This is the Most Disasterous Performance in Tory Politics Since………*

Highlights (Lowlights?) of the speech

At the 2017 Conservative Party conference in the UK, Prime Minister Theresa May delivered an absolute train wreck.

First, was a comedian pranking by delivering a "P-45" form (pink slip to Yanks) from Boris Johnson, then she spent something like 15 minutes largely unsuccessfully battling a cough and a frog in her throat, and finally, the theme logo for the conference began to drop letters off the backdrop.

It’s hard to imagine a more excruciating hour. One that was meant to re-establish the prime minister’s authority over her party ended in pity from an audience who could scarcely bring themselves to look her in the eye. Open ridicule would almost have been a kinder reaction.

Theresa May had always intended her speech to be personal; she just had no idea it was going to get this personal. She began by trying to rid herself of her Maybot image. Her election campaign had been too presidential. Too scripted. She said, reading awkwardly from a script. Even when she is trying to be engaging, sentences don’t come naturally to her.

“The British. Dream. That. Is what I am. In politics. For,” she repeated leadenly time and again as she tried to reinvent herself as a three-dimensional entity. But each time she said it, she only sounded more automated. Emotional intelligence is even harder to master than artificial intelligence.

Then the British Dream turned into a nightmare. First the comedian Simon Brodkin, dressed as a conference delegate, wandered up to the stage. “Boris asked me to give this to you,” he said, handing her a P45. Which Theresa gratefully accepted. Because in her heart of hearts, this was what she had always really wanted. Being PM just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It was too stressful. No fun.

………

It rapidly got worse. Once Brodkin was escorted out the hall, it was the turn of Theresa’s voice to make its own protest. By going awol. This time she knew what words she wanted to say, she just couldn’t get them out as her voice had its own psychosomatic, narcissistic, breakdown. She tried to clear her throat. She drank water. Still nothing came out. Eventually the chancellor handed her a cough sweet which temporarily did the trick.

“The British. Dream. That is. What I. Am in Poli. Tics for,” she croaked in a barely audible whisper. By now almost everyone in the audience was feeling almost as uncomfortable as her. People started muttering and staring at the floor. Opera heroines have died a less public, less agonising death.

………

As she reached her final appeal for the party to stop squabbling – a bit rich after she had spent the previous three days saying how united the cabinet was – the frog got the upper hand again. This time it didn’t limit itself to obstructing her throat, it also hopped across the stage and started knocking letters off the slogan, Building a country that works for everyone, on the screen behind her. First the f of for disappeared. Then the last e of everyone fell to the ground. Theresa’s world was literally falling apart around her. 

Seriously, this absurdity would have deemed a step too far by Monty Python in the day.

She could have bitten off the head of a kitten during the speech and done better.

^*Since all but about 8 years of Winston Churchill's political career.^†
†Seriously. Aside from 1939-45, this guy was a f%$#ing horror show.

iPhone Design Fail

This kind of defeats the 2mm you saved in thickness

Apple has finally added a dongle with both a charging port and an earphone port, and it is ugly and stupid:

It took an entire year after the release of the iPhone 7 for Apple to start selling a dongle that lets you plug in headphones (or your car’s AUX cable) and charge at the same time. But now it’s here. Apple is just selling the thing, mind you — not making it. In September, Belkin quietly announced a new, second version of its “Rockstar” adapter that now includes both a 3.5mm jack and Lightning port. Last year’s version had two Lightning ports, so if you wanted to use wired headphones with it, you had to plug Apple’s own headphone dongle into another dongle. Going double-dongle is bad enough on a laptop, but on a phone?! Good grief.

Well, this is expected for iPhone users.

After all, you get your super thin phone, and then you put the delicate snowflake in a case that doubles its thickness because otherwise it breaks in a stiff breeze.

Deplorable People of the Week

Seattle police officers including lead plaintiff Robert Mahoney who attempted to assert a 2^nd Amendment right to administer violence indiscriminately:

When the Department of Justice handed down remedies for the Seattle Police Department's excessive use of excessive force, it told officers they would need to dial back their penchant for deadliness. Just prior to the DOJ's civil rights investigation, the PD was responsible for 20% of the city's homicides. The DOJ recommended officers work on their de-escalation tactics, as well as partake in training meant to steer officers away from viewing anything strange (medical conditions, mental health issues, drug impairment, behavioral crises) as something to be shot at or beaten.

Seattle PD officials adopted the DOJ recommendations and altered the department's use of force policies. Rather than comply or quit, several police officers decided to file a federal lawsuit against the DOJ. The officers asserted a nonexistent right (the "right" to make it home alive) and hammered an existing right (the 2nd Amendment) to it in hopes of persuading a federal court that using less force less often somehow violated their right to keep and bear arms.

The crowdfunded lawsuit didn't get very far. The district court pointed out the 2nd Amendment does not create a "right" to defend yourself, much less attempt to guarantee officers' personal safety. Gun ownership is regulated, not a free pass for cops to violate PD use of force policies as they see fit. It also tossed a variety of other rights violations claims, noting these were even more tenuously connected to the officers' protest of the new use of force policy than the 2nd Amendment claims.

The officers appealed this decision because of course they did. Despite raising less than $4,000 of their $100,000 legal defense fund goal, the officers apparently had enough funding to lose twice. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected [PDF] the officers' ridiculous rights violation assertions. (h/t Kevin Gosztola)

These guys are not peace officers, they are a clear and present danger to the community.

