…apologies in advance [DOT 21/9/23]

but some days...

21/9/23 SplinterRIP 43

…look…I don’t want to wind up just ranting purely about that bullshit move sunak pulled…there’s so many other things to rant about, after all…but…it’s not going to stop winding me up any time soon so…by way of a compromise…let’s go with john crace & if you feel like endangering your blood pressure you can check out the interview he gave the BBC…it’ll make you think things that would probably make it difficult to negotiate airport security if you went on about them online…& that’s not because listening to the man turns you into a terrorist like some sort of insurrectionist boot camp…it’s because the guy in charge of the UK is…from a not unreasonable point of view…a fucking terrorist

You could sense the panic when news was leaked of Rishi Sunak’s plans to water down some of his climate change targets. Instead of a controlled speech later in the week – probably somewhere with green connections: Rish! never knowingly undersells the irony – we got a hastily arranged press conference. In the very same Downing Street media centre where No 10 staff had joked about having illegal parties during the pandemic. Call it karma. Stay calm and carry on taking the piss out of the country.

And breathe. Sunak strode into the room and stood in front of a lectern with a sign reading “long-term decisions for a brighter future” on the front. Gaslighting the country again. It’s getting to be a habit. He then opened his mouth. RishGPT can’t really help the entitled, nasal whine. But this time it came soaked in contempt. This wasn’t just patronising, it was the most cynical speech from a prime minister in years. Deep down Sunak must know that he has sold his soul for the chance of remaining in office a while longer. There was a comedy to Liz Truss. At least she believed the mad things she was saying. Plus when all’s said and done she only destroyed the economy. But Rish! doesn’t believe any of this. He can’t be that stupid and deluded. And he’s hellbent on taking down the whole planet. The dishonesty was breathtaking. He lied and he lied and he lied.

“People are frustrated with politics,” Sunak began. They were fed up with the short-termism. So he was here to deliver change. Only he wasn’t. The whole point of his speech was a short-term gain. To try to revive his standing in the polls with voters he imagines don’t much care about the climate crisis. To at least give him a shout in the election he’s sure to lose. Here he was pushing back net zero targets for 2030, safe in the knowledge he and his family will be back in California long before that. There’s no way RishGPT is going to hang around to see the consequences of his action.

…folks…again not unreasonably…made a lot of hay about the US dragging its feet on this stuff…not merely because the US is up there with china in terms of the contribution made to making matters worse…but because however you feel about it the fact remains that if america moves one way the rest of the world shifts as a result…& that’s…less true of an increasingly self-harmed little island off the coast of europe that used to be a big deal when colonizing places was considered pretty neat…but…god-damn it…how is it that these people can possess such a concentration of hypocrisy without achieving the kind of critical mass that would neatly remove them from existence?

So RishGPT – soft voice becoming ever more condescending, almost as if he was trying to dissociate himself from himself – had news for the country. It was time for us to do climate change lite. Just the bits we wanted. There was no need to go the whole hog. It was like this. The UK had always led the world in meeting its climate change obligations. So we could afford to ease up a bit. More than that, it was our duty. It wasn’t British to show up other countries. We were more modest than that. What we needed to do was give everyone else a chance to catch up. That way everyone would be happy.

“We’re not giving up on net zero by 2050,” Sunak insisted. One day he might look back on footage of this 40 minutes and feel some sense of shame. No. The very idea that he might be rowing back on any climate change commitments was a total misunderstanding of what he was about. He was just abandoning some targets along the way because he was terrified of next year’s election. That wasn’t at all the same as abandoning legally binding targets, even though everyone remotely sane agreed it was. He had no idea how we would make up the difference but he was sure someone would think of something in 10 years or so. In any case, it made no difference to him anyway. He was just saying what he needed to say.

