More on those US elections and what they can tell us about the political outlook.
Elliot Morris recently appeared as a guest on Paul Krugman’s Substack podcast. Krugman has published this brief summary of Morris’ findings.
“First, the election results confirmed what the polls have been telling us for months: Trump is deeply unpopular, his policy agenda is unpopular, and when voters are forced to choose between Trump and something else, they choose something else.
Reality finally starts to bite in the US AND IT HASN’T COME IN A MISPELT ALL CAPITAL LETTERS POST ON TRUMP SOCIAL.
The first major sign of the change were the results in Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New York. Well New York is probably a bit of stretch but the Virginia result was by 14% and New Jersey was also double digits and Georgia flipped a vote on a Public Service Commission ballot for the first time in recent memory. In Mississippi Democrats won three seats and broke the Republican supermajority in the Mississippi Senate.
Amidst the world’s many troubles is the growing possibility of a combination of the bursting of a bubble, a major government and corporate debt crisis and the possibility that a popular investment strategy – lifecycle investing or borrowing to invest- will all implode at the same time.
Once upon a time conservatives were quick to argue that we’ll all be rooned if governments took on too much debt. While true in extreme cases it was more a device to deny any political party’s calls for welfare spending and indeed any spending on social goods. Moreover, the mantra was that tax cuts would pay for themselves
The latest PPRI polling provides a stunning reflection on how Americans now regard Trump.
A survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PPRI), a nonpartisan independent research organization, found that 56% of Americans think that “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.”
It’s often said that money doesn’t make you happy. Whether or not that’s true is moot – but being under financial stress is definitely bad news.
The Scanlon Foundation Research Institute this month published a major report on the emotional toll of financial stress.
There are two major Australian polls on issues such as this – one by ANU and one by Scanlon (the Mapping Social Cohesion) study. The ANU poll found that 34% of the Australian population were finding it difficult to get by on their current income. 62% said they altered their spending on groceries and essential purposes to ease financial strain.
For US multi-billionaire Peter Theil September 23 must have been a rather disappointing day. It was the day the Rapture was to occur. Sadly, as with other similar predictions about the end days over the centuries it didn’t come to pass.
It was more of pity given that he recently delivered a series of four off-the-record lectures on the Antichrist. The talks at the Commonwealth Club were sold out and the online invite vaguely indicated the talks would be “addressing the topic of the biblical Antichrist” and its “theology, history and politics – all off the record.
As the fall outs from the Charlie Kirk assassination metabolised into a mass movement a few voices raised a very unfortunate parallel – the assassination of Horst Wessel.
Like Wessel Kirk had a massive funeral and nationwide morning – with flags at half-mast nationally. Trump as Hitler did with Wessel, deemed Kirk a martyr.
The federal opposition is in damage control following firebrand senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s claims the government is accepting “large numbers” of Indian migrants into Australia to bolster Labor’s vote, claiming that a Redbridge poll had found that 85% 0f those who have Indian ancestry voted for Labor (on a two party preferred vote).
The following post is by Associate Professor in History at Deakin University, Carolyn Holbrook.
The Australian War Memorial is in the news for reportedly retrospectively changing the rules of its Les Carlyon prize for military history. This resulted in it not being awarded to Walkley award-winning journalist Chris Masters’ book about disgraced special forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith.
Pearls and Irritations today published Peter Stanley’s piece on the latest Australian War Memorial example of the AWM trying to deny the realities of our military history.
Peter wrote: The Australian War Memorial remains one of Australia’s most cherished national institutions, attracting a million visitors, mainly tourists, to Canberra each year.