Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

The words do not have to be perfect.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Our President Joe Open Thead: The Man LOVES His Job

Our President Joe Open Thead: The Man LOVES His Job

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And Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost was enjoying hers, last night.

… It was like watching a pinball bounce around the game board. Biden jumped from one group of people to the next, to the next, to the next, in absolutely no rush to leave and seemingly energized by every minute of being able to engage with real live people. And here he was back in the building he’d spent decades of his life working in ― a second home of sorts. Why ever leave?

“Thoughts and prayers to the staffers trying to move Joe Biden out of one of his favorite places,” former White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Tuesday night, perhaps all too familiar with the president’s habit of being the last guy to leave every party…

After checking in with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the president poked his head into a conversation between Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Reps. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) and Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.). Whatever he said left them all laughing.

He turned around and hugged Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), who was eager to introduce him to “the newest member of my team,” Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.)…

It was a whirlwind of appeals and stories from here on out, as the president slowly made his way to the exit doors where lawmakers were clustered to try to talk to him. Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-Ind.) leaned in close to tell Biden something about ironworkers, “transformational” infrastructure and a $1 billion budget…

From a longer photo-thread:

Reader Interactions

117Comments

  3. 3.

    Alison Rose

    From Bendery’s piece:

    The president was still navigating the swarm of people when Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) popped in and said she stuck around the House chamber to see him “out of respect.”

    “You know it’s the anniversary of John’s death,” she told Biden, referring to her late husband, former longtime Rep. John Dingell.

    “It was Beau’s birthday two days ago,” the president said.

    “I know,” Dingell said, choking up. “It’s how we always…”

    She leaned in and he kissed her cheek.

    “But they’re up there watching,” Dingell continued, visibly upset.

    “Yep. I have to ― I believe it,” Biden said.

    “I do too,” Dingell replied.

    Such a good man.

  4. 4.

    Poe Larity

    The Democrats problem is they don’t have enough boring candidates for the Applebees salad bar crowd.

  7. 7.

    japa21

    Look up the word mensch in a dictionary and there’s a picture of Joe. To paraphrase Churchill’s comment on democracy, Biden is a flawed president, but better than any of the others. Only Carter, in my lifetime, is as close to the pure of heart as Joe is.
    Back when he announced, and people started moaning and complaining, Betty Cracker complained that he was too conservative. I told her that he was a lot more progressive than people recognize and that his time as Obama’s Veep impacted him. After all, he was the one who came out and promoted same sex marriage when it’s approval rating was still low.
    He wears his heart on his sleeve, but he also knows the rules of the game better than anybody else. Last night proved that.

  10. 10.

    oldster

    I wish him health and strength and safety. Like Zelinsky, he has grown to become the person that the crisis required. I hope they both live to pass the mantle to their successors, in more peaceful times.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    Open Thread? Seems Elon Musk’s expensive new toy gone and done broke, at least for the moment:

    Twitter faces widespread outage as users told they’re over tweet limit

    Twitter faced one of its first widespread outages of Elon Musk’s tenure on Wednesday, leaving the site unusable for many and prompting an internal scramble to restore the site’s features. The outage persisted for hours and led Twitter to apologize to users for the trouble.

    Twitter had shed more than two-thirds of its staff since Elon Musk took over the company last year, and the steep cuts have led many to wonder how long the site could continue functioning normally — and what might happen if technical problems arose.

    On Wednesday, that concern became the reality as Twitter said it was working internally to get the problems fixed. “Sorry for the trouble. We’re aware and working to get this fixed,” it tweeted.

    Attempts to send tweets were met with messages reading: “You are over the daily limit for sending tweets.” Beyond posting tweets, users reported an inability to send direct messages, follow other accounts, and load content on their timelines.

    They’re probably trying to roll out a “pay for a higher daily tweet limit” feature and screwed something up, but enjoy the thoughts of how much cash Musk is pissing away.

  13. 13.

    UncleEbeneezer

    This is one of the reasons I really hate our fetishization of Outsiders!  Retail politics is also a really crucial part of the job and one that might be impossible to teach.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    @Baud: No no no, blame the House GOP “pre-Musk Twitter sucks” hearing today. There’s clearly a correlation, and that clearly implies causation.

