The Mike Hosking Breakfast

The Supreme Court won't necessarily side with Donald Trump if the US election results are legally contested.
Both Trump and rival Joe Biden are prepared to go to court to prove they've won the election.
The Democratic candidate is opening up something of a lead of around 20 when it comes to the electoral votes... 270 are needed to reach the White House.
The BBC's Nick Bryant told Mike Hosking there's a 6-3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court, but doubts it will necessarily rubber-stamp everything Trump wants it to.
Bryant says it will take a few more days to sort out the votes in Nevada and Pennsylvania and then the legal battles will begin.
He says we don't know how to how long that process will take.
He says Trump's been fuming about the rulings of some of his appointees ahead of this election.
He says the Biden camp wanted a joyride to the White House, through Texas, and Florida, but always realised it had a couple of emergency routes.
He says one of them passed through the "Rust Belt".
Bryant says it looks like Biden's going to win Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona, plus one Congressional vote in Nebraska.
 

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Thursday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) I'm Sure We'll Get a Result Eventually/The Unemployment Issue/Remember Kim?

Fears that the Covid-19 outbreak would mark the end of buffets did not happen, and some have now returned to booming businesses.
Eight Restaurant, Cordis Hotel's flagship restaurant, is the latest to reopen and resume its buffet offerings from eight different kitchens.
A Restaurant Association survey of 16 buffet operators and 10 hotels have found that 80 per cent had returned to normal buffet settings if they had them in place in the past, with just around 20 per cent having changed.
The general consensus among members with buffet offerings was that none had permanently changed to a la carte as a result of the virus outbreak, it said. The exceptions were large hotels, some of which had been turned into Covid-19 isolation facilities.
Social distancing rules meant it wasn't possible for restaurants to offer a buffet service during levels 2 and 3.
Many had had to adapt, with some like Five Star steamboat buffet restaurant in Rosedale offering takeaways and Eight having a buffet-to-table setting.
"Feedback from the individual operators was that at level 2, customers were a bit negative and cautious, but they seem fine at level 1 to have things back to normal," said association chief executive Marisa Bidois.
She said that the association had not heard of any instances of customers having any anxiety over eating from a buffet.
"Buffets are still popular choices for some establishments and this is integral to their offer," Bidois said.
"It's a great way to try a variety of different foods and can be a really fun way to eat."
She said while the association did anticipate some businesses will not return to buffet operations, there were others for whom buffet was an important part of why people choose to dine there and these will continue to champion the buffet.
Cordis executive chef Volker Marecek said business has been "better than expected" since Eight resumed full operations on October 22.
The restaurant now has new additions to its buffet spread including a Peking duck oven, rotisserie, wood-fire grill and a new dessert bar.
 

Cordis Auckland hotel's flagship buffet restaurant Eight has been thriving since it reopened. Photo / NZ Herald
 
"We are doing about 250 covers for dinner and bookings are already coming in for the festive season, with some dates already fully booked," he said.
Marecek said he had encountered some apprehension about buffet dining in the early stages of the virus outbreak, but the tide had turned.
"We are now getting enquiries about what is new at Eight buffet and how long can they stay at each sitting rather than being concerned about eating from a buffet," he said.
"People are just so ready to get out to eat and have a good time, and with fewer hotel dining options because of coronavirus and the festive season coming, we are just preparing for a boom."
Earlier in the year, some overseas travel wholesalers had specifically requested no buffet for their clients after the rapid spread of Covid-19 on cruise ships linked to that style of dining.
This also led to predictions that the virus outbreak would lead to the end for this self-service dining tradition.
Joe Kim, owner of Five Star, which resumed its steam buffet in September when Auckland returned to level 1, said the business had had to innovate to survive.
"We went from being a buffet restaurant to becoming a takeaway operations at the different alert levels," Kim said.
But he said bookings have been good since the buffet resumed and things were looking up for the summer.
Some buffet businesses, however, did not survive the pandemic.
Paldo, a buffet restaurant specialising in Korean barbecue in Takapuna, was among those that closed soon after the last Auckland lockdown.
Others like Masu by Nic Watt at Skycity has ditched its Sunday buffet brunch and is now offering a new Japanese "yum char" dining - with its...