…the sheer fucking arrogance required to go out & pitch this kind of obvious bullshit in the context of a world where it’s increasingly impossible to ignore the extent to which the world…the whole fucking thing…is noticeably out of whack to an extent that is…to pick the euphemism du jour…destabilizing…requires a brass neck of industrial proportions

Except it wasn’t. It was a naked ideological pitch to the Tory right. There in plain sight and all Rish! could do was instruct the country not to believe the evidence of its own eyes. He even talked up the offshore contracts auction that resulted in no bids. Green industry has already rejected the Tories. Astonishingly he also spoke of government by consent. This after making sure parliament was on recess because of the party conference season and could not have its say.
[…]
He wasn’t watering anything down, he said snottily. His anger at being outed was exposed. He was keeping to the same targets by pushing the targets back. It was delusional stuff. Insane. Even the car industry thinks he’s mad. And he didn’t care about his daughters because they wouldn’t be paying £10K for a heat pump. Mmm. That’s rather the point. But he had spoken to them and asked them which they preferred. The planet dying or Daddy being disappointed at the next election. These were hard choices.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/20/cynical-rishi-sells-net-zero-targets-down-the-river-to-appease-the-right

…I dunno…but…sometimes something crops up which just

…makes you feel like wonko the sane…so…I’m not insensitive to the part where that’s a fairly astute use of twX-itter for an official white house account…or how maybe that’s a net good in the context of modern political discourse…but…in terms of the overton window we’re working with here…can we pour one out for the dearly departed sane perspective?

…so…it’s not so much refreshing as feeling like clinging to something that floats while a tidal wave washes over you when you find people like fetterman getting written up…or this lady

“Being a single mom of young kids in Congress was not possible,” she writes of her first year in office. The job was “just too hard.”

The day before the 2019 in-person deadline to file for her first reelection campaign, Porter was here in Washington, far from the Orange County Registrar of Voters, and “so tired I couldn’t see straight.” She was resigned to failure, to being a one-term congresswoman, because she couldn’t get her act together to run again. She was “seething” that the Founding Fathers had wives and servants “to do their bidding while they endlessly debated in Washington, without worry about their children getting to bed on time.”

…it’s not an accident that rishi-fucking-sunak is a run of the mill politician…the same way gaetz is…while she’s an outlier of fetterman-scale proportions

Power is what Porter wanted when she ran for office — the power to confront cheating corporations, to make the government responsive to the people. A “durable majority” of Democrats in Congress is what Porter wants now. She’s fed up with the party’s struggle to keep its head above water. “We’re going backwards in terms of the number of Democratic women” in the Senate, she told me. “To me, equality is not electing Joni Ernst‚” the Republican senator from Iowa. “Like, that’s not helping.”

…it sticks in some throats, to be sure

On April 17, Porter was asked on “The View” about the notion that she oversees a “toxic workplace.” And, in Porter fashion, she trimmed a thorny subject into a clear message for an audience of millions.

“I saw this as a professor, certainly: Female professors, particularly women of color, get much worse teaching evaluations, … even when all the professional evaluations are the same,” Porter said on air. “And so we see this again and again: Lots of [these] so-called ‘bad bosses’ are women and, disproportionately, people of color. I think it’s really unfortunate, because those are the very voices we need more of in our government. So I’m proud of my staff. I’m proud of the relationship we’ve built. I’m proud to have them as my team moving forward.”

It was a deft answer. And it prompts more questions: Why is Porter trailed by this cloud of insinuation — and should it matter at all? How can leadership be properly judged in a world built with double standards, and wired with infinite triggers and sensitivities? What is the price of surviving and thriving in politics?

…& in the end…who’s paying for it?

“The author seldom misses an opportunity to take a swipe at someone—her staffers and House colleagues get especially rough treatment,” noted Kirkus Reviews. In the course of the book, Porter mocks Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) three times, for example. (Though who could blame her.) She ribs fellow Democrat Abigail Spanberger (Va.) for being able to do only one push-up during a contest at the House gym, and refers to Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) as the answer to the eternal Hill question, “Who is that old guy?” Porter praises her staff while also referring to their “raised-by-wolves” behavior. Her depiction of life in Congress is both tongue-in-cheek and knives-out.

Her sniping extends beyond the written page. On the podcast “Lovett or Leave It” in May, Porter referred to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as “queen of the dips—s.” The live audience erupted in joyous applause. (The cheeky title of her book is “I Swear.”)
[…]
While seated for the marathon voting for House speaker earlier this year, Porter made sure the online masses could see her reading material: “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.” She has created such viral moments since her first days in Congress, when during hearings she used a whiteboard, math and common sense to rattle barons of finance and break through to the public.
[…]
The head of Wells Fargo resigned two weeks after Porter and other Democrats flayed the bank’s business practices during a 2019 hearing.

“How many lives did Katie Porter save today using a whiteboard, a bulls— detector, and an ability to retain focus?” tweeted television producer Hart Hanson in March 2020, after Porter wielded her oversight power to extract a public pledge from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director that coronavirus testing would be free for all Americans.

