdogan's latest bout needling aimed at the US. I mean, I get juggling allies with serious animosity between each other like Greece and Turkey is a highwire balancing act over a pool of ill-tempered sea-bass with lasers, but when you've Erdogan stomping on the wire, trying to make you fall, continued inaction is going to disproportionately hurt the US.