A great way to support local restaurants struggling in this crisis is to buy their gift cards, so they get cash now for meals they'll deliver now or serve later. I've been working with the @Gateway_Chamber of Commerce to encourage this, and here's how you can help! (1)
First, go the website rallyforrestaurants.com, and send them contact info for your favorite local restaurants. Once they're signed up, they'll be able to market their gift cards to a much bigger audience.
Then we can buy those gift cards, and even donate them to others in need.
Oh, and when we order delivery from that great local eatery we're supporting, let's not forget to include a tip for the person who will safely leave it at our door.
Please retweet this thread -- let's get every local restaurant and cafe in #CD07 signed up, and encourage our friends to support them.
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When you get beat, you've got to listen to people who weren't sold on your arguments, so I listened to this from Dave Portnoy with an open mind. I'm sure a lot of folks who view themselves as moderates and voted for Trump feel this way. But I have some questions. 1/
First, Harris never once called Trump backers "Nazis," "fascists" or anything similar. Trump's Marine general former chief of staff did say Trump admired Hitler and many of us cited that (how could we ignore it?), but that was not about his supporters. 2/
Meanwhile, at multiple rallies, Trump referred to people like me - whether Democrats or his Republican critics - as "scum" and "vermin" and "domestic enemies" who are worse than our foreign enemies. Are we going to talk about Dems offending Trump supporters and ignore that? 3/
I've avoided commenting on college protests because they matter way less than the real horror people in Israel/Gaza are experiencing. But there are principles worth defending here, both from the extremism of the far left and the blood lust of partisans on the right. For example:
1. The right to peaceful expression and protest should be sacrosanct, even if the ideas being expressed make people uncomfortable. Many of our elite colleges have unfortunately forgotten this in recent years. Their right wing critics forget it, too, when it suits them.
2. There's a long tradition in America of protestors violating laws that protect access to streets or buildings. That's not violence, but if you do it, you have to accept consequences. If negotiation fails, colleges are right to break up encampments that cause disorder.
As a former State Department official responsible for enforcing the Leahy Laws, which prohibit US assistance to units of foreign militaries that commit gross human rights abuses, here are a few thoughts on what's going on with the Leahy Laws and Israel. 1/
First, we've enforced the Leahy Laws all over the world, including with close allies. They work because they allow a surgical approach of cutting off individual units instead of denying aid to entire countries. Foreign governments often make changes to avoid getting "Leahied." 2/
Second, it's true that till now the State Dept has in practice not applied Leahy to Israel. This is wrong - while Israel shouldn't be held to a higher standard than other countries on human rights, it shouldn't be held to a uniquely low bar either. 3/ theguardian.com/world/2024/jan…
The House has the votes to pass more aid for #Ukraine (by a 3-1 margin). But the GOP leadership has refused to allow a vote. And now there is no GOP leadership.
The road to renewing aid, on which so much depends, will be hard. Here is a thread on how it could still be done.
Plan A, the normal option, would be for Republicans to elect a Speaker, who would then schedule a Ukraine vote. But Jim Jordan says he won't do that. And If Steve Scalise manages to unite his caucus to win, I doubt he'll then call a vote on Ukraine that divides his caucus.
Plan B: The Senate passes Ukraine aid attached to a bill dealing with the border crisis, and the new House Speaker agrees to take that up. But an immigration compromise reasonable enough to get bipartisan support in the Senate might not fly with the House invade-Mexico crowd.
Our 12 NJ House members may have to vote next week on Kevin McCarthy's threat to default on America's debts to force massive cuts in domestic spending.
Default would destroy our economy.
But we should also talk about what the proposed extreme budget cuts would do to New Jersey.
The McCarthy plan would cut about $130 billion right away and massively more over 10 years. Since the GOP will likely exempt defense, veterans, and (I'd guess) border enforcement, that would require cutting everything else the government does by over 50%.
One obvious consequence of the McCarthy cuts would be to eliminate the increased spending on our roads and bridges from last year's infrastructure bill.
So anyone voting for this is kissing the #Gateway tunnel goodbye, along with hundreds of local projects coming to our state.
I was intrigued, so just for fun, I asked another chatbot - #BingChat - what it thought about Prof. Kosinski's scary sounding experience with its cousin Chat GPT4.
Bing replied I shouldn't worry because Kosinski had admitted in a later tweet that he'd made the whole story up.
I thought "that clears things up -- I guess I had missed Prof. Kosinski's later tweet." But then I looked at his timeline and couldn't find that tweet.
So I asked Bing for evidence and it sent me one link, and then another -- but neither showed Kosinski's purported confession.