The United States(!) of A

I think the main issue with Hunter Bidens laptop story is that is a complete and utter load of bollocks...its ridiculous that people can take this seriously.

I mean a 'story' alleging that a laptop left by an unknown man at a Delaware repair shop — and, conveniently, never picked up — has emails supposedly investigated by the FBI from Hunter Biden offering to introduce his father to an executive with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The fact that the Post got the story from Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump 2016 campaign chairman Steve Bannon, currently out on bail after his arrest on charges that he misappropriated funds that donors intended to help build the wall with Mexico, hardly augments its credibility.

Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon - say no more. Two of the biggest GOP gronks ever conceived.

Not much of an October surprise but brownie points for trying...just more of the same BS from a desperate President and co.

Forget how are people going to react if Trump wins another term, the question is how are Trump and MAGA squad going to react when he loses?

"I think the main issue with Hunter Bidens laptop story is that is a complete and utter load of bollocks...its ridiculous that people can take this seriously"
Oh come on Westofthelake. Didn't you hear that all the evidence was sent to Fox News and it mysteriously disappeared from a multinational courier company (that Tucker Carson didn't name). I mean, Tucker Carson is just so reliable, that if he says it's true, it must be true. If that's not evidence enough for you westofthelake, nothing will convince you that Hunter's guilty of criminal activity.
LOCK HIM UP. LOCK HIM UP. LOCK HIM UP. LOCK HIM UP.

".... and @info while accusing Facto of being a troll launches into a paragraph of vitriol himself. Ah info, never fails, always aims to satisfy"

Can you honestly say Facto is anything but a troll?

Just look at all his post, page 35 & this page are classic examples, all are blatant trolls. (ten seperate post of his on page 35 alone)

The objective is not to add anything to the discussion in anyway, it's purely just about stirring people up, mocking and baiting others.

Im not a fan of yours and sometimes you troll me with comments that are off topic and just mock etc the whole "info" thing is pretty childish

But at least it's not all you do, you actually bring an opinion or contribute to discussion answer others questions etc just like you did on the bottom of previous page to Blowin & Sickaz (the fact i disagree with you 99% of time is irrelevant)

Same goes with pretty much everyone else here including myself, sure no ones perfect sure we bait and troll others at times get heated at times, but we also generally stick to the topic and have a conversation.

Any of you Trump fanboys on Swellnet want to condemn this type of behaviour?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/31/biden-harris-bus-texas-t...

A simple, "that is unacceptable" would be fine.

Im not a trump fanboy so I wont condemn or support it

but I will say, it's pretty bloody funny

https://mobile.twitter.com/KarenArdoin10/status/1322747503314427904

and probably more fake left bullshit

Westoflake, I do seriously believe that it is worthy of at least being able to report in the media. Like I said I don’t know the exact details of the story . Twitter censorship and suppression is undeniable though in my opinion. Again read what I have written, I never said it wasn’t a bogus story. I said that there was credible evidence and the fact that Giuliani and Bannon, who are both obvious slime bags, were involved does nothing to address the allegations. It shouldn’t be hard to just say it was false because X,Y and Z and then we could all let it go under the bridge. But that hasn’t happened, why? That is what gets me. I’m getting pretty sick of having to keep explaining it. It also seems to be as much about Chinese activities than Ukraine and Burisma. Again I don’t know the facts but why can’t anybody show anything that proves the claims are false - that is the issue.

Jack Dorsey from Twitter backflipped on the NY Post blocking and claimed it was an anti hacking concern that led them to Suppress and censor the NY Post stories and I don’t believe that when you combine it with all the other people that have been arbitrarily blocked with no justification from Twitter, all seem to be critical of the DNC. Dorsey also said it was a mistake to block the NY Post for 3 weeks pre election and said that they had no evidence to show the evidence as fake. If they had evidence why wouldn’t he provide it to the senate hearing, of course it would be the first thing he would do. That was from a Senate commerce commission hearing which is about as non partisan news as you could get.

Examine the evidence and explain it to me if you know something that I don’t. Saying stuff like you can’t seriously believe it, without backing yourself up, when I explain clearly that I don’t know enough about the HB story to believe it or not because it has been censored and suppressed, is not good enough.

