Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Bark louder, little dog.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

I really should read my own blog.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Late Night Open Thread: WEIRD — The GOP (Non) Rebuttal

Late Night Open Thread: WEIRD — The GOP (Non) Rebuttal

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To save you a click: Because Trump and Vance, and a great many of their fellow Repubs, are weird!

In the collection below, I’ve deliberately stuck to GOP professionals — no street-level MAGAts competing for each other’s applause, mockery of which could (probably has) filled whole volumes. (Also not included: Roger Stone, who’s made Creepy Weird his entire brand as well as personality.)



The #White Dudes for Harris really got under their pale, thin skins…

Don Jr steps in:
Late Night Open Thread: WEIRD -- The GOP (Non) Rebuttal - STOCKPILE
Late Night Open Thread: WEIRD -- The GOP (Non) Rebuttal - STOCKPILE 1

Jesse Watters continues his highly lucrative career as The Idiot Sidekick…

Gov. Go-Go Boots is j-e-a-l-o-u-s!

Give it another six months, Mr. Friedman!

Reader Interactions

200Comments

  3. 3.

    Pete Downunder

    Is Friedman as much of an arrogant idiot as he appears? Why does anyone pay any attention to him ?

  5. 5.

    Aussie Sheila

    Had time today to follow all the news on twitter and other sm sites. Excellent all round. Harris rally in Atlanta, various cable news gobshites etc;

    Couldn’t be better imho.

    Could the Dems be learning?

    FTFNYT!

    Who needs them when you have a fired up base, many alternative social media sites to blast out your memes, news and videos, and an elite media ecosystem that looks powerless now, irrespective of how they put their thumbs on the Biden administration up to ten days ago.
    That this potential debacle turned out the right way shows a couple of things.

    First, listen to your base, then ensure a united and disciplined Party listens.

    Second, kill the infatuation of normie Dems with elite media.  Even if they don’t read it, it affects their mood.

    Third, never underestimate focus and unity in rolling over your opposition.

    Oh, and most important, laughing at and mocking your opposition is the best vitamin blast to get people going.

    My money is on the Harris/tbd ticket in November.

    I am expecting another very good meal from that bet.

    ✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊✊

  7. 7.

    Chet Murthy

    @Pete Downunder:

    Why does anyone pay any attention to him ?

    There are always two questions one must ask about such types (like Friedman):

    • Why do people listen to him today?  B/c he’s a FTFNYT columnist, gets invited on all the shows, wrote a bunch of books, and gets consulted by Presidents.  Sigh.  It is what it is.
    • Why did people -start- to listen to him?  Why did he -get- that FTFNYT columnist job?  From what I’ve read, back at the beginning of his career he was actually an acute observer of the Middle East and wrote a bunch of excellent reporting on the region.  That was the basis of his career, and on that he rose.  Eventually, he ….. defeated the forces of gravity, and here we are today.  Ah well.

    I could be mistaken about this, but it’s what I read a while back about him.  Clearly he’s long-past his use-or-discard date.

  8. 8.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Tim C.: ​ 

    I follow him for reasons, but his tendentious insistence the JD Couchfucker Vance meme was some sort of low-brow-unserious-twaddle instead of a viral energizing social media wave got annoying, with a quickness, as the kids say.

  9. 9.

    SpaceUnit

    @Aussie Sheila:

    Yeah, I’m not going to read it but just by the headline that Friedman opinion piece seems destined to rank among the most desperate, flatfooted and laughably misguided hit-jobs ever launched by all the stauchley-dressed Repubs in the NYT’s corporate boardroom.

     

    They’ve got nothing

  10. 10.

    Ishiyama

    The Yippies did not invent political ridicule, but they deployed it effectively on a number of occasions. Much tut-tutting resulted.

  11. 11.

    Aussie Sheila

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Friedman has that ‘end of history’, ‘US hegemon’ stink about him.
    He’s thirty years out of date, and I hope and trust after this election, no US President ever listens to him again.

    After all, it’s not just taxi drivers in Bangalore that need to keep on living. The rest of the world deserves a shot too.

  12. 12.

    Chet Murthy

    @SpaceUnit: He’s pretty laughable at this point, isn’t he?  The “Friedman Unit” pretty much ruined his reputation with anybody with two neurons to rub together ….

  14. 14.

    Aussie Sheila

    @SpaceUnit:

    Well they’ll have nothing if people stop taking them seriously and just mock them in the odd moments they have between organising for victory in November.

    Christ, the FTFNYT Opinion section is like reading dog eared Readers Digest Magazines 50 years ago when I was sent to the dentists by myself. It was boring then and its ineffable now.

  15. 15.

    BeautifulPlumage

    It’s like they got caught with their pants down. Now they’re tripping over the living room furniture trying to pull them up and pretend everything is normal (while the pron they were watching on the TV is still playing) .

  18. 18.

    Martin

    The Pod Save America guys are impressed with Harris ability to build the plane while in the air. They commented on how many weeks it normally takes to build the stump speech and how bad Obama was at it at first, and Harris has hers together in 24 hours and makes it look like she’s been telling it for a month. I think that might be as much an indictment of how we’ve justified a year+ long campaign process (work expands to fill time available) as it is a compliment of how well Harris is doing.

    She must be completely exhausted.

  20. 20.

    Ishiyama

    @Martin: She must be completely exhausted.

     

    On the contrary, she is rested; she hasn’t had to fight a months-long battle for the nomination. She comes off the bench with fresh legs. And, as a litigator, she has had lots of practice drafting a speech that will give her target a “short, sharp shock”.

  21. 21.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Ishiyama: ​ 

    And she doesn’t have the POTUS schedule, she’s taking full advantage that Joe has the helm, and she is free to campaign.

  22. 22.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Martin:

    Not too exhausted I hope. The unbelievable amount of money that goes into US elections should be able to buy her some quality thinking time, while all those ambitious little wannabes run around doing their thing. If it’s not, there’s something wrong.

    @space unit
    The second best thing that has come from this is the pure and unadulterated hatred of the Biden loyal base for the NYT.

    I don’t think for a minute that the Party base and the Organisation that should serve it have been wrong. They have made good decisions on the fly, which makes my point about an organised efficient Party machine being important particularly in times of crisis.

    However, the role played by elite media in all this is a good lesson.

    They will never, ever act in a way which meets the needs of a movement which must cohere sufficiently to form a ‘Party’ every four years. My advice is, be a Party every year and FTFNYT always.

    Great leaders can beat both the Opposition and the media.

    No leader can, or should, beat his/her own Party, no matter their legacy. That way lies tyranny.

  23. 23.

    Darkrose

    @Chet Murthy: I read “From Beirut to Jerusalem” in 1990, and it seemed like a balanced look on the Middle East at the time. He got a bad case of Pundit Brain later, though, especially after 9/11.

