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Varad Mehta

18 Dec, 8 tweets, 4 min read

@NickClairmont1

"Jill Biden is not a Ph.D. stealing the valor of physicians. She is a technical school student stealing the valor of Ph.Ds."

So many great lines in this outstanding overview of l'affaire Dr. Biden and its deeper meaning by @NickClairmont1. tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

"It is generally not of the caliber of work that we associate with the projects that represent such gargantuan achievement in fields of knowledge that we have decided as a society that people might be addressed as “doctor” for having completed them." tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

"Epstein's piece garnered the reaction it did because it was a brazen reminder of a finding that the highly educated among us already know but wish were not true." tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

"I don't believe the butt of Epstein's piece was women, but rather credentialism—which is the hornet’s nest one cannot kick today. Oh boy, do you not want to piss off the people whose sense of self hangs in a frame on their wall." tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

"Epstein's point is that the flaunting of educational credentials as part of one's name is a sign that society at large is guilty of overvaluing those credentials as signifiers of anything really important." tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

"The debacle of Doctor Jill becomes much more serious and worrying in the way it involves censorship, though. No norms will be left unturned in the guarding of credentialed status." tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

"There are reasons why we no longer record in the way we refer to people whether they are a landowner; it matters less now to how much respect and how many rights we think people should be accorded. The same should be true of doctorates, in whatever field."tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

@NickClairmont1

This whole essay by @NickClairmont1 is fabulous. Read it all. And then hope never to think about this ridiculous affair ever again. tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

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More from @varadmehta

Varad Mehta

@varadmehta

18 Dec

@dcexaminer

"Biden's triumph was no triumph for climate activism. Far from it. Climate change, despite appearances to the contrary, was something of a loser in the 2020 election."

ICYMI, me in @dcexaminer on Joe Biden's climate agenda, now out from the paywall. washingtonexaminer.com/politics/green…

"Biden's climate proposal would transform the economy. It is sweeping in its reach and scope. And it is almost certain never to see the light of day. Voters made sure of that a month ago when they gave Republicans at least 50 seats in the Senate." washingtonexaminer.com/politics/green…

"Given Democrats' reduced majority in the House, there’s no guarantee it could pass Congress’s lower chamber either. Republicans won't provide a single vote for it, which means that, for all practical purposes, Biden's climate plan is already dead." washingtonexaminer.com/politics/green…

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Varad Mehta

@varadmehta

18 Dec

"Block-Heads," a 1938 feature in which Stan and Ollie are reunited after Stan has spent the last 20 years guarding a trench in France because no one told him WWI was over, might be the most appropriately named Laurel and Hardy film.

Also on tonight's bill, two shorts from 1932, "Scram!" and "The Chimp." In the first, the boys play vagrants who are ordered by a judge to leave town and then fall in with a drunk and try to sneak into his house. Except it's not his house.

In "The Chimp," Stan and Ollie play circus hands who get the circus' flea circus and chimp in lieu of their back pay when the circus folds. They then have to sneak the chimp into their hotel, whose landlord is furiously awaiting his wife, who he thinks is two-timing him.

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Varad Mehta

@varadmehta

17 Dec

"What a Wonderful World" at 28. Bravo, XPN listeners. #XPN2020.

This was another great set "A Change Is Gonna Come," "Yesterday," and "Purple Rain." Throw out Leonard Cohen's original of "Hallelujah" and Prince leads into Louis Armstrong. Throw out Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" and it's a great run right now. #XPN2020

Now "Baba O'Riley." The top 50 is full of Boomer classic rock standards like Dylan, the Who, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd. But XPN listeners have also voted in Prince, Louis Armstrong, Etta James, Otis Redding, Joni Mitchell, and Sam Cooke. #XPN2020

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Varad Mehta

@varadmehta

17 Dec

@Vermeullarmine

"By striving so conspicuously to depoliticize the Supreme Court, he has brought about the very thing he hoped to prevent: No one has done more to politicize the court than the chief justice."

@Vermeullarmine and yours truly on John Roberts' futile quest. washingtonpost.com/outlook/john-r…

"Strategic behavior flagrantly intended to advance an agenda often creates public suspicion — which may undermine the aims for which the strategy is undertaken."

Wisdom John Roberts would do well to heed, even at this late date. washingtonpost.com/outlook/john-r…

"If Roberts's apostasies have demoralized the right — Vice President Pence called him a 'disappointment to conservatives' in August — they have emboldened the left. Far from sating critics of the court, his concessions have only whetted their appetite." washingtonpost.com/outlook/john-r…

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Varad Mehta

@varadmehta

17 Dec

https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1339538118521856003

https://twitter.com/ByronYork/status/1339538118521856003

"After beating Trump and creating a permission structure for some GOP voters to back Biden, the task now, they said, is to turn back Republicans' embrace of authoritarianism and transform their party in the process."

LOL at every word of this. politico.com/news/2020/12/1…

"Trumpism isn't going anywhere. The repudiation of GOP candidates up and down the ballot that never-Trumpers longed for never materialized."

This is the reality. Trump barely lost and everywhere else on the ticket NeverTrump was an abject failure.

politico.com/news/2020/12/1…

Read 11 tweets

Varad Mehta

@varadmehta

16 Dec

https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1338851758198677504

Minerva's owl flies at dusk, or so the saying goes, yet even if you lived on a planet where dusk lasted a thousand years that wouldn't be long enough for you to get a clue.