  19. 19.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    This is why I’m not real worried about Biden’s age. He frickin lives for this shit and loves every minute of it more than anyone else who has ever been POTUS. Everyone else gets worn out by having to do parts of the job they detest or the weight of responsibility. To Joe though, it’s just doing a selection of his favorite things to do. He practically draws energy from the job like no-one since forever. Maybe, if his personal failings hadn’t been such an issue, Clinton might have been comparable, but he’s the only one that even comes close.

  21. 21.

    Jeffro

    He’s an extrovert’s extrovert, that’s for sure.  (and thank goodness)

    (or, what WHTRED4Us? just said)  =

    ETA: Joe Biden running on the Modern Democratic Party platform appears to be a good combination, Dems.  Looking forward to 2024!

  23. 23.

    Ohio Mom

    Did I first see this here on Ballon juice or elsewhere:
    Post speech, as Biden was winding his way to the door, Jen Psaki tweeted, “Thoughts and prayers to the staffers trying to move Joe Biden out of one of his favorite places.”

    I found the way he related to all those different people with all their different stories profoundly moving. Such a good person.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @schrodingers_cat:

    . He will be promoting his new book “It’s Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism

     
    It sounds like one of Frankensteinbeck’s books.

    Don’t Tell My Parents I’m Angry About Capitalism.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @dmsilev:

    They’re probably trying to roll out a “pay for a higher daily tweet limit” feature and screwed something up

    That seems possible, but the system is inherently complex and fragile.  They had trouble keeping it going with 3 times the staff they currently have, and Musk seems to be more focused on rolling out new features than on keeping the current stuff running.  I can easily believe something happened to break in a difficult to predict way, and they simply lack the staff to quickly find and repair the problem.

  27. 27.

    Ripley

    I’m in IT and I had a new kid in my dept., walking around with me, ask “Do you just walk around and talk to everyone?”

    Yes. That’s how I earn people’s trust; that’s how I get some things a little faster than other members of my team might; that’s how I gain a few extra days to complete a requested project, if I need them. That’s why people reach out to me instead of other members of my team when they need help. That’s how I decided to recommend You for a part time position in my dept., when you were already working in another dept.

    Talking to people and listening to people, giving a shit about how their day and their workflows are going is so freaking easy. People enjoy attention and individual concern, and they LOVE authenticity. And it pays back in so many ways, in hugely multiplied benefits to EVERYONE.

    I think that’s what makes Biden a great leader: authenticity and genuine concern. Please, Lord, send us more like him.

  29. 29.

    Roger Moore

    @Ripley:

    I’m in IT and I had a new kid in my dept., walking around with me, ask “Do you just walk around and talk to everyone?”

    This was famously raised to an official strategy by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.  They called it “management by walking around”.  My dad, who worked at HP way back when, said it was not just a slogan.  The founders would actually walk around and talk to people and genuinely wanted to hear what line employees thought.  It’s a good way of bypassing hierarchies, which can often trap upper management in an environment where their immediate subordinates control the flow of information.  Of course, to make it work people have to trust the manager enough to talk straight with them.

  31. 31.

    bbleh

    @Roger Moore: and the manager has to earn their trust, which “walking around” can help with but in my experience isn’t sufficient by itself.

    You gotta show loyalty to your reports.  “Kiss down, kick up.”  (Quoting that publicly may have contributed to my being JE’d some years later, and fine by me.)

  33. 33.

    Ripley

    @Roger Moore:

    This was famously raised to an official strategy by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.  They called it “management by walking around”.  My dad, who worked at HP way back when, said it was not just a slogan.  The founders would actually walk around and talk to people and genuinely wanted to hear what line employees thought.

    Yep, I’m a big fan of MBWA. It’s generated some of my “greatest” ideas. And if I think of something on my own, I go out and evangelize to the people who do the work before I bring it up to my team.

    My boss (and some of the team) has a bit of the “rarified air/IGMFY”, so I have to take it to the streets first.

