THREAD: We have a historic, even generational opportunity ahead of us just 11 days from now. Let me outline it for you. I'm gonna try and make this non-partisan. I hope you don't judge me irretrievably naïve.

The fact is, much of what's going on in America today is unsustainable. Whether it's government debt, or higher education, climate, or income inequality, it seems pretty clear to just about everyone that if we stay on current trajectory, America is hosed.

I'm not speaking to or about any particular side although if you follow me you probably know where I'm coming from. But 11 days from now we can all collectively choose to keep doing what we're doing -- which means we'll keep getting what we got...

...or we can choose to take a deep breath, close our eyes for a second, and say, "It's time to change." Part of that means turning down the rhetoric. It means taking an inventory of what's broken and thinking hard about how -- together -- we can make things a little less bad.

It means thinking practically about what to do next, and recognizing that the time for maximalist thinking is over; fixing our country will take compromise. All sides will suffer some disappointment, that's how you know the deal was close as possible to fair.

#NHSwhitepaper Thread:

Contrary to some of the headlines, the reforms are NOT the
‘end of privatisation’

(Will explain below)

The white paper wants to reverse legislation that mandated competitive tendering, which meant every contract had to be put out ‘to the market’....

1/

Which was a nuisance
Created unnecessary beurocracy And wasted a lot of money

This legislation was brought in under Cameron’s coalition government

(Against the advice of the unions, health think tanks, royal colleges...basically everyone)

2/

THREAD: Last-Century thinking got humanity into a mess. It worked well though, just too well. Into the third decade of the new century and I am sad to see how little last century thinking is being named and challenged. 1/

OLD THINKING: Take that nature, use that nature. Same amount of land that we stated with, but going on four times the population and much soil erosion behind us. NEW THINKING: use it, put it back, regenerate it. 2/

OLD: Either you are good or bad. Promoted on almost every TV show. Reality is, we created a system and it grew and that system brings out the worst in us to an extent we have forgotten how to bring out the best in each other, almost. 3/

OLD: If you have money you should spend it on what you want. A few people had cars back in the 1920's. Now there are so many on the Earth that they alone can push the climate over the tipping point. NEW: Money should never give you the power and right to commit ecocide. 4/

OLD: the power in the economy is consumption. Using stuff up. Problem is, we are already using more stuff than our earth-society-earth can sustain. Successful ideas like that end badly when there is more human stuff on the earth than natural. 5/

Yesterday, as at 08:00am-09:00am, I left the residence of a family member and something pathetic happened when I was about getting home.
I was on a street closer to the junction when I suddenly heard a heavy sound. I ran towards the junction in few seconds and saw people...

gathered around a MAN. He just had an accident.

This man, who looks in his early, mid or late forties is soaked in blood. His right eyeball is almost entirely out of its SEAT, his nose isn't clearly seen because thick blood had drenched it, half his head was full of blood...

& more kept gushing off his head towards the ground. This MAN'S left leg has broken and his wrist crushed and was bruised too.
When I got to this place, over 60-100 humans gathered around him and began pitying him. The MAN roared, "please, I need water, I need water, I'm dying"..

Blood kept gushing off his head.
The statement he made echoed into me when I got there. I ran Helter skelter in search of water and luckily I got. I was about fetching it when those who I met gathering around the man shouted, "NOBODY should give him water, it's dangerous for...

...him." I dropped the bowl, I was perplexed!
I ran towards him, now, he's soaked in blood, the ground was well soaked too. The MAN began, "I'm dying, someone should please help me, I'm dying, don't watch me please, please, this is, please..."
I didn't make him finish his mixed..

My husband’s family history is complicated (on both side), to say the least.

Recently, he grew curious and wanted to learn more about his maternal grandfather—which was quite a force of nature.

Here’s a pretty long thread ⬇️

His maternal great grandfather was from a samurai family, so wealthy enough at the time to study at Todai and to become a judge. He got married, had 2 sons and then found nothing better to do than abandoned wife & kids to ran with a mistress and go do business in Manchuria.

Suffering from financial hardship, his ex-wife (from a merchant family) had to sell one of her son to another family.

She kept my husband’s grandfather with her, and remarried.

His grandfather received some good education, luckily, and studied at Meiji university.

The grandfather dreamt of becoming a prosecutor. But when he graduated, all the exams got cancelled—Japan was at war and the administration had no time to overview tests. He missed his one chance, and had to settle with becoming a public servant.

He married another descendant of a samurai family—my husband’s grandmother, an admirable lady and a nurse who had come from Gifu to Tokyo at 18.

They both were hardworking folks, who came from wealthy families who lost all their wealth in a fast changing world.

It’s time to do a thread about @NeilDotObrien. This arrogant, self-serving, narcissistic, devoid of empathy and pathetic excuse for a human being, continues to spout nonsense on his Twitter page instead of doing his actual job as an MP.

