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1. Yes, @FareedZakaria's new book, Ten lessons From a Post-Pandemic World argues we don't need a big or small gov- we need a GOOD one.

We don't have that now & that is bc for decades now, the GOP has intentionally hallowed it out. Stripping it of funding under the auspice that

 2. the only goal should be small. And as it turns out- that was stupid. And now we have a dysfunctional, as @maddow says, "big, bad" gov. Something that has been "wasted, and rotted and ruined." And its been intentional. Its been murdered, with no thought for how people would
3. suffer for it. COVID just put that suffering in a streamlined spotlight. But as @FareedZakaria points out- its the cherry on top of a 40 year plan that Bannon termed the final "deconstruction of the administrative state." As with the decimation of the economic tools that had
4. allowed the world's 1st middle class to emerge & flourish before The Great Lie ushered in the greatest wealth transfer in history. Not only were Americans bamboozled into voting away their wage increases, their pensions, & their health care (at least till 2010)- they were also
5. tricked into pissing away their country's superiority- its claim to fame, its ability to puff its chest out & say "look over here, we have the best _____. " I had no idea when I was a kid that we were not, in fact, the greatest country on Earth- at least not if you care about
6. actually BEING the greatest country on Earth for realz- and not just saying you are. Like college football. IDK- it matters to me. I want the Ducks to be #1 somewhere other than in their own heads. I mean, don't get me wrong- we've got categories! We're #1 in national defense,
7. & w all the damage the Republican Party has done to our NATO alliances w their elevation of an unqualified and legit crazy reality show criminal as their party's nominee in 2016 certainly cost us a lot in our global standings, so its a damn good thing that we've consistently
8. invested ludicrous amounts of money on national defense bc if the D Party can't fix what the Rep Party has done to America's image & standing abroad, we'll need it! We are also #1 in plastic surgery. But all the shit we USED to be #1 in- all the stuff that FDR & the Democrat's
9. New Deal that was created to fix the 1920s Rep Party's f'up that caused the Great Depression (I'm sensing a pattern here!)- that stuff we were kicking ass internationally on, for a nice long time. We had the best K-12 system & the best higher ed system. But bc of ideology
10. bc of this whole hang up about local control and schools, we blew that. We now have one of the worst K-12 systems in the world, guaranteed to suck bc its financed via property tax which is a system that perpetuates inequality and poverty. But our higher ed system has survived
11. #1- primarily bc we can milk int'l students to offset our costs. I should add- this is a small subset of schools, the broader system in the US is struggling & do you know why? Yep, bc the Rep Party has come for it too! Over the past few decades, the funding for colleges & uni
12. which used to be covered by states has been getting cut and with each cut, tuition and fees must rise!) and in state's defense these cuts, well maybe not in some Red states where starving government & public entities is part of the fun, these cuts have been necessary bc of
13. budget pressure & the rule that state's must balance out their sheets every year- no deficit spending at the state level! So FYI: we are expected to lose about 1/2 of the current colleges & universities we now have over the course of the next decade (I believe decade). Not
14. sure we'll maintain that #1 in the world status after that! And healthcare! We're not even in the top 50 in healthcare. Or retirement. Or things of that nature. In the U.S. life expectancy is lower than in western Europe, Canada, & Australia. The infant mortality rate
15. is higher. We're declining in these metrics even as some of our peer democracies rise. And the thing you should know, that you should understand, that we hope to make Americans see, to understand, is that this, for some reason, has all been by design. The product of specific
16. choices, policies, politicians, think tanks, & one political party that up to now has been able to operate w impunity.

A party that is no longer just a danger to itself- its a danger to us all.

A party that was, if presented w a narrow victory & a workable pathway to
17. disqualify tens of thousands of Democratic voter ballots, perfectly happy to do so to reverse engineer a 2nd Trump term & a presidency. That plan thwarted by the size of Biden's margin of victory. Too big to pull it off discreetly.
Of course 2 mins after I post this, @RBReich's got a new book that will tell you the full story of how the GOP killed the American middle class. Serendipitous!

https://t.co/JW0CpKD8KE

More from Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌

Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. From convo on @Morning_Joe today about @DrIbram's new article which asks that progressive policy not be blamed for D losses/underperformance.

One of my main concerns is intraparty factionalism/fighting. Everything a "moderate" & "progressive"

2. D fights- a R gets a vote. Certainly radical (and yes, defunding police departments IS radical) policy proposals that fall on the outside bands of the distribution are less attractive to this idealized "swing" voter who is, in our minds eye" always a high info, high reasoning.

