Something I really should have noted in last week’s post is that the Australian Electoral Commission has now published two-candidate preferred preference flow data from the election, showing how minor party and independent preferences flowed between Labor and the Coalition. The table below shows how Labor’s share increased for the four biggest minor parties and independents collectively (and also its fraction decrease for “others”) from the last election to this and, in the final column, how much difference each made to Labor’s total share of two-party preferred, which was 52.13%.
Note that the third column compares how many preference Labor received with how many they would have if preference flows had been last time, which is not the same thing as how many preferences they received. Labor in fact got nearly 2% more two-party vote share in the form of Greens preferences at this election because the Greens primary vote was nearly 2% higher this time.
State and territory by-election:
• Six candidates for the August 20 by-election in the Northern Territory seat of Fannie Bay, in ballot paper order: Brent Potter, described in a report as a “government adviser, army veteran and father of four”, for Labor; independent George Mamouzellos; independent Raj Samson Rajwin, who was a Senate candidate for the United Australia Party; Jonathan Parry of the Greens; independent Leah Potter; and Ben Hosking, “small business owner and former police officer”, for the Country Liberals.
• Following the resignation of Labor member Jo Siejka, a by-election will be held for the Tasmanian Legislative Council seat of Pembroke on September 10. Siejka defeated a Liberal candidate by 8.65% to win the eastern Hobart seat at the periodic election in 2019. There will also be a recount of 2021 election ballots in Franklin to determine which of the three unelected Liberals will replace Jacquie Petrusma following her resignation announcement a fortnight ago. As Kevin Bonham explains, the order of probability runs Bec Enders, Dean Young and James Walker.
• Still no sign of a date for Western Australia’s North West Central by-election.
Some Reactions to news that FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/8/2115296/-Reactions-come-in-after-news-the-FBI-searched-Trump-s-Mar-a-Lago
Looking for laughs.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/08/lars-von-trier-diagnosed-with-parkinsons-disease
”
phoenixREDsays:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 10:02 am
Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins – CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent·
“The former president of the United States did not handle classified documents properly. I watched him do it…I watched him go through documents, throw some away, rip some up and put some in his pocket,” Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former press secretary, says on CNN.
Trump was not in Florida when the Mar-a-Lago search happened. He is at Trump Tower in New York, I am told.
”
Will this happen to LNP politicians in Australia in near future?
theunaustralian.net @TheUnOz
·
2m
BREAKING: To Celebrate The FBI Raid On Mar-A-Lago Donald Trump Has Released A Limited Edition Gun To Collect Yours Simply Storm On Down To Florida.
”
outside leftsays:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 11:02 am
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/08/lars-von-trier-diagnosed-with-parkinsons-disease
”
Hope PB Lars is OK.
Griff:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 8:42 am
[‘Dr Doolittle has clearly stated that causal analysis does not equate with justification. Indeed Dr Doolittle went further to denounce Putin as a fascist.
So why would a few bludgers continue to conflate the two? It makes causal analysis a lot more difficult.’]
Agree but Dr Doolittle is more than competent at rebutting his detractors if he so chooses.
‘It’s never good’: Michael Cohen responds to revelations Trump was raided by FBI
Former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen was the unfortunate target of the Republican leader’s attacks and retaliation, but on Monday evening he learned that his former client was falling under a raid of his own.
“It’s never good when the FBI raids your property; especially when you’re Donald Trump and you’ve been storing documents at that location,” Cohen told Raw Story.
Cohen was referencing the report on Monday that there are photos of documents that Trump tore apart and threw in the toilet. There were previous reports that Trump attempted to destroy documents by flushing them, causing serious plumbing issues at the White House.
Several months ago, staff from the National Archives were forced to go to Mar-a-Lago and retrieve a truckload of boxes filled with documents that Trump took from the White House when he left. It was revealed that some of the documents were so top secret that they were for the president’s eyes only.
I hope they find something worthwhile. You’d think they were fairly sure he either had incriminating evidence or documents that he shouldnt have had and needed to be in a secure location.
People currently on CNN panel are nervous because if the raid did not amount to something substantial then the country will be torn asunder.
