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Created
Tue, 24/01/2023 - 07:26
The Bank of Canada is widely expected to increase its policy interest rate again this week, for the eighth time in the last 10 months. Media and financial market commentary on its decision has made numerous throwaway references to how Canada’s economy is still “running hot,” and that i why a rate hike is needed. This common claim is surprising, [...]
Created
Tue, 24/01/2023 - 01:06
Three little words “We all make mistakes,” James Fallows begins his newsletter. “People, organizations, countries. The best we can do is admit and face them. And hope that by learning from where we erred, we’ll avoid greater damage in the future.” Yet half the country has internalized what Donald Trump mentor Roy Cohn taught him: Never admit mistakes. Always attack your accuser. Win no matter what. Gloat when you do. “Roy was a master of situational immorality,” author Sam Roberts said. We view Donald Trump as the author of the Republicans’ descent into amorality. But often the slide is long before the edge of the cliff. Even while letting out a Wilhelm Scream, we will not admit to falling. Only losers admit mistakes. The powerful never do. It has become reflex. Fallows examines how news outlets have failed to arrest their slide into scandal mongering. The press has failed to confront past mistakes and thus failed to correct them.
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Tue, 24/01/2023 - 02:30
He plans to primary Kyrsten Sinema Washington Post: Rep. Ruben Gallego announced he will run for the U.S. Senate in Arizona on Monday, setting up a potential three-way race in the battleground state in 2024 that poses a threat to independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s hold on the seat. Gallego, a Marine veteran who has served in the House since 2015, announced his candidacy in a video in English and Spanish that stressed his military service and experience growing up as a first-generation American. “The rich and the powerful, they don’t need more advocates,” Gallego said in the video, which shows him addressing veterans at Guadalupe American Legion Post 124. “It’s the people that are still trying to decide between groceries and utilities that need a fighter for them.” We know where Kyrsten Sinema was over the last week and who she advocates for. Here’s Gallego’s announcement.
Created
Tue, 24/01/2023 - 04:00
People think I’m over the top by calling Marjorie Taylor Greene the “shadow speaker.” I’m not: Days after he won his gavel in a protracted fight with hard-right Republicans, Speaker Kevin McCarthy gushed to a friend about the ironclad bond he had developed with an unlikely ally in his battle for political survival, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. “I will never leave that woman,” Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, told the friend, who described the private conversation on the condition of anonymity. “I will always take care of her.” Such a declaration from Mr. McCarthy would have been unthinkable in 2021, when Ms. Greene first arrived on Capitol Hill in a swirl of controversy and provocation. A former QAnon follower who had routinely trafficked in conspiratorial, violent and bigoted statements, Ms. Greene was then widely seen as a dangerous liability to the party and a threat to the man who aspired to lead Republicans back to the majority — a person to be controlled and kept in check, not embraced. But in the time since, a powerful alliance developed between Ms.
Created
Tue, 24/01/2023 - 05:30
This piece in the NY Times about the boomer vote tracks with my instincts. First of all, the youngest boomers aren’t even 60 yet so not all of us are ancient. Biden, for instance is not a boomer. He’s older. Trump was born in the very first year of the baby boom so he’s at the very oldest edge. The truth is that there were always a fair number in that large generation who were conservative. Not everyone was a hippie. And yes, some moved right as they aged. It seems to just happen with some people. But many, many boomers were and have, as I have, been very liberal their whole lives. And they’re still fighting the good fight. Is it time to call the next election “the most important in American history”? Probably. It seems like it may involve a judgment on democracy itself. Americans with a lot of history will play a key role in determining its outcome. And judging in part by November’s midterms, they may not play the role that older voters are usually assigned. We at Third Act, the group we helped form in 2021, think older Americans are beginning a turn in the progressive direction, a turn that will accelerate as time goes on.
Created
Mon, 23/01/2023 - 09:00
I said to a young friend the other day that this might be the best job market they will ever experience and she looked at me like I was crazy. I get it. When you’re young the experiences you have had limit your understanding of what it’s like when things change. When you are old (like me) you’ve been through some stuff and you have a different outlook. This piece in the NY Times looks at the different ways the generations are experiencing the contraction in the tech sector: When Lyft laid off 13 percent of its workers in November, Kelly Chang was shocked to find herself among the 700 people who lost their jobs at the San Francisco company. “It seemed like tech companies had so much opportunity,” said Ms. Chang, 26. “If you got a job, you made it. It was a sustainable path.” Brian Pulliam, on the other hand, brushed off the news that the crypto exchange Coinbase was eliminating his job. Ever since the 48-year-old engineer was laid off from his first job at the video game company Atari in 2003, he said, he has asked himself once a year: “If I were laid off, what would I do?” The contrast between Ms.
Created
Mon, 23/01/2023 - 10:00
This is how right wingers have fun I have no words: Body-camera footage and images of the night Breonna Taylor was killed in 2020 were shown in front of diners at a Kentucky restaurant this week during an event in which a GOP women’s group hosted one of the officers who fired into Taylor’s apartment, according to an NAACP chapter and accounts from patrons. The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky held a dinner event Tuesday at Anna’s Greek Restaurant in Bowling Green, Ky., for Jonathan Mattingly, a former sergeant with the Louisville Metro Police Department who was among the officers who conducted the botched no-knock raid at Taylor’s Louisville apartment in search of her ex-boyfriend. Mattingly, who was one of the officers who fired into the 26-year-old Black woman’s apartment the night she died, was cleared of wrongdoing in an internal police investigation and retired in 2021 to become a conservative author and pundit.
Created
Mon, 23/01/2023 - 11:30
So sad… It appears that he’s not going to be able to wrap up the nomination the way he expected: Advisers to Donald Trump have blanketed South Carolina Republican officials with pleading phone calls in recent weeks in an effort to drum up endorsements and attendees for the former president’s first campaign swing of the 2024 cycle next week. But the appeals have run headlong into a complicated new reality: Many of the state’s lawmakers and political operatives, and even some of his previous supporters, are not ready to pick a presidential candidate. After raising the debt limit for decades, Republicans in recent years have leveraged it to enact spending cuts while also threatening government default. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post) They find themselves divided between their support for Trump, their desire for a competitive nomination fight in the state and their allegiance to two South Carolina natives, former governor Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, who have taken steps to challenge Trump for the nomination.
Created
Mon, 23/01/2023 - 01:48

Scotland has no shortage of dreadful right wing judges, but as the very epitome of reactionary conservatism, one gobsmacking judgment from Perth Sheriff Michael Fletcher stands out. In a major rowing back of Scotland’s right to roam legislation contained in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, Sheriff Fletcher ruled that plebs must not be allowed […]

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