The Democrats are at least two parties. The progressive wing of the party (which is by no means unified) and the finance wing of the party, which is also the party leadership.

1/

During the leadership race, the progressive wing was represented by @SenSanders and @SenWarren; the former wants to minimize the role of markets in our lives, the latter wants to redeem markets by regulating them. It's a distinction with a difference, but I donated to both.

2/

Both wings of the party have prominent representatives in Congress; Sandersism are most visibly associated with @AOC (whom I donated to) and Warrenism is embodied by @RepKatiePorter (likewise), who was also one of Warren's law school proteges.

3/

Porter is a force of nature. She is infamous - and celebrated - for her brutal, no-holds-barred questioning of both corporate and administration witnesses, using a white-board to pin them down and eviscerating any attempts at bullshittery.

4/

This isn't just about getting facts into the record (though, she is SO GOOD at getting facts into the record!), it's also about effecting change, like when she single-handedly cornered the CDC's chief into guaranteeing universal, free covid

1/18 How Flare makes you richer by encouraging participation in the network, making it better over time.

(Video version @ https://t.co/KffCtIVVlo)

A thread. 👇

2/18 Imagine you lived in a country with a really high inflation rate, say 10%. That would be awful wouldn't it? Every year your money would be worth 10% less, so you'd have to hustle to earn at least 10% more each year just to break even.

3/18 But what if this country paid you to vote? Every month there was some kind of election, and if you participated by voting, you would get paid. Participating in all of the elections was enough to not only offset the 10% inflation, but get you a bit more buying power.

4/18 That's a pretty cool way to encourage people's participation in the democracy, right? But it wouldn't necessarily make the country better. A lot of people would probably just vote for anybody so they could get the reward and go home.

5/18 But what if the reward only went to the people who voted for the people that were most likely the best candidates? The people who got the most votes in the end are (democratically speaking) the best, and if you voted for one of THOSE people you'd get the reward.

If you haven't been paying attention, China and several other countries attempted to overthrow the American elections. China used proceeds from the US trade deficit to purchase influence in the very heart of the US Government, and battleground state governments. Trump has all..

Last talk about Securing Democracy at #enigma2021: @jackhcable speaking about "THE FULL STACK PROBLEM OF ELECTION

Let's imagine that elections use all the security measures security people have been advocating: risk-limiting audits, paper ballots, etc. Would people trust the elections more?

Jack would argue no. Most people don't understand this stuff and most of the claims people are making can't be disproven. And are massively bogus already.

Georgia did a full recount on paper ballots and it very much didn't stop people from doubting the election!

Are election security results in vain? The point of election security is to convince the loser they lost.

No! Have to focus on the whole stack, from election infrastructure to campaigns to people and mis/dis-informaton

One takeaway from the talk: the parts of the stack must work in tandem. Can't fight misinformation in a vacuum, but must build on other election security measures.

President elect Joe Biden, please do not appoint any members of EDGE, the John Brockman nonprofit that laundered Jeffrey Epstein’s money and reputation, to positions in the new administration. No associates or allies of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in public office.

One name already out there. It’s breaking our hearts.

THREAD

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have taken the decision to resign from the SNP.

I cannot in good faith ask people to vote SNP in the upcoming Holyrood elections. Those with the ability to make a difference, and make positive change have stood by and done nothing

1. I have tried to reconcile myself many times to staying in on the basis of wholly good organisations such as @YSINational, @SNPStudents and @OutForIndy. However, I have seen for myself the number of times that these organisations have been ignored.

2. However, every time these people try to do anything to advance equality, they have been left empty handed while TERFs have been pandered to.

3. In the 4 years I was in the SNP, I have met a whole host of good people trying to do good things. However, I cannot in particular feel that I can in good faith stand in the same organisation as those who want to roll back equality, and intimidate those who disagree.

4. I joined the SNP because I thought that I could advance my vision of independence. However, more and more it has dawned on me that the egalitarian Scotland that I want to see is not something that I will ever get from the SNP.

The errant Christian participation in the Capitol insurrection has its roots in the apocalyptic craziness espoused by the likes of the late Hal Lindsey and Tim Lahaye. Their 'end of the world' mania misled many, laying the foundation for conspiracy theories...

