The pandemic highlighted how decades of pushing for socialism have utterly destroyed our ability to measure costs against benefits and evaluate risk. We're down to people refusing to take vaccines until they're 100% effective and demands for lockdown until we have 0% coronavirus.

It's entirely reasonable to say Trump's election lawyers need to produce hard evidence to back up their sweeping allegations, PDQ.

It's absurd to expect them to do it live on a talk show, as if they were carrying Marsellus Wallace's magic glowing briefcase from Pulp Fiction.

Host: You say thousands of votes were switched by corrupt computer software. You need to prove it.

Sidney Powell: Of course. I have the proof right here.

[opens briefcase, golden light spills out]

Host: Is that...?

Powell: Yes.

Host: Wow. OK, you win. I'm sold.

There is no way the "evidence" of the most serious claims is something that can be dangled in front of cameras. There is no way that attempting to do so would convince anyone, nor should it. The evidence will be extensively evaluated by experts and presented to judges.

It's perfectly appropriate to say the clock is ticking and this evidence needs to be correctly presented in the proper venue very quickly. Treating it like prop comedy on a talk-show set or at a press conference isn't exactly going to make it look more serious and credible.

It's possible Trump's team sincerely believes they have ironclad evidence, but it doesn't pass muster with court analysts. In other words, they're not trying to scam anyone, but they're mistaken about the value of what they have. Their reputations would survive in that case.

Every crisis becomes a religion if it lasts long enough.

One factor in that transformation is the Beautiful Theory phenomenon: the power elite insists its remedies are logical and politically correct so they MUST work, even if the actual evidence shows they obviously don't.

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.

Political violence is always wrong and should never be tolerated from anyone. Once "protesters" threaten lives and property, their grievances and ideology should become absolutely irrelevant to the situation.

That is, obviously, not the country we live in.

Long ago, we had an attitude of zero tolerance for terrorism, "we do not negotiate with terrorists," etc. One reason for this was the implicit understanding that negotiating with terrorism legitimizes it. Violence becomes an instrument of politics.

Some of us warned all last year that treating violence as acceptable, even laudable, from SOME people would mainstream it and touch off an arms race. Everyone would start getting the idea that only groups with a demonstrated capacity for violence are taken seriously.

When violence becomes acceptable from one party and its clients, one ideology, it becomes an instrument of authoritarianism. That's why authoritarian regimes frequently have violent vigilante groups roaming the streets in addition to their vast security and military forces.

Iran, for example, has all sorts of heavily armed police and security forces, working for both its secular and theocratic governments, but it ALSO has ultra-violent "vigilante" groups indulged by the State whose "grievances" supposedly justify vandalism and murder.

The liberty and mobility granted to average people by cheap gasoline and home energy is absolutely infuriating to socialist central planners. They need you people to stop moving around so much. You keep scuttling their glorious five-year plans.

Count Giancarlo Cicogna was a member of the Ciga hotels clan. He was with Ghislaine Maxwell for 4 years. He was 'the man who moulded the Ghislaine we now see. He told her where to get her hair cut, and what to wear.'
https://t.co/XorCl9VKW6

There is a very Ghislaine like character named Madam Anais in the movie La Belle De Jour who runs a Brothel. The film was produced by Marina Cicogna.

Private View of 'Once Upon Time' an Exhibition of Photographs by Marina Cicogna Sponsored by Fiat at the Little Black Gallery,

My view Marina Cicogna looks like Dottie in the Disney Channel series WandaVision.

NY Times covered a story of Countess Marina Cicogna, a woman with a very intetesting life. I am sure she knows many secrets and that gives her power over people of influence.

We should stop confusing what someone was doing when we became aware of them with all they are capable of, interested in, or ever hope to be

Let folks have their many talents, interests and gifts. Life is far more fun with variety, loves.

A lot of folks have come to know me as an activist & I’m grateful that folks care to know me at all.

But I wasn’t born in 2014. I was a whole teacher, executive, policy person, speaker, arts and culture lover, reader, writer, woman of faith, fashion and more before 4 yrs ago 🤷🏾‍♀️

We rightfully complain that marginalized people are not allowed to be fully human.

But we internalize and transfer our oppression daily. It’s a smog. We all breathe it in & act it out.

And then tell WoC “girl ain’t you supposed to be a _______? Why you doing ____?”

Can I live?

And don’t go reading anything personal into this-this isn’t about me necessarily and it’s no subtweet (I try hard not to do that.)

I’ve just been observing that behavior more and more lately. Especially when it comes to marginalized folks.

Evolution should be our aspiration.

“Can’t knock the hustle” should be our anthem.

As long as someone isn’t bringing active and continual harm, why can’t they explore their many sides?

Nearly a year ago, the Tablighi Jamaat controversy took over India’s media. Around 3,500 foreign nationals had visited India to attend the Tablighi Jamaat event at the Nizamuddin Markaz Mosque in Delhi.

With the lockdown being announced on March 24, 2020, several attendees had moved to different parts of the country to attend smaller gatherings in local mosques.

Around 960 foreign nationals were held at quarantine and in states like UP, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, etc. were sent straight to prison.

There was an outpour of Anti-Muslim bigotry in much of Indian news media with this event where it ramped up its demonisation of the community.

For weeks, the attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat event were named the “super-spreaders” of COVID and in several cases, Maulana Mohammad Saad was called a terrorist and “the maulana of death”.

Overall I think Labour will be a bit disappointed with how the ‘relaunch’ has started. Labour have given themselves a mountain to climb anyway through a year of inaction but the speech today lacked coherence, purpose and distinction from the government.

Starmer is (funnily enough) making a lot of the same mistakes Corbyn made in 2019. He is listing a ‘bold’ set of policy proposals that come across as disjointed and lacking connection to Britain’s priorities.

The policies themselves were basically good, I wouldn’t argue against them. But I would cringe whenever Labour came out with spending proposal after spending proposal in 2019 without any rationale or connection to a larger economic strategy. That’s what Starmer did today.

The questions that voters will have about Starmer’s speech are the same ones that voters will have had about Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto: why are these policies your priority, how can we afford them and why aren’t we doing these already?

The first one needs to be answered by diagnosing Britain’s problems and their causes. He doesn’t have to diagnose all of them. For the purpose of today he could have picked three that feed off each other: inequality, stagnant income growth and stagnant productivity.