Why don’t you tell me why it’s BS without using some partisan media article to do the work for you. If you can’t do that or are unwilling to you should keep your mouth shut and refrain from deriding people without backing yourself up.

Holy shit Sypkan. Every serious news outlet in the USA is showing trump fans behaving disgracefully on the highway and there’s video evidence showing it plain as day. But you ignore all of it and go to YouTube.
You simply can’t admit trump or his fan club have done anything wrong.
Pretty pathetic.

oh gawwd, the dems can't even get their celebrity trash right...

https://mobile.twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1322735855501455361

I didnt say it was right, I said it was bloody funny

...and in the wider context, ...its hilariously bloody funny...

the vid I posted, the white car clearly came into trump trucks lane, there was argy bargy after that, but that encounter was initiated by the white car in the wrong lane

and it really was bloody funny

more so the ambush than the argy bargy

Seems like Trump supporters are just following the Biden bus around, and the Biden car that is following the bus is clearly illegally straddling both lanes clearly going into the lane the black Trump car is in and they they have a little bingle.

And?

It's not like they are rioting on the streets and burning shit down.

"Again I don’t know the facts but why can’t anybody show anything that proves the claims are false - that is the issue."

So you can't prove it, obviously, nor can anyone else it seems. Yet the onus is on other people to disprove it. Right...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/left-and-right-are-rad...

wonder what people think of the premise above?

Free ride that is an excellent article and I think it is bang on the money

The trick is getting people to react to a caricature or stereotype if you like, of the 'other' group. And then in turn reacting to that reaction etc etc

So let's flip this incident around. If 50 trucks filled with armed BLM protestors waited at the side of the I35 for a Trump bus, and then boxed it in, tried to force it off the road , and created a car accident, that would be "funny" too? "Extremely funny"?
Sort of funny like when those militiamen stormed the state senate at gun point. The same Trump fan club militia who's members were arrested for plotting to kidnap the governor.
Help me out blokes, was that funny too?

"serious news outlet in the USA".. hehe
https://babylonbee.com/news/facebook-bans-babylon-bee-for-being-too-accu...

Sorry , Freeride but that article was apologist dogshit .

The moderate outsiders that the author is praying for are and always have been the DNC .

Trump as President would not exist if it wasn’t for the DNC . Everyone seems to want to pretend that Trump was voted in by the Proud Boys or the KKK whereas it was actually the millions upon millions of workers who had been consciously ignored and foresaken by the establishment representing DNC . If the DNC had not abandoned the working class for the previous decades in their race to bolster neoliberalism then there would have been no desire for the protest vote.

The working class would not feel so dejected and disenfranchised by the ( allegedly) left leaning DNC that they would have voted them in and Trump would have remained a reality star.

Instead the DNC cynically shafted the Bernie campaign and pushed Hillary as the only option. This was the true subjugation of democracy in the USA. It was a determined effort to subvert the will of the American people for representation in line with their values.

Clinton lost . Trump won and the election result was blamed on .Nazis and Russia .....WTF ?!?!

So it went for the next four years. Alienate the TRUE LEFT - which is the working class - by ridiculing them for their rejection of modern politics because theyd had true representation stolen from them.

And here we are again. The moderate outsiders should be the DNC but instead they’ve again denied the working class their representation by selecting candidates that are not palatable to anyone except Wall St / Military Industrial complex / legacy media .

With this selection-which is anything but left wing - they have decided to hold the working class to hostage : Either vote for our candidates which you hate or we will set fire to your nation.

From this point the author is correct . This plays into the hands of the proper Nazis and right wingers who want a shitstorm to descend.

The DNC have created this entire mess. If they’d done their job and focussed on the working class instead of turning into the Corporate Lite party then the polarisation of the US would never have happened.

The author even referenced this direct parallel with his example of the unrest in Britain when discussing how the indigenous English felt disenfranchised because they felt they no longer had any political representation. Embarrassing oversight on his behalf.

