The latest PPRI polling provides a stunning reflection on how Americans now regard Trump.
A survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PPRI), a nonpartisan independent research organization, found that 56% of Americans think that “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.”
It’s often said that money doesn’t make you happy. Whether or not that’s true is moot – but being under financial stress is definitely bad news.
The Scanlon Foundation Research Institute this month published a major report on the emotional toll of financial stress.
There are two major Australian polls on issues such as this – one by ANU and one by Scanlon (the Mapping Social Cohesion) study. The ANU poll found that 34% of the Australian population were finding it difficult to get by on their current income. 62% said they altered their spending on groceries and essential purposes to ease financial strain.
For US multi-billionaire Peter Theil September 23 must have been a rather disappointing day. It was the day the Rapture was to occur. Sadly, as with other similar predictions about the end days over the centuries it didn’t come to pass.
It was more of pity given that he recently delivered a series of four off-the-record lectures on the Antichrist. The talks at the Commonwealth Club were sold out and the online invite vaguely indicated the talks would be “addressing the topic of the biblical Antichrist” and its “theology, history and politics – all off the record.
As the fall outs from the Charlie Kirk assassination metabolised into a mass movement a few voices raised a very unfortunate parallel – the assassination of Horst Wessel.
Like Wessel Kirk had a massive funeral and nationwide morning – with flags at half-mast nationally. Trump as Hitler did with Wessel, deemed Kirk a martyr.
The federal opposition is in damage control following firebrand senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s claims the government is accepting “large numbers” of Indian migrants into Australia to bolster Labor’s vote, claiming that a Redbridge poll had found that 85% 0f those who have Indian ancestry voted for Labor (on a two party preferred vote).
The following post is by Associate Professor in History at Deakin University, Carolyn Holbrook.
The Australian War Memorial is in the news for reportedly retrospectively changing the rules of its Les Carlyon prize for military history. This resulted in it not being awarded to Walkley award-winning journalist Chris Masters’ book about disgraced special forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith.
Pearls and Irritations today published Peter Stanley’s piece on the latest Australian War Memorial example of the AWM trying to deny the realities of our military history.
Peter wrote: The Australian War Memorial remains one of Australia’s most cherished national institutions, attracting a million visitors, mainly tourists, to Canberra each year.
Donald Trump sinks lower and lower in polls and rhetoric. And every day he takes the US a step further along the road to being a Fascist state. Indeed, the film Civil War – released before Trump was re-elected – is looking increasingly prescient.
In the film Kirsten Durst plays a journalist crossing a dystopian civil war landscape and (spoiler alert) dies protecting a young journalist from a demented President trying to kill her. This is obviously fictional as Trump probably wouldn’t know one end of a gun from the other – and given his aversion to military service – would probably not know how to use it if he did. The film seemed a bit like a documentary – if a very uncomfortable one.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Robert Darnton and others had left nothing for anyone to say about the French Revolution – not that this stops many from holding forth anyway.
Yet Antoine Parent, a French economist at University Paris 8, is one of the co-authors of a study published in Nature (27/8) which uses epidemiology to explain the Great Fear which preceded the Revolution. Their findings go beyond the Revolution and have significant implications for today’s political environment.
Is the AI boom heading towards a bust – just like many other boom and bust developments of the past?
Four researchers at MIT NANDA have published a report – The State of AI in business 2025 – which raises some interesting facts.
They said: “Despite $30-40 billion in enterprise investments in GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organisations are getting zero return.”