BC POLITICS
Saved by @Alex1Powell

1. The ideal outcome @JRubinBlogger & @AliVelshi IS that the MAGA faction turns on the "establishment" part of the party & they tear each other apart. This is why only 20 M.O.Cs are acknowledging Biden- they are TERRIFIED of this. But I should make something clear & this is

 2. something that @rickwtyler and this panel doesn't seem to be sending a vibe off that it gets and that is that absent some type of intraparty Civil War 2, the Republican Party is not a party in decline, heading into a sunset, its a party primed to go into the 2022 cycle & take
3. the Speaker gavel from @SpeakerPelosi! I mean, jeez guys- all of the stuff just talked about in terms of its abandonment of sanity, of the rule of law, of its dereliction of duty to the Constitution while it performs gross fealty to a swamp creature, all of that was true 1
4. month ago and what happened?? They gained 11+ House seats and potentially will hold the senate majority even though Ds had 6 pathways to it. 6! No, as craptastic as it is, despite the fact that it stood ready to execute a coup it spent months preparing for w Trump, the GOP is
5. STRONG right now. Its voters- and NOT just the nuts you see at the MAGA rallies, I'm talking about mild-mannered regular folks you run into at the bank and work with at Progressive Insurance- those folks are STOKED on the Trump Admin (albeit the Right Wing media over the past
6. decade, and esp the last 5 years, moved from conservative spin to full on alternative facts to create an alternative universe- which allows R voters to assess Trump along a set of contrived metrics that are completely fabricated and not based at all on his actual performance.
7. That's why- as early as Jan. 2019- in my NYT-op ed, Why Trump Will Lose in 2020 I said that turnout for both sides will be massive. I learned from the 2018 cycle how galvanized the Rep electorate was- that is was being fired up via negative partisanship. That is why Ds
8. underperformed in some of the 2018 senate races and lost in GA Gov and TX and FL ultimately. Watching that panel on @AliVelshi one would have the impression of a GOP descending. Please don't think like that! The potential that the party fractures over Trump's loss is our best
9. hope for this. If we get lucky, this will cause a massive 2nd Civil War in the Rep Party & distract them from focusing on the D Party. In addition to this, the electioneering/messaging/branding/offensive overhaul I am hoping to work with the DNC on will be CRITCAL to upsetting
10. what will otherwise be a bruising Midterm. If Ds go into the Midterm under the same electioneering system they've been using (as they used in the 2020 cycle) the House majority is gone. They've got to position themselves as the governing party up against a party of extremists
11. who are intentionally trying to sabotage the economic recovery playing politics and frames the Midterm as a referendum as a question on whether the GOP can be trusted with power. The American people don't know why Congress is broken. They don't know why legislation doesn't
12. come from Congress. When COVID relief legislation doesn't get passed through the whole of the fall general election season, voters are told by media that "Congress adjourned without passing anything." They aren't told- America, you need direct payments, small business grants,
13. 600 added to unemployment because if you are a middle class wage earner, unemployment comes nowhere close to replacing your wage. And do you know WHY you don't have these things? BC the Rep Party controls the senate and refuses to give it to you. In fact, the Republican Party
14. has become SO extreme that more than half of their senators want to give you NOTHING. That's right, NOTHING. Americans never hear these points. They don't hear them via a bully pulpit which could be implement due to control of the House & pressers, they don't get it in ads,
15. and they sure as hell didn't get it as the basis of the Dem's case for the 2020 general election in which you'd have thought they might have wanted to put before voters this basic fact: if you want gov to function for you- you're going to have to elect a functional party to
16. control it. Tell voters- show up, vote for this NC senate race & give us control of the senate so we can finally pass ___, ____, ___. Give voters stakes. Make them realize that there's a connection between their decision to vote & the outcomes they'll receive policy wise.
17. Take some pages out of the GOP playbook- stop making the vote micro, make it macro. Make voters see a tangible benefit to themselves. And if they're not liberals- for god's sake, make that tangible benefit money! Understand that voters DON'T know all of the current events and
18. news you know. Actually, they don't even know 1/8 of that stuff. They didn't watch the House impeachment hearings and chances are good that they didn't even read an article about it either! We, the people reading this thread, working on campaigns, reading about politics,
19. CARING about politics- we are freaks. We are not typical people. My political science students- even the majors, most of them (albeit the fact that they were young) didn't know who McConnell was. And they, themselves are far more informed that any avg. American. The GOP gets
20. this. They realize that they are working with clean slates when it comes to the electorate. They can fill those slates with anything they want. They can focus on big themes. They can tell Black voters not to vote for Biden bc of a 1994 Crime Bill vote even though he's running
21. to remove from office a man who is simultaneously to that ad, running ads on TV in WI, MI, and PA telling "suburban housewives" that they must vote Trump bc their suburban homes are under invasion (it is implied by Black robbers off camera) and only Trump can save them. The
22. The very same type of white fragility propaganda that MAKES whites likely to shoot Black people for crimes like walking with Skittles & a hoodie in the dark. The VERY worst kind of propaganda. So Ds need to refine their electioneering system and start talking to the voters
23. that actually exist and not these mythical voters that their focus group & polling data creates.

