Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Battle won, war still ongoing.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Everybody saw this coming.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

The willow is too close to the house.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Bark louder, little dog.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Not all heroes wear capes.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Once Again — SRSLY?!?

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Once Again — SRSLY?!?

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In his defense, people are pointing out that Sen. Cornyn is known for being quite stupid…

I generally enjoy Nuzzi’s work as a journamalistic assassin, but I also appreciate her frustration with the Biden White House…

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Also scheduled today:

Reader Interactions

140Comments

  1. 1.

    MomSense

    Fuck Cornyn.

    ETA I think this who’s really in charge is a wink to Qnuts and their latest conspiracies.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    I hadn’t seen Cornyn’s follow on tweet. Clearly, playing to the base. Also too, puppets are normally the people who are put in front of the camera, not shielded from the media.

  3. 3.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Imagine being so stupid and damaged that you miss Trump’s idiot tweets.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    Ironically, on MJ, Karen Tumulty has a new book on Nancy Reagan, and the theme is she was a real power broker behind the scenes.

  9. 9.

    Jeffro

    “His tweets are sooooo pedestrian” – tweet aficionado John Cornyn, sipping his chablis and pondering which Politico story to copy next.

    Ahem.

    Ok, so what are we going to do about now full-on white supremacist Tucker Carlson, peeps?  I’d hate to let his BS slide.  You could parse a transcript of last night’s whitey-white rant and run out of red pen.

  11. 11.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: A huge fraction of political media people seem to have gotten some kind of emotional charge out of Trump’s tweets that they’re missing… and they think everyone else feels that way too, which is why they make those strange “admit it, you miss him” statements. It’s a bizarre failure of empathy.

  14. 14.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Suzanne: It was always those second- and third-tier bullies you really had to watch out for. They’d go after the weakest people around to prove their mettle. This is probably a metaphor for something.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

     A huge fraction of political media people seem to have gotten some kind of emotional charge out of Trump’s tweets that they’re missing

     
    Also known as ratings, subscriptions, and clicks.

  18. 18.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @schrodingers_cat: ​
      What they don’t get is at least half the country (probably more) have no first hand memory of RayGoon. He left office 32 years ago and absent a war or crisis, the vast majority don’t pay attention to politics til their 20s.

  20. 20.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
      Sadly yes. The nearly 70 year old Cornyn got his start in politics 50 years ago supporting segregationist George Wallace.

  21. 21.

    Baud

    John Boehner on MJ trying to compare the progressive/centrist divide in the Democratic Party with the fascist/corporate split in the GOP.

  22. 22.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Baud: ​
      Pols have always been unreliable – you just never know which way the polish vote will break.

  23. 23.

    WereBear

    @Baud: Ironically, on MJ, Karen Tumulty has a new book on Nancy Reagan, and the theme is she was a real power broker behind the scenes.

    I recently re-read Kitty Kelly’s bio of Nancy Reagan, and she BUILT Reagan as we know it. She went looking for a horse she could spur over the finish line, and she found him.

    Power broker? More like puppetmaster.

  24. 24.

    Princess

    Fuck Nuzzi. She’s nothing but a gossip columnist She’s the worst, because she knows better and does this anyway.

  27. 27.

    NotMax

    Set the WABAC machine to 1952. Who ordered the slam on wry?

    “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends. That if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”
      – Adlai Stevenson
    .

  28. 28.

    John S.

    @Matt McIrvin: All bullies have one thing in common: They shrink in the face of resistance because they’re all really insecure cowards, and need to pick on others as some bizarre form of self-validation.

    I got bullied once in my life when I was in elementary school. The kid tried to shake me down for lunch money, I kicked him in the balls and all the other kids laughed at him while he writhed in agony.

    Two things happened: 1) I got a detention and 2) I never got bullied again. And that kid never bullied anyone else again in my school once he lost that bully mystique.

  29. 29.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I’m wondering about the idiot who chose to amplify the stupidity of what Cornyn said. Honest to god, could the White House beat morons get any worse?

  31. 31.

    Baud

    @Princess:

    Her Obamaworld/Bidenworld comparison reminds me of that Ezra Klein column that got passed around.  It’s a Village meme to compare the two, no matter how tenuous the connection.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @John S.:

    All bullies have one thing in common: They shrink in the face of resistance because they’re all really insecure cowards, and need to pick on others as some bizarre form of self-validation.

    It’s why I believe that liberals who complain that Republicans always win do us a disservice.

