BC BIDEN
Saved by @Alex1Powell

I got overnight via email a query from @briansflood at Fox News, the principal part of which I reproduce below. I answered by email too. I'll append that reply in the next threaded tweet:

 @briansflood My reply:
Hunter Biden's dubious business activities have been reported for years. Here for example is @TheAtlantic in September 2019, year *before* @nypost https://t.co/qZBTpyuysM
That emails attributed to Hunter Biden were circulating was also known well before the NYPost story in October. Here's TIME magazine https://t.co/JvpEKdG0U4
What @NYPost added to the work earlier done by others was a new *origin* story for the materials that circulated in Ukraine in 2019. When other media organizations attempted to corroborate that story, hijinx ensued. https://t.co/ZJGZWq7etU @thedailybeast account
I doubt that anybody at any responsible media organization holds any particular brief for Hunter Biden. I sure don't. If he did wrong, he should face the consequences. But Hunter Biden's legal situation was not what was at issue with the NY Post report.
What was at issue in the NYPost story were these two questions: "Is this material about Hunter Biden being promoted by Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani genuine? If yes, where does this material come from?"
In November 2019, Russian spy agencies hacked servers at Burisma, the Ukrainian company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. The NYTimes reported in January 2020: https://t.co/Vhz03pg3o1
When the Trump White House shopped purported Hunter Biden materials to reputable news organizations like the Wall Street Journal, reporters went to work verifying authenticity and sourcing. That process unnerved the Trump White House and its allies. https://t.co/HI4QbH1UkS
The Trump White House and its allies wanted their purported Hunter Biden materials to be published with no uncomfortable questions asked about its authenticity and its origins. For that, they turned to the New York Post. https://t.co/HI4QbH1UkS
Even after the NYPost published, the Trump team still refused other media organizations the information they needed to verify the NYPost story. This behavior - plus the selective leaking to pro-Trump outlets that didn't bother with verification - naturally sowed suspicion.
Now there's a new report on DoJ investigation of Hunter Biden's activities. That report is of course something every media organization will want to dig deeper into. https://t.co/N3iJiSlZve
But those latest stories, properly sourced, do not confer retrospective rehabilitation on what the NY Post was doing in October - or on the Trump White House officials doing Trump campaign work at taxpayer expense.
Last point. It very often happens that presidents must deal with family members who try to trade on their relationship to power: James Roosevelt, Donald Nixon, Billy Carter, Hugh Rodham - it's a recurring problem.
I've suggested from time to time that one way to deal with that problem is to require publication of tax returns by any member of the First or Second family who accepts Secret Service protection.
But even that answer - tax returns for Secret Service - only carries us so far. In the end, there's probably no once-and-for-all legal remedy to the problem of relatives trading on power. The ultimate guarantor of ethical standards must be vigilant media and a concerned public.
At the same time, it's essential to keep a sense of proportion. For the past four years, the US government has been led by the most corrupt president in history. Trump's children and their spouses eagerly grabbed their pieces of the action too, again on a scale never before seen.
It may turn out that Hunter Biden is our next generation Jimmy Roosevelt or Donald Nixon. It's right to expose that, and to demand that the Biden administration distance from him.
But when the Trump family tries to excuse its massive depredations by invoking Hunter Biden's activities - we have left earth's orbit.

When Donald Trump Jr. asks, "Can you imagine if I did ... " the right answer is : Junior, you did that -and worse- just before breakfast today
So there's my answer to the @briansflood query - and to the pro-Trump trolls who have been frolicking in my Twitter timeline over the past 24 hours. I'll put it here, where they live - aware that the truth may not matter much to them, but confident it matters to everybody else.