”
Jan 6says:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 11:16 am
I hope they find something worthwhile. You’d think they were fairly sure he either had incriminating evidence or documents that he shouldnt have had and needed to be in a secure location.
”
But reportedly he flushed a lot of documents down the toilet.
Robert Reich @RBReich
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Trump said.
Yeah, well no president in history has staged an attempted coup to change the outcome of an election.
Hopefully this raid will confirm what i have long believed.
Trump is a treasonous traitor.
“Climate breakdown” is a far more accurate term than both “global warming” and “climate change” – I’d like to see it more widely adopted …
Could be Australia this article is talking about – but we were merely among the first to experience “the new normal”. Now the rest of the world is also finding out what it looks like …
Why indeed?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/08/the-new-normal-how-europe-is-being-hit-by-a-climate-driven-drought-crisis
Phoenixred
Or sold the USA to their adversaries.
Question is which foreign adversaries?
I have a few ideas though. Lol!
Victoria @ #1363 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 10:54 am
I suspect it confirms he was a President who didn’t care an iota for following laws and rules. That he has taken and or destroyed documents that didn’t belong to him.
Avoiding documented incriminating evidence has been his schtick for decades. It is his skill.
2024 US Presidential election betting:
Trump equal favourite at $4.60
DeSantis $4.60
Biden $8
Harris $18
Newsom $18
Buttigieg $25
Pence $28
Holdenhillbilly @ #1355 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 11:03 am
It’s already started happening. Trump goons in Pick Up Trucks headed there as soon as they found out about the raid.
Pretty extraordinary stuff over in the US.
C@tmomma @ #1368 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 11:01 am
Good luck with that. There is a law against interfering. It isnt one you want to break.
Ven @ #1361 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 11:18 am
Seen elsewhere, and I don’t know the answer but, “What evidence does it take to get a no-knock warrant on an ex-president’s home?” Someone already has evidence.
shellbell @ #1251 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 8:21 am
Ha, She was interested into the technical aspects, and then verged into thoughts on what consciousness was, as you do!
I have been ranting about Trump being a traitor since 2017.
It feels like the longest suicide note ever……
Not to forget, on a day where a lot has and is happening.
The numbers may be trending down but people are still dying. Stay safe. Look out for others.
Late Risersays: Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 11:33 am
Seen elsewhere, and I don’t know the answer but, “What evidence does it take to get a no-knock warrant on an ex-president’s home?” Someone already has evidence.
…………………………………………………………………………………………
Several things jump off the page right now. First, the DOJ would have needed to convince a federal judge that it was probable that such a warrant would produce proof of Trump’s guilt. Second, this warrant was apparently a no-knock warrant, which generally means that the DOJ would have needed to convince the judge that Trump or someone else in the building would likely have tried to destroy evidence if he’d known the warrant was coming.
It’s also notable that while Trump is at Mar-a-Lago most of the time these days, he’s apparently at Trump Tower in New York today. This allowed the FBI to carry out the search warrant without the complication of Trump being there and throwing a fit, or whatever stunt he might have tried to pull.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/the-real-reason-this-fbi-raid-of-mar-a-lago-means-donald-trumps-goose-is-cooked/46542/
Victoria says:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 11:36 am
I have been ranting about Trump being a traitor since 2017.
It feels like the longest suicide note ever……
They got the mob with tax law.
Looks like they will get Trump with rules over how federal documents should be handled.
Late Riser @ #1371 Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 – 11:33 am
They would know exactly what documents were still missing after previously collecting 15 boxes of classified documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago illegally. The only gamble whether Trump destroyed them, or still had them kept them in his safe. Given Trump’s narcissism, I don’t think it was very much of a gamble.
Frednk
More like how he sold out the USA
Selling secrets to the highest bidder comes to mind
Victoriasays:
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 11:24 am
Is there another kind?
In memory of lizzie.
Trump supporters: https://twitter.com/cbenavidesTV/status/1556802919919505408
A subtle message from the chap from Benin.
.
Keep Your Hands Off , African leader to Macron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLQeFR5PEBM
A subtle message from the Benin chap.
.
Keep Your Hands Off , African leader to Macron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLQeFR5PEBM
Is Trump urging his supporters on via any of his outlets?