  34. 34.

    Martin

    @dmsilev: Musk turned off the servers in line with corporate America’s standard plan to cut costs to spur growth. Give it a quarter and you’ll see amazing results.

  35. 35.

    realbtl

    Charles Pierce said of Biden’s love of the BS of retail politics- “I find myself looking at him the way I look at people who sky-dive or drive in demolition derbies. I have no idea why they do what they do, and I have absolutely no intention of doing it myself, ever, but, goddamn, do those people look like they’re having fun.”

  37. 37.

    Aussie Sheila

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. He is simply the best US President of my (political) lifetime. I hope that last night shuts up anyone who wants to tank the Dems chances in 2024 by running a primary against him.

    I believe he is steering the US (and the rest of the world) into a new economic and social paradigm. Maybe not as fast as some would like, but as fast as the US electoral system allows.

    He is a testament to the truth that politics is a skill, and that smart people never stop learning. He is also a good and decent man. That shows, and I believe it does help once it sinks in to enough people.

  38. 38.

    laura

    Absent a catastrophically disabling health event- that is a Solid, functioning Administration with a lot to show for and plenty more to do. That’s a Team I’m proud to help get re-elected and fuck the haters “on both sides.”

  39. 39.

    MomSense

    Back in 2012 my boys got to meet him and it was everything you would want in a Joe Biden meeting – winks, knowing glances at mom, God love yous, big smiles and lots of laughter.

    The man is charismatic but it’s not a charisma that is put on or that is born of ego.  He likes people. Life has taught him the hard way to be present. I think he is energized by interaction with others. He is a good person with a big heart.  His faith calls him to be more loving and considerate.

    His superpower is his decency.  We are really lucky to benefit from his experience, patience, and character.

  41. 41.

    Martin

    @schrodingers_cat: Free market, consumptive capitalism is one of the things that Democrats and Republicans are in pretty absolute agreement on. It’s one of those ideas that you cannot debate in Congress. You can’t suggest any solutions that would deviate from that central thesis of America.

    Bernie says you can discuss it. He used to be the only one. That’s his only trick, but it’s a really big trick. Liz Warren started talking about a wealth tax – that was unmentionable before. AOC talks about some of these things too.

    Understand gen z views socialism more favorably than capitalism. That’s almost inconceivable to those of us who are older. If there’s one person in Congress who will talk to them about it, they’re going to flock to him. Maybe other Dems should try it out? It’s not Bernies fault they’re afraid to. It’s not the young voters fault either.

  43. 43.

    Bill Arnold

    @HumboldtBlue:
    This, maybe:
    Girls in Florida may not have to disclose their menstrual histories to play high school sports after all (BYMIKE SCHNEIDER AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, February 9, 2023, 12:03 AM UTC)

    Facing blowback, the director of Florida’s high school sports governing body is backing away from using an eligibility form that requires female athletes to disclose their menstrual history in order to compete.
    Instead, the executive director of the Florida High School Athletic Association is recommending that most personal information revealed on medical history forms stay at the doctor’s office and not be stored at school.
    The association’s board has an emergency meeting Thursday to vote on whether to adopt the four-page form — which would remove questions that force student-athletes to share details about their menstruation cycles in order to be participate in sports.

  46. 46.

    Ken

    @Martin: Musk turned off the servers in line with corporate America’s standard plan to cut costs to spur growth.

    For those who are wondering, this is not a joke. In December they announced plans to shut down one of their three datacenters and downsize another.

  47. 47.

    surfk9

    @Ripley: I retired from doing IT at the state of Ca for 25 years. I was lucky, I lived in San Diego and my boss was in Sacramento. I took the same approach to all of my users. I developed trust by being around every day and getting to know them. They knew that I had their back. They also trusted me because I would admit when I fucked up. They knew that I would do anything to get them back up and running.

  48. 48.

    kindness

    That last comment in the HuffPo piece about the California Republican complaining about water…What does he think, Joe makes the stuff?  S. Cal Republicans…..I’ll be damned.  They think it should all come to them, forget about anyone or anything else.