  24. 24.

    SpaceUnit

    @Aussie Sheila:

    Yeah, The NY Times is cleverly maneuvering its way into complete irrelevancy.

    Hated by the right.  Hated by the left.  Paper of record for the view from nowhere.  Clearly genius stuff.

  25. 25.

    HumboldtBlue

    Fucking NBC, there are all sorts of live competitions going on, and they have three people in their pajamas talking about anything that isn’t happening live in the actual Olympic games.

  26. 26.

    Betty Cracker

    I read the NYT op-ed page regularly, mostly to keep an eye on Narrative™️ construction, though I admit I enjoy some columnists, including L. Polgreen and M. Goldberg. (I steal NYT content via a professional group subscription I glommed onto several years back rather than paying for it.)

    Before the controversy with the Biden reelect, Friedman was occasionally making sense on the I/P issue — to the point where it was disconcerting because he’s been on the wrong side of so many issues for the entirety of this century. In a way, it’s almost comforting to see him whiff again on the WEIRD question.

    I had to chuckle at the astounding lack of self-awareness contained in the Ron DeSantis tweet above. If ever there were a case of corporate media trying to “make fetch happen,” it was the DeSantis 2024 boomlet, in which various entities tried to build up a lumpen, charisma-free fascist asshole as a credible GOP Trump slayer, only to see him vaporize upon first contact with non-FL voters. Fuck off, Ron. You’re done.

  27. 27.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Darkrose:

    Never underestimate the rush to the head that the fall of the Soviet Union gave to such pundits. I was pleased with its fall for very different reasons from Friedman I’ll wager.

    It effected every piece of nonsense from the 1990s to 2001, and then went into a ‘recession’ after IraqWar2 and the 2007/2008 Great Recession aka Crisis of Neo Liberal Twats .

    The last 23  years have been a revelation.
    I now believe I understand how the 1920s became the 1930s.

  29. 29.

    Freemark

    Posted this:

    Yes Republicans politicians are WEIRD.

    I mean as a group they want to
    – know when children start their periods
    – know if women want to travel out of state
    – examine your personal medical records
    – decide what books you can read
    – have an obsession with other peoples genitals including those of other people’s children
    – read Project 2025; talk about fucking WEIRD

    Have chosen as their leader a guy:
    – who puts ketchup on his well-done steak, even filet mignon
    – hates dogs
    – can’t complete a sentence but can ramble for 90 boring minutes
    – cheated on all three of his wives
    – buried his first wife in an unmarked grave on his GOLF COURSE
    – has publicly perved on his own daughter
    – is a convicted felon and proven rapist

    And chose as his back-up
    – a guy who thinks only people with children should be allowed to vote
    – people who adopt aren’t real parents (shouldn’t vote)
    – step-parents are also not real parents (shouldn’t vote)
    – has changed his name TWICE
    – has some weird grievance against cats
    – may have fucked his couch

    Would welcome additional additions to this list

  34. 34.

    Baud

    There seems to already be more hand wringing about “weird” than there ever was about Trump giving everyone insulting nicknames.

    Not that anyone here should be surprised at this point.

  36. 36.

    Tony Jay

    FTF–NYT EDITORIAL OPINION

    Far-Left ‘Politics of Derision’ Give Short Term Buzz, But Further Erode America’s Under Threat Standards Of Civility

    After years of carping on about the sometimes salty language deployed by Donald Trump and other superstars of the populist centre-right, you might think the professional opinion-whisperers on Kamala Harris’ payroll would have enough self respect to steer well clear of the kind of degrading, sexually-explicit, borderline-bullying language more often heard emanating from ‘edgy’ comedians struggling to get noticed on the c-list Live circuit. You might even think they’d have enough concern for the threadbare national consensus on acceptable levels of partisan vituperation to try and rise above the temptation to join the Alex Joneses and Keith Olbermanns of the world in infantilising the important business of reminding America what was once great about it.

    But you would be wrong. Take a seat and we’ll talk about why this is so dangerous.

  38. 38.

    WereBear

    @Aussie Sheila:

    I now believe I understand how the 1920s became the 1930s.

    I know! And I happen to be studying the Great War and the 20s for a novel, and it’s a bit eerie. But in a good way.

  39. 39.

    Rusty

    The Republican freak out about being called weird is because it’s now glaringly obvious how out of touch they are with the average American.   It was always the Democrats they could call weird before.  Vegetarians were weird, gays were weird, people of different ethnicities were weird, and so on.  But now the menu of every chair restaurant has at least a green leaf next to Vegetarian options, and maybe even a whole Vegetarian section, even the vegans are getting recognized.   Gays are getting married, the most boringly normal of things and are treated as just another character in movies and television.  For the younger generations, people of color are the majority now.  For a long time the right could paint the left as the outsiders, now it’s the right that is clearly out of step.  Obsessions about the sex habits of others is just weird.  The whole 2025 plan is a series of policy obsessions that come across as strange and out of touch.  It’s the reversal that’s causing the angst.  There are also a group of very moderate liberals that made a name for themselves, Friedman and many more, punching down on various liberal positions that made them uncomfortable.   Now they are out of touch too, and that the ground shift under them without notice is making them freak out too.  The world has flipped, and the other side is responding g by flipping out.  They are weird, which is short hand for really out of touch with the country, conservatives and contrary an liberal commentators alike.  The hell with them all, call them weird!

  40. 40.

    Expletive Deleted

    Look at them talking about gaslighting and feelings and inclusivity all of the sudden as though they hadn’t had to google the very concepts.

  41. 41.

    WereBear

    @Rusty: Got so deep in the weird in the first place because the culture been shifting for so long — against their cheatin’ resistance — that they are getting punched in the face and chased down the street with it.

    Because they dodged it for so long. We told them.

    But they also try to dodge the laws of physics.

  42. 42.

    karen marie

    @Freemark: I’d remove the name change from your list. The first was when his mother’s second husband (or was it third?) adopted him.

    The second time … well, that just looks like someone running from who they are. I’d vote that more sad than weird. He says he changed it to Vance to honor the grandparents who raised him but I think that’s another lie. He’s on record saying he was inspired by both Bill Clinton’s and Obama’s stories – the grandparents, prestigious law school – and he wanted that. “JD Hamel” wasn’t going to cut it. Neither would a change back to his birthname – “JD Bowman.”

    “JD Vance” is much snappier. It sounds classy. It sounds successful. So in 2013, as he was graduating from Yale Law, he ditched his past and became a new man, willing and eager to make it big in a manipulable world.

    But, no, it’s not weird. It’s very sad.

  44. 44.

    Aussie Sheila

    @WereBear:

    I’m genuinely glad it’s a good way in assisting your novel!
    But nothing in the last 110 years has been good for millions of people that lost their lives at the hands of very bad people that had a lot of power and no stake in peace and reason.

