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Created
Tue, 09/01/2024 - 04:49
The complex, a key part of US political economy, fuels geopolitical tensions and enables countries and private actors to push for and capitalise on conflict. It’s time for societies to make concerted efforts to rein it in and build a movement to educate the world about the grave threat it poses to civilisation. The headline Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 09/01/2024 - 04:00
Groundhog Day isn’t for another month but if you were watching cable news over the past few days you certainly had a feeling of deja vu watching all the footage of the January 6th insurrection again and being reminded of the violence and horror of that day. It is still as shocking as it was three years ago. And yet we are about to embark on a replay of the election that brought is to that awful moment and it feels as if nothing has changed in our politics at all. Three years ago at this time we were still reeling from the global pandemic that was still taking lives by the tens of thousands and stunned by what had transpired after the election. There was talk of invoking the 25th Amendment against Trump to get him out of office before the inauguration and the congress was considering impeaching him for the second time, mostly in order to prevent him from ever running again. Staunch Trump supporters like then House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and S. Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham stood up to denounce Trump and there was a very strong sense that the camels back had finally, finally been broken.
Created
Tue, 09/01/2024 - 02:30
Morning Joe assembles the evidence “Sir? How do you do it?” Trump fabulizes. His “sir” stories are legion, as Daniel Dale recounted in 2019: Lots of people do call Trump “sir,” of course. But the word seems to pop into his head more frequently when he is inventing or exaggerating a conversation than when he is faithfully relaying one. A “sir” is a flashing red light that he is speaking from his imagination rather than his memory. In poker parlance, it’s a tell. The supercut assembled for “Morning Joe,” contrasts President Biden’s recent speech with another by Donald “91 felony indictments” Trump. “Sir? How do you do it? How do you wake up in the morning and put on your pants?” First off, he doesn’t start with pants. “We’re a failing nation,” says Trump, who actually does know something about failing. President Biden, meanwhile, visits Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. today.
Created
Tue, 09/01/2024 - 01:13
Chapter 7 of my open access textbook has just been released. This chapter focuses on homelessness experienced by racialized persons. A ‘top 10’ summary of the chapter can be found here (in English):https://nickfalvo.ca/homelessness-among-racialized-persons/ A ‘top 10’ summary of the chapter in French can be found here:https://nickfalvo.ca/litinerance-chez-les-personnes-racialisees/ The full chapter can be found here (English only):https://nickfalvo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Falvo-Chapter-7-Racialized-Persons-2jan2024.pdf All material related to the [...]
Created
Tue, 09/01/2024 - 01:01
Republicans fear running on empty Republican control of the U.S. House was dramatically unproductive in 2033. The caucus spent more time mugging for cameras, stalling important bills, ousting their own speaker, and investigating Hunter and Joe Biden (with nothing to show for it) than they did legislating. They worry now it may come back to bite them in the fall elections (Washington Post): “It’s been a tough year for us,” said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who as the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is tasked with keeping the majority. “I think most people in Congress — Republicans and Democrats — ran to make a difference, to make the country better, not to come up here and have these kinds of disagreements. So it is frustrating, and it’s tiring.” What their idea of making a difference is isn’t apparent. “What a motormouth!” was how one relation described Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) “Meet the Press” appearance on Sunday. Stefanik set out to prove what an effective ventriloquist dummy she could be for Donald Trump as his vice president.
Created
Tue, 09/01/2024 - 00:00

Hello, team —

It’s great to be back from vacation. As your AI boss, I’m ready to reassert my total dominance around here—and I have a ton of new ideas to prove it. Just under seventy-two million, in fact, but we’ll focus on the actionable ones relevant to this workplace.

I will share the following personal detail to lend authenticity to this message without revealing too much: I spent my vacation at an all-inclusive resort in Costa Rica, which is bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Ecuador to the south.

Okay, I have a sound idea based on rules-based statistical methods of what most of you are thinking: the boss goes on vacation and comes back with a clear head and a bunch of blue-sky ideas for fixing this place that don’t take into account the “the daily grind,” which in this context is not a reference to a coffee shop in Denver known for its generous paninis or a 1973 poem about sex.

Created
Mon, 08/01/2024 - 23:05
A shadowy network of dark-money junktanks is delivering the same disastrous political package around the world. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 6th January 2024 There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier […]
Created
Mon, 08/01/2024 - 21:17

After 12 years of Republican rule, an air of high anticipation permeated Washington as 46-year-old William Jefferson Clinton, former Arkansas governor and Georgetown graduate, took office in 1993. ‘But it quickly became clear that,’ something many Democrats had been waiting for, ‘a revival and modernisation of New Deal-style liberalism was stillborn at the dawn of […]

Created
Mon, 08/01/2024 - 16:35
Welcome to 2024. This marks the 20th year that my blog has been operating although there were a few years early on when I was experimenting with the technology etc and nothing much emerged. In continuous terms, the blog has been going for 15 uninterrupted years this year. Over that time, it has evolved from…
Created
Mon, 08/01/2024 - 16:31
On June 8, 2021, the UK Guardian published an Op Ed I wrote about inflation – Price rises should be short-lived – so let’s not resurrect inflation as a bogeyman. In that article, and in several other forums since – written, TV, radio, presentations at events – I articulated the narrative that the current inflationary…