  49. 49.

    Martin

    @Ripley: That’s how I did it too. My staff would complain about someone not responding to email. “Leave the office, grab a coffee, and go stand in their doorway”. They learned that they could usually get the thing they needed done in less time by walking around then even just *writing* the first email to all the people.

    There’s another benefit – you can get a lot done when it’s not on the record. I’d need something, find someone higher up the ladder, find out what they needed, and work out a deal in a hallway somewhere. They had a problem, I could solve that problem – but politically they couldn’t be involved in that solution. There were no emails, phone calls, meetings that tied us together. I did the deed, and we both got what we needed. That was almost a daily thing. I’d have a meeting with my staff, they’d make a case that we needed to get x in order to get through the term. I’d tell them after the meeting I was going for a walk – they knew what that meant. Two hours later I had x. Can’t do that via email, or a memo, or a ticket. Those things are good for other stuff, but as you have more responsibility, those relationships matter in getting things done. I knew who everyone’s spouse was, if they had kids, how old their kids were, etc. Genuinely ask someone out of nowhere if their kid got into a college and you have a colleague you can work with.

  50. 50.

    TheOtherHank

    @Bill Arnold: Blowback and the overhead of dealing with a dataset that would have been approximately 100% false. Not one person on earth would submit truthful data to something that stupid. I think it would be composed mostly of variations on “I am on my period every day.” and “I have yet to go through puberty.” with maybe a few “I work out so hard that I don’t have periods.”​​

  51. 51.

    Chetan Murthy

    @TheOtherHank: I’d like to believe that that’s where things would have gone.  But I fear that the next step, after that database, woudl be “confirmatory examinations”.  Or maybe they’d start with “automatic replication of all medical records for random spot-checks”.  The end-goal would be two-fold: find any trans girls, and Gilead.

  52. 52.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Just heard this on the Hayes program. This guy is just…. I don’t even know which half-understood psychological diagnosis to reach for

    Lalee Ibssa @LaleeIbssa
    “I think it’s reprehensible that the Senator would say such a thing to me in the demeaning way he said,” Santos said about Sen. Romney’s comments to him at last night’s SOTU
    “It wasn’t very Mormon of him.”

    he’s lucky Mitt Romney has no influence in the party

  56. 56.

    Roger Moore

    @Ripley:

    Yep, I’m a big fan of MBWA. It’s generated some of my “greatest” ideas.

    One of the big things I’ve picked up is that managers should always credit the people who work for them for good work.  The purpose of a good manager is to help the people working for them to do a good job, not to do everything themselves.  Managers always get reflected credit for the work their reports do, and giving the credit freely makes them look generous rather than grasping.

  57. 57.

    surfk9

    @Martin: ​
     The personal relationships that I developed early on allowed me to do a lot of “off the books ” stuff to get things done for my users and the offices I worked in. A lot of those people that I developed relationships with became administrators in later years. I did what I called charity work for some small agencies in my Department that were not large enough to have onsite support. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass, but some of the managers in those offices became high ranking administrators who really helped me when I needed it on several occasions

  60. 60.

    Ripley

    @Martin:

    Our Economy/GDP/Future could be so much better if people would just work together as people with a common cause. Alack and alas, we have MBAs and managers and “I’ve been here for xx years, so…”

    I’m a fan of Servant Leader philosophy. It’s not perfect, but I’m also a student of “don’t make the Perfect the enemy of the Good”. Every day is a new opportunity to learn and grow.

    I think Biden is a Servant Leader and millions of people’s lives are better for it. He has felt our pains and joys, and it shows.

  63. 63.

    Whomever

    @Roger Moore: Sort off topic, but everyone I know who was associated with HP hates Carly Fiorina with the temperature of a thousand super nova for destroying the place.  I have no idea how she could possibly have a chance running for CA politics, but of course this is the US where people fail up.

  66. 66.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Roger Moore: The best boss I ever had was really clear on this: if there was credit, he made sure his subordinates shared in it; if there was blame, he took it on himself 100%.

