Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

I was promised a recession.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

He really is that stupid.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

I really should read my own blog.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / High Chair, Low Quality

High Chair, Low Quality

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Remember going to restaurants in the Before Times? I miss it, but this isn’t my first restaurant drought. Around the turn of the century, for a couple of years, we had to subsist on our own cooking and takeout.

It wasn’t plague that kept us from the joys of eating out back then. It was our toddler.

After our baby was born, my husband and I kept right on eating out as we had before. If the baby fussed, she was easy to soothe. I remember bragging to my mom about how good MY baby was in restaurants, not at all like those other inferior children marring their families’ (and everyone else’s) outings by shrieking and throwing things. MY baby was clearly a budding food critic and etiquette expert.

My mom gave me a knowing smile but said nothing. That’s the kind of parent she was, a believer in letting her children learn things for themselves.

And boy did I ever learn, an entire lesson delivered in one attempted meal around the time our kid turned two, plus a bonus lesson: they call it the “terrible twos” for good reason. I remember it like it was yesterday. We were at little Greek and Italian restaurant around the corner from where we lived at the time, a place where we were frequent customers.

The kiddo had outgrown the car seat / detachable carrier thing we had been carting her around in, and the waitress asked if we wanted a high chair. We did.

The high chair came with the tray shrink-wrapped to protect its sanitary surface, which contained a mini-pack of crayons, a coloring sheet and a handful of Captain’s Wafer crackers. What fun, I thought. It’s a prison, the toddler apparently surmised.

Perhaps unhappy with being buckled in, the kid seemed disgruntled though not alarmingly so. But just after we ordered dinner, Beelzebub took possession of our placid angel, and she started screaming and crying and hurling crayons and throwing her sippy cup.

We remonstrated. We retrieved thrown articles. We tried to amuse her. We offered crackers to mollify her.

She shrieked at a higher pitch and pounded the crackers to dust with her fists on the high-chair tray. She tore up the coloring paper and distributed the shreds and cracker crumbs on every surrounding surface.

Under the withering glare of every other patron in the restaurant, we asked our waitress if we could please have our order to go, paid the bill and left a 200% tip to cover the destruction. It was a nightmare.

This is a weird segue, but I swear I was not surprised, when reading this Vanity Fair piece, to learn that when Donald Trump’s low-quality nepotism hire Jared Kushner presided over the meetings in which he fucked up the coronavirus response, he sat “in a chair taller than all the others.” I expect monstrous behavior from people in high chairs. Kushner delivered:

Kushner, seated at the head of the conference table, in a chair taller than all the others, was quick to strike a confrontational tone. “The federal government is not going to lead this response,” he announced. “It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do.”

One attendee explained to Kushner that due to the finite supply of PPE, Americans were bidding against each other and driving prices up. To solve that, businesses eager to help were looking to the federal government for leadership and direction.

“Free markets will solve this,” Kushner said dismissively. “That is not the role of government.”

The same attendee explained that although he believed in open markets, he feared that the system was breaking. As evidence, he pointed to a CNN report about New York governor Andrew Cuomo and his desperate call for supplies.

“That’s the CNN bullshit,” Kushner snapped. “They lie.”

According to another attendee, Kushner then began to rail against the governor: “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…. His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”

“That’s when I was like, We’re screwed,” the shocked attendee told Vanity Fair.

It’s a horrifying article, replete with tales of greed, incompetence and douchebro arrogance. Dudes gotta go. Open thread.

Reader Interactions

156Comments

  1. 1.

    trollhattan

    My profound hope is that the princeling follows dad not only into the business but also into the Big House. He’s vile, in a banal way that’s doubly irksome.

  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    I read that article earlier today; in retrospect, the most horrifying part of it was how utterly unsurprising any of it was.

  7. 7.

    Soprano2

    That article was sad and horrifying. It makes it absolutely clear, if it wasn’t before, that the Trump administration has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on its hands. Industry was ready, willing and eager to help, but Trump and Jared completely ignored them. It reminded me of what W did with the Iraq Occupation, where they sent a bunch of Heritage people in their 20’s over to Iraq to run everything rather than people who knew what the hell they were doing. Both things had the predictable results, totally fucking up everything.