Yeah, This is Senior Investors Plotting an Exit Strategy

Uber's Board of Directors just made major changes in their structure to lock out Kalanick and to go IPO as quickly as possible:

Uber’s board of directors voted on Tuesday for governance changes that will reshape the balance of power at the ride-hailing service, paving the way for a stock sale to the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and for the company to go public by 2019.

The 11-member board met for less than four hours to approve some of the terms from a proposal put forward last week by Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s new chief executive, and Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that is an investor in the privately held company.

As a result, the clout of certain Uber shareholders — including, most significantly, its former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, who is a board member — will be reduced, according to people briefed on the deliberations, who asked to remain anonymous because the conversations were confidential. Other proposed measures, including one that would have posed hurdles to Mr. Kalanick’s returning as chief executive, were dropped before the meeting.

Still, the board approved enough changes for Uber to move forward on an investment from SoftBank. SoftBank has held discussions to buy a significant chunk of Uber’s stock, but the deal was contingent on changing the company’s governance structure so that some of its early investors would have an incentive to sell. In addition, directors approved a resolution for Uber to go public by 2019, the people briefed on the meeting said, setting up what could be one of the largest technology stock offerings in years.

These are a group of people looking to find some rubes so that they can cash out.

You have been warned.

Republican Family Values

Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA 18), a prominent anti-abortion wingnut, has been caught trying to convince his mistress to get an abortion.

A text message sent in January to U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy by a woman with whom he had an extra-marital relationship took him to task for an anti-abortion statement posted on Facebook from his office's public account.

"And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options," Shannon Edwards, a forensic psychologist in Pittsburgh with whom the congressman admitted last month to having a relationship, wrote to Mr. Murphy on Jan. 25, in the midst of an unfounded pregnancy scare.

A text from Mr. Murphy’s cell phone number that same day in response says, "I get what you say about my March for life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write any more. I will."

The congressman has been lauded by the Family Research Council, for his stance on abortion, as well as for family values, generally. He also has been endorsed by LifePAC, which opposes abortion rights, and is a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus, an affiliation that is often cited by his office.

As Atrios notes, "I am sure that there isn't a single anti-abortion male who would object to an abortion if an inconvenient pregnancy happened." (This is true of many of the women as well.)

The article actually covers a whole litany of what is called "Mishugas" by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, including an office environment that his chief of staff described as, "A hostile workplace in which Mr. Murphy repeatedly denigrated employees, threatened them and created a state of terror."

Lord of the Flies, Uber Edition

It appears that Travis Kalanick has gotten to the breaking sh%$ of grief, specifically, he just appointed two board members without consulting with the board of Uber's new President:

The phone calls began late Friday among Uber’s new chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, and the ride-hailing company’s executives, as well as board members and a raft of lawyers. They were facing an emergency.

The problem was that Travis Kalanick, Uber’s former chief executive and a board member, had appointed two new directors — Ursula Burns, the former chief executive of Xerox, and John Thain, the former chief of Merrill Lynch — to the privately held company without informing them. The moves, which pushed the nine-member board to 11 people, gave Mr. Kalanick new potential allies on major decisions at Uber.

Mr. Kalanick’s actions were “disappointing,” Mr. Khosrowshahi wrote on Friday in a letter to employees that was obtained by The New York Times. “Anyone would tell you that this is highly unusual.”

The trigger for Mr. Kalanick’s move — one made possible by a board vote last year giving him control of three seats — was a proposal that Mr. Khosrowshahi and the investment bank Goldman Sachs, an Uber shareholder, brought to the board on Thursday. The proposal, which is set to be discussed by directors on Tuesday, includes measures that would shift the power on Uber’s board by reducing Mr. Kalanick’s voting clout, expanding Mr. Khosrowshahi’s powers and imposing a 2019 deadline on the company to go public, according to three people with knowledge of the proposal who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Parts of the proposal were also read to The Times.

Let me translate this into English, the investors realize that Kalanick has become toxic, and as a result is facing increased regulatory and media scrutiny.

In particular, people are beginning to notice that, "Uber has no conceivable path to profitability," because once they rise prices to reach profitability, entrants re-enter the market, and suddenly they are not particularly special and unicornish any more.

The big investors want to go public before it is too late, and that means rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and then getting into a lifeboat before the rush starts.

Well, This Sucks

It appears that Tom Petty suffered a cardiac arrest, and may or may not be dead though the most recent reports strongly imply that it's just a matter of time:

For several hours on Monday, rock star Tom Petty was dead to some members of the news media, even if he wasn’t in fact.

Though gravely ill and lingering near death, Petty was still clinging to life when CBS News incorrectly reported that he had died. The report — which the outlet blamed on unidentified sources in the Los Angeles Police Department — was later withdrawn and corrected.

But not before touching off a stampede of he’s-dead/no-he’s-not reporting by other news organizations. The result was a monumental mishmash of confusion, joining the long history of misreporting on the deaths of well-known people.

TMZ, the tabloid website with a history of being first on celebrity deaths, was the first outlet to report that Petty was in the hospital and soon updated its story to say: “TMZ reports that Petty had no brain activity when he got to the hospital and a decision was made to pull him from life support,” while never pronouncing that the “American Girl” singer had died.

Rolling Stone magazine reported around 4:15 p.m. EST that Petty had died and published a lengthy obituary of him. But the magazine upgraded Petty’s condition to “hospitalized” about an hour later without explaining what had happened to its earlier report. A note at the bottom of its story said, “This story is developing.”

I rather liked his music, and he did the best Mad Hatter ever, so I will miss him.