Wow blowin, when a bunch of nazi thugs march under torch light chanting "The Jews will not replace us", and when nazis go shoot people in mosques and synagogues, and when nazis plot to kidnap governors, I actually blame the nazis. You on the other hand blame the Democrats.
You're weird mate.

nice to see antifa now exist at the atlantic at least...

seems to be quite a few conceding and conciliatory artcles popping up now...

biden dam wall is leaking

polls are tightening

trump crowds getting bigger

dems are getting spooked...

https://mobile.twitter.com/CHIZMAGA/status/1322793417743675393

Concur with Blowin's post, it's been well documented that disenfranchisement of native Western working classes feeds into things like Trump, Brexit, UKIP, Yellow Vests, etc.
Even you said that recent Western election results have hung upon the votes of those who didn't go to university VL (I paraphrase, but that stuck with me)

Edit:

Yeah I cant get with the "Democrats are to blame for Trump" schtick.

It's not unlike the wife basher's "look what you made me do" justification.

Blowin, your soft spot for the worker's Left hardened into a callous twenty-five years ago. Aussie worker's have had nine elections to show how they feel since Economic Rationalism was loosed here, and seven times they chose the mobility of capital over worker's rights.

All these things you say Labor aren't doing, they've tried in the past and lost, the majority spoke, that's democracy, and what's that adage about doing the same thing and expecting a different result?

Stu, we’ve been through this very debate previously so I’m not getting too into it beyond saying that Labor have never , ever rejected neoliberalism and the workers were sold a pup with the ‘ rising wealth through rising house prices “ scam and unfortunately it took many people a generation to realise it.

Now there is no alternative. Just like the USA.

PS It’s nine times that Capital has won over worker’s rights.

One thing that recent elections have shown, is when a crisis hits, people will vote for competence first.
Left of centre parties have had big wins in NZ, ACT, Queensland. Competent right of centre parties are doing OK too.
Despite massive support from Murdoch, incompetent and corrupt politicians are in deep shit in the UK, USA and Australia. The Queensland LNP, Palmer, and Hanson got belted yesterday. Gladys is hanging on by a thread. The Victorian Libs are unelectable and Johnson is despised in the UK. It also looks like Trump is going to get whipped.
2020 may well be the year when flag wearing faux patriotism dies, and not a minute too soon.

@Blowin, 

Neoliberalism helped solve the recurring issue of cyclical stagflation which hit Western economies hard through the seventies, it also offered an end to the industrial disputes driving down productivity. There is no way on God's green Earth that Oz politicans could've said no to neoliberalism, not for the aforementioned reasons, and also because our closest cultural ally and our largest trading partner were both liberalising.

In short, Australia HAD to liberalise, and for a while it was very good for us, especially with the protective measures Hawke and and Bill Hayden and Paul Keating put in place (though it was all unpicked when Howard got his hands on it). Our economy diversified, wages grew (and so did our real wealth), and liberalising meant opportunity for classes of people who previously had none.

This notion that Australia could've rejected neoliberalism is a fairy tale.

Can you picture Australians peacefully standing back while elsewhere around the Western world living standards skyrocketed, personal freedoms bloomed, and all the fun trinkets from imported goods to cheap foreign travel became available to other people but not to us?

No, I can't either, and if you say you can I'd venture you're lying because you indulge in them just as much as anyone else.

This was pretty good too, French Yellow vest doco by Journeyman, en Francais, reporter narrating in another language, but all with subtitles:

4:14 - what triggered it - new climate legislation that would drive diesel up to levels that many regional working people could not afford

9:27 "Get your act together Macron. We can't live on 1200 Euros a month. Fuck!"

Very well put Stu. I find blowins arguments (what I'd call a narrative) vastly simplify the issue.

This idea that left wing parties could just ignore this trend is fanciful and I'd suggest arranged so as to construct villains. I don't think we can make any progress on this issue until the money of wealthy individuals and corporations can be excised from politics.

You’re kidding right ?

You think that Australians would be worse off if we hadn’t pushed house prices out of the reach of our kids through the mass migration which simultaneously pushed down their real wages ?

You think we’d be worse off if we sold our mineral wealth offshore whilst taxing the companies appropriately ?

You think we’d be worse off if we hadn’t privatised every asset our nation had built or owned ? If we hadn’t turned the homes of Australians into a globalised market ?

If we hadn’t retained some manufacturing capacity and it’s associated skills and jobs through a bit of National protectionism ?

I think you’re confusing neoliberalism with the normal ability of a social democracy to engage in international trade. Nothing wrong with trade itself in it’s conventional form . It’s when it’s perverted into neoliberalism that the middle and lower classes get progressively smashed.

