National

Imagining that teams of teenage boys are transitioning to win the girl's softball state championship is a "problem" that only exists in the fever dreams of MAGAT nation. No matter,…

I'm an office person.  I like the dividing line between work and not work.  I also like being around people.  In my experience, being part of an effective team requires occasional bullshitting ..or let's call it "non-work" interactions.   But I can also see that I'm not like some people who are way more productive without the commute and office bullshit. Either way, showing up in an office because some middle manager is justifying their job by taking attendance is probably going away.

At its heart, the battle over remote work is a test of corporate America’s definition of an ideal worker. For decades or even longer, that has been a person who prioritizes their job above all else and has no outside commitments.

It’s “an incredibly powerful story,” said Brigid Schulte, the director of the Better Life Lab program at the think tank New America. “It’s part of our culture. It’s part of our DNA.”

It’s probably not shocking that people who are lower on the org chart tend to be less enthusiastic about returning to the office than the senior leaders and executives who thrived in the in-person Before Times.

“For many C.E.O.s and managers, that’s how they worked. That’s how they succeeded and that’s the only way they know,” Ms. Schulte said. “All of this was completely false; it was totally a fake story we’ve been telling ourselves.”

 

Alex Pareene asks the salient question, "What do cops do?" He answers it, too -- they do what's easy, avoid what's hard and slack off a lot, just like people…

Even though I practically am one (born early in 1965), I've got nothing but contempt for the "Baby Boom" generation (people born between 1946 and 1964).  They wrecked the vibrant…

I'm cooked. These days I cannot even skim the news, let alone come up with some kind of trenchant comment on it.   That's why it is almost 2:30 and I'm…

All of these murdered children are so rude!  Always politicizing things that are inherently political. Also: - American Cities Are Rethinking Traffic Stops. Why not rethink racist policing? - Is White Christian Nationalist minority rule locked in? Yup, as long as we have a Senate and Electoral College, and - A milestone for Coons' super secret bipartisan caucus

Memorial Day FB post by a friend gets to the heart of it. I know that today we’re supposed to remember those who died serving our country. But I feel…

Happy (?) Memorial Day Open Thread. I'm taking today off so put anything you think we should know in the comments.

I can just hear it. That's going to be the reaction to the rightful excoriation of the cops who showed up at Robb Elementary School only to hassle parents and…

Nobody who says "We don't have a gun crisis, we have a mental health crisis" gives a fuck about dealing with mental health. Do you know how I know that? Where's the follow-up? Where's the money? It's just a little stalling ruse to allow the latest gun atrocity to fade from the headlines. Also, even the most cursory mental health screening for gun ownership would immediately put gun ownership waaaaay out of the reach of anyone who has ever said, "We don't have a gun crisis." Similarly, "armed teachers" is a bunch of bullshit. Setting aside the fact that it assumes that school shootings are natural and inevitable, like tornadoes, last week they wanted teachers locked up if they mentioned in passing that "gay" is a real thing. So which is it, guns or handcuffs, for the nation's underpaid surrogate moms and dads? So yeah. All of the GOP's talking points on this are pure bullshit. But it is Democrat's that allow them to get away with it every time. At least Beto had the guts to call them on it this time. Maybe that sensibility can spread.

You know your country is in a bad way when you’ve developed a sort of hierarchy of the awfulness of mass shootings, depending on the location and the number and identity of the victims. It’s safe to say the worst of all happen in an elementary school. The Sandy Hook massacre was a special kind of horror that transfixed the nation for days, and now so is Uvalde, Texas, where a lone gunman butchered 19 children and two adults in a local school on Tuesday. In response, some senators proposed a vote on a background check bill that has passed the House several times, most recently last March. The swing Democratic votes in the Senate leaped into action to clarify that nothing of the sort would be done. Reached by reporters at the Capitol asking if he would support ending the Senate filibuster to clear the way for the bill, Joe Manchin refused, insisting, “The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.” Kyrsten Sinema concurred, telling reporters that she doesn’t think “D.C. solutions are realistic here.” The Senate leadership barely even pretended to try to force their hands by scheduling a vote. Instead, senators are reportedly going on their Memorial Day recess. It’s a broken, worthless institution.

Meanwhile Senator Chris Coons would like you to know that "we" have to do more, but by "we" he does not mean the US Senate.

Senator Chris Coons @ChrisCoons We have to do more. We have to make it harder for individuals to get access to weapons who have demonstrated the capacity, or the potential, to use them to harm themselves or their families. And we have to do more to address gun violence. We cannot become numb to this.