Jara

Alas, nothing as useful as medicine. I'd be happy to look at your rash, though - you guys don't seem too worried about the qualifications of the "experts" you use.

Dr. Marohasy? That's the bloody IPA entomologist again. She's not a climate scientist's cake-hole. She's weird: look at her bio. Says she's got a PhD, but doesn't tell you what it was for (there's some very dodgy doctors around - I should know - I'm one myself).

Well, there's at least one person who agrees with you: Trump himself.

Oh and Wrecker, I'm not the one who is denying the views of reputable scientific organisations such as the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union or the American Geological Society, all of whom unequivocally support the view that global warming is man-made. You are. Ergo, you are a denialist.

Yeah, yeah, I know, your IPA entomologist showed that the BOM is corrupt. I interviewed several BOM scientists a few years ago. Those guys spend their lives trying to provide accurate information to the community. What on earth do you think is their motivation for them to fudge the figures?

Nice try, Earl, but the deniers don't pay much attention to reputable scientific organisations. They get their science from looking out the window and reading Andrew Bolt.

He's sucked you in. Dunno if that requires much brilliance.

How's Trump? "If there was a school shooting, I'd go running at the gunman, even if I didn't have a gun." Yeah, sure, like you did in Vietnam. Heel-spurs - wasn't that his excuse? Or VD? What a boastful, bloated, self-deluded moron.

Who's McChins?

You've got to hand it to Trump - he has this uncanny ability - he's almost like Stephen Curry, lobbing those three-pointers - I've never seen anything quite like it - he has this astonishing ability to say the wrong thing. His brain must be made of jello. His response to crazies shooting children: arm the teachers and re-open the madhouses of the old days. Can you imagine what kind of weirdo could come up with such inappropriate ideas? No consideration of the obvious solutions: stop selling assault weapons to anybody who wants one and improve your health system. He's King Midas in reverse: everything he touches turns to merde. He's wrong on everything. (I wondered how he could have had the brains to build a property empire, then I remembered he inherited it) Which leads me to the obvious question: you Demonland climate deniers, what's it like having this fruitcake in your corner? Forget the science: I'd say, the mere fact that he doesn't believe in global warming is proof that it's happening.

binman, dunno about 'great' I reckon our own wide brown land was pretty good - pre 1788.

Terrific post, Choke. Obama was constantly calling for greater gun control. Stalled by Republican hookers in the pay of the NRA. The Fat Orangutan, by contrast, says it's nothing to do with gun laws, all about mental health. Crazy boy just wanders in to the corner shop, buys a machine gun: 17 dead, most of them kids.

What on earth are you trying to say, Ethan?

I think it was because he didn't control Congress, which is controlled by the NRA and its Republican bumboys. Re Gillard, maybe it was one of those issues - like Howard and gun control - which could only ever be brought in by the party normally seen as a fellow traveller. Look at Penny Wong on marriage equality - I've seen her lambasted as a hypocrite by right-wing shock-jocks for not pushing it while Labor were in government. I suspect it was always important to her - but not so important that she was willing to sacrifice government for it. Also, some issues are just slow burners - eventually, their time comes. Society develops, attitudes change. I don't think I'd ever even thought about marriage equality until - what? maybe the last ten years? - but as it gained traction, I began to see that it was a terrific idea. We've got two gay couples among our circle of friends, and it was wonderful to see and share their happiness.

Trump. What a loser. What a liar. "Nothing to do with guns and my supporters in the NRA - all to do with mental health." Nothing to do with laws that say a crazy can just walk into a shop and buy a machine gun. It's got a lot to do with mental health all right - the mental health of the lunatic in the White House and his alt-right friends.

The only thing that's clear to me is that the elites (and I mean the real ones, not The Mad Monk's imagined ones) always find a way to protect their interests.

If he had handled a crisis like Rudd did, he'd be entitled to.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never seen a politician carry on so boastfully about a rise in the economic cycle. You'd think he was out there himself, lifting the bricks and troweling the mortar. Re Ethan's comment, I'm not blaming or praising Trump for the fluctuations in the economy, I'm just saying he looks like a jerk for all the boasting he's been doing about the upswings. From what I can see, all he's done is what Republicans always do - lower taxes for rich people (including himself). Maybe that affects the stock market, maybe it doesn't. I dunno (although there was an article by Peter Martin in yesterday's Age suggesting that the tax cuts were partly responsible for the crash - stuffed if I could understand half of what he was talking about, though)

Love the way the Orange Buffoon has been boasting all year how brilliant he's been for the financial markets: "a beautiful set of figures". Not so boastful today.