  36. 36.

    dr. bloor

    @John S.:

    1) I got a detention

    The good old days.  Do it now, and it’s two years of mandated counseling if you’re white, and cuffs with a side of pepper spray if you’re black.

  37. 37.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    8 years of Obama showed you can have an administration without drama. parts of the media can’t seen to remember this.

  40. 40.

    Low Key Swagger

    @OzarkHillbilly: Not really.  My brother taught me to stand up to bullies when I was seven yrs old.  Been doing it ever since.  Rare to find a bully that doesn’t shrink when his/her perceived power disappears.

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    Nuzzi from the New York Mag piece linked in the OP:

    Hunter has declined all cable news and print interviews. His book has struggled to maintain its position on Amazon’s top ten. But it has served his purpose — and his father’s. In the memoir, he describes a decision to talk to the press without alerting his father’s campaign: “I knew what the story would really do: inoculate everybody else from my personal failings. I wanted to make it so there couldn’t be anything held over my dad’s head.”

    And it has worked so far, at least for the portion of the citizenry who don’t marinate in wingnut media (most of us). WingnutWorld took the book’s launch as an excuse to resurrect the most salacious material from the purloined laptop, as Nuzzi also notes in the piece.

    Sometimes it drives me nuts when wingnuts get a pass on scandals that would engulf a Dem. During the turnip error, I got sick of prefacing sentences with “Imagine if Obama had done…” Well, this time the dynamic is working in our favor. Good.

  45. 45.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I am convinced that rant Trump did at that GOP retreat was to out crazy-stupid Gaetz and the whole More Conservative Than Thou thing as been replaced with More of Jerk Than Thou with the Republicans.  The 2024 primaries are going to be a bunch of middle age guys screaming obscenities at each constantly.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Sometimes it drives me nuts when wingnuts get a pass on scandals that would engulf a Dem. During the turnip error, I got sick of prefacing sentences with “Imagine if Obama had done…” Well, this time the dynamic is working in our favor. Good.

    I don’t see this. No Republican would ever have been scandalized by the independent acts of their children. It’s nice that were not being treated unfairly here, but I don’t see this as us getting away with a scandal.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    This is what Nuzzi’s article is about:

    In 2021, on the other hand, a genuine gut-spiller from the First Fuckup, detailing in his own words all the major personal issues the right-wing media has tried and failed to weaponize for years — that had the potential to derail a presidency. Yet Hunter Biden’s ballad of the black sheep landed quietly in Washington

    I don’t think it had the potential to “derail a presidency” but they’re absolutely married to the idea that 1. people care about Hunter Biden and 2. Hunter Biden damages Joe Biden.

    They’re not alone in that error! It was Trump’s only strategy, to the extent that it got him impeached. They care about it, Glenn Greenwald cares about it, Donald Trump cares about it, but most people don’t seem to. She’s attributing the fact that it hasn’t damaged Biden to “handling” but what if it’s not? The thing itself doesn’t go anywhere. The scandal doesn’t lead anywhere except back to Hunter Biden.

  52. 52.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Low Key Swagger: So very happy for you that you have been lucky in your bullies. May you always be so lucky. A couple times I wasn’t so lucky and got my ass royally kicked for my troubles. I knew one guy in HS who loved it when somebody fought back. He would have very much enjoyed making your acquaintance.

    Fortunately for all of us still among the living, he isn’t, because he finally found someone even more vicious than he was.

  54. 54.

    Ken

    @Baud: Also known as ratings, subscriptions, and clicks.

    Oh, is that why CNN cancelled the “Daily Press Briefing” show?

  55. 55.

    Geminid

    @Baud: That last election was too close for comfort. I’m glad the trump campaign ran down the laptop rabbit hole two weeks before Election Day. But trump got the incompetent campaign management he wanted and deserved.

  59. 59.

    TS (the original)

    @tom:

    I admire Jen Psaki’s restraint in not adding “you stupid fuck” to the end of her answer.

    Apart from being brilliant at her job,  what a wonderful breath of fresh air and truth after listening to those who worked for TFG.

  65. 65.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: The main difference with the many underreported Trump scandals is that their misdeeds centered on greed rather than personal fuckups. I certainly think that’s a different category, but historically, the MSM hasn’t always observed that distinction, e.g., Bill Carter, Roger Clinton, etc. The MSM could choose to run with this stuff, but so far, they aren’t. Good!