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    1) This part is bullshit, not from the reporter, but from Jared:
    The meeting began at 6:30 p.m. Kushner is an observant Jew and normally wouldn’t work during Shabbat, which ended at 8:00 that evening, but a “rabbinic dispensation” allows him to make exceptions for matters of public importance, according to a senior administration official.
    Judaism requires that Jews break whatever commandment is necessary if health, safety, and life are at risk, especially in an emergency. Theirs or others. There is no rabbinic dispensation needed it’s built into the religion.

    2) And this is just hysterical:

    Kushner, seated at the head of the conference table, in a chair taller than all the others
    I realize he’s not a particularly intimidating figure and has the muscle tone of a newborn, but this is just stupid, silly, and comical, not intimidating. I am constantly amazed that people seem to cower in terror of him and the President.
  11. 11.

    lamh36

    Since this is an open thread…

    I graduated MT school in 2003 and since my first MT job in Microbiology in 2005 way back in Dallas, Texas, to my move back home to Louisiana in 2012 I have worked exclusively as a Microbiology bench tech. Today, September 2020 was my final day as a bench tech in the Micro for the forseeable future.

    Today marked the end of one chapter in my professioal career and soon a new chapeter in management will begin in a new city and new lab. I’m appreciative of where I’ve been and excited to see what will come next. I’ve got BIG plans to come!

    https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/1307020559105089539?s=20

  12. 12.

    Lapassionara

    I, for one, appreciate the art work that Betty did to accompany this post. I have not seen Betty’s always entertaining artwork for a while, and we missed our butter lamb this spring.

    for which I blame Trump.

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    That photo of Kushner at the VF link — has there ever, anywhere, been an image that more accurately captures “arrogant, entitled motherfucker”?

  15. 15.

    Eljai

    @Betty Cracker: Your segue was masterful!  Reminded me of the time I took my then 2-year old nephew to a pancake restaurant chain.  He’s a fine young man now so there’s no lingering trauma from the experience.  But I cannot say the same for myself.

    PS:  Maddow fan here.  I guess I am one of the few people here who LOVE the first 20 minutes of her show when she does the set-up for the first news story.

  19. 19.

    FelonyGovt

    I remember those days of restaurant shame, including our daughter’s transition from a sweet, mellow baby to a screaming hellcat that drew the disapproving stares of everyone in the place. And you’re right, we stayed out of restaurants for the most part during that period as well.

    Kushner was not elected and knows nothing and the fact that Shitgibbon put him in this position of power says all we need to know about him. And as a former New Yorker, those remarks about “people are going to suffer” chills me to the bone.

    Yes, dude’s gotta go.

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I realize he’s not a particularly intimidating figure and has the muscle tone of a newborn, but this is just stupid, silly, and comical, not intimidating. I am constantly amazed that people seem to cower in terror of him and the President.

    Not a stretch to think he got inspired by dear daddy in law on this, because it sounds like something Trump has done routinely, along with his Rubioesque stacked heels.

    I still love the princeling photos wearing body armor over his blue blazer. I’m sure that really impressed those military boys.

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @lamh36:

    It’s so exciting that you’ve generously made sure the Balloon Juice family are part of your journey. Congratulations on everything you’ve accomplished so far, and all success on the adventures to come!

  27. 27.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: from what I’ve read, Jared’s commitment to his faith runs as deep as the clauses in Papa Kushner’s will.

    One of the tidbits from Mary Trump’s book is the Charlie, not long out of prison, stood up at the wedding and told the assembled arrivistes that at first he wasn’t sure Ivanka was good enough for his princeling, until he saw the commitment she brought to her conversion. Which I find hilariously tacky proof that these people all deserve each other, and specifically I bet it made The Beast so mad he briefly considered making a show of tearing up the check that Kushner Inc wrote to the Trump Organization/Bedminster to pay for the wedding. But he probably needed it to meet a payment to Deutsche Bank that month.

  28. 28.

    cmorenc

    The experience out at a public restaurant or event with a mortifyingly misbehaving toddler is a universal nightmare experience for everyone who’s ever been a parent.  There’s never any available way to escape the situation that’s quick enough or graceful enough to avoid the humiliation of having imposed your hell-spawn on the nerves and grudging patience of others.

  29. 29.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Kushner, seated at the head of the conference table, in a chair taller than all the others, was quick to strike a confrontational tone.