Voters decided between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden on Tuesday, closing an epic campaign marked by rancor and fear that will influence how the U.S. confronts everything from the pandemic to race relations for years to come.
The first set of polls neared a close in the East after millions of voters put aside worries about the virus — and long lines — to turn out in person. They joined 102 million fellow Americans who voted days or weeks earlier, a record number that represented 73% of the total vote in the 2016 presidential election.
Spirits were high — and positive — in many polling places after a long, exceptionally divisive campaign.
“The most important issue is for us to set aside our personal differences that we have with each other,” said Eboni Price, 29, who rode her horse Moon to her polling place in a northwest Houston neighborhood.
Biden entered Election Day with multiple paths to victory, while Trump, playing catch-up in a number of battleground states, had a narrower but still feasible road to clinch 270 Electoral College votes. Control of the Senate was at stake, too: Democrats needed to net three seats if Biden captured the White House to gain control of all of Washington for the first time in a decade. The House was expected to remain under Democratic control.
With the worst public health crisis in a century still fiercely present, the pandemic — and Trump’s handling of it — was the inescapable focus for 2020.
The president began his day on an upbeat note, predicting that he’d do even better than in 2016. But during a midday visit to his campaign headquarters, he spoke in a gravelly, subdued tone.
“Winning is easy,” Trump told reporters. “Losing is never easy, not for me it’s not.”
Trump left open the possibility of addressing the nation Tuesday night, even if a winner hadn't been determined. He had scheduled a nighttime speech from his Delaware hometown but, hours before slated to deliver it, he turned noncommittal, saying, "If there’s something to talk about tonight, I’ll talk about it. If not, I’ll wait till the votes are counted the next day.”
“I’m superstitious about predicting what an outcome’s gonna be until it happens ... but I’m hopeful," said Biden, who earlier had made a last-minute pitch in the critical state of Pennsylvania. “It’s just so uncertain ... you can’t think of an election in the recent past where so many states were up for grabs.”
With the coronavirus now surging anew, voters ranked the pandemic and the economy as top concerns in the race between Trump and Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.
Voters were especially likely to call the public health crisis the nation’s most important issue, with the economy following close behind. Fewer named health care, racism, law enforcement, immigration or climate change
The survey found that Trump’s leadership loomed large in voters’ decision-making. Nearly two-thirds of voters said their vote was about Trump — either for him or against him.
 

A woman places a campaign sign outside a polling place for the 2020 election in the United States yesterday. Photo / AP
 
The momentum from early voting carried into Election Day, as an energized electorate produced long lines at polling sites throughout the country. Voters braved worries of the coronavirus, threats of polling place intimidation and expectations of long lines caused by changes to voting systems, but appeared undeterred as turnout appeared it would easily surpass the 139 million ballots cast four years ago.
No major problems arose on Tuesday, outside the typical glitches of a presidential election: Some polling places opened late, robocalls provided false information to voters in Iowa and Michigan, and machines or software malfunctioned in some counties in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.
The cybersecurity agency at...

Genome sequencing of one of Christchurch's community Covid-19 cases shows the virus was passed on from within the managed isolation facility.
The genome sequencing is from the first of the two infected healthcare workers at the Sudima Hotel.
While the source of infection is still under investigation, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield told Morning Report the initial report of further testing into the first case reported on Monday had been released.
"It's exactly the same genome sequence on five of the [fishing] crew tested ... what that does mean is that we rule out one or both of these new cases were infected outside of the facility."
Investigations will include reviewing CCTV footage and doing a detailed walkthrough with the two cases on their interactions in the facility, which Dr Bloomfield said would shed light on how the infection happened.
Until the source infection and route of transmission is found, none of the fishing crew at Sudima would be released from the facility, he said.
"I daresay that the fishermen who are in the facility, all the reports I've had is, they've been co-operative and compliant despite language challenges."
Despite testing and retesting of the staff at the facility, including healthcare workers who interacted with the first case, Dr Bloomfield said "it's possible there will be additional cases".
"The teams are not huge, they do have interactions together but the most likely source and where we will be looking first is to look for a common infection source for both of them rather than one passing it on to the other ... [based on] the timing of these infections."
A pop-up Covid-19 testing centre will be open in the carpark of Christchurch's Princess Margaret Hospital today.
People concerned about the two new community cases of Covid-19 in the city are being encouraged to go there for a free test.
No appointment is required, and people do not need to have symptoms.
The site has been chosen for its proximity to Cashmere High School - which is attended by a close contact of one of the cases - and to the Countdown supermarket on Colombo St, which was visited by one of the cases.
The centre will be open from 11.30am to 4.30pm.
If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP - don't show up at a medical centre
Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce chief executive Leeann Watson told Morning Report there was a bit of an increase in complacency among the general public over the past couple of months, but businesses continue to do their best on tracing and hygiene.
"I think these latest two cases [are] a real reminder for people to be vigilant and not complacent."
Watson believed more needed to be done to try and eliminate these sorts of cases from arising.
"Whether or not that is possible I'm not sure, but I do think we need to constantly be reviewing what we're doing and how we're doing and whether or not that can be improved, because this is a situation that we cannot afford to keep happening."
 