  68. 68.

    bbleh

    @Steeplejack: “Job Elimination.” You’re not fired; rather the particular position you filled is no longer considered sufficiently worthwhile.  Purely a business decision, not at all related to you.

    It’s a back-door way of firing people, particularly those who are in any sort of protected class

    Oddly, the same job often turns up at a different location soon afterward.  Or another is created at the same location with a superficially different description.  Purely a business decision, you see.

  74. 74.

    Taobhan

    I wasn’t sure about Biden when he was elected to the White House because I remembered him from the Clarence Thomas’ hearing before he was confirmed to the SCOTUS.  Disgraceful performance I thought re his treatment of Anita Hill.  But he has far exceeded my expectations for the past two years.  He was made for being president and I will vote for him again if he runs for the White House again.

  75. 75.

    Jackie

    I’m glad Hunter Biden has FINALLY decided to play offense!

    ”Hunter Biden’s legal team sent letters to Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon and 11 others on Wednesday, asking them to preserve potential evidence for future lawsuits related to the alleged theft of personal data that may include information from his laptop, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
    The move is the latest in a new legal strategy by lawyers for President Joe Biden’s son, who plan to pursue a wide range of litigation against allies of Donald Trump and others involved in obtaining and disseminating data that they say is or may be the private property of their client.
    Besides Bannon, Stone and Giuliani, those who were sent near-identical “litigation hold” letters include John Paul Mac Isaac, the computer repairman who first obtained the laptop when Hunter Biden allegedly left it at his Wilmington, Delaware, shop; lawyer Robert Costello, who has represented both Bannon and Giuliani, ex-Trump aide Garrett M. Ziegler, and former Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski.“
    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-lawyers-bannon-stone-giuliani-lawsuits-rcna69824

  77. 77.

    Citizen Alan

    @TheOtherHank: I think Republican women must absolutely hate themselves. When I find out a woman is a Republican and proud of it, I genuinely wonder if they cut themselves or something out of a sense of self loathing. I am nearly certain my sister and I will never speak again if I manage to get out of Mississippi alive.

  78. 78.

    Captain C

    @Ken: Next from Musk:

    “Tell those servers if they don’t work harder the next thing to go will be their air conditioning.  See how they like that!”

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Roger Moore: ​
      It’s what we were taught in OCS. Talk to the soldiers, have them show you what they are doing and why. You both learn. You also feel the weather conditions they are working in. If your fingers are cold as you stand and talk to them, theirs must be colder as they work on the howitzers in January. If you are getting wet, how much wetter they be as they are changing the oil in a HMMWV? You can make sure they are being taken care of my their NCOs. You can also avoid your commander while doing your job, unless their doing the same thing.

  80. 80.

    Captain C

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Well, you must remember, Santos did play football at BYU with Steve Young. So there’s that.

    Santos would have beat him out for the starting spot in ’85* if he hadn’t injured his knee piloting the Space Shuttle Galactica earlier that year.

    *Football geeks will note that Young was actually playing for the ill-fated L.A. Express in 1985.

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    one of the ‘moderates’ some were hoping would help save the country from default

    Aaron Rupar @atrupar
    “I have great regrets about getting the shot” — Nancy Mace is out here trying to undermine Covid vaccines

    I have trouble taking these hearings seriously, but two things I can’t quite get past is the way these people treat twitter as if it 1) an official government body governed by the First Amendment and 2) the only way information is transmitted in this country. Google tells me that 23% of the country uses twitter, and frankly I’m surprised it’s that high. Google also tells me that over 70% of USians have a Facebook account.

  83. 83.

    J R in WV

    Back nearly 20 years ago when I managed a software team, I had to do an annual evaluation of all the staff. Everyone got high ratings but one guy who couldn’t/wouldn’t learn the new platform our systems were built on. There was one elderly personnel system that he could work with. I gave him adequate ratings… there was no way to fire him for being a shiftless bastard.

    I worked with many of my better staffers to show them how to request a reclassification from PA n to PA n+1 by using the personnel description of those classifications to build their descriptions of their daily work load… just tweak the verbage a little, you can’t just copy and paste. But in a government system, that was about the only way to give someone a pay raise. They all appreciated the work I did with them.

