Saturday smorgasbord

Details on two privately conducted polls, plus a stew of federal preselection news.

Two privately conducted ReachTEL polls from the past week to relate, followed by enough federal preselection news to choke on. Also note immediately below this the post on a new YouGov Galaxy state poll from Queensland. I should also observe that September 8 has been set as the date for the Wagga Wagga state by-election in New South Wales, to be held after Liberal member Daryl Maguire fell foul of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. It presumably won’t be contested by Labor and will probably be of interest only to locals, but Antony Green naturally has a guide up.

On with the show:

• The Guardian reports a poll conducted for the ACTU has Labor leading 51-49 on two-party preferred. Other findings of the poll relate to wage rises, or the lack thereof: 47.6% reported not having received one in the past year, 32.9% said such as they had received did not cover the cost of living, and only 19.5% said their pay had improved in real terms. The poll was conducted on August 2 from a sample of 2453.

• Greenpeace has a Victoria only poll which, after exclusion of the 6.7% undecided, has the Coalition on 35.4% (compared with 41.8% at the 2016 election), Labor on 34.9% (35.6%), the Greens on an unlikely 18.6% (13.1%) and One Nation on 5.1%. Labor leads 57-43 on two-party preferred, compared with 51.8-48.2 at the election. The poll was conducted July 30 from a sample of 1118.

The preselection news bonanza starts in Victoria, where internal party democracy has been having a rough time of it lately, with Labor’s national executive and the Liberal Party’s state administrative committee both taking over federal preselections to protect sitting members amid factional unrest.

• The Labor vacancy created by the retirement of Michael Danby in Macnamara, as Melbourne Ports will now be known, is set to be filled by one of his former staffers, Josh Burns. The seat is reserved to the Right under factional arrangements, and Burns prevailed in a factional ballot with 61 votes to 49 for Nick Dyrefurth, executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre, and 16 for Mary Delahunty, a Glen Eira councillor (numbers related by Emma-Jayne Schenk of the Caulfield Glen Eira Leader). Delahunty called on the national executive to disregard the result, accusing Danby of hand-picking the attendees to the meeting and seeing that others were locked out, and complaining that 85% of those present were male.

• United Voice state secretary Jess Walsh will take second position on Labor’s Victorian Senate ticket after winning Socialist Left endorsement at the expense of incumbent Gavin Marshall. Marshall has been demoted to what is being described as an unwinnable position – number three according to the Herald Sun, though reports vary. The result is a defeat for Socialist Left powerbroker and Marshall ally Kim Carr, whose influence has diminished in the face of a new alliance between the Industrial Left and Right forces associated with state MP Adem Somyurek. It also contradicts the justification for referring preselections to the national executive, which was to protect sitting members.

• The Herald Sun reports a factional deal has set up state upper house member Daniel Mulino to run in the new safe Labor seat of Fraser in western Melbourne, making his existing seat in Eastern Victoria available for Jane Garrett. This was supported by Bill Shorten, and bitterly opposed by Garrett’s foes in the United Firefighters Union. Garrett is backed by the Industrial Left, which has been determined to find her a new seat after she abandoned her existing berth of Brunswick, where she is under growing pressure from the Greens. Mulino is aligned with the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (although the internal politics of that union is a story unto itself), which was at first unhappy at losing influence within the state government, but has been mollified with the promise of an extra state seat.

• Jenny Macklin’s successor in Jagajaga, which is reserved to the Socialist Left, will be Kate Thwaites, a former staffer to Macklin, ABC journalist and, most recently, communications director at Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services. Thwaites won factional backing ahead of Sonja Terpstra, a local teacher and community activist.

• The Victorian Liberal Party’s administrative committee has rubber-stamped the preselections of all sitting federal MPs, ostensibly to prevent the party from being distracted in the lead-up to the November 29 state election. However, the real story by all accounts is that the dominant conservative faction wishes to protect Kevin Andrews in Menzies, who faced a challenge from Keith Wolahan, a former Blake Dawson lawyer who earlier served overseas with the Australian Defence Force.