More from David Frum

David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
Yoga employs more Americans than coal. But compare and contrast 1/2


and 2/2


I think many of us carry in our minds an image of the US economy that looks like this


when the reality is this


and this
INTERNET
David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
Trump tweets about his health remind me of a story my late father-in-law Peter Worthington told about covering the Six Day War in 1967 ... 1/x

Pete was in Cairo on the day the war started. He was awoken early by air raid sirens. He turned on Radio Cairo to listen for news. Time passed until an announcer delivered a bulletin. "The Zionists attacked at dawn. We shot down six of their planes and suffered no losses." 2/x

Pete shaved and prepared to go visit the air ministry for himself. The announcer returned to the air. "Update: we shot down TWELVE Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

He understood the Egyptians had suffered a bad defeat. 3/x

He finished dressing, knotted his tie, and the announcer was back.

"Update again. We shot down FIFTY Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

That's when he realized that the entire Egyptian air force had been wiped out.

4/x

(NB I may have the figures wrong in the anecdote, I'm telling the story from memory, but you get the idea.)

5/x
TRUMP
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David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
On October 16 2020, a secondary school teacher named Samuel Paty was beheaded with a meat cleaver in the street of a small town 20 miles down the Seine from Paris. 1/x

Paty's murderer, a young Chechen refugee, had never met the teacher. The killer was incited to the crime by a multi-day campaign of defamation and disinformation on French social media. 2/x

For 5 years, Paty had taught his classes a unit on free speech and its limits in a democratic society. As part of the discussion, he showed his students some of the famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons - after inviting those who might be offended to leave and then rejoin the class. 3/x

One parent of one student - not the student herself - then set in motion a campaign of denunciation against Paty. And the result was a crime that shocked France and pulled tens of thousands to vigils and protests. 4/x

France has suffered terrible crimes in the name of religion before the Paty killing. We're only 5 years from the horrifying nightclub attacks that killed 130 in November 2015. But past attacks caught France by surprise. This murder announced itself in advance. 5/x
EDUCATION
David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
In February 1981, pro-Franco army officers attacked the Spanish Parliament hoping to halt Spain's evolution toward democracy and liberalism. 1/x

The coup was soon suppressed, in large part because of a miscalculation by the dying Franco regime. In 1975, the regime had restored the old Spanish monarchy, hoping to glamorize authoritarianism. Instead, King Juan Carlos opposed the coup - and most of the army obeyed. 2/x

Here's where the story gets interesting for our current purposes ...

The coup launched to thwart Spain's shift to democracy instead consolidated Spanish democracy. The next year, 1982, social democrats won the biggest landslide in Spanish electoral history. 3/x

The elected social democrats formed a government without a single minister connected to the old regime. State support of the Catholic church ended. Family law was modernized, minority language rights were protected. If Franco had opposed it - the new Spain wanted it. 4/x

The process was not instant. Not until 2019 would the state remove Franco's remains from the lavish tomb he built to himself. But the process was inexorable. The pro-Franco attempted coup guaranteed the total doom of Francoism in Spain. 5/x
WORLD
David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
In an early episode of "Mad Men," the young striver Peggy Olson faces a traumatic experience. The principal character, a man whose life is built upon falsehood and evasion, offers his life advice: "It never happened. It will amaze you how much it never happened." 1/x

With the Tanden nomination, we are watching congressional Republicans put Don Draper's advice into effect.

They supported a profoundly corrupt, cruel, vituperative, and generally immoral and unethical president at the head of an inept and unethical administration. They knew it!

But of course those senators never said so. They were scared and they were shamed. Maybe they stopped some bad things - or at least they tell themselves they did. But the experience had to have been profoundly humiliating for almost all of them. And these are not humble people.

So how do they cope? They follow Don Draper's advice. "It never happened."

The Tanden nomination is the opportunity to rev the pretense loud and fast.

The lady was occasionally indecorous! Even ... sometimes ... untoward. We can't have THAT in the US government!

Hypocritical is not really the word to describe this behavior. It's more a kind of post-traumatic coping mechanism, a denial of the radical abuse that they also suffered, along with US allies worldwide, people of integrity in govt service, and so many bereaved American families
ALL

More from Biden

Grace Fogarty
Grace Fogarty
@Grace_E_Fogarty
https://t.co/fhVL1fjDhC

Thank you Victor for this gift.

