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I think there is a good fucking reason why JOSH HAWLEY has been pushing the fairness doctrine but for social media. How can anyone propose government intervention into what kind of politics gets oxygen when the majority of the House GOP voted the way they did yesterday?


He knows what he is proposing. He knows it is a backdoor. He knows it can entrench and promote white supremacist fascist propaganda forever. He is counting on there being a backdoor when he takes the presidency.

Look at all the calls to police the social media companies for “bias” against conservatives. Look how it propped up the kind of speech that took us to yesterday. “Fairness” and “political neutrality” were euphemisms for forcing platforms to carry propaganda and incitement.

CDA 230 is a sideshow but it’s not an empty one.

There’s a lot of good-hearted and intelligent people who are going to fall for this shit in the coming days. Do not forget where Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have stood on 230, fairness doctrine, and the like. Do not forget who they were when they took their masks off yesterday.
Here's a thread of all of @LLinWood's recent 🔥 tweets for your safe keeping.
I want to call out this particular point in my larger tweetstorm, because it sorta maps onto a dumb talking point from the left: "The government can borrow and spend any amount we want. American *can't* have a Greek-style debt crisis, because we borrow in our own currency!"


My right-wing followers, of course, understand why this won't fly: America borrowing in dollars, and under US law rather than some neutral third country, is not a law of nature. People with money could easily decide it was too risky to make us dollar-denominated loans.

(Or at least, at any price we'd want to pay.)

What would make them decide this? The fastest way would be for America to borrow a metric crap ton of money, and then default or let inflation eat away the value of our loans so we're repaying pennies on the dollar in real terms.

And since the "America can't have Greek-style debt crisis" talking point is genreallly only uttered by people who are urgin gus to do exactly the sort of thing that make it more likely we'll have trouble borrowing money in dollars, this is just deeply, deeply silly.

I mean it would probably work for a while--as Adam Smith said, "There's a lot of ruin in a nation". I am prepared to concede that the natural stopping point of this binge might be quite a few years away. I only say there is some stopping point.
Dear @solomon_rep,

I saw saw the proposed bill you presented at @HouseNGR. My question is simple: How is this bill going to change the ineffectiveness of the LGA? How will further disempowerment of the LGA get it closer to the people?


Has the @HouseNGR ever challenged State Gvnors for not releasing funds to their LGA? If Gvnors do not give the funds that a constitutionally the right of the LGA, how then do you think they will fund it when it isn't a constitutional tier of Govt? These should be how we think

We should ask questions first when a problem exists, after which we can investigate one state in each region, then you have the appropriate committee brainstorm on d best cause for action that gets governance to the people. This eliminates any short sightedness in pushing a bill

Has d LGA elections been a reflection of the people's will? Why is the LGA election held by the SEC rather than by INEC? Why do we have all LGA in a state like Lagos owning a broom? Similarly some states having most LGA if not all using an umbrella? We should ask these questions

This brings me to the real reason why the LGA has continues to fail.

It has fail mainly because "The State Joint Local Government Account(SJLGA)"

When the LGA has revenue in its jurisdiction but the state govt fight them over jurisdiction. They can't get their own IGR.
This issue is, appropriately, contentious. As a vaccinologist - & citizen & relative of people in at-risk groups - I fully support the UK decision to increase dose intervals of both our Ox/AZ product and the Pfizer product. I'd happily receive either with a >8w gap. Here's why 🧵


For the Ox/AZ vaccine, it's fairly simple. The trial demonstrated efficacy at a range of dose intervals. Antibody responses after the boost were significantly stronger with longer intervals - see table

(so in response to @drmarkporter's point, higher immune responses with a longer interval is proven & now public. I haven't seen a similar analysis for efficacy against disease but the data exists and I suspect the regulators & JCVI committee have)

For Pfizer, there isn't direct evidence of efficacy with a >3wk interval. But as widely publicised, efficacy in the period from 14 days after first dose to 21 days is high.


Can we extrapolate from this to a longer interval? It's a judgment call. On one hand is evidence-based medicine's scepticism of anything not directly proven 'beyond reasonable doubt' in an RCT; on the other is a 'balance of probabilities' approach based upon the biology.
NEW
Boris Johnson says 1.3m people have been vaccinated across UK, 1.1m in England.

650,000 of them are over-80 which is 23% of that cohort.

DAILY UPDATES ON VACCINATION FIGURES ARE COMING FROM MONDAY!

It's @olyduff wot won it.


PM says there are 107 hospital hubs open for vaccinations now, plus 595 GP-led sites. This week another 100 hubs are coming on stream and 180 GP sites - next week the first seven mass vaccination centres open in stadiums and exhibition centres.

NHS refusing to give out the locations of the seven new mass vaccination centres 🤔