BC BIDEN
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

1/13
I have watched every presidential inauguration that I can remember, since I was a little boy, and long before I ever imagined I would live in America. But I had never watched one the way I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden. #velshi

 2/13
I’d never considered the details leading up to an inauguration. I watched this one like a nervous parent, making sure everything went as planned. #velshi
3/13
Thanks to the last four years, everything is different, now. Our demons are on full display, our Union is certifiably imperfect. Our nation is divided. #velshi
4/13
After a year that takes first place in our history for death, destruction, fear and injustice, normalcy is struggling to regain its place. One thing with which we will struggle in this new day for America is the death of shame. #velshi
5/13
In addition to the other norms the former president destroyed, he turned lying - deliberate, casual and often with the force of law - into an art form and, with that, contributed to the death of shame. #velshi
6/13
I’ve been a business journalist for most of my career. When I’d interview a CEO and they’d tell me something that wasn’t true, and I’d have the evidence that it wasn’t true, it would make for an awkward moment. #velshi
7/13
The CEOs tried to explain it away. Their people would offer clarifications and maybe, there’d be a statement of clarification. Maybe even an apology. #velshi
8/13
If the lie - or any kind of wrongdoing pointed out by the press, was significant, someone might resign, a red letter of sorts on their chest. A mark of shame. #velshi
9/13
For some people - some liars – there’s no shame now. One reason I haven’t had Trump officials or allies on @VelshiMSNBC for the last several months is that confronting them with the truth stopped mattering. When caught lying or distorting the facts, they lied more. #velshi
@VelshiMSNBC 10/13
To wear a red letter - TWO red letters, in the former president's case - both capitals for impeachment. It means little to him; there is no contrition. #velshi
@VelshiMSNBC 11/13
He explains it away as partisan or calls it a hoax or a witch hunt. A source of shame once again somehow morphed into to a badge of honor. The death of shame - is the real catastrophe. #velshi
@VelshiMSNBC 12/13
If we as humans do not feel shame in doing something wrong, or in getting caught doing something wrong, what guardrails exist? #velshi
13/13
When the powerful can’t be embarrassed by the bad choices they make, people suffer, democracy erodes, institutions crumble & lies proliferate. This time, people died. If we allow what we’ve witnessed the past 4 years to go on then shame on us all. #velshi

More from Ali Velshi

Ali Velshi
Ali Velshi
@AliVelshi
1/13
This past week, before he did an interview with a top-rated AM radio station in St. Louis, and THEN being interviewed on CNN, Senator @HawleyMO wrote an Op-Ed for the fourth highest circulated newspaper in America. #velshi

2/13
In all of those extremely high-profile appearances, he repeated his grievance that he is being quote "cancelled" and quote "muzzled." That's rich. #velshi

3/13
Hawley freely discussing his being "muzzled" seems lost on him as he writes about how "corporate monopolies and the left team up to shut down speech they don't like and force their political agenda on America…” #velshi

4/13
Hawley continues: "For those who still believe in free speech & the First Amendment, this is the time to take a stand." That's cute. Complaining about being cancelled while speaking on the Senate floor. Complaining about shutting down free speech in a major newspaper #velshi

5/13
Hawley seems to enjoy taking stands, he's just not overly discerning about their being rooted in truth. And when they clearly aren't rooted in the truth, Hawley believes he bears no responsibility for what he says. Hawley can apparently dish it out but can't take it #velshi
GOVERNMENT
Ali Velshi
Ali Velshi
@AliVelshi
1/11
It may sound counterintuitive to be having a conversation but there are some issues that just don’t have two sides. Nobody is in favor of tornadoes, or cancer, or against pizza – maybe pineapple on pizza, but not pizza itself. #velshi

2/11
There are, in fact, things that we can all agree upon. Unanimously. Or at least within a very VERY small margin of error. What led to the second impeachment of the former president is one of those things that doesn’t have two sides. #velshi

3/11
There are many who claim to be against the 2nd impeachment but, when you examine those claims, they are political, or maybe even constitutional when considering impeaching a president whose no longer in office. #velshi

4/11
On the specifics of what happened on January 6th, there’s no debate. Exactly 2 weeks before we inaugurated a duly elected president – a fact determined not just by 50 secretaries of state but by MORE than 50 courts of law - a violent mob ransacked Congress. #velshi