Nothing punitive or carceral, nor punishment related, nor negativity related should ever be tied to healing, recovery, rebuilding one's life or anything that makes a person feel worse about himself, herself, or themself. We know enough now to understand that punishment, loss

and/or reminders of past traumas and/or losses have no business and play nothing but a negative role, in rebuilding self-esteem, self-worth, self-love, community and the meaningful things we all need to create lives for ourselves that we feel are worth living. Especially in

exceedingly early ‘sobriety’, ‘abstinence’ and/or the traditional deprivations of one’s substance(s) of choice when people have had their only coping mechanism ripped away from them, under the ancient and provenly ineffective current model of ‘recovery’.

The author @johannhari101 , wrote the book ‘Chasing the Scream The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs’ said in his now famous Ted talk ‘Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong’:
BIDEN
Lewis Goodall
Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
BREAK: Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States.

The Trump administration is over.

Technically another 9 mins to go for the official handover. But it’s a formality.

Biden: "This is America's day. This is democracy's day. A day of history and hope....Today we triumph not of a candidate but of a cause. The cause of democracy. The people, the will of the people has been heard. And the will of the people has been heeded."

"At this hour my friends, democracy has prevailed."

Biden thanks his predecessors from both parties "from the bottom of my heart."

With, perhaps, the exception of one.

Biden addresses the pandemic and its economic consequences: "Few people in our nation's history have found themselves in a moment as challenging as the one we're in now...but the dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer."
BIDEN
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Numberonepal
Numberonepal
@numberonepal
1/ This was lifted from a FB post...

Any regrets yet??

Biden Update....

2pm yesterday marked Biden’s 50th hour in office. Let’s take a look at the Biden/Harris administration —

- A loss of 52,100 jobs in oil.

- Ended energy independence for the United States.
BIDEN
Joe Cunningham
Joe Cunningham
@JoePCunningham
"Ban" is a verb meaning to "officially or legally prohibit" something. If the Biden administration is not approving new fracking permits, how is that not "officially or legally prohibiting" new fracking permits?


The economy is bleeding, and the Biden administration's response is to cripple one of the few industries that has been consistently employing people throughout this crisis.

But, his allies in the media don't want him to take that PR hit, so they run cover and play word games. Biden's exact words were "We are not going to ban fracking. Period." The "Period." there would imply that ANY ban is off the table.

If you are going to prohibit via executive order - which is nothing more than a law passed outside of the normal legislative process - anything, you are "legally" prohibiting it. There are legal consequences to violating that regulation.

So yes, definitionally, Biden has "legally prohibited" fracking in some way, shape, or form, which is the opposite of his campaign statements.

In other words, he lied.
BIDEN
grist
grist
@grist
President Biden sprung into climate action on his first day in office, but he will need to rely on his Cabinet choices to help deliver on his climate goals.

Here's a quick guide to the top 10 climate-relevant Cabinet nominees. THREAD ⬇️ https://t.co/OnCEjtaclz


1/ If confirmed, @DebHaalandNM will become the first Indigenous Cabinet secretary. As secretary of the interior, Haaland would steward 500 million acres of public lands, manage oil and gas leases, and be tasked with upholding Indigenous treaty rights.


2/ Former Michigan Governor @JenGranholm is Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Energy. She would help lead the transition from gas-powered to electric vehicles and start work on Biden’s goal of a 100% clean electrical grid by 2035.


3/ @Michael_S_Regan is Biden’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, leading efforts to regulate industrial pollution and carbon emissions.

Regan founded North Carolina’s first Environmental Justice and Equity Board.


4/ Former Secretary of State John Kerry (@ClimateEnvoy) is Biden’s pick for special envoy on climate change. If confirmed, Kerry will have a seat on the National Security Council, guiding American foreign policy on climate.
BIDEN

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You want to buy a house.

You take a loan from the bank.

The bank asks you, “what if you don’t pay back?”

You say, “take my home and sell it”.