    So all these dumbasses think the Trump administration is just a special episode of The Apprentice.

  30. 30.

    Kent

    The most depressing part of this is that these people will never pay a price for the wreckage they have made of this country.  None.

    Nearly 2 decades ago the Bush people brought similar wreckage onto the world with their Iraq war and none of them have paid the slightest price.  I expect this will be the same.

    Kushner and his ilk will lie low for a year or two, counting their winnings.  And then pop back up making sweetheart real estate deals and hosting parties in “East Egg” and lining up the next tax break to shelter their millions.

  33. 33.

    Kelly

    Oregon Fires Update:

    Rain and west wind has reduced smoke levels in the Willamette Valley from off the scale hazardous to merely unhealthy. It’s been raining lightly at our house. There is a highway dept webcam a couple miles from home I can watch. Evac zone has been reduced but the hard closure is about 100 yards from our road. So near yet so far. Upside insurance pays for our room until our evacuation is lifted. Oh our room is on the coast in clear air.

  34. 34.

    gene108

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I am constantly amazed that people seem to cower in terror of him and the President.

    The shameless greed, lack of even the slightest shred of normal human emotions and reactions like laughter and empathy, as well as open contempt for any law that gets in their way is probably overwhelming to a lot of career government people.

    They never figured a President or his closest advisors would be utter sociopaths.

    It defeats all the years of education, work, training, etc., they thought would help in their positions, when in reality they must have realized any unqualified two-bit hustler would be just as effective as them in this administration.

    Probably spooked a lot of government folks.

  35. 35.

    Kent

    @cmorenc:The experience out at a public restaurant or event with a mortifyingly misbehaving toddler is a universal nightmare experience for everyone who’s ever been a parent.  There’s never any available way to escape the situation that’s quick enough or graceful enough to avoid the humiliation of having imposed your hell-spawn on the grudging patience of others.

    Been there, done that.  You really learn to pick your restaurants when dining out with young children.  Some are incredibly accommodating.  Some not at all.

  37. 37.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Adam L Silverman:I am constantly amazed that people seem to cower in terror of him and the President.

    You serious? If someone like Kushner gave me a dirty look I would have to fight the impulse to laugh in his face.

  38. 38.

    scav

    The Federal government’s role is not to coordinate saving lives, that’s up to the states and free markets.  The Federal Government’s role is role is to yank funding from schools if they a) don’t open (get those football teams on the field!) or b) let the wrong sort of people on the teams.

  40. 40.

    debbie

    Betty, I accompanied my brother’s family to dinner when their (then two) children were about 3 and 1. They were fine, but out of nowhere, the 3-year-old screamed, pointed at a deer’s head hanging on the wall, and shrieked, “Daddy, Bambi’s stuck in a hole!”

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @trollhattan: If you’re going down range, and you hold a senior position like that, you bring a suit in case you have to meet with a senior host country official, but otherwise you should be wearing appropriate clothing, with appropriate footwear. The khakis were fine. The button down shirt was okay. The blazer was stupid.

  46. 46.

    Charluckles

    We once took our kids out to a really fancy restaurant for a celebration. We showed up early and figured we would be out of there before the fancy folk showed up. Everything went great and we were just starting to pack up to get ready to go when my older son fell out of the bench he was in and pulled the table cloth with him.  Oh what a night. I’ll bring that story up on his wedding day.

    I hope Biden/Harris are able to focus a spotlight in on Kushner. I think that is an incredibly weak spot that should be exploited.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @zhena gogolia: It fits. While the vast, vast majority of psychopaths are not serial killers, every serial killer we apprehend blows the top of the test for psychopathy. I guarantee if we gave Jared the Minnesota Multiphasic Index, he’d ace it.

  49. 49.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’m a Maddow fan, and I especially like when she does the deep historical dives that tie current events to the past, though I often think  she could shave a couple of minutes off just by not repeating herself, which seems to be more of a personal/speaking tic than part of her writing. A lot of people were complaining about the one she did— last night? night before? two years ago in COVID/trump time?– explaining exactly what heard immunity is and what it would mean, which I thought was both timely and well done.