5/11
The mob attacked the building itself, and then members of the mob went in search of its occupants. A mob that, by admission of many who actually participated, & have since been arrested, was doing what it did because the former President motivated them to do it. #velshi
SOCIETY
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Ali Velshi
Ali Velshi
@AliVelshi
1/10
Three days ago, we saw the putrid runoff of what’s been stoked, distilled & fomented by Trump since the beginning of his term. The riot in service of an attempted coup wasn’t spontaneous. It was planned & encouraged by the President of the United States of America. #velshi

2/10
The halls of our Capitol have only twice seen such insurrection - the last being August 24, 1814 when the British invaded Washington DC, set fire to the White House and breached the U.S. Capitol building before setting it ablaze. #velshi

3/10
The U.S. Senate was unable to meet in the historic Old Senate Chamber for nearly 5 years after that. On Wednesday, Senators returned after just five hours. But what a chaotic five hours it was. #velshi

4/10
Members of Congress were in the building because federal law dictates that the sealed certificates of each state's Electoral votes - which were cast on 12/14 - be transported to the Congressional chamber to be counted. There they were stored in the three wooden boxes.#velshi

5/10
Staffers took those boxes with them as they were ushered out of the House chamber. There are duplicates and, had the rioters taken the boxes and burned them, we’d still be able to account for all of the votes and get this done. #velshi
TRUMP , TEUMP
Ali Velshi
Ali Velshi
@AliVelshi
1/8
Mike Pence is the 48th Vice President, the 2nd highest office in the U.S. executive branch. He’s also the Senate president, with the authority to cast the tie-breaking vote. That’s what made his response to a vital question during this week’s debate so feckless. #velshi

2/8
Just before the debate ended, the moderator reminded Pence that Trump has, several times, refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of power after the election. She asked, if Joe Biden won the election and Trump refused to leave office, what would he do as VP? #velshi

3/8
In his roughly 2-min. answer, Pence talked about Hillary Clinton, spying, the Mueller report, Trump’s impeachment, mail-in voting & the FBI. One of the only thing Pence didn’t mention was what he would do if Trump refused to accept a peaceful transfer of power. #velshi

4/8
Here's the thing: Mike Pence isn’t about to tell Trump anything he doesn’t want to hear. It’s the basic rule of survival in the Trump orbit. But back in 2016, that is exactly what Pence told “60 Minutes” he WOULD do. #velshi

5/8
Pence said in 2016, “I promise you that when the circumstances arise where I have a difference on policy or on presentation…I would have no hesitation, were I privileged to be vice president, to walk into the president's office, close the door, and share my heart.” #velshi
POLITICS
Ali Velshi
Ali Velshi
@AliVelshi
1/11
Last week General Motors announced plans to be carbon neutral in its global operations by 2040 & to offer only zero-emissions vehicles even by 2035. #velshi

2/11
I’ve had my share of things to say about GM's poor corporate responsibility & leadership for years but now, it seems, even GM sees the writing on the wall: the future is about cutting emissions, transitioning to electric vehicles or other zero-emissions technologies #velshi

3/11
America is less than 5% of the world’s population, but uses 20% of all the oil produced in the world every day. Gasoline for driving accounts for half of that. #velshi

4/11
General Motors has done the math. Getting to zero-emissions as quickly as it can is where GM can have the biggest positive environmental impact. With this announcement, we may witness an America where gas stations eventually become charging stations. #velshi

5/11
The upside to doing any of this is clean air, a healthier earth, stopping the warming of the earth, moderating the effects of hurricanes & floods & wildfires, all by transitioning away from an energy source that kills the planet to produce it & to burn it. #velshi
SOCIETY

More from Biden

Nash Across the 8th Dimension
Nash Across the 8th Di...
@Nash076
These fucking hacks.

Look, Biden's still Biden, but these fucksticks covered Trump's vast conflicts of interests for 0.5 seconds before just giving up when it became clear Trump simply didn't care about ethics.

Expect them to keep ringing this bell on Biden each week, however.


Biden having a foundation is pretty much the same as it was for Clinton, for Obama, for pretty much every President in living memory except maybe Jimmy Carter.