    Every family in Europe, the Middle East, SE Asia, the Americas and beyond has suffered loss and grief because of them.

    Damn them all.

    And damn the fucknuckles that can’t be arsed to understand what happened.

  49. 49.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @WereBear: Exposure was his kryptonite.

    That labeling DeSantis “weird” was so effective  might explain the freak out from the Right over the Left adopting it.

  52. 52.

    WereBear

    @Aussie Sheila: Every culture is shedding their feudal period at different rates.

    I see our MAGA as that “mental remnant” still hanging on, and to the extent I am sympathetic, it is because I understand the cultures many of them are trapped in.

    For them, there is no other. There is no support for them to leave and they are often afraid to as a result.

    They kept refusing and now their time has run out. It’s obvious how they are insisting on being a brake on progress, which has driven people away from places they never wanted to leave.

    That’s the real divide, the same one that happened with the last global Pandemic.

    Some people you can’t keep down on the farm, and MAGA won’t even let you visit. The totalitarian insistence of the red states has created a brain drain, a social deficit, and a sense of oppression in those who remain.

    The Harris campaign will bring out people who sense their chance to make their voices heard. As women have been doing since Roe was overturned.

    I think it makes people read Project 2025 with less skeptical eyes. Look what they already did. They mean it.

  55. 55.

    Geminid

    Yesterday an Israeli drone strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah commander. Reports are that five other people were also killed by the missile. The strike was retaliation for the errant Hezbollah rocket that killed 12 children in the town of Majdal Shams Saturday, in the occupied Golan Heights.

    Shukr’s death is a blast from the past. The U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Shukr’s arrest in connection with the 1983 bombing of the Beirut  Marine Barracks. That attack took the lives of 241 American military personnel: 220 Marines, 18 sailors and 3 Army soldiers. Minutes later another bomb killed 58 French paratroopers. Those attacks marked the beginnings of Hezbollah’s rise to power in Lebanon.

  56. 56.

    Maxim

    @WereBear: Do we actually know any of these things? I saw the post asserting them, with the alleged photo of the page, but such things can of course be faked. If it were actually true, I would expect some corroboration to be leaking out.

    Or are you just being snarky?

  57. 57.

    hueyplong

    @WereBear: “The Harris campaign will bring out people who sense their chance to make their voices heard. As women have been doing since Roe was overturned.”

    Hoping it is not only true but (1) generally perceived to be true and (2) generally welcomed.

    Harris is the proper messenger.  Biden’s heart is in the right place, but he’s not the messenger.

  59. 59.

    Suzanne

    @karen marie: On the name thing….. I will note that I actually have a similar name story to Vance. When I was born, my parents were married, and I was given my father’s surname. My parents split up when I was a baby and my father didn’t want to pay child support (he had other kids he also wasn’t paying for)…..so he took off. My mother changed her name, and mine, to her maiden name, and I grew up with my mom and my maternal grandparents. When I got married to Mr, Suzanne, I kept my maiden name and added his name. I miss my grandfather a lot (while simultaneously recognizing a lot of sexism and racism there, some of it directed at me), and he was the male figure of my early life. I also gave that name to each of my kids as a second middle name. So I get the urge to feel “more related” to a grandparent, especially if the name you have links you to someone you no longer have in your family.

    I will also note that Ex-Mr. Suzanne’s mom also changed his name a few times when he was young. She was married four times, never to his father, and she changed her kids’ names to that of whomever she was married at the time. I have a few friends with this story, also. I think this was fairly common for a while.

  60. 60.

    hueyplong

    @Tony Jay: I can tell when the beloved pitchbot is at work.  Your effort was much more sinister, in that it passed for the real thing from start to finish over a longer course.

  61. 61.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Weird is working partly because it can stand in for other words like creepy, which definitely applies, or lame, which also applies and is the last thing these guys want to be perceived as. The fact that they’re breaking out the cucks and real men don’t say weird stuff is how you know they’re finding this all emasculating.

    The NYT is so beyond parody at this point. Look for every angle to take the Dems down a peg and call it balance. Why is it the comity police only chastise Democrats. Trump and his fellow travelers are out there calling us much worse things than weird and have been for years, even decades with nary a word they’ve gone too far.

  62. 62.

    hueyplong

    @What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: Not only do the comity police only come out for Democrats, they only come out when the thing they’re complaining about is working.

    Not to single out a cracker, but if all who keep their subscriptions for some narrow niche thing like puzzles were to make a small sacrifice and cancel (praising the puzzle and excoriating the paper as a GOP rag sheet in the comments to the cancellation) the FTFNYT might for the first time pause and consider their course.

    And if they don’t, the point is even stronger.

  65. 65.

    Princess

    @Betty Cracker: De Santis must be absolutely green with envy at how Harris has been able to penetrate Trump when he failed over and over again. He could easily have used “Trump is weird.” He wasn’t smart enough to come up with it.

  66. 66.

    hueyplong

    @Princess: “Brave” works almost as well as “smart,” but the real impediment was his glass houses issue.  DeSantis is plenty weird himself.

    Harris doesn’t have that problem.

  69. 69.

    WereBear

    @Maxim: I remember the graphics, and it was leaked in an indirect way.

    What is a fact is that the first edition was recalled. That’s really rare. They overlook typos these days, even in “professional” presses.

    And the part I read sounded like the rest of the book. I’m just saying, the MSM has decided we are not going there.

    Hardly the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever read in a memoir. Especially ones with literary pretensions.

    Someone leaked it, and it was long ago. Because the couch thing was not made up from thin air. It was based on this social media fragment.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: There was a small bit of good foreign news yesterday. Ragip Soylu posted a photo of 3 men standing in front of a bright white line painted across a low bridge. Walking towards them were two men and a woman carrying a briefcase. They were Turkish diplomats meeting their Armenian counterparts for a fifth round of negotiations aimed at normalizing relations. This was the first round staged at the border. The diplomats met on the Armenian side in the the morning and the Turkish side in the afternoon.

    Soylu, the Middle East Eye’s Istanbul bureau chief, also posted a funny (to me) R.T. Erdogan story:

       Erdogan says the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics was full of indecency.

    “Macron invited me, and I wanted to go to Paris. Then my 13 year-old grandaughter told me the event was full of LGTB, showing me on Instagram. Asking me not to go.”

    “PawPaw, you mustn’t go!”

  72. 72.

    WereBear

    The fact that Trump was so off-putting and unlikeable to at least half the electorate was why the election stealing had to rise to meet the new demand.

    Much like the NRA, I believe the Republican Party is infested with enemy action. Last I looked, such collaboration was still illegal.

  73. 73.

    hueyplong

    @Baud: Yes, for sure.  He polished his Outrageous Asshole credentials to a blinding shine but was operating before an audience that wouldn’t tolerate his turning them against Trump.