    And the senior members of the user community knew they could come to me if they needed something fixed or modified. If the underlying rules changed in a major way, funding had ton happen. But if it was something that an expert in the system could do over a few weeks it just happened.

    I actually really liked my job. But wife needed me to be at home with her after she took total disability. Being alone after working really hard for 30 years wasn’t good for her. So here we are. But Management by Walking Around really worked for me as well. I just didn’t know it had a formal name!

  84. 84.

    Tony G

    @Alison Rose: Biden seems to have the personality that, back in the day, was a typical politician’s personality — that is, he seems to genuinely enjoy talking to people.  A lot of politicians now — many Republicans but some Democrats also — seem to regard talking to people (aside from donors) as an unpleasant chore, like taking out the garbage.  (Ron DeSantis, for example, just seems to be someone who is filled with contempt for the human race.)

  85. 85.

    Ruckus

    @dmsilev:

    Yeah, I wrote on a prior thread that this happened to me and it really pissed me off as this was my second comment of the day. EVSFB seems to step on himself on a constant basis. It’s almost like he enjoys golf spikes in his johnson. Maybe he’s so used to doing this that he thinks golf spikes are normal there.

  86. 86.

    Tony G

    @Captain C: Musk should just remove all of the Twitter servers.  That way he’ll be able to control Twitter directly with his brilliant mind — after he snorts enough white powder.

  88. 88.

    Alison Rose

    @Citizen Alan: Cool Girl™ Syndrome. They’ve never matured beyond adolescence and are still desperate for the boys to like them. So they do the “I’m not like those awful feminist girls who can’t take a joke and think they’re better than you” thing. Even if they’re married, it’s still ingrained in them to want men to think they’re 1) hot, 2) cool, and 3) fun, so they’ll do things that harm other women and laugh at crass sexist humor and all that, just for the approval. It’s pathetic.

  89. 89.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @HumboldtBlue:

    @Bill Arnold:

    I saw this linked in that Rebekah Jones thread:

    Outsports: At least 44 states currently ask high school female athletes about their ‘menstrual period’: Female athletes encounter questions about their periods. Some states request genital inspections, for ‘males only.’

    At least 44 states currently require or request the asking of female high school athletes for information about their “menstrual period,” Outsports has found through a state-by-state examination of publicly available “preparticipation physical evaluation” forms, as they are commonly called.

    The issue has recently come to the fore as Florida last week drew public scrutiny for the Florida High School Athletic Association including these questions on forms, with further concerns about where information was stored and who has access to it. People across the media and social media attacked the state for being “transphobic,” “a police state for women,” “trampling on women’s rights,” and a host of other critiques.

    The state has asked these questions for about two decades, according to reports.

    Outsports’ survey reveals the Sunshine State is only one of dozens of states to suggest or require asking these questions of female high school athletes before they can compete.

    Outsports has reviewed the websites of the high school sports associations and Departments of Education of all 50 states. At least 88% of the states include some form of pre-participation medical evaluation that requests or requires asking female athletes about their “menstrual period,” or similar questions.

    Of the other six states, at least four — Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi and Vermont — have recently asked these questions statewide or had the questions included by cities, sections or schools. It was not clear if these questions were included in statewide athlete pre-participation forms in 2022.

    It’s unclear if New Hampshire has ever suggested questions about menstrual cycle or genitalia.

    From publicly available content, Outsports could find forms for only one state — Oklahoma — that do not seem to ask questions about menstrual periods in 2022. The state does include a supplemental “biological sex at birth affadavit.”

    Among other states, Massachusetts does currently suggest an examination of “genitalia.” Other states also suggest genital examinations, some of them like Oklahoma and Michigan singling that out for “males only,” or like New York asking if male athletes “have only one testicle.”

    It doesn’t seem like it’s just Florida

  91. 91.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Roger Moore:

    The purpose of a good manager is to help the people working for them to do a good job, not to do everything themselves.

    This!