Elsewhere:

• Matthew Killoran of The Courier-Mail reports five candidates are seeking preselection for a Queensland Senate position reserved to the Left, which is being vacated with the retirement of Claire Moore. The front runner by all accounts is Nita Green, a former staffer to Senator Murray Watt, who is backed by the CFMMEU. This is despite Green being based in Brisbane, and party rules reserving the spot for central or north Queensland (Green says she will move there if successful). Others in the field are Leanne Donaldson, who held the state seat of Bundaberg from 2015 until her defeat in 2017, and lost her position in cabinet when it emerged she had failed to pay nearly $8000 in council rates; Julie McGlone, Tourism Australia marketing executive; Tania Major, Cairns-based indigenous youth advocate; and Karin Campbell, an occupational health and safety consultant.

• Paul Starick of The Advertiser reports that Georgina Downer, who for some reason wants to run in Mayo again, will face opposition from Reagan Garner, human resources manager for ReturnToWorkSA. However, Starick reports Downer is the “overwhelming favourite”.

• Sally Whyte of the Canberra Times reports there are five nominees for Labor preselection in Canberra, where a vacancy is available as a result of the Australian Capital Territory’s House of Representatives seat entitlement increasing from two to three. They are John Falzon, chief executive of St Vincent de Paul; Kel Watt, a lobbyist for the greyhound racing industry; Jacob Ingram, a staffer to Chief Minister Andrew Barr; Simon Banks, managing director for lobbyists Hawker Britton; and Alicia Payne, who has worked as a staffer to Jenny Macklin, Bill Shorten and Lindsay Tanner. Falzon has been endorsed by the Left, Watt and Ingram are seeking endorsement from the Right, and Banks and Payne are unaligned. Falzon has been in the news lately after a picture emerged of him wearing a t-shirt with Lenin emblazoned on it, while Watt has been the target of a dirt sheet being circulated within the local party. The preselection process will be completed early next month.

• In South Australia, Labor will deal with the abolition of Port Adelaide by having the homeless Mark Butler run in Hindmarsh, and moving Hindmarsh MP Steve Georganas to neighbouring Adelaide. The latter is being vacated by Kate Ellis, and has turned from a marginal to a fairly safe Labor seat as a result of the redistribution changes. Paul Karp of The Guardian reports the deal involves a Senate seat being forfeited by the Left, of which Butler is a member, with the top two positions on the Senate ticket to be taken by the Right.

• Nathan Hondros of Fairfax reports Labor’s likely new candidate for the marginal Liberal seat of Hasluck in eastern Perth is James Martin, Mundaring Shire councillor and director of Marketech Ltd, a firm that develops stock market trading software. The position became vacant after the withdrawal of Lauren Palmer, an official with the Maritime Union of Australia, who cited health reasons. Andrew Burrell of The Australian reports Martin is a member of the Progressive Left faction, which combines forces of the Right (the SDA, TWU and AWU) and Left (the MUA and CFMMEU).

• Luke Hartsuyker announced this week he will not seek another term in the mid north coast New South Wales seat of Cowper, which he has held for the Nationals since 2001. No word yet on who might succeed him as Nationals candidate, but Rob Oakeshott, who ran unsuccessfully against Hartsuyker in 2016, is not ruling out running again.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

892 comments on “Saturday smorgasbord”

Comments Page 12 of 18
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  1. C@tmomma @ #544 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:45 am

    Rex Douglas @ #544 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:43 am

    WeWantPaul @ #537 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:41 am

    “We need to stop Bernie’s opportunistic efforts to get Americans to examine their social conscience. He’s dangerous… !”

    He is, all his destruction of Hillary gave us Trump, after Comey who almost certainly swung the result, it was Bernie and to a lesser extent Jill Stein that did the ‘they are as bad as each other, stay at home’ that had Hillary so close to the line.

    I can’t stand these fringe players that get to play fast and loose from the boundary and are never accountable for anything.

    But wasn’t it Hillary’s destruction of herself and Bernie that delivered Trump ..?

    No.

    She beat Trump by 3 Million + votes. If she’d lost by that much your banal assumption may have had weight. As it stand it’s just another lightweight throwaway line from you.