Australia never had to go down this path .

Trump was the result of the effects of neoliberalism which primarily still lie in Australia’s future. The entire towns turned to ruin by offshore jobs , the collapse of the real estate Ponzi , the complete turning away of the body politic from these problems. Now the victims of US neoliberalism are pilloried because they’re uneducated despite education being priced out of their grasp and no jobs at the end of their degrees. They’re called Nazis when they tick the box marked “ Anyone but the fuckers responsible for getting the nation into this circumstance “.

Stu - You acknowledge the way our youth can’t live in their hometowns already. The unemployment stats for young people. The only thing holding Australia back from its own Trump moment is that the wheels haven’t fallen off our own Housing Ponzi yet. The can might get kicked down the road a few more years till it does by MOAR mass immigration but it’ll be the same result in the end ....only by then all the koalas will be extinct cause their habitat will be used for housing developments.

PS How’s that blessed economic diversification resulting from neoliberalism looking now mate ? Houses and holes . Houses and holes . Houses and holes.

The thing about our version of neoliberalism and privatisation is in states like Victoria with Kennett we went further than Thatcher ever did flogging off power, gas, water and public transport along with all manner of formerly publicly funded/operated functions. Forced LGA amalgamations and the slashing of formerly public services via forced compulsory competitive tendering. Private operators are more effective right?

How did it come that you’re defending neoliberalism or at least advocating for its continuing existence, Stu ?

The ALP and the DNC could reverse it tomorrow if they told the electorate the truth about the path to ruin we are running down. But they won’t cause they’re complicit and they’ve got multiple investment properties each or a position on the board of an international corpo waiting for when they’ve bled the punters dry for their masters.

Instead the DNC derail democracy before the electoral race has started by injecting the candidate hand picked by the same establishment which set the US to ruin in the first place and basically signalling to the working class to suck it up,or fuck off elsewhere. Hillary literally said as much. This time around the DNC are pulling the same stunt but trying to avert the same result by victim shaming the population into voting in the establishment stooge.

Vote for Wall Street or you’re a Nazi !

If you aren’t racist you’ll vote for the guy who wanted to illegally invade Iraq and who voted for racial segregation !

Don’t be surprised when the protest vote is still alive and kicking and it is even angrier because they’re still in the same situation before but now they’re also being brow beaten by sanctimonious clowns on Twitter.

Big shout out to Anna Bligh !

"You’re kidding right ?"

No, I'm serious. All of those things I said - standard of living, wage growth etc - did happen through the eighties and nineties. It's very easy to look up. You can do so if you wish. We all benefitted from neoliberalism. You too.

What came after that - the undoing of unions and privatisation of major ultiities - is a blame that lies at the Liberals feet.

It didn't have to be that way. We could've chose 'neoliberal lite', similar to the structure some northern European countries chose, and Australia would be a very different country right now, however we didn't and you can blame Howard's Battlers for that.

I'm getting a sense that you think neoliberalism is an on/off switch. That it's an either/or argument, when in fact governments can choose how deep they want to dive into the neoliberal pond.

Said northern European countries are still neoliberal, however what makes them different from us is their govts retain command of things that we sell off. I mean, Nokia is Finnish, Ikea is Swedish, they're tapped into the global economy via neoliberalism, but countries of that ilk retain a greater degree of sovereignty.

Saying Australia "never had to go down that path" is a fundamental misunderstanding of history.

Generations of economists couldn't solve stagflation, but neoloberalism fixed it. Made our life better in the years immediately afterwards too.

Note: I'm not arguing for what came after mid-nineties.

Yet you're saying that economists and politicians should've had some crystal ball that told them what would happen in a quarter of a century's time and somehow convince the angry mob to remain in the economic and social quagmire where civil unrest is just a molotov away.

Blowin,

You're absolutely in dream land on this one:

'The ALP and the DNC could reverse it tomorrow if they told the electorate the truth about the path to ruin we are running down.'

All that would happen is corporate money would absolutely desert both parties and they would be absolutely smashed in the media as conservative parties push simple messages of tax cuts and de-regulation.

