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Capitalism was heavily regulated in most western countries between 1930s and 1970s when deregulation and neoliberalism took over.  FDR's New Deal was actually the culmination of a 130-odd year struggle to improve living conditions that started at the dawn of the industrial revolution.

So it is possible.  

 

Only problem in west is globalist free market unregulated capitalist types now dominate the old working class parties.  

It's why right wing parties now appeal to many working class people even though these parties are also nominally unfriendly to living standards.

 

So current choice is "neoliberal with some welfare to prevent dissent" or "neoliberal with some welfare to prevent dissent."

 

There's no real grass roots movements to stop it either.

 

Major change requires upheaval ala economic collapse or major war to destroy/damage existing power structures.  Not talking GFC or Afghanistan/Iraq but more something like Great Depression or WWI and II.

 

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So @Thatguy from what I heard last night if Paramatta Feels win this weekend it breaks a 36 year GF drought. They also mentioned something about them having the opportunity to do a clean sweep of premierships, something along the lines of 3 premierships for 3 grades?

I might have to jump of the Feels bandwagon and give them a bit of support, no one likes seeing a team go that long without a major win.

 

 

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3 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Wouldn’t it just look like the progressive socialism model as seen in Denmark, Finland, Norway etc? Countries with high social mobility and low poverty. I know in America that’s a bad word, mostly I feel because there isn’t an understanding of the difference between democratic or progressive socialism as the Scandinavians interpret it, and communism, this lack of education obviously benefits the right wing because the less people know about a given subject the easier they are to manipulate towards your way of thinking. 

Well that's the very thing that the right-wing banks on. Keep 'em poor and pregnant and stupid so they're easy to control and manipulate.

Years ago we had this thing called the FCC Fairness Doctrine which required broadcast news outlets to present contrasting and opposing views for each issue. Back in my youth the truth was important and respected. Most network news outlets and newspapers strove to present the truth in as fair and balanced a manner as possible. But good ole Ronnie Ray-gun abolished that shit in 1987, and now 35 years later the news has become a 24/7 for-profit free for all where anyone can basically say anything at all with no regards to 'fairness' or even the truth. Once the news networks figured out they could just lie and say whatever they wanted or more to the point whatever their viewers wanted to hear, then from that point on all bets were off and the practice of reporting the truth went right out the window.

It was that stupid fucking Aussie Rupert Murdoch who started his Fox News channel in 1996, I blame him. It's not actually a news outlet at all, they pay a little lip service to the news in the middle of the day, but the rest of the time before and after that they're a collection of right-wing opinion talk shows. Rupie saw that there was a lack of news programming that catered to right-wingers, so he was happy to step in and fill that void. And now they get the highest ratings out of all the cable news shows because they give their viewers, who are largely in the older and more conservative right-wing demographic, exactly what they want to hear. Gotta give him credit, it's a great business model, they're raking in the dough because they've had no real competition in that conservative christo-fascist space except for talk radio until more recently with the modern rise of right-wing online social media propaganda outlets. Tell the viewers what they want to hear, give them content that they can't get anywhere else (because you made the shit up) and they will always be loyal viewers and generate beaucoup advertising dollars for you.

So now the result of this is you have a large block of the right-wing in this country who are all getting fed the most outrageously ridiculous ass-backwards nonsense propaganda because it's what they want to hear. They need to be told what to think, so they tune in religiously each day for more propaganda swill. All this hate-filled rhetoric and wildly inaccurate fabrications they take in are "feel good" comfort food to them and they lap it up. They honestly don't even want to know the truth about what's really happening in the world, they only want to hear whatever confirms their ugly thoughts. I firmly believe that if we could bring back the fairness doctrine to force networks to tell the truth and shut down these blatant propaganda networks (or at least not let them use the word "news" in their name) that could go a long way to fixing this mess even though it will probably take at least a generation to get rid of the last of this MAGA cult as they die off.

You can't even argue with or talk any sense to these people, they're all convinced beyond any doubt that they have it all right and they're onto it and everyone else is lying to them even though they're being straight-up lied to by the talking heads they do trust every day. Facts and logic and references and statistics mean nothing to them, they don't read or do any research on their own outside of their little conservative right-wing media bubble echo chambers. They are eager and willing to believe whatever made-up nonsense they're told by their favorite talking heads no matter how improbable or bizarre or ridiculous it may be, and they will reject anything else from any other source as "fake news." You'll find these idiots all over the internet, they're easy to spot because they all parrot the exact same bogus right-wing propaganda talking points. They all believe "the big lie" that the 2020 election was stolen and that the Jan 6 insurrection was a peaceful gathering and that all of our "Democrat cities" have been burned to the ground by Antifa and the BLM rioters during the summer of 2021, and that moderate centrist Joe Biden is a radical left-wing Socialist who's personally responsible for global post-pandemic inflation and that he controls the price of oil and gas across the globe and he has caused all their other problems and that he's thrown the southern border wide open. And don't forget Hunter Biden's laptop. 