(Thread)

That makes sense. The bank gives you a loan and in case you don’t pay, the bank will take over your house and sell it and recover its money.

That’s collateral.

Banks also lend money to big corporations. With them, banks don’t always have collateral.

So a loan where the bank has collateral is considered safer for the bank.

In the early 2000s, the banks in the USA were giving out loans to people for buying houses.

The economy had just recovered from the tech bubble in 2000 where many banks had given out loans to businesses that had shut down.

In that backdrop, the banks found giving home loans safer.
ALL , 2008 CRASH , 2008 RECESSION
Guillaume Chaslot
Guillaume Chaslot
@gchaslot
The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.


This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/


A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/

https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/

https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/
TECH , FLAT EARTH
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ArmaniTalks \U0001f399\U0001f525
ArmaniTalks 🎙🔥...
@ArmaniTalks
Manipulation Sign:

If you are compromising too much, there is a chance that you are getting manipulated.

Why are you the one that's always compromising?

How come the other person always gets their way?

Be more curious.

If something seems off, stick up for yourself.

'Wait, you sure I am being manipulated?'

I have no clue, that is only something that you can decide for yourself.

'Dang is there anything I need to look out for?'

Plenty..

But let me give you a few things to look out for.

👇

I see manipulation as skillfully controlling someone's behavior for egotistical or unethical purposes.

'How come people don't leave when it's happening to them?'

Because most people have 0 clue that they are being manipulated.

1. Guilt Trip

You ever made a mistake around someone, only for them to hold it over your head?

The will always bring up the mistake when you 2 are not seeing eye to eye.

These people will use that mistake as leverage to get what they want from you in the future.

Look out.

2. The Rationalizer

This person will commit the worst acts & find a way to rationalize it.

Example: cheaters when they get caught.

They have every excuse in the book for why they did it.

Heck, they are so good at rationalizing, they will make it seem like your fault.
LIFE
ArmaniTalks \U0001f399\U0001f525
ArmaniTalks 🎙🔥...
@ArmaniTalks
Shy people are either overthinking or highly observant of the social setting.

And in many cases it can be both.

'So what do I do?'

You learn the 75/25 law.

'What is that?'

The law of charisma...👇

Let's address the over thinkers first.

Do you have any idea why you overthink?

'Yea. Because others are judging how shy I am.'

Incorrect.

Others are thinking about themselves, not you.

But the fact that you think they are thinking about you, you fuck up the interaction.

Now you stay in your head too much & avoid the present moment.

A major no no in the social world.

Your tendency to think that others are judging you for being shy, coincidentally makes you more shy.

And that's when you start giving off a strange vibration to the social setting.

This is when you begin attracting comments like 'why are you so quiet?'
LIFE
XVIII Airborne Corps\U0001f409
XVIII Airborne Corps🐉...
@18airbornecorps
1 of 16: WE ARE ALL JEWS HERE: THE STORY OF RODDIE EDMONDS

One of the most moving and relevant stories of the Battle of the Bulge, or any American Soldier in any war, is that of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville, Tennessee native, who served with the 106th Infantry.


2 of 16:

Roddie was captured early on in the Battle of the Bulge, on December 19th, when Panzer forces plowed through his unit.

He, along with almost his entire regiment, was forced to surrender.


3 of 16:

The men were transported to the Stalag IX-A POW camp in Ziegenhain, Germany.

Roddie was the senior enlisted American Soldier at the site. As such, he was the conduit between all American Soldiers and their German captors.


4 of 16:

In late January, the camp’s commandant, Major Siegmann [pictured here], ordered Roddie, a Christian, to identify all Jewish Soldiers and order them to stand in formation by themselves the next day.

[Jewish Soldiers were a minority within American units]


5 of 16:

Throughout WWII, captured Jewish Soldiers were often tortured and then killed by their German captors.

In fact, Jewish Soldiers had been told to bury their dog tags before capture. The dog tag identified Jews with the letter “H” for Hebrew.
SOCIETY