U.S. Politics January 2023: Kevin McCarthy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life

you best check yourself

Cause when you diss Dre you diss yourself

― I got two Clark Gables and a slide trombone (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, January 10, 2023 11:57 AM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I immediately thought of the Nate Dogg lines "I heard you wanna fuck with Dre / you picked the wrong motherfuckin' day"

i wont get specific but the porter stuff is legit, truly hair-raising stuff going on in that office, been a long time wondering when it would start coming out

i'd love it if people got specific about porter--the only thing I could find was some b.s. about letting a staffer/intern go when the staffer violated covid protocols

also alleged that she told a staffer to "grow up" when she reported sexual harrassment

The main point I've seen so far is that she's a frequent screamer. That usually goes along with abusive language, too, but I haven't seen anyone quoting any abusive language.

Politicians are assholes. You don't want to work for an asshole, don't get a job in politics.

"its just locker room talk"

Manny Diaz should set him on fire, then hang himself.

seems pretty standard for a number of political campaign offices tbh

very bad but not uncommon

imagine working for someone like that who gets bonus points from liberals for fake-reading a book called 'the subtle art of not giving a fuck'

as always with this kind of stuff it'll depend on how many young ppl at the bottom of the totem pole will want to attach their names to public allegations, but it def runs deeper than "mean high-functioning politics boss" shit

allegedly

on the one hand, I get the real fear that it might be astro-turfed Jacob Wohl nonsense, on the other, it seems this has been whispered amongst colleagues for a while. but I also get wanting something more substantive than the REO speedwagoning of "heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend".

that said, I wouldn't be surprised if something more concrete does come out later, and that there is definitely fire here. and while it's not uncommon for a politician to be this way on either side, I would really love it if we no longer normalized this (not that I think anybody is saying it's ok itt). abusive employers are bad no matter who they are and I know some people say derisively (again, not ITT) say "it's just work, w/e", but a huge part of my mental collapse nine years ago began with hostile work conditions, which were only about .005% as bad as what the anonymous sources are reporting here. it's yet another type of abuse you often can't walk away from because most people can't afford to just up and quit their job these days. I was fortunate that I could just switch departments.

Given how non-seriously the Kolbuchar stuff was taken, I doubt any of these staffers are going to be willing to put their names to these stories

yeah, and I think a large part of why that died out is that her Presidential campaign flamed out fairly quickly. Klob used to kind of wear "I'm a hard person to work for" as a badge of honor, which, tbh, fuck that

"you're fired!"

nobody likes having an asshole boss, but some people really like having an asshole at the very top.

people who enjoy firing people should never be in charge of anything

otm

Having a shitty boss sucks. I've had several. I've never viewed it as a badge of honor, and I've always gotten out as quickly as possible, often doing something to get myself fired so I could collect unemployment. And on the very few occasions where I've been someone's boss, I've tried really hard to be nice and never yell at anybody. But politicians in particular are sociopaths and monsters, because only sociopaths and monsters run for elective office, so this is to be expected.

I wouldn't be surprised if something more concrete does come out later, and that there is definitely fire here.

agree. but I also agree with waterface:

i'd love it if people got specific about porter

just dropping vague hints that "she's really bad" amount to what used to be called 'a whispering campaign'.

i guess we'll see what comes out

"Basically told the individual to grow up," Georgiades said regarding the case of a staffer who had reported sexual harassment in Porter’s office.

Georgiades noted that the staffer, who worked with her during her two-year period in Porter’s office, left the office shortly "after the sexual harassment conversation" with the congresswoman.

She also noted the individual "hasn’t filed anything with ethics committee but spoke about it with Porter personally, and that was her response."

"Basically" means "this is how I interpret what she said."

Does stuff like this regularly come out about male politicians? I can't think of any, other than Trump, and as KM said above, for his supporters that was a feature rather than a bug.

Franken

Franken had a reputation for being horrible to his staff? I honestly don't remember. He resigned over utter bullshit.

oh boy

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rep-katie-porter-used-racist-language-ridiculed-people-for-reporting-sexual-harassment-ex-staffer-claims/ar-AA15OUIq

article containing quote PK shared (thanks, PK!)

it seems like she wasn't fired, however she was forced to work the remainder of her tenure remotely after being accused of not following office protocol and giving Porter COVID. she claims the office protocol was not to take a test immediately when feeling unwell (which isn't terribly unrealistic, a lot of company's/politician's policies had protocols that weren't very effective at stopping spread). sounds like a throw under the bus moment.

that's more than enough to give me pause, particularly the accusation of using racial slurs.

