Ralf W

@raflw.bsky.social

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Peripatetic pessimist-optimist.
Hanger on at Balloon Juice, also too.

Posts Replies Media

I'm still hopeful for our democracy. This was just a small part of our Walworth Co. Democrats presence in the July 4th parade today

Got to meet former & future US Rep. Peter Barca in Whitewater, Wisconsin today. Let's go Dems! Beat Bryan Steil #WI-01.

This is the prelude to how all of America will be, if everyone doesn't just work like the dickens to get Dems elected in Nov.

Mississippi is the poorest state in the US. Even though the state gets federal welfare funds, it is difficult to get welfare. The money was all getting stolen, and they got away with it. Now the journalists who exposed the story are facing a lawsuit and jail. www.nbcnews.com/investigatio...

She exposed how the nation's poorest state spent federal welfare money. Now she might go to jail.www.nbcnews.com "The rabbit's got the gun now," said a lawyer for former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, who is trying to force reporter Anna Wolfe to reveal her sources.

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Ralf W

Reply to

GOLIKEHELLMACHINE

columnists can lay out the conditions under which they would be satisfied, but i didn’t vote for a fucking columnist and i do not look to them for leadership

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Ralf W

Maybe we should be talking about credible allegations of Trump sexually assaulting twelve year olds with the assistance of Epstein!

By the way, Faine, have you already seen this? If this is true, then it'd be all the more horrific for such a man to win the presidency.

Rachel Bitecofer 🗽💡🔭🦆 on X: "Trump forced 12 year olds to perform lesbian sex acts for him. That seems important. https://t.co/yvmSxUbW6c" / Xtwitter.com Trump forced 12 year olds to perform lesbian sex acts for him. That seems important. https://t.co/yvmSxUbW6c

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Ralf W

“Politics would be interesting again,” no politics should not be interesting, normal people should not have to invest time and energy into saving democracy because our institutions are collapsing, give me boring, mundane politics any day

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Ralf W

The fact that I know more about Joe Biden’s one bad debate night than I do about Donald Trump’s years of raping and sexually assaulting girls within Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring shows exactly what is terribly wrong with today’s political mainstream media.

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Ralf W

The GOP are spiking the football before they’ve actually won in a way that we can absolutely use to our advantage.

One of the few things that gives me an ounce of hope is that they are endzone dancing months in advance of their possible federal gov takeover, which doesn't mean it won't happen, but that sort of thing does have a way of blowing up in peoples' faces. That said, it'll be a continuous fight anyway.

The final 3 business days of the Supreme Court term make clear, ending Trump's political career doesn't break the fever. It may only change the date on Project 2025.

Also, considering what young professional conservatives have been marinating in, they're only going to get worse. But we can kneecap them by winning enough to restore the guardrails. But Democratic leadership must see the time for business as usual is over. Ending Trump does not break the fever.

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Ralf W

Seems like it should be pretty easy for the Dems to simultaneously affirm Biden’s place at the top of the ticket *and* start getting Harris in front of the camera more ASAP to reinforce her competence & bona fides & send the message that you’re voting for both of them. What am I missing.

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Ralf W

Reply to

Popehat

The ambiguity is the point. There’s guaranteed to be an issue for appeal, both pre- AND post-trial, thus ensuring that the real rule is “a president is immune from suit so long as they’re a president we like” It’s inimical to the rule of law and makes a mockery of the entire profession

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Ralf W

Reply to

Chris Wyman

Bringing 24 hour news values to the papers and magazines was a mistake. We sorely need more deliberative media to temper the constant emotional kneejerking you get from real time reaction and the subsequent echoes as people react to the reaction.

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Ralf W

If the lower court understood the present moment, this would be its response: "The court is surprised this needs to be said, but anything related to a coup attempt is not an official act. That includes all of the conduct in the indictment. Trial begins September 1st."

