She went on to say women in general "are making four-fifths" of what men make, "at best".
Like drivers who are not car buffs, nontechnical computer users make at best a loose distinction among different areas of expertise.
Ms. Lerner has become a person of intense interest to Congressional investigators, who insist that she made, at best, incomplete statements when she said she first learned that her subordinates had singled out Tea Party groups after reading news media reports last year.
He made at best a quarter-step this week by embracing Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip and evacuate the Jewish settlements there, as well as a few isolated ones in the West Bank.
Rob Dobson, the senior economist at Markit, said: "This suggests that industry will make, at best, only a marginal positive contribution to broader economic growth in the final quarter of the year".
The story that makes the most sense to me, however, rests on an old insight by the economist W. Arthur Lewis, who argued that countries in the early stages of economic development typically have a small modern sector alongside a large traditional sector containing huge amounts of "surplus labor" — underemployed peasants making at best a marginal contribution to overall economic output.
Decisions about which career to pursue, whom to marry, and where to live, for instance, are made at best a small finite number of times.
If we continue with a million separate, siloed, identity politics marches and movements for every issue, our opposition will exhaust us, deplete our resources and money, and we will make at best disparate gains.
