https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi/status/1212370196444438528?s=20

Hmmm….

https://t.co/t2g8vZvyYd

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي (@iyad_elbaghdadi) Tweeted:
«No they haven’t. Please be better than this. There is no overlap whatsoever between the Tahrir Square protest movement against corruption, and the Iranian militia “protest” at the US embassy. Be better, you’re causing harm and treating Iraqis as exchangeable props.»

In response to:

Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) Tweeted:
Really hard to overstate how badly Trump has bungled things in the Middle East. One of the only good things going – anti-Iran street protests in Iraq – have now morphed into anti-U.S. protests thanks to Trump’s mishandling of Iran policy. https://t.co/1glF0HjRAC https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1212047363755446273?s=20

Happy New Year, y’all.

https://twitter.com/beardedstoner/status/1212231184589217793?s=20

𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫 (@beardedstoner) Tweeted:
I hope this spirit carries us forward. https://t.co/MG6KKJMeQi

BY THE WAY… The new decade starts NEXT year, not this year. But nobody needs that pedantry, I guess.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1211841726970621952.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/business/trump-tax-cuts-beat-gilti.html

I’m actually in favor of lower (or no) corporate taxes and a VAT aimed at the wealthy, but this isn’t good.

«Thanks in part to the chaotic manner in which the bill was rushed through Congress — a situation that gave the Treasury Department extra latitude to interpret a law that was, by all accounts, sloppily written — the corporate lobbying campaign was a resounding success.»

https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Ftranscripts%2F499490275&group=__world__

But note: I am absolutely not a libertarian.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-12-28/putin-s-russia-is-20-years-old-and-stronger-than-ever-or-is-it

«Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about Putin’s ability to continue extending Russia’s global reach is that he’s doing it on a shoe-string budget. The anemic and extraction-reliant economy he’s built is less than 8% the size of the U.S., which spends more than double on defense alone than Russia spends on everything, including education, health care and policing.

….

Putin, with help from China and other countries, has been building barricades to guard Russia’s economy from the vagaries of the U.S. dollar-dominated financial system and the impact of any additional sanctions. This, coupled with Putin’s tactical abilities in global affairs, allows Russia to keep punching above its weight, according to Dmitri Trenin, head of the Moscow Carnegie Center.

“GDP is not the absolute measure of all things economic,” Trenin said. “Far more important are the basic resilience of the economy; its capacity to absorb powerful shocks; Moscow’s sound finances; its low foreign debt; the Kremlin’s capacity to mobilize in the face of external threats; and the relative abundance of resources Moscow needs to support its foreign policy.”»

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Moscow_Center)

https://kendraalvey.com/2019/12/30/19-things-i-learned-in-2019/

«It’s that time of the year again. Yup, it’s the time of year when I make a list of what I learned, thus convincing myself that I grew or changed or whatever. That I haven’t just been sitting on the couch eating popcorn all year. (I’ve been sitting on the couch eating popcorn all year.)

I’ve been doing this since 2011 and, let me tell you, it works like a charm. Last year, in 2018, I learned 18 things, and in 2017, I learned 17. This year, I learned 19 if you can believe it. Nineteen things! In 2019! (Next year in 2020, I’m gonna reset this shit to 0 instead of coming up with 20 things so I hope I don’t learn anything.)

Here they are:»

David M. Perry @Lollardfish

Race science is bad, folks.

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN @sivavaid

Also, not science.

David M. Perry @Lollardfish

also indeed.

11:35 AM · Dec 28, 2019·TweetDeck

(In re Bret Stephens’s recent opinion piece in the New York Times claiming that Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than average.)

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/dec/28/thai-navy-seal-dies-of-infection-from-cave-rescue

https://twitter.com/LibyaLiberty/status/1210860093513879553?s=20

hend amry (@LibyaLiberty) Tweeted:
Muslim nations don’t represent Islam. If they did, they wouldn’t all be silent on the Uighur internment camps. Muslim nations are nation states pursuing their own national interests. Religious authority is subjectively and strategically leveraged. https://t.co/TEThFSh3dg