James

@jcalchemist.bsky.social

Posts

Dad, Vet, Wiseass. He/Him.

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Me: you know liberal apologia is big reason why conservatives are comfortable being openly racist towards Kamala White liberals: I literally fell out of a coconut tree please explain scare quotes, context, and history to me

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James

genuinely hopeful sign that every big name GOP garbage monster is frantically trying to distance themselves from Project Say The Quiet Part Loud In an Easily-Digestible Bullet Point Format About Which There Can Be No Confusion. this means we should all absolutely continue never shutting up about it

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James

"you're not American why do you care about the 4th of July" mate I'm Indian, any day someone got the Brits to fuck off back to their country is a national holiday for me

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James

Official act. Immune.

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James

Happy No-More-Kings Day tomorrow! And remember: Patriotism is helping the country you love do less wrong. Nationalism is pretending that it's *never* wrong. 🇺🇸 "Nationalism is Patriotism for Assholes." – Jon Lovett

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James

christian rock is so funny bc they’re all singing about being in love with the same guy

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James

this entire crusade against diversity in hiring and admissions is based on the supposition that all white men are necessarily more qualified than any nonwhite person or woman who might be considered for the job. like, this lawsuit more or less states that outright.

Lawsuit: Northwestern’s law school is biased against White men in hiringwww.washingtonpost.com The lawsuit, filed by a prominent attorney, alleges the university’s law school gives hiring preference to women and people of color.

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James

Classic American political dialogue is premised on the idea that we share fundamental values but disagree on how best to promote them. I haven’t believed this for a while. Other than “I prefer to be alive and not dead” and “I like pudding,” I do not share values with these people.

Yep. One of the biggest blind spots people have is assuming that underneath, others share the same basic values as them. They have trouble imagining an ideology that is completely misaligned with theirs.

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James

Remember who had did all of that agenda- and parameter-setting around terms like "activist judges" and "politicizing the courts?" They were telling you what they were going to do. When they accuse, they are always telling you what they are going to do.

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James

“What makes you so confident you should be president?” is an actual question a reporter shouted at the incumbent who just warned about a reckless court decision that imperils democracy

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very much reflective of the lack of any real survival instinct among journalists that they think the big story today is whether biden will step down

“What makes you so confident you should be president?” is an actual question a reporter shouted at the incumbent who just warned about a reckless court decision that imperils democracy

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James

Again, Black people are an exception here, as basically anyone who stayed in the Jim Crow South has a living memory of living under what amounted to fascism, including the “always walking on eggshells/lack of social trust/long periods of boring endurance/randomized terrifying violence”

Pretty much. What it mostly boils down to is that most Americans really don’t have the faintest idea what living under modern authoritarian regimes actually looks like, and how it’s often at the same time way more boring and way more scary than they’d imagined.

The United States has always been a democracy for some and a brutal authoritarian regime for others, and the effort to expand it to democracy for all has led to a 70+ year backlash culminating in SCOTUS claiming that kings are totes cool and also judges are the ones to coronate them

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James

And remember, the Christian Right only took up abortion as a topic after they lost school segregation for good when the IRS went after Bob Jones’ U status, & needed a new issue to rally the troops. 1/x all our issues are intertwined. 🧵

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James

Oh boy, $150,000!

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James

a vote for the Democratic candidate is, among many other things that are also good, a vote for being allowed to continue to vote in the future

look i'll be clear, I will be voting, and encouraging everyone I know to do the same, against donald trump and the end of democracy in this country in november. I do not care if that means i'm voting for a man who is literally dead.

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James

In all seriousness, if Biden informed Manchin/Sinema that they will be prosecuted if they don't vote to end filibuster/appoint four new justices, wouldn't that conversation be presumptively immune from prosecution, since it's a discussion about how to advance the president's agenda?

Question: After SCOTUS ruling, can Biden now order DOJ to prosecute Manchin/Sinema on trumped up charges if they refuse to vote to end the filibuster and appoint four new justices? Wouldn't order to DOJ be absolutely immune, and wouldn't threat to the senators be at minimum presumptively immune?

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James

My parents left Vietnam in 1975 to escape from single party rule from a fascist government led by Hồ Chí Minh and Lê Duẩn. He would be in this photo but he was in the infirmary using his medical training to help the sick. He loves America for being the land of opportunity. SCOTUS betrayed us today.

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James

Biden needs to come out and say “give me the senate you get extra 5 seats on the court day one of the new session”

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James

The Supreme Court just overthrew the country and I’m still seeing headlines that are like “did you know Joe Biden is like, months older than his opponent?”

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James

My first read: If a president commits crimes unrelated to him being the most powerful person in the world, he can be prosecuted. But if explicitly uses his powers to commit crimes, he is at least presumptively, and probably absolutely immune from prosecution. I mean, holy shit.

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James

Well at least the schmoozing and support for the Courts legitimacy persuaded Barrett to be on the right side of the immunity case. Wait, I'm getting a message...

Thinking about this.

Barrett, Sotomayor Emphasize Harmony on Heels of Public Chidingnews.bloomberglaw.com Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett stressed the need for collegiality in a joint appearance just days after the more junior justice appeared to publicly chide her liberal colleagues for th...

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James

According to my originalist reading of the plain text of the constitution, what the founders really fuckin loved was kings

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James

A list of George III's official acts: www.archives.gov/founding-doc...

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James

I can’t believe the Supreme Court just ruled that the president can sleep outdoors in a public space.

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James

Not one more minute of defensiveness from the Biden campaign, please. Not one more question answered about age or debates. All day, every day, a referendum on Trump's criminality and assault on the constitutional order, on what he would be like with blank check for his lawlessness.

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James

Need someone joe biden loves and respects to get him to understand that This Moment Right Now is the time for some very drastic "official acts."

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James

Clarence Thomas unquestionably committed tax fraud on his motorcoach deal and the president has the power to put him in handcuffs this afternoon, in his official capacity in charge of the IRS and federal law enforcement

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governments are large and complicated you aren't voting for Biden or Trump you are voting for a boring center-left administration or Project 2025

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James

A grotesque and hideous distortion of the rule of law from the highest Court of the world’s most powerful democracy. This is a national and global catastrophe. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23p...