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Brandon Friedman Profile picture
Brandon Friedman
@BFriedmanDC
Co-Founder, @RakkasanTea • Board Member, @DallasCPOB • Occasional columnist, @NYDailyNews • Former Obama guy • Once a soldier
mahjacat⁷😷#BLM🐝✊🏾🌈💋 Profile picture eDo Profile picture Liz Profile picture C McDonald™ Profile picture KGC (TheFightToProtectAmericanDemocracyIsDaily) Profile picture 10 subscribed
May 1 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Need to be very clear about what happened here: NYPD went on Morning Joe and lied to Americans about Columbia University students in order to make it appear those students were working with organized, transnational terrorist organizations Here's the clip. Morning Joe should delete this and apologize for having this NYPD guy on.
Apr 21 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I'll let others dismantle the sanctions suggestion here, but I continue to take issue with Israelis comparing IDF war crimes to the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yes, U.S. troops committed war crimes. No, the frequency and magnitude were not anywhere close to the IDF. To the casual observer, I understand combat looks like combat and "both sides" are guilty of war crimes. But we are talking about orders of magnitude when it comes to the difference between these two fighting forces.

It's like the New York Times bothsidesing Trump and Biden.
Apr 3 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
This is accurate. The IDF operates on the battlefield in a fundamentally different way than NATO militaries. It is a reckless, purposefully destructive approach to fighting that mirrors Russia's, and it's hard to explain to the armchair "war is war" crowd why this is important. What do I mean by that? Let’s dive in. Long thread follows.

First, modern professional militaries understand the need to fight in urban environments. They also know that in such situations, less is often more.
Apr 2 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Short thread. Because this gutted me.

Kids are scared a lot. They're scared of bullies. Of needles. Of someone breaking into the house at night. But as an American parent, you can always reassure them: You'll be fine. It won't be that bad. I'll protect you. It is, therefore, unimaginable to me what it must feel like to have told your child, over and over, as the bombs fell, for months on end, that it would be all right and that you'd protect them, knowing full well that it was out of your control.
Mar 31 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
If you told me 10 years ago I would one day be quoted by @FT as a player in a situation involving China's entry into the brewing Himalayan tea wars between Nepal and India, I would not have believed it.
ft.com/content/2b06b2… It's paywalled, but my take is that what's ultimately stressing the market — and leading to tea wars — is that tea is too expensive to produce. It used to not be for two reasons: First, workers were brutally exploited. Second, consumers were happy with low-grade, low-quality tea. Image
Mar 24 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Underdog Grand Canyon University is competing against Alabama today for a trip to the Sweet 16. Never heard of it, so just googled and learned a lot! For starters, GCU is the first predatory, for-profit school to compete in NCAA sports. GCU is owned by publicly-traded Grand Canyon Education, Inc., formerly Significant Education, LLC.

In 2008, it had fewer than 1,000 students enrolled. By 2017, it had 17,500 students. Today, it has more than 100,000.
Feb 11 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is a threat People may see this as Trump being a simple idiot while trying to take credit for someone else's success. But that's not what this is. Trump thinks like a mobster. He's trying to head off a potential Taylor Swift endorsement of Biden by raising her opportunity cost of doing so.
Feb 4 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I don't think this story articulates the threat clearly. To clarify: Biden can afford to lose Michigan. Even if 150,000 Arab and Muslim Americans (the 2020 margin) vote Trump or don't show up at all, and it swings the election, Biden still wins 290-248. 🧵 politico.com/news/magazine/… However. This isn't his only problem on the left. Biden won Michigan by 2.8%. What's more important is to know that he won FOUR states by even tighter margins. These he cannot afford to lose.

So how close were they?
Jan 25 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This statement is written — in tone and theory — to emulate the declarations of secession produced by Confederate states in 1860 and 1861. Just swap out slavery for immigration. I assume this is deliberate. 🧵 Abbott's accusation that the federal government has breached the Constitution by having "broken the compact between the United States and the States" is lifted nearly verbatim from South Carolina's 1860 declaration of secession. Image
Dec 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1. The Israeli government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has made Jews worldwide less safe through the use of indiscriminate bombing and siege warfare in response to the horrific attack on 10/7. 2. The most dangerous country for Jews (with a large Jewish population) is Israel. Nowhere else are Jews massacred, raped, kidnapped, and rocketed. The worst atrocity committed against Jews since the Holocaust happened where they were "safest."

