Hi! I really should drop by more, just so little time these days. The youngest is nearly 2 now and the oldest is approaching 3 and a half, and they are brilliant and really getting the hang of playing together now that the younger one is getting talkier and more physically capable.

A few factors in particular.

Major natural disasters over the past 3 years and the government's fingers in the ears response (the pandemic saved Morrison for a while , actually - the bushfire response of 2019/2020 was that bad but the pandemic reset all polling numbers and wiped away previous concerns, at least for a while. His numbers were heading to the toilet before COVID).
This is partly the climate awareness and cost of inaction thing and partly the government's uncaring "not our problem" attitude.

Treatment of women. Morrison might nominate the selection of Grace Tame (look her up, she's amazing) as Australian of the Year 2021 as a killer for him. And the moment where, after being horrible about the rape allegations from a former Coalition staffer, Brittany Higgins, he came back the next day and said after speaking to his wife and her telling him that he should imagine if it was one of his daughters how he'd react, he realised he needed to have more empathy. I mean holy shit that was bad. The right's issues with treatment of women and violence against women came out in a big way and directly led to the "Teal" independents (all women) challenging the right in traditional strongholds, running on climate, treatment of women and anti-corruption, and WINNING, but it was a live issue countrywide.

The stench of corruption and a broken promise to deliver an independent anti corruption watchdog. Labor, the Greens and the Teals all made great hay out of this.

Finally I would be remiss to entirely ignore the pandemic. I do think in general most people have memory holed it good and bad, but certain effects linger. For this election the lingering effect was resentment in Victoria and especially Western Australia that they were repeatedly screwed by the federal government specifically as punishment detail for having popular state Labor governments. The huge swing in WA above the national swing is I think mostly because of this factor. We'd have won without it but it helped!

My Labor cohorts would also say low wage growth. And truly, if there was one ELECTION CAMPAIGN moment that mattered, it was probably Albanese really going to the mat in the debates over minimum wage increases while Morrison tried the old right wing shibboleth of minimum wage imcreases destroying jobs.

On economic matters however Labor was very small target on the whole. I'm sure it leaked votes to the Greens on the left for that reason. They could advocate the more adventurous policies while Labor tried to not scare the horses in less left-wing areas.

Hey guys,

Hope all going as well as can be expected given the shit I hear coming out of the US on a weekly basis.

I drop in to mention that after 9 gormless years of climate denial and Trump lite fuckery, the chickens just came home to roost for the right in Australia. Labor is going to form government - and the right wing Coalition has been gutted, effectively wiped off the map in the metro area of every state and left clinging to rural areas and suburban bogans (sound familiar?).

Many of the seats went to the Greens or climate oriented independents instead of Labor which is great (more difficult to manage in government of course, it will either be a minority government or the barest of margins for majority government, but being dragged to the left by the minority government partners will be different to being dragged to the right!) but a huge sign that the long promised climate change vote has finally appeared in Australia in sufficient size to make a difference. My own seat of Kooyong looks to have turfed out the Treasurer of the country after never voting for anyone but the right wing in its entire history. The right wing heartland of wealthy but educated seats has turned on them wholesale and the so called Teal independents - professional women who are economically centre or right but socially progressive and huge campaigners on climate change - have made the difference by not carrying the baggage that the Labor Party name has in such areas.

A little bit of hope amid the blackness, I hope.

ps: kids doing well!

What do the Trumps have on Lindsay Graham that he's now being a booster for LARA Trump?

Were Apple workers demoralised by the company spending so long sitting on giant cash reserves doing nothing on them?

It doesn't feel like something the average worker thinks much about.

If anything, Tesla workers are more likely (presumably) to just see this as Elon being a genius again.

I think Pence and his ilk assumed that the pecking order of people doing the work of God was them, then the person they vouched for, and that if they withdrew the vouch then the faithful would come with them. Not so much.

I think Trump support has become the world's biggest and stupidest example of the sunk cost fallacy. Tens of millions of people who can't bring themselves to admit they spent 4 years worshipping a petulant charlatan no matter what.

That is WTF enough even when I only recognise two thirds of the people. I assume the rest wouldn't improve anything.

Sounds like Merc advertising to me.

If it could be 2002 it could be Porsche Cayenne.

This is one I could actually ask after. Will be interesting to know.

Sidney Blumenthal's piece on Mike Pence for the Guardian was great reading.

It must shit Pence so much that he spent 4 years years with his head knowingly up Trump's ass, putting all that effort into being his loyal servant, and ending up with not just no gratitude, not just no reward, but with "his people" becoming Trump's people and actively trying to murder him on Trump's say so.

The Republican Party has become astonishingly in thrall to all these mentally ill narcissists who believe they're divinely inspired and therefore all their shit is justified because God must will it. It's one thing to be a narcissist who believes God has chosen them but quite another for millions of other people to make that person the head of government or deputy head....