Until the money from wealthy individuals and corporations is excised from politics, parties can either play the game, or be out in the cold. Protest votes like you promote do nothing to help the issue, they only push left wing parties further to the right in order to emulate what was seen as a successful strategy.

I’m trying to make the same point as yourself that it was a choice the degree to which we liberalised our economy. What I dispute is the way you don’t seem to think that the ALP were complicit in the whole thing and still are to this day.

One of the central tenets of neoliberalism in a Western society- perhaps the single most fundamental pillar - is the human trafficking demanded by the rent seekers to create demand and push down labour prices which goes under the guise of population growth.

ALP refuses to consider that this disastrous political decision is counteracting each and every fight they may wage at the margins of the battle between Labour and Capital.

They allowed themselves to be wedged by letting the issue with become aligned with One Nation rather than taking ownership of it themselves ,therefore making any possible concession towards addressing this issue subject to cries of racism from the Fake Left which inhabits the inner sanctum of the ALP.

Or maybe they would have opposed it anyway. Nothing they do surprises me anymore.

So yes , even from the opposition it’s the fault of the ALP because they provided no opposition which is their only role to play.

What ever Labor party leader tried that approach would be on the cover of every Murdoch paper the next day, photoshopped into Karl Marx with headlines decrying 'Socialists are coming for your bath plugs!'.

Blowin is a classic example of someone who aligns with the neo-liberal elite and despises progressive politics. It's no great secret to how this works. Murdoch, Alan Jones, Canavan etc don't operate for the benefit of working class people, but they have used racism and social conservatism to get the non-tertiary educated working class vote.
Who is to blame for stagnant wage growth? immigrants. Who is to blame for casualisation of the workforce? immigrants. Who does the Hanson set hate? Greenies, immigrants, the media, and inner city folk.
The Hanson mob have been sold a pup. They were told Australia could go it alone. They are still being told there's long term jobs in thermal coal. They were told low tech manufacturing has a future in Australian and it can support high wages.
The countries that have done well out of globalisation are those who have invested hugely in education. South Korea being the classic example. The place has so few natural resources and was one of the poorest countries in the world 2 generations ago.
Blue collar conservatives live in a 1950s fantasy land. So many of these people think their economic lot can be improved by stopping immigration. They don't want to retrain. They think they deserve $50 an hour doing the same job for life. A job that can be easily replaced with a robot or automation
These people need to know two truths. 1. The LNP / One Nation / Clive Palmer have never been on your side and 2. Education is the only way to improve your economic lot in life. The days of low skilled high wage manufacturing is over.
Labor then have to back this up with $$$ and opportunities for non-tertiary educated people. It's a quid pro quo. Governments create the education and training opportunities, and a safety net, workers don't get to live in a fantasy land where nothing changes.

JQ - I refuse to accept your defeatist attitude and I also refuse to accept your position that the Australian public is so entirely gullible that , in this day of diverse media outlets AKA the internet, there is no way for a rational vision for Australia’s future to be put forward by the ALP.

Regardless- This is not what is occurring in the USA . The Democrats have Big Tech and the majority of legacy media in their corner. They’ve got more money , they’ve got more influence and yet they still sidelined the reasonable and appropriate candidates who wanted to halt the overreach of the neoliberal experiment.

You know why the DNC DIDNT run with candidates who truly wanted an curtailing of the neoliberalism which has destroyed the USA ?

Because if they’d done so they would have entirely lost their backing of the complicit media / tech / Wall Street/ MIC. They have therefore chosen the establishment over the people again and that’s why the protest vote for Trump will be as strong as ever.....cause nothings changed.

Australia isn’t as controlled or as polarised as the US. We can have a major party who is potentially opposed by the vested interests and who could break through on people power.

Yeah for sure bloke. Me and Rupert are peas in a pod.

Seriously, if you don’t have anything worthwhile to add at least don’t involve me into your sloppy misdirections.

It’s a made up rumour that immigration is used to push down wages. That’s why the going rate for your kids to work at a 7/ 11 is currently $2.30 per hour.

"It’s a made up rumour that immigration is used to push down wages. That’s why the going rate for your kids to work at a 7/ 11 is currently $2.30 per hour."
Dude, if that is the case, maybe you should blame the person exploiting the immigrant not the immigrant themselves. The 7/11 franchisor makes out like a bandit and you're pointing the finger at the poor bloke getting exploited behind the till.
blowin, you're a sucker mate.
The answer is having serious criminal penalties for wage theft, but don't hold your breath waiting for One Nation or the LNP bringing something like that in. They are on the other side.

What’s with all the double speak going on these days ?

Since when was overloading the environment with humans progressive politics ?

When did supporting the neoliberalism which insists on mass immigration to push down wages become left wing ?

When did utilising violence to ensure that people follow your perspective become Anti Fascism ?

Can you write a single post without getting insultingly personal ?

Go compare your posts with the other posts on this page and spot the difference. You pretty much destroy any chance of a worthwhile conversation.

Hiccups that was a much better attempt and you even cherry picked my own writing, out of context and referred to earlier post I made about the onus of proof to try to find a hole in my story. It was a much better attempt but still an abject failure and I will tell you why.

I said if you make allegations the onus is on you to provide evidence. The HB allegations have provided proof which, the FBI, DOJ, and Dept of Homeland security have said after much time to check it that there is NOTHING to indicate is is either fraudulent or Russian misinformation. This I have written before multiple times so I see why you didn’t include that in the quotes of my posts that you used.

If the allegations are backed up by credible evidence they should be able to be reported in our ‘free press’. Of course I don’t have the information, I repeatedly say that. Indeed if, in a free press, authorities censor free speech, the onus is on them to disclose why it has been censored .

What I keep saying and for some it might be hard to get your head around, is, why, considering the evidence to support the allegations has the story been suppressed and censored with no justification of why.

So it was a better try but keep trying.

Countries that have taken the Pauline Hanson / blowin anti-globalisation option. Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Indonesia under Suharto, North Korea.
BTW blowin, do you seriously believe Australia can start chucking up trade barriers with zero blowback from our trading partners?

Take out Indonesia and your list looks more like a list of socialist/communist influenced countries not exactly Pauline Hanson material, Australia is more likely to end up like those countries if the Greens were in power.

BTW. Im surprised with that post or two from Stu it's honest and balanced view, it's not the view i expected but from my limited knowledge/understanding that's my understanding of things.

I think much of these things are also tied to a type of natural evolution of society and basically always going to happen in a long running democratic society and tied too many other aspects of social change maybe even changes in tech.

Far Out...we lazy fuck Qldurrz are an hour behind already!
Take 5 to salute Blowin, love yer work!
Top notch broadsheet, we'd be lost without you Blowin! Seriously!

Indo, Hanson is essentially in coalition with the LNP. This is how it works.
The LNP have never, and will never, stand up for working class people. Hanson is just the LNP's useful racist idiot.
She can be relied on to "angry up" the racists (many of them traditional labor supporters) and deliver their vote to the LNP via preferences.
The thing is, Hanson is that stupid, she achieves absolutely nothing for working class people or the racists, even with the balance of power. After the Queensland election it looks like half her supporters have worked out she's a fraud. She does nothing to stop corruption, she does nothing to help the working poor, and she doesn't create any opportunities for her voters. She doesn't do "solutions", all she does is create and maintain resentment. She just gets played all the time.
Once the LNP have her followers' votes, the LNP ignore them. I can't stand the corruption, anti-environmentalism and anti-eduction agendas of the LNP, but thank fuck they give Hanson nothing, because her policies are a fucking disaster for working class people.
I get why working class people are pissed at neo-liberalism in the west. Most governments have not provided them with opportunities to retrain. But thinking Trump, Le Pen, Wilders, Brexit, and Hanson are the solution to their problems is just idiotic.

Yes some good points from Blowin and stu it’s been a good read

Sickaz. If your issue is with censorship, I can respect that. Fair enough. However, if you think this laptop story hasn't got the traction it deserves, maybe it's because it HAS got the traction it deserves. Fuck all. The FBI, yep, the same FBI with a Trump appointed director, have had the hard drive since December last year and nothing has come of it.

This is a non story perpetuated by The New York Post, a bullshit Murdoch outlet, that no credible news source wants to touch. The hellish cesspool that is Twitter shouldn't have blocked the NYP, because now the embers of this chatter have been given enough oxygen to have people like you still banging on about it. Even that syphilitic parasite Tucker Carlson has backed down.