Don Rafa
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raf.bsky.social
Don Rafa
@raf.bsky.social
just a panda. went to war, did some politics. what’s next?

world's biggest Toledo Mud Hens & Nashville Sounds fan, long-suffering Mets fan. likes 🐈, 🏉, ⚽, ⚾, 🏀, 🍕. likes = bookmarks.
Reposted by Don Rafa
this is what ten years of obsession with "wokeness" in the media was trying to get to btw bsky.app/profile/mari...
November 25, 2025 at 4:04 PM
dooooooooomed.
November 25, 2025 at 4:04 PM
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answer is great but also it's telling that the guy who's been saying this since day 1 has to answer about whether he's an antisemite for 5 min every interview while the same people grin vacantly at the jewish space lasers lady and call her a brave warrior
WELKER: What is your message to Jewish New Yorkers who feel you won't be tough enough in your response to antisemitism?

MAMDANI: That I am looking forward to being the next mayor and fulfilling the commitment I've made to Jewish New Yorkers to not only protect them but to celebrate and cherish them
November 23, 2025 at 4:26 PM
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Isaac Chotiner staring at a list of names right now.
November 22, 2025 at 2:29 PM
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i promise i don’t mean to high horse this but if you’re thinking about giving lizza ten bucks there are a lot of good independent journalists whose work you could subscribe to for a month instead
November 22, 2025 at 7:34 AM
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I felt like I was losing my mind watching this person's remarks and had to write about how disgusting they are.
Sarah Hurwitz Profanes the Holocaust
Holocaust education has worked too well for the Obama speechwriter, since when she rationalizes Israel's genocide, "I sound obscene." Maybe sit with that, Sarah
www.forever-wars.com
November 21, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Reposted by Don Rafa
It sucks an unreal quantity of ass knowing who these people are, having been to parties where you saw them pitch their company, and know—years in advance—that they are terrible, morally bankrupt people and who, despite years of fucking up and corruption, have still been rewarded immensely for it.
*KALSHI RAISES $1B AT $11B VALUATION: TECHCRUNCH
November 20, 2025 at 8:32 PM
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I think its pretty clear that ww2 movies are in fact load bearing in the culture and we probably need to mandate a few every year
November 20, 2025 at 7:36 PM
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She went to HR about him 5 times before she was murdered
Submitted without comment
November 19, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Reposted by Don Rafa
Few if any mainstream/center-left parties are as good on trans rights as Democrats, and we don't do ourselves any favors by pretending otherwise.
This is the hardest I have seen any member of Congress work to try and address transphobia in Congress, and her ability to get nearly all Democratic lawmakers to sign onto this letter is something any first would applaud
House Dems unite to tell GOP to stop "demonizing" trans people with "dehumanizing" slurs - LGBTQ Nation
Rep. Nancy Mace's "tra**y, tra**y, tra**y!" tirade is just one example.
www.lgbtqnation.com
November 19, 2025 at 3:00 AM
the response to the crisis of elite impunity must be relentless, pitiless, & overwhelming.
My mind has been spinning the last few days as multiple crises of journalism converged—the Nuzzi book, Epstein’s emails revealing journalists hid information, Trump berating a reporter with no consequence—and it occurred to me they all stemmed from the same source: elite impunity.
Moral rot in elite journalism is killing the whole field
The Nuzzi/RFK Jr. mess and the revelation of Esptein's journo pals lay bare a profound moral absence at the heart of our free press.
www.thehandbasket.co
November 18, 2025 at 11:49 PM
Reposted by Don Rafa
New — I wrote about the myriad ways journalism’s moral rot manifests, and how our crumbling institutions have created the conditions for it to fester:
Moral rot in elite journalism is killing the whole field
The Nuzzi/RFK Jr. mess and the revelation of Esptein's journo pals lay bare a profound moral absence at the heart of our free press.
www.thehandbasket.co
November 18, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Reposted by Don Rafa
the real thing that people are addicted to is the idea that there are no legitimately difficult choices. nothing has a downside. you don't have to pay for anything. the only reason that anything bad happens is that someone intended it.
they tend to alternate the two like whack-a-mole. someone is a product of the system, then they always had a choice and they are evil because of that. you see this similarly with mental illness. mental illness is real when you want it to be, "schizophenia doesn't make you bad" when you don't want it
November 18, 2025 at 5:30 PM
genuinely one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read; if you’re a history buff of any kind, you owe it to yourself to pick it up.
November 18, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Don Rafa
So @50501movement.bsky.social is circulating a video of a guy saying candidates "are being paid to be Israel first, to be loyal to the Zionist project and not to their constituents, not to the American people." Which is just a hairs breadth away from saying "Zionist Occupied Government." Not great!
November 17, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Reposted by Don Rafa
Folks you do not have to read the Nuzzi thing.

In fact, you are all better off not doing it.

I promise you people outside of Bluesky are not reading it.

Go play a video game, read a novel, look at trees, anything but giving any part of your one lifetime to reading any single thing about her
November 17, 2025 at 2:15 PM
ROUGHRIDERS WIN THE CUP
November 17, 2025 at 2:48 AM
no, they won't. in what world does anyone think THAT happens?!?
Tim Kaine: "The public will see this debate on healthcare without it being drown out by air traffic delays, SNAP recipients losing benefits, federal employees losing their paychecks."
November 16, 2025 at 9:07 PM
it's the same Stateside; sub in "Northern working class" for "Midwest" (Youngstown, Pittsburgh, "Rust Belt", etc). IOW: it's all genderized!
there's a *massive* disconnect between what they think "Northern working class" means, and what it actually is! Miners, steelmill workers etc. are largely extinct - these days, it'll be office workers, service sector and the like, knowledge and information workers, not manual workers
November 16, 2025 at 5:29 PM
this is where I’m at. he’s essentially a bust in Europe at this point, & this “debate” is happening mostly because of his last name.

if he were genuinely interested in a career reset, he’d go to MLS.
The worst part about Gio scoring is now I have to listen to every pundit say he should be starting in 2026, when the guy isn’t starting for his club team. Talented but toxic and fragile as fuck. Let it go.
November 16, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Don Rafa
Wish more members of Congress had this sort of courage.
November 16, 2025 at 12:01 AM
I kinda dig this Olivia person, she’s awesome
November 15, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Reposted by Don Rafa
Nuzzi, like TCW, exists as a kind of simulacrum of the midcentury public intellectual. Not even ripping off the writers of that era, but imitating a sort of half-remembered, half-invented idea of what those writers were sort of like and what their general vibe was.
November 14, 2025 at 5:49 PM
just a cataclysmic injury for the Pigeons, on multiple levels.
November 15, 2025 at 2:35 PM