Jara

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.

Don't quite get what you're saying, Sensei. If Bananaby was quoted anywhere, be it in Breitbart or Mein Kampf, I'd do what I normally do: weigh it up, see if it made sense, see if it was true. I'm sure even Breitbart has the odd truth in it somewhere. Personally, I'm praying that he stays on as Deputy PM. I think he's a fine man, an outstanding leader, eloquent, handsome, well-hatted - and the best present Labor's had for years. He'll win a few votes from the sheep-shaggers in Tamworth - and cost the Coalition the election.

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.

Dunno why you think you'd get banned. It was in the Herald Sun. I followed your advice and looked it up. The police did investigate it. Even Andrew Bolt admitted there was nothing in it. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/improbable-rape-claim-dropped-update-shorten-names-himself/news-story/8b80a5982615271f88037f224f53bb54 An unsubstantiated allegation made about him when he was 19. I'm with Andrew on this one - in bringing it up, you only cheapen the discussion.

Hey Jnr - what was the background of the Shorten allegation? Was there any evidence, was there an investigation, or was it just another groundless Murdoch smear? I've never heard it before (sorry for my ignorance, but I tend to read mainly the quality press). I mean, I could say I spotted Barnaby shagging the sheepdog, but it doesn't mean much unless there's some sort of evidence. If Tony Burke or any other politician, Labor or Liberal, is proven guilty of rorting the system, throw the book at em. Was thrilled to see the loathsome Obeid get jail-time. If Kathy Jackson is guilty of what they're alleging, off with her head. I couldn't care less. Whenever you get a whiff of power - even from a fundamentally decent organisation like Labor - the bloodsuckers will come out. They need to be stomped upon. You can post all day and I'll say "Well done, Jnr, for your contribution to honesty in public places." But this is Barnaby's moment in the sun. I'm not saying he deserves to go to jail or lose his job, or whatever - as far as I know, there's no law against voting against screening for cervical cancer while you're bonking the secretary (although there should be a law against those hats - as my dad used to say, the bigger the hat, the smaller the cattle). All I'm saying is that he deserves to be called out for the potato-headed hypocrite that he is.

I began my original post by saying that I didn't care about the adultery, that of course all sides did it ( I never heard the allegations about Shorten, but I'd suggest you should have some pretty solid evidence before repeating them here - of course I remember Bob and Blanche, Gareth-Gareth, Toady Thompson etc - if you care enough to start a thread on them, go for it). As I said, it was Barnaby's voting against screening for cervical cancer, and his reasons for it, that got on my goat. The sheer hypocrisy. I did a bit more reading on it since I posted this morning, and apparently there was a screening for boys that was introduced a year or two later, and he didn't vote against that. Boys, in the Barnaby mind, will be boys. What a jerk. Not sure why you're bringing in the citizenship thing, or why you think it's hypocritical on Labor's part. I'm not a latched-on Labor supporter. I reckon, once the precedent was set, they should all have been referred to the High Court (I suppose Labor would counter Lamb with Frydenberg - both sad cases) - I couldn't care less. The only ones who seem to have acted ethically were The Greens.

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.

Don't think I've ever started a new topic before, and apologies to those who are sick to death of it, but I just noticed one little item in yesterday's paper that made my flesh creep. I can handle his being an adulterer - none of my business and I suppose they all do it. I can handle him arranging cushy jobs for his girlfriend and dirty week-ends at the taxpayer's expense - again, I imagine they all do it. I can almost handle him being a sleazy hypocrite in opposing marriage equality because he supported the "sanctity" of marriage while having a bit on the side - yet again, I bet he had plenty of company. I could handle that incredible appearance on the 7.30 Report, where our Deputy PM sat there looking like a shell-shocked beetroot saying it was all "private". But then I came across a little sentence, in the final paragraph of an article in yesterday's Age, in which it mentioned that he'd opposed screening for cervical cancer for young women because it would "encourage promiscuity". That was it, for me. That was enough to get me off my lazy ass and start a new topic. I've got two young daughters. That lard-faced, big-hatted lying conservative would rather condemn them to death than have them breach his "morals". What a snivelling hound. What a fat-lipped hypocrite. What an alt-right creep. What a Barnaby!

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)

Morning Biff - certainly agree with your last comment - in part, anyway. I'm sure a lot of it is because of badly planned migration (my wife works as an emergency nurse - reckons their work load has doubled in the past 10 years and staffing levels more or less the same - same seems to be true of most other aspects of the public infrastructure) - but I also suspect a lot of it is due to the behaviour of the rich (for example - tax avoidance - read this book a couple of years ago - called Treasure Islands, or something like that - pointed out that in a typical western capitalist country like ours, about 10% of our GDP is buried away in tax havens (another amazing fact I remember - in many Third World countries, around 20% is squirrelled away - in Russia, it was around 40% - I presume this is all because technology has made it easier to do - governments always lag behind the spivs and conmen) As for The Rhino - she's weird - inherited iron ore worth tens of billions and grumbles because we won't work for African wages. Hope things are going well for you in North Altona (as I think said to you once before, I grew up round there)

Self-crippling? That makes about as much sense to me as Wrecker's suggestion that I was 'jealous'. I feel neither crippled nor jealous of anybody. I just happen to believe that societies that allow massive amounts of wealth to accumulate to a few individuals tend not to work as well as their more egalitarian counterparts . Last year I heard a documentary about Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund. Basically they've saved vast amounts from their North Sea oil. Their savings are ten times greater than our own; their financial future is secure. Australia, on the other hand, seems to have just p*&%ed our resource income up against the wall and given it to people like Gina Rhino. Which, I presume, is one of the reasons our public infrastructure is disintegrating and so many of us worry about our kids' future.

We can embrace the greater good or dwell on a small minority who's only crime is to make lots of money. Jealousy is a curse. Morning Wrecker So you'd be happy to see Hawthorn win the next fifty premierships?

Hey Ethan - dunno where you got your stats from, but Choke was quite right - coincidentally, there was an article about it in this morning's Age - by Peter Martin. IMF forecasts US growth from 2.3-2.7 % in 2018, then from 1.9% - 2.5 % in 2019. Personally, I don't pay much attention to GDP. I reckon inequality is a better measure of how well a society is doing. If there are ten people in my street, one of them is a billionaire and the others have nothing, the stats will suggest we're all millionaires. Interesting figure in yesterday's paper: the number of billionaires in Australia has doubled in the past few years, while wage growth has been sweet fa.

Terrific post, Choke. - but there must be a mistake somewhere. The man's a stable genius.

Fair enough. Thanks for saving me the trouble. I suppose you do get a bit of a boost when you unleash the shackles on big business, increase inequality and indicate an eagerness to destroy the environment to increase profits. Long term, we'll see (the last crash came at the end of an 8-year Republican party)

GDP, stock market and unemployment figures - all measurable are pointing towards a genius. Didn't most of those things improve under Obama? (General recovery from the GFC)