Simon Rosenberg Twitter Threads

I'm not immediately aware of Simon Rosenberg but he spins really good Twitter Threads. 
Here is one I like...

Let's take a step back, and review what's happened in recent months:

- Trump steals nation's secrets, lies about it to FBI. Historic security breach.
- Trump's CFO pleads guilty to 15 felonies.
- Trump takes the fifth 440 times in an investigation into his crooked finances.
- Jan 6th investigations establish Trump led a massive illegal conspiracy, involving hundreds of GOP officials incl Sens Graham and Johnson, which sought to overturn an American election and unleashed a violent attack on Congress as part of its strategy.
- The Trump family took $2b from the Saudi government, and launched a new business venture with them here in the US.
- The Supreme Court goes on an extremist field day, ending Roe, legalizing coercive prayer, weakening common sense guns laws.
- States pass medieval abortion restrictions, creating a public health crisis in the United States.- A leading Republican organization brings Putin's closest ally in Europe, Hungary's Orban, to US while we are fighting Putin in Ukraine.
- More mass shootings.
- Election deniers have won GOP primaries across the country. Some of them will get elected this fall.
- Liz Cheney lost her primary to an absolute fucking lunatic.
- Trump has encouraged violence against the FBI/DOJ and attacks have taken place. 

It's been a tornado of malevolence and venality unlike anything we've seen in American history.
It's why this election matters so much. Voters must reject what the GOP has become or it will get worse.
Things are moving our way but we cannot let up.

And there is growing evidence that all this criminality, awfulness and extremism - MAGA - is causing the GOP itself to crack, splinter and meltdown in the closing days of the election.
Praise f---ing be.

Here is another one which was linked in the one above.
This is rich with hyperlinks so open it up for closer scrutiny.

So, is the GOP melting down right now? You decide.

First, the putative leader of the GOP is calling for the Senate GOP leader to be replaced, immediately. 1/

Trump calls for McConnell to be ousted as GOP leader ‘immediately’
Former President Trump on Wednesday called on Republicans to boot Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from his post as Senate minority leader, accusing the senator of being a “pawn for the Democrats…
The leader of the Senate GOP campaign arm, Rick Scott, is being openly accused of financial mismanagement by his peers. 2/

There is an unprecedented and well-funded effort by Republicans to convince other Republicans not to vote Republican.
Liz Cheney will be campaigning with Democrats this fall.
When have we ever seen anything like this? 3/
Anti-Trump GOP group spends big to shrink his base
The nonprofit arm of the Republican Accountability Project is launching ads across all the closest swing states of the 2020 presidential race.
Today there were signs GOP candidates have been told to start distancing themselves from Trump, MAGA, abortion extremism (LOL!!!!).
GOP House candidate in swing district scrubbing site of Trump endorsement. 4/

Here's an AZ MAGA scrubbing his site of Trump and MAGA. 5/

Here's the AZ Senate nominee running screaming from his extremist abortion positions. Another website scrub. 6/

Here's a CO GOP state senator switching parties, saying the GOP had become an existential threat. 7/

Colorado Republican turns Democrat over ‘existential threat’ from GOP
> In letter announcing defection, state senator Kevin Priola cites political and environmental threat from his erstwhile party
> Jan 6th related investigations spreading.
> GOP leaders in AZ, GA, MI, NV, PA, WI have been subpoenaed.
>Meadows, Lindsay Graham, other MAGAs being called to testify.
Rudy may get indicted. 8/

Giuliani Is Told He Is a Target in Trump Election Inquiry in Georgia
Rudolph W. Giuliani, as former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, spearheaded efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power.
Democratic candidates are raising tons of money. R candidates aren't.
WTF here GOP? 9/

And then there is Trump's ongoing criminality, betrayal of the country.
It has become THE GOP news story every day, blocking out all efforts by Rs to reach voters.
And it's likely to get much worse in the weeks ahead. 10/

Trump Kept Over 700 Pages of Classified Documents, Letter Says
The letter from the National Archives, which was sent to the former president’s lawyers, described Justice Department officials’ alarm as they realized the nature of the documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Lots of unhappiness with GOP House campaign arm too......

is GOP falling apart, melting down, splintering just weeks before people start voting? 

Sure looks like it. 11/ 

Twitter thread: the Muslim roots of American Slavery

Twitter thread by Bayt Al Fann @BaytAlFann.

In 1807, Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar, was stolen from Senegal & sold into slavery in America. He left behind an autobiography written in Arabic.

To mark the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade & its Abolition, a thread on the remarkable story of Omar…

1/ Written in Arabic and recently acquired by the @librarycongress, "The Life of Omar Ibn Said” is not only a rare handwritten personal story of an American slave, but it's also one of the first intimate accounts of the early history of Muslims in the United States. 

2/ Omar wrote his brief autobiography, 190 years ago, & it spent much of the last century forgotten in an old trunk in Virginia. When he wrote it, Omar was 61 and more than two decades into a long enslavement in America, first in Charleston and then North Carolina

3/ Omar ibn Said was born to a wealthy family in the Imamate of Futa Toro, located along the Middle Senegal River in West Africa. He was an Islamic scholar & a Fula who spent 25 years of his life studying with prominent Muslim scholars, learning mathematics, astronomy & business

4/Omar was enslaved & taken to Charleston South Carolina. In his autobiography, the description of his capture by "a large army who killed many men" & his crossing of "the great sea" for a month & a half testifies to the violence of the slave trade & terrors of the middle passage

5/ Omar was among the approximately one-third of American slaves who were Muslim. While the exact number of enslaved Muslims is unknown, up to 40 percent of those who were captured and enslaved came from predominantly Muslim parts of West Africa.

6/ Scholars estimate that the slave ship that brought Omar to South Carolina landed in 1807. The next year, the United States abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade making it illegal to bring new enslaved people to the United States (though the illegal slave trade continued)

7/ Not long after his arrival to Charleston, Omar was sold to a cruel local and intensely violent slaveholder, he escaped and made his way to Fayetteville, North Carolina

8/ As a runaway, Omar sought a place of worship, & found a church & began praying. When discovered, authorities took Omar into custody. He gained notoriety for writing on the walls of his jail cell in Arabic, challenging beliefs that enslaved Africans were illiterate

9/ Omar was eventually purchased by a prominent man in the area, General James Owen. Knowing of Omar’s Islamic faith and Arabic literacy, Owen provided him with an Arabic copy of the Bible. Said attended the local Presbyterian Church and was baptized as a Christian in 1821.

10/ Omar's later apparent conversion to Christianity rendered him a celebrity of sorts. Many around Omar commented on his full conversion & his solid Christian faith. However, inside of his Bible, Omar inscribed in Arabic, “Praise be to Allah, or God” & “All good is from Allah.”

11/ Through his writings, Omar proved to be cleverly clandestine about practicing Islam. For example, he penned Surah Al Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Qur’an, in Arabic allowing white observers to believe it was the Lord’s prayer.

12/ In another text, he wrote a part of a Psalm but then included a traditional Muslim invocation after it. It was his Islamic education that allowed Omar to use Arabic to hide his Muslim religious writings.

Half length formal portrait of "Uncle Moreau" [Omar ibn Said]; elderly man seated wearing headwrap, suit; left elbow rests on newel, cane in right hand. Ambrotype
Unknown photographer; circa 1850

13/ Omar moved with the Owen family in 1836 to Wilmington, North Carolina, and again to a farm on the Cape Fear River during the Civil War. He is believed to have died at the age of 94, but the exact circumstances of his death are unknown.

14/ The translation of Omar's text begins with passages from the Holy Qur’an. His autobiographical account is not chronological, but relates to key events in his life: his forced passage to America, his escape & recapture, his time in prison, & his journey to the home of Jim Owen

15/ Omar’s status and education in West Africa, as well as his tenacious resistance to his violent treatment in South Carolina, provided him with a skill set wherein he was able to garner positive attention from at least some white Americans.

16/ The erasure of the black Muslim identity among the enslaved people in the United States was part of a strategy to strip enslaved Africans of their identities & reduce them to chattel both legally & in the public imagination

17/ Both accounts of Said & his autobiography tell of white American’s positive reaction to his literacy & spiritual devotion. While the reaction of white people was fortunate for him, literacy among enslaved people was not legal in certain states, including South Carolina

18/ Enslaved Muslims who left behind a written record challenged the idea that enslaved men and women were a brute workforce solely capable of physical labor because they lacked the intellectual capacity that would make them deserving of independence and freedom.

19/ What we know about the masses of African Muslim slaves who left no written record can be garnered from the remembrances of their descendants and their names on bills of sale or runaway notices. How long they adhered to Islam is unknown

20/ Some enslaved Muslim converted to Christianity while others pretended to convert in order to satisfy their captors. But there are signs that some enslaved Muslims held onto the religion of their homelands.

21/ The story of Omar Ibn Said is now an opera by the winner of @macfound and Grammy awards Rhiannon Giddens.

