tim f

@timfitz.bsky.social

937

Posts

dev, sysadmin, libsoc, gtarp enthusiast, enjoyer of being a dad

also at: http://mastodon.social/@diceyfitz • http://cohost.org/fitzzz

Posts Replies Media

I feel like this bears repeating, even though it fucking sucks. The Supreme Court is considered by both of the other two branches, and the public at large, to be a sacrosanct authority on what the state must and must not do. Having abandoned all pretense of "balls and strikes", it rules unchallenged

The idea that our institutions can be relied upon at all is laughable. Anybody writing about American politics as if there's not a judicial coup in charge of the country at this very present moment needs to be moved to a different beat. And that's a lot of the people writing about American politics.

While it is theoretically possible to impeach a justice, and it is theoretically possible to pass a law to limit the court or force it into a new shape, the first one requires consensus and is not usable, and the second one is made politically treacherous due to said public perception of the Court.

It sounds like Biden is thinking about it anyway. The problem is that he's alienated a lot of the people he would need to set the table for real reform. If he is going to draw people back with a response to the right-wing takeover of the gov, he needs to go hard, fully commit, make a case, all in.

Ah yes, Prime Day, the 48-hour period in which America's journalists emerge from their cryogenic storage pods to comprehensively cover the Internet store

Gift link. This is overdue but one of the things Biden absolutely needs to get after right now. Maybe Dems are waking up to what it is going to take to defeat this judicial coup. www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/u...

Biden Considers Pushing for Major Changes to the Supreme Courtwww.nytimes.com The proposals include term limits for the justices and an enforceable code of ethics. But they would need congressional approval, which is a long shot.

Need to add packing to the todo list, tho.

Reposted by

tim f

A lot of people on this site have zero idea what intersectionality is and it shows. You aren’t being progressive when you stack rank various kinds of oppression like you’re making a fucking tier list of marginalized identities, people.

Reply to

This Sandwichman is Tom Walker

Oh, I think that's premature. There's likely to be evidence on his phone, and at least some context from his family. His friends have already described him as a staunch, traditional conservative. Unlikely to be much more complex than that.

WSJ this morning. lol at the last bit. "Leaders on both sides need to stop describing the stakes of the election in apocalyptic terms. Democracy won't end if one or the other candidate is elected. Fascism is not aborning if Mr. Trump wins, unless you have little faith in American institutions."

Reply to

Derek

Is it who we are as a nation, or what this nation is and who it is for

Reply to

This Sandwichman is Tom Walker

Seeming increasingly likely this is exactly what happened

I feel like this is flying under folks' radar, but concrete information has emerged about Crooks' political alignment from people who knew him: he was a staunch conservative. www.thedailybeast.com/trump-rally-...

Reply to

A.J. Ponder

No, this is disinfo. The info matches him, not the 69-year-old. The source of the confusion is a screenshot of the donation record with his city listed as Pittsburgh, but the zip matches only his home address nevertheless. Source: I dug into this yest, you'll find the same thing if you do the same.

That said, other info establishes very clearly that he was ideologically conservative, e.g.: www.thedailybeast.com/trump-rally-...

Trump Rally Gunman Was ‘Definitely Conservative,’ Classmate Recallswww.thedailybeast.com “It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate.”

Reposted by

tim f

If you’ve shared this but haven’t read it yet, you should. PEOPLE isn’t pulling punches. Just printing “Christian Nationalism” in relation to the platform of a presidential candidate is more than many pubs have done.

Just a reminder that People mag has a great Project 25 write up that you can share with your less politically aware friends and fam people.com/what-is-proj...

What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything from the Word 'Gender' to Public Educationpeople.com Donald Trump's far-right allies created Project 2025 as a blueprint for his possible second term. The controversial plan would push a Christian nationalist agenda that dramatically reshapes the U.S. g...

The press needs to stop telling people how to feel about the attempted assassination (among other things). From literally moment zero, journos/editors have been unable to resist stuff like "Likely to boost Trump" and "Expected to further divide the nation". I want the news, not the weather.

For all anyone knows, people are going to see all of this not as something blamable on Democrats or people pointing out true things about the man, but as more of the Trumpian chaos that they know and revile. Which, as it turns out, is a much smarter take than what the Times has divined we must have.

Can't you imagine your readership and the public at large remembering more than the last 10 minutes? Or keeping track of more than 2 characters at a time? It's your job is to assist people in doing those things. Or isn't it? If it's not, we need to create a new job for that purpose, so let us know.

Here's what happened this weekend: A conservative Republican kid took a shot at the fascist Republican nominee known to exhort political violence and clipped his ear. Where are the explorations of cleavages in the Republican party, or how Trumpism has killed conservativism & wears it as a skin mask?

Maybe we could talk about the judicial coup and how it has eliminated key parts of social contract that conservatives always saw themselves as primarily focused on defending. Maybe we could talk about how past authoritarians have exploited liberal fears of appearing intolerant to destroy liberalism.

The idea of Trump and the GOP using the botched assassination to steal the center lane from Biden would be legitimately very scary if it weren’t impossible to imagine. The moment they go any deeper than the tritest platitudes they’ll give off the usual creepy fashy vibes. Trump cannot play earnest.

It really doesn’t play to any of Trump’s strengths except the fact that somebody tried to shoot at him. But the shooter was a conservative, so how does that even work? He’s going to unify America against his own base? It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense!

All Biden has to do here is keep projecting calm, normal vibes, mixed with the right amount of forward-looking kitchen table and quality of life stuff for folks. Be the safest port in a world being made more dangerous by Donald Trump, who’s long had the most violent rallies around.

Starting to feel like the national mood is less “let’s get on crazy train with the sniper target” and more “let’s all redouble our commitment to normality”, which might not be as good for Trump as I initially feared

Reposted by

tim f

everybody's gonna be talking about the other stuff today but Shannen Doherty spent the better part of fifty-three years entertaining people and fifty-three is pretty early to have to go and that's hard. travel home safe Shannen D.

Another famous woman of the ‘90s who deserved a reexamination of how hard people came for her. She was good at what she did. variety.com/2024/tv/news...

Shannen Doherty, ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ and ‘Charmed’ Star, Dies at 53variety.com Shannen Doherty, who played Brenda on 'Beverly Hills 90210' and starred in 'Charmed,' has died.

PRO-TIP: If you don’t want people to try to kill you, DO NOT: get involved in politics in order to seize power and kill, subject, and/or ethnically cleanse them and/or the people they care abou. DO: not do any of that. Easy peasy, zero bullets, live your best life!

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Trump is still openly a fascist who means to dismantle democracy in the United States and replace it with a Christian nationalist theocracy that will happily throw us each and all to any available wolf. There’s nothing hyperbolic about stating such facts.

Reposted by

tim f

the "violence shook this previously peaceful white christian nationalist rally railing against the vermin tainting the blood of the country" stories are going to destroy me

Reply to

Coach Finstock

It could easily have been a bb or other non-lethal projectile. We just don’t know. I do agree that the lack of info is becoming sus tho

Reposted by

tim f

Since I've been seeing folks talk around it but not post any articles, here's the Al-Jazeera article detailing Israel's massacre of at least 71 Palestinians and injury of several 100 while ostensibly targeting a Hamas commander today

‘Children in pieces’: Israeli raids on Gaza ‘safe zone’ kill 71, wound 289www.aljazeera.com At least five Israeli air strikes target tents of displaced people near water desalination unit in the al-Mawasi camp.