... and the horrid view of the civil government so many trapped in the maze of this nonsense espouse. In an odd-couple marriage, Christian post-millennialism was then married this movement to a 'save America', all in the name of a mythical 'lost' Christian America and hopes for a

... future Christianized state, a theocracy in the Christian sense. Opposition to Christian positions on moral issues was equated w/ opposition to God. How? Paul Weyrich and the Reagan-era GOP saw this as an opening to win the Evangelical vote for themselves & beat Carter in 1980

EVs had voted for Carter in large numbers in 1976, Carter identifying with them as a Baptist and Sunday School teacher, a humble, gracious, country boy. The GOP wrangled that support to itself by taking up the fearful millennialism of the EVs and making the Democrats...

... an embodiment of the Beast of Revelation. American could be a Christian Republic, saved from evil - from the Democrats in particular - and, later, from the swamp, the deep state, or whatever label worked best. Because a majority of people would never accept these wild views

Andy Ngo thinks Antifa are on a level with the Nazis in terms of wanton violence. Furthermore, he says that 'even the Nazis knew to cover their tracks' and that we didn't know about the Holocaust until afterwards.

Wrong, and offensive on almost every level.

Violence had been building for years prior to the Nazis assuming power, and much of it was instigated by the SA.

In 1932 for example, 105 people died in clashes between SA and opposing groups in Prussia alone - that's one region.

SA activity - marching through 'red' neighbourhoods and fighting those who opposed them was a deliberate strategy. The spectacle of violence and the implied 'restoral of order' was the point.

Just think of how Horst Wessel was remembered following his death in 1930. He was turned into a martyr who fell 'bravely in battle' against the Bolsheviks. Violence was inherent to the message - a clash between forces for the future of Germany.

During his time as SA leader in Berlin, Goebbels worked on a strategy of provocation that almost always ended in violence, a form of trolling that would always provide the opportunity for a brawl and the implication that a menace had been dealt with.

(Sorry, long, rambling, unthought-out thread here) I've lost count of the amount of times I have been proud to call myself an Unioner, and of their commitment to direct, and often local action instead of parrotting nebulous and often ultimately meaningless phrases.

I know personally people at the club who take very seriously their commitment to eradicating racism from the club, as well as from football itself. But I have seen and heard racism in the stands, as well as on the way to and from games too many times before.

I have always shied away from acknowledging it. I've accentuated the positives, I've said it comes only from a small minority (which is also true), all because I don't want my own romantic image of the club to be tarnished, and I don't want to be guilty through association.

Or, to be honest, to endanger my privileged position of being able to write about the club I adore in the city I love.

When it happens it is a reflection of a broader racism in Germany, and in football, but that is no excuse for my inaction, for my sitting on my hands and hoping the problem goes away, so I can just go back to hailing them as a rebellious club from a rebellious city.

"He's not just unprepared -- he's temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility."

- @HillaryClinton, 2016

Four years ago this country failed itself, bigly.

We got everything wrong.

All of it.

1/

We are where we are today because of the mistakes we made then. Period.

It could have and would have- gone so very differently.

This is true whether you believe Trump actually won fairly, or, that he and Russia stole the election in 2016.

We fucked up either way.

2/

"We cannot put the safety of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump's hands. We cannot let him roll the dice with America."

- @HillaryClinton, 2016.

She sounds like a prophet now. She told us out loud every single day of that campaign who Donald Trump was.

3/

Many of us were screaming with her from the sidelines, but out front it was pretty much just Hillary.

Everyone else was too busy trying to tear her apart to hold him accountable for anything.

Even the left.

The fucking left

It was shit storm and it rained everyday.

4/

.

All kinds of fun stuff happened during that time. Things that should have made everyone sit up straight and pay attention.

In Dec 2015 Jill Stein ate dinner in Russia with her, ahem, good friends Michael Flynn and Vladimir

1) Have given some thoughts on a new party. Using MN DFL as an example, I think each state should have a Patriot Party, and there should be a national party called AMERICA FIRST PARTY.

