Bluey's Dad

If the uneducated holds a media position, absolutely.

Probably my favourite photo ever

I didn't say I found Newman offensive. I said it's valid to have a go at him because he couldn't work out a simple pronoun change. IIRC Newman referred to her at "it". This is unacceptable. Agreed, Newman is a tool.

huh? It's not hard. Was a guy, is now a girl. He is now she. This is not confusing in the slightest. It's not like she's an owlkin listing her pronouns on Tumblr and biting off your head when you don't know to use 'phe' or something. Having a go at a media personality who can't make a simple change like swapping a pronoun is valid in my book. Just because you can't deal with something so simple doesn't mean others can't, or that the 'political correctness' boogeyman is to blame and will lead to the downfall of society.

Great podcast last night Big fan of WJ, even though I could only understand a small amount of his references to last century. Then he started talking about the current team. Very astute man is WJ, great observations. Can't wait for the next one.

No. Obviously. As I said before all religious people, even the fundamentalists, will pick and chose which parts of their holy text they find self-serving and which parts they don't. If you want to start a war, a good way to do it is to call on people who share your religion and tell them God wants it too. Christians don't stone adulterers, and a priest would be insulted if you assumed that he did. I'm simply extending the same courtesy to all religions. Just because something is written in a holy text doesn't make it mainstream. Plenty of Christians work on the Sabbath. The issue for Islam is that it hasn't moderated to secular values as a lot of other religions have. IMO it is doing so now. All religions are dangerous (except maybe Sam Harris's often quoted example of the Jaynes). One in particular is being co-opted by warmongers and fundamentalists, and I refuse to condemn the majority of law-abiding Australian Muslims for the actions of despotic wack jobs in the Middle East. As I said before, I'd be happy if the entire belief system was relegated to history. But that's not going to happen, and if it is, it will take many more generations than I'm likely to see.

Lol. What a joke of an article. UN doesn't even use the term third world any more. Article is ridden with proximity fallacies, where you show two stats and infer a causal relationship but show no actual causation.

I'm aware of what's going on. I just don't blame Mohammed down the road for it, nor do I want to kick to him out of the country because some people who share an extreme form of his religion are killing people. My example is figurative, hopefully you get the idea.

Funny, if I were to chose a word to describe your post I too would chose 'ignorant'.

Well, no, might have exaggerated a bit. I Don't think Islam is nearly as much as a threat as some here do. It honestly doesn't scare me. It's just another backwards religion, just that it hasn't had a proper clash with modernity like many of the others have. I Reckon it's going through one now, and we'll be much better off at the end of it. In an ideal world, I'd be happy if it and any other religion was gone completely. But it's not gonna happen, and it's unfair to vilify the majority for the acts of some fundamentalist morons. And don't say the majority aren't peaceful. They are. We have 600,000 of them here making not many waves at all. We have lots of other religions with stupid things in ancient texts but we don't tar all followers with the fundamentalist brush for them, not sure why we do for Muslims.

lol fair enough. Still, can't exactly export them can we. Bernadi annoys me. Won an election as a Liberal and then breaks away. 6 years he has a seat. If I was in his electorate I'd be really angry.

Yeah I think Hitchens even referred to it as a 'death cult' (going on memory here, been a whilst since I've read any of his stuff or watched a debate/interview). I reckon you're panicking about nothing on Islam TBH. People have panicked about every new group that comes here. Oh noes! Their values are different! It all gets diminished within a generation or so. Treat everyone like a human being and they'll have less reason to rail against society. Excluding them just justifies further action on their part. What are you gonna do? Export 600,000 or so Muslims? Stick them in internment camps? You seem to think that there's this monolithic threat to our society called 'Islam', and every single subscriber to it is at least at risk of radicalising themselves into a threat. It's simply not the case. Like any religion you have a spectrum of people who follow some bits and ignore others. I'd say its a given that all religious belief involves the cherry picking of some pieces of text that one agrees with whilst ignoring others. Plenty of cherry pickers on the Muslim side have ignored the terrible bits of their texts, as other religions do as well. Just because they believe some stupid cap in an ancient book doesn't mean we can just ship them out. If they ACT on some of the stupid (and illegal) crap, then the criminal justice system should deal with them. Personally I think anti-vaxers are a bigger threat to our society than Islam. Can't really stick them on a boat and send them back to where they came from now can we?

Hitchens has been very scathing of other holy books as well. He hated all religions with a passion. I think he wrote a book called "God is not great, how religion poisons everything". Can't speak for the clip specifically as I haven't watched it. Not sure the cuckold comment is warranted.