I know. Please forgive me. 🙂
We can guess who Trump was selling secrets to. Some possible contenders come to mind.
China
North Korea
Russia
UAE
Israel
Turkey
Eric Chump using some inflammatory language. These guys are f’ed in the head.
Long informative thread.
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1556777965937037312
It continues until /19.
Victoriasays: Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 11:54 am
We can guess who Trump was selling secrets to. Some possible contenders come to mind.
China
North Korea
Russia
UAE
Israel
Turkey
……………………………………………………………………………………
Any thing else I can help you Russian boys with ?????
If you’re wondering why the Trump’s are making such a big deal about the FBI havng to “break into a safe”, consider this statement just released by the Chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, which is leading the congressional investigation into mishandled documents:
“Presidents have a solemn duty to protect America’s national security, and allegations that former President Trump put our security at risk by mishandling classified information warrant the utmost scrutiny.”
So, I would guess that the documents do exist, but that Trump’s defence will be that he didn’t “steal” them because as ex-president he was entitled to take them, and that he didn’t “mishandle” them because he kept them locked up.
He will lose bigly on both counts if charged.
Who can forget trump being impeached for withholding money to Ukraine whilst he was President, and attempting to bribe Zelensky
Also I just remembered that Merrick Garland AG visited Ukraine recently
LR, well worth reading that whole thread.
It cant just be because he took stuff from the Whitehouse he shouldnt have. They have probably known that for quite a while. So something has come up to suggest he has something that he really really shouldnt have and/or that he is using that inappropriately.
What new intel has come up? Something from Alex Jones’ phone? An intercept from an OS phone call?
The Chumps are jumping with rage. Dont people realise the law doesnt apply to them? The Chumps are labelling this the action of a 3rd world dictatorship – because attempting a coup is the new democracy.
Mavis at 11.09 am, Griff at 8.42, Jan 6 at 8.27 am, Socrates at 8.24 am, et. al.
As Griff and Jan 6 have implied, different people may be following Putin’s war for different reasons.
If one is concerned only with cheering for the goodies, then causal analysis may be superfluous.
If one is worried about how and when Putin’s war might end, causal analysis is critically important.
Here is a possible, perhaps rather idealistic, scenario for how this bloody war could be concluded:
Outline of potential minimum cease-fire conditions to end Putin’s war in Ukraine
1. Ukraine commits to neutrality on the example of Austria. The UN Security Council arranges for a UN peace-keeping force to be deployed as soon as possible along the borders of Russia and Ukraine, not including Crimea in Ukraine, with all of the force to be drawn from neutral countries (e.g. African countries and perhaps India). To clarify, the borders are those that were de facto the borders of Russia and Ukraine at the end of March 2014.
2. The European Union, in cooperation with Ukraine, commits to ensure the implementation of the Minsk accords with exclusion of the amnesty clause, i.e. article 5 of Minsk II of 12 February 2015. Russia commits to facilitate the implementation of those accords by withdrawing immediately to the de facto borders as at the end of March 2014 (i.e. not withdrawing from Crimea).
3. Western sanctions against Russia are lifted once the latter of two conditions occurs: a) the UN peace-keeping force has been deployed for one month without any Russian attacks; and b) the surrender of Igor Girkin to The Hague (either to the Tribunal there, if the verdict in his case for the destruction of MH17 has not been handed down, or to imprisonment if he has been convicted, with this condition being null and void if Girkin is found to be not guilty).
4. The status of Crimea is to be determined by a referendum organised by the UN to be held 10 years after the armistice is signed, with voters in the referendum to include all residents of Crimea at the time of the referendum plus any people who were residents of Crimea prior to 18 March 2014 who have subsequently left Crimea and who wish to participate in the vote.
5. Frozen Russian assets to be released once such a referendum in Crimea has been held, i.e. organised and supervised by the UN [in the manner of the 1999 UN referendum in East Timor].
Now, noting that this scenario is significantly less beneficial to Russia than Kissinger’s proposal of a return to the “status quo ante” of 23 February 2022 (which includes Russian control of parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), what happens if you take out condition 1 above, because you believe that the widespread belief in the Russian elite about a threat from NATO is nothing but propaganda?