    There is a great TED talk by Benjamin Zander on the transformative power of classical music. One point he makes is that the conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. The conductor’s job is to bring out the best in the musicians who are playing. To my mind, that is the manager’s main job too.

  93. 93.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ​
      High school sports are supposed to make students healthier or and least not hurt them. It is my understanding that over training and/or poor nutrition can lead to changes in menstrual cycles. So having a doctor ask about that as a part of a athletic physical seems reasonable to me. The idea of being asked to share that info with anyone but the doctor does not.

  94. 94.

    frosty

    @bbleh: In some organizations (local government for example), it’s the only way to get rid of toxic people. Where I worked it took six months of a supervisor’s time to let someone go. It’s no wonder they get bumped to jobs with good salaries and no responsibilities. Sometimes it’s the only way to let the good people get the job done.

  98. 98.

    Jackie

    @Omnes Omnibus: Exactly. As part of a sports examination prior to being eligible to play that sport. The school athletic department only receives a signed statement from the doctor saying “eligible or not eligible.”

  99. 99.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    The idea of being asked to share that info with anyone but the doctor does not.

    Is that the difference between what the Florida board was proposing and what those other states require?

  100. 100.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jackie:

    Exactly. As part of a sports examination prior to being eligible to play that sport. The school athletic department only receives a signed statement saying “eligible or not eligible.”

    Thanks. I don’t know why Outsports didn’t give that context. They’re supposed to be a LGBTQ sports news site

  101. 101.

    Splitting Image

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Outsports: At least 44 states currently ask high school female athletes about their ‘menstrual period’: Female athletes encounter questions about their periods. Some states request genital inspections, for ‘males only.’

    There is a big difference between having a law on the books that has been intermittently enforced since way back when and a current government announcing that they intend to begin strictly enforcing it because There Is a Crisis and We Need to Protect Our Children From The Groomers.

  102. 102.

    Alison Rose

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, if it’s only being shared with the doctor, that feels more in keeping with normal practices. Anyone with a uterus gets asked for the date of their last period when they see a new doctor or go for a checkup.

    Which was how I learned that one doctor in my city should never have been given a medical license because she had no understanding of illness-induced long-term amenorrhea and seemed to think I was in some kind of horrible danger.

  105. 105.

    Kay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Ugh. That article is written so imprecisely  – the difference between ” ask” and “require” is the whole issue but the article treats them as identical:

    The athletic association’s current Preparticipation Physical Evaluation Form, which must be completed by a student and their physician and kept on file at their school, asks female athletes five questions about their periods, but they’re all listed as optional. The questions, which association officials say have been on the form for at least two decades,include when a student had their first menstrual period, when the most recent one was, how long the interval between their periods typically lasts, how many they’ve had in the past year and the longest interval between periods in the last year. The proposed revisions to the form include four mandatory questions about menstruation, including if the student has ever had a period, the age they had their first period, the date of their most recent period and how many periods they’ve had in the past year.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    What a mess. That article just adds to the confusion. Two issues- mandatory responses to the questions and mandatory keeping the medical history on file at the school compared to voluntary responses and not requiring the medical history to be kept on file at the school but instead having that portion remian with the physician.

  107. 107.

    cain

    @J R in WV: Good on you in taking care of your wife. It’s a sacrifice that we bear to help our loved ones.

    I also was in IT and I did similar things – I would walk around a lot and chat with people and also do free work. I earned a great reputation as being very customer friendly. Turns out that skill works really well when working on open source software. So now I do a lot of program management / open source stuff and working my way through technical communities doing fun things.

  108. 108.

    Jacel

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: As a sometimes musical conductor, my definition of what a conductor does for many years has been “to dispel uncertainty” — make each musician in the group feel and play confidently that what they do at each moment fits effectively with the composed piece and what the other people making sounds are doing.

  110. 110.

    Jacel

    I worked as a technical writer for a company for over a quarter century, most of that time covering the beat between the hardware (SPARC)  and software  (SunOS/Solaris) parts of the company. I did a lot of my job walking around between employees in different organizations, reading their documