Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Vincent Bevins interviews Branko Milanovic about the economic roots of the working-class revolt against neoliberalism, while pointing out that there’s nothing inevitable about globalization harming large numbers of people in the developed world: Let’s start with the obvious question. Does the elephant graph
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Alberta Politics: Canada’s Conservatives have taken their greatest strength and bulldozed it to the ground: this will not end well for them
PHOTOS: Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidates Kellie Leitch, Chris Alexander and Brad Trost get ready for their next debate on how best to Make Canada Great Again. Actual CPC leadership candidates may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Former Alberta Progressive Conservative premier Ed Stelmach, Alberta PC leadership candidate
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Why Nobody Should Ever Normalize Donald Trump
It wasn't a surprise, but it was depressing, and it was another grim milestone on the way to the darkness of Trumpland.Despite all the e-mails, the petitions, and the protests, Donald Trump is now officially the president in waiting of the United States. There were many protesters but few faithless electors
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Danielle Martin highlights how investments in ending poverty including a basic income can improve health outcomes among other key social indicators: Far more than consumption of medical care, income is the strongest predictor of health. Canadians are more likely to die at an
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Donald Trump and the Basket of Deplorables
I'm sure you all remember the day Hillary Clinton called some of Donald Trump's supporters a "basket of deplorables"And I'm sure you remember how Trump howled with outrage, and managed to turn Clinton's comment into a rallying cry.So I'm glad to see that Trump now admits that Clinton was right, and that
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Lessons From Rex Tillerson*
If Rex Tillerson, the former head of ExxonMobil and Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, taught a class on pipeline strategy Brian Jean would be stuck at the front of the room wearing a dunce cap and Rachel Notley would be excused because she already knows this stuff. Conservative
Continue readingIn This Corner: Stuff Still Happens, week 50 : Why won’t this horrible year just END?
A meltdown of humanity. That vivid phrase was used this week by a UN spokesman, in reference to the final days of the battle for Aleppo. It’s not a bad way to describe most of 2016. Aleppo is the largest city in Syria. It is several thousand years old, and
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Donald Trump and the Spectre of Treason
The only thing scarier than thinking about what Donald Trump might do to our neighbours, is thinking what he might do to the planet.Because not only is he planning to torch it, by ending the war on climate change. His foreign policy plans are as dangerous and as crazy as he
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Shape Of Things To Come?
The other day, I wrote a post about how NBC Nightly News was attacked by Donald Trump via his weapon of choice, Twitter, a perhaps apt mechanism given the president-elect’s incapacity for sustained thought or discourse. But NBC is hardly the only media outlet in his sights. His latest is
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Trying To Come To Terms With The Grim Year 2016
Like so many others I will always remember the year 2016 as an absolute nightmare, an annus horribilis if ever there was one.A year that began promisingly in the still smouldering ruins of Harperland.But ended with a world seeming to spin out of control, the agony of Aleppo, and the
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Donald Trump and the Restaurant Review From Hell
As we all know Donald Trump is always raging about the way the media treats him, the lying media as he likes to call them.And encouraging his 17-million Twitter followers to go after them.He has attacked the New York Times and the Washington Post for exposing his shady deals, he has blasted NBC
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rogue One, a Right Wing Wars Story: wherein the Wildrose Party’s Derek Fildebrandt slips his leader’s leash
PHOTOS: Wildrose Party Finance Critic Derek Fildebrandt going rogue at Rebel Media’s Calgary anti-everything rally last Sunday (CBC photo). Below: Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Jason Kenney as imagined for this story’s rather labored metaphor. (They said I couldn’t do it. Actual PC leadership contenders may not appear exactly as illustrated.)
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Trump energy policy holds out dangers for Canada
Chairman of the Board of USA Inc. President-elect Trump has started selecting his “cabinet”, and the implications for Canada’s economy are significant: In a move that might be a bit more predictable than the rest, given Trump’s public statements, the memo places a priority on building more pipelines. Just a
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Trump energy policy holds out dangers for Canada
Chairman of the Board of USA Inc. President-elect Trump has started selecting his “cabinet”, and the implications for Canada’s economy are significant: In a move that might be a bit more predictable than the rest, given Trump’s public statements, the memo places a priority on building more pipelines. Just a
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Donald Trump and the Road to Resistance
If you put a toga on him he would look like an American Caesar.Donald Trump basking in the warm glow of his inflamed supporters, as he continues his triumphal "Thank You Tour" of his conquered country.Swaggering around one stage after the other, bragging about how great he is, soaking up
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Miles Corak offers a must-read paper on the two stories most often told about inequality in Canada, reaching this conclusion on the recent accumulation of wealth at the top of the income spectrum and the readily observable inequality of opportunity based on the
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Death threats, a noose on a hockey stick, opponents kicked out … Calgary Rebel Media rally was another goon show
PHOTOS: They say a photo is worth a thousand words. This one, taken at Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media rally in Calgary yesterday, certainly speaks for itself. Obviously, not all the NDP supporters were successfully purged from the meeting. Below: Chris Alexander, Mr. Levant and Kellie Leitch. Mr. Aleander and Ms.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Dani Rodrik writes that today’s brand of trade agreement has little to do with economic theory as opposed to political power: What purpose do trade agreements really serve? The answer would seem obvious: countries negotiate trade agreements to achieve freer trade. But
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Is It Time To Take a Break from Social Media?
I must admit I've been finding to hard to blog or tweet or do anything on social media these days. It's just getting too crazy out there.The blogosphere is too gloomy, Twitter is a smoking battlefield.And it's hard to make people laugh as I like to do, when so many of the
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Donald Trump and the Great Russian Conspiracy
We already knew that a small legion of Russian hackers had intervened in the U.S. election, hacking e-mails, and spreading fake news stories.And we knew that Vladimir Putin would not be displeased to see the U.S. descend into chaos.Which is what most experts believe the Russians were trying to do.
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