3. I guess you'd call them a "fine dining" type voter. But we KNOW that actually, most swing voters are NOT like this. Don't believe me- check out @axios Swing Voter Project, which ran focus groups with Obama to Trump voters through the whole cycle.

4. Indeed, what @richthau learned about America's "deciders" is likely to haunt his sleep for ever as it personified a sticker I keep in my office which is a quote from George Carlin: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." (K.I.M. when we talk "stupid"

5. on my threads about people, we're not talking IQ, or overall stupid. We're talking civics. We're talking about political literacy. Very smart, successful people can't name their senators or their governor & are thus, civically stupid. And I'm sorry, not sorry for labeling them
FOR LATER READ
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. You also have to give them a landing. It's tempting, I know, to take the pent up rage out on the only ones who respond to you (like @ProjectLincoln!) or Never Trumpers like @RadioFreeTom or @BillKristol bc they were "guilty" in the past or "waited too long" like @WalshFreedom


2. but at each of the big inflection moments where Trump lost support I've begged non-Rs to consider the fact that if Trump supporters see that they have nowhere to go, they will stay w the only people that DO accept them, & the price might actually be the collapse of democracy

3. which, until Weds, some people thought I was being hyperbolic about. I WASN'T! When the MAINSTREAM of a major political party divorces themselves from democratic norms & values & its supporters turn to a fictionalized world to justify their political party's actions, your

4. country's stability is at risk & one by-product of poor messaging on the Dem side is that extremism on the Right was able to not only take root in the Rep Party, it was able to take OVER the R party & become the party's mainstream- pinnacled w the presidential win via the EC

5. of Donald Trump, w/o the GOP paying any electoral price for their extremism. A healthy Rep Party might have found the courage to reject Trump's nomination & accept the short term costs that would have come w refusing to endorse his 2016 candidacy. But the Rep Party of 2016
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Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. Yes, Trump will claim to intend to target GOP senators up for reelection in '22 (like he did to Thune with Kristi Noem) if they don't join in @HawleyMO's sedition on Jan. 6, but the fact is, it's not clear whether Trump will be successful in ANY of those efforts & voting yes


2. to hedge off these threats will also create fissures & fractures for these incumbents among other elements of their party that could complicate their renominations. Indeed, what worries me the most about the potential for the country to slip into @anneapplebaum territory is

3. that what should be robust and intense push back from the party establishment against actually ending democracy- bc that's what Trump's request would do, if it was granted, is fairly muted. What we SHOULD be seeing from the mainstream of the party is threats to strip committee

4. assignments, chairs, privileges, even reelection funds, if anyone gets involved in this bullshit- in the House & the Senate, and the fact that you don't see it is more than a story of McConnell & McCarthy being afraid of Trump & his base. Its a story of receptivity, of the

5. level of receptivity the congressional and party leadership is dealing with both within the rank and file membership of the party and within its donor class, and THAT, my friends, is why you find me so concerned. That, and my decision to finally pull @anneapplebaum's book
TRUMP , CRYPTO
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. We've got @dananessel, killin' like usual on messaging w @HallieJackson on @MSNBC stating, objectively (accurately) that if SCOTUS were to grant the relief sought by TX & these other states & invalidate the votes of millions of Americans due to COMPLETELY FABRICATED claims of

2. of fraud, it would be the end of democracy in America. PERIOD. It would serve, functionally, as the moment of SC's succession, Dec 20, 1860 & also as a function of anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and TREASONOUS behavior post a presidential election they simply didn't want to

3. accept and spend 4 years living under. So instead, they "invalidated" it by refusing to continue to be part of the U.S. Here, if the Court was to play along (and to be crystal clear, the ONLY constitutional, pro-America position here is a full and unequivocal rejection of this

4. suit and frankly, a "supreme" legal tongue lashing at the ideologues that now control the modern Republican Party and by controlling it, have now forced the United States of America into its first constitutional crisis since the fields of her were strewn with bodies and blood

5. as she ripped herself apart to rid herself of her original sin of slavery, and in that process lost 620,000 Americans which at that time was 2% of the country's population. That Trump & his good squad fabricated a story of trucks in the night sneaking in 100Ks worth of ballots
GOVERNMENT
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. Yes, removing @DebHaalandNM from NM CD 1 intros risk on losing the seat, but maybe less now that I am connecting w @RepSeanMaloney.

