Every argument against raising the minimum wage involves pointing to some other part of our broken system as if it were a beloved cultural treasure to defend rather than just the next unacceptable thing that needs fixing.
They can't risk exposing the truth that you can actually just give people the money they need and nothing will break.
Is this obvious, it feels obvious.
More from A.R. Moxon
As many as 140 House Republicans and at least one GOP Senator will object to Biden's electors.
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 1, 2021
As @ChrisMurphyCT told me, it's only a matter of time until Rs steal an election.
\u201cThis party has a whole bunch of enemies of democracy inside its top ranks."https://t.co/FlhH0F1SXH
This isn't a failed coup. This is a *continuous* coup that stretches back years. It includes Gingrich's scorched earth methods, Bush v Gore, the politicizing of the Bush DoJ, the judicial obstructionism and nullification of the McConnell Senate, and the entire Trump presidency.
It includes decades of tortured racist gerrymandering and disenfranchisement, Citizens United, the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, PACs, and deliberately colluding with foreign powers.
This isn't a failed coup. This is a *continuous* coup that stretches back years.
The Republican Party is not participating in democracy. They are quite obviously an organization dedicated to the destruction and overthrow of the government of the U.S. as we know it, and should be treated as such.
There are no legitimate Republican office-holders.
I think there's a distinction to be made. Democrats are often weak/ineffective, and many are complicit because they're those things by choice—but institutionally they aren't authoritarian, and they aren't fascist. They're a corporatist conservative party.
To what extent is the legitimacy of Democratic leadership also questionable? If I have a friend who tells me he\u2019ll help protect me from a bully we both identify, and then steps out of the way of every punch headed for me, don\u2019t I just have two bullies with extra steps?
— Duke \u201cthiiirdperson\u201d Greene (@DukeGreene) January 1, 2021
The reason is, it's an example of this magic trick, the oldest trick in the book.
It's a competition between what I call compass statements. And it matters.
There\u2019s a magic trick that\u2019s going to get played on us every day during the 2020 election cycle. It\u2019s a fairly simple trick, once you see it.
— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) February 17, 2019
I\u2019d like to talk about leadership and governance.
And the compass, the navigation, the travel, and the corrections.
(thread)
There are a lot of people who think "defund the police" is a bad slogan.
But it's a directional intention. A compass statement.
The real effect of calling it a bad slogan, whether or not intentional (but usually intentional), is to reduce a compass statement down to a slogan.
Whenever there is a real problem and a clear solution, there will be people who benefit from the problem and therefore oppose the solution in a variety of ways.
And this is true of any real problem, not just the problem of lawless militarized white supremacist police.
There are people who oppose it directly using a wide variety of tactics, one of which is misconstruing anything—quite literally anything—said by those who propose solutions—any solutions.
They'd appreciate it if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion.
The reason they'd appreciate if if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion is, it wastes time that could have been spend on the solution trying to persuade them, with different arguments and metaphors or solutions.
Which they intend to misconstrue.
"If they start canceling these American presidents, they're gonna come after Bible characters next. Mark my words" -- Fox News "news side" host Bill Hemmer pic.twitter.com/qTPV0NERv8
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 19, 2021
Imagine if Christians actually sacrificed themselves for the good of those they considered their enemies, with no thought of any recompense or reward, but only to honor the essential humanity of all people.
Imagine if Christians sold all their possessions and gave it to the poor.
Imagine if they relentlessly stood up for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.
Imagine if they worshipped a God whose response to political power was to reject it.
Or cancelled all debt owed them?
Imagine if the primary orientation of Christians was what others needed, not what they deserved.
Imagine Christians with no interest in protecting what they had.
Imagine Christians who made room for other beliefs, and honored the truths they found there.
Imagine Christians who saved their forgiveness and mercy for others, rather than saving it for themselves.
Whose empathy went first to the abused, not the abuser.
Who didn't see tax as theft; who didn't need to control distribution of public good to the deserving.
*Ossoff and Warnock win handily*
Pundits: Ah. Nevertheless,
Congressional Republicans balk at Joe Biden\u2019s $1.9 trillion relief plan, complicating push for quick passage https://t.co/npXogXvBHM
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 15, 2021
The only way political reporting in this country makes sense is if you understand that the almost universal, almost subconscious default assumption: that conservative white people are the protagonists of any story that's being told, no matter the facts of the story.