MP’s like @NeilDotObrien do not care that lockdown measures across the developed world, will push an extra 150+ million people into absolute poverty, which will mean them starving to death over the next 10 years. He doesn’t care if people can’t eat, because it doesn’t affect him.

MP’s like @NeilDotObrien don’t care about the millions pushed into unemployment; the millions of small and medium sized businesses going bankrupt; entire family businesses seeing decades of their hard work disappear overnight due to avoidable lockdown measures.

MP’s like @NeilDotObrien earn a salary of £81,932, more than £50k above the national average salary. He is not affected by a loss of income, had his wages reduced to 80% on furlough or worried where his next pay cheque will come from. Why? Because he doesn’t care.

MP’s like @NeilDotObrien don’t care that we have accrued the biggest public debt since WW2, and that these measures are actively destroying a once sound economy which will lead to the greatest economic depression since The Great Frost of 1709.

New from me.

Alberta is exploring the idea of establishing a provincial police force. What are the motivations behind this move, how much is it going to cost, and do Albertans even want it?

#yeg #ableg

Alberta currently pays $262.4 million for its RCMP service, with the feds paying $112.4 million annually in a 70-30 split. This is the prime concern for Alberta’s small towns and cities.

“We could be saddled with some immense costs going forward without federal contributions.”

Dr. Laura Huey, a criminologist at the University of Western Ontario, estimates the cost is likely to be in the billions.

"I’m not convinced necessarily that people understand and appreciate how enormous those costs are, and that those costs are ongoing and forever.”

In the end, it all comes down to cost versus control, Dr. Huey argues. But with increased control comes the risk of politicization, an issue that concerns NDP Justice critic Irfan Sabir.

“I think the province shouldn’t be controlling directly how these police forces operate."

So why is Alberta pursuing this? Autonomy from Ottawa seems to be the largest driving factor.

Derek Fildebrandt, former MLA for Strathmore-Brooks and publisher of the Western Standard, suggests the UCP are in search of a “legacy project” to hang its hat on. #ableg

@ondakondratiev @PlzBeSensible @mattyglesias Okay, as promised, some links. @Burgerfacemcta1

This is from Canada:

@PlzBeSensible @mattyglesias @Burgerfacemcta1 This was in Psychiatric Times:

@PlzBeSensible @mattyglesias @Burgerfacemcta1 This is from a uni counseling center, and is a good overview of gendered victim-blaming for male victims:

@PlzBeSensible @mattyglesias @Burgerfacemcta1 This is tangentially about male victims of sex crimes and discusses gendered bonding and what men can admit.

@PlzBeSensible @mattyglesias @Burgerfacemcta1 Finally, RAINN has a summary, similar in theme to the UTK counseling center above:

A little thread about language and #HumanRights...

Recently I shared an NHS letter (not mine) that started with the line 'The vast majority of babies are normal.' It meant 'normal' as opposed to babies born with particular conditions, including #DownsSyndrome

Regularly hearing negative language about your child is emotionally wearing. And surprisingly hard to challenge in the moment (for me anyway... which is possibly why I choose to try and challenge it by writing about it).

A fortnight before Rosa was born, a consultant explained the problem they'd spotted with her digestive system, and then went on to say "...and now I have to say something to you that's not very nice... this condition is often associated with Down's syndrome."

In hospital, nearly three weeks after Rosa was born a nurse repeatedly told me what my baby wouldn't do compared to a "normal baby".

In my first conversation with the Health Visitor her opening question was "Did you know she was going to be Downs?"

https://t.co/gfXjaJF2tc New study re the views of nonautistic people towards autistic individuals. The aim - to move away from negative stereotypes.
But the 'sample fictional autistic person' is a white male who likes to only talk about fantasy fiction (LOTR).
Er.../

OK, that describes about 1% of autistic people.
And it exactly matches the stereotype myth that all autistic people are like this.
But...if the aim is to improve how people respond to autistic people...how does this fictional character help?/

My concern is that the more we focus on that 1%, the more we a) forget the other 99% exist and b) the more we set people up to fail, on encountering us. I cannot begin to tell you how confused people are that I'm not a young male who can only talk about Sci-Fi & IT, for example/

...and teaching people how to think positive thoughts about a white male fantasy-fiction-fan doesn't get them anywhere when asked to collaborate with a middle aged gay mum. Let alone one who can manage a decent chat on almost any standard topic on earth/

As it happens, I can chat about LOTR, and IT. But probably no more than anyone else on the street.
If we're serious about improving autistic lives, we need to be serious about diversity.

Normally at this time of year, I get to tout the successes we’ve enjoyed in #Chattanooga in the past 12 months, like initiatives that help our families, ribbon cuttings for park improvements, and economic development deals that bring good jobs.