The GOP will start w descriptive representation on this one. In other words, they will seek to run a Native American. If there IS a Republican

2. American active in politics that resides (or can be said to reside!) in CD 1, they will run that person. This is bc the GOP is esp good at the "biography" end of politics in these specials- IE: Mike Garcia in CA 25.

Ds *think* they're good too. But they're not! All D's needed

3. in CA 25's special election to ensure they held that seat was a qualified Latino nominee who passably personable. They literally GAVE that seat away under this myth that it would be too hard to beat Garcia when the whole election was a story of % R ballots relative to % D

4. ballots- as we ALL watched in the special election. And even with a candidate people told me was "flawed", "a mess" or even "crazy" Ds lost the damn seat again, sealed the loss in the fall general by 333 votes! If that doesn't hurt YJEM, it hurts ME. Makes me want to PUKE!!


5. And although white people, and most particularly white men, who are, in most cases, still in the positions that make the decisions for these things and THUS leave their orgs vulnerable to blind spots that they themselves have huge incentives to not get stuck on, bc like all
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🌹⚜️ ⚔️𝒮𝒽𝑒𝓀𝒽𝒾𝓃𝒶𝒽 ⚔️ ⚜️ ...
@PetahJane
A passage from a book I read in January this year by Megan Watterson: Mary Magdalene Revealed. I was flying to Perth, and it as my birthday (31st January - also her birthday) when I could feel myself activated by the Angels as I read this... given what I experienced on that

flight, so incredible. There was no one to meet me at the other end. I knew no one. I had to make my way to a friend's house where I was staying, and I spent my birthday entirely alone. I finished this book while I was alone with Her that day:

"If I could start over from the

beginning, I would start with the most invisible, the threads in the web of our ecosystem that are rarely named, much less revered. I would start by listing the trees, the flowers, the seeds that carry the light that give us light and that give us life, because its this we have

forgotten This is where our reverence has not yet reached. I would start with Frankincense and Myrrh, the Boswellia and Commiphora trees that made them. I would start with the honeybee and the sweet nectar it feeds on. I would start first with what goes unnoticed and with what we

haven't realised is the the most sacred amongst us. I would start with the names of everyone we have excluded: the street children, the millions slowly starving to death in plain daylight, I would start with the outsiders, the outcasts. I would start with every one of us who
BOOK
The Tycoon Mindset
The Tycoon Mindset
@tycoonmindset05
Zurich axioms - A book on Risk taking, by Max Gunther

@safiranand @jposhaughnessy @Vivek_Investor @BalakrishnanR @Covel @shyamsek @_anshulkhare

#investing
#Bookthread 👇🧵


Switzerland, a country with no strategic or geographical advantage, became the world’s banker by learning how to manage risk and facing it head on.

Zurich axioms are simple rules in order to learn about betting to win.

The First Major Axiom:
ON RISK

- Life is an adventure. In order to experience life to its full potential one has to take meaningful risk.. All Investments are speculation. Some people accept it. some don’t.
Always play for meaningful stakes.


- An investment with a small stake would not incur significant loss but will not generate any significant gain too. It should also not be so huge that loss would bankrupt a person.

- Resist the allure of diversification. The more one diversifies, the smaller the speculation gets. Through diversification all the losses and gains are likely to cancel out and no sizable difference is made.
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Patrick\U0001f578
Patrick🕸
@STILLTish
Another thread on Whittle as a companion to this thread.


Here Stephen makes an impassioned plea for the rights of trans people not to be sterilised. I agree. Does Stephen know that we are now, effectively, sterilising “transkids”? Is Stephen speaking out about this?


Yes. I agree you have the right to be parents. You know many “transmen” who have given birth. What will happen to the kids put on #PubertyBlockers followed by Cross-sex hormones?


Makes a clear statement activists did not want to campaign on “surgical status”. #LeaveNoOneBehind. Also that they have the right to bodily privacy,
Just trans folks? Do women have the right to bodily privacy?
Is this what passing looks like? Ignoring women?
Congratulations


An impassioned defence of the campaign for Self-Identification. Make no mistake this was a demand that women accept male-bodied women in single sex spaces. That was significant over-reach and a massive blunder. Women only spaces, regardless of surgery, is my stance now.
BOOK
1/2 Churchill 1/2 Chamberlain
1/2 Churchill 1/2 Cham...
@anabhu
One can make an analysis of how many right wing groups published books before Modi in power and after Modi in power.