BC far from weak- the GOP is coming out of 2020 strong. IF they can shake Trump off in Jan, they will be favored to take the House w/o the changes I'll be fighting to implement.

More from Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌

Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
Yes, actually that's kind of the problem these days.

All the 🔥takes will be shown to be wrong once the voter file data & analysis like this one w the FULL RESULTS get done, which is why I'VE NOT PUBLISHED MY 🔥TAKE IN NYT yet

We'll have to decide if we want it fast, or right


There is ONE STORY in elections right now and its education. Its not rural vs urban, or Black and White, Latino and White

Its educated versus non-educated

And its global

1. I'll add that it's very imp that Ds understand, crystal clear, this fact (that edu is the divide that rules all other divides). After Parscale's success in 2020 the GOP will now double down on their efforts to come after non-college educated, non-white voters bc now they KNOW

2. they're gettable. The 2018 and 2020 cycle were "feelers." No doubt donors and strategists were skeptical. Now they have the analytic proof and the $ will be flowing. This is one reason that I decided that I had to get into electioneering myself. Someone is going to need to be

3. there talking to these voters from the Left (and talking to them with effective messaging- for ex they don't give two shits about insider trading corruption) or you'll see even more erosion in the D's vote share among non-college educated non-white voters, I'm sure of it. Its
POLITICS
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. Been excited about @JoeNBC's sustained convo today about @KBAndersen's new book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America which explains how the Republican Party radicalized OVER ECONOMICS over the past 30 years. It was launched w the radical tax cuts in Reagan's presidency, but

2. as the GOP evolved through the 90s & 2000s they became dogmatic about their economic philosophy- until it became a radical litmus test/position the party followed even when conditions screamed for different policy. It was a MIRACLE the party acted to stabilize the economy at

3. at the end of 2008 when it was crashing down around us (though they just barely did & some didn't and that's bc it was before the Great Purges of 2010,2012, & 2014). America doesn't know the hit job the GOP did on the American economy as they dogmatically pursued tax cuts to

4. the exclusion of everything else while denying any policy that could grow wages or improve the economic lives of the bottom 80% aside from the 2 or 3 times Ds managed to squeeze through policy while in charge (minimum wage increase in 2007-which was the 1st time in a decade

5. and now, of course, its been another decade. It's actually a miracle wages (all wages bc when the min wage is artificially low it affects all the wages above it, that's how you end up w $10 per hr EMTs & teachers) aren't even more out of wack w inflation. As @JoeNBC points out
ECONOMY
Advertisement
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. The hot take that "D's need to learn to talk to the other side of the electorate" is absolutely the WRONG take.

I mean my god. Biden, Lincoln, the outside groups: they threw the best persuasion messaging in the history of persuasion campaigns at them.

What Ds need to do is
POLITICS
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. From convo on @Morning_Joe today about @DrIbram's new article which asks that progressive policy not be blamed for D losses/underperformance.

One of my main concerns is intraparty factionalism/fighting. Everything a "moderate" & "progressive"

2. D fights- a R gets a vote. Certainly radical (and yes, defunding police departments IS radical) policy proposals that fall on the outside bands of the distribution are less attractive to this idealized "swing" voter who is, in our minds eye" always a high info, high reasoning.

3. I guess you'd call them a "fine dining" type voter. But we KNOW that actually, most swing voters are NOT like this. Don't believe me- check out @axios Swing Voter Project, which ran focus groups with Obama to Trump voters through the whole cycle.