    Wonder what would have happened if she didn’t use a private email and had a Bernie aligned VP nominee….?

  2. never accountable for anything

    The Democratic primary voters who preferred Sanders on the issues but second-guessed themselves because they thought a pro-establishment centrist was what the electorate was demanding – they are the ones who are responsible for Trump’s election. If they had voted their conscience instead of voting tactically (and counter-productively in this case because they voted for the weaker of the two Democratic contenders), there would be a Democratic President right now, and the Supreme Court would be moving to the left. Instead, some naive Democratic primary voters were too timid to vote for the candidate they liked the best.

  3. He is, all his destruction of Hillary gave us Trump, after Comey who almost certainly swung the result, it was Bernie and to a lesser extent Jill Stein that did the ‘they are as bad as each other, stay at home’ that had Hillary so close to the line.

    Last week some new data was released.

    On Thursday, though, Pew Research Center released an unusually robust survey of the 2016 electorate. In addition to having asked people how they voted, Pew’s team verified that they did, giving us a picture not only of the electorate but also of those who didn’t vote. There are a number of interesting details that emerge from that research, including a breakdown of President Trump’s support that confirms much of his base has backed him enthusiastically since the Republican primaries.

    The data also makes another point very clear: Those who didn’t vote are as responsible for the outcome of the election as those who did.

    As we noted shortly after the election, about 30 percent of Americans were eligible to vote but decided not to, a higher percentage than the portion of the country who voted for either Trump or his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Pew’s data shows that almost half of the nonvoters were nonwhite and two-thirds were under age 50. More than half of those who didn’t vote earned less than $30,000 a year; more than half of those who did vote were over age 50.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/08/09/new-data-makes-it-clear-nonvoters-handed-trump-the-presidency/?utm_term=.148be6b046bb

  4. I always thought that a sustainable Australia is a country that
    1. doesn’t turn farmland watered by rainfall into housing estates 50km from CBD eg Korrumburra
    2. Doesn’t grow cotton
    3. Controls cubby station and other large farms water allocation
    4. So that downstream communities have water eg broken hill & Adelaide
    5. Has more than 14 days bunker supply of fuel , what is pumped out of Bass Strait?
    6. Keeps enough gas onshore for domestic users
    7. Doesn’t allow the human population to exceed the continents carrying capacity today and in the future
    8. Makes provision for global warming and mitigates for the effects

  5. poroti @ #541 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:42 am

    WeWantPaul

    So there isn’t a sensible distinction between isolation and sustainable

    If you are fishing sustainable, not taking more than is produced, then there is nothing to stop us from exporting some. The only problem would be if we get to a stage where our population is so large we consume all of the sustainable catch. Which means not getting to a population size such that we consume all of the capacity.

    Instead of building more coal-fired powerstations we should build more fish farms !!

  6. Ok so for 200 million extra Australians, even without going inland, you could space out 20 10 million person cities on the coast. You could do that on WA’s coastline alone.

    You desal water, fish farm, and use some inland land for farming (particularly in the North).

    It isn’t going to be cheap and we couldn’t do it quickly, but it is extraordinarily possible and sustainable.

  8. Rex Douglas says:
    Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 10:27 am
    Sohar @ #517 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:21 am

    So the only Democrat of note that support’s Trudeau’s stance on Saudi Arabia is Sanders. It figures.

    How do you know that Democrats don’t support Trudeau?
    Why are you calling Sanders a Democrat?

    The take-away from the round of Primaries held this week in the US was that Sanders-endorsed or aligned candidates amongst Democrats generally lost, while Trump-supported Republicans generally won.

  9. C@t

    If you have a friend on who you think you can rely you are a lucky (wo)man…

    I still list that movie as my favourite ever movie.

