At around 11pm on 8 November Eastern Standard Time in Australia this is how the polling looked to Nate Silver:
The late trend is to Clinton. Alan Kohler said tonight if Trump wins the sharemarket will drop like a stone. If Clinton wins nothing happens – it’s already priced in. Continue reading Trump victory slipping away
Paul Waldman in The Washington Post warns Republicans are now vowing Total War. And the consequences could be immense. This warning is coming from multiple sources and has to be taken seriously.
Republicans, it seems, will deny the legitimacy of a Hillary Clinton presidency. They have actually been saying that she would have no mandate because people would only vote for her to avoid Trump. They will immediately take steps for Congress to impeach her, will not co-operate on any legislation she might propose and will refuse to endorse any appointments she might seek to make to the Supreme Court.
That is, of course, assuming that she wins. Continue reading Trumpism: bigger than Trump?
The homeless are usually given transitional housing, and then are required to get a job and get sober before they are given more permanent options. Utah has implemented a scheme first developed in New York where the homeless are given permanent housing and then offered help to transition back into mainstream society, in this case in the form of a social worker to provide assistance.
Mostly it works and is cheaper for the state, saving on things like shelters, ambulances, hospitals and jails. Continue reading Saturday salon 5/11
Or is it an entirely inappropriate intervention in the political process by a public official?
At the end of the working week we were cruising to a perhaps anticlimactic finish to the presidential campaign when a letter from FBI Director James B. Comey advised Congress that the agency would once again be examining emails related to Clinton’s time as secretary of state. Continue reading FBI bombshell, or storm in a teacup?
A shootout that leaves both damaged, Abbott perhaps more than Turnbull. That’s largely because none of the scribes and commentators have taken account fully of Peta Credlin’s account of the events (paywalled, but Google ‘Peta Credlin IT IS ironic that after a whole week talking about the Adler shotgun’).
I think most people now think that Tony Abbott was lying when he said there was no secret deal between him and David Leyonhjelm in mid-August last year to put a sunset clause on the temporary ban on importing the Adler A110 lever-action shotgun. The sunset clause was said to have been inserted in exchange for votes on migration legislation in a deal Justice Minister Michael Keenan and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. Not so, says Credlin, because the extension, with sunset clause, had been done weeks earlier, and the fact communicated in the national press. Continue reading Abbott and Turnbull in public shootout
It’s generally agreed, I think, that the moderator won the third presidential debate, with Hillary Clinton coming second.
Trump may not have lost, however, because there is talk that Trump may launch himself into the TV business, where no doubt nothing but the truth will be told.
There has been talk about it at Vanity Fair back in June. There was talk at Huffington Post a few days ago. Now it’s in The Economist. Continue reading Saturday salon 22/10
Donald Trump was born in June 1946, and would have turned 17 in 1963, the year Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique was published, which I gather fired up ‘second wave feminism’ in the US.
Back in early August, James Hamblin in The Atlantic identified Donald Trump as the climax of American masculinity.
That referred to his aggressive style. Now Paul McGeough’s article ‘Formal’ vulgarian Donald Trump evokes Mad Men, Playboy and the Rat Pack looks at the origins of his attitude to women. Continue reading Trump an exemplar of American masculinity?
Three days ago Nate Silver published an analysis that broke up the polling along gender lines.
If only the men voted Trump would win 350 votes to 188. But if only women voted Clinton would win an astonishing 458 votes to 80.
That was before the second debate and the 2005 videotape had any impact. Clinton trailed Trump by 11 percentage points among men but led him by 33 points among women. Continue reading Trump isn’t teflon
Martin Parkinson, head of the PM’s department, told CEDA what we need to do to become truly innovative.
What caught my eye was what he said about Australian management in manufacturing:
The week began with Newspoll maintaining Labor’s TPP lead at 52-48, and ended with Kelly O’Dwyer endorsing a bill that criticised the Government. In between Turnbull got the Senate to pass his legislation supporting Victoria’s CFA volunteers, with Pauline Hanson’s support, and one of the National senators stood aside so that Pauline could join the NBN committee.
The major political event of the week, however, was Labor killing off the marriage equality plebiscite legislation. Sure, it still has to go to the senate, but Xenophon, the Greens and Labor oppose it, so it can’t pass.
Laura Tingle says the Faustian bargain Turnbull struck with the Nationals to become PM is eroding the rationale for replacing Abbott with Turnbull. Continue reading Liberals flounder as the marriage equality plebiscite turns to sludge
Malcolm Turnbull was at the historic UN Summit on Refugees to tell everyone about our world-class effort, though it is doubtful world leaders took very much notice. Australia has unique circumstances, and thankfully, unique solutions. What we may see as our badge of honour, others may see as our badge of shame. Anyway, undaunted by UNHCR estimates of a burgeoning number, reckoned in 2015 at 65.3 million people displaced from their homes, the UN announced The New York Declaration, enunciating principles, promising aid, and plans to conclude a global compact on refugees and immigration in 2018.
Within hours, says Deutsche Welle:
Probably the biggest story of the week was the Essential survey asking people whether they would support or oppose a ban on Muslim immigration to Australia. Overall support/oppose was 49% to 40%, with Labor voters 40-48, the LNP 60-31, the Greens 34-59 and Other 58-35. Essential were so shocked they ran the poll again, with the same result.
Just about everyone is shocked, including the higher than expected support amongst Labor and Greens voters. Peter Lewis, the Essential man, says he was floored by the result. He thought Pauline Hanson represented a rump, but not so. Continue reading Saturday salon 24/9