    I was thinking this morning that as our Attorney General considers charging people with sedition, she could do one on exactly what that is and how it’s been defined, and abused, in the past

    ETA: And, oh god, how I miss restaurants.

  50. 50.

    Betty Cracker

    @cmorenc: Truth! There was a brilliant ad made some years ago in a Scandinavian country featuring a young father coping with a toddler meltdown in a grocery store. The product is condoms.

    @Lapassionara: We did have a butter lamb this year! Not even a plague can stop the butter lamb.

  54. 54.

    opiejeanne

    Sorry, someone else may have already brought this up, but do you remember him saying that the national stockpile of PPE was not there for the states, it was their stockpile?
    At the time I didn’t understand that he meant it belonged to Emperor Tang and some of his family and minions.

  55. 55.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kelly: Oh our room is on the coast in clear air.

    Three words for you: Cascadian Subduction Zone.

    Once the shakerattle&roll starts, you get 2-4 minutes to reach higher ground, or risk (as they might say in the PNW) getting juandefuca’d.

    You want to take a chance on this not being The Year Of The Jackpot, have at – it’s your real fun.**

    ** NB Anagram of “funeral.”

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @gene108: Actually, it is two reinforcing dynamics.

    1. In abnormal times, many, if not most, people try to maintain as much normalcy as possible. So they maintain the professional and personal behaviors they did before things became abnormal. In this case, you have people who have spent their careers in the civil service or in the uniformed military or in both as they transitioned into the civil service when they left or retired from the military, and they are socialized to treating senior appointees and the president a certain way.
    2. Even among the senior career civil service, people who have extremely large amounts of statutory bases protection for their professional decision making and actions, there is a dearth of people who will take any risks. Despite having professional, career, and work place protections and security that the vast majority of Americans can only dream of, they will do nothing risky.
  62. 62.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Lawyers representing the U.S. at Julian Assange’s extradition trial have accepted the claim that the WikiLeaks founder was offered a presidential pardon on the condition that he would help cover up Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the DNC.
    https://t.co/DrbYbVbTpn

    — The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) September 18, 2020

  63. 63.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Citizen Alan:

    I have never seen a picture of Jared Kushner in which he looks like an actual human being.

    Yeah, he definitely has the ‘no soul behind these eyes’ look going for him.

    That might be scary if he had an IQ much above room temperature.

  64. 64.

    Brachiator

    “Free markets will solve this,” Kushner said dismissively. “That is not the role of government.”

    Sweet boneless Jesus. Young Jared in his high chair displays everything that is wrong about running government like a business.

    He doesn’t have a clue and he arrogantly stews in the warm juices of his stupidity. But he clearly got the message from Trump. It wasn’t “don’t cause panic.” It was “People can’t blame us if we don’t do anything. We just have to look like we are in control.”

  65. 65.

    Kelly

    @Uncle Cosmo: Yes but I keep having near misses in this year’s disasters. Fire stopped a few feet short of our house, no covid so far and a month ago a 60 foot long dead snag fell on a beautiful windless day missing me by  2 feet. It’s better to be lucky than good. My presence may protect thousands of coast residents. Heading outside for the afternoon.

  70. 70.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    Seeing this makes me doubly sick about the alleged executive order on patriotic education. If you’re not going to buy that I’m a real American who deserves the protection of the Federal government, then why should I buy into your re-education program?

  72. 72.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    trump is apparently talking and Tom Nichols is covering it — said The Beast seems sedated today. I’d heard people saying that trump has been talking about Puerto Rico but this is the first I’ve seen of it

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom ·2m
    “We are going to bring pharmaceutical manufacturing back to Puerto Rico” And then: “We’ve done more for Puerto Rico than anybody”

    “I’m the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico.” He really just said this.

    paper towels

  74. 74.

    JPL

    @debbie: Good!   Maybe the restaurant will think twice about hanging trophies on the wall.

     

    fyi I was streaming CNN and trump came on to talk about how mean Joe was to him..  I actually have no idea what he was going to talk about, but he did sound low energy.   I only listened for a minute though.

  75. 75.

    LuciaMia

    Trump speaking now from the WH, about the virus and the vaccine. Jesus, it will never penetrate that solid pumpkin orb that NOBODY BELIEVES A THING YOU SAY ANYMORE!