  10. Billie @ #554 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:50 am

    I always thought that a sustainable Australia is a country that
    1. doesn’t turn farmland watered by rainfall into housing estates 50km from CBD eg Korrumburra
    2. Doesn’t grow cotton
    3. Controls cubby station and other large farms water allocation
    4. So that downstream communities have water eg broken hill & Adelaide
    5. Has more than 14 days bunker supply of fuel , what is pumped out of Bass Strait?
    6. Keeps enough gas onshore for domestic users
    7. Doesn’t allow the human population to exceed the continents carrying capacity today and in the future
    8. Makes provision for global warming and mitigates for the effects

    A good start. I would add:

    9. Doesn’t destroy prime agricultural land by fracking or digging up coal.
    10. Doesn’t destroy rivers and marine environments through salinity and toxic runoff.
    11. Doesn’t deplete aquifers that will take thousands – if not millions – of years to regenerate.
    12. Doesn’t drive species to extinction at unprecedented rates.

    Sadly, the list could be endless …

  11. “Instead of building more coal-fired powerstations we should build more fish farms !!”

    Personally I don’t like fish, but yeah we should be shutting down coal-fired powerstations about now as fast as we can. I really like this list and agree with most of it:

    “1. doesn’t turn farmland watered by rainfall into housing estates 50km from CBD eg Korrumburra
    2. Doesn’t grow cotton
    3. Controls cubby station and other large farms water allocation
    4. So that downstream communities have water eg broken hill & Adelaide
    5. Has more than 14 days bunker supply of fuel , what is pumped out of Bass Strait?
    6. Keeps enough gas onshore for domestic users
    7. Doesn’t allow the human population to exceed the continents carrying capacity today and in the future
    8. Makes provision for global warming and mitigates for the effects”

    But other than 8 it is not about sustainability it is about values. Values I agree with, but they lead to my chief gripe with the faux sustainability ‘science’ – you start with those values and then model them, and low and behold we already have too many people.

  12. WeWantPaul @ #555 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:51 am

    Ok so for 200 million extra Australians, even without going inland, you could space out 20 10 million person cities on the coast. You could do that on WA’s coastline alone.

    You desal water, fish farm, and use some inland land for farming (particularly in the North).

    It isn’t going to be cheap and we couldn’t do it quickly, but it is extraordinarily possible and sustainable.

    Dangerous extremist thinking there WWP.

  13. “Dangerous extremist thinking there WWP.”

    Yeah I’m just snipping for my keyboard and will never have to implement or take responsibility for any of those 10 MM person cities.

  16. C@tmomma @ #545 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:45 am

    Rex Douglas @ #544 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:43 am

    But wasn’t it Hillary’s destruction of herself and Bernie that delivered Trump ..?

    No.

    She beat Trump by 3 Million + votes. If she’d lost by that much your banal assumption may have had weight. As it stand it’s just another lightweight throwaway line from you.

    Exactly this.

    There are many things that colluded to deliver Trump. Hillary, her mediocrity, and certainly her “use of private email” are not among them.

    Anyone still harping on about “Hillary’s emails” in 2018 is either a Russian troll or about as blindly partisan as your typical rabid Trump supporter (or both).

  17. Jenauthor@10:39am
    There are no “moderate republicans” in GOP. It is a oxy-moron. That species died with the exit of Lincoln Chafee from GOP.

  20. “Forget the fact that this is neither possible nor sustainable. ”

    Real scientists disagree with you, but stick to your facts, I’m cool.

    “The real question is “Why would you want to do this at all”?”

    Well in a values and wants and economics debate you wouldn’t ever consider it, but as soon as it is framed as a sustainability debate you need to think about what is sustainable.

    Real scientists have modelled that the real sustainability cap is when the body heat from the population is so large the system collapses (and we are quite a few billion short of that tally). Now you’ve made a lot of value sacrifices before you get to that point, and I personally wouldn’t want to make any of them, but again I’m back in a values / wants / economic debate not a genuine sustainability debate.

    If you are rich enough to live on a 100 acre farm, with nice streams, nice solar panels a wind turbine or two, and you have this lovely series of dams on conveniently steep hills, you make and sell lovely furniture from the trees that grow – it is paradise. You love it.

