Yes I know. They are irrelevant to the point of Gelman’s blog post, which is why he doesn’t mention them. I assume they’re being brought up here out of some kind of guilt by association thing, or to make the self-link seem more on topic.
Yes. To provide the context necessary to understand the "this is why we can't have nice things" quote, you have to say what "this" is. That's how pronouns work.