  77. 77.

    lowtechcyclist

    “The federal government is not going to lead this response,” he announced. “It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do.”

    One attendee explained to Kushner that due to the finite supply of PPE, Americans were bidding against each other and driving prices up. To solve that, businesses eager to help were looking to the federal government for leadership and direction.

    “Free markets will solve this,” Kushner said dismissively. “That is not the role of government.”

    The same attendee explained that although he believed in open markets, he feared that the system was breaking. As evidence, he pointed to a CNN report about New York governor Andrew Cuomo and his desperate call for supplies.

    “That’s the CNN bullshit,” Kushner snapped. “They lie.”

    According to another attendee, Kushner then began to rail against the governor: “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…. His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”

    Kushner is an observant Jew

    I wonder how many Jews were killed by Covid-19 as a result of Kushner’s refusal to even accept help, let alone actually help.

  78. 78.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @debbie:

    When I was about three, I went with my extended female family (mother, aunt, grandmother, great-aunts, and great-grandmother) to an elegant tearoom-style restaurant one Sunday after church. The table linens were of white damask, and the napkins were huge.  At one point, I stood up in my chair, swaddled myself in a napkin, and in piercing tones announced to the entire room: “I look like Baby Jesus!”

  87. 87.

    lowtechcyclist

    I don’t want anyone’ head on a pike, or (as I occasionally envision) anyone’s neck swinging from lampposts on Constitution Avenue, tempting as the thought is.

    What I want is for them all to be sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in Gitmo.  Trump, Kushner, Barr, Stephen Miller, the whole gang. And for every last one of them to live to be 100, and be fully conscious until the end.

  94. 94.

    Brachiator

    @The Moar You Know:

    raven will not be surprised that LBJ not only did the same thing, but had a control panel at his desk where chairs could be lowered or raised as he felt appropriate.

    Yep. LBJ liked to play dominance games. But he was competent. Not always right, but competent.

    Young Jared is a pretender. Trump always turns to him because he doesn’t know how to choose people who know what they are doing.

    And neither Trump nor Young Jared even understand what needs to be done when they are faced with a crisis.

  97. 97.

    Miss Bianca

    @Brachiator:

    Sweet boneless Jesus. Young Jared in his high chair displays everything that is wrong about running government like a business.

    He doesn’t have a clue and he arrogantly stews in the warm juices of his stupidity. But he clearly got the message from Trump. It wasn’t “don’t cause panic.” It was “People can’t blame us if we don’t do anything. We just have to look like we are in control.”

    Not only all of the above, but the notion that “the boss’s son” or “the boss’s son-in-law” is somehow naturally entitled to a position of authority that he hasn’t earned, by any stretch of the imagination, is also a bad import from the “run government like a (crappy) business” model. We’re supposed to have nepotism laws in government because we are supposed to have actual standards for government positions.

  100. 100.

    LuciaMia

    Somebody asks Trump about the aborted effort by the USPS to mail masks to every American. Trump shrugs, mumbled he doesnt know, then starts rambling on how the Post Office could make money if they raised rates on packages,…how they lose money on that but postal workers are great people, really great…

    ????

    Why cant some reporter pipe up, “Mr. President , just what the fuck are you talking about??”

  102. 102.

    opiejeanne

    @FelonyGovt: I saw a letter to the editor referencing what I am still certain 50 years later, was referring to us and our  first baby. It was 1970, he was 3 months old and in one of those plastic baby carriers from the period, and for a moment while I was getting into the booth, I set it on the table before setting it on the bench beside me.  This was a high-tone classy joint named for a little boy who gets bullied by tigers, which name eventually became controversial.

    The outrage! Not just that I had set the carrier on the table briefly before the table was cleaned by the waitress, but that we had brought our squalling brat to this fine establishment or any other, why didn’t we have a babysitter, and how dare we?!! You could almost hear the jowl-quivering rage.

    The thing is, our kid never made a peep the whole time we were there, and people stopped by our table and cooed over how good he was.

    His little sister made up for it in a coffee shop near Gilroy, CA several years later. Something went wrong in the kitchen while we waited eons for our food, and she decided she was not having it! She was 18 months old, hungry and did not want that damned balloon they tied to her high chair, and there were no crackers on the table. She started to wail and I’m not ashamed to say, we let her because, good Lord, it took them 20 minutes to bring us glasses of water. Our food came out of the kitchen really quickly after a couple of minutes of that noise, brought to our table by the manager, and it was obvious it had been sitting under a heat lamp for a while.

