Bluey's Dad

Yep, took me a while to recognise him!

I get what they're trying to do, but that looks awful.

Very good point there F5, I had completely forgotten their 'internal investigation'! As Redleg pointed out, their defence was a mockery before. Once you add this it's looking shaky to the extreme.

I understand, and that might even be a good thing in the business world. I don't know, I'm not a real estate mogul, maybe that strategy works. But I reckon the electorate who chanted "lock her up" and waved signs about a wall with Mexico won't be overly happy about it. The whole point about voting for Trump was that he WASN'T a politician, and would actually do what he says. Now he's backing away from that premise. So he'll anger those people who voted for him because: - he wasn't a politician as he's now demonstrated he backflips like the rest of them - he won't do the extreme things he said he do, that they wanted him to do (Clinton to jail etc) But, by doing this, he'll validate those people who voted for him who did so hoping that these stances would actually soften. I would guess many Americans would be in this camp. They voted for him because he wasn't Hillary, in the hope that he'd soften his stances later. He's doing just that, but as I said, in doing so he alienates the other group that voted him in to do exactly what he said he'd do. So, he'll annoy some of his voters, and validate others. As I said previously, I hope he does a good job. I have severe doubts about whether he can, but I hope that he does.

lol, thanks mate! I finally landed one! My personal believe is that the whole 'safe space' notion is just idiotic. For several reasons: 1 - you can't have a proper conversation about real issues if you're worried about 'triggering' people 2 - use of the word 'trigger' undermines it's actual valid medical use (for people who actually have depression or PTSD) 3 - applying them to universities or colleges, where the environment is supposed to be one of learning and being exposed to new ideas is just counter productive. I'm a lefty, but I'm not an "I'll dance around your sexual orientation with pronouns in case you identify as owlkin" lefty.

Trump does: Btw, this is what he was reacting to: http://imgur.com/gallery/orLvWdQ Youtube if link above doesnt work The man might as well not have skin at all, considering how thin it is!

You sure that's a good idea radar? She doesn't look real impressed with the scarf lol

Some wild speculation on my part here, but what if by the time the MFC said he was ready, he knew he would be unable to break into the 22 because of Hunt? Much easier to reconcile 'ongoing concussion issues' with 'not good enough any more' with his giant ego.

I see. Thank you... I think.

I want to google this to find out what it is, but I feel like it will end badly.

Feminist

lol yep. Already the Mexican wall has become a 'fence', and now in parts a 'virtual wall'. He's not going to appoint a special investigator to look into Clinton's emails. He's backed away from deporting all Muslims, now it's just the ones with criminal records. I have no doubt that this will be watered down further. Both sides are going to be disappointed with him as you say. I think Gingrich even referred to some of his policies as 'campaign devices'. Sounds like the good old 'non-core promise' to me. The whole idea behind electing someone who wasn't a politician was to avoid the sort of backflips and concessions politicians make upon getting into office wasn't it? For a 'political outsider', he does seem to be able to perform the political backflip like the best of the 'elites'. One wonders how he's going to drain the swamp, given the swamp monsters must vote on their own drainage system. I really like his congressional terms limitation policy, but it'll never pass. He's in now for better or worse though, we're all in the same boat so lets hope it somehow turns out for the better. Hand on heart, I'd much rather be here in 4 years saying "I was wrong, Trump was great", than "told you so".

I make a conciliatory post about the flaws of the left, and you're angry because of I missed one issue? Yes, the left use inflammatory language too and that needs to improve.

I think my post stands on it's own as an effort to remove my rose coloured glasses.

Incorrect. Has no white. Now if you were an ESSENDON supporter, it'd be fine.

lol last time we went down this road Iv'a, it got pretty heated. Although I agree with what you've stated, I don't trust that there's not some little wink-wink nudge-nudge deals happening to inflate those civil settlement payouts in exchange for the players taking a lower in-cap payment. The AFL has said they will monitor the situation to make sure this doesn't happen, although as you say, it's a different jurisdiction so I don't know how they check it all without being able to see half the equation. Also, I wouldn't trust the AFL to monitor a primary school hallway.

