Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
As a bit of an update to my post last night, the Essential Research poll is now out, basically showing no change from last time. Possum has more on all the other questions asked. So, we can now be more confident about suggesting that Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has yet to really shift any of the trends that were evident under Nelson - this also highlights the vast over-inflation of the importance of Preferred PM and Opposition Leader approval ratings in most of the punditariat’s commentary. It will be very interesting to see what the delayed Newspoll says - since this is apparently the only poll the punditariat focus on. Where to now for the famous “media narrative”?
Peter Martin has all the wonky stuff worth reading on the Reserve Bank’s 1% rates cut, which a number of banks and lending institutions have indicated will lead to a .8% cut in their variable mortgage rates. Dennis Atkins, writing at Party Games, thinks that the Reserve has given the Rudd government political breathing space.
I wonder if no Newspoll is bad news for the pollsters and those who own them. This must be the first Monday in living memory (well, since anyone started paying attention to this stuff before last year’s campaign) when there hasn’t been an early release of selected Newspoll numbers. It couldn’t possibly be because the numbers don’t show any leadership bounce for Malcolm Turnbull, could it? [Update: Or could it be because NSW had a public holiday yesterday?] After all, last week’s Morgan face to face poll showed a straight swap of primary vote from the Coalition to Labor - 1.5%, with Labor on 57.5% 2PP. And ACNielsen and Newspoll a fortnight ago showed a very poor bounce by historical standards for the Opposition.
No doubt we’ll find out.
Malcolm Turnbull has been playing a dangerous game on interest rates. Continue reading ‘No early Newspoll; interest rates to be cut’
As noted here and here in comments, there’s an extremely interesting development in Queensland state politics today - Indooroopilly MP Ronan Lee has defected from the ALP to join The Greens.
Lee has been something of a maverick during his time in Parliament, causing both Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh a few headaches, and having switched factional allegiance from one right wing faction - the Old Guard (”Labor Unity”) to the other - the AWU (”Labor Forum”). He might have expected ministerial promotion, particularly if Anna Bligh had had the determination and the support to put the broom through Cabinet that is needed - rather than just talking about “renewal” - but has had to content himself with the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Attorney-General. Lee has been a very active local member, as his website demonstrates, and a position of some independence with regard to his party (Lee’s election paraphernalia and office signage have radically downplayed his ALP affiliation) must have assisted him in retaining a very marginal seat in traditional Western Suburbs leafy Liberal heartland he first won in 2001. Lee has also been outspoken on environmental and transport issues, and recently took a swipe at Anna Bligh for not being serious about green issues.
Lee’s defection is not necessarily unexpected, and as Dennis Atkins notes at Party Games, may not be unrelated to the difficulty of holding Indooroopilly if the LNP vote does improve in Brisbane. Continue reading ‘Indooroopilly Labor MP Ronan Lee joins Greens’
The New Zealand election is still in a phoney campaign, with the parties only just beginning to launch their campaigns. Which gives me more time to fill in the background. Deborah has already done an excellent beginner’s guide to MMP, so I thought I’d follow up with what MMP naturally results in: coalitions. Continue reading ‘A beginner’s guide to coalitions (NZ election)’
Earlier on tonight, the indications were that the US House of Representatives would be voting around 2am AEST on the revised version of the TARP bailout bill (with extra billions of dollars in pork to attract lawmakers’ votes - added in the Senate amendment which John “Against Earmarks and Wasteful Spending” the Maverick McCain duly voted for). It doesn’t look like that’s the case because a lot of Congressthings want to go on record for their constituents by speaking on the House floor (and/or because they have to ask questions now because the bill has never been subjected to legislative hearings, as is normal in the US Congress).
Anyway, I’m off to bed. But you can follow what’s going on via this liveblog from Catherine Rampell at the NYT’s Economix.
NB: Previous discussion and commentary at LP on the bailout, the financial markets crisis and the ramifications can be accessed here.
Update: via danny in comments -
1:25 p.m. | Bill passes: The bill passed 263 to 171. The vast majority of Democrats voted in favor (172 yeas to 63 nays), while a slighter majority of Republicans voted against (91 yeas to 108 nays).
Reaction and commentary over the fold.
Continue reading ‘Liveblogging the House debate on the TARP bailout bill’
Jennifer Schuessler at the New York Times has been boosting the “turn the Veep debate into a poetry slam” movement. Two poems selected from her Paper Cuts blog post:
Haiku’s not the form
For Senator Joe Biden
Because the last line may come out slightly longer than is absolutely necessary due to the subject’s ability to analogize all topics to a seminal moment in the history of this great nation of ours, America, the UNITED states of America
-Henry Alford
So jobs, they … you know,
Health care’s really …. it’s — Katie,
That bridge? I said no.
-David Orr
[Via Quick Study]
As everyone probably knows, the Veep debate will be televised live at 11am AEST on both ABC1 and SBS (which also has live streaming online if you’re not near a tv).
Any links to liveblogging of the debate appreciated.