Nurses Organisation kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku. Photo / RNZ
 
Nurses union calls for urgent review
The nurses' union wants an urgent review of how the Covid-19 isolation hotels are being run, saying staff are becoming increasingly anxious and fearful amid the risk of infection.
Nurses Organisation (NZNO) kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku told Morning Report when health staff became infected, it often showed there was a failure in the system.
"So unless we have a review of the system to see whether a failure has happened we'll continue to have these outbreaks."
Where that potential failure lay was unclear, she said, and that was why a review was necessary to identify and rectify any issues.
"What we do see is that there are often a few nurses placed in responsibility...

Patience, America and the world.
We may not know who won the United States presidential election tomorrow. And if so, it does not necessarily mean anything is broken, fraudulent, corrupted or wrong.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested a slower-than-typical result is a sign of trouble.
"I think it's terrible that we can't know the results of an election the night of the election," he said yesterday. "I think it's a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over."
It's unclear what the president thinks is a long period. But it's standard practice to continue tabulating votes after election day.
Here's a closer look at why that count could take longer than usual, and why that might mean we may not know the winner on the day:
WHAT'S NEW THIS YEAR?
The biggest factor that may slow things down this year is clear: Millions of Americans decided to vote by mail rather than risk contracting coronavirus at a polling place. And in general, those mail ballots take longer to count.
Election workers must remove the ballots from their envelopes, check for errors, sort them and flatten them — all before they can be run through scanners the moment polls close and be tabulated. In states with well-established vote-by-mail programmes, this processing happens weeks before election day. The results are often released quickly.
But several states did not have this system in place before this year and laws on the books prohibited election officials from processing the ballots well in advance of election day. Without a head start, there's virtually no way to process and count all the mail votes on election day, while also counting all the in-person votes.
There are three important battlegrounds with restrictions on when the mail vote can be processed — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In those states, Republican-controlled legislatures have resisted pleas from election officials to update the laws to allow for a speedier count. (The Michigan legislature did allow processing to begin 24 hours before election day in cities, but election officials say that's not enough of a head start.) Instead, they will initially report in-person votes — expected to heavily favour Trump — and gradually update with the more Democratic-leaning mail ballots later.

The Biden campaign is preparing for a long election night, and is warning the country — and the media — to ignore any victory declaration from Trump before all the ballots are counted.https://t.co/ZyO3moexxA
— Axios (@axios) November 2, 2020
BUT DON'T NEWS ORGANISATIONS CALL A WINNER BEFORE ALL THE VOTE IS COUNTED?
Yes, there's never been a presidential race in history in which all votes are counted on election day. It's just not physically possible to instantly count that many ballots — possibly as many as 150 million tomorrow.
Media organisations, including AP, declare winners in thousands of races on election day based on the results that are in, voter surveys and other political data.
But in a close race, more of the vote may need to be counted before AP can call a winner.
IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR KNOWING THE WINNER TOMORROW?
Sure. Not all battleground states are slow-counting states. So if several key states release their results promptly, one candidate may have a majority of the electoral vote — even without knowing who won in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Michigan.
That becomes more likely if the races in those states are not close.
It's a scenario that puts a lot of eyes on Florida. The state allows its election offices to process mail ballots 22 days before the election. It's also the biggest swing state. As long as the race isn't too close — a big "if" in a place famous for tight races — there could be a close-to-complete count tomorrow. And if Trump loses...

In the closing hours of a campaign shadowed by a once-in-a-century pandemic, President Donald Trump charged across the nation Monday delivering an incendiary but unsupported allegation that the election is rigged, while Democratic challenger Joe Biden pushed to claim states once seen as safely Republican.
America stood at a crossroads. Never before in modern history have voters faced a choice between candidates offering such opposite visions as the nation confronts a virus that has killed 230,000 Americans, the starkest economic contraction since the Great Depression and a citizenry divided on cultural and racial issues.
The two men broke sharply Monday on the voting process itself while campaigning in the most fiercely contested battleground, Pennsylvania. The president threatened legal action to stop counting beyond Election Day. If Pennsylvania ballot counting takes several days, as is allowed, Trump charged that “cheating can happen like you have never seen.”
Going further, Trump even tweeted about election-related “violence in the streets," though none has occurred. Asked about it, Biden said “I’m not going to respond to anything he has to say. I’m hoping for a straightforward, peaceful election with a lot of people showing up.”
 