I'll take a stab in the interests of trying not to align with the dichotomy you mention. No contraceptive/ family planning- no govt benefits. Not sure how this would work? I get what it's trying to achieve, but really unsure of how any scheme like this would be implemented. I understand there are a lot of people who we look at and think that they shouldn't have kids. I share that view. However, a scheme like this to me is a human rights issue. Everyone currently has the right to reproduce. Do we really want to take that away from some people and grant it to others? Feels like a slippery slope to eugenics. Besides that, I'm not a fan of the government removing rights from its citizens. A freeze on permanent migration. Nope. Without migration we miss out on too many opportunities. Happy to reduce overall intake though to slow the overall rate of growth, but cutting it out entirely risks stagnating society IMO. Also would not support a ban on some countries and allowing migration from others. Overall scaled reduction ok. Compulsory national service for overseas born immigrants.(2 years).Aged under 40. Sure. Happy for this to be extended to society at large as well, depending on the definition of national service. TBH I think it's a joke that someone at the age of 18 has to chose their career path. Give them 2 years doing something that benefits society - drought/flood relief, aged care, whatever. Would also give new migrants an easier way to integrate into society. Having said that, it'd have to be paid, otherwise a new migrant family wouldn't be able to support itself. Also if my wife, who was born overseas and is under aged 40, was required to quit her job tomorrow and work for the national service, our entire family budget goes out the window. We can't pay the bills on my wage alone, and the current flexible working hours allow her to be a mother to two kids under 5. So not sure how this would operate as well. However, if the compensation and benefits for individuals in this position matches their current pay and working conditions, I see no reason why she shouldn't do it for 2 years. Her current job would have to be held for her though. Then what about migrant high income earners? Would we pay them $300,000 a year to leave their jobs and go do national service? Seems a waste to pay them that rate when in the private sector they were paying large amounts of tax. And don't say that's outlandish or unrealistic, my mother is/was in this position when she was under 40 (born overseas, high income earner). Much more valuable for her to be paying tax. Then there'd be an outflow of labour from the market. In one wack a bunch of people would be doing national service, and not their jobs. My wife works in a biotech lab, there are many many people in this bucket. The place simply would not operate if you took out all the migrants. Lots of nurses are born overseas too, this would put a strain on hospitals. Maybe some professions, like nursing, could actually count towards the national service requirement? I dunno. Can of worms here, I agree on the theory but the implementation may be problematic. Maybe only apply the rule to new migrants and not make it retroactive? Possible exemptions for highly skilled migrants who can go to work in fields we have shortages of? Not sure. Zero marriage visas. Nope. Happy for people here to fall in love overseas (or with a visitor) and bring their partners over. Extend marriage Visas to same sex couples as well. Zero permanent reunification visas. Don't know what these are sorry. Voluntary Euthenasia,offered to life prisoners. Ok with this. Also extend the option to society at large, it's ridiculous the pain some people have to live in. Reintoduce death penalty for treason,espionage,massive tax fraud,murder,terrorism. Not a fan of state sanctioned killing in any form. The voluntary euthanasia above is as close to that line as I'm comfortable with. Support harsher sentences for these though, whilst reducing sentences for stupid stuff like weed use - ends up clogging up prisons with minor offenders. 3 child limit for all. Average family size is like 2.1 kids now anyway. I see no need to place limits on family sizes.

As has been pointed out before, I'm a soft touch and far too trusting

The 'my president' thing was when he got his citizenship. I assume he felt it gave him more authority to argue with Americans, given his British accent I wouldn't be surprised if they threw his 'foreignness' at him when he had a go at various issues in American society. I bought the Iraq lies as well - seemed pretty solid at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

No worries, back to the yellow you go.

I.... don't understand? I agreed with you so you'd like me to block you again?

First post I've actually unblocked you on in a long time PD, and it's a good one. Hitchens is (was) amazing. Worth noting that after September 11 his views on Marxism changed somewhat. IMO after then he sounded more right-wing than most of his other athiest contemporaries at the time, except maybe Ayaan Hirsi Ali. IRRC, and this was a long time ago so I might be wrong here, but I remember thinking he sounded more like a libertarian than a Marxist in some of his writings. Wish I had sound on this computer to watch your clip. His debates really are something else, you can find a lot of them on youtube. I used to stream them on one pc screen while grinding mmo currencies on the other. Made a tedious task much more enjoyable. His wit is remarkable. His back-track on waterboarding is one of my favourite pieces of anyone ever, I think in Vanity Fair. After saying it was fine to use (this was at the height of the Bush administration), he volunteered to be waterboarded to prove it. He immediately changed his mind after the experience, saying that it was indeed torture. The man could admit when he was wrong, and IMO should be highly respected for that. There was a video of the experience on youtube a while back, not sure if it's still there. See also: Richard Dawkins Sam Harris Dan Dennett Lawrence Krauss They all have/had similar concerns about the pervasive effect of religion on society.

Can only assume they're doing this to [censored] the game overseas where there are heaps of soccer pitches but not many cricket ovals. Plus smaller pitch means smaller team, means smaller talent pool required to run a league. And of course, as has been suggested, more games to place bets on. With the money spent on this, surely they could professionalise the umpire squad instead? Make our great game better, instead of bastardising it for an entirely different market. Why the AFL wants to be soccer, I'll never know. We have the greatest game on earth here, and all they want to do is monkey with it.

Right with you here. She could have been great. She was not.

You'll find the overall quality of posts on demonland heightens greatly after you block him. Unfortunately you get reminded of his existence constantly with the little yellow lines that appear in place of his posts. Still, better than having to read his spiteful tripe. Wrecker is probably the only right winger worth engaging, as he's the only one who seems in it for the discourse and not the trolling. DC too, although I think he may be more centrist - I dunno. Top post here (without the Hansen stuff). You're an interesting man Dieter. Can't say I agree with your conspiracy theories but your heart seems in the right place.

to avoid paywall: go to google paste : australia-will-pay-for-renewable-energy-targets click first non-sponsored link read article ????? profit