The whole situation is -- amazing really. I've never seen anything like it. Apparently there's this mass of white working-class Americans who are p&*d off because they've been left behind by the changing economy. So they respond by ...electing one of the generalissimos responsible for those changes, a buffoonish snake-oil salesman who'd sell his own mother for spare change. Boy, are they going to get a surprise. Read a great book a few years ago - What's the Matter with Kansas? or something like that. The author went back to his home state to try and figure out why they keep electing the very business-friendly people who have been selling their jobs to China. Main conclusion: the Republicans have discovered that pushing "cultural" issues - i.e. guns, race and religion - is enough to make people vote against their own economic interests. The poor buggers are seeing their jobs disappear, and rather than blaming the fat cats responsible, they blame East-coast 'liberals' who want to take away their guns. Personally, I blame television. Producing a generation of morons.

Still don't get it - not sure whether you're talking about Hillary or Trump going to gaol. I was asking Wrecker about Hillary - why he seemed so confident that gaol was waiting for her, just because of some dodgy Republican memo. I personally suspect that the chances of either of them ever going to gaol are miniscule.

Heard it on the news, but I don't get it. A bunch of Republican congressmen reckon the investigation into Russian involvement in the election is biased. Where's the surprise in that? Of course they think that. No sympathy for Bill - he should have got the sack for being a bad liar - but why do you think Hillary's going to gaol? Drain the swamp? Boy, have you been sucked in. Trump is the swamp.

Uh, god, they are. I have not one ounce of sympathy for the governments of either of those countries. A bunch of dangerous kleptocrats. We're bad, but they're worse. Robber barons everywhere (see my post above - about 40% of Russia's GDP is hidden in tax havens). All we can do is try to call them out. Support progressive liberal democracy wherever you see it. I have to laugh when I see the Chinese crooks call themselves 'Marxists'. They're not a Marxist's a#$&hole. I groan when I see all these Chinese billionaires buying up our real estate and driving up our house prices. I lived in China for a couple of years, speak reasonable Chinese, and have seen first hand the suffering upon which their fortunes are based. I know a huge Chinese middle-class has been dragged out of poverty, but, from what I could see, many of the poorer people (i.e. away from the east coast cities) are living in worse conditions than they were when I first went there, thirty three years ago.

Thanks for the advice, Biff, but it's a bit late in life for me to learn new tricks. (And thanks for your concern about my financial situation, but don't worry, I'm doing fine - it's not personal resentment or jealousy - I just reckon that societies that hand everything over to the robber barons don't do a very good job for the majority of their citizens - a comparison, for example, of the health care systems of Australia and the US would be a pretty clear demonstration)

Hi T - hmmm - have to think back to what I meant - I tend to shoot first and think later on these posts - you've confused me a bit - I didn't think I was talking about roads etc (mind you, I hate the Hawks so much, I'd be happy to blame them for the state of the roads) Maybe a better question would have been: 'Are you happy that the Hawks have won twelve premierships in the past fifty years while we've won none?" I mean it was great the the Dogs and Tigers broke through, but I was getting heartily sick of a league in which the same teams - the big power ones - kept winning premierships and we didn't. Which is why I support the equality measures that the AFL has introduced. My reasons for supporting greater equality in the broader society are similar. When a small number of individuals grab everything for themselves, it means a lot of others miss out. If that's the law of the jungle, so be it, but I don't think it is: much of it comes from the type of government/taxation systems we choose to introduce. I was only joking about Rinehart, but jeez, she's a horrible example of something. I mean, she inherited the bloody stuff, and then runs around doing weird things with her power - my favourite was getting her staff to vote for her as a "Woman's Weekly Living National Treasure", or whatever it was. Then there's the grumbling about us not working for African wages, the ugly spats with her own kids, bribing Barnaby. She's a shocker - the Bernard Tomic of mining magnates (I don't think it's jealousy, pace Wrecker - I mean, I don't react to Twiggy in the same way)