For anyone unsure about making @JoeBiden President & Commander-in-Chief, here's a real story about his excellent instincts as a manager.

On inauguration in 2009, @BarackObama gave Biden the biggest assignment of his life: Overseeing the hugest economic stimulus in US history.

With the economy in freefall, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided $787 billion for state/local support, infrastructure, energy independence - to put people back to work. The challenge was to spend that money quickly, but without fraud, waste, abuse. 2/11
President Obama made VP Biden responsible for overseeing the federal stimulus program. It's not common for a VP to be directly accountable for a high-stakes, high-risk government operation. But that was a signal of how important the effort was for the Administration. 3/11
To pull off a daunting mission, Biden did what a great manager should do: He hired a skilled and experienced team, set clear and measurable goals, delegated authority, invested significant time every week to the team & effort, and fostered a culture of accountability. 4/11
I saw it first-hand. As a Deputy CTO, I worked with the VP's ARRA oversight team on 3 elements - broadband stimulus (implemented by Dept of Commerce), smart grid upgrades (Dept of Energy), and electronic health records (HHS). 5/11
Biden's lead staffer for ARRA oversight was the incredibly gifted @EdDeSeve. He pulled together a tiny but extraordinarily hard-working, high-performing, no-drama team of government operations and budget nerds like his deputy, Frank DiGiammarino. They were relentless. 6/11
Biden got daily updates, conducted a weekly review, and led a weekly conf call with a rotating set of governors and mayors from both parties. He enforced a 24-hour rule, that any question from a Cabinet secretary, governor, or mayor be answered within a day. 7/11
Biden and his chief of staff @RonaldKlain backed Ed & the team at every turn, elevating him to the top layer of White House staff. I saw Ed's daily updates at Rahm Emanuel's early-morning senior staff meeting.

The VP's team established a Transparency Board of agency IGs. 8/11
They set up https://t.co/g2HnGMpEOJ - a system open to the public that could track every stimulus $ down to the sub-recipient level. The result was a massive economic stimulus effort that got deployed quickly, was transparent to the public, and was essentially scandal-free. 9/11
It's common wisdom that Senators don't make good managers. But @JoeBiden proved otherwise, and I saw up close the kind of operation he runs. He has excellent executive instincts and knows how to drive performance and accountability from the White House. 10/11
Joe Biden will make a great President, not just because of his decency and judgment. He'll need to revitalize a broken and demoralized Executive Branch at a moment when the nation desperately needs it to function well. As I've witnessed, he's just the person to do it. 11/11

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MDZS is laden with buddhist references. As a South Asian person, and history buff, it is so interesting to see how Buddhism, which originated from India, migrated, flourished & changed in the context of China. Here's some research (🙏🏼 @starkjeon for CN insight + citations)

1. LWJ’s sword Bichen ‘is likely an abbreviation for the term 躲避红尘 (duǒ bì hóng chén), which can be translated as such: 躲避: shunning or hiding away from 红尘 (worldly affairs; which is a buddhist teaching.) (
https://t.co/zF65W3roJe) (abbrev. TWX)

2. Sandu (三 毒), Jiang Cheng’s sword, refers to the three poisons (triviṣa) in Buddhism; desire (kāma-taṇhā), delusion (bhava-taṇhā) and hatred (vibhava-taṇhā).

These 3 poisons represent the roots of craving (tanha) and are the cause of Dukkha (suffering, pain) and thus result in rebirth.

Interesting that MXTX used this name for one of the characters who suffers, arguably, the worst of these three emotions.

3. The Qian kun purse “乾坤袋 (qián kūn dài) – can be called “Heaven and Earth” Pouch. In Buddhism, Maitreya (मैत्रेय) owns this to store items. It was believed that there was a mythical space inside the bag that could absorb the world.” (TWX)