US President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on October 30. Photo / AP
 
Biden, earlier in Pittsburgh, delivered a voting rights message to a mostly Black audience, declaring that Trump believes “only wealthy folks should vote" and describing COVID-19 as a “mass casualty event for Black Americans.”
“We’re done with the chaos, we’re done with the tweets, the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility,” said Biden, whose campaign has focused on increasing turnout by Black voters, who could prove the difference in several battleground states.
Both campaigns insist they have a pathway to victory, though Biden’s options for winning the required 270 Electoral College votes are more plentiful. Trump is banking on a surge of enthusiasm from his most loyal supporters in addition to potential legal maneuvers.
Trump spent the final full campaign day sprinting through five rallies, from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin with his final rally, just like four years earlier, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Biden devoted most of his time to Pennsylvania, where a win would leave Trump with an exceedingly narrow path. He also dipped into Ohio, a show of confidence in a state that Trump won by 8 percentage points four years ago.
Biden emphasized the pandemic. He declared that "the first step to beating the virus is beating Donald Trump,” and he promised he would retain the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom the president has talked of firing.
Trump in Grand Rapids insisted that the nation was “rounding the turn” on the virus. But Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, broke with the president Monday and joined a chorus of Trump administration scientists sounding alarm about the current spike in infections.
“We are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic,” Birx wrote in a memo distributed to top administration officials. She added that the nation was not implementing “balanced” measures needed to slow the spread of the virus. One recipient confirmed the contents that were initially reported by The Washington Post.
Trump, meanwhile, made only passing mention of what his aides believe are his signature accomplishments — the nation's economic rebound, the recent installation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — in favor of a torrent of grievance and combativeness. He angrily decried the media's coverage of the campaign while complaining that he also was being treated unfairly by, in no particular order, China, the Electoral College system and rock singer Jon Bon Jovi.
“I have been under siege illegally...

It's easy to call Joe Biden the winner today. Logic dictates it, all polls bar perhaps Iowa, show he leads. Every battleground state Donald Trump needs to win he trails, in some by a margin large enough only the deluded would argue with it.
The pollsters so badly humiliated four years back have reworked their ratings to involve the Trump crowd more prominently, so logic would suggest they couldn’t possibly be that wrong twice.
Covid in America is a mess. In a world where those who have voted have voted for safety and Covid success, it would appear odd that America would be so uniquely different and in such numbers that they have loved watching records being broken , and a couple of hundred thousand die.
Logic would also dictate, and backed up by the polls, that at least a chunk of those who came out last time on the idea that this bloke was different and worth a shot, won't be back given what they’ve seen. Many clearly have buyer's remorse.
Women, especially, have deserted him. He's crass, he's an oaf, he's arguably a sexual predator, he's a liar, he's immersed in any amount of legal activity and dishonest behaviour, much of which will swamp him if he loses today and returns to normal life.
His pathway is narrow and that’s being generous. He has to win Florida, and at least one of those rust belt industrial type states. It would seem most likely Pennsylvania, and collect all the others that should, and did fall his way last time. Basically, he has to have a perfect day.
If you want to mount a case for him, there is a lot in the economy that's not reported here that is actually going well. Manufacturing, just yesterday, is at nearly two-year highs, last week's Q3 bounce-back was massive, homes sales are up, and spending is up. There's a lot of solid material to sell.
The crowds he's getting are sensational. There is something magnetic about him. How many politicians can you name that could get you out in freezing temperatures at midnight to listen to a few one liners and barbs about Biden? But he does it. Those who love him are evangelical and that’s never to be underestimated, especially given it was last time.
But the reason Biden will win is not because Trump can't, because he can, and not because Biden is brilliant, because he isn't. But it's because Trump was an experiment that needed a better run and a bigger tailwind.
If Covid hadn't happened, he would probably be winning today. But it did happen, and so did all the other stuff that’s mired him in controversy, anger, and madness.
Four years ago, he was an eclectic outsider. He was different enough and refreshing enough to be worth a shot. Four years on he's still the same bloke, just weighed down by enough eccentricity, dishonesty, loopiness, and failure to have lost the shine that made the difference.
Part of me wants to be wrong. The Democrats and the left are miserable downtrodden whiners who have never got over their loss. They're disparate rabble with too many extremists.
But, it's their day. They'll hold and gain in the house, they’ll flip the Senate, and they will win the White House.
The Trump era, such as it is, is over.

It's unclear whether Republicans will turn out in big enough numbers today to sway the US election Donald Trump's way.
A hundred and two million people voted early in America, while final ballots are being cast today.
US correspondent Nick Bryant says large numbers have pre-voted in Texas, a state that hasn't gone Democrat since 1976.
He told Mike Hosking that generally means a lot of minorities and young people have voted.
Bryant says more Democrats seem to have voted so far.
He says Republicans tend to like voting in person but it's not clear whether than will happen in sufficient numbers today.
He says an important part of Biden's campaign has been saying he has the empathy to understand people who are suffering and have seen relatives die. Biden lost his son to cancer a few years back.
The Democratic presidential candidate started the day by attending mass and visiting his son's grave.
Bryant says it's also significant Biden is in Pennsylvania, because it's such a key state in the election.
 
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