4. Indeed, what @richthau learned about America's "deciders" is likely to haunt his sleep for ever as it personified a sticker I keep in my office which is a quote from George Carlin: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." (K.I.M. when we talk "stupid"

5. on my threads about people, we're not talking IQ, or overall stupid. We're talking civics. We're talking about political literacy. Very smart, successful people can't name their senators or their governor & are thus, civically stupid. And I'm sorry, not sorry for labeling them
FOR LATER READ
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. I think school closures also dragged Ds down in congressional races. To be clear, they wouldn't in a functional democracy not following a herd immunity strategy & normalizing the indifference genocide of up to a half million of its citizens. That "conditional" is a necessary


2. component of the "pandemic backlash effect that we have in the U.S. other countries don't have sizable anti-mask movements, ones so large it impedes states like North Dakota who governor @DougForDakota has "led" them to a point where every single county in his large;y rural


3. state has been governed to "high" infection rates. He must feel so successful that liberty & freedom is so abundantly clear all around him! So yes, in a country that has normalized murdering via indifference its old, medical compromised & in the case of

4. COVID- which is a random killer, which sometimes kills young healthy mothers whose own mothers couldn't let their daughter forgo a baby shower bc its such a special part of the birth experience or bc how do you skip the "1 year" baby party when the baby smashes her cake all

5. over her own head? I get it. Those are once in a lifetime events that can't be replaced. So people have been doing them bc their governors & their president esp has told them to do so, that its no big deal, that actually they'd be FOOLS not to hold that gender reveal party,
ALL

More from Politics

John Hayward
John Hayward
@Doc_0
Funny, before the election I recall lefties muttering the caravan must have been a Trump setup because it made the open borders crowd look so bad. Why would the pro-migrant crowd engineer a crisis that played into Trump's hands? THIS is why. THESE are the "optics" they wanted.


This media manipulation effort was inspired by the success of the "kids in cages" freakout, a 100% Stalinist propaganda drive that required people to forget about Obama putting migrant children in cells. It worked, so now they want pics of Trump "gassing children on the border."

There's a heavy air of Pallywood around the whole thing as well. If the Palestinians can stage huge theatrical performances of victimhood with the willing cooperation of Western media, why shouldn't the migrant caravan organizers expect the same?

It's business as usual for Anarchy, Inc. - the worldwide shredding of national sovereignty to increase the power of transnational organizations and left-wing ideology. Many in the media are true believers. Others just cannot resist the narrative of "change" and "social justice."

The product sold by Anarchy, Inc. is victimhood. It always boils down to the same formula: once the existing order can be painted as oppressors and children as their victims, chaos wins and order loses. Look at the lefties shrieking in unison about "Trump gassing children" today.
POLITICS
Faisal Islam
Faisal Islam
@faisalislam
NEW - on @skynews shortly:
Reliable source tells me Withdrawal Deal text contains

- No unilateral exit from backstop

- Large annexe on level playing field

.... after reporting this on @SkyNews I get a call from a different senior source that this is “spot on” and further that the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has not pulled his punches in confirming in legal advice there is “no unilateral exit” from backstop ...

... furthermore I’m told (and this chimes with excellent Times splash this morning re Weyand) that the future partnership then takes its starting point as the activated backstop - ie UK-wide customs union-style arrangement and level playing field.

Understand that a ministerial briefing on the draft Withdrawal Agreement meant to drum up support from some trade organisations due tonight has now been postponed
POLITICS
Advertisement
Henry Farrell
Henry Farrell
@henryfarrell
1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.

2. It is intended to enforce a clear division between those who accept and are committed to democracy and those who are willing to turn to violence when the vote doesn't turn out the way that they want it to.

3. One of the basic implications of Adam Przeworski's theoretic work is that democracy is made out of mutually reinforcing expectations, and those expectations are fragile. If some actors think they would be better off defecting from the democratic bargain, they will.

4. In other words: democracy and armed factionalism are far closer than we think, or we would like them to be. This means that it is incredibly important to police the boundaries between them. Allowing some to turn to violence can lead to expectation collapse and cascading ruin.

5. When we allow the divisions to become blurred, that means that we are running the perpetual risk of things getting fucked up. If a major faction turns to violence, and no-one responds, things can get really fucked up really, really fast.
POLITICS
Tim - Efficacious vs the Mutants\U0001f489 NO trampVE\U0001f3db\U0001f985
Tim - Efficacious vs t...
@tmstrickl_tim
"these people are not going to take it any longer..
do not want to see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left Democrats.
We will never concede.. when there's theft involved...had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about."
1/

"We will not let them silence your voices. We're not going to let it happen.

Not going to let it happen.