Context in this earlier post and Amanda’s post on Biden at Hoyden About Town.
Update [by Mark]: Liveblogging at Firedoglake, Feministing and FiveThirtyEight.com.
One point of view that’s been expressed about the financial markets crisis can be summed up by something I read at Crooks & Liars today:
Have you noticed that every person suddenly knows everything there is to know about how the economy works? Wow, it’s all so simple.
Maybe there’s a point there, but not the one John Amato thinks he’s making. I’ve consistently been of the view that the economy should be a subject for civic and political discussion, and that we shouldn’t hold back because of the “not an economist!” cries that sometimes echo around the place. If one of the continuing problems with the US financial sector is the lack of transparency which is causing the crisis of solvency - because no one still knows where all the securitised bodies are buried - so too a bit of transparency in demystifying the fiscal arcana whose complexity was part of the reason for this mess should be welcomed.
So, with that in mind, I wanted to share some links (from econobloggers and non-economists both) I’ve found particularly insightful and interesting over the last few days.
Continue reading ‘US economic crisis policy links post; and Obama and the economy’
[I’m borrowing the pun from Michael Bérubé]
In the absence of any more “game changing” impulsive madness from Walnuts, all eyes will probably be on the Veeps debate on Friday - although our friends in the House Republicans or more spectacular crashes on Wall Street might diminish the focus a tad. Sarah Palin won’t be able to pull a McCain though, and “suspend” her campaign, after that trick spectacularly failed as Walnuts slunk out of Washington calling for bipartisanship on one hand while slagging off Obama on the other, after fairly poor reviews of whatever contribution he may have made to the crisis from his fellow Republicans. Nor will Palin be dropped from the ticket - I think (presuming there’s any rationality to the McCain strategy). As Nate Silver observes, there are at least three good reasons why it would be dumb (but again, I’m thinking dumb is the name of the McCain game). And the last time a Veep candidate was dumped - Thomas Eagleton in 72 - McGovern dropped 7 points in the polls.
Anyway, that’s that for the moment, but in this increasingly bizarre campaign which in true postmodern style seems to have as fictive a relationship to the real world as all that fictitious capital swirling around Wall Street waiting for the government to buy it, who knows what lies ahead, or even what lies lie ahead. My main purpose in posting was to draw attention to two excellent pieces from two of my favourite Stateside online writers on the bizarre phenomenon that is the Palin pick, something I continue to believe deserves more analysis than just political calculation or the desire to diss implies.
We like things complicated in New Zealand. I think that’s why we opted for MMP, or Mixed Member Proportional Representation, though it’s possibly not as complicated as the STV system here in Australia, which I have yet to get my head around. We also think that if something is good, then more is better, which is why we have a system where we all get two votes each, one electorate vote, and one party vote.
Here is a primer on the Kiwi variety of MMP.
Continue reading ‘A beginner’s guide to MMP (NZ election)’
The other day I pointed to ludicrously misreported Galaxy polling showing federal Labor improving its vote in Queensland. Yesterday, the other bit of the Galaxy Poll was published in the Courier-Mail showing state Labor going backwards in Queensland. (Although actually, it only shows this if the comparison is with February - the last three polls show the 2PP bouncing around 52% for Labor and the margin of error isn’t stated. But as usual all the focus is on preferred Premier - where, of course, Anna Bligh is still ahead - but not by so much.)
Richard Farmer has pinged what the national News Limited polling pundits haven’t noticed - the movement in inconsistent directions (although the trend in both cases is weak) shows that their current narrative of “balancing” Labor’s federal dominance by turning on state Labor.
Incidentally, Lawrence Springborg shouldn’t get cocky (heh! bad pun!) about all the good news from the meejah. Continue reading ‘Left right hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing’
The Nancy Pelosi speech that made the Republicans cry:
Context in this post about the Congressional rejection of TARP.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Recent comments
Adrien, Peterc, danny, danny, Graham Bell, Kim [...]
Snugsentise, Umm Yasmin, pablo, Roger Jones, Rebekka, Ben Eltham [...]
wilful, klaus k, joe2, David Rubie, FDB, Robert Merkel [...]
Tyro Rex, Shaun, Lefty E, Ambigulous, Ambigulous, Patrick B [...]
JohnL, Nick Caldwell, joe2, Spiros, Down and Out of Sài Gòn, Bingo Bango Boingo [...]
Adrien, Mercurius, silkworm, Adrien, Ambigulous, Adrien [...]
wizofaus, Robert Merkel, wizofaus, Robert Merkel, Chris Anderson, MsLaurie [...]
Nick Caldwell, Paul Burns, Ambigulous, Paul Norton, Lefty E, Ambigulous [...]
Fine, Kevin Rennie, Megan, paul walter, Mark, Fine [...]
Nancy, MarkL, Graham Bell, Katz, Nabakov, MarkL [...]
patrickg, Kim, OldSkeptic, Lefty E, Kim, Ambigulous [...]
Kim, Helen, Stephen Hill, Graham Bell, Paul Burns, Mark [...]