According to this, only 18 have settled: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/essendon-supplements-saga-bombers-settle-compensation-with-18-players-20161122-gsupyp.html So they've got 16 left to go. One could infer that these remaining 16 may cost more to settle, since they haven't reached payments already and may be more litigious than the previous 18. I assume Jobe is one of the remaining 16, and his payout would probably be higher than anyone else's because of giving up the Brownlow.

Yeah, I'm pretty 'left' myself and even I can see how stifling some activists' use of language and demonisation has been hurting society instead of helping it. I get the whole 'left censorship' thing, and tbh it's frustrating. It's gotten to this point because there is a lot of inflammatory language from the traditional or conservative right, and a lot of the time they don't understand how inflammatory it really is. But here's the thing, if that's the only way you know how to communicate, of course you'll feel censored if society starts telling you you can't use that language. That's a huge mistake the left (and I guess by extension, myself as well) has made. To assume that the conversation on various issues can continue after you've completely shut down the language of one side. Then you end up with a mass of seething people with no way to express themselves, ironically something the 'left' was trying to avoid. This is all easy to say in hindsight, because before the election of Trump I was dismissing this argument as a minor issue only applicable to a small portion of idiotic bigots. But it's not. A whole segment of American (and I guess Australian) society feels shut down by political correctness and leftist language censorship. We have to do better, but I'm not sure what that looks like. The one advantage we have in Australia is that we've seen this happen already with the UK and America. We've seen the marginalised working class reject politics as usual when those who needed to represent them did not. We've seen the left reject them as racist idiots. The Liberal party have a chance to do much better than our British and American counterparts have done. How? I don't know. But at least we have the opportunity to attend to this before the [censored] hits the fan as it has elsewhere. I also think the media needs to get on board with this. The sensationalising of insignificant utterances as major news just makes politics scared to say anything, further stifling speech and political discourse. Using divisive language, exaggerating headlines, insufficient research and inflammatory articles all sell very well, but do little for the public good. The blatant cheerleeding of the HUN last election of behalf of Abbott, and The Age on behalf of Rudd, was absolutely abhorrent. They knew their markets and they played on them, to the detriment of the country. Is it any wonder people increasingly go to their Facebook feeds for information? Traditional media has let us down for so long that we ascribe more authenticity and authority to a blogger than we do a media institution. In all likelihood, the blogger will have worse and less reliable information than the paper, but the reader doesn't ascribe the same level of distrust to blogger, which results in more cut through. In an ideal society, we should be able to trust that politicians on the whole will do the best thing for the country. And we should trust that the media should expose them when this is not the case. Neither of these things is happening to any reliable degree, and people are angry. I don't know if the cause is a worsening education system, career politicians, lobbyists, unions or media partisanship, but I think it's clear we need to lift our game. Whatever the reason, I feel like the issues are far to big for me to change with my puny little vote ballot. TL:DR - I'm left. I'm angry, I'm powerless. I blame lots of factors, left and right.

Might have been an issue at the beginning of 2016 when Channel 7 didn't broadcast the footy in HD (for some mind boggling reason). But they miraculously flipped the switch half way through the year. I really don't see TV viewers' confusion as a valid reason any more.

Indeed. It's quite alright to BE stupid and corrupt, but to appear so is the cardinal sin AFL house.

Bah. The fact that this is on the AFL website is telling. They're positioning for a break. The biggest argument 'for' ASADA in that article is that it gets the AFL funding from the government. The AFL isn't some super special snowflake sporting organisation. It doesn't need different rules. What a [censored] joke article.

lol. Very good.

Something very similar happened to me when I was about 19. I went to a mate's place for a party, had a big night. I stayed over and didn't leave his house until 3 PM the next day, to make sure all the alcohol was out of my system. My last drink was at about 1 AM, so 14 hours without a drink. I was pulled up by a cop on the way home. He gave me the bretho. He looked at the bretho, looked at me, back at the bretho, just smiled and said "on your way mate". I assume I had blown something minuscule, but the time of day I was driving indicated to the cop that I had been responsible in waiting to drive home. Technically he could have booked me, as anything over 0.00 is a violation for P plates, but he chose not to. Unless I completely misread the situation, but the smile he flashed was suggestive.

And Titus skewers it again: