Matt J

[Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 @PollTracker2024]

Multiple Democrats told the Bangor Daily News they expected a national outlet to drop a story about Graham Platner Monday or Tuesday

#MaineSenate

https://t.co/v6uAnNBg46

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@OxfordYazuka @weedallergens @dubseatv 1. Breathe
2. Get Nexus

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

Pro Palestinian demonstrators in front of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in Victoria, Canada. #Nakba #Palestine

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

I’ve met people from pretty much every B1G school, except Illinois.

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@silvopasturist @6Shittalkerffs You’re a good man.

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

The second order consequence of this rumor, if true, means Republicans are looking at losing at least the Senate in November and are weighing the options of what to do before that happens.

[Political Polls @PpollingNumbers]

Rumors are swirling that Samuel Alito, 75, could retire before Donald Trump leaves office (USA Today)

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@paulcerro @blondesnmoney Came here to say this

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@jlippincott Just the same old ✨Rent seeking ✨

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

The “universal burning question” is usually, if not always, the wrong question.

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@sagharborcap Lamentable that we replaced this with credentialism.

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

https://t.co/lDAnWfJyfZ

[Sana Ebrahimi Ledene @SanaELedene]

This is Tehran. Let that sink in. You are watching a revolution unfold live while the world’s media stays dead silent. Legacy media has become nothing more than a propaganda machine, because what news could possibly be bigger than this?
@FoxNews @CNN https://t.co/1X5PlzQAhw

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

Until very late last year I didn’t have an appreciation for how brutal the Iran-Iraq war was. It was as if they had their own WWI. Massive casualties between 1M and 2M dead.

An odd butterfly effect of this war was how young Iran is today. Iran after the war enacted a policy to pay women to have more children. Today, Iran is still a gerontocracy ruled by Ali Khameni who will be 85 this year. Meanwhile half the population of Iran is under 33 and loathes their political class as evidenced by the Mahsa Amini protests that started last year.

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@the_transit_guy Where are the funds coming from? Theft.

https://t.co/kwtECvWT4W

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@arian_ghashghai @sporadica Correct, we’ve entered the “Fabius Cunctator” phase of anti tech backlash.

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

This feels like the “wet pavement makes it rain” fallacy.

Do people who are well-read have things figured out? Or are people who are well-read a lot alike across a bunch of other traits that make them have “things figured out”? Like that they’re inquisitive and self-starters?

(I think it’s the latter)

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@friedberg @naval @RoKhanna @chamath Just a reminder, they’re already seizing tech employees’ assets under California’s escheatment laws. In 2015, it was the fifth largest revenue line on the CA state budget.

https://t.co/aT0YEadiyT

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@FairweatherPhD @AndrewYang "Any company that has an economist certainly has one employee too many."
- Warren Buffett

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

This feels like political malpractice. If I’m your campaign manager I’m asking myself why would you be putting yourself in the position of defending a thorny state level tax bill, that is widely disliked by your biggest constituent-donors. This will ultimately be decided in Sacramento, not in the US House where you are.

You could just throw your hands up, say that this is for the state legislators to decide, and not get involved and spare yourself the grief. But now those constituents are angling to primary you.

Dumb.

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

“When Bonasera relents and asks Don Corleone to be his friend, he is turning his back on America. He is rejecting—not without cause, of course—the Lockean worldview, the Miracle [of liberal democracy and capitalism], in favor of the more natural and eternal political order. It works on the assumption that there is no extended order of abstract rules and contracts, there is only power, loyalty, reciprocity, alliances, honor, and friendship. Right and wrong are defined by what is good for our tribe. It is no coincidence that the name Amerigo Bonasera, translated from the Italian, means ‘Good night, America.’

The moral universe of The Godfather is the moral universe of all politics before the Miracle. It is natural. It lurks beneath the surface in every society and in every soul. It is there waiting to reclaim the Miracle and restore humanity to nature. And all it takes for nature to succeed is for us to let it.”

- @JonahDispatch, Suicide of the West

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

RE: Fraud in Minnesota

I’m not sure that most Americans understand that in large swathes of humanity, there is no actual concept of “fraud,” particularly fraud against the government. Instead, there is a belief in the virtue of getting away with what you can to help yourself and your tribe.

I spent a lot of my life in the Middle East and Central Asia, working closely with foreign contractors and foreign governments to provide support to American military operations. As a US Army officer with a big checkbook courtesy of Uncle Sam, I can’t really count the sheer number of times I was offered bribes to award a contract, or falsify records to do things like create larger (fake) headcounts at places like dining facilities, or to just simply be on the take for future illegal requests.

Of course I had enough sense to never comply with such requests. Moreover, they were never explicitly structured as “bribes”; instead it was usually along the lines of “Here I have these Rolexes as gifts for you and your wife to show our friendship.” (Unfortunately, too many US officers and NCOs succumbed to this siren song and ended up breaking rocks in Leavenworth.)

The weird thing about this to me was that whenever I turned down such an offering, it was treated as a grave insult. I was the one in the wrong, and not the fraudster trying to bribe me. They considered it rude that I was in their country and refused to accept how things got done. After all, why did I not want to help my tribe by helping their tribe?

Let me repeat: in these cultures, FRAUD IS NOT EVEN A CONCEPT. There is only what helps your tribe.

Such thought processes are so alien to Americans and much of the West. We are raised on the presumption that our institutions are valid, that the rule of law always prevails, and that integrity is universal. We need these presumptions to have working governments and economies, and without those presumptions—without the mental barrier that causes us not to accept outright fraud—our nation would quickly descend into the economic and social hellscape of countries like…. ummm… you know…. SOMALIA!

So when we import people en masse from cultures that accept bribery and fraud as routine, acceptable ways to advance one’s tribe, we should not be surprised that things like the $8 BILLION fraud schemes of the Somali population in Minnesota happen so easily.

Introducing a fraud-based culture based on tribalism into America is like introducing some sort of lethal virus into a population that has no natural immunity. The virus will spread and grow, unchecked, because it is so alien to the host. Similarly, a culture of fraud is anathema to American thinking, and it must be cut out before it consumes the host.

So when you see and hear patriotic Americans decrying what is happening in Minnesota or elsewhere, and when they seek deportation of the offenders, it is not “racism,” it is not “bigotry,” it is not “xenophobia”; instead, it is preserving the American tradition of responsible institutions and national integrity.

[Detroit News Opinion @DetNewsOpinion]

Joyner: Michigan’s data center gold rush is colliding with reality https://t.co/WCwrdCh5Hb

[Matt J @MattAJoyner]

@PaulSkallas Having POA over Les Wexner allowed him control over his assets, including Limited Brands (Victoria’s Secret). Perhaps he got wealthy in a bust out of Limited Brands assets and credit facilities culminating in bankrupting it in 2017?

Pure speculation.