Omar will be shown at the LA Opera from October 22 – November 13

"Omar," an opera illuminating a Muslim slave's life in America

The new opera tells a largely-forgotten story, about a 19th century Muslim scholar stolen from Senegal and sold into slavery in America, who left behind a remarkable autobiography, written in Arabic, …

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/omar-opera-a-muslim-slave-in-america/

23/ ‘You asked me to write my life…I have much forgotten my own, as well as the Arabic language. Neither can I write very grammatically or according to the true idiom & so, my brother, I beg you, in God’s name, not to blame me, for I am a man of weak eyes, & of a weak body’ Omar

Tribute to Bees

I came across this lovely Twitter thread linked to a source rich with a multitude of beautiful links about what appears to be an endless variety of subjects.

At this point I know nothing more, but the twitter thread was to pretty to miss and I needed the practice of curating the thread.

"Bayt Al Fann is Arabic for Art House. We are a global home for artists, creatives and communities to collaborate, exchange insights and co-create the future of art and inspired by Islamic tradition."

In the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an a chapter is dedicated to the bee, called An-Nahl. This literally translates to ‘The Bee’ & it describes the bee’s way of life, & how Muslims should be more like them. For #WorldHoneyBeeDay we are celebrating the bee in Islam 🐝 A thread…

 

1/ Al Nahl, Chapter 16, 68-69, talks about a variety of topics, but Allah specifically chose the title The Bee to catch the attention of the readers. Bees are said to be Allah’s miracles; the way they function and how they behave, are to be held as an example #WorldHoneyBeeDay 

 

2/ The significance of Al Nahl as Chapter 16 is important. The only verse in this chapter that mentions bees is made up of 16 words & 16 different Arabic letters. Coincidentally, female bees have 16 pairs of chromosomes, whereas males have 16 chromosomes 

 

3/ What is fascinating about the bees in the Qur’an is that it was written from a scientific standpoint where the colony, roles & practices of bees are observed. These characteristics & traits were used as a figure of speech for the follower reading the Qur’a

 

4/ A reason why an entire chapter in the Qur’an has been devoted to the bee is that Allah has enabled the honey bee to produce a substance within which there is a cure for all mankind. Honey 🍯

5/ In Surah Al Nahl, Allah is asks people to “give thought” to the attributes of the bees & embody these traits in their lives. Through their behaviour, we learn things such as to gain knowledge & reflect, to care for our community & maintain good relations

6/ In the scientific language all the honeybees belong to the genus Apis. The honeybee communicates with other honeybee using a dance language, which scientists have discovered to be very complicated and highly developed

7/ Approximately a third of all the food we eat is due to pollination from the honeybee. Unfortunately, due to habitat loss, pollution, pesticides & disease, their numbers have dwindled. Over the last decade, there has been a rise in colony collapse disorder 

8/ If bees disappeared from the surface of the Earth, humans would have 4 years left to live. The bee has officially been declared the most important animal on Earth by the Earthwatch Institute in 2017

9/ Surah an-Nahl, 16. Pages from an early Ottoman Qur'an written in two different script styles, 16th century The right hand page starts with part of verse 110 from Surah an-Nahl (The Bee) and continues through to verse 122 on the left hand page

10/ Since 2011 the East London Mosque @elondonmosque in England has been home to several beehives. Most of the hives are kept on the roof of the London Muslim Centre 

(Khalil & Salma inspecting a hive. Pic: Jessica Chia)

11/ This is a look around the observation hives at the East London Mosque @elondonmosque where you get a feel of beekeeping in the mosque.

Repost from @Bushwoodbees

12/ Here is a wonderful video from @BBCNews about the amazing bees at the East London Mosque

Bees living on top of a London mosque

13/ This mosque in Indonesia is well-known in the community as Sarang Lebah (Honeycomb) Mosque or An-Nahl Mosque, because honeycombs inspire the architectural elements used in this building including hexagon-shaped vent blocks, similar to those of honeycombs

14/ The Al Nahl mosque promotes the pilgrims' essential concept, the world as a public and social entity, just like the bees, which are social creatures and hard workers, where no bees live alone. It aims to build a broader empathy for fellow human beings15/ Bees lives less than 40 days, visit at least 1000 flowers & produces less than a teaspoon of honey.For us it is only a teaspoon of honey, but for the bee it is a lifetime of workThank You Bees!🐝

Heather Cox Richardson Twitter thread, September, 2018

Heather Cox Richardson - a Threadreader transcription dated Sept. 7, 2018.