    The Trump scandals went by the boards because we already knew they were horrible, corrupt people, so it was like the MSM didn’t consider that newsworthy. I think HB is leveraging a similar dynamic here — confessing, hey, I’m telling you I was a degenerate crackhead so it’s not even news. He pretty much says that straight up in the quote.

  68. 68.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    He has had difficulties. He admits them. Still going back to yesterday when you convinced me that the GQP actually thought that 46 would abandon Hunter because of his troubles.

    I was stunned that anyone could believe that 46 would abandon one of his only two living children.

     

    It still boggles the mind.

    They are ridiculous ?

    They want to make a.scandal of something that isn’t.

    They are desperate for a 46 scandal.

    They despise the competency.

  69. 69.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: John Boehner on MJ trying to compare the progressive/centrist divide in the Democratic Party with the fascist/corporate split in the GOP.

    Saw him on Colbert last night. He keeps saying that both parties have problems with extremists, but doesn’t seem to understand that the big difference is that the extremists are running the Republican Party right now!

  70. 70.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gin & Tonic: The Skidmore fuck. KM was a big tuff guy. DS, wasn’t very big. Normal height, normal build, but what he lacked in that he more than made up for in pure meanness. He went to a street festival once with a billy club up each sleeve. From what I heard it didn’t take him long to pick out a victim.

  71. 71.

    sab

    @Kay: Actually I do care about Hunter Biden, a guy with issues, a drug problem since his infancy in a hospital with painful medical issues and loss of his mom.

    If you don’t care about that Hunter Biden  then you are a phucking monster.

  72. 72.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Six clotting cases out of seven million J&J doses administered. I’m no mathematician, but that seems to me to be a negligible percentage. (Edit: LITERALLY less than a one-in-a-million chance.) I guess the pause is just out of an abundance of caution.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    What she thinks should have happened or would have happened with a different president is a crisis response- a coordinated effort to limit damage. But there was none of that, which she’s attributing to “control”. But is it? I mean, if it’s control it’s a kind of “what you resist persists” non-control- they’re not doing anything. They’ve never really done anything about it.

  74. 74.

    Baud

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    AstaZeneca was also a tiny percentage.  The problem here is that people might wait for Prizer or Moderna, or turn even more skeptical of all vaccines.

  76. 76.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: I think they’ve never tried to “control” the HB story because Biden is secure in his reaction to it.

    Re the J&J problems: Crap! All we need is more vaccine scary stories

  77. 77.

    Elizabelle

    @SiubhanDuinne: FWIW, there was going to be a major shortage of J&J for a short time anyway, due to the cross-contamination spoilage at that Baltimore factory that J&J itself is now supervising.  Wasn’t it 15 million doses ruined?

  78. 78.

    Geminid

    @Soprano2: There may be a lot of complaining by twitter polemiscists, but I don’t very much division amongst elected Democrats. The House Caucus went through a very wrenching fight over emergency border funding in July 2019, but they seemed to come out of it with more mutual understanding between the moderate and liberal wings. And so far, they have hung together in this Congress.

  79. 79.

    BruceFromOhio

    @John S.:  This is absolutely the only method for dealing with bullies, they simply do not understand anything else.

    I welcome the day Dem leadership finally figures this out about the GQP.

  80. 80.

    JPL

    @Kay: President Biden showed by his response, that he is a man of true character.    Unfortunately, gossip columnists prefer smut.  I always assumed MSM didn’t cover half of trump’s crimes, because they couldn’t keep up.   The trump years were like a never ending roller coast.

    Glad you back btw

  81. 81.

    WereBear

    There are bullies and then there are people with anti-social personality disorder.

    They require different handling.

    As a girl, even back in the day, I wished I hadn’t listened to my parents’ well-meaning but utterly useless advice to “ignore them” and just punched someone in the solar plexus.

    Might have had to do it in every new school, but would have still been an upgrade.

  82. 82.

    Kathleen

    @MomSense: I will add Ph**I Nuzzi. She strikes me as a graduate of the St. MODo, Patron Saint of Perpetual Petulance and Mean Girls Terminally Self Absorbed School of Journalism.