  74. 74.

    Maxim

    @WereBear: I can’t find any evidence of the first edition being recalled. Do you have a link, by chance? I’d like to have something I can share.

  75. 75.

    Dave

    @Tim C.: Yeah like Tom goes between bugging me and making some good points.

    If his real life persona matches his online one he’d be the guy I got along well with most of the time and would generally like even if my official stance towards him would be cordial aggravation.

  76. 76.

    WereBear

    @Maxim: I can’t find anything now. and searching is useless with all the new results.

    Sorry. It was from X which I don’t have an account on any longer. Might not have been reported. And it was a sucky book.

    At this point, it’s publisher gossip I believe, but no one will footnote. Understandably.

    It’s enough for me to know it wasn’t a wild Internet hair. It was based on fact.

  77. 77.

    mapanghimagsik

    @karen marie: And its weird how it *always* goes to that — cuck, manliness, feminizing. Its almost like they can’t get their brains out of a mode.

  79. 79.

    WereBear

    @karen marie: It’s End Stage Toxic Masculinity. When it stops making any pretense at sense and just reacts like a pithed frog to anything somehow not-masculine.

    Like the insistences on strict gender roles keeps short circuiting any actual thinking and they just desperately come up with more and more performances of their angst.

    Get a room. With a therapist in it.

  80. 80.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    This reminds me of when Stephen Colbert did the White House correspondents dinner when Bush was president and the stuffed shirts in the media were horrified he dared to make fun of the great W.

  81. 81.

    Dave

    @WereBear: It’s funny because looked at objectively there are probably a not insignificant number of teenage boys and girls that have humped any number of inanimate objects.

    I don’t actually care and really neither do most people but as we keep mentioning it was beautiful vector to open up “these dudes are just off putting and uncomfortable man” and it drives them nuts feels like it’s cheating when they point at say a drag queen presenting flamboyantly and we shrug our shoulders because while it’s unusual it’s not off-putting and uncomfortable.

    They don’t understand that they essentially made it impossible to understand that (why Frum’s comments are so on point whatever his flaws he does in fact get that).

  82. 82.

    Baud

    I keep forgetting that the British national anthem is the same music as My Country Tis of Thee.

  83. 83.

    RSA

    @Betty Cracker:  I had to chuckle at the astounding lack of self-awareness contained in the Ron DeSantis tweet above. If ever there were a case of corporate media trying to “make fetch happen,”

    Even his use of the phrase is cringe-inducing. It’s not in the language his constituency speaks, even ironically.

  85. 85.

    Chris Johnson

    @karen marie: This! I’ve found it off-putting ever since the alt-righters started with it, even ironic or edgelord use of it. It turns me off being edgy.

    Near as I can tell ‘cuck’ basically means ‘ha haaa, you haven’t dominated a female!’ and I’m just not cis, or even kinky, enough to adore that point of view.

    So to me using that term is WEIRD. It’s like ‘um, exactly how creepy are you really? Like, moderately creepy, or full-on threat to others creepy?’. It’s well on the way in that specific direction and I don’t like it and I’ve not been impressed by people who seem comfortable with saying it.

    Why would that come up, why would THAT be your lens for interpersonal relationships. Weird weird weird. If you want to be kinky BE kinky, don’t sneak it into narratives as if it’s normalcy.

  86. 86.

    Barbara

    @karen marie: ​I’ll take weird if that works better than misogynistic. Cuck is used as shorthand to suggest that there is something wrong with men who treat women as equals.​

    ETA: It’s like saying any man however stupid is preferable to any woman however smart.

  87. 87.

    Kay

    @Suzanne:

    I will also note that Ex-Mr. Suzanne’s mom also changed his name a few times when he was young. She was married four times, never to his father, and she changed her kids’ names to that of whomever she was married at the time. I have a few friends with this story, also. I think this was fairly common for a while.

    It is fairly common, and for juveniles some judges will not change the child’s surname to that of a step parent without an adoption, even if the birth parent consents.

  88. 88.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @karen marie: Its always projection or confession. He’s engaged to someone who is 8 years his senior, a dynamic his ilk would label “cuck”

  89. 89.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: There seems to already be more hand wringing about “weird” than there ever was about Trump giving everyone insulting nicknames.

    Sounds like efficacy where I come from.

  90. 90.

    Ken

    According to that Helen Andrews tweet, “women police conformity”. Huh. I hadn’t realized the GQP — the party of controlling how you dress, what you can read, who you have sex with — was entirely composed of women.

  91. 91.

    hueyplong

    @Chris Johnson: “Near as I can tell ‘cuck’ basically means ‘ha haaa, you haven’t dominated a female!’ ”

    Pretty sure it’s that and the alt-right’s ceaseless love of creating code words that their enemies don’t “get” for a week or two.  Pepe the Frog, the OK hand signal, calling people “cucks” for insufficient toxicity to females or just insufficient fealty to assholedom, etc., etc., etc.

    If a plausible explanation exists in your memory of middle school, then it’s a likely explanation.

  92. 92.

    Ken

    @HumboldtBlue: And she doesn’t have the POTUS schedule

    Like Trump ever let that interfere with his campaign events. Or his golf. Or his executive nap time.

  93. 93.

    Kay

    Steven Rattner

    @SteveRattner

    17h

    Trump claims to be an ‘America first’ president, but since the passage of his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Apple has paid more taxes abroad than in the US

    This really does make the American public look like chumps – that we allow this. Everyone collects more taxes on these companies than we do.

  94. 94.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Ken: In my experience, it has been women who “policed” me for not being “feminine enough” my whole life. Women are the enforcers, but ya, the whole party has now taken on the task.

    Eta: feminine enough for whom, was always my question.

  95. 95.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Princess: I still suspect that DeSantis was betting that Trump would be out of the running (dead or in prison, at a guess) by Memorial Day, and was positioning himself to be the alternative candidate for the Trumpists. As you said, Harris doesn’t need to square that circle.

  96. 96.

    Kay

    Axios

    @axios

    50m

    SCOOP: The Harris campaign is pressing Wall Street donors to cut their checks ASAP, citing a financial rule that bars contributions to tickets featuring a sitting governor. That’s led some to conclude that Harris plans to pick a governor for VP.

    That really doesn’t narrow it much :)

  97. 97.

    Starfish

    @Pete Downunder: Yes, he is such an arrogant know nothing. I have read one of his books. It was called “The World is Flat.” Imagine, it took years for humanity to accept that the world was round and create the field of geodesy. Now, here is this dummy who thinks that because he is a rich person who can get on a plane and have conversations with cab drivers that he has made up, the world is flat.

  98. 98.

    3Sice

    Friedman carries a narrative well. That ME book was lightweight fluff that told them what they wanted to hear in Foggy Bottom, and his reward was a well paid, and utterly useless career arc.