…which…incidentally…I’m pretty sure I saw something yesterday saying they’re bringing back

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/20/us-will-again-offer-free-at-home-covid-tests-starting-monday.html

…although…four? …per family? …that’s…well that’d be one of them token gestures, really…wouldn’t it?

Many Americans see Porter as an avatar or role model: an Iowa farm girl who went to Harvard, survived a difficult marriage and set her sights on Congress, all while teaching and breadwinning and shuttling her kids — now 11, 15 and 17 — in a minivan with plates that say “OVRSITE.” Her 2022 House campaign was buoyed by small donations (each less than $200) that added up to nearly $14.3 million, five times the average total haul for House members that cycle, according to OpenSecrets. Porter has styled herself as a “real person,” and many “real people” — those who can only spare so much cash for a favorite politician — love her.

The most cutting observation in Porter’s book, though, is on the subject of realness.

“Being a real person and having a real life,” Porter writes, “is in fundamental conflict with American politics.”

…coincidence…or self-fulfilling prophecy…you pays your money…& it gets drowned out by money at a scale that makes your head spin…same as it ever was

“I protected my family” and “ended a marriage that was troubled,” Porter said then, adding: “I think it’s important that people understand that when real people run [for office], they run with their real lives, and those lives might often include painful times.”

Two days after “I Swear” was published, this April, Fox News Digital resurfaced those court records, which included allegations of mistreatment that Porter’s ex-husband made against her, and tied them to the toxic-workplace chatter. A spokesperson for Porter told Fox that her account of the saga “was supported by police accounts, a doctor’s recommendation after a child custody evaluation, her sole request for a move-out order and property control, and ultimately a judge’s decision granting her majority physical custody” of their three children.

Last year, Fox published text messages from Porter to the mayor of Irvine regarding the 2021 arrest of Porter’s boyfriend for striking a disruptive Donald Trump supporter during a scuffle at one of her district events. The congresswoman reacted to the incident in a way that, according to some former staffers, exemplifies her temper. “Your police force is a disgrace,” Porter texted the Irvine mayor, according to messages. (A Porter spokesman told Fox that the congresswoman “was upset that a planned family-friendly town hall was hijacked by extremists” and that, despite advance warning, police officers “were hundreds of feet away and did not intervene immediately when fighting broke out.”)

…&…I’ve never worked in a congressional office…but…I gotta be honest…if fetterman straight up decked gaetz as he passed him in a hallway on the hill…or curb stomped josh hawley…or some other bit of completely unacceptable behavior…I…would not lose an iota of respect for the man…but then, I never particularly claimed to be a saint & living vicariously that way would put a shit-eating grin on my face…so…maybe I’m being unduly forgiving…but…I’d expect it to be harder to work for someone like katie porter…who’s rowing like hell against the rip tide to end all rip tides…than “your average member of congress”…so…my suspicion is that if they were a little less circumspect & a lot more detailed…the mutterings of ex-staffers might just make me more sympathetic to their boss…I can’t know that for sure…but…something, something…omelette…something…eggs?

Here we get into tricky territory. My chat with the ex-staffer was revealing, and it prompted me to reach out to others. Four people — each formerly in Porter’s employ or orbit — told me about upsetting experiences working for her that spanned her first 3½ years in Congress; three additional former staffers told similar stories to one of my Washington Post colleagues. But to define the credibility of these seven sources, or to specify their allegations of “bad boss”-ness, is to give away their identities, which they do not want. Nobody wants to go public in ways they might regret.
[…]
“I personally like her a lot, and I personally would never work for her,” said the former senior House staffer from California, adding: “I love what she brings to the table, nationally. I’m really worried about what she brings to the table for the state.” Meaning that, for a senator to succeed, especially in representing a behemoth like California, her office needs stability and collegiality, this former staffer said. This has largely been the case for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s some 30-year operation; this has not always been the case for Porter’s House office, according to interviews with former Porter staffers.

…call me a fool…but…if there were more katie porters & less feinsteins…I’m pretty sure I’d call that a massive improvement…but…ymmv & all that sort of thing

I tried to corroborate allegations that could not be fully corroborated, at least on the record, so I had broader, deeper conversations with a variety of people about what separates a demanding boss from a domineering one. About how female leaders are unfairly expected to have a baseline of maternal warmth. About why the pressures of working in Congress can hobble a human at any level of authority. I thought about the subtitle of Porter’s book, “Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan,” which encapsulates the tension between the pressures of a high-powered job in public service and the demands of a divorced working mom’s home life.

