1/ Political violence is NEVER an appropriate call to action. It is certainly not appropriate for a sitting United States Senator like @CoryBooker to call on Americans to head to the Capitol to "get up in the face of Congresspeople." #incitement

🚨🚨Clinton Foundation --> Solar winds connection

🧵Thread 👇👇👇

Clinton money runs very deep. They’ve been involved with elections since 2014.... How was the foundation allowed to fund "projects" dealing with elections even while Killary was running as president?

~1~The Clinton foundation is the source of many well funded activities that allows them to control everything. Barrick Gold Corp is relevant to #Solarwinds & the Delian Project to Dominion. I'll cover Barrick once I get to Newmont through UBS. We will focus on the Delian Project.

~2~“In 2014, Dominion Voting committed to providing emerging and post-conflict democracies with access to voting technology through its philanthropic support to the DELIAN Project, as many emerging democracies suffer from post-electoral violence due to the delay in the...

...publishing of election results. Over the next three years, Dominion Voting will support election technology pilots with donated Automated Voting Machines (AVM), providing an improved electoral process, and therefore safer

~3~Dominion was bought by Staple Street Capital in 2018.

Watching the Congress hearing on Gamestop/Robinhood/Reddit. I'll let people know if there's anything super interesting.

Right now, it seems like both Democrats and Republicans are sympathetic with average Americans rather than the companies. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

I kind of like Rep. Patrick McHenry's (R) take. Basically, he says it's dumb that it's easier to buy a lottery ticket than to invest.

Now, Congressional hearings in committees are often more about figuring out problems than attacking each other; I fully expect both Democrats and Republicans to have good insight here.

Rep. Al Green says that fines -have- to outweigh the benefits from breaking the law. I completely agree.

Here is the rough transcript and story of @realDonaldTrump's NI envoy, his meeting with @simoncoveney and the alleged threat of the EU using aviation as leverage over the UK if the Internal Market Bill led to a hard border on the island of Ireland.

2/ Mr Mulvaney was talking to the @iiea via video link.

Asked about the concerns in the US over the IMB, which breaches the NI Protocol, Mr Mulvaney said that in his meetings with all sides his worry was that the Bill could result in a border “by accident”.

3/ He told the presentation: “The best response I got on the matter was from Simon Coveney when I met with him in Dublin.

4/ “I said to him..., look, Simon, my fear is this: there’s a no deal Brexit. The IMB kicks in, the Brits don’t want to put up a border on the island, because they know what that means, the Irish don’t want to put up a border across the island because they know what that means.

5/ “The Europeans come in and say, well, if you’re not going to control the flow of goods from outside of the [European] Union [to] inside the Union, from Belfast to Dublin, for the sake of this discussion, we’re going to force you to ring the whole island of Ireland

Panic has always been a valuable political resource, but 2020 was the year our ruling class perfected the art of harvesting it, renewing it, and refining it to weapons-grade purity.

The bitter irony is that one reason panic became so easy for politicians and grifters to sow and reap is the great collapse in confidence caused by their own incompetence and greed over the past few decades. The political class found a way to profit from its own ineptitude.

If public confidence in government and major institutions had not been so thoroughly shaken by years of rampant corruption and incredibly expensive failures, perhaps the public would not have been panicked so easily - and profitably! - when the coronavirus struck.

Even as public confidence collapsed and paranoia grew, social media came along to make our society more twitchy and neurotic. We argue constantly about the spread of "disinformation," but not enough about how social media rewards irrationality and performative emotionalism.

Panic and social media both nourish the human herd instinct, and herds respond to loud noises, not reasonable arguments. Our society was panicking over far less important and dangerous things before Covid-19 arrived. We were panicking over some bizarre social issue every week.

PARDON ROULETTE

CHRISTIE: Donald, if you pardon your kids, they will be forced to testify against you. And they will. You've trained them to be selfish. You know them. They would bury you. You cannot be this stupid. It would be the dumbest thing you could do.

#PardonRoulette

PARDON ROULETTE

BARR: What idiot suggested you should pardon your kids? Was it Hannity? Don't tell me you're listening to Giuliani again? Hasn't he gotten you into enough trouble?

#PardonRoulette

PARDON ROULETTE

IVANKA: Daddy, don't pardon anyone who is not family. Not Manafort, not Giuliani and gosh, not that vile creep Stephen Miller. The more you pardon, the more there will be investigations. Keep pardons just within the family, Daddy.

#PardonRoulette

PARDON ROULETTE

IVANKA: Daddy, don't pardon the boys. Junior is an idiot. Eric is a moron and isn't even our blood. We all know his dad is Gary Busey, so fuck him. Just pardon me

#PardonRoulette

PARDON ROULETTE

TRUMP: What about Jared? Should I give him a pardon?