  100. 100.

    Ken

    @Princess: A lot of them think the earth is flat. Seriously. Remember Milo? He was pushing that hard. Weird.

    A lot of flat-earthers don’t actually believe it, but push it because it burnishes their “I’m a brilliant nonconformist” self-image. And gets them attention, obviously.

    Either path is still weird, of course.

  101. 101.

    Matt McIrvin

    They really don’t get the “weird” attack, do they?

    It’s turning their decades-long thing back on them in a way that changes its meaning. Conservatives’ whole identity is that they’re the party of the long-suffering normal folk being squeezed out of their birthright by the freaks and weirdos asking for special treatment. One of these days, they’ll take back America and put us all in our place, and things won’t be so weird any more.

    What “weird” is saying is that they lost the culture. It’s normal to tolerate people who are different from you. It’s normal to be a different color or to be gay or trans. Wanting a white Anglo-Saxon-dominant culture where everyone has to speak the same language and act the same way is weird. And the box they’re trying to shove us into is one that’s out of touch with the way we live now.

    We’re fine with being weird as long as your weirdness is for you and it’s not abusive. When it’s what you’re demanding for everybody, we’re going to hit back.

  102. 102.

    Ken

    @Kay: a financial rule that bars contributions to tickets featuring a sitting governor.

    Odd, that it doesn’t also bar contributions to a ticket with a sitting senator or representative.

    No, on second thought, remembering who writes the laws…. And in any case it’s easy to get around, they just have to contribute to a PAC instead of directly to the campaign.

  103. 103.

    Rugosa

     

     

    @Tony Jay: OMG, the Dems used an adjective!  Like religion and the flag, adjectives belong to the right wing now.  Only they can stick labels on people, like “childlesss cat ladies.”

  104. 104.

    WereBear

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: I grew up in one “visitor economy” and now I live in another. It’s a transition for every industry which relies on low wages, but tough. Make it work or get out.

    No more cheating. Bad business people should go. Make room for good ones.

  105. 105.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @MagdaInBlack: Honestly, my experience also has been women being the main ones policing conformity.

    Important distinction here, this was almost entirely Republican women telling me my hair was too long and pushing back when I decided I liked painting my nails during COVID.

    The only other group even in the same league was other boys while I was in high school.  For the record I do not throw like a girl. I’ve never known a girl to throw as poorly as I do.

  108. 108.

    WereBear

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Republican women will always disparage their rivals. It’s how their society works. Men have all the power.

    “Keeping” a man is her responsibility. Rigid gender roles make partner choosing a crapshoot because they don’t reveal themselves to each other.

    That would be showing weakness, which they are trained to attack. Why they have so many divorces, and remarriages.

    Confederate society, still destroying lives.

  109. 109.

    Shalimar

    @Kay: That basically means it’s not-Kelly, right?  It would be funny if they’re just doing due diligence for when she makes a choice and it does turn out to be Kelly after the money has flowed in.

  110. 110.

    Geminid

    I see that Pekka Kallioniemi has put out another installment in his “Vatnik Soup” series. This one is about JD Vance.

  112. 112.

    Ken

    @Kay: Let me also note that “you should contribute now because the law may prevent it later” is such a refreshing change from Trump’s “I will remember who didn’t give me money and take revenge” stance.

  115. 115.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: citing a financial rule that bars contributions to tickets featuring a sitting governor.

    But bribing a sitting SC Justice is OK? Our financial rules suck donkey dick.

  116. 116.

    different-church-lady

    I just realized why “scary” didn’t work: MAGA wants to be scary. They think scary is powerful and bad-ass.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    @maggieNYT

    16h

    This is the point and this is what’s getting missed. Trump’s first transition, while derided by some of his advisers, began in May 2016. It’s now almost August.

    It is shocking how blatant the NYTimes political team are in their hope and belief that Donald Trump will win. It’s like they no longer understand that ordinary people can read their Elon Musk accounts.
    Sheesh. They all decided sometime back in January that their boy is going to be back in the White House and that belief is unshaken.
    They need a real godammned manager. Their superstars are just operating as independent political agents.
    We have to win just to beat these people. The nerve of them being so far out ahead of the public, directing the election. They need to be pushed back with a resounding, decisive loss.

  118. 118.

    WereBear

    @Shalimar: Everyone she picks is getting extra money and attention.

    And the press breathlessly covers it. Instead of ignoring us. I love the Harris campaign press releases.

    We are the ones shaping the narrative now, Karl Rove.

    Personally, I’m pleased because it exposes all the BS I grew up with as mostly junk rules that favored artifice and pretending as a social default.

    Like a nation of con artists, all putting up a good front. The Harris team is going radical honesty, and the lapdog press must follow.

    They lazily followed the Trump narratives. Maybe they will follow ours, when it is what the people are demanding.

  119. 119.

    matt

    @Princess: Ron couldn’t use it because every Republican has to out-weird the other ones to attract their weird voters. The great thing about it is you don’t have to say anything about the voters to point out the weirdness of the politicians.

  120. 120.

    Kay

    Just another day on Twitter- the NYTimes political team discuss the nuts and bolts of Trump’s transition team, 3 months prior to the public indicating any decision at all. You cannot tell me this doesn’t color the coverage. They’ve called the race.

  121. 121.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

     

    @WereBear: Rigid gender roles make partner choosing a crapshoot because they don’t reveal themselves to each other.

    That’s the truth right there. This also promotes the habit on relying on superficial things like status symbols. If the goal of marriage is to improve your status and then propagate, love and familiarity become a threat; whether to draw you into a relationship of low standing or upset the balance of a lucrative match.

    The worst part, to an extent we were all raised on this. It isn’t completely gone from any of our psyches. It echoes through media and will be with us indefinitely.

  122. 122.

    WereBear

    @different-church-lady: But weird alerts us to their scary.

    Why they have so many rigid social rules. Makes it easy for predators to hide.

    And they love those televangelists and mega-church pastors…

    As a result, they are the most gullible of groups.

  123. 123.

    matt

    @Barbara: specifically it equates respect for women with the desire to watch your wife get fucked in front of you. That’s super weird!

  124. 124.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: We had a kid in our class whose whole name kept changing back and forth depending on which parent had custody of him, so we started calling him Buddy. He hated it, but it was a kid’s natural reaction to a strange situation where the same kid was enrolled each year with a different name than the year before. I mean they didn’t just change his last name, they changed his first name too! Poor kid, I felt sorry for him being tugged back and forth like that.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    If Trump loses all the Trump whisperers at the NYTimes will be irrelevant – pining away for their Glory Days of book deals and manly men in the White House. God what a breath of fresh air that would be.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    Public schools have accommodated “informal”name changes for years trying to be welcoming, but a lot of schools think it has gone too far and that parents are not being thoughtful about the effects on children – judges too. They don’t think it’s child centered.