Seems odd that one of the accusations pivots on what was the office protocol regarding covid testing. You don't disseminate a protocol to your staff verbally, you have it written somewhere so it can be consulted when there are questions about it. Neither side is citing any documentation in that story. Ought to be an easy one to substantiate.

The story also leans heavily on a single person who is relies on characterizing what was said. We don't hear what racial slur was used, only that it was a racial slur. We don't hear the details of the alleged harrassment or the conversation between the person reporting it to Porter because the person telling us doesn't purport to be a witness to either event and even as hearsay it lacks details.

If this is going to be treated as real there needs to be more clarity. A lot more.

Franken

― sleeve, Tuesday, January 10, 2023 1:55 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol which one?

Mike Franken (sorry, ADMIRAL Mike Franken) tried to run for US senate in Iowa and some bizarre story dropped about how he may have grabbed and kissed a former staffer that he had dinner/drinks with. This was, coincidentally, the same week he sent out a mailer with an endorsement from Al Franken.

yeah, that's how these things work.

One person makes some accusations, not using a lot of specifics possibly so the stories can't be tracked back to any other staffer, possibly because it's just rumor. Then anonymous people (staffers?) back her up (again nothing specific or else they'd be identified)

I don't mean to dismiss complaints of young people (particularly in politics) but sometimes I have found their expectations of things are a little presumptive and they are sometimes surprised when entire institutions don't modify how they work to fit those expectations. So, in this case I'd like some specifics otherwise it's not really fair to the candidate, IMO. But also I think symbolically reading a 'the subtle art of not giving a fuck' is dumb, the way bringing popcorn is dumb.

My reaction to that Porter photo was “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON” and I now expect her to go full-Sinema within the next five years

yeah she's going to be an establishment politician, kinda what you have to do i guess, unless you're bernie. klobs probably not far off the mark.

Larry Kudlow indicates support for cutting military spending because "there's a lot of woke in that budget"

It's notable about "woke" has become a catch all for anything Republicans don't like pic.twitter.com/xL3PWWwKxC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2023

F-35 scrapped for being too gay

woke gi bill comes with everything you see here

klobs making a staffer shave her legs is 100% i know that

allegedly

it's hard to be normal and be a politician because very few people can do the outsized personality thing it takes to get elected without being self-absorbed weirdos

there should be laws against being in politics for too long. also racism.

I don't mean to dismiss complaints of young people (particularly in politics) but sometimes I have found their expectations of things are a little presumptive and they are sometimes surprised when entire institutions don't modify how they work to fit those expectations. So, in this case I'd like some specifics otherwise it's not really fair to the candidate, IMO. But also I think symbolically reading a 'the subtle art of not giving a fuck' is dumb, the way bringing popcorn is dumb.

I don't read it that way at all, but ymmv

I've seen young people fail to register the full size of an institutional problem while being correct about the negative aspects of the specific bullshit they encounter.

yeah that's not what I meant, I was thinking more about it in terms of my experience as a manager of people in a workplace, and while I support empathetic workplaces etc, I occasionally run across people who expect work to also act as a place to do therapy for every single issue they have in their life, and people who claim trauma over getting negative performance reviews, etc.

which admittedly doesn't mean these claims aren't grounded in reality, I'd just like people to start being specific about shit because otherwise it's very easy to dismiss.

Okay, that I agree with— as you note, the specifics are important! Young people expecting work to be therapy or to be a place where they don’t have to live up to reasonable expectations is something I have also experienced as a manager, and mirrors behavior I’ve experienced as a teacher.

mirrors behavior I’ve experienced as a teacher.

*nods* Don't I know it.

Larry Kudlow indicates support for cutting military spending because "there's a lot of woke in that budget"

Military Woke = VA & educational benefits.

Of course these are the same people being captain save a captain on people who did not take the Covid vaccine yet at the same time did not give a s%1t about people that had health issues from burn piles, Ground Zero on 9/11 and/or whatever that stuff that they gave to many soldiers before the first gulf war that made them sick.

“He certainly hasn’t earned my trust,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, suggesting to @wolfblitzer there should be a House ethics investigation into George Santos

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 11, 2023

cute of him to even pretend like there will be ethics rules in this House

again, the guy on the left, eli crane, is only in congress because he sells bottle openers made up of 50mm shell casings and got to be on tv for it

Posted by Steve Bannon on GETTR pic.twitter.com/REvsnOvEz6

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) January 11, 2023