Just do the obvious and necessary good things and let the horrid evil people who hate good things squeal and cry about it forever.
I really need Democrats who will state the clear and obvious truth, which is that Republicans are our enemies, because they insist on attacking the very idea of a shared society and are more than happy to use violence to do it, which is the very definition of an enemy.
You can't make people who want to kill you not be your enemies even if you wish they'd be your friend.
They can stop trying to kill you, but until that happens they are your enemy, and acknowledging that fact isn't what makes that fact true.
More from Society
Ready?
Create a private foundation and give it all away. 1/
Let's stipulate first that lottery winners often have a hard time. Being publicly identified makes you a target for "friends" and "family" who want your money, as well as for non-family grifters and con men. 2/
The stress can be damaging, even deadly, and Uncle Sam takes his huge cut. Plus, having a big pool of disposable income can be irresistible to people not accustomed to managing wealth. https://t.co/fiHsuJyZwz 3/
Meanwhile, the private foundation is as close as we come to Downton Abbey and the landed aristocracy in this country. It's a largely untaxed pot of money that grows significantly over time, and those who control them tend to entrench their own privileges and those of their kin. 4
Here's how it works for a big lotto winner:
1. Win the prize.
2. Announce that you are donating it to the YOUR NAME HERE Family Foundation.
3. Receive massive plaudits in the press. You will be a folk hero for this decision.
4. Appoint only trusted friends/family to board. 5/
these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.
this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.
let's look.
above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.
we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.
this is devastating to the case for NPI.
clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.
barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.
this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.
there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.
this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.
everyone got the same R
this methodology is a little complex, so let me explain what i did.
— el gato malo (@boriquagato) May 30, 2020
a few EU countries provide real day of death data. this lets us plot meaningful curves to show rate of disease change.
what struck me is how similar all the curves were.
everyone got the same shape. pic.twitter.com/bN0hILzoSl
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Where to begin?
So our new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was "longtime lawyer and confidant of...Robert Maxwell," Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad.
"Pisar was one of the last people to speak to Maxwell, by phone, probably an hour before the chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers fell off his luxury yacht the Lady Ghislaine on 5 November, 1991." https://t.co/DAEgchNyTP
OK, so that's just a coincidence. Moving on, Anthony Blinken "attended the prestigious Dalton School in New York City"...wait, what? https://t.co/DnE6AvHmJg
Dalton School...Dalton School...rings a
Oh that's right.
The dad of the U.S. Attorney General under both George W. Bush & Donald Trump, William Barr, was headmaster of the Dalton School.
Donald Barr was also quite a
Donald Barr had a way with words. pic.twitter.com/JdRBwXPhJn
— Rudy Havenstein, listening to Nas all day. (@RudyHavenstein) September 17, 2020
I'm not going to even mention that Blinken's stepdad Sam Pisar's name was in Epstein's "black book."
Lots of names in that book. I mean, for example, Cuomo, Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen - all in that book, and their reputations are spotless.
Who are these chuds?
Patriot Front broke away from white nationalist org Vanguard America following #unitetheright in #charlottesville after James Alex Fields was seen with a VA shield before driving his car into a crowd, murdering Heather Heyer & injuring dozens of others
Syed Robbie Javid a.k.a. Sayed Robbie Javid or Robbie Javid of Alexandria,
Happy Monday everyone :-) Let's ring in September by reacquainting ourselves with Virginia neo-Nazi and NSC Dixie affiliate Sayed "Robbie" Javid, now known by "Reform the States". Robbie is an explicitly genocidal neo-Nazi, so lets get to know him a bit better!
— Garfield but Anti-Fascist (@AntifaGarfield) August 31, 2020
CW on this thread pic.twitter.com/3gzxrIo9HD
Antoine Bernard Renard (a.k.a. “Charlemagne MD” on Discord) from Rockville, MD.
https://t.co/ykEjdZFDi6
Brandon Troy Higgs, 25, from Reisterstown,