Reading

I have just finished reading a report from the Population Strategy Council (PSC) of Japan – 令和6年・地方自治体「持続可能性」分析レポート (2024 Local government “sustainability” analysis report) – that was released last week April 24, 2024). The study found that around 40 per cent of the towns (municipalities) in Japan will likely disappear because their populations are in rapid…

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Speaking of polls, Philip Bump has a good bit of fun with Trump’s hilariously misleading charts like the one above ostensibly showing his crushing Biden in the latest Bloomberg poll in his newsletter this weekend. It doesn’t matter what the numbers are, Trump is always “crushing” it. He added this bit which I thought was interesting. If the bottom of the red shaded area is not higher than the top of the shaded blue area, it’s best to describe the race as a dead heat or statistically tied. After all, consider those Pennsylvania results, with the margin of error of 3 points. That means support for Biden probably lands between 43 and 49 percent and support for Trump between 44 and 50 percent. So maybe the “real” support for Biden is 47 percent while Trump’s is 46. The crusher has become the crushee! I put “real” in quotes because there’s squishiness all over the place here. Margins of error don’t capture all of the uncertainty, nor do April polls predict November results.  Indeed. Remember this as you look at polling over the next few months.

The Trumpers insist they were never in any danger of being stolen or observed in that storage room at Mar-a-Lago. Well: A coat hanger or “very tiny screwdriver” could be used to unlock the Mar-a-Lago storage room where former President Donald Trump stored highly classified documents for more than a year, according to a witness in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation. The account was relayed to FBI agents by an unidentified aide to Trump in January 2023, according to newly released exhibits, and further undercuts claims by Trump that the highly-classified materials he’s accused of taking with him after leaving office were secured at all times. Not to worry. I’m sure none of the thousands of people who attend paying events there every night of the week, (including all the foreign nationals with sketchy credentials) could figure that out. Certainly they couldn’t have known how to unlock that bathroom door where all the boxes were stored in the shower. They were all very, very secure.

Skolpedagogiska reformimpulser borde så småningom sluta att förlita sig på sjuttiotalets motiv, innebörder och semantik. Annars går det som när en orkester orubbligt fortsätter att spela de gamla välkända melodierna utan att bry sig om att publiken för länge sedan har lämnat salen. Det är på tiden att spela något nytt, man borde våga en […]

Former Australian Prime Minister (yep, really), Scott Morrison, has written in his new book about his painful battle with the disease endometriosis. Mr Morrison, or ScoMo, as he prefers to be referred to, revealed that he believed that he had... Read More ›

. Old love never dies …

If you watch CNN you’ll no doubt be hearing a lot about their new poll from the most annoying data analyst on television, David Chalian. It shows Trump beating Biden 49-42 and this will almost surely end up being the narrative going into the next week. Don’t listen. It’s an outlier: There is also a new CNN poll today showing Trump with a 49-43 national lead. Given that dozens of other national polls have shown the race within the margin of error and many have shown Biden gaining or with leads THIS CNN POLL IS AN OUTLIER and should be treated that way by CNN and other commentators. Any attempt to use the CNN to guide one’s understanding of the election given that dozens of other polls are showing a completely different race (tied) would be journalistic and/or analytical malpractice. A few months ago the Washington Post published a poll that they considered an outlier, and acknowledged it in their article about the poll, pointing out that their data was different from many other recent polls. CNN and other commentators should do the same with this poll. This race is inexplicably tight to be sure and Trump may well be marginally ahead. But this is ridiculous.

Adam Serwer on the immunity argument: Trump’s legal argument is a path to dictatorship. That is not an exaggeration: His legal theory is that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for official acts. Under this theory, a sitting president could violate the law with impunity, whether that is serving unlimited terms or assassinating any potential political opponents, unless the Senate impeaches and convicts the president. Yet a legislature would be strongly disinclined to impeach, much less convict, a president who could murder all of them with total immunity because he did so as an official act. The same scenario applies to the Supreme Court, which would probably not rule against a chief executive who could assassinate them and get away with it. The conservative justices have, over the years, seen harbingers of tyranny in union organizing, environmental regulations, civil-rights laws, and universal-health-care plans. When confronted with a legal theory that establishes actual tyranny, they were simply intrigued.

On 27 February, we wrote to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) expressing concern that Australia had failed to fulfil its obligation under the Genocide Convention (1948) to prevent any action that further risks the survival of the Palestinian people. That failure continues. We copied our letter to Judge Hilary Charlesworth at the ICJ. We Continue reading »

China’s economic policymaking over the past few decades is a fascinating example of adaptive planning and strategic foresight. From pivoting away from reliance on globalisation to emphasising domestic infrastructure and poverty alleviation, tilting towards the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and now focusing on “high-quality development” (simultaneously upscaling advanced manufacturing while deflating the property bubble), Continue reading »

In that newspaper of record of extraordinary bias – The Australian – there is much preaching about the sanctity of the market mechanism and the absolute folly of the government’s plan to subsidise investment in new industries. Such sharp economic brains have not, however, cared to admonish nor demand we terminate the massive subsidies given Continue reading »

Are you well-armed, fired up, pitchfork to hand? The quarry is elusive, his background suspect but we know his name – DV. Are we getting closer? Every case is searingly awful but overall there have apparently been changes, with Crikey using Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data to claim domestic homicide rates have fallen: Continue reading »

As Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines all move closer to US-led military architecture in the Asia-Pacific region, experts warn of the consequences. Political tensions are increasing in the Asian-Pacific after engagements in Washington produced statements pointing to New Zealand, Japan and the Philippines moving towards greater integration into US-led military blocs. Philippine President Ferdinand Continue reading »