  131. 131.

    WereBear

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I was able to get out of the area, because I wasn’t from there.

    One of the ways a person gets by is that family and friend network. Someone to watch the kids, another shift worker to ride with, a place to go in a downturn. For people who want marriage and kids, the upsides of the support can mask the downsides of trapping themselves with poor job prospects.

    If Democrats improve all the states, as we KEEP trying to do, let them keep naming things for our accomplishments, like Obamacare :)

    If we help their kids stay, they will feel that.

  132. 132.

    Suzanne

    @Matt McIrvin:

    What “weird” is saying is that they lost the culture. It’s normal to tolerate people who are different from you. 

    Exactly right. It’s defining what is normal vs. what is abnormal. Conservatives are conformists by nature and have always had a conception of themselves as the normative type. And there’s a hierarchy, they’re on the top of it, and they demand deference and esteem.

    But they lost that. There’s not a monoculture, the hierarchy isn’t as strict, they don’t get treated like petty lords, aninstead other people get positive attention that they think they are owed. That’s…..pretty weird.

  134. 134.

    Starfish

    @different-church-lady: Scary is a deeper judgment. “Weird” lets people who want to classify themselves as normal walk away.

    “A basket full of deplorables” may be satisfying, but it doesn’t give the deplorables a path to walk away from the weirdness.

    A lot of the fundraising emails have been “we are doomed if you don’t give us money,” and that is exhausting, especially as we are attempting to recover from a global pandemic.

  135. 135.

    Kay

    @WereBear:

    I want to think about how the country will be different – renewed– without not just Donald Trump but the entire media and grifter circle that has grown up around him, that is wholly interdependent on him. This toxic, wholly negative ecosystem. We’re like the donkey carrying this huge load since 2015 – when it’s lifted we’ll say “my GOD that was heavy – I had no idea”

    This is it for him and his hangers-on. One and done for all of them. Finally.

  136. 136.

    Ken

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: If the goal of marriage is to improve your status and then propagate

    And of course so much else follows from that.

    Consider for example Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan, who (as Media Matters reports) derived, with the kind of rigid mathematical logic that Queeg applied to the strawberries, that “women cannot take care of themselves”, and thus that “the central purpose of every society is to figure out the distribution of women”.

    He goes on to say that democracy is good because leads to monogamy, but notes that this conflicts with the “gorilla code written into our DNA”. Then it somehow becomes less coherent.

    However, remember what our pundits are telling us: It would be impolite and an election-losing strategy to call this weird.

  137. 137.

    Kay

    I wonder how we could impart a sort of “light at the end of the tunnel” idea to the Harris campaign – the end of the Trump Era and all the distortions and negativity it brought- the twistedness. I think that would be appealing to normies. Tell them they’re almost there – one more push.

  138. 138.

    E

    @Kay: They are a malevolent player. People like Halberman actively work, in front of God and everyone, as purveyors, messengers, and launderers of propaganda and make it seem like Trump talks to the press when he does not. He is literally never in danger of a real question from the press. I am ashamed I did not see this years before I did.

  139. 139.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    He goes on to say that democracy is good because leads to monogamy

     
    I thought they thought democracy was bad.

  140. 140.

    Starfish

    The Republican Party has not learned. Kari Lake, once again, won a GOP Senate primary in Arizona. How many times does “no” have to be said for Republicans to understand that it means “no?”

  141. 141.

    Kay

    @E:

     I am ashamed I did not see this years before I did.

    I’m not and I hope you will reconsider. I love newspapers and have since high school – we were operating in good faith – trying to get the best info available and often paying for it. We didn’t do anything wrong – they did. Think about this – if we win this whole group of people are adrift – this “movement” is one old man. We beat him this time it’s over. They should have hitched their careers to something solid that lasts, like ethical, good faith news reporting.

  142. 142.

    Soprano2

    @MagdaInBlack: It’s an enduring mystery to me why other people care about things like this. I’m a live and let live person, I don’t care how “masculine” or “feminine” someone else is. I have my hands full worrying about myself.

  145. 145.

    Suzanne

    @Kay:

    Public schools have accommodated “informal”name changes for years trying to be welcoming, but a lot of schools think it has gone too far and that parents are not being thoughtful about the effects on children – judges too. They don’t think it’s child centered. 

    I will note that it is a freaking PITA. My mother did my name change legally, but I know some of my friends whose parents never did it. They just enrolled them in school with a new name, or used it at the doctor, or whatever. It makes cleaning that all up as an adult really obnoxious.

  146. 146.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Chet Murthy: ​
     

    Clearly [Friedman]’s long-past his use-or-discard date.

    Unfortunately, it seems that being a regular columnist at the FTFNYT or WaPo is an even more secure job than being a tenured professor. They can be churning out totally predictable columns for decades without losing their perches. They’re a waste of space, but I guess since they’re ‘prestigious’ wastes of space, nobody gets rid of them.

  147. 147.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: I think you hit on why it’s freaking them out so much. They’re used to being the ones who are seen as “normal”, and us as “weird”. Now that’s turning around on them, and they don’t know how to react to it. Because good Lord so much of what they want to do now IS WEIRD. They want to police your daughter’s menstrual cycles. Their VP nominee has repeatedly insulted people who don’t have children. I’m still waiting for the total press freakout over insulting such a large group of voters. /s/s/s/s/s/s

    ETA – Republicans have been calling their opponents insulting nicknames since the days of George W., and I never saw much outrage at all from the press over it. Funny how we call them “weird” for a week and the outrage is already starting.

  149. 149.

    WereBear

    Wind Mountain #53 of the I Ching.

    DEVELOPMENT (GRADUAL PROGRESS)
    Those who persevere make continuous progress.

    The image of this hexagram is that of a tree growing high on a mountaintop. If this tree grows too fast, without first properly rooting itself, it becomes susceptible to being torn up and destroyed by the winds. If, however, it establishes a proper foundation and is content to grow gradually, it will enjoy a long life and a lofty view.

    Human beings are no different. While we often desire rapid progress—we want to change someone’s mind today, obtain an apology now, achieve all our goals immediately—sooner or later we must come to understand that the only lasting progress is gradual progress. Chien comes to urge you to accept that fact and base your thoughts, attitudes, and actions upon it.

    When we have allowed ourselves to be pulled off balance by another or by some event, the ego tempts us to believe that we can influence the situation through forceful behavior. This is incorrect; the actions of the ego inevitably complicate our difficulties. The greatest influence possible always comes through the patient and steady refinement of one’s inner self. If you will devote yourself to the path of the sage, with every step along that path you will be strengthened, and progress will come automatically.

    It will be gradual, but it will last.

