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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Pro-Union POTUS (Open Thread)

Pro-Union POTUS (Open Thread)

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Some of us were wondering why the party’s initial response seemed so muted when workers at Staten Island’s JFK8 Amazon warehouse won the unionization vote. President Biden marked the occasion yesterday:

Good for him. Democrats are the pro-worker party, so it’s important to celebrate when workers win. And this win in particular was inspiring since it was pulled off by a scrappy local group going up against Engulf & Devour Worldwide Inc.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    Jerry

    Engulf & Devour Worldwide Inc.

    LOL. Never heard that before. Did you make that up? Or is that an old Floridian term that is now being released into the wild?

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    It’s very good news. The first victory is always the hardest. Here’s hoping a tsunami of unionization engulfs Amazon, Starbucks, and all the others.

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jerry: Pinched it from an old Mel Brooks movie. I can’t remember which one. My mom loved Mel Brooks, so I’ve seen them all. :-)

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    Open thread? Was awaiting an ‘official’ morning thread, but what the hey.

    Several recent eye-catching items.

    1) Say “cheese,” get pinched (emphasis added).

    Despite protests from the pandemic-battered wedding industry, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi signed a measure into law Tuesday that bans unregulated commercial activity in city parks from Waimanalo to Makapuu.
    [snip]
    Under the law, they note, commercial activity such as maternity shoots, graduation photos, family photos, proposals, engagements, photographing merchandise for retail aren’t permitted. Source

    2) Taking cosplay way, way too far.

    Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged two men they say were posing as federal agents, giving free apartments and other gifts to U.S. Secret Service agents, including one who worked on the first lady’s security detail.
    [snip]
    Authorities did not detail what, if anything, the men were aiming to accomplish by posing as law enforcement officers or by providing the gifts. Prosecutors said the investigation remains ongoing. Source

    3) Sometimes the punch lines write themselves in indelible ink.

    Capitol Hill has a fox problem. And that’s not the lead-in to a joke.
    [snip]
    Of course, there were many joking references to Fox News at the Capitol on Tuesday. But the House Sergeant at Arms was serious when telling lawmakers and their staffs Tuesday afternoon that there had been multiple recent fox encounters and that the animals should not be approached.

    The warning noted that there are possibly several fox dens on the Capitol grounds and that animal control personnel would be seeking to trap and locate any that they find. Source

  9. 9.

    Jerry

    @germy:

    New York conglomerate Engulf & Devour is from Silent Movie.

     

    Ah. Never seen that one, but after seeing so many of his other movies, I can almost hearing it being said now.

  11. 11.

    germy

    @NotMax:

    Marjorie Taylor Greene, who voted against awarding congressional medals to Capitol Police officers injured in the insurrection and ranted that its cops are the “gazpacho,” just reported a literal late-night talk-show joke to them as a "threat of violence." https://t.co/T0jbn5eTZM

    — The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 7, 2022

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    OT so I’m gonna post this here: I have been curious about exactly how many and which projects David Attenborough has been involved in. Finally googled it this AM and came across this little tidbit:

    Despite his growing success, Attenborough left the BBC in the early 1960s to study social anthropology at the London School of Economics. However, when BBC Two was created in 1965, Attenborough was asked to return to the station as its controller. In both this capacity and as director of programming for both the BBC and BBC Two, Attenborough continued to collect milestones, pioneering such educational series as The Ascent of Man and Civilisation, overseeing the BBC’s transition to color television and having the wisdom to sign up an oddball comedy series called Monty Python’s Flying Circus, starring John Cleese and Terry Gilliam among others. In recognition of his contributions, in 1970, the British Academy honored him with its Desmond Davis Award. Yet Attenborough could not shake the passion that had remained with him since his youth, and in 1972, he resigned from his post at the BBC to follow his dreams into the wild.

    Thank you Sir David, you are a servant to all mankind.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    @NotMax: The fox-Fox metaphor come to life is a little too on the nose and had a tragic end. The fox bit several people, including a Democratic House member who had to undergo rabies shots. It was caught and euthanized to confirm it had rabies. Then they discovered a den full of its kits. The report I read said it hadn’t yet been determined if the kits also have rabies and have been/will need to be put down. Like I said, a little TOO on the nose..

    ETA: Link to the story I read in WaPo.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    That is sad.

    Speaking of rabies, any scientists care to explain why it hasn’t destroyed all mammalian life already?  It is extremely lethal and seems easily transmissible.

  17. 17.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    “I slipped Uncle Kimo a tenner to come out of retirement and take photos and now he’s in the slammer. My bad.”