So yeah, logic, reason, thinking, and dictionary definitions of words are definitely not their strong suits. They will twist words to mean whatever they want them to mean. Almost none of them seem to have any real idea about political ideologies or the different forms of government that exist, or what words like Socialism or Communism or Fascism or even Democracy and Republic actually mean. They've been indoctrinated that socialism is bad, period, without even knowing what it means. They often refer to their unfaltering love and respect for the US Constitution, but mosst of them have never actually read it nor do they have any idea what it actually says in there, other than maybe a sentence or two of the second ammendment which mentions their right to bear arms. Most of them have not even the most basic knowledge of history (neither world history nor US history) and no interest whatsoever in anything that happens anywhere in the world outside of the US, unless maybe it has to do with our American military kicking some brown foreigners' asses.

Fortunately this MAGA profile doesn't represent half the country or even close to half. Most estimates put this group to be between roughly 20 - 25% of the voting public in this country. But that's still a sizeable number in a country of 330 million, more than enough to royally fuck our shit up. I've been saying for years that you should have to pass an IQ test in order to be eligible to register to vote, but no one listens to me.

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30 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

Fortunately this MAGA profile doesn't represent half the country or even close to half. Most estimates put this group to be between roughly 20 - 25% of the voting public in this country. But that's still a sizeable number in a country of 330 million, more than enough to royally fuck our shit up. I've been saying for years that you should have to pass an IQ test in order to be eligible to register to vote, but no one listens to me.

 

Due to voter apathy and the way Congressional seats are allocated, those 25% can have an outsize impact.

We're seeing the same in France and Italy.   Eg new Italian right wing government only won 26% of the seats.  In France in 2nd round of French presidential election, only 72% of voters voted which is lowest turnout since 1969.  Indeed Macron's party only got elected due to collapse of vote in parliamentary elections - indeed in 1st round in 2022 only 47.5% of voters voted.  

 

Doesn't help so many intelligent people are bitter and disenfranchised with broken democratic systems.  And a lot of the rest of the population is sheeples.  I dread to think how few Australians would vote if it wasn't compulsory.

Like capitalism, democracy needs actual serious competition and effective regulation to work yet both these things have shrunk over the years.  All major political parties now have same ideology (thus reducing choice) and regulation has been sidelined to allow increased influence of lobby groups, political donors etc.  Here in Australia political donations are open to corporate and overseas donors.  Literally corruption and self interest are baked into the system.

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1 hour ago, KillaKukumba said:

So @Thatguy from what I heard last night if Paramatta Feels win this weekend it breaks a 36 year GF drought. They also mentioned something about them having the opportunity to do a clean sweep of premierships, something along the lines of 3 premierships for 3 grades?

I might have to jump of the Feels bandwagon and give them a bit of support, no one likes seeing a team go that long without a major win.

 

True. We need this.

But it's the Cheaters (the Riff, the inbreds etc) who will get the clean sweep if they win. No pasaran.

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2 hours ago, KillaKukumba said:

I'm sure you'll happily hand back the try from a forward pass that even the NRL Boss claimed was wrongly awarded?

I could go on at great length about why he was wrong, why it didn't matter in the course of the game, how it was evened out by egregiously wrong decisions to our disadvantage later in the game, but I know you are just baiting me and I don't give a flying fuck. We are going all the way!

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Doc being more animated than I've ever seen him. Think I might even be willing to believe he's a real person.

Wish these other Aussie blokes would stop baiting our poor beleaguered Doctor though. It's bad enough his scrappy Eels haven't won a cup in 50 years, as a NY sports fan I know how that feels.

And besides, I'm the master baiter around here, so if anyone's gonna be baiting the good doctor it should be me. Just don't drop the soap Doc! 😉 Badum-bump.

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Baiting is about all Eels are good for, especially injected with aniseed.