    You are asked to house 20 people from a nearby town that is failing. You’d have to clear the trees to build a new house, the power system isn’t going to be enough for 20 people, all the extra water you are going to use. You don’t want the extra 20 people and you’d have to sacrifice some of the things you love and pay a price for 20 extra people and you may well say ‘no’ to the 20 extra people but you haven’t made a sustainability decision you’ve made a values / economic decision.

  21. C@tmomma @ #30199 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:42 am

    O Lucky Man
    Anthem of my youth.

    Bought the record. Saw the film.

    Also went to see:
    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    Plus, I still have this poster on my wall to forever steel my spine against the real thugs:
    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    I also read the book in Year 5. 🙂

    Ah. The 70’s. The forgotten decade – before the Neolib Apocalypse.
    1978 was my “wanderyahr” – I spent a couple of months doing an elective at Barts in London, wandering down Baker Street wi’ twa’ Scots lassies doon fra Glaskey. Gerry Rafferty provided the soundtrack: Sax and all.

  22. Darn @ #302 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:41 am

    KayJay says:
    Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 8:33 am
    I find the previously mentioned Niki Savva strangely attractive.
    Where in the Medicare schedule is this covered?

    Kay Jay
    Have you had your cataracts checked out recently. An operation may be necessary.

    Fair go matey. Just a passing comment. Ms. Savva is not my cup of tea (coffee) but I suspect that many people dote on her every utterance.

    Seen in the right light I believe that I may also be classed as strangely attractive – possible dark of the moon about 3 A.M.

    ☮ ✌Peace and ☕ coffee.

    Busy day today for me as I attempt to write a letter of condolence to the son and grandson of my very dear sister-in-law who passed away, in hospital, in her sleep last Tuesday evening. 😢😢😢

  23. As we noted shortly after the election, about 30 percent of Americans were eligible to vote but decided not to, a higher percentage than the portion of the country who voted for either Trump or his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Pew’s data shows that almost half of the nonvoters were nonwhite and two-thirds were under age 50. More than half of those who didn’t vote earned less than $30,000 a year; more than half of those who did vote were over age 50.

    A very large slab of the US population is repressed in economic and political terms. It is an explicit goal of the Republicans that this repression be reinforced and extended. Americans have opened hostilities on each other. This is the first order issue in the US.

  24. “Hillary, her mediocrity”

    Noone will ever be able to convince me this isn’t just purely wrong. There may be a few genuine issues with Hillary, amongst the stupidity, but she was and is on no conceivable objective measure ‘mediocre’.

  25. Player One says:
    Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 10:57 am
    WeWantPaul @ #556 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:51 am

    It isn’t going to be cheap and we couldn’t do it quickly, but it is extraordinarily possible and sustainable.

    Forget the fact that this is neither possible nor sustainable.

    The real question is “Why would you want to do this at all”?

    Exactly what I was thinking P1. I’m not sure if WWP was actually proposing such a thing or was just using it as a debating tool. But either way it just sounds nuts.

  26. Sky News AustraliaVerified account@SkyNewsAust
    3h3 hours ago
    .@David_Speers: Are you saying the Environment Department is wrong?

    @KKeneally: I’m saying the department may not have known of the offer and has since been asked to go and negotiate with the GBRF.

    MORE: https://bit.ly/2vXpDaN #SpeersonSunday

  28. WeWantPaul @ #570 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 11:07 am

    “The real question is “Why would you want to do this at all”?”

    …

    You are asked to house 20 people from a nearby town that is failing. You’d have to clear the trees to build a new house, the power system isn’t going to be enough for 20 people, all the extra water you are going to use. You don’t want the extra 20 people and you’d have to sacrifice some of the things you love and pay a price for 20 extra people and you may well say ‘no’ to the 20 extra people but you haven’t made a sustainability decision you’ve made a values / economic decision.

    So, ignoring all the “real scientists” claptrap, your answer seems to be that because we already have too many people to support a sustainable lifestyle, we should add a few billion more?

    Have I got that right?

  30. KayJay @ #30231 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 11:12 am

    Darn @ #302 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:41 am

    KayJay says:
    Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 8:33 am
    I find the previously mentioned Niki Savva strangely attractive.
    Where in the Medicare schedule is this covered?