  83. 83.

    artem1s

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    The 2024 primaries are going to be a bunch of middle age guys screaming obscenities at each constantly.

    while they are all trying to pick their donor’s and each other’s pockets.  it’s going to be epic.  I for one am rooting for injuries.  yea, the dumbest, meanest bully with access to big donor dollars (not the chump change that TFG’s marks are scrabbling around for in their couch cushions, real Koch level money) is going to win the nomination.  None of the usual suspects have what it takes to dethrone the Orange God Emperor.  If he’s out of the picture by then (prison, on trial or dead?) then maybe DeSatan has a chance?  But I’m betting some really evil spawn of Poppy and Barb will surface with a wad of cash and dark money.  One of Neal’s kids maybe still has some of that Silverado money stashed away in a sock drawer.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    There had to be a theory on why Hunter’s addiction impacts the general public. There never was. Not even an invented, insanely exaggerated theory like how they all cared deeply about national security and emails until Clinton was out and they never mentioned the issue again. It’s just gossip about a sort-of famous person.

  88. 88.

    artem1s

    @tom:

    I admire Jen Psaki’s restraint in not adding “you stupid fuck” to the end of her answer.

    OK, Now I’m going to be hearing that at the end of all her sentences!

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @BruceFromOhio:

    I’m with Ozark on this. I wish bullies always backed down with resistance, but a lot of bullies, maybe most, are really determined nut cases and resistance doesn’t work at all.

    I’ve had to abandon this theory, along with the “enemy of your enemy is your friend” which in my experience is almost never true either.

    The school approach to bullying is a kind of collective action- a social sanction, and it doesn’t rely on a single hero- it puts bullying beyond the norms and it won’t work unless most of the community sign on to that. They make the bully an outcast.

  93. 93.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: The main difference with the many underreported Trump scandals is that their misdeeds centered on greed rather than personal fuckups.

    Not entirely, for example E. Jean Carroll. But as you say, those were also underreported.

    However, applying the “every accusation a confession” rule, we can almost certainly expect some drug scandal involving one of Trump’s adult children.

  94. 94.

    Joey Maloney

    @artem1s: I’m pretty sure Ms. Psaki hears it in her head at the end of all her sentences.

    Someone really does need to do a Key-and-Peele type thing except instead of anger, she has a dumbfuck scorn translator.

  95. 95.

    artem1s

    @Soprano2:

    He keeps saying that both parties have problems with extremists, but doesn’t seem to understand that the big difference is that the extremists are running the Republican Party right now!

    Boehner thinks because he and Kasucks sit around and treat themselves to drinks at their Kountry KKlubs in Cincinnati with stolen LP money that they are secretly in charge of the GQP.  They don’t recognize the faction of the Holy Republican Empire that has been moved to Mar-a-Lago, so they continue to believe they are still in charge. Never mind that neither of them have held office or won an election for what, over a decade now?

  96. 96.

    Matt McIrvin

    @John S.: Yeah, at my junior-high school, the result of trying to fight back against a bully was that you got jumped by the bully’s six larger friends standing nearby. They traveled in gangs and made sure to have victims heavily outnumbered. In hindsight I should have organized an anti-bully gang but I suspect the school administration would have come down on me like a ton of bricks, because bullying was one thing but they really hated fighting.

  97. 97.

    PJ

    @Princess: She’s an avowed fan of Ann Coulter, friends with all kinds of terrible right wing people, and the girlfriend of a sexual harasser.  In other words, she’s a Republican.

  98. 98.

    catclub

    @Baud: 

    John Boehner on MJ trying to compare the progressive/centrist divide in the Democratic Party with the fascist/corporate split in the GOP.

    Even the sane republicans are seriously misguided on many things.

  99. 99.

    Low Key Swagger

    @Kay: Not sure enough of the statistics to say “it’s a hard and fast rule”, but every bully I’ve encountered always punch down.  Psychopaths and plain mean people don’t differentiate, they will fight anyone.  But a bully usually expects his target to withdraw, and when that doesn’t happen, the bluster tends to disappear.  Never seen a bully go after someone bigger and stronger.  This has been my experience in school, in the military, and in jail.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It’s so awful to look at popular culture of bullying and how it was treated. Like “weather” or something else uncontrollable that we all had to accept. There are the bullies and then the bullied and that’s just the natural order of things.  Certain people could attack other people and we had to learn to live with it.

    Finally people were like “excuse me, WHY are we putting up with this in schools, exactly?” It was such a low standard!

  102. 102.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ken: I meant the Trump spawn scandals, but you make a great point: the POTUS was accused of sexual harassment and/or assault by something like two dozen women, and the MSM reaction was a collective yawn. There was coverage, but nothing like what a scandal of that magnitude would seem to merit. He was a known harasser and/or rapist; therefore, not news…

  103. 103.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Suzanne: ​…the jerks who support the bully because they like being in that orbit, but don’t have the huevos to do anything themselves.