A short history of American tax policy for @winesalongirl, highlighting the larger questions at stake: when we levy taxes, we are deliberately shaping society. The question is... what society are we shaping? 

Before the Civil War, the US had no national taxation because southern slave holders kept the government small and inactive. They wanted no interference with slavery + wanted money to accumulate in their hands, so they could advance "progress." A few tariffs funded government.

Republicans under Lincoln believed that progress came from regular folks, so they created an active government to promote opportunity. That meant new systems of funding, including taxation. In 1861, GOP invented national taxation, and in 1862, the graduated income tax. 

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed had labor not first existed -- that labor could never have existed without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior -- greatly the superior -- of capital.  [Lincoln, 1859]

This paid for the Civil War and for new departments to spread opportunity. It tied individuals to the government, spread costs fairly, and was enormously popular. As a war measure, it was set to expire in 1872, but got extended until 1875. Then funding went back to tariffs. 

New GOP tariffs protected industry, whose leaders colluded to raise prices. This hurt workers. Money moved upward. Democrats begged for lower tariffs to lower prices for workers, but GOP said no, the gov't needed funding. (It actually ran a SURPLUS in the late 1880s). 

The revenues of the government for the year ending June 30, 1889, ascertained for the quarter ended 1888, and estimated for the remainder of the time, amounted to $377,000,000 and the actual and estimated ordinary expenditures for the same year are $273,000,000, leaving an estimated surplus of $104,000,000.

When the economy crashed in 1893, Democrats in Congress passed an 1894 law lowering tariffs and levying a new income tax on rich. Pro-big business Supreme Court declared income tax unconstitutional in 1895: only states could tax (Pollock v Farmers' Loan). News to Republicans! 

This meant rich didn't have to support government, even as they were awash in money (In 1901, J.P. Morgan's US Steel was capitalized at $1.4 billion; 3 times national budget). In 1909, GOP President William H. Taft called for constitutional amendment permitting income tax.

1913: Sixteenth Amendment. D President Woodrow Wilson instantly proposed cutting tariff and replacing money w/ tax: the Revenue Act of 1913. (This is often incorrectly cited as the first income tax.) Then WWI hit, and taxes went as high as 77% to pay for it. 

The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

After 1918, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon went on campaign to slash those taxes because he believed they were killing growth. It worked, but fed the 1920s bubble that led to the 1929 Crash. Then, FDR's New Deal raised taxes on wealthy and created the modern activist state.

That introduced a new wrinkle. Movement Conservatives (like Goldwater) hated the New Deal state and wanted to slash taxes to destroy it. Other GOPers, like Eisenhower, wanted to pay off WWII's debt. DDE kept high tax rate at 91%. Goldwater=apoplectic. Called DDE a socialist. 

To undercut Goldwater and a short-term recession, JFK proposed a 1963 tax cut. Passing Congress in 1964, it ended GOP debt payoff plan. Often used as proof that tax cuts stimulate economy, it actually cut taxes primarily on the demand side (workers) not supply-side (the rich).

Movement Conservative Reagan set GOP on path to destroy the New Deal gov't. He slashed taxes in 1981 and 1986 on ground that freeing up $$ on the supply side would stimulate economy. Budget director David Stockman admitted this was just "trickle down" economics in a new guise.

Reagan economy boomed from cheap oil, dropping interest rates, huge deficit spending for the military, deregulating the savings and loan banks, but idea spread that tax cuts worked to pump the economy. The cuts instead started the Great Divergence, moving $$$ upward.

Tax cuts to destroy the New Deal state became a political law for GOP, even though folks like government programs. Leaders convinced voters that gov't programs gave tax dollars from hardworking white men to lazy POC and women. GWBush slashed taxes and programs. So has Trump.

https://bit.ly/2QdUQ2D

But both also poured money into military. Taxes on rich went down; benefits went down. Nat'l debt and living costs went up. So gov't is still pricey, but $$ goes to contractors and investors, not regular folks. CBO says cuts won't pay for themselves. 

Trump's Federal Budget Deficit: $1 Trillion And Beyond

There are very different views between the Trump administration and non-partisan organizations on the trajectory of yearly U.S. deficits.

At the end of the day, a government that protects us, guarantees we don't have to eat of garbage cans, and fixes our bridges costs money. And now we have a HUGE debt that must be paid. Who should do it? That's what tax policy is about.

Do we think that a few rich folks should have all the money because they know best how to run society? That's what we're saying these days. Or should we balance taxes so that we all pay our fair share and all have a stake and a say in our government? Me, I'm #TeamLincoln /END