    The reason we didn’t leave at that point is that in 1970 there was nothing for at least another 20 minutes away, not even a McDonalds, and the waitresses kept apologizing for the delay and saying our food should be right out so they kept hope alive.

    There was a time we had to remove our youngest from a restaurant until she had calmed down; I swear, if she’d have been the first she’d have been the last.

  105. 105.

    Mary G

    Remember this?

    White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on Wednesday expressed optimism that much of the country could be “back to normal” by June as several states prepare to lift restrictions meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

    “I think what you’ll see in May as the states are reopening now is May will be a transition month, you’ll see a lot of states starting to phase in the different reopening based on the safety guidelines that President Trump outlined on April 19,” Kushner said on “Fox & Friends.”

    “I think you’ll see by June that a lot of the country should be back to normal, and the hope is that by July the country’s really rocking again,” the president’s son-in-law continued.

    Bold mine. Any normal person would’ve resigned in shame and never show their face again in public, but not these mooks.

    @lamh36: So happy for you!

    ??✨??

    My old company felt so strongly that new management should not be in charge of any old colleagues that they always moved people far away, like Dana Point to Simi Valley, which trust me, is hours of stop and go traffic. One of my managers broke out in hives after about a week, and another started crying when it rained unexpectedly and had to be hauled off and tranquilized. You are going into it right.

  109. 109.

    opiejeanne

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I wonder that they could find a chair like that and didn’t just give him a phone book to sit on.

    Phone books, they don’t really exist any more do they. A couple of thick books they found in the Lincoln bedroom.

  110. 110.

    Jager

    @cmorenc:

    My girls are two years apart, this is how it worked, we had a sweet baby, then her terrible twos while her sister was a sweet baby when the first came out of her terrible twos, the other started hers. Then we went into the “She touched me!” stage to the “She’s looking at me!” stage. It never stopped. I once overheard the younger, a sophomore in HS at the time, “If you don’t take me to that party on Saturday night, I’ll tell dad you were doing donuts in his car.”  They are the mothers of my grandchildren and they still talk shit to each other.

  112. 112.

    Adam L Silverman

    @japa21: And thanks to the fact that the Florida Democratic Party couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse if you spotted them the house, the whores, the viagra, the lube, etc, Rick Scott’s organization and part of the Republican Party in Florida has been doing outreach and working to get their support since Hurricane Maria. It’s largely how he was able to beat Nelson to win the senate seat.

  114. 114.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @cmorenc: As I get older and realize I’m not going to have grandchildren, my reaction to toddlers in restaurants has mellowed. Basically, I now want to offer the kid cookies to see if it makes them feel better, poor things.

  116. 116.

    Bill Arnold

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    That photo of Kushner at the VF link — has there ever, anywhere, been an image that more accurately captures “arrogant, entitled motherfucker”?

    That VF image is excellent, but some of the images found in a search for “Jared Kushner” at images.google.com are as good at exposing his arrogant banal evilness.
    (He wasn’t in my regular Rogues’ Gallery, but now he is. :-)
    He is looking increasingly ashen and less human. Not clear why.

  117. 117.

    Miss Bianca

    @Benw:

    Kushner’s a Terminator who wasn’t given the target’s name before it got sent back in time

    You *may* have just won today’s Internets with that one. LOL

  119. 119.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Tom Nichols@RadioFreeTom ·29m
    Trump just described the Taliban as “very smart, very sharp, very tough,” Says that “in all fairness they’re very tired of fighting.” He really just said this, apparently out of fairness, because you know, the Taliban is tired of fighting too.

    It’s hard to keep up with the specific droplets coming out of the firehose of crazy and corrupt and stupid, but for twenty years the Taliban have been held up as a quasi-supernatural force for evil, and the people doing most of that holding up are propping up the guy who says the Taliban are a noble folk of warriors, and they should come to Camp David for a sleepover.

  120. 120.

    Steeplejack

    @The Moar You Know:

    [Johnson] had a control panel at his desk where chairs could be lowered or raised as he felt appropriate.