2) In practice, Michigan Patriot Party fields its statewide candidates and...

17 January 2020 #MAGAanalsis #Overturn

Will He Or Won't He, That Is The Question

We'll begin and end today's contemplations with J.E. Dyer
@OptimisticCon's recent work. If you haven't yet, please head over and read her fantastic analysis,

On loving one's neighbour/enemy.

The often-quoted "Love your enemies" (Mt. 5:44, Lk. 6:27) reads "diligite inimicos vestros," αγαπατε τους εχθρους, and not "diligite hastes vestras".

No mention is made of the political enemy. What’s the difference here? The political enemy is the outside. Is “hostis”. “Inimicus” is within the order.

To illustrate an example, within the order of Catholic Christendom, two politically competing orders, say the Dominicans and Franciscans in the late Middle Ages, are inimicus. They should love each other.

As Carl Schmitt points out, Never in the millennia of political struggles between Christians and Muslims did it occur to Christians to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks.

The enemy in the political sense, hostis - the definition of which clearly demarcates an exteriority, need not be hated personally, but with regards to interior factions, only then does it make sense to love one's “enemy”, i.e., one's adversary.

Latest: The Trump administration made a series of surprising moves regarding Asia policy over the last week, while @JoeBiden revealed the candidate for the new role overseeing Indo-Pacific region. I talked to @kharisborloff about what these mean:

"With less than a week from leaving the office, the Trump administration has been making some major moves regarding Washington’s policies for Asia Pacific."

"On January 9, U.S. Secretary State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. would scrap all existing limitations on interaction between Taiwanese and U.S. officials and on January 12, the White House declassified a security paper related to the Indo-Pacific Strategy."

"Some experts think that the Trump administration’s latest move to declassify the national security paper is to put the Biden administration on the spot."

"Kharis Templeman, an advisor to the Project on Taiwan and Indo-Pacific at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, said following the declassification, if the Biden administration wants to disavow parts of the Indo-Pacific strategy in the future, they will have to do it publicly.

Background
The following transcripts were released on January 15, 2021, by the Senate Judiciary Committee. They were not released entirely searchable, so The Black Vault has processed them all to have a searchable format.

The Judiciary Committee also released a press release regarding them, which reads as the following:

The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), today released transcripts of interviews conducted during its inquiry into the origins and aftermath of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.

“I consider the Crossfire Hurricane investigation a massive system failure by senior leadership, but not representative of the dedicated, hardworking patriots who protect our nation every day at Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice.

“As chairman of the Senate JudiciaryCommittee, I have decided to release all transcripts of depositions involving the committee’s oversight of the CrossfireHurricane investigation. We have released as much material as possible,but some classified material has still been withheld.

Transition, 'inclusion' etc all have political ramifications. Instead of buying into the remarkably masculinist assumptions of queer theory that the dissolution of boundaries is always good, we should be examining them from the point of group power relations.

Transactivists try to conflate identifying as trans with gay marriage, in attempts to demonstrate the progressiveness of their cause, but the comparators are actually transracialism, trans-abledness, identifying as w/c etc.

The diagram shows the asymmetrical nature of such identifications. Identifying down is colonisation. Identifying up is impossible. The most you can do is improve your individual status relative to your class of origin, which leaves everyone else behind.

It also shows that the classes are occupied. If you identify as disabled, or as a woman, or as black, you are demanding access to spaces and facilities which were set aside for people based on a characteristic which you don't share.

How well tolerated this is gives us a clear insight into which oppressions are tolerated. We're rightly paying a lot more attention to racism, so Rachel Dolezal was fired by the NAACP. Other white women in the US who've tried this have been heavily criticised.

1. Sat. 16 Jan. Twenty Points of Why America is Transitioning Corporate to Republic and B*iden Will Not Be President: https://t.co/ciWkYV4VuO

Trump was not running for just another 4 year election in 2016 – Trump was approached by the military to run & his entire win has...

Mainstream media has been terrorizing Americans with fake/debunked news (1/12):

1. Capitol Hill siege pre-planned (meaning Trump could not have incited it with speech he was *impeached*