"Every world leader you imagine doing statecraft is actually just making decisions based on a whatsapp group full of scumbags responding to, 'wot r pplz vibes re: Putin?'"

Starmer is bad.

The alternatives seem worse.

A government with a million seat majority and no election for half a decade is acting like a minority coalition facing voters next week.

They pinky promised voters not to do the only thing (tax increases) they obviously absolutely must do.

There are graduate degrees you can get in Public Sector Governance that take years to earn... but the way the world is actually run is Steve Bannon e-mailing Jeffrey Epstein "Can u get rid of Powell?"

I think their performance metrics are tied to reach and engagement, which famously doesn't discriminate between hate clicks and fond ones.

Should note, this is another case of NYT Editors fucking over their journalists with idiot headlines.

The first two paragraphs of this piece can best be summoned up as David Farenthold and Ken Bensinger repeating Kevin Robert's line sarcastically while making a wildly exaggerated wanking gesture.

I guess in this case it's the editor, becuase everything below the title is the journalists being like, "This is the dumbest shit we've ever heard - no one should take this seriously."

Alas, time is the judge's gavel that overrules even our loudest shouts of 'objection!'.

Teen Vogue?

bsky.app/profile/expl...

Happy to contribute.

A charcuterie spread of taxation paired with a degustation of means tested subsidies and finished with a Cafe Gourmand des rate hikes.

"Oh no! DJT is on to what me and my friends are doing here with underage girls. He's going to report us to the appropriate authorities, have nothing else to do with us, and use his immense privilege to publicly condemn our immoral behaviour so we can't hide behind our wealth and power."

"But what if this erodes the norms of using the justice system against one's political enemies?"

"Oh, you mean the norm whereby President Biden's justice department indicted his son while slow-rolling any prosecution of Trump until it's too late, only for Trump to win and prosecute his enemies?"

"Oh, the New York Times Editorial Board thinks that's too mean and voters yearn for bipartisanship?"

"Well noted. No thanks. Also, maybe next time instead of worrying about Hillary Clinton's e-mail server they should think about the Epstein e-mails on theirs?"

A friend in need is a friend indeed, but a friend offering access to a rotating harem of chattel slave underage girls on his private island is better?

"The biased media never gives us any credit for the thousands of emails we exchanged with Epstein that weren't (quite as) creepy."

Only for my OnlyFans subs.