    //

  22. 22.

    satby

    @Baud: It’s (rabies) not that transmissable, but the lethality of an infection drives the deliberate overresponse (link to main website):

    The risk of infection following an exposure to a rabid animal is about 15%, but it varies (from 0.1% to 60%) depending on the exposure factors of the bite. These factors include the number of bites, the depth of the bites and the stage of illness in the infected animal.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    @germy

    Brought back from the U.K. a double-LP set of Monty Python with me in 1974, for the delectation of my compatriots, well before it began regularly appearing on U.S. TV.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    @satby

    My crude understanding is that rabies treatment has improved, at least to the point where one no longer has to endure a series of furlong-length needles poked into the abdomen as in the days of Old Yeller.

  27. 27.

    Ken

    @NotMax: The first Python recording I heard was the “Matching Tie and Handkerchief” album. The owner didn’t warn anyone about the doubled side, so when he moved the needle back to the beginning and said “let’s hear that again”, we were all bewildered that we weren’t hearing it again.

    I wonder how many times he pulled that trick and didn’t get lucky. I guess about half the times he tried it.

  29. 29.

    satby

    @Baud: That’s the presumption, often because the biting animal isn’t caught to confirm a diagnosis.There’s a human vaccine for rabies, and if you travel to a rabies endemic area they recommend it if you’re likely to work with or get bitten by animals. You still have to get a post-bite series of shots, but only two instead of five. 

    @NotMax: Some improvements, yes. @Baud, any time before symptoms appear. Incubation can be 7-20 days, but has been documented to take as long as a year!

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    Presaging The Onion,

    “Rabid Foxes Demur From Biting McConnell, Citing ‘Professional Courtesy'”

    //

  34. 34.

    Kay

    Jennifer Berkshire
    @BisforBerkshire
    ·16h
    Christopher Rufo gave a speech at Hillsdale last night called *Laying Siege to the Institutions* calling for a campaign against public education that starts with 1) sowing mass distrust in schools in order to win 2) universal school choice

    Anyone who really wanted to know what behind Rufo’s inciting a CRT/anti gay panic just had to read or listen to him. He gives these speeches all the time.
    He’s calling people pedophiles to reach a specific policy outcome- he wants to abolish public schools. He’s never hidden this at all- the people who believed he was sincere about “CRT” or “pedophiles” are too lazy to read or listen to him.

  37. 37.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Andy:

    I’ve never seen Silent Movie, but have long been aware of that factoid and still find it hilarious and clever.

  41. 41.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Billy Townsend on Twitter has an interesting take on this:

    More at his Substack page here. It’s hard to summarize, but basically, he’s saying the Jeb-aligned GOP killed the privatization dream via grift, so the Trump-aligned GOP is focusing on purging public school personnel via “Don’t Say Gay,” etc.

    I have no idea if the Florida experience translates nationwide, but it is a good argument against privatization. It’s been an unmitigated, scandalous disaster here.

  42. 42.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @satby:

    Got a call last night from my niece-in-law. She was bitten by a spider (apparently/presumably a Black Widow) a few weeks ago. Days or weeks later she woke up in the middle of the night screaming in pain, chills, 103° fever. Her thigh was inflamed — bright red. Doctor came (to the house!), said get to the ER now, Jenn was delirious by then and remembers nothing of that night before waking up in the hospital. She was there for a week, has totally lost her appetite, has lost 25 pounds. Has been home for a couple of days. One of the doctors told them that if they hadn’t taken her in when they did, they’d be having a very different conversation.

    AFAIK, there are no pre-emptive vaccines against the bites of Black Widow spiders, but your comments about rabies made me think of this.

  44. 44.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I think the fact that you generally have to be bitten, and that a symptomatically rabid animal will die after a few days, probably limits the spread, relative to an airborne disease. And apparently carnivorans are more susceptible than other kinds of mammals.

    Interesting Wikipedia fact: while a human probably COULD transmit rabies by biting, human-to-human transmission of rabies has only ever been known to happen through organ donation (and that is extremely rare).

  46. 46.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken: I can’t tell if you’re joking or not so at the risk of being obvious I’m just going to note that on the periodic table the designation for Iron is Fe.

  47. 47.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay: He’s never hidden this at all- the people who believed he was sincere about “CRT” or “pedophiles” are too lazy to read or listen to him.

    Too lazy??

    This is a guy that I hadn’t even heard of by this time last year.  And haven’t heard him mentioned that much since, even though I’m aware that he’s the guy who ginned up the whole CRT business out of thin air.

    So I’m gonna give some benefit of the doubt to those who pay less attention to this shit than I do.  After all, just a few other things have been going on in the meantime.

  48. 48.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: It makes me crazy that every media outlet that reports on this doesn’t mention him and that this was a created thing, not some uprising from the grassroots. The information is easy to find, they really don’t have any excuse for not telling people about it.

  50. 50.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Thanks, I posted that to the FB thread on our local paper where people are talking about the election results.

  51. 51.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: they really don’t have any excuse for not telling people about it.