IVANKA: That's up to you, Daddy. Jared's a bit dense but loves you more than Beavis & Butt-Head, or Rent-A-Mom

#PardonRoulette

So I’ve been wanting to do this thread for a while and as usual, I’m hoping people who know more than me, academics especially, chime in. The question: when did “bipartisanship” become an important value in American politics?

Obviously members of opposing parties have always worked and passed things together when interests align. But when did collaboration become not only an actual policy goal in itself but a virtue worthy of extolling?

Consider this 1960 article from historian Henry Graff in the NYT on the incoming Kennedy admin. “In domestic matters, bipartisanship is, naturally, impossible and undesirable. Although some legislation will...enjoy bipartisan support, our politics remain by nature partisan.”

“Naturally!” And Graff evidently wasn’t alone. An earlier article that year from one Douglass Cater suggested ominously that divided government after the 1960 election would be not only undesirable for domestic policymaking, but a national security risk.

If you think these were fringe ideas, here’s a '68 NYT editorial on Nixon's election. “Except in time of war...history suggests that self conscious bipartisanship does not work very well in this country…a peacetime coalition could only serve to blur the lines of responsibility"

Thread 6: Brainwashing by Bannon

I mean literally brainwashing. Please see psychological and sociological theories. I mean literally building a cult - that CANNOT FIND THE TRUTH

It is like the Branch Davidians (mass suicide)

Steve Bannon built this cult for Trump

I mean literally brainwashing. MOST OF YOU have relatives or friends who are inside the cult. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot find the truth. They believe in their brainwashing.

PERFECTLY SANE even intelligent people can be brainwashed. It is not 'stupidity'

Yes MANY of the Trump #cult45 are gullible and some are mentally simple, many are lowly educated. BUT plenty of smart, educated, successful people have fallen into the cult - and like any cult - they cannot get out.

They cannot find the truth.

Steve Bannon, with Mercer money, and Putin's KGB brainwashing experts in Europe, built the best brainwashing machine ever designed, called Cambridge Analytica in 2016. They stole user info, and then used Facebook as the broadcast platform to poison nearly half of Americans

Most of the GOP voters were fed brainwashing lies with Steve Bannon / Cambridge Analytica developed activating phrases like Drain The Swap and Deep State. Yes. These were DESIGNED (with the help of KGB brainwashing experts) to poison Republican voters. Anyone who uses those..

1) Where we are: This is much, much bigger than a fraudulent election (it was) or rampant gubment tyrannical China Virus abuse (it is).

2) What we are facing has been building for a good 30 years.

3) I date it back to the GOP failure to defeat Clinton in the gubment shutdown.

4) If you went to public school, that would be the 1995 budget battle.

5) The brand new GOP Congress, with plenty of public support, failed to rein in a Clinton bloated budget.

6) It wasn't the numbers. Compared to today's deficits & debts, this was pocket change. Rather, this was the first time since the Cold War, which was a legit excuse for constant deficit spending, that Congress failed to do its MAIN constitutional duty--oversee spending.

7) No, this isn't a thread about deficits or debt. At present, I don't think those pose the biggest challenge to us, or even probably one of the top five.

8) Rather, this is about a deadly disease that hit DC & the patient refused to take any medicine for it.

9) The disease was the failure to address the major problems of the day, whether it was deficits, Islamic terrorism, the banking crisis, or trade.

10) Vote fraud & this frankenstein of an election is only the latest SYMPTOM of this much larger disease.

This might be a good time for folks to take a deep breath before interpreting election results. We don't know how much of victory was due to Biden's campaign message, Biden's record, Kamala's boost to the ticket, hatred for Trump, Trump errors on the campaign trail...

...the enduring appeal of Trumpism, the effectiveness of GOP campaigns for the Senate or the House, the mistakes made in Dem campaigns for the House, vice versa on both the preceding counts, the role of the GOP disinformation echosystem, COVID, the economy...

...mobilizing progressives, mobilizing centrists, racism, anti-racism, the movement to defund the police, the use of the word socialism, media blunders, voter ignorance, the impeachment process, corruption in DC, campaign finance abuse, the power of the establishment...

...the power of the Murdoch's, the hard right, the evangelicals, the Russians, the young, the old, whites, Latinos, blacks, women, men or any of the other countless factors (divine intervention, etc.) that have been cited in the media, by pols, on social media, in the days since.

