Today is Monday, July 29, 2024. Now Democrats are strongly leaning into publicly labeling the Orange Turd and his party of malcontents as “weird” and it will probably cause the Orange Demon to shit his pants because this is an insult he casually throws at everyone else who’s viewed as his adversary. The use of this word is written about in an online article for USA Today by Rex Huppke entitled “Democrats have decided to publicly label Donald Trump ‘weird’ and it’s about time.”

So it’s not surprising that Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, has started using it to describe convicted felon and former president Donald Duck. It seems Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who’s on Harris’s vice presidential candidate list, led the charge, succinctly saying of Drumpf and his running mate this weekend: “These guys are just weird.”

This assessment of MAGA world as it reflects on its Orange Messiah is most assuredly held by millions upon millions of American voters – certainly liberals and independents, and even a slice of old-fashioned conservatives – who have spent the past eight or so years watching Dump and the MAGA circus and have come to the same conclusion: “Wow, this is all very weird.”

This is not new – this label of weirdness attributed to Dump and his MAGAts for the last eight years. Witness the rise of Trumpism itself and the bizarre chaos it ushered in – from family members lost down conspiratorial rabbit holes to the denial of facts and abandonment of shared reality – has given us election lies and Trump-branded Bibles and Rudy “Ghoul”-iani giving an insane news conference outside a landscaping business in Philadelphia and a dude calling himself the QAnon Shaman wearing a horned fur cap as he he joined an attack of the U.S. Capitol. This strange guy’s name for a Trivia Contest quiz is Jake Angeli, a Phoenix man, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison for obstructing a civil proceeding.

This label is certainly apropos of the twice-impeached former insurrectionist and his unhinged rants, his nonsensical stories about sharks and Hannibal Lecter, his blabbering cruelty, and unfiltered spouting of whatever odd thought passes through his addled mind.

It’s all weird, where Dump is surrounded by lackeys who are incontrovertibly weird who go on Fox News and say crazy things about Dump being the greatest president of all time. Are they in a different reality? one must ask. He is supported by slavish repugnicans who once openly denounced him, and their hypocrisy is weird.

His running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, has a slew of past interviews in which he derided “childless cat ladies” (he’s been roasted by almost everyone for this weird remark) and suggested the votes of people who have children should count more than the votes of those who don’t. This won’t fly at all with the American electorate.

Last week, Governor Walz said on MSNBC, “These guys are just weird. They’re running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something. That’s what they’re doing. That’s just not what people are interested in.”

Over the years, we’ve seen these weirdos get everyone else fired up over drag queens, and banning books about gay penguins, and transgender school kids who just want to be allowed to exist. This is totally weird and unacceptable!

When Kamala Harris announced her bid for the presidency only about a week ago, she was shamelessly portrayed by Dump and his circus clowns as a “DEI candidate,” which is just code for woman of color.

However, the GOP presidential nominee is a twice-impeached, one-term president who was convicted of 34 felony counts (which he’s trying to overturn because of the corrupt “Extreme” Court that is in his pocket) of falsifying business records in a case involving hush money paid to an adult film star. If this isn’t more weird, then nothing is! He’s had multiple bankruptcies, faces hundreds of millions of dollars in fines from a civil fraud ruling, and was found liable of sexual abuse. And he is still revered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base. Now if that in itself isn’t weird, what is?

What is also weird about this truly unfit candidate is that he never laughs. He’s rarely seen in public with his wife, “Melanoma.” He regularly says stuff like this from a recent rally: “We won in 2016. We did much better in 2020, but it was rigged. It was rigged.”

Most sane people who have looked at his rallies or listened to him or to one of his minions on television have probably quietly said, “How in the heck is anyone taking these weirdos seriously?”

Thus this one-word description of Drumpf and his lackeys is a smart labeling move by Harris and the Democrats. The adjective accurately captures an almost-exhausted emotion many of us have felt but failed to identify. Until now!

Even Josh Shapiro, another of Harris’s vice presidential hopefuls, is using the weird label against the aging Orange Messiah, when he jabbed Drumpf’s “weird” practice of flag hugging. His comments about the lying presidential candidate are found in an online Raw Story by Daniel Hampton entitled ‘Weird thing he does, right?!’ Crowd laughs as Josh Shapiro jabs Trump’s odd flag hugging.”

Speaking at a rally for Harris on Monday evening, Shapiro probed the audience, “You ever see this guy? Like when he’s on stage?”

Here he adopts the MAGA leader’s shambling gait and raised arms, saying, “He kind of meanders over. And he goes over to the flag and he like hugs the flag – I mean I love the flag – but it’s a weird thing he does, right?!”

As the crowd laughs, Shapiro continues laying into Dump, saying, “But while. . . while he ‘s hugging the flag, you know what he’s doing? He’s ripping away our freedoms! That’s what he’s all about. Because here’s what I know. It’s not freedom to tell our children what books they’re allowed to read. That’s not freedom. It is not freedom to tell people they can go to work, but that they can’t join a union. That’s not freedom! It is not freedom to tell women what they’re allowed to do with their bodies. That’s not freedom!”

I think this will be a very successful strategy for Democrats as they finally hit Dump where it hurts: calling him names when he easily resorts to this behavior at all times against his opponents.

Yesterday Elliot and I celebrated my son’s birthday at Bryant & Cooper, in Roslyn, New York. We picked him up at my ex-wife’s home in Hollis Hills, at around 6:15 and drove to the famed steakhouse. We had a 7 p.m. reservation, but got to the eatery about 6:35. We were seated anyway after giving our name to the host.

This time I did order filet mignon ( 10 ounce) and had shrimp bisque soup. Elliot ordered the same and had sliced beefsteak, tomato, fresh mozzarella, and onion salad, while “Joshua” had chicken parmigiana. I don’t know why Joshua preferred this time a pasta dish in a steakhouse, but this is what he ordered. He also had one Cosmo.

For dessert, three waiters came over and stuck a candle in the apple strudel and sang “Happy birthday” off key to Joshua. I found it amusing. Elliot had a cappuccino while Joshua and I drank coffee.

We then drove Joshua back to his mother’s house and we drove home. We then watched Wicked Little Letters on Netflix starring Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Eileen Atkins, and Timothy Spall. This was a British film, naturally, about a century-old scandal that actually occurred in a British seaside town in 1920 which centers upon the receipt of some sexually explicit and vulgar letters being sent anonymously through the mail to one Edith Swan (Colman) who is a buttoned-up, religious woman who lives with her aged parents, overbearing Edward (Spall) and more submissive mother (Gemma Jones). Who is immediately suspected as the foul letter writer is one Rose Gooding (Buckley) who is Swan’s neighbor. Gooding is a prime suspect because she uses foul language as frequently as any sailor does and has a Black lover, plus a young daughter. She is blunt and a loudmouth and she’s a foil to Swan’s prim and pious character. So when Swan first receives these letters, Gooding is quickly suspected as the culprit, and it’s not until an enterprising young policewoman known as Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) suspects something else is afoot here, that the plot literally thickens.

Elliot and I both enjoyed the film. Colman is fantastic in everything she does and new rising star Buckley can chew the scenery as well as anyone else can. At some point, we sort of guessed who the real culprit was and it wasn’t Gooding. You’ll have to see the film yourself.

Stay safe and be well.