Michelle > Recent Status Updates

“We’re going to put a tariff on all steel and aluminium, on everything coming in,” the president said, “and see what happens.”

“It goes through air,” Trump said. “That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even the strenuous flus.”

“Since childhood, I’d believed it was important to speak out against bullies while also not stooping to their level. And to be clear, we were now up against a bully ... challenging the dignity of our country with practically his every utterance ... It was dignity I wanted to make an appeal for ... Dignity had always gotten us through.”

“Had the House not focused solely on the Ukraine aspects of Trump’s confusion of his personal interests (whether political or economic), but on the broader pattern of his behaviour - including his pressure campaigns involving Halkbank, ZTE and Huawei ... there might have been a greater chance to persuade others that “high crimes and misdemeanours” had been perpetrated.”

“The consequences of this partisan approach by the House were twofold. First, it narrowed the scope of the impeachment inquiry dramatically and provided no opportunity to explore Trump’s ham-handed involvement in other matters - criminal and civil, international and domestic - that should not properly be subject to manipulation by a president for personal reasons (political, economic or any other) ...

“Under Abbott, denial and scepticism about climate science spread ... Abbott made his feelings clear by failing to include a minister for science in his first government.

The denigration of science has not only affected climate science. It has undermined the nation’s commitment to research and development more broadly and fostered a hostility to new renewable energy technologies.”

“Hockey and Abbott’s cavalier attitude to the Australian car industry was evidence of the lack of depth in too many of our political leaders’ understanding of economics. They can read a balance sheet, but fail to understand the real world that produced it.”

Fascinating ...

Fascinating reading.

“Someone needs to explain to me how it is that the richer Britain gets the poorer it thinks itself.” Bill Bryson

Like every democratic society ...

“But we should not allow our growing familiarity with his failings to dull our sense of bewilderment and dismay that a person so utterly unfit for the office, morally, intellectually and temperamentally, should have been elected president of the United States. He is plainly very egocentric, but the extent of this egocentricity remains hard to grasp.”

The difference between Jobs and Musk: "Elon can be very demanding, but he'll make sure the obstacles in your way are removed"

"One of the maddening things about discrimination of any kind is that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to prove that it's taking place. The bias is often subtle, or even subconscious." Dan Lyons

I just finished The Girl on the Train and gave it 5 stars.

I just finished Mightier Than The Sword: The Clifton Chronicles 5 and gave it 5 stars.

"When it comes to modern examples of extreme Stupid, it doesn't get bigger, vaster, more historic, more epochal, than the Iraq War.", Bernard Keane One of the many reasons why I am thoroughly enjoying this book so far.

When you have a paragraph that begins "We've all given up on facts ... Facts do not matter. They have been eclipsed by opinion ...", you know you're in for a good read.

Compelling reading. I'm sure that Woodward reports with as many facts as possible - Obama was left with a mess. There is no two ways about it.

I just finished The Hit: A Will Robie Novel 2 and gave it 4 stars.