Once they’ve figured out there’s soft meat on offer, I doubt they’d stop at one eye

If you rode there on a snail, nobody can be mad at you for being late. It’s really the only possible outcome. Plus being naked shows that you left the house with all possible haste.

Good advice from the Trump administration? This is too weird, I’m going back to bed

What did disabled or gay people ever do to the Nazis? Fascists need outgroups as a target for their hatred. It gives them a sense of purpose, and it unifies them, since they are all cultivating the same hole in their morality. Small and marginalized outgroups are easy prey, and trans people don’t have much of a voice in the public sphere, so it’s easy to paint them as monsters.

But generally once someone starts dressing in lycra, they stop being a reasonable person. I will always cycle in street clothes.

Do you wear a suit to the gym as well?

Did I stutter?

E V E R Y T H I N G

. . .

gets sucked into sandwich singularity

Pedolf Shitler seems to be a popular choice too. Encapsulates a lot of information. You have to bear in mind that all international references to Trump would use that as the official title. Can we do better?

keep wishing for shit and you can fill up both hands at once

have a spine: don’t give into wedge issues

And that, folks, is how we made idiocracy happen

I think it’s time the rest of the world got together and officially renamed Trump

Are you kidding? Compare an LLM’s ability to generate a paragraph of bullshit with Trump’s ability to do the same. At least the LLM version is going to be coherent

If nobody ever changes their mind, why bother having elections at all? You could just use the result from last time

On a wedge issue like this there really doesn’t seem to be a right way to do the messaging. On Fox news you’re addressing entrenched beliefs that trans athletes are this huge threat to all that is good in the world, trying to explain why it isn’t so is a losing game.

I think Talarico tried to sidestep the issue by saying he opposes trans athletes “if it endangers safety or fairness”, which is really quite a reasonable position. To the right wing it sounds like he opposes trans athletes but the condition he put on it means he actually doesn’t. He put forward a position that both sides might even agree on, but it didn’t give the trans community the impression of endorsing their side that they wanted.

I hate to say I agree with you on this. And I really hate to say it because I also agree with the trans community in principle. But it’s a really small issue compared to a lot of the other evils in this world, and it’s being used to perpetuate those other evils.

The “christian right” is a broad category going far beyond Evangelicals, and I don’t think anyone’s addressed their hypocrisy in such an appealing and convincing way before. Many will dig their heels in and stick to the tribal identity, but their claims of being real Christians are going to sound more hollow to a lot of people.

There’s no such thing as a right wing Christian

No such thing as a true Scotsman

This is a really tricky issue for him, not saying he handled it the right way. Voting the right way in the Texas House but seemingly walking it back in a Fox interview isn’t great, but I don’t know how to handle it better. Trans kids in sport is the wedge issue of the moment and if he takes a confrontational hard line about that on Fox news it would instantly alienate him from the audience he is trying to reach. I don’t think you can realistically be the guy who appeals to right wing christians and the guy who consistently champions trans rights. Getting people to break out of identity politics isn’t easy and wedge issues exist to drive people back into their tribal mindset. Not a battle you can win.

That’s why I’m saying he’s the perfect weapon, not the perfect politician. Honestly the whole clean cut white christian thing gives me the creeps and I wouldn’t leave him alone with my kids on that basis alone. But I do think he’s the right guy in the right place at the right time.

I agree totally about the testing. Old people often drive until an accident or near miss demonstrates their inability to continue. When you live in a world where driving is a necessity, of course people will push themselves to do it until they reach a point of failure.

I think that’s why he’s the perfect weapon. You can’t look at that guy and say he isn’t sincere or knowledgeable in his religious beliefs, and he draws a straight line from that to his political position. His sincerity must come over as something exceptional if you’re used to listening to GOP politicians. It’s not going to win over every voter but I think it will cause a few to really question themselves.

Those absurd attempts to suppress Talarico’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel tell a different story. It shows they are scared of him. Even if they didn’t need to be scared of him, showing that you’re scared isn’t a good look.