  150. 150.

    schrodingers_cat

    @MagdaInBlack: Same. Women are often the enforcers and overseers of patriarchy. I was told I would have to wear a sari when I was visiting some of my husband’s relatives. I was called names for not bending to those rules. Mostly by other women.

    Among practicing Hindus, married women are supposed to wear symbols of being married, whereas men don’t. Widows have those symbols of marriage taken away from them when their husband dies.

    Guess who does that policing. Its not men.

  151. 151.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Well this situation definitely wasn’t “child centered”. Those people had a pissing contest with each other, and used that poor boy to do it. They’re exactly the kind of people you’re imagining they are, and he ended up in prison. It was a sad situation. He had a sister who I guess had a different dad, because none of that name changing crap ever happened to her. Either that, or the dad didn’t care because she was a girl.

  152. 152.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I like your idea of telling people that if TCFG loses, he’ll be out of their lives again. I do believe a lot of people would like that idea, because they’re just exhausted with hearing about him all the time.

  153. 153.

    Soprano2

    @E: That’s right, because if he was he’d be asked by every reporter he talked to why his VP nominee seems to hate childless women who like cats.

  154. 154.

    schrodingers_cat

    just had an epiphany. NYT politics desk (and most of our MSM)’s main function is not to deliver news but to tone police and concern troll the  the Democratic party. Keep them in line and well behaved.

    Ds are the party of women and minorities, the media helps the white patriarchy keep them in line

    Biden didn’t follow those guidelines that’s why they had it in for him since the get go.

  156. 156.

    BritinChicago

    @Princess: “De Santis …. could easily have used “Trump is weird.” He wasn’t smart enough to come up with it.”

    I don’t think it’s mostly a matter of smarts. Ron DeS is weird in the same sorts of ways as TFG (in some of them maybe even weirder), so that stuff doesn’t seem weird to him.

  157. 157.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ken: A lot of high-profile flat-earthers are grifters who are gaming social-media systems that monetize engagement. Saying absurd things that cause people to fight you, and the low-info conspiracy-curious to be fascinated, is an excellent way to boost engagement.

    I think a lot of their poorly-educated followers actually believe the garbage, at least in the symbolic tribal sense of wanting to parrot assertions, because they’re the sort of people who believe all the conspiracy ideas at once. But some of these folks are sophisticated and slippery enough about it that I’m pretty sure they’re liars running a con.

  158. 158.

    topclimber

    @Soprano2: But that’s a lie!/s.

    If Trump loses he is going to be shit talking his way through three major trials and appeals for the next few years. I know I will be watching and won’t even care when he brags about the resulting ratings.

    It’s not a bad thing, except for the part where his mug and mouth are still with us. But the payoff could be so sweet.

    OT: My rejoinder to the Cucks for Harris crowd is Schmucks for Trump. Or Schmucks for the Schlemiel for those who want to double down on the Yiddish.

  160. 160.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    You would not believe what we see in juvenile court. I know you and I have talked about this before and I’m like a broken record but it’s really true – there are two kinds of people – those who think of children as possessions and those who think of children as separate human beings. JD Vance is a possession person – that’s why he keeps ordering women to step up production. I have a sister who is an unmarried parent and she kept her daughter, my niece, away from the child’s paternal grandparents for no other reason than pride and spite. We still only speak at twice yearly family events and it’s 20 years ago because I told her it was the most selfish thing she had ever done. Possession. Like holding title to a truck. They’re people. They have their own place in the world.

  163. 163.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Matt McIrvin: If I have learned anything in the last 5 years of dealing with BJP’s highly sophisticated troll and bot disinformation teams, is that not engaging with people who are trolls or other malafide actors is the best course of action. Reacting angrily just boosts their reach. One of their goals is to waste your time and energy. I don’t owe them my time.

    Pieing on BJ does the same thing mutes tiresome reptitious tirades.

  164. 164.

    TBone

    Much more important to me than the Veep pick:

    Who will be appointed as the new Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General?  That is the question I’ll be focusing on.

  168. 168.

    TBone

    @Matt McIrvin: seen at another location today:

    From r/QAnonCasualties:

    Both parents largely sucked in by Q and I’ve largely resigned myself to the fact that it’s impossible to convince them otherwise. I’ve been here for support and ideas to cushion my own sanity. Conspiracy theories seem to be the favorite flavor of them both but they have always been like this to some extent. They have been MAGA since that started but will turn quickly in conversation regarding certain issues that do not align with the rhetoric. But have staunchly supported the overall agenda. The Project 2025 stuff happened and they have been silent on their support of the GOP candidates. Mostly focused on other stuff. They became outraged at the assassination attempt and have pivoted since then to state they do not believe that Trump was hit at all. According to them all acting as he was an actor in TV prior to being president. Then the information they were being fed went on JD Vance’s anti cat lady thing. That was it for Mom. She’s done. Her cats are so important to her. She’s not said anything sideways in days. All conversations have been about home renovations she wants to do and national parks she wants to see. TV has not been on. They are watching old movies at night, not the news. Last night she said her first political thing. “Harris will win.” I was floored. No nasty name calling or anything. Just matter of fact-like. My Dad didn’t launch into any indignant monologue. He was just quiet and said the whole thing is too much now and he changed subjects to a hobby he is working on. Even if this week is short lived these are the parents that I remember from when I was a kid.

    Just that one anecdote is encouraging for me.

  171. 171.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    I thought they thought democracy was bad.

    Possible responses:

    A) Democracy is both good and bad, both at the same time. It’s a Zen thing.

    B) “It’s GOOD when we impose our ‘democratic’ will on The Others, but it’s BAD when The Others try to practice it themselves.”

    C) “It’s GOOD, but you Dems/libs/non-MAGAs are doing it WORNG!!” [This is just a variant of B.]

    D) “SPLUNGE!!!”

  173. 173.

    p.a.

    Women get enforcement job 1:  pointing out & ridicule of the oddballs*.  Men get job 2, if it becomes necessary: physical threats & actual violence.

     

    *maybe women get to engage in woman-on-woman violence when “needed”, but men are always willing to take that on, above & beyond domestic 1-on-1 violence.  The 1920’s Klan was all-in on social control of any deviation, not just Black American empowerment.

  174. 174.

    TBone

    @WereBear: cats are the new status symbol 🐾 for cool people.  When Willow came to the White House and I saw Dr. Jill with her, it was instant LOVE!  The contagious kind.

  175. 175.

    Keithly

    @Maxim: I checked out a hard copy first edition of Hillbilly Elegy from the University library and looked at the pages whose page numbers are visible in the photo.  Didn’t match. What was in the hard copy at that place were fairly anodyne ‘fish out of water’ stories of young Master Vance—or whatever he called himself that week—beginning his studies at THE Ohio State.  To quote my political hero, Donald Rumsfeld (/s), “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

  177. 177.

    p.a.