Would Akhilesh Mishra, Abhinav Prakash and many others have got a chance to write in an English daily before?

The VC of JNU, IIAS, Nehru center, RRML are all


Right wingers.

This, while some in our own fold were criticizing and backstabbing an excellent book (disagreeable in places) by Harsh Madhusudhan and Rajeev Mantri.

There have been at least 4 lit fests and think tanks developed by right wing in six years. Pondy and +

Mangalore are the prime of them.

There are more media channels and more anchors in neutral channels backing the government then those against in six years.

We have at least three big lawyers: Harish Salve, Mahesh Jethmalani and Mukul Rahotgi fighting cases. We have won

more legal battles than not and are able to get many things done that would look impossible just two years ago.

Yes, textbooks, deregulation, harrasment and cabalism of the left including tech suppression and killing spree of fascistic governments remain and everything is not

a bed of roses. But what was a bed of roses for the opposition is not a bed of roses for them too.
Udhav would have loved to see Republic closed. It hasn't.. Mamata would love to have killed the whose who in BJP - Not possible.. She would not like big wigs of TMC join BJP - Not
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Abhishek Mukherjee
Abhishek Mukherjee
@ovshake42
I suppose a lot of us are still upset, so let me share something amusing.

This concerns this book, one that I had been unaware of until I came across a report by Andrew Lang in The Times.

In a piece in 1922, EV Lucas hailed the author as the Indian Nyren.
+


.@sumitganguly14 got a scan of the cover for me from an acquaintance in Lucknow.

I shall share some snippets here.

I shall share more if and when I ever get the entire book.

But first, a word or two on cricket books in India.
+

Calcutta Cricket Club Scores 1844-54, the first known book of scores outside the British Isles, was published in 1854.

In 1867 a Hindi coaching book was published in Agra. It was translated in Urdu in 1868.

In 1889, a Marathi coaching book was published in Baroda.
+

JM Framjee Patel's famous Stray Thoughts on Indian Cricket was published in 1905.

In between all this, this book came out in 1891. As you can see, it has a long name.

I shall refer to this as Cricket Guide.

Here are the promised excerpts, mostly taken from Lang's piece.
+

I am trying to add some comments. I also have some questions. See whether you can answer them.

Excerpt 1:
"Even those who are very good and noble turn so rash and inconsiderate at certain moments that their brains lose the balance and begin to take fallacious fancies."
+
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Again, at such a key moment in UK and at such high political levels, evidence of deep misunderstanding of EU: The PM is under pressure in some quarters to delay #Brexit vote to allow her first to “improve” deal in Brussels BUT EU is determined not to budge at this stage

2) All EU leaders watching tomorrow’s vote. Of course they want to avoid a no deal #Brexit BUT they feel the deal - so painfully negotiated between EU and UK - is too fresh to re-open. Clarifications, yes but fundamental renegotiations, no.

3) The EU’s international reputation as a tough deal-maker is at stake here too. If Brussels now suddenly “gives in” to U.K. on EU red lines (eg backstop) then that would weaken the EU’s reputation in future trade negotiations with other non EU countries

4) Also on backstop the EU is unlikely to cave in to favour a relationship with a leaving member state (UK) against the explicit wishes and ignoring the deep concerns of a continuing member: Ireland.

5) Both the EU and the PM signed up to a guarantee to protect the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. If either the U.K. or EU can leave the backstop unilaterally then this clearly is no longer a guarantee.
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THE EVOLUTION OF OUR NATIONAL FLAG (1857-1947)

The INDIAN NATIONAL FLAG is not just a flag! It's a testimony of patriotism and seamless sacrifice. A symbol representing one of the oldest civilizations on this planet.

Let's hope what happened yesterday never repeats!

(Thread)


After the revolt of 1857, the first Indian flag was designed. The design was based on western heraldic standards with "Union Jack" in the upper-left quadrant and a "Star of India" enclosed in the royal crown in the middle of the right half.(1)


The flag was a symbol of the direct imperial rule in India.(2)

In 1904 the first Indian flag which stood for India's independence from the British was devised. The design was provided by sister Nivedita, an Irish disciple of Swami Vivekananda.(3)


The flag was red and yellow with an image 'Vajra' (weapon of god Indra). The phrase 'Vande Mataram' was written in Bengali on it. The red colour and the yellow colour signified freedom and victory while the symbol of vajra stood for strength.(4)
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