This year has been different. 1/

As we enter 2021, it is also important to count our blessings. This painful, strange year, for example, has indeed brought renewed clarity to a lot of what is truly important. 2/

I’m thinking about the nurses, doctors, home healthcare staff, and medical providers who have been working harder than ever to care for COVID-19 patients and others. Every day, we witness their sacrifice and service. 3/

I’m thinking also about the police, firefighters, public works employees, teachers, child care workers, and other truly essential personnel who have shown unrelenting dedication to keeping us safe and educating our young people against truly staggering odds. 4/

The pandemic has been brutal on our small businesses and Chattanoogans already living on the edge. I appreciate our Economic & Community Development Dept giving rent and utility assistance and other kinds of support to the business owners and employees who need it the most. 5/

I'm feeling kind of bored and at loose ends, so I'm going to start serializing, in tweets, my 2006 ~10,000 word "Training Manual for the New American Left"

Here goes:

1. The following might be considered as a treatise on a strategy or for progressives in coming years. It is not at all necessary for those reading the following to agree with every point made in the document as long as there is acceptance of several underlying premises:

2. The new conservative right has achieved at least partial control of many of the significant institutions in American society, especially in politics, media, and to a lesser extent in business and - increasingly - in the area of religion.

3. Meanwhile, political progressives have failed to effectively defend enlightenment values and mainstream institutions from a sustained attack that has been ongoing now for several decades, and...

4. progressives have almost wholly missed the parallel construction, by the new American right - largely now the Christian and religious right - of an entire parallel nation, a shadow nation with its own alternate institutions, culture, assumptions, and even versions of history..

(1/35) A thread about growing up as a gay kid in a Christian fundamentalist right-wing homeschooling family in the 1990s, and how I interpret today's political culture in light of those experiences.

Not all tweets are numbered but this is where it's going.
Tweets 3-9 "biblical law" and stoning gay people
Tweets 10-17 coming out in the evangelical church
Tweets 18-29 white-washing confederate history
Tweets 30-35 Scopes in modern politics & education

I grew up with R. J. Rushdoony on the bookshelf, an influential proponent of homeschooling who sought to instill Christian dominion in America. Reading @JulieIngersoll's excellent book last weekend inspired me to share how his ideology impacted my life. @C_Stroop @RLStollar

Ingersoll wrote in her 2015 book about how Rushdoony "advocated the death penalty for gays and incorrigible teens" (xiii). I made the same point in 2009, junior year of college, when I wrote an essay called "Education, the State, and the Fight to Take Back America."

In that 2009 essay, I wrote how Rushdoony promoted a "return to Biblical law, which he said should govern all nations, especially America" and how that law "would even apply the death penalty to homosexuals or rebellious children" (18). I wrote that line based on 2 sources:

Diversity is America's greatest strength 🇺🇸

Diversity is Ireland's greatest strength 🇮🇪

Diversity is Germany's greatest strength 🇩🇪

Diversity is Australia's greatest strength 🇦🇺

Diversity is Belgium's greatest strength 🇧🇪

My dear law students, I know that the events in Brisbane are at the top of your minds, so I will jump on the bandwagon and talk about one aspect of this wonderful test series that appealed to me. Right through the series, we have seen the role of fortune in a player’s success.

Rishabh Pant escaped a stumping before he went on to win the game for India in Brisbane. In Melbourne, Ajinkya Rahane was dropped before he went on to make a hundred. But is it not the case that we give these players credit for their achievements despite their fortune?

We also hold these players responsible even if what happened was their misfortune. India’s 36 in Adelaide was a collective failure no doubt but it was also a perfect cocktail of bad luck-pitch, conditions, and all the Australian bowlers managing to get their line & length right.

That’s test cricket, but we might say that’s life in general. Luck, good and bad, plays an important role in how the world judges us. We might go further and say that the law reflects life in this respect.

When I look at the way the law apportions responsibility, I am amazed that there is widespread acceptance of the system. Take the law of negligence that all of you study in the first year. The law of negligence establishes an objective standard of care.

@ThyConsigliori

This is not in response to your work, Pat  but...

this is well, ummm

MY FIRST THREAD😳

I am posting  what I sent to my Reps in D.C., in hopes that others will follow. The time is now or never to say HEAR ME!

(1)To: (my reps),

It is your duty to stand and represent, as our reps, to not only vote to elect Trump, but also with your objections to electors that are falsely claimed for Biden. 

You are bound by the constitution to uphold what the maj. of YOUR constituents

2. believe to be true.

(A)That Donald J. Trump won this election in a grand way and should be inaugurated on Jan. 20. 2021. 

(B)That Biden electors in certain states are falsely claimed by the use of lawlessness and deception.

(3) As a public servant it is your duty, first and foremost, to represent your constituents. You are our voice in Washington and our voice needs to be heard. We know much about what happened in this election, and on what we don't know, there are very strong

(4) suggestions and unexplained anomalies. If you don't stand up to fight for America herself today, to fight for the truth to be uncovered, then you will never have this chance again. Even if you have been "promised" a "bright future". To surrender today only means one thing.