The idea that Porter was initially overwhelmed by her duties is corroborated by the congresswoman herself, in her book. “I was doomed on day one,” Porter writes, adding: “I failed to wake up to get my kids off to school on time, and I left them unsupervised for the evening when I fell asleep at 6:00 p.m., badly jet-lagged.” Of her first year in office, she writes: “I felt like a toddler, powerless against forces that were stronger than me, and out of solutions except rage.”
[…]
Porter realized early on that Congress was not set up to accommodate her reality as a single mother trying to do the job. “I tried talking to House leadership and my congressional colleagues,” she writes. “The majority leader explained that they could not run Congress around my unique needs. Repeatedly, I heard that I had a ‘special situation.’ I came back with statistics about the 13.6 million other single parents in America.” (The office of then-Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer [D-Md.] does not comment on private conversations between members.)

On the day in 2019 that she admitted to a small group of female politicos that she hadn’t filed for reelection, Porter was in tears. “Listen to me,” Porter had told them, according to her book. “I’m beyond exhausted, my kids are suffering and angry, Congress is frustrating and broken, and I don’t fit in here.”

…there’s a difference between not getting it right first time & starting as you mean to go on…&…well…frankly I don’t believe she’s in the top half of bad bosses in that sphere…I find it more credible that russell brand knows where the line should be drawn on matters of consent…& stays on the right side of it

An eighth former staffer — who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly in Porter’s defense — pushed back on the criticisms from my other sources, and described Porter as a “relentless” hard worker who “does not sleep” and who possesses a “strong sense of how to get s— done.” Porter’s first year in office “was chaotic,” this ex-staffer said, and it was not Porter’s fault alone: “There was a constant barrage of unforced errors that she had to deal with then because she had a young staff who were setting up a brand-new office while Katie was flying across the country every Friday and Monday. There’s no blueprint for being a single mom in Congress.” That kind of situation would be “frustrating for anyone,” said the ex-staffer, who believes that Porter later “really did try to be more sensitive to the stress on staff.”

…but…here we are

A current staffer in Porter’s Irvine office — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly — affirmed that the congresswoman struggled with a steep learning curve in her first term, but has since “improved significantly” as a boss.

None of the people who shared criticisms with me currently work for Porter. All of them, regardless of their allegations, value her priorities and skills, which they believe are good for the Democratic Party.

A former staffer who thinks Porter’s behavior as a boss makes her “wildly unfit” to be a senator nevertheless told me: “She’s one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met.”

…lemme get this straight…valuable skills & priorities…good for the party that isn’t trying to burn the world down around our ears…is…wildly unfit for the senate? …it’s instructions on toothpicks all over again

A purple district has awarded Porter three victories. A national audience has showered her with steady praise and tens of millions of dollars over her political career. Among House candidates in the 2022 cycle, Porter was second only to McCarthy in fundraising, a feat she accomplished without money from corporate PACs or lobbyists, according to OpenSecrets. Her drive to win runs down the ballot, to races she could easily ignore, where her advocacy amounted to party-building, not showboating.

“She not only endorsed me but she came out to one of my kickoff events,” says Stephanie Wade, a Porter constituent who ran for city council in Seal Beach, Calif., this year. “I don’t think it bought her much. But it did a lot for me.”

In the last session of Congress, Porter sponsored 54 bills, more than twice the median for members, according to OpenSecrets. Last year, some of her proposed legislation — on raising royalties on fossil fuel companies, on reclaiming taxpayer dollars from pharmaceutical companies that raised drug prices faster than the inflation rate — found a home in the Inflation Reduction Act.

…I meant to go on about altogether different shit when I pulled up to the keyboard this morning…but…fuck it…I honestly don’t know if the sunak thing annoyed me more than reading this one…& right now I’m pissed off enough to last several people all damn day…so…sorry y’all…but there’s more

The stressors — and perhaps the doubters and haters — will keep coming for Porter. Fellow California Reps. Barbara Lee and Adam B. Schiff, both Democrats, are also running for the Senate seat. Lee has been endorsed by Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which Porter also belongs to, as well as the mayors of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Porter’s own city of Irvine. Schiff has so far been endorsed by 22 of the 40 Democrats in the state congressional delegation (to Porter’s zero, for now). Schiff’s campaign raised more than twice as much money as Porter did in the second quarter of this year. Porter, Lee and Schiff were the only candidates who reached double-digit support in a June poll from the Public Policy Institute of California, with Porter and Schiff separated by a statistically insignificant three percentage points.
[…]
In the meantime, Porter has been focused on what’s making people’s lives hard. In an oversight hearing last week on the year-old Inflation Reduction Act, Porter spoke about a resident of her district with “real person” problems: They haven’t had air conditioning all summer, but they also need to fix a 20-year-old dishwasher and a stove with only one working burner.