What happens is that the prospects for ending Putin’s bloody war in Ukraine diminish substantially.
If you take Russian concerns about NATO out of the equation (and note that, according to Dr Fiona Hill, they are real concerns, although not the predominant reason for Putin’s war), then you are saying that, most probably, there are only two ways that Putin’s war will end: either with a very slow Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, which will take many months at best, if indeed it ever occurs, or with the Russian narod (popular masses) finally getting a move on and putting Putin out of power.
Some observers believe a palace coup against Putin is more likely than a revolution, but his regime is designed to prevent a palace coup. Revolutions happen even when old regimes try to prevent them.
See: https://russiandissent.substack.com/p/stupidity-treason-or-business-as (Girkin mentioned)
The author of that essay, Boris Kagarlitsky, once toured Australia as an anti-war activist in 1995, at the time of Yeltsin’s first Chechen war. He will be 64 in late August. He is hoping for a revolution, but nobody knows whether or not it will occur. What Putin knows is that the longer his war drags on, then the more likely a new Russian revolution becomes. That may be one reason for him to compromise.
SM giving away $600m per hour for the six week caretaker period.
https://michaelwest.com.au/all-caretaker-no-responsibility-how-a-dying-government-slipped-freebies-to-its-mates/
from BK this morning:
“About 55m light years from Earth, a colossal black hole about 1,000 times larger than the sun known as M87 is slowly consuming the universe.”
The journalist obviously is not fully aware that black holes have zero size so I think they mean 1000 times heavier than our Sun. I also take issue with “slowly consuming the universe”, gravity is the weakest force in the universe, I doubt it’s even consuming it’s surrounding galaxy, let alone the whole Universe”
Of course Trump and his cronies are attempting to whip up violence by his brainwashed supporters.
How can they ever be made to see that Trump was the enemy of the USA.
More often than not, the actual truth hurts
Unless he thinks (for some reason) in the near future the US (either via POTUS or congress) backs away or even actively supports Russian aims in Ukraine before an overthrow or Russian revolution is likely.
Jan 6says: Tuesday, August 9, 2022 at 12:12 pm
Long informative thread.
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1556777965937037312
The Chumps are jumping with rage. Dont people realise the law doesnt apply to them? The Chumps are labelling this the action of a 3rd world dictatorship – because attempting a coup is the new democracy.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Cronus says:
Monday, August 8, 2022 at 7:45 pm
I would add Robert Fisk to the grouping of Chomsky and Pilger. There is a real tendency for these people to go somewhat feral and off the plantation. At the risk of name dropping, I had a very interesting (unscheduled) meeting with Fisk in Lebanon in the 1990s wherein he attempted to coerce me into giving him privileged military information on an individual. This person was an informant who was also a key leader in the attacks on the Sabra and Chatilla Palestinian refugee camps in the 1982.
Fisk desperately wanted to know his location and attempted to morally blackmail me by telling me I was hiding a war criminal. His thirst for a story outweighed (in his mind) my informant’s value to the UN mission in attempting to prevent attacks at that time. It was one of those morally challenging dilemmas in warfare when one must weigh up the greater and lesser evils and make a decision. Much to his disgust and anger, I chose not to provide him with the information he sought.
__________________________________________________________
I too have had mixed feelings about Robert Fisk. He wrote excellent histories of the Palestine-Israel conflict and of Lebanon. But I thought his opposition to the US-led intervention to remove Iraqi troops from Kuwait was misplaced. The reluctance of many on the left in those days to endorse any action led by the Americans, somewhat mirrors the moral confusion some are exhibiting today over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Fisk’s ex-wife, Lara Marlowe, said he once told her that war was so terrible there was never any justification for waging it, even when fighting Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. Marlowe said she then asked him what should have happened where Hitler was concerned. “Saddam Hussein is not Hitler,” was all he then said.
M87* is 1000 more massive than Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
Sgr A* is around 4 million solar masses, so M87* is around 4 billion solar masses.
“black holes have zero size”
Not really. My physics is rusted over, but a black hole is “merely” any body that has a gravitationally induced escape velocity which is higher than the “speed of light”, hence the name. They have size, mass and density.