Opinion basically comes down to "official actions are immune, unofficial aren't" and the court says that since lower courts have not made a determination on that question, they need to go do that. Beyond me to determine how feasible that is, but absolutely delays the trial.

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Ralf W

the New York Times has descended into total nihilism; it doesn't give a damn about the truth, only about damaging Democrats and helping Trump. So it presents a video it acknowledges to be misleadingly edited as evidence for its thesis.

Setting the particular topic aside for a second, this is a truly spectacular case of the Times' pathologically incompetent "Where there's fire, there's smoke" theory of writing up high-stakes investigative stories

Heather Cox Richardson's full post overnight about this extreme, radical Supreme Court is a must read. open.substack.com/pub/heatherc.... "Today the United States Supreme Court overthrew the central premise of American democracy"

This country has never really gone hard-right before. I don’t think our ~250 year history suggests we’ll passively accept jack-booted power. But maybe I’m too naive, of course lots of people will just keep their heads down and work to survive as their main resistance.

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Ralf W

The Court has purported to strip us of all legal recourse for crimes committed by the most powerful person in the nation. Each and every one of us is now, effectively, at the mercy of an autocrat, who could order our death if he simply made the pretense of connecting it to his official duties.

Criminal law probably functioned as some kind of deterrent on abuses of presidential power, and that deterrent is now gone. But even if that weren't true, today's ruling would be an appalling display of contempt for the American people and for the basic principles on which this country rests.

"They're not pulling this because they're strong right now, they're pulling it because they're weak."

These are not actions you take if you think your movement has a legitimate chance of maintaining power via overwhelming popular support.

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Ralf W

Reply to

Mr. Grift

These are not actions you take if you think your movement has a legitimate chance of maintaining power via overwhelming popular support.

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Ralf W

Reply to

hilzoy

Two things. First, I have said this before but it gets special emphasis today: I never, EVER want to hear conservatives talk about originalism or judicial restraint ever again. There is nothing about Presidential immunity in the Constitution.

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Ralf W

all of this sound and fury can just as easily represent the dying gasps of the republican party as a national institution, if we make it so

Whole thread. It's stomach churning, but valuable.

Second, this is SO much worse than even terrible cases like Shelby or Citizens United. In those cases there was something that vaguely resembled an argument -- a dumb argument, but an argument nonetheless. In this case, it's just 'let's nullify our Republican form of government because Trump.'

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Ralf W

Reply to

hilzoy

This really does, in some ways, wrap all of the decay in the conservative (radical) Supreme Court. Avenge Robert Bork, venerate Tricky Dick's dirty tricks, and signal that going forward, extremism in defense of right wing hegemony is no vice.

Roberts posthumously pardoning Richard Nixon for firing Archibald Cox. How delightful.

Corner Post and the undoing of Chevron is an existential threat to the entire administrative state and the US economy as a whole. We really have no idea how destabilizing these two decisions in tandem will be.

All the dire warnings from the Right about how terrible a second Biden term would be make much more sense after the last three days of SCOTUS output. The Right understands how much, how radically more powerful the presidency is starting now, than it was a week ago. And how weak Congress is.

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Ralf W

This Originalist™ court has effectively immunized both the president and all federal law enforcement officers from any meaningful accountability. Because if there are two things the Founders cherished, it's the power of a king-like executive and armed agents of the government to act with impunity.

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Ralf W

the supreme court is an extremist organization being treated like a pesky HOA

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Ralf W

Biggest campaign story ever: using a private email server that could hold top secrets but doesn’t and could be breached but wasn’t. Tiny story: stealing top secrets. Hiding them in a bathroom. Taking them to NJ. Showing them to foreigners. Meeting with foreign governments.

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Ralf W

Reply to

Brooke Binkowski

They NEED you to either stay civil and nice or completely lose your shit and start screaming. If you mock them like a playground bully and get real personal they can't take it. Trump is obsessed with being respected. So disrespect him. He's a sad old loser felon who fails at everything and stinks.