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Apparently, the Washington Post has decided it needs to “move to the center” and I’m sure you know what that means. It’s pretty devastating for them to do this at this particular moment. If we ever needed clear-headed analysis it’s now and if there’s one thing we know, “centrism” (aka “both sides”) is never clear headed. They’ve been laying good people off and one of them is Paul Waldman, one of the best analysts they had. The good news is that he has a newsletter so his insights will still be accessible. (Thank god for blogging, eh?) Here’s one he posted today and I could not agree with it more. Any regular consumer of political news has been deluged with stories recently about traditionally Democratic voting groups who may be ready to defect from Joe Biden in 2024, especially Muslim Americans and young people. It’s mostly about recent events in Israel and Gaza, but the grievances driving this debate have included housing costs, student debt, and climate change.

On the whole, I love my job writing holiday gift guides. I get to curate beautiful lists designed to help you, the consumer, bring joy to your loved ones. According to data from my affiliate links, you have been receptive to most of my suggestions, from cashmere gloves to fancy olive oil. That’s great and all, but I don’t feel satisfied. When will you slobs get on board and start buying backgammon sets?

A good backgammon set is the perfect gift, which is why they keep showing up on my gift guide lists year after year, no matter how rarely they actually get purchased. As long as the gift recipient has an entire extra room in their house with a game table (preferably hand-carved, and seventy-four centimeters in height) that isn’t occupied by any other objects, then a backgammon set will fit seamlessly into their life. Any reasonable person would be delighted to receive a backgammon set and would surely take the time to learn the rules, find a willing opponent, and set aside weekly, if not daily, time to enjoy this new hobby. The only question is, which color set to buy them…? (The answer is black and teal. Always black and teal.)

Kissinger the scholar studied power. Kissinger the statesman acquired power, guarded it, and wielded it.

After WWII, a good many people wondered why nobody had put a stop to either Hitler or Stalin, the two greatest butchers of history prior to the modern era, before they could accomplish their wicked designs. At Doha in 2023, the petrostates and corporations gathered with the clear intent of deploying their own ‘weapons of Continue reading »

The Global Stocktake, the report card on climate action for parties (countries), is shaping up to be the fight of COP28. What might look like a technical exercise: either we are, or we are not consistent with 1.5, is anything but. Instead, the assessment must go through the conference floor to be accepted and agreed Continue reading »

Mainstream media outlets repeat, ‘Hamas, a terrorist organisation designated by the US and other western governments.’ Tagged to that description is a daily reminder of the brutality of Hamas’ attack on October 7 and the taking of over 200 hostages. Intimidated journalists and ill-informed politicians then promote the Israeli message that Hamas is a monster Continue reading »

In April, National Cabinet agreed to hold a dedicated meeting on health reform by the end of the year. Based on media coverage this week, it might be a battle about NDIS and GST funding instead. Who pays for what is important, but it will be a missed opportunity if a funding fight displaces discussion Continue reading »

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Peter Dutton’s border protection rhetoric has contributed to a remarkable improvement in the Coalition’s public polling. He will ride that rhetoric to the next Election. But few Australians would be aware of Dutton’s appalling record on border protection. As Minister for Home Affairs, he allowed the unscrupulous to run riot with Australia’s visa system in Continue reading »

On 1 November 2023 the Minister for the Public Service, Senator Gallagher said “in the next stage of reforms” to the public service the government would introduce “requirements for the Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary to conduct merit-based appointment processes for Secretary roles to build rigor into the advice provided to the Prime Minister on Continue reading »

Women of colour continue to be mistaken for one another in the media and beyond. Whether it’s in social settings, the workplace, online or in the media, women of colour are sadly mistaken for one another all the time. The Australian newspaper has been criticised after an incorrect image was used in an article about Continue reading »

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Welcome to the party, pals The Atlantic this morning delivers a full spread of articles announcing the imminent demise of the Late Great United States of America, all part of its “If Trump Wins” series. There is growing alarm about another Trump presidency and reason for it. But it’s not as if Robert Kagan’s, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” just last week did not give many of us sleepless nights already. Conventional wisdom has finally caught up with what Ruth Ben-Ghiat (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) and Timothy Snyder (“On Tyranny“) have warned about for years. This Trump guy whom sane people treated as an ignorant, loudmouth jerk, and his red-hatted band of equally loudmouth sycophants and Beltway collaborators, are a genuine threat to the country’s existence. Have you heard? They ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. There’s video. Trump is out for revenge, writes David Frum. He will dump NATO, warns Anne Applebaum. His second term will be all loyalists, lapdogs and cronies, explains McKay Coppins.

. Yours truly has for several years been conducting a doctoral course in statistics for students in educational science where SPSS has been used. Unfortunately, Bayesian analysis has not been available in that program. With version 29 of SPSS, things have changed.  So, next year, there will be a new addition to the course!

To help celebrate our twenty-fifth year of being on the information superhighway, we have reached out to some of our former columnists for check-ins and updates. Today’s featured columnist, Susan Schorn, is a former Column Contest winner. She wrote sixty-one essays of Bitchslap, her column about women’s rights and self-defense, from 2009 to 2015. We’re pleased to have her back on our pages with her sixty-second installment.

Bitchslap debuted in 2009 as “a column about women and fighting,” because they say write what you know, and what I knew was that I always seemed to be fighting—for safety, or autonomy, or simply to not be pushed around—and most of those fights were related to my identity as a woman. The column’s premise was apparently novel enough to sustain an audience: that fighting is not without its costs, but it works surprisingly well against bullies, and even when it doesn’t work, it’s preferable to helplessness. Sometimes it’s even fun.