Yeah, these "foundations" and everything should be a point of concern. They're kind of weird.

But.

These political reporters suddenly flipping to covering Biden's "ethics quandaries" are also the ones who nodded off about the Trump Foundation, the hotels, the golf courses ...

Remember his taxes? That was maybe a week of coverage then forgotten.

Politico in particular can't be trusted to act in good faith when their editorial staff makes decisions like giving Ben Shapiro a platform and higher profile via their site.

They're going to spend the next four years watching for any cough or hiccup and calling it a plague.

Wouldn't it be lovely if we had a national press who were capable of reporting on ethics violations in an ethical manner, and not one determined to sensationalise every little thing as if it were the beginning of a massive scandal?
BIDEN
David C Lowery
David C Lowery
@davidclowery
Okay. That was quick. I’m done with Biden. Renata Hesse is total nightmare for workers. Her previous stint in DOJ had her tightening restrictions on songwriters while letting big tech off the hook. She is a pawn of Silicon Valley. Be very very afraid.


Former Google attorney Renata Hesse when working at DOJ antitrust tried to change the details of the BMI and ASCAP consent decrees that would have made a $1 Billion lawsuit against Google go away. This is horrendously corrupt. This is a terrible terrible start for Biden.

https://t.co/yM5ej1rIBN

https://t.co/hkc1B31cR7

https://t.co/J5f3C90qsh
BIDEN
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ACLU
ACLU
@ACLU
BREAKING: We’re calling on President Biden to pause all federal government use of face recognition technology.

This tech is flawed, biased against people of color, women, trans people, and more.

Even if it worked exactly as advertised, it would be a nightmare. Let’s explain.

Study after study has confirmed this bias.

One study showed that face recognition tech failed in identifying Black women nearly 1/3 of the time, but was more accurate on white men.

Subsequent studies, including by @ACLU_NorCal and the government, have confirmed these findings.

These biases have real consequences that disproportionately harm Black people.

Robert Williams, Michael Oliver, and Nijeer Parks are all Black men who were wrongly arrested and detained because of this technology.

Even if face recognition tech worked perfectly, it would be a civil liberties nightmare — giving the government the ability to track us to houses of worship, protests, healthcare appointments, intimate partners’ homes — harming our rights to privacy, speech, and association.

And face recognition technology would surely be used to exacerbate over-policing of communities of color, immigrant communities, poor communities, and others already bearing the brunt of the criminal enforcement system.
BIDEN
Xiyue Wang
Xiyue Wang
@XiyueWang9
1. Ben Rhodes’s comment dismissing the concerns of former political prisoners and US hostages in Iran regarding Rob Malley’s potential appointment as Iran envoy is deeply unprofessional and offensive. As my own story illustrates, not everything is about partisan DC politics.


2. In 2016 I was a Princeton graduate student who excitedly supported the JCPOA and the new era of Iran-US diplomacy it was meant to usher. Such was my optimism that I actually went to Iran for dissertation research. That’s when my nightmare began.

3. I was arrested by Iranian security forces and held hostage in Evin prison-away from my wife and infant son-for more than 3 years. The regime knew I was innocent and told me so. It took me 40 months in Evin to comprehend what had happened to me.

4. As a political prisoner I’ve likely had more intensive contact with Iranian hardliners than most Iran watchers in the US, especially US govt officials like Mr. Rhodes and Malley. I believe the insights derived from that experience have a unique value.

5. I support strengthening the nuclear deal, but am convinced the JCPOA of 2015 is well-intended yet inadequate. Simply lifting pressure against Iran and allowing it to benefit from economic integration produced NO further incentive for the regime to change its behavior.
BIDEN
Jacob Reynolds
Jacob Reynolds
@jacobreynolds
A tentative thread on the Biden speech

Adam Curtis once leaned heavily on the book 'Everything was forever, until it was no more' by Alexei Yurchak - a slightly odd book about the way that language in the Soviet Union slowly degraded.

Instead of confronting reality, the job of propagandists, indeed of all official discourse, was to stitch together a series of recognisable banalities.

Ideas that once were essential parts of the concrete social project of the Soviet Union - building a worker's state - were now invoked in whatever context needed.

Thus, you could praise the 'trenchant labour of the workers' when discussing the publication of a new edition of technical guidelines for building tractors.