    Like those little bastards (we all know/knew at least one) who do nasty shit & then run & hide behind Big Bad Daddy’s trouser leg & stick their tongues out at the rest of the world? Asking for a fiend…

  104. 104.

    catclub

    @artem1s: ​
    &nbsp

    ;But I’m betting some really evil spawn of Poppy and Barb will surface with a wad of cash and dark money.

    Pompeo

  106. 106.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @artem1s:  None of the usual suspects have what it takes to dethrone the Orange God Emperor.  If he’s out of the picture by then (prison, on trial or dead?) then maybe DeSatan has a chance?  But I’m betting some really evil spawn of Poppy and Barb will surface with a wad of cash and dark money.  One of Neal’s kids maybe still has some of that Silverado money

    I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Gaetz the way Gaetz is going between the sex crimes and stupid.  But I think the winner will suddenly pop up at the beginning of the primary cycle because these assclowns have a short self life.

    But Trump’s act is stale and he is a luzer now and DeSantis is just slimy and is in office thus is guilty of knowing stuff.

  107. 107.

    SFAW

    @NotMax: 
    I was wondering whose quote that was. For some reason, I thought it might have been Truman, but I think that was just melding that line with his “I tell the truth and they think it’s Hell” quip.
    So, thanks for the history lesson. Which I expect I will (A) forget, and (B) continue to mis-attribute that bon mot.

  108. 108.

    Kay

    @Low Key Swagger:

    I’m not an expert but bullying isn’t happening without a larger group of people who either accept is as the natural order or are on Team Bully. We beat the Trump bully. A humiliating, crushing defeat. Has Republican behavior changed?

    It’s more difficult than that. It requires a critical mass and a certain level of voluntary buy-in.

  110. 110.

    Quiltingfool

    @rikyrah: I have an appointment to get the J&J shot this morning.  I look at the stats and figure I have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than getting blood clots from the shot.  However, my father just called me, telling me my aunt saw something about it on tv, and he was rather panicky about me getting the shot.  So, not sure the pharmacy will give the shot.

    I want to get vaccinated, but I don’t want my dad to worry; and he would.  Guess I’ll see what happens.

  111. 111.

    sab

    @Quiltingfool: Astra Zenicka is what he is worried about (needlessly). Not a whiff of concern about your vax on the internet

    ETA J &J is a traditional vaccine.

  112. 112.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Low Key Swagger:  Never seen a bully go after someone bigger and stronger.

    Oh they do, that’s part of the Bully Bullshit. They try to play it as the stronger guy is the abuser. High Broderism starts as kids (“Why do you fight all the time, I don’t care if he threw the first punch, blah blah blah”) I got that a lot as a teen until I learned “Yes, I get off on hurting little snots like you, so let the fun begin” and then that look of utter terror in the eyes .  As an adult I learned to de-escalate to The Smile, which is just enough because an adult bully is wary enough to realize if his would be victim is suddenly happy it means the bully just screwed himself.

    Most shit talkers are really scared and trying to hide it, you can see it in their eyes.

  116. 116.

    Amir Khalid

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Come on, Texas. Cornyn and Cruz? You can do better.

    They can do better, of course. But I suspect the Republicans who vote for Cornyn and Cruz simply don’t feel the need.​

  117. 117.

    Kay

    @Low Key Swagger:

    Anti-bullying efforts are more ambitious than “hit the bully back”. They change the culture of a workplace or school to make the behavior unacceptable to most people.

    Like with Gaetz, on a different issue. So Gaetz shows his photos of nude women to other GOP House members and instead of going along they say “jesus- WTF is wrong with you, I’m reporting you to ethics you’re a disgusting person” – the behavior is out of bounds in that workplace. That it WASN’T is the real problem.

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sab: The same clotting issue’s been reported for J&J and the feds just recommended a pause in using that vaccine while they investigate. It’s extremely rare and just from the raw numbers, it seems absurd to pause vaccination over it, but I understand they’re thinking about the higher-order psychological effects of people losing trust in health authorities.

  119. 119.

    sab

    @sab: Astra Zenicka has small risk of developing blood clots, especially among the young. Covid has higher risk of blood clots, but not with the young.