This is on Netanyahu's government.
Nov 16, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I've seen some criticism of Warren's statement below because she avoids the word "ceasefire." I think this is wrong. I think Democrats should get fully behind her.

Here's why: I've stayed out of the ceasefire debate because I don't really support a "ceasefire." Hamas is now ISIS, a plague on both Gazans and Israelis, and I'm fine with relentless military pressure on it. What I have opposed from the beginning is large-scale, indiscriminate fires that target civilian infrastructure as a form of collective punishment.
Sep 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
When you study the Holocaust on an academic level, you learn two things: First, yes, however bad you thought the Nazis were, they were worse. And second, they were totally average, ordinary people. The second point is key. It's why historians are warning us now about Republicans. @ejmccarthy And before anyone jumps in with the "you should not compare, the only Nazis were Nazis," I would just like them to stipulate which era. Because the Holocaust was 70 years in the making. Nazis existed for 20+ years *before* the first extermination camp was built.
Aug 9, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
"An armed society is a polite society" is the biggest fallacy in the world.

I live in Texas, so let me show you how this has played out: The worst people in the world have been empowered to behave like assholes. And if you're normal, you simply have to take it. You have to modify your behavior to assume everyone you interact with has a gun and they're having a bad day. If you don't act submissive, you risk your life. A few examples follow.
Jun 12, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
We've completely normalized a small span of critically important roadway taking "months to fix." This is a failure of capitalism.
yhoo.it/3MUw45K America built the Hoover Dam in 60 months using 1930s technology. In 2011, a single Dupont Circle escalator in Washington, D.C. took nine months to repair, before promptly breaking 2½ years later.
May 8, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In the wake of threats leveled after yesterday's massacre, schools in Frisco, Texas are excusing student absences Monday. This means schools are allowing absences to *preemptively* prepare for an armed attack. ImageImage We are one step away from schools being unable to open or operate at all due to Republican-driven violence in Texas communities
Apr 27, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
People are kinda implying what a potential terrorist this guy was, but I honestly wonder how unusual he really is for a 21-year-old born after 9/11 in a country constantly at war, awash in guns, raised by YouTubers like Andrew Tate, while school shootings happen every week. I mean, maybe the kids are all right and he's a total anomaly. But also maybe this is a consequence of our extremely online, weird gun culture country, where fascists now run several states. I would not be shocked to see a lot more of this.
Apr 24, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
What a debacle: The FAA has now grounded SpaceX's Starship program "pending results of a 'mishap investigation.'"

"It's not yet known" whether the fallout material "is dangerous to touch or breathe in and what effect it could have on soil health." cnbc.com/2023/04/24/spa… Total disaster, all because Musk thought it would be funny to launch on 4/20. There's so much in this story. It'll be months, maybe years before Starship launches again. ImageImage
Apr 22, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Two large explosions at Ross & Hall in Dallas in the last hour. Lost internet both times. It came back on about 15 minutes after the first. But now we just lost electricity. Going great. Thankfully I had just finished making a pot of tea. Really dodged a bullet
Apr 18, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
As others have noted, the acceptance and roles of transgender people in societies throughout history are well documented. I had to go back and find it, but here's an example from Lakota Sioux culture. It wasn't written recently. It's from a book published more than 50 years ago. Image Always interesting how societies — for thousands of years — have been able to appreciate, celebrate or, at least, accept members who are atypical. Then you have toxic, regressive cultures like modern Republicans, defined by a myopic worldview and glaring ignorance of history.
Apr 16, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
I often disagree with Tom, but do enjoy his writing on the "death of expertise." However, being in Texas, I feel like I’m reading this thread from a parallel universe. It’s simply disconnected from the reality lived by minority populations and Democratic voters in red states.

🧵 Tom's thread ignores states like Texas, where fascist Republicans do have a "well-developed party structure," are highly organized and eagerly working to expand red state power over deep blue cities. They *do,* in fact, "want to capture and run the State in all its glory."
Apr 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The problem with "Dianne Feinstein digs in" is that no one really knows if it's Senator Feinstein digging in or her staff. That's the difference between her and Fetterman. When Fetterman had a brain injury, he showed up and took questions. politico.com/news/2023/04/1… I'm just so sick of politicians being treated with kid gloves. Or like royalty, entitled to the office they hold. There's no sexism here, either. Fetterman got *brutalized* by the press when it looked like he might be physically incapable of doing the job.