The incredible brittleness of this cut-and-paste discourse meant that no-one in the Soviet Union was able to process, let alone alter, the decay of the Union and its increasingly unstable economic system.
BIDEN

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I want to explain what happened to tumblr overnight. And why Twitter as reached it's dream (or have come ever so close to it)

Yahoo, who bought Tumblr years ago, used to have a huge adult presence on the early net. They allowed adult groups and what not.

However, people and bots (just like now) misused the service, and Yahoo were forced to make a choice. They made private the groups (and later closed them down and sold some of it to other companies) and then ended their chatrooms on yahoo messenger...

after a incident with one of the chatrooms vid cams. The damage was done, Yahoo Messenger lost a lot of people - and with the closing of the groups - backpage and Craigslist came more important.

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TECH
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Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer
@HeerJeet
1. Now that Stan Lee is being eulogized far and wide, it's important to remember how marginal Stan Lee and his collaborators (Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) were in the 1950s and 1960s.

2. Marvel Comics (before that Atlas) was just a cog in the machine of a bottom pulp publisher run by Martin Goodman, the husband of one of Lee's cousins. It was the lowest of the low in the publishing world.

3. Now Mario Puzo (not yet the author of the Godfather) shared offices with Stan Lee in the 1950s and 1960s. Puzo wrote for garrish men's adventure magazines and, like Lee, dreamed of writing a novel & breaking out. But Puzo looked down on Lee.

4. Flo Steinberg, 1960s secretary at Marvel: "They were always making jokes about us. They'd come in and giggle. mario Puzo would look in and would see us all working on his way to the office and say, 'Work faster, little elves. Christmas is coming.'"

5. When JFK was killed, the whole office of Magazine Management was stunned and quiet. Except Lee. He continued working. "He was still working on the comic books," Puzo said. "Like that was the most important thing in the world."
CULTURE
Henry George \u0646
Henry George ن
@intothefuture45
Thread: *Post-Liberal reading list*
1/ Religion and the Rise of Capitalism - R.H. Tawney
Unto This Last - John Ruskin
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity - James Fitzjames Stephen
The Great Transformation - Karl Polanyi
The Quest for Community - Robert Nisbet

2/ Family and Civilisation - Carle C. Zimmerman
Science, Politics and Gnosticism - Eric Voegelin
Liberty Before Liberalism - Quentin Skinner
The Great Debate - Yuval Levin
Lincoln and the Politics of Christian Love - Grant Havers
Where We Are - Roger Scruton

3/ The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry - Various
The Unsettling of America - Wendell Berry
Moral Matters - Mark Dooley
Red Tory - Phillip Blond
Blue Labour - Eds. Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst
Together for the Common Good - Eds. Nicholas Sagovsky & Peter McGrail

4/ The Politics of Virtue - John Milbank & Adrian Pabst
Localism in a Mass Age - Eds. Mark T. Mitchell & Jason Peters
The Antimodern Condition - Peter King
The Principle of Duty - David Selbourne
Nostalgia - Anthony Esolen
A Common Human Ground - Claes G. Ryn

5/ The Politics of Gratitude - Mark T. Mitchell
A Time to Build - Yuval Levin
Remaking One Nation - Nick Timothy
Despised - Paul Embery
Defending Identity - Natan Sharansky
Between Kin and Cosmopolis - Nigel Biggar
The Virtue of Nationalism - Yoram Hazony
CULTURE
Aron Hyman
Aron Hyman
@aron_hyman
THREAD: The following tweets are for the purposes of stories that will appear in Sunday Times Daily. The videos and images depicted may be upsetting but are deemed to be in the public interest. This is the story of the Ayanda "Borhey" Mtila as far as we were able to verify it.


On 13 October Mtila as defacto overlord of the Boko Harram gang, allegedly carried out his penultimate cash-in-transit robbery. Sources say he sustained a head wound in a shootout with security guards. Some friends believe he was killed by a fellow

He died two days later, on 15 October, after allegedly being in a coma for more than a day. His funeral was a spectacle, held on Nyanga Sports fields on 24 October and attended by hundreds of people. Sources say it was made possible by Paarl businessman Lukhanyo "Spur" Mangena.
CRIME