    That sounds like complete bullshit. Reference? Or even just explain how it would work.

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @Kelly: My presence may protect thousands of coast residents.

    There’s definitely an idea for a fantasy story there.

    “Grandpa, why don’t you ever visit us?”

    “Well, there’s this thing called the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and if I get more than a hundred miles from it, thousands of people will die….”

  124. 124.

    Ruckus

    @Citizen Alan:

    @zhena gogolia:

    Both of these comments are great. JK looks like the kid that got pantsed and his lunch money stolen regularly – and deserved it, which most kids who get that treatment don’t. But then the kids that normally got pantsed and their lunch money stolen would probably be the ones doing the deed in payback for them getting the treatment in the first place. Not a lot of solace in being second row in the pantsing/lunch money crowd.

    I imagine that stealing his lunch money would be different today, possibly it would be a credit card and his phone…..

  125. 125.

    Ken

    @Steeplejack: Or even just explain how it would work.

    I see Adam got there first with his frontpager superpowers.

    The Austin Powers spoof of that scene is good too.

  128. 128.

    Ken

    @opiejeanne: I wonder that they could find a chair like that and didn’t just give him a phone book to sit on. Phone books, they don’t really exist any more do they. A couple of thick books they found in the Lincoln bedroom.

    Oh, is that where the binder with the Obama HHS/CDC pandemic response plan went?

  129. 129.

    Dan B

    @Uncle Cosmo: We’ve gone to a little resort on the Washington coast about three miles north of the little river where the great earthquake of 1700 (Great wave of Kanagawa) was detected in the sediments.  There are miles of flat highway with Tsunami Evacuation Route signs.  I paid them heed.  There was an article about the uselessness of these signs since the pavement would buckle and the bridges collapse.  I learned holiday plus inevitability was doable.  No passable roads meant no food so maybe the wave was preferable.

  130. 130.

    Bill Arnold

    @gwangung:

    I want Kushner’s head on a pike.
    I’m being nice here.
    Head.
    On.
    A.
    Pike.

    I use a real name here so can’t do that. My go-to is to cast it as a Trolley Problem:
    If there were a Trolley Problem with an anonymous choice between J. Kushner and an innocent female wolf spider with an egg sack, my choice would probably[1] be Life for the spider-mom and her unborn children.

    [1] Like 99+ percent probability.

  131. 131.

    narya

    lamh: congrats!

    Adam and other fellows in your faith: happy new year!

    My favorite toddler stories (stolen from a blog I used to follow eons ago): (1) Dad is having poker night, 3-year-old daughter trundles out, naked, with a pen in hand, announcing, “I have a pocket!” And proceeds to demonstrate said . . . pocket with the pen. The blog owner said, who can top this? The winner: (2) young girl comes out with multicolored drips down her leg–turns out SHE used the pocket for jellybeans, which were melting. Mom’s friend (who was present for this) threw jellybeans at the daughter’s eventual wedding.

  135. 135.

    Mike in NC

    Showtime is coming out with a miniseries called “The Comey Rule” starring Jeff Daniels as the former FBI head and Irish character actor Brendan Gleeson as Fat Bastard. No listing of anybody cast as Jared Kushner.

  136. 136.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Soprano2:

     

    Industry was ready, willing and eager to help, but Trump and Jared completely ignored them.

    Actually, it’s much worse than that. Trump and Mini-Trump actively fucked things up. And Mini-Trump’s former college roomie, that guy they put in charge of the response, is a classic Too Busy to Actually Be Effective godamned moron. The nation would have been way, way, way better off if we’d just bribed the three morons to just sit still.

    As the South Carolina doc said “I realized pretty fast that I was dealing with a bunch of kids.”

    Oh, and fuck all of the senior advisors and other personnel who watched this shitshow daily. This most especially extends to Pence an all of the Republican Senate leadership. They all saw this happening, daily, and just walked on by.

  138. 138.

    Brachiator

    @Steeplejack:

    [Johnson] had a control panel at his desk where chairs could be lowered or raised as he felt appropriate.

    That sounds like complete bullshit. Reference? Or even just explain how it would work.

    Yeah. Also seems pretty tame compared to the other acts LBJ is supposed to have done.