“How can the Inflation Reduction Act help this Californian afford a heat pump and lower their bills without breaking the bank?” Porter asked a witness, who then described the legislation’s tax credits for energy-efficient home upgrades.
[…]
“Oh stop. Stop there, Mr. Higgins,” Porter said, holding up a finger. “This Californian is hot today. Can they go. Get a heat pump. Using this credit. Today?”

The answer, as Porter knew, was no. Not yet. Maybe in a year. Government was moving slow, as usual, and Porter was impatient. There were real people out there with real problems. Including her.

“You might be interested to know,” she said, “that ‘this Californian’ is me.”

Katie Porter and the politics of real life [WaPo]

…there’s a reason we talk about “the political reality”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/20/biden-american-climate-corps-green-jobs

…as distinct from the reality of…well…reality…which is supremely indifferent to political calculus

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases

Humanity has ‘opened gates to hell’ by letting climate crisis worsen, UN secretary warns [Guardian]

…so…I’m just about out of time…as ever…&…likewise…have barely scratched the surface of the shit my mind refuses to quit bugging me about for more waking hours than can possibly be good for anybody

Things both my toddler and Elon Musk do that are signs of genius, apparently [WaPo]

A new study suggests that tobacco companies, who were skilled at marketing cigarettes, used similar strategies to hook people on processed foods. [WaPo]

…see…a thing can be “hyperpalatable” & fucking terrible for you…just like a thing can be good for you but unappealing…shocking, I know…what is it they say? …just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should [be allowed to]

Elon Musk’s Neuralink approved to recruit humans for brain-implant trials [Guardian]

…if you need me…I’ll be over here building an inside out house, I guess?

[…what…you thought plan b came up with “the defamation of strickland banks” all on his own?]
[…apologies for the c-word & all]
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43 Comments

  1. Selling out to hardline ideological right wing assholes will not end well.

    Hardliners (no matter their stripe) are close minded dimwits convinced of their own superiority, but Rishi never struck me as a brave one (very rare that a kid born into wealth and covered in priviledge ever is… probably had the butler slap around his bullies for him.)

    See MAGAts or Convoy Trucker Fuckers (for local references.)

    Can’t let the Dunning Kreuger terminally stupid dictate our future.

    • …maybe I just have the wrong end of the stick…but…right as you may very well be about all of that…& much as it might even be a perfectly good description of what sunak’s self-serving nonsense about not out-distancing industry by going too far, too fast because it risks leaving the public behind…no, really…that’s damn near verbatim…is in aid of…but…even by that measure…it seems fucking worthless?

      …like…he equivocates to dilute the part where he’s defying logic & reality…which means going on about continuing to do the things those gammon-faced daily mail sycophants he’s courting think aren’t “good for the future” so much as they’re “the” reason brexit isn’t the promised land they remain convinced it would be if everyone just pulled their socks up & stopped saying things that aren’t complimentary about the tory tenure of the last too-many-years

      …so he’s doing it to position himself for an election in which it provides…at the most charitable possible estimate…a marginal gain

      …while unambiguously causing significant drag in terms of his ability to navigate the headwinds of an oncoming election in which it would be obvious that him & his party would get crushed…if I had any remaining faith in the concept of a thing that “stands to reason”

      …there just doesn’t even seem to be a net benefit to him…which somehow makes it more aggravating?

      • I struggle a lot to understand the same kind of thinking for people like Mark Meadows, and why he stayed loyal to Trump to the point of major personal risk.

        Other relentless Trump enablers who saw the same gathering storm clouds after the 2020 election bailed — Bill Barr, Betsy DeVos, possibly even Ivanka. What made Meadows commit crimes? He’s rich and could have just quit like many others.

        All of the beat sweetener profiles of Meadows and his conspirators failed to prepare anyone for what they turned out to be. And we still don’t really understand.

