I hope this ends it. The prospect of four more years of Biden means I want to see his absolute worst right now so we can decide if we want that, plus I want to factor in four (and a half) years of continued mental degeneration on top of what he’s got now.
Well, this seems like his worst right now. This, plus four and a half years more (worse) is unimaginable.
And on the other side, the prospect of another Trump presidency is too terrifying to bear. I dipped into the “Project 2025” business and it seems so utterly crazy I don’t know how to begin even talking about it without sounding like a lunatic. It’s straight-up Margaret Atwood prologue shit. Straight-up end-of-democracy insanity. I’m sick to my stomach. Women’s rights would be utterly gutted, and so would gay rights. The latter is the one I’m focused on, career-wise (I run a gay rights org) and I’m basically so terrified I’m paralyzed. I don’t even know how to address a shock so insane as would be the case if Trump were reelected and even a fraction of “Project 2025” came to fruition.
Meanwhile I continue to see large numbers of “gender critical” people just naturally drifting towards a middle-ground position between these two possible futures, naturally putting themselves into what they think is neutral ground.
I don’t know how to begin to tell them that, should Trump win, there won’t be an in-between with anything. The extremists don’t have any interest in compromise. They’ll just take their win and ram through their nuts agenda.
That’s where I’ve come down as a somewhat disinterested party: if you want the trans stuff gone and that’s what you really care about you want whatever the ghouls at the Heritage Foundation come up with. The other option is an admittedly garbage compromise that gives the trannies some of what they want (not sure exactly how that’d shake out but I’ve got a few ideas) but that they will absolutely not be remotely satisfied with, but again it’s the Heritage Foundation future you’re facing otherwise.
Honestly, a Secret Service agent accidentally tripping him coming off the plane would be doing the Republic a great service at this point.
As an aside, wouldn’t the new administration be more dangerous than Trump himself? Pursuing his personal vendettas isn’t likely to harm all that many people whereas destroying the federal government, well…
Furthermore he pronounces it pootin. Poot is slang for fart.
But at the same time, President Fartin has a certain Russian ring to it. Could catch on, and get up Vlad Putin’s nose so much as to change the course of history. Could also be based on years of reading by Sleepy Joe of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and other hard-to-pronounce writers. Give credit where it could possibly just be due.
I’m fine with Biden winning… provided he quickly steps down and lets VP Kamala take the wheel. I don’t know what her politics are and I don’t care, she’s got to be better than the doddering grampa and the human garbage dump.
I listened to the clip, and I see what you mean about the pronunciation. I’d probably transcribe it “poot’n”, as if it were “pooting” in colloquial American speech. “Pootin” is how it’s correctly pronounced, no? Do people say something closer to “pyootin”?
Re Biden, I am concerned, but I want the Democrats to win, regardless of their candidate, and I want the Republicans to lose, even if Trump dropped dead tomorrow. I don’t want the Republicans controlling the Executive Branch, especially not after what they’ve become under the influence of Trump and his cronies. It’s more about two parties, less about two people.
I’m not a fan of political primaries, especially open primaries, where it’s not even party members but the general public telling a party who their nominee ought to be. The Democrats have lately been fighting internally between having the party be small-d democratic in choosing a nominee and having the party apparatus do it. Part of me cynically wonders if a contested convention was the goal all along, to let the convention choose the nominee without all the expensive and divisive primary battles.
@10 Sackbut, as I recall from my undergraduate Russian course, there are two letters for U sounds in Russian. The one used in Putin’s name in Cyrillic is pronounced “OO,” the other as “YU.”
I’ve seen the name spelled “Poutine” like the Canadian dish in French publications.
By the way, Trump means fart, too., at least in the north of England. My British ex-husband used to blow a raspberry every time we passed Trump Tower. I suspect many people on this site already know that.
Ya it was the T bit I meant, as Sackbut said, not the U bit. Biden says it poo’in – a glottal stop instead of a crisp audible T. In general reporters and such pronounce the crisp audible T so I assume that’s closer to the Russian.
Russian vowels are slightly different from their English counterparts, but not so much the consonants. Even anglicized, Putin shouldn’t involve any glottal stops. “POOT-in” would be acceptable. “POO-‘-in”, like BO’O’O’WA’ER, though? That’s just bad.
What I’m saying. He repeatedly said “Pu’in” like “bu-uh” for “butter.” (Mind you, we Yanks say it budder instead of butter, but that’s a different story.)
The sounds in our pronunciation of “butter” isn’t really a /d/ sound, certainly not in the same way we produce the /d/ in, say, “dance”. In linguistic terms, it’s a flap–the tongue just briefly taps the alveolar ridge while moving from one vowel to the next. Interestingly, that’s the way a single (i.e., non-rolled) “r” is pronounced in Spanish. So to American ears the word “rara” sounds something like “rada”, while to Spanish ears the yanqui pronunciation of “water” sounds like “warer”.
As for the glottal stop, my historical linguistics professor liked to tell the story of a Scottish linguist who claimed in a lecture that “There are no glo’al stops in English.”
You’d make a good linguist. Just be careful not to fall into the trap that gets us all: the more we pay attention to what we’re doing, the less reliable our judgements are. (For example, linguists are adept at finding contexts in which almost any string of words can be grammatical.)
But that said, there probably is some subtle difference, though I’d have thought the /t/ would be a bit longer.
I’m getting real “Weekend at Bernie’s” vibes off Biden now,
Not Good.
And he called Harris “Vice-president Trump.”
We are in such deep shit.