    Johnson lived to dominate, and he used crass behavior to bend people to his will. At 6-ft., 3-in. tall and 210 lbs., he liked to lean over people, spitting, swearing, belching, or laughing in their faces. Once, he even relieved himself on a Secret Serviceman who was shielding him from public view. When the man looked horrified, Johnson simply said, “That’s all right, son. It’s my prerogative.” His favorite power ploy, however, seemed to be dragging people into the bathroom with him—forcing them to continue their conversations with the president as he used the toilet.

  139. 139.

    PenAndKey

    @lamh36: I graduated MT school in 2003 and since my first MT job in Microbiology in 2005 way back in Dallas, Texas, to my move back home to Louisiana in 2012 I have worked exclusively as a Microbiology bench tech. Today, September 2020 was my final day as a bench tech in the Micro for the foreseeable future.

    Today marked the end of one chapter in my professional career and soon a new chapter in management will begin in a new city and new lab.

    That’s awesome! I was in the industrial fermentation and metabolites side of the microbiology world myself but moved up to management in 2017. The bench may be repetitive and not the most glamorous, but there are times when I still miss it. I’m more in the Quality Assurance because the pay and hours are way better, but holy zeus was there a learning curve going from being a bench monkey to manager.

    If there’s one bit of advice I can give it’s this: never lose sight of the bench, and if you have the chance at all to throw on a set of PPE and keep your skills fresh you should take it whenever you can. If for no other reason than to break up the stresses of project and staff management. Plus, it’s good for team morale.

  140. 140.

    Jess

    Apparently, I’m still capable of being appalled. Both at the grotesque callousness and the short-sighted stupidity.

  148. 148.

    Roger Moore

    @Miss Bianca:

    Not only all of the above, but the notion that “the boss’s son” or “the boss’s son-in-law” is somehow naturally entitled to a position of authority that he hasn’t earned, by any stretch of the imagination, is also a bad import from the “run government like a (crappy) business” model.

    Emphasis on the “crappy”.  If you look at a list of the best run companies in the country, none of them behave like Trump is doing.  Apple didn’t groom Steve Jobs’s kids to run the company.  Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have made a big deal about wanting to make sure their kids have to make their own way rather than coasting on daddy’s money.  Even Paris Fucking Hilton got cut out of granddaddy’s will rather than being handed the company on a silver platter.

  150. 150.

    billcinsd

    As evidence, he pointed to a CNN report about New York governor Andrew Cuomo and his desperate call for supplies.

    “That’s the CNN bullshit,” Kushner snapped. “They lie. I managed to hijack, like 100 trucks full of PPE supplies. If Cuomo had my initiative, he would have at least that many.”

  151. 151.

    J R in WV

    @lamh36: 

    Today marked the end of one chapter in my professioal career and soon a new chapeter in management will begin in a new city and new lab.

    As a retired manager of nerdy software builders from all over the world, I recommend being as sweet to everyone as you possibly can be. As a natural thing. Until they might have done something over the top bad. And then, still try to be sweet. Even tho it can be really hard.

    There was one guy who refused to learn and successfully use any new technology. SO he was limited to working on one or two old systems that took 40 minutes of work a month. Him I was a little short with. He thought he was the bee’s knees, but not so much.

  155. 155.

    Chris Johnson

    Thanks to whoever (possibly in another thread) linked to the Lincoln Project podcast, saying that they had encouraging words about the Hispanic vote in Florida and what they were doing about it.

    I found their little round-table VERY gratifying, often funny as hell, and it gave me a clear sense of where these folks stood. I’d LIKE to have them kicking around, including after the election: they are what Republicans SHOULD be, and apparently what a not insignificant number of Republicans are. They’re tough, funny, pissed off as bad as we are, and best of all they are understandable.

    I want to ask them, will you raise hell with anybody in government who is letting Russia get away with their shit? Because the weird thing is how I (an avowed progressive) have gotten very VERY radicalized against Russian warfare upon us, having watched it now for years. I used to not be nearly so hawkish, but now I’m really far from complacent. I feel like these Republicans could be natural allies in that sense. They can be additional energy to dig out the literal traitors during a Biden administration that needs to try and stabilize things. I want the Republicans to cut off their gangrenous limbs, to get rid of their literal traitors rather than making US do it while Russia uses QAnon to weaponize that against us.

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