    Kay Jay
    Have you had your cataracts checked out recently. An operation may be necessary.

    Fair go matey. Just a passing comment. Ms. Savva is not my cup of tea (coffee) but I suspect that many people dote on her every utterance.

    Seen in the right light I believe that I may also be classed as strangely attractive – possible dark of the moon about 3 A.M.

    ☮ ✌Peace and ☕ coffee.

    Busy day today for me as I attempt to write a letter of condolence to the son and grandson of my very dear sister-in-law who passed away, in hospital, in her sleep last Tuesday evening. 😢😢😢

    My sympathies, KJ. I hope she went well.

  33. WeWantPaul @ #574 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 11:14 am

    “Hillary, her mediocrity”

    Noone will ever be able to convince me this is just purely wrong. There may be a few genuine issues with Hillary, amongst the stupidity, but she was and is on no conceivable objective measure ‘mediocre’.

    Okay, then how about “Hillary’s mediocre ability to go for the jugular on Trump’s many, many failings or motivate voters to turn-out for her”?

    She’s had a long career with many accomplishments, yes. But as a campaigner for POTUS, her abilities left a bit to be desired. She certainly was no Obama in that regard.

  35. rhwombat

    1978 was my “wanderyahr”

    Same here and that was the sound track to it all. An old journo looks back then and now and loss of friendships. A long read with truly hilarious tale about who I assume was Russ Hinze ( warning .Disturbing imagery)

    Why do so many friendships dissolve as we age?

    What are we without friends, those who know us warts and all but love us anyway? Yet many friendships drift away as we age, leaving us beating on, boats against the current, borne back into the past…

    …….God, I loved the ’70s. I loved Damian, too – the first of a handful of enduring friendships forged during my early years in the then rollicking and irreverent craft of journalism. At the time, Damian was the awful Truth’s grooviest hack, fresh from a music magazine in his native England and full of tales about wild rock stars, gonzo writers and adventures with exotic drugs………….. our Me Decade indulgences are all about things we feel we should do – and stuff the consequences.

    Like the night, after a day of police violence against peaceful street protesters, when Julie, Ed and I take our first LSD trip together. Over 15 frenzied hours we rush in and out of countless bars; sneak into a government building and move all the files from one department to another; try to attach a fork to the nose of an annoying TV presenter; give a beautiful stranger a ride through the city on a hand trolley pinched from the government building; and laugh so much our shirtfronts are wet with drool.

    https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/why-do-so-many-friendships-dissolve-as-we-age-20180807-p4zvxm.html

  36. TPOF @ #560 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 10:53 am

    C@t

    If you have a friend on who you think you can rely you are a lucky (wo)man…

    I still list that movie as my favourite ever movie.

    And you have to wonder what has happened to the British film industry in the 21st century that they can’t get it together any more to make such films!?!

  37. briefly:

    The breakdowns are fascinating. For instance non-whites preferred Clinton to Trum. Half of non voters in 2016 were white, however 74% of voters were white.

    Same with young people who preferred Clinton to Trump by 30 points. 1/3 of voters in 2016 were under 30 years old, however less than 1 in 8 voters in 2016 were aged under 30 years.

    If these people had turned out to vote instead of sitting home, esp in those key swing states, the result would likely have been very different.

  39. “So, ignoring all the “real scientists” claptrap, your answer seems to be that because we already have too many people to support a sustainable lifestyle, we should add a few billion more?
    Have I got that right?”

    No, you are not even close. And I asked a real scientist from a real university, not for an opinion or for his conclusion, but for a summary of the various sustainability studies and she went straight for, ‘well we would need to be living in very high and very deep buildings and most people wont want that’ but if you did then …

    It is the ‘if you did’ and ‘things I wont do’ that drive the models. And so the models, like all models, can produce any answer you want, but they are answering as well as a model can a very specific question with a very specific range of assumptions.

    If the specific question is how many people could the planet sustain, the answer is very very big. If the question is ‘how many people can live in a McMansion on a 2 acre block’ the answer is somewhat different. I just think it is a cowardly way to hide an economic decision driver behind something that at first glace is noble rather than just selfish. And at second glace the driver is just selfish and not noble at all.