    But they have a reason: Hardly anybody would read it. It’s all about getting the most clicks for the least amount of work.

  52. 52.

    Soprano2

    @SiubhanDuinne: Could have been a brown recluse, too. They cause necrotizing of tissue. Don’t Google pictures of it if you have a weak stomach. Some people have to get plastic surgery after having a brown recluse bite.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    My maternal grandmother was born in 1892. In commemoration of the event, she was given, at some point, a silver Columbian Exposition ring with the year prominently displayed. I, born fifty years later, now own that ring.

  54. 54.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: They’d read it if they put it in the first paragraph of the article or video, where it belongs. It’s irresponsible of news organizations when they don’t tell people the origins of this because it’s so out there. He’s proud of it! He’s not hiding what he did, and neither should they.

  56. 56.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SiubhanDuinne: It was easy to confuse his candidacy with Bloomberg’s–Bloomberg ran as a Democrat (and got absolutely shredded by Elizabeth Warren at one of the primary debates, ending a brief period when he somehow got frontrunner buzz)

    I think there was an idea early in the 2020 cycle that only another high-profile CEO-politician could beat Trump. But there was also some talk about Schultz as a deliberate corporatist spoiler, a kind of poison pill to take down Warren if the Democrats nominated her.

  58. 58.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Yeah. I don’t know anything about the provenance of the ring, but somebody in the family thought it was a good gift for a little girl born just a couple of weeks before the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the new World. But I doubt it was an official souvenir.

  59. 59.

    Tarragon

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think the fact that you generally have to be bitten, and that a symptomatically rabid animal will die after a few days, probably limits the spread, relative to an airborne disease. And apparently carnivorans are more susceptible than other kinds of mammals.

    It also doesn’t spread as much among animals as you might think.  Smaller animal victims are generally killed outright not giving them a chance to pass it on.

    I learned that there are no known cases in [state] of a mouse transmitting rabies when I went to get a tetanus shot after a mouse bite and they spent 20 minutes reassuring me it wasn’t rabid.

    I was like, I wasn’t concerned about that until you brought it up, a bunch of times.

  61. 61.

    Starfish

    @Betty Cracker: Yes, school choice is a lot of grift.

    Both Democrats and Republicans supported school choice, but it was all about killing the teachers’ unions and enriching themselves.

    Diane Ravitch who was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education under Obama supported school choice, but then she shifted in the opposite direction. She keeps a blog that is read by a lot of K-12 educators.

    There are two paths to choice. One is vouchers to funnel money into private schools. The other is setting up charter schools in various districts and getting district money while deviating from district requirements in some way.

    A number of charters that are trying to work their way into districts are affiliated with Hillsdale College. Hillsdale does not have an education major. Only an education minor. Anyone who is building a charter based on Hillsdale’s material is involved in Republican-grifting charter school nonsense.

    I live in a place that has school choice. You can send your kid anywhere in the district. The only people who have the free time to do that are people with the money and flexibility to do so, so you have these charters that are performing well because the parents of these kids are all college educated and chose to put their kids in this school, as opposed to anything particularly special about the school.

  64. 64.

    gene108

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Interesting Wikipedia fact: while a human probably COULD transmit rabies by biting, human-to-human transmission of rabies has only ever been known to happen through organ donation (and that is extremely rare).

    Rabies is transmitted by the infected creature’s saliva entering the bloodstream. Humans make a bad host from the rabies’ virus’s point of view.

    Humans don’t usually directly bite anything. We have arms, opposable thumbs, and tools that we prefer to use to first contact anything we will ingest.

  66. 66.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Thanks. I have never read him before.

    This made me laugh:

    Florida Politics
    @Fla_Pol
    · 21h
    “I think Disney has been a responsible corporate citizen.”
    Breaking with @GovRonDeSantis, @SenRickScott says @Disney self-governance “was never an issue” when he was Governor

    Maybe Rick Scott is turning into some GOP insurgent or something?

  67. 67.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
     

    My old man got that treatment after he got bit by a rat during WWII while sleeping on his B-29.

    My dad had the whole series back in the late 1930s after a dog bit him and ran off. Since dog couldn’t be found, they decided the shots were best, since he was bitten pretty seriously.

  68. 68.

    J R in WV

    Many years ago I rescued a chipmunk from one of our big tom cats, Ralph. He was playing dead once I got to him, as chipmunks will do, but I was pretty sure it was just the possum game. I was walking across the bottom to deposit chipmunk into the brush along the fence, and looking at him in my hand, when he opened his eyes, and looked right at me, before biting my thumb.

    Rodents have hugely strong bite strength to deal with nuts. But he  bit to escape, not to hurt me, so it was just a hard pinch without breaking the skin. Mr Chipmunk got tossed about 10 yards into the brush. Was probably near 40 years ago now…

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