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Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 19:32

VOLUNTEERS from Marine Rescue Wooli assisted two adults and a young child sailing from Cairns to Victoria after their yacht ran out of fuel and their tender became submerged and disabled off Wooli last Thursday. Marine Rescue NSW Inspector John Murray said Marine Rescue Wooli received a call for assistance just before 12pm and rescue...

The post Marine Rescue return boaters to yacht after tender submerges on Wooli Beach appeared first on News Of The Area.

Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 19:26

COFFS Harbour Creative Arts Group’s (CHCAG) annual Mad Hatters Tea Party takes place at the Coffs Harbour Showground Gallery on Saturday 15 March, at 2pm. One hundred percent of proceeds will be donated to the Coffs Harbour and Clarence CanDo Cancer Trust. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business....

The post Coffs Harbour Creative Arts Group’s annual Mad Hatters Tea Party to support ‘CanDo’ appeared first on News Of The Area.

Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 19:16

AN old motorcycle painted blue has popped up above the fence of a property on Orara Way in Coramba, accompanied by the sign “Feeling Blue? Get help”. It is the handiwork of the group of lifelong mates behind the Blue Motorcycle Project. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business....

The post Blue Motorcycle Project rides in to the Coffs Coast appeared first on News Of The Area.

Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 18:54
Could Trump and Musk be seeking to end our time on Earth? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 5th March 2025 In thinking about the war being waged against life on Earth by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their minions, I keep bumping into a horrible suspicion. Could it be that this is not […]
Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 11:41
The Chinese Embassy in the US underlines the country’s differences with the US. Marco Rubio and Boris Johnson refer to the war in Ukraine as a proxy war, while Rubio also reaffirms Trump’s warning to Hamas. Ohad Kozminsky of the Jewish Council of Australia shares his views on Western colonialism and Gaza. The U.S. needs Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 11:33

“Martin O’Malley, the former commissioner of the Social Security Administration, said the recent cuts made by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency at the agency could result in the ‘collapse’ of the Social Security system ‘within the next 30 to 90 days.’” — The Hill

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Internal memo from the Department of Government Efficiency

FACT 1: People pay into Social Security over their working lifetime and then withdraw from it when they hit their sixties, like an IRA that holds value even when the stock market crashes. This works as long as the number of people paying in is greater than the number of retired people. Stupidly, the forefathers assumed there would always be more working people (sixteen to sixty-seven years old) than there are retirees. This assumption is called a Ponzi scheme.

Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 08:30
If you think that they aren’t going after Social Security, think again: he newly installed caretaker at the Social Security Administration acknowledged this week that Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is calling the shots as the agency races to slash thousands of jobs and shrink its budget, telling a group of advocates, “Things are currently operating in a way I have never seen in government before.” In a meeting Tuesday with his senior staff and about 50 legal-aid attorneys and other advocates for the disabled and elderly, acting SSA commissioner Leland Dudek referred to the tech billionaire’s cost-cutting team as “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs,” according to a meeting participant’s detailed notes that were obtained by The Washington Post. “DOGE people are learning and they will make mistakes, but we have to let them see what is going on at SSA,” Dudek told the group, according to the notes. “I am relying on longtime career people to inform my work, but I am receiving decisions that are made without my input.
Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 07:00
Trump is going to make Ukrainians pay and pay hard for failing to immediately surrender to his “brilliant”, “savvy” friend Vladimir Putin three years ago: U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to revoke temporary legal status for some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the conflict with Russia, a senior Trump official and three sources familiar with the matter said, potentially putting them on a fast-track to deportation. The move, expected as soon as April, would be a stunning reversal of the welcome Ukrainians received under President Joe Biden’s administration. He’ll be deporting everyone under temporary immigration statuses including Afghans, Cubans, Haitians, etc. But I think the deportation of Ukrainians in the middle of the war is a Trump bully tactic to try to force Zelensky to lick his boots. It’s just cruel. The Trump administration last month paused processing immigration-related applications for people who entered the U.S. under certain Biden parole programs – placing Ukrainian Liana Avetisian, her husband and her 14-year-old daughter, in limbo.
Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 05:30
Here’s a fascinating look at the DOGE actions by Harvard political scientists Ryan Enos and Sam Fuller. I urge you to read the whole post which but here’s the essence of their findings and it should give us some heart: Trump’s actions, matters of complex questions relating to civic and constitutional norms, are incredibly unpopular: they are not supported by an overwhelming majority of Democrats (unsurprising), a significant majority of Independents (more surprising), and nearly half(!) of Republicans (extremely surprising). And, particularly among Republicans, if you cut through the partisan blinders and remind people these actions are illegal and unconstitutional, people are even more likely to disapprove of his actions. We see this in data that comes from questions we asked about Trump’s actions on the most recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.1 In particular, we asked people how much they support the following authoritarian actions (full questions can be seen at the end of the post): Responses were on a five-point scale from “strongly support” to “strongly oppose”.
Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 05:00

The past fourteen days, like all epochs reduced to memes and cable news chyrons, have revealed the cyclical farce of power—a pantomime of bullies, billionaires, and eggs priced like bullion. We chronicle here the struggles of the recently unemployed, the begrudging representatives of the people, along with their staff who really just want to drop the R and F word without repercussions… but now that woke is dead, they still won’t say it.

In the children’s theater of democracy, world leaders—continually summoned to the asphalt hinterlands of a metaphorical middle school called the White House—find themselves cornered in the empty government halls by the administration. Recently, in a taxpayer-funded episode of Mean Girls, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was reprimanded by hall monitor JD Vance, who demanded fealty to join the country’s kickball team, further proving he was most definitely not invited to the cool kids’ parties.

Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 04:59
In its response to AUKUS with its objective of militarily confronting China in the South China Sea, we should not be surprised by Chinese naval vessels sailing around Australia to pick up some intelligence or at least showing us their growing naval power. For China, it would be a good training experience in new waters. Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 07/03/2025 - 04:58
The Australian labels Albanese a “jellyfish” in the face of Chinese naval vessels, ironically the barbs came from a faceless columnist. Kudos to The Australian for keeping tabs on a US nuclear submarine in our waters, but the headline act for the Murdoch masthead was hosting its own event for weapons makers and China hawks. Continue reading »