    Nothing wrong with selfish, it is like the key concept behind capitalism. But don’t @me with claims it is noble.

  40. a r

    Being so experienced would have been a handicap in a way because public figures over time build up dings and scratches on the shiny paintwork and lose their gloss.

  41. I was watching ABC 24 News today morning. At about 7:15am, the African American professor, who is a guest commentator on ABC News on Sundays, was talking about Trump’s doubling of tariffs on Turkey. He mentioned a couple of points and I found one of them very insightful.
    1. Turkey is NATO partner. He is pissing of another NATO partner.
    2. America has quite a few military bases in Turkey ( some PBers may say we know it Sherlock Holmes.) But they are mainly used as a counter to Russia. (some may say nothing new)
    3. Turkey is one of the main participants in Syrian war. But Russia is also a major player in Syrian war.
    4.Turkey President said in retaliation he would look for other countries for partnership.
    5. Trump by doubling the tariffs has angered Turkey and it has a flow on affect of Turkey being less cooperative to US against Russia. So can we say that another puzzle piece is in place?

  43. “Okay, then how about “Hillary’s mediocre ability to go for the jugular on Trump’s many, many failings or motivate voters to turn-out for her”?
    She’s had a long career with many accomplishments, yes. But as a campaigner for POTUS, her abilities left a bit to be desired. She certainly was no Obama in that regard.”

    Hillary’s biggest problem outside of the Republican’s, the FBI and then Saunders and Stein on the left, was she was an establishment figure in an antiestablishment time. She won the popular vote by some 3 million so as a campaigner for POTUS she was one of the ones that won the popular vote.

    Trump didn’t really have a jugular because in the end it came down to what voters were prepared to believe and vote on, and ultimately that had very very little to do with reality, particularly amongst the 70k or so in the three states that handed Trump the electoral college.

  44. a r says:
    Sunday, August 12, 2018 at 11:21 am
    WeWantPaul @ #574 Sunday, August 12th, 2018 – 11:14 am

    “Hillary, her mediocrity”

    Noone will ever be able to convince me this is just purely wrong. There may be a few genuine issues with Hillary, amongst the stupidity, but she was and is on no conceivable objective measure ‘mediocre’.
    Okay, then how about “Hillary’s mediocre ability to go for the jugular on Trump’s many, many failings or motivate voters to turn-out for her”?

    She’s had a long career with many accomplishments, yes. But as a campaigner for POTUS, her abilities left a bit to be desired. She certainly was no Obama in that regard.

    The election was hacked. If it had been an election for the President of a footie club, it would have been declared void and run again. Thieves have stolen American democracy, assisted by the idiot-Sanders supporters, who were entirely sucked into an enterprise that worked directly against their political and economic interests.

  46. ‘ She certainly was no Obama in that regard.’

    No, she wasn’t. On the other hand, she’d have probably got more done than he did.

    There’s a reason why it’s difficult to replace a Democrat with a Democrat or a Republican with a Republican – you have to either offer ‘more of the same’ or trash your predecessor’s record.

    ‘More of the same’ of Obama wasn’t apparently acceptable (which raises the question of why, if he was such as superstar, America was in such a parlous state). Trashing his record would have been seen as betrayal.

    Doesn’t leave much wiggle room.

  47. …assisted by the idiot-Sanders supporters, who were entirely sucked into an enterprise that worked directly against their political and economic interests.

    By the Russians, no less!

    Who attacked America every which way but loose! And I’m sure they gave that a solid go as well! 😀

  49. President Obama did not leave America in a parlous state. He left it in such good condition, despite the Repugs best efforts to trash him and his agenda, that Trump has surfed on his successes ever since. Especially wrt the Economy.

  50. Playerone@10:55am
    Good points overall. For people like Nicholas, Pegasus these should be “red meat”. However, other than bagging ALP and posting articles critical of ALP they never discuss these issues
    BTW, I didn’t include Rex in the above people.

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