I hope this ends it. The prospect of four more years of Biden means I want to see his absolute worst right now so we can decide if we want that, plus I want to factor in four (and a half) years of continued mental degeneration on top of what he’s got now.
Well, this seems like his worst right now. This, plus four and a half years more (worse) is unimaginable.
And on the other side, the prospect of another Trump presidency is too terrifying to bear. I dipped into the “Project 2025” business and it seems so utterly crazy I don’t know how to begin even talking about it without sounding like a lunatic. It’s straight-up Margaret Atwood prologue shit. Straight-up end-of-democracy insanity. I’m sick to my stomach. Women’s rights would be utterly gutted, and so would gay rights. The latter is the one I’m focused on, career-wise (I run a gay rights org) and I’m basically so terrified I’m paralyzed. I don’t even know how to address a shock so insane as would be the case if Trump were reelected and even a fraction of “Project 2025” came to fruition.
Meanwhile I continue to see large numbers of “gender critical” people just naturally drifting towards a middle-ground position between these two possible futures, naturally putting themselves into what they think is neutral ground.
I don’t know how to begin to tell them that, should Trump win, there won’t be an in-between with anything. The extremists don’t have any interest in compromise. They’ll just take their win and ram through their nuts agenda.
It’s terrifying.
That’s where I’ve come down as a somewhat disinterested party: if you want the trans stuff gone and that’s what you really care about you want whatever the ghouls at the Heritage Foundation come up with. The other option is an admittedly garbage compromise that gives the trannies some of what they want (not sure exactly how that’d shake out but I’ve got a few ideas) but that they will absolutely not be remotely satisfied with, but again it’s the Heritage Foundation future you’re facing otherwise.
Honestly, a Secret Service agent accidentally tripping him coming off the plane would be doing the Republic a great service at this point.
As an aside, wouldn’t the new administration be more dangerous than Trump himself? Pursuing his personal vendettas isn’t likely to harm all that many people whereas destroying the federal government, well…
But at the same time, President Fartin has a certain Russian ring to it. Could catch on, and get up Vlad Putin’s nose so much as to change the course of history. Could also be based on years of reading by Sleepy Joe of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and other hard-to-pronounce writers. Give credit where it could possibly just be due.
I’m fine with Biden winning… provided he quickly steps down and lets VP Kamala take the wheel. I don’t know what her politics are and I don’t care, she’s got to be better than the doddering grampa and the human garbage dump.
Poo-tin: a container for excrement.
I listened to the clip, and I see what you mean about the pronunciation. I’d probably transcribe it “poot’n”, as if it were “pooting” in colloquial American speech. “Pootin” is how it’s correctly pronounced, no? Do people say something closer to “pyootin”?
Re Biden, I am concerned, but I want the Democrats to win, regardless of their candidate, and I want the Republicans to lose, even if Trump dropped dead tomorrow. I don’t want the Republicans controlling the Executive Branch, especially not after what they’ve become under the influence of Trump and his cronies. It’s more about two parties, less about two people.
I’m not a fan of political primaries, especially open primaries, where it’s not even party members but the general public telling a party who their nominee ought to be. The Democrats have lately been fighting internally between having the party be small-d democratic in choosing a nominee and having the party apparatus do it. Part of me cynically wonders if a contested convention was the goal all along, to let the convention choose the nominee without all the expensive and divisive primary battles.
@10 Sackbut, as I recall from my undergraduate Russian course, there are two letters for U sounds in Russian. The one used in Putin’s name in Cyrillic is pronounced “OO,” the other as “YU.”
I’ve seen the name spelled “Poutine” like the Canadian dish in French publications.
By the way, Trump means fart, too., at least in the north of England. My British ex-husband used to blow a raspberry every time we passed Trump Tower. I suspect many people on this site already know that.
Ya it was the T bit I meant, as Sackbut said, not the U bit. Biden says it poo’in – a glottal stop instead of a crisp audible T. In general reporters and such pronounce the crisp audible T so I assume that’s closer to the Russian.
Russian vowels are slightly different from their English counterparts, but not so much the consonants. Even anglicized, Putin shouldn’t involve any glottal stops. “POOT-in” would be acceptable. “POO-‘-in”, like BO’O’O’WA’ER, though? That’s just bad.
What I’m saying. He repeatedly said “Pu’in” like “bu-uh” for “butter.” (Mind you, we Yanks say it budder instead of butter, but that’s a different story.)
The sounds in our pronunciation of “butter” isn’t really a /d/ sound, certainly not in the same way we produce the /d/ in, say, “dance”. In linguistic terms, it’s a flap–the tongue just briefly taps the alveolar ridge while moving from one vowel to the next. Interestingly, that’s the way a single (i.e., non-rolled) “r” is pronounced in Spanish. So to American ears the word “rara” sounds something like “rada”, while to Spanish ears the yanqui pronunciation of “water” sounds like “warer”.
As for the glottal stop, my historical linguistics professor liked to tell the story of a Scottish linguist who claimed in a lecture that “There are no glo’al stops in English.”
lol
I’m saying “butter” and “rudder” aloud to see if there’s any difference and I find there is. Slight but there. Flap v not flap.
You’d make a good linguist. Just be careful not to fall into the trap that gets us all: the more we pay attention to what we’re doing, the less reliable our judgements are. (For example, linguists are adept at finding contexts in which almost any string of words can be grammatical.)
But that said, there probably is some subtle difference, though I’d have thought the /t/ would be a bit longer.
Coulda been worse. He could have called him President Shitcan.
Mind you, that’s exctly what the US will get if Trump wins.