    Phizer and Moderna do something with RNA. Strongest efficacy.

    Johnson and Johnson slightly less efficacy, but no RNA issues. You might get Covid, but probably won’t get hospitalized, and will not die. If your dad doesn’t like the newest vaccines, J&J is the vax for you.

  120. 120.

    H.E.Wolf

    As with discussions of sexual harassment, discussions of bullying often feature a statement from someone who insists that “Hit them harder than they hit you” is the perfect tactic.

    Perhaps for some people it is. Perhaps, for others, it isn’t. The uses and abuses of power take many forms.

    If a violent response was successful, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect where on the power/status pyramid (straight, white, and/or male) the responder resided.

    In both sexual harassment and bullying, the societal environment in which it occurs will have to be changed before the phenomenon decreases in frequency….

  122. 122.

    Edmund Dantes

    @H.E.Wolf: it also lands a bit on victim blaming. If everyone would just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and punch their bullies in the mouth, they’ll just disappear. Dontcha know?

  123. 123.

    Low Key Swagger

    @Kay: Agree completely.  My experience was different than Ozark’s, hence the difference of perception in what a bully is and will or will not do.  But addressing bullying at schools is relatively new, and I think has real potential provided enough parents buy-in.  If I was better at linking I post it here, I have a couple of tabs open that are pretty comprehensive studies. Let me try…

    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01984/full

  124. 124.

    Quiltingfool

    @sab: Honestly, I’d rather have the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, but in Missouri, in my county, you have to be a world class detective to find accessible vaccination sites.  I swear, it’s like Fight Club, nobody wants to talk about it, lol.  I went to the doctor several weeks ago, and nobody in his office had a clue about who to call about setting up a vaccination!  So, when I finally found a way to get a shot, J&J was the best, quickest option.

    Folks against vaccinations are so damned stupid.  They have no idea how many people suffered and died from diseases that we have vaccines for today.   They were either not taught in school about viruses/vaccines or they were and didn’t pay a damned bit of attention.

  125. 125.

    Geminid

    @catclub: Mike Pompeo certainly won’t lack for money when he runs in 2024. Before he became Secretary of State, he was Congressman from Wichita, Kansas, headquarters of Koch Industries. Before that, the Kochs provided financial backing when Pompeo and other partners bought a local aviation parts manufacturer.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    @Low Key Swagger:

    I’m on a school committee and what was interesting to me was how easily kids took to it. Our whole idea of the “natural order” on how they behave was just wrong. Lord of the Flies? No- they really hate that and they’ll dump it for a different approach if you give them one and then give them social support for the new rule.

    There was overreach, but that always happens with a change like that. There’s always authoritarian-types or dumb people who are incapable of using discretion and a case by case basis and want to define everything as bullying but they shake out with time and it becomes a kind of workable norm.

    So much wholly unnecessary pain. I was in chambers with a 70+ magistrate once and bullying came up in a juvenile case and he was just stricken telling us about how he was bullied for having to wear a built-up shoe- he’s disabled and drags his foot a little. Sixty years later this really accomplished and successful person still carries how painful it was.

  127. 127.

    WereBear

    @Kay:

     

    Changing the culture is a better solution, and I applaud it.

    My own bullying comment was looking back, to what definitely DID NOT work, which was being told to do passive acceptance. Made me a target.

    What I did do was scare them with my inherited Medusa look from my mother. But then again… it was girls.

  128. 128.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Edmund Dantes: Bullying is a systemic problem. You can’t fight back when you’re outnumbered and the system pretends it doesn’t exist. Ask me how I know.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @WereBear:

    It’s not a norm yet but it’s honestly how I feel when I see adults smack children. “Excuse me- did you just HIT that tiny person standing next to you? WTF?”

    I feel like that should be the norm.

  132. 132.

    Ruckus

    Media people get paid by the number of eyeballs on their prattle.

    Period.

    End of job description.

    The days paper end up in recycling 15 minutes after being read. The only difference between them and TV news is that there are more channels on TV, with more eyeballs, so more money. They don’t even have to tell the truth – faux news. And every other channel, who are in competition for all those eyeballs and ad revenue, made possible by selling stuff. It’s entertainment, really nothing more. It is not and never has been about the truth or someone’s opinion. It is about the eyeballs and the income.

    And in this country, it always will be.

  133. 133.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro:

    Ok, so what are we going to do about now full-on white supremacist Tucker Carlson, peeps? 