        • That’s true of a lot of Trump supporters. So many of them could have just quietly retired and spend the rest of their lives enjoying wealth I’ll never see. Why in hell did Rudy go ride-or-die on fucking Trump? What’s in it for Ginni Thomas? She’s protected, at least, but Rudy’s penniless and probably going to get convicted. The smarter ones bailed out. Why did others stay?

          The only explanation I can come up with is power. They’re addicted to controlling others, and they’ll take any gamble to get to that state. Well, and cognitive issues, in Rudy’s case.

          • I think there are clues for people with access and a lot of exposure that better explain what’s going on. I think it is much less of a mystery to them why Sydney Powell went criminal but other Trump lawyers like Pat Cippollone did not, and why some who backed the conspiracy like Lin Wood are now cooperating with prosecutors. But they rarely share these clues.

            It would be one thing if they stayed out of the explanation game altogether. But we get a regular diet of seriously underbaked explanations that assume simplistic psychological motives like complete loyalty to Trump or pure greed which are provably incomplete. So if there are further indications of someone’s psychology, they should show them.

            • Roodles wrote the Trump election scam playbook as he did the exact same shit (conpsiracy against me, blah blah black folks cheated, I WON I WON rhetoric) that Trump did during his first NYC mayor campaign (he lost to David Dinkins) in 1988 (I think?).

              This would mostly explain why Roodles went all in. Mostly ignored by the MSM except MSNBC.

        • I think they didn’t think it could happen to them because they had power and access and also that they were in so deep that only more power could save them. Frankly, American history would also tell them that people of their status rarely face punishment no matter how bad the acts they commit, so why not hang on for dear life. (Also they’re dumb. But, I mean, they already support Trump, so seems like that’s a given.)

          • You could be right, but why one set and not the other? Someone like Lin Wood appears at least superficially to have been as nuts as Powell, so why does he show up as a cooperating witness in Georgia while she was indicted? What made Cassidy Hutchinson go from true believer and trusted Meadows aide to honest dealer?

            I think it’s possible to look at behavior and then back assume motivations to fit the behavior. But I think that’s far short of what reporters should be doing. They tend to stick to an awfully narrow set of motives for political figures which fall short of explaining the next crazy turn from Mark Meadows or Mayor Adams.

            For that matter I think the political press wildly discounts evidence that politicians care about serious issues, so that Al Gore on global warming was treated as simple nerdism, or Sanders on health care becomes just a function of his supposed radicalism.

            I think it’s awfully hard to predict who might flip on Trump, and I don’t fault journalists for being suprised by Lin Wood, for example. But I think coverage of motivations for Meadows has been so broken by failure to think outside of narrow tropes like “fiscal conservatism” or “Christian beliefs” that it’s useless.

              • Like I said, I think it’s awfully hard to predict behavior, but I think the tropes reporters use are so incredibly weak and limited to be wildly misleading.

                For example, I would bet “Christian faith ” has come up a million times to explain Meadows, but I think the obvious lack of faith would be a vastly better explaination. But being a classic willful hypocrite in the sense of the Gospels and the Sermon on the Mount would go a lot farther to explain him, but it barely, if ever, comes up.

  4. David Brooks tweeted a photo of a burger and fries he said cost him $78 in Newark Airport, and said that explained why people thought the economy was terrible.

    People noticed the tumbler at the top of the photo, and then tracked down the airport restaurant. It turns out the burger was a 10 ounce mix of ground brisket, prime beef short rib, and 21 day aged strip loin for $19.99.

    They did the math and figured that tumbler must have been a $50 whiskey. Let’s say it was $40 and Brooks was including tax and tip.

    https://nitter.poast.org/JFG0995/status/1704689653847072920

    I’d love to know if the underlying reason he posted this is he was in a bad mood after some Times accountant refused his travel expense reimbursement form. Or maybe he sent this after having four $10 whiskeys?

    • Inflation isn’t helping but I thought those middle way morons were all about freedums to soak the shit out of travelers and the power of the market? He should be celebrating getting ripped off at the airport.

    • Brooks is such a goddamn pinhead.

      Yes, of course, let’s look at inflated airport pricing to gauge the economy. That way we can make a flawed conclusion from our flawed assumptions, and then haughtily act like this is common sense?

          • It’s not a jump so much as it’s adopting a conclusion and then working backward, and having to rely on sketchy “evidence” because your conclusion is demonstrably wrong to begin with.