I'm still on Doc's side and going for the Feels this weekend. Although that in itself could be a curse because teams I want to win rarely do, especially when I watch the game. However I'm sure if the Panthers win by two after scoring from a forward pass in the dying minutes, Feels fans will embrace it as the right decision at the right time.

 

 

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Finally back home in New England. Great to see my folks. My mom made some clay pumpkins for everyone to carve, which she'll fire for Halloween, and she also worked on a chess set with me for my son the monster. Listened to some music, ate some real BBQ, drove through seemingly endless countryside, had good mead. The drive back was horrendous but the visit was worth it.

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Nice trip.

I am off to Coledale this morning (on the coast north of Wollongong) for the wedding (second time out) of my oldest friend - I met him in primary school -  tomorrow. Will be a really, really nice occasion - his second wife (to be ) is a good person and suits him well and should see him out.

It is a no gift wedding - they are not kids and don't need stuff - but I had to do something for him, so I wrote a Wedding Fanfare for brass quintet and percussion - about a minutes worth of music, short and noisy like a fanfare should be. My budget doesn't run to hiring and rehearsing the musicians so its all MIDI but it sounds pretty good I think.

Then on Sunday the train to Sydney to meet my son and we are off to the epoch making Grand Final  to witness the vindication of the eternal underdogs.

GO EELS and fuck youse all.

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Each day I grow to hate Australian legal and political institutions that little bit more.:

 

1. Staff at hospital I work covered for a paedophile nurse in children's' ward.  Government literally changed the laws so the people involved in the cover up could not be sacked!

2 Australian government has relented and will introduce an anti-corruption "integrity" commission to investigate political corruption.  Sounds good EXCEPT the commission will operate in secret in most cases.  So either it's smoke and mirrors to cover things up and at worst it could be used as a kangaroo court to hammer minor parties and independents. 

3. State government is punishing a juvenile detention facility worker who revealed that several staff were engaged in rape and sexual assault of detainees.

 

One day when the Chinese take over Australia, Australians won't notice a difference because our freedoms and rights will have been so eroded that we are now on par with People's Republic of China.

 

EDIT I just wrote to 10 of our local Federal Parliament members about concerns with secret corruption commision.  Wonder how many will even bother to get back to me.

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You noticed that with your keen powers of observation didja? The fact that it's in Korean makes it seem like more of a devious sinister attack. Perfect time for it too, FA probably just went to sleep and being 6:20am Saturday morning in the UK Macca's probably still gonna be sleeping for awhile.

The funny part is that you posted your spam alert right after a Deadovic rant about the Chinese taking over the world.

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Well doc it's your big day, do you get to arise in about 14 hours screaming triumphantly that your team man handled the balls given to them really well and hugged their way to victory. Or do you return with your tail between your knees complaining about bad umpiring and that the team was robbed. All in all as long as both teams actually stay in the game for 80 minutes it will be better than the AFL final.

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2 minutes ago, markm said:

The man of of many names who must not been named has held top posting position at both Metal-fi and here on Metal Forum, but at M-F I was often in the top 5, here I don't rank in the Leaderboard. My power is waning here on Middle Earth. 

That's not true Marky Mark, you had the most posts by far on the M-Fi board until prolific latecomer Deadovic came and surpassed your total. But then if you'll remember he quit and burned his account behind him leaving you in the #1 spot, while I was somewhere in the lower top 10. When Deadly Do-Right realised the grass wasn't any greener elsewhere on the interwebs and came back to us, he had to make a new account with a new username and start all over again from post one. I was only able to climb up into the 2 slot right behind you near the end after several of the OG regulars like Carlissimo and Fernando started leaving the board for Goldy and Snyde's Discord Vortex thing.

We never had likes or horns to throw at each other over there, so there was no way to gauge who might have had the most liked content. But it seems to me that a polarizing, loudmouthed, opinionated, caprine character such as myself would be prone to have both the most liked and the most disliked content at the same time if we were keeping track of such things. Lucky for me we have a horns button here 🤘 but no middle finger button 🖕 I'm sure that if we did have one I'd garner far more birds flipped in my direction than anyone else at no less than a 5 to 1 ratio. 🐦

I believe that you yourself would have a lot more liked content if you spent more time here, but I understand that like most people with a job and a wife and a kayak 🚣‍♂️ you have other more pressing demands on your time. You just recently dipped out for a bit, I was just thinking the other day that maybe I should shoot you a text and ask if everything was alright. But then you dropped a post on us and I saw that I had been worried for nothing. 🤷‍♂️

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