    I hear the surface of the Sun is nice this time of year, as well as all of the other times and years.

  134. 134.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    I still remember being bullied about my size, almost 60 yrs ago. And I grew out of that, long after most everyone else had a few choice experiences. The shit is the stuff you do remember, especially if it was everyday stuff you couldn’t do anything about. Except kick a bullies ass. And often the reason you are bullied is that you likely don’t have that option, whatever you are being bullied about. I imagine many, maybe most people had some bullied experience in their lives, it sort of seems to be some right of passage in growing up.

  135. 135.

    Central Planning

    @The Thin Black Duke: I know this as well. Looking back, I might have been outnumbered but I think my 12-14 year old self might be more satisfied today if I did some fighting back. Fortunately we moved when I was 14.

  136. 136.

    bluefish

    Cornyn not happy unless he’s putting his provincial stupidity on full blast. Take a seat, brother.

    Sorry to see Nuzzi tweet like she’s got a bug up her, ah, … I dunno. Byline? Ain’t nobody got time none no more for this sorta crap.

  137. 137.

    Plain Dave

    @Low Key Swagger:  I worked with a really nice older guy who presented a very rough appearance.   One of my friends accepted his invitation to have a beer after work at the local biker bar.   After his buzz started the “nice older guy” slammed his empty mug on the table, stood up, and shouted “I can lick any man in this joint!”  No one said a word.  There were lots of stories about him but none indicated he was a bully.  I created a new category for him:  A bar-fight hobbyist.   And tried my best to avoid him.

  138. 138.

    Rand Careaga

    As a tyke in 1959 I caught the attention of the local bully, maybe twelve, but big for his age, and affecting a very convincing (to my young eyes) fifties “juvenile delinquent” vibe—he had a fucking switchblade!—who became fascinated by my diction: my pronunciation was precise and I spoke in subordinate clauses; he tended to grunt. Other bullies, closer to my own age, tended to knock me around because I “talked funny,” but this one appointed himself my protector, and for the remainder of the school year, whenever I got grief from one of the lesser young thugs, I had only to point him out to my guy: “Bruno—kill.” Word got round that I was off-limits. Good times!

  139. 139.

    Bill Arnold

    @rikyrah: ​

    FDA, CDC call for pause in use of Johnson & Johnson vaccine after six reported cases of rare blood clots

    For the other side of the risk calculation, SARS-CoV-2 also causes blood clots. A lot of blood clots. (I’m just starting poking through some recent COVID-19 blood clots research and it’s scary.) Basically, not getting vaccinated means eventually getting unlucky and getting infected with the real virus, with a major risk of blood clots, some of which might do long term damage (e.g. if in the brain or heart), or kill more quickly. Individual’s choice of course, but the risk calculation needs to include the risks from SARS-CoV-2 infection. E.g this paper from Nov 2020:
    Thromboembolism risk of COVID-19 is high and associated with a higher risk of mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis (Open access, Mahmoud B. Malas et al, November 20, 2020)

    Venous thromboembolism (VTE)
    The overall VTE rate was 21% (95% CI:17−26%); 5% (95% CI: 3−8%) among non-ICU patients but as high as 31% (95% CI: 23−39%) among ICU patients. DVT events were reported by 28 studies, 3 of which studied postmortem outcomes (Fig. 2B).
    …
    Arterial thromboembolism (ATE)
    The overall ATE rate was 2% (95% CI: 1−4%): 1% (95% CI: 0−2% among 5 non-ICU studies and 5% (95% CI: 3−7%) among 5 ICU studies
    …
    In this meta-analysis of 42 studies involving 8271 patients, we showed that thromboembolic events are high in SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals. Overall VTE rate was 21%, with DVT rate of 20% and PE rate of 13% while ATE rate was 2%. Among ICU patients, the VTE rate was 31%, DVT rate was 28%, PE rate was 19% and ATE rate was 5%. Thromboembolism significantly increased the odds of mortality by as high as 74% (OR, 1.74; 95%CI, 1.01–2.98; P = 0.04).

  140. 140.

    TriassicSands

    In his defense, people are pointing out that Sen. Cornyn is known for being quite stupid…

    It is entirely possible for Senator Cornyn to be extremely stupid and also be relatively intelligent for a Republican. It’s also possible for Cornyn to be extremely stupid and also to be relatively stupid for a Republican. What we can be sure of is that Senator Cornyn is extremely stupid and his being a Republican makes that obvious.

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