    @TBone: Much more important to me than the Veep pick:  Who will be appointed as the new Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General?  That is the question I’ll be focusing on.

     

     

    Also too FBI, CIA.  Maybe an actual Democrat for fuck’s sake!

  178. 178.

    SFAW

    @p.a.:

    Also too FBI, CIA. Maybe an actual Democrat for fuck’s sake!

    Whoa, whoa WHOA!! That’s crazy talk!

  179. 179.

    Kay

    Ugh. Israel released the soldiers who raped the prisoner.

    This isn’t going to end well – for anyone. The United States should not be part of this. The US knew it was going on because they accepted a criminal case regarding a 15 year old Palestinian boy who was in military custody in 2021. They used the case as a basis for threatened sanctions, but never followed through. I just can’t see whether anything will ever be enough to change policy – it’s disastrous and it gets worse every day.

  181. 181.

    MomSense

    @WereBear:

    Along that line, parents in rural places live STEM.  They want that education for their children.  They rightfully see it as a way for their children to achieve stability in their future lives.  I think project 2025 and the end of the Dept of Education will not be welcomed by a lot of rural parents.

    As an aside I have advocated for a long time that we should add Arts to STEM and make it STEAM.  Creativity is an essential part of all the careers that require STEM education. There is a lot I could say about the subject but that is a topic for another time.

  182. 182.

    WereBear

    @Keithly: The ones with the page were recalled and the “first” edition reissued.

    That’s a fact, though I don’t know where to find it. It’s all social media because publishing isn’t newsworthy about routine things. Obviously, the leaker is being super-discreet.

    Just that I don’t think it was made up. I remember too much about “the incident” and it was definitely…

    weird.

  183. 183.

    Kay

    The legal basis for “custody” in modern democracies is a duty to protect the person you have imprisoned because you have taken away that persons ability to either flee or protect themselves. The duty is on the custodian. It’s a really basic concept. The US can’t ignore it.

  185. 185.

    Hamlet of Melnibone

    @Kay: I’ve always been incredibly thankful that I didn’t have any family like that when my parents got divorced.  My stepmother was supportive, my mother and my stepmother dealt with the things that needed to be dealt with like decent adults.

    My paternal grandmother continued to treat my mother as part of the family and treated my step-siblings as her own grandchildren.

    Because decent people do what is best for the kids and don’t let pettiness harm them.

  186. 186.

    different-church-lady

    @Starfish:

    “A basket full of deplorables” may be satisfying, but it doesn’t give the deplorables a path to walk away from the weirdness.

    Saying “not everyone should be put in that basket” also lets them walk away from it, but they weren’t interested.

  187. 187.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    NY Times The Point: Democrats Could Regret Calling Trump and His Supporters ‘Weird’

    For 25 years now, the unsubtle subtext at Fox News has been Democrats Are Weird. And now these assholes are complaining because Democrats turned it around on them and made the subtext text?

    Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!

  188. 188.

    SFAW

    @Kay: ​
     

    JD Vance is a possession person – that’s why he keeps ordering women to step up production.

    Adjacent to that is his “idea” that parents should get to cast votes for their non-voting-age children; more children, more votes. I keep hoping — foolishly, I know — that someone in the MSM will ask Vance if, as a compromise, he’d be willing to let parents have, say, three-fifths of a vote for each child.

  189. 189.

    Trivia Man

    @Princess: his problem is that the things most people find weirdest like school genital inspections, don’t say gay, outlaw traveling out if state for women of child bearing age… he is the loudest cheerleader.

  190. 190.

    Captain C

    @Princess:

    De Santis must be absolutely green with envy at how Harris has been able to penetrate Trump when he failed over and over again. He could easily have used “Trump is weird.” He wasn’t smart enough to come up with it.

    To be fair, De Santis was and is well on the wrong side of ‘weird’, so it may have only served to highlight his own sinister strangeness.

  192. 192.

    Trivia Man

    @Kay: when we canceled i specifically called out “report the news instead if saving it for your books.” I trust they know exactly what i am talking about. IYKYK and i think they know.

  193. 193.

    evodevo

    @Barbara: As far as I can tell, it’s the modern alt-right term for the older label “pussy-whipped”, meaning a man who doesn’t dominate his female companion and treats her as an equal partner.  It was an asshole mindset back in the old days, and it’s still a mindset common among assholes LOL

  195. 195.

    Splitting Image

    I’m disappointed in Friedman. Even if he thinks that calling Republicans weird will backfire on Democrats, he should, for consistency’s sake, say that the next six months will prove the issue one way or the other.

    It has the advantage of being right in this case. I’m fairly optimistic myself.

  197. 197.

    apocalipstick

    @evodevo:

    It’s from the old term ‘cuckold’, a word for the husband of an adulterous wife. It often implied that everyone else is aware of the wife’s infidelity while the husband remains unaware.

    It has morphed into a description for a man who receives sexual pleasure from watching his partner have sex with another man, with the clear implication being that the second man pleases the partner in ways that the cuck cannot. The knowledge of his own inadequacy arouses the ‘cuck’.

    Quite a bit different from ‘p***y-whipped’.

  199. 199.

    SomeRandomGuy

    @Martin: Hey, dude. I was rude to you yesterday, during a pain flare-up, and I’m sorry. I only try to bust on people for something real, and I misfired.

    Also, anyone who reads this, I’m bailing for now, maybe forever. Pain has gotten so bad I can’t keep my brain on task properly. I mean, that’s *normal*. It’s why I say I can’t read and write – I can, I’m functionally literate, but I just finished a book after 3 months. It was a Young Adult book, something that would have taken me three hours before the CFS got bad.

    I’ve been trying to learn to be a different kind of human, because the human I learned to be was so mild and gentle he got the shit kicked out of him (metaphorically speaking) because he was so stupid he believed in the concept of NT-friendship, forgetting he was never going to be NT. Helpful hint: NT concepts only apply to fellow NTs, no matter how long you study those concepts.

    And yes, I’ve been horrifyingly triggered by people talking “old man cooties” which I believe is code for “I saw something I didn’t understand, and freaked out.”

    It’s like children. Children, seeing a stroke victim, whose face is “wrong”, might scream. But you’re not a child any longer. A grownup who sees a person with a wrong face might double take, or, if you’re like me, take a long, subtle, look, so your brain doesn’t keep twitching each time you see it.

    Well, lots of neurological symptoms have the same effect. It’s not loss of skeletal muscle control in the face, it’s SOMETHING ELSE. And if a person freaks you the fuck out, *I* see my duty as a fellow human being to be not-freaked-out.

    Maybe it’s just because I was bullied. Lots of my moral compass seems to be focused on “don’t shit on people,” and maybe “don’t pick on people for being different from you,” isn’t a normal part of the moral code. Republicans sure don’t think there’s any morality in acceptance and tolerance.

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