For Dems, this is definitely not the time for finger pointing and division. There must be a laser-like focus on winning the run-offs in Georgia. There should be a widespread effort to mobilize the broadest possible support for the agenda of the Biden-Harris administration.

💥Ted Cruz, Ali Alexander, and CJ Pearson.

The road to the January 6th insurrection.

Thread

This thread involves 3 main players:
1)Ted Cruz
2)Ali Alexander
3)CJ Pearson.

The first two you are aware of but let me give you a brief overview to give some context.

You've all seen the Stop the Steal clip by now with Ali Alexander.

But what you might not have known is that the person standing next to Ali Alexander on stage with Sidney Powell & Lin Wood is a young republican by the name of:

CJ Pearson

But we'll get back to him soon.

First, let's talk about Ted Cruz.

Cruz was one of the leading & most influential figures responsible for the Jan 6th insurrection.

I won’t go too deep into Cruz as we generally know his story. But @donwinslow does a good job of representing his

The second player is Ali Alexander (Formerly Ali Abdul Razaq Akbar) but what you may not have known is that Ali has been in this game for a LONG time.

Alexander actually got his beginnings in 2007-2008 during the Tea Party movement to which he claims he co-founded.

I'm not surprised at 2021 inauguration invocation pick, Obammas 1st inauguration was by evangelic/Baptist, Rick Warren, even then identity in black politics represented had a omen emitted within. Some of smart black folks seen the signs in

Heres 2021's pick Leo Donovan, a Jesuit Catholic.
Do you know what Jesuit were famous for?

The jesuits and catholics in Georgetown.

Good morning, friends.

So here's a question: How should journalists deal with baseless claims undermining the integrity of the election, given that these claims are cited as the reason that the President is refusing to concede?

A thread: 1/

This moment poses a challenge in terms of avoiding amplifying false claims on the one hand, and reporting on Trump’s failure to concede on the other.

Some background and some guidelines from political scientists and scholars of journalism and democracy:

President Trump has lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College. And yet, the president and many of his Republican allies are refusing to accept the declared outcome of a free and fair election.

However, his refusal to concede should not come as a surprise.

The administration and GOP elites questioned the results before the polls had opened. They falsely claimed that there is significant & widespread voter fraud through illegal mail-in ballots, & had already stated that the election would be illegitimate if the president didn’t win.

📢The New York Times investigated these claims, speaking with election representatives from every state.

The result was consistent and unequivocal: There was no evidence of voter fraud in this election.

IMP 🚨 INVESTIGATION

India's lockdown was called world's largest, strictest etc. @ BBC, we wanted to know how the govt planned it.

So, what're we looking at?

Govt docs that reveal every department/agency who was consulted by PM Modi before imposing #lockdown.

#Thread

How did we access the docs? Well, for months my colleague Arjun Parmar and I filed RTI applications with the relevant govt depts - State & Centre. Hundreds in fact. We then filed appeals, then filed second appeals..phew!

Background - this day last year, India had less than 600 cases and nine deaths. Some European & Latin American nations (with way higher numbers) had imposed lockdowns.

China, with thousands of deaths and cases by March 2020, never imposed a national lockdown.

One more thing - India started monitoring and preparing it's response to coronavirus from January 8, 2020. It was repeatedly mentioned that none other than PM was personally leading the effort.

Let's start with what we've got now.

India's lockdown was imposed by an @ndmaindia order. Who heads NDMA? Prime Minister.

So we asked NDMA - who all were consulted before lockdown? Also, how many NDMA meetings did the PM attend? Their response.

NIL to both. Yes, NIL.

The votes are in! It looks like you want me to do a thread on monetizing your knowledge. There's quite a bit of ground to cover here, but I'm up for the challenge of doing it in a monster thread :)

So here we go: Monetizing Knowledge, from the ground up - the Thread. [1/39]

Let's start with the question of: What does it actually mean to "monetize your knowledge"?

There's two ways to go about this. The "simpler" one is to offer your knowledge as a service ("consulting"). If you know a lot about a particular problem area, you can sell your time.

But how do you accumulate this knowledge, and how do you know it's worth actual money?

I like to think there's a relatively simple formula for this, and comes down to doing the same thing over and over again: Solving problems.

In fact, you can think of it a little like mining.

We'll start with the problem. This can be almost anything - an obstacle, a bad situation, a shortcoming, the gap between how we want things to be and how they actually are.

If you can identify describe something in terms of a problem, you're already halfway to solving it.

For this to work, though, you have to pick a problem you're very interested in - because in order to level up, you're going to have to solve this problem *a lot*. As in, every day.

It could be anything from "how do I make this app suck less" to "how do I become a famous writer?"