The one "Insurrection" video you MUST see.

@NewYorker reporter @LukeMogelson
followed Trump supporters as they forced their way into the Senate chamber.

Some quick thoughts... #Thread

The crisis in the NHS is overwhelming this week. It has reminded me of conversations I had with my late father on how to manage within the state sector. I think they're worth sharing.

My father worked for the nationalised electricity industry from the late 1940s to late 1980s. He spent much of that time as a fairly senior engineer. He was committed to what he did. He believed electricity supply was a human right. And he sought to delver it.

He left the industry and retired when he realised that privatisation challenged what the believed in. The priority was no longer supply. It was, instead, profit. He had a clear example of the difference this made. It was about emergency management.

In his day the state electricity boards ensured that they had all the capacity they needed to manage emergencies to keep supply going as well as possible, come what may. It meant there was excess capacity. But it wasn't wasted - maintenance and training was done instead.

Privatisation saw that excess as waste, and it went. It was assumed contracts could buy in support when needed. My father believed that was dangerous - because when demand was strongest the most inexperienced people would be put to work on the job.

Ever since 9/11, we've been instructed that tiny minorities of extremists are solely responsible for their reprehensible actions. There was no greater sin than blaming law-abiding people who share some of their beliefs.

That's how we got the "lone wolf terrorist" cliche. A great herd of lone wolves swept across the world, each completely isolated from anything but the most direct support for their heinous deeds. "Tiny minorities of extremists" were blamed for "hijacking" the beliefs of millions.

The Western world did backflips to completely firewall the actions of terrorists from the larger bodies of people they claimed to represent. We hired a legion of consultants to show us exactly where the line between extremism and legitimate belief was drawn.

We wouldn't even name the adversaries of civilization. We declared a "global war" on their methods, to avoid criticizing their beliefs. The Obama administration launched a huge, expensive "Countering Violent Extremism" initiative that pointedly treated extremism as generic.

The greatest of pains were taken to draw very sharp and bright lines between violent extremism and even the most provocative and incendiary acts of legitimate speech and political organization. This was true of the race riots in the Obama years, as well as terrorism.

@ProjectLincoln @tedcruz Texas failed to winterize its generation sources the last time this happened in 2011.

Now ask yourself, why?

Simple. Texas's extended power outage is a result of negligent GOP infrastructure policy.

THREAD.

@tedcruz The Texas GOP has continuously rebuffed plans to invest in better infrastructure to upgrade TX power grids.

Texas was warned to weatherize power plants.

Why didn’t they?

@tedcruz TX power companies said electricity prices are too low to provide incentives (profit) to build new plants or improve older ones. (a result of privatization of basic services.)

@tedcruz The electrical grid in Texas was deregulated, privatized, and removed from interconnected networks to avoid federal regulation and increase profits for a small number of wealthy individuals.

Go figure.

@tedcruz If TX ERCOT grid was on the national grid, or simply reinvested in their privatized infrastructure, they'd be fine by now.

They did neither, b/c it wasn't profitable.

It's a failure of TX leadership –– total, inexcusable, and utterly catastrophic.

Not fucking windmills.

1) It looks like Pelosi is covering up the reasons why there was insufficient security at the US Capitol on January 6.

Did Pelosi purposely create the stage, as political theater, for the US Capitol Police to be overrun? House GOP leaders are asking questions that need answers.