CROWD: Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump.
TRUMP: Thank you."
2/

"those tens of thousands of people ..
..the military, the Secret Service and we want to thank you and law enforcement ..you're doing a great job..
..but I would love it if they could be allowed to come up with us. Is that possible? Can you just let them, please?"
3/

"if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.
..he has the absolute right to do it..States want to revote, the states got defrauded..they want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president"
4/

"I actually I just spoke to Mike. I said, Mike, that doesn't take courage, what takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage, and then we are stuck .. and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen. "
5/
POLITICS
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
@ezraklein
So I've been reporting a story about how you'd fix the impeachment process. It doesn't work for removal, as currently designed. Impeachment was built for a political system without parties. It fails in a system with polarized parties.

The one time it functioned as intended, confusingly, was the time it didn't happen: Richard Nixon wasn't impeached! But the impeachment process, which came at the low ebb of party polarization in American history, convinced his party to force him to resign.

Would Republicans force Nixon to resign today?

Oh, you're cute. Thank you. I needed that.

The problem of impeachment is pretty simple: Presidents are leaders of parties. Parties are tied to the political fortunes of presidents. You're asking a party to basically wreck its immediate political future for the good of the system.

This doesn't just have the effect of making impeachment ineffective as a remedy. It's worse than that. It makes impeachment dangerous to the president's party, and gives them a reason to defend him and either normalize or minimize his crimes. As we are seeing right now.
POLITICS

You May Also Like

Steve Stewart-Williams
Steve Stewart-Williams
@SteveStuWill
THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less. https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)
LIFE
George Mack
George Mack
@george__mack
THREAD: 15 of the most useful razors and rules I've found.

Rules of thumb that simplify decisions.

Bezos' Razors:

• If unsure what action to take, let your 80-year-old self make it.

• If unsure who to work with, pick the person that has the best chances of breaking you out of a 3rd world prison.

Skinner's Law:

• If procrastinating on an item, you only have 2 options:

1. Make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it.

2. Make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.

Luck Razor:

• If stuck with 2 equal options, pick the one that feels like it will produce the most luck later down the line.

I used this razor to go for drinks with a stranger rather than watch Netflix.

In hindsight, it was the highest ROI decision I've ever made.

Bragging Razor:

• If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume it’s half what they claim.

• If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume it’s double what they claim.

The map is not the terrain.
ALL , BUSINESS , PRINCIPLES
Advertisement
Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Srikanteshwara Temple,
#Nanjangud  #Karnatakatemples 🚩

Srikanteshwara Temple or
Nanjundeshwara Temple is a famous Shiva Temple located in Karnataka at the bank of river  Kapila. Temple is also called Varanasi of South. Nanjunda means one who has consumed poison.


Story is  related to the Samudra Mathanam when Paramashiva had to consume halahala.

Parashurama worshipped Mahadeva here to relieve himself from the curse of Mathru Hatya. While clearing the place to do poojas Parashurama's  axe hit the Shivalingam and it began bleeding, that


mark is still visible even today. Thus
it is also believed that Parashurama did Shiva Prathishta here

Sthala Puranam says that, once there was a demon named Keshi who disturbed the people in the area, after  getting blessing from Brahma Deva  and Mahavishnu. Mahadeva appeared


here and killed demon Keshi and blessed this place as Papa Vinashini. Whoever praying to Srikanteshwara or Nanjundeshwara, after bathing in the  Kabini River will be relieved from all sins.

Nanjundeshwaraya Namah
🙏🕉🙏
ALL
Nicolas
Nicolas
@necolas
A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.
TECH
Lu_lu\U0001f498
Lu_lu💘
@luciame16
Some thoughts on episode 54 of #Hercai

If you ever cross the distance and come to me, come with love that blooms in your heart.
~ Şems-i Tebrizi

#Reyyan #Miran #ReyMir #EbruŞahin #AkınAkınözü
#HercaiThoughts


1
I have to make a note before writing about this episode. I was the person (still am) who thinks that bringing back D. was a bad idea. I repeat it that for me the writing of S1 and S2 is like tossed into the bin with that plot evolution, but they had to invent something+
#Hercai

2
+ to be able to continue to prolong the general story after Aslan’s story did not work out. All the suffering of M., all the crying seems for “nothing” for two seasons and we viewers are also kind of fed up in seeing him cry all the time when with the upcoming episodes+
#Hercai

3
+he is justified the most to cry. With her resurrection now the attention shifts back to Miran’s storyline and I don’t know if I like this to be honest. This said, Dilsha is here and we have to deal with her.
#Hercai

4
So, my comments are going to be how I find they wrote her into the story, the details we get to know, the flashbacks we get to see, the way it was filmed and directed, with leaving out if I agree on it or not but describing along the way what I saw.
#Hercai
CULTURE