            Brooks wants to prove the “economy is bad.” He starts with a ridiculous example and then uses that to justify his false conclusion. Not only is an airport an expensive place to eat, but “most Americans” don’t fly. And of those, only a portion go through Newark. But saying a statistically insignificant number of people are paying outrageous prices (based on the free market that right-wingers claim to worship) that he can’t document doesn’t provide any evidence for his “economy is bad” conclusion.

            I just spent more time thinking about this than he did. And right-wingers don’t have the cognitive skills to work out the fallacy.

  5. I struggle a little with the Katie Porter stuff because a lot of the reason we’re in the mess we’re in is we love to overlook bad behavior in people we either agree with, believe in or think are particularly talented at their jobs (see every athlete accused/convicted of heinous behavior and how long it takes them to get back on the field.)

    If this were “Keith Porter” instead of Katie Porter, I’m not sure I’d want to give him a second look and I know he’d be getting a lot more heat on social media from his side than she is.

    But she’s not wrong to say that the standards are different for women in power and she is clearly an effective legislator and public speaker. I think she’d make a great senator. But if she’s a monster behind the scenes, I dunno, seems like we have enough of those people in power already, and maybe that should count for something, too. It’s hard to square being in favor of worker rights and consumer protections but also treat your employees like crap.

    • I’m right there with you. She IS an effective lawmaker, but if she struggles to be a decent human being, I feel like we’re back at Amy Klobuchar. Which is nowhere.

          • No, it’s a good comparison because she had similar (if not even nastier) stories about her. But she also kinda sucks so I was like “Yeah, sure, not surprised.” Porter surprises more because she seems way more in-tune with real-life issues. But lots of people can be one thing in public and entirely another in private.

    • I’ll note one thing I’ve seen in decades in the workforce: Some people are NOT cut out to be managers. They just aren’t. And they usually don’t recognize that fact, because if they did, they’d take steps to mitigate it (like hire a chief of staff in politics or an assistant manager in the workforce and let them manage people).

      And if you don’t have any talent for management, there’s simply no way to graft that onto you. Classes and training won’t help. It’s just something some people can navigate and others can’t. Yeah, come at me. I’m right and you’re not changing my mind.

      I’ll also add that you can be a bad manager for good reasons. Maybe you can’t take the stress. Maybe you are TOO empathetic (yes, professional distance is a good thing). Maybe you’ve got someone you trust that’s actually undermining you (back to the empathy thing). Maybe you’re just not good at reading people or juggling multiple personalities and goals. None of that makes you a bad person, but it can sure make you a bad manager.

    • …I’m absolutely aware I could be wrong…& that giving her the benefit of the doubt is bias on my part…but I’m also aware that the ex-staffers with the complaints don’t come with a name or a description of the detail in that complaint

      …so…even if she should have done better at being their boss…my suspicion is that they couldn’t have done what she was doing without being worse in the process than she was…which is another form of double standard on the one hand…& on the other…has a bunch to do with making the job incompatible with things that are not in fact unusual attributes for a person to have in terms of logistics & demands on their time

      …so…I think if it was keith not katie…I’d still be as impressed with the whiteboard routine…but there’s a chance I wouldn’t be giving him the single-mom bonus in the benefit of the doubt stakes

      …so…I do think your point is sound in the general sense…but I’d honestly be a lot more surprised to find out she was a genuinely problematic boss than I would be in a lot of cases…& not at all surprised if the complaints about her as a boss were less justified than a boss would be complaining about those employees

      …which isn’t a particularly natural fit for my thinking…but you don’t wind up actively involved in an above average amount of legislative work without your staff having an above average amount of work demanded of them…& if they’re just average at their jobs with expectations that differ from the reality it’s real easy to bitch anonymously

      …whereas it strikes me as hard to consistently come across more like katie porter than amy klobuchar if you aren’t in fact more like katie porter seems to be than amy klobuchar apparently is

      …so…if I had to put money on it…maybe I’d lose…but…I probably would?

      • Yeah in the end, I don’t really care if she’s just a bad boss or kind of unpleasant to work for. There’s also a LOT going on in political work in terms of weird hours and timing and requests and things to do … it’s possible some people just got burnt out by it and pointed the finger at her. I don’t know, and I’m not even sure it’s possible to know for sure from the outside.

        I just struggle to square “I’m fighting for the common person” with being shitty to underlings, because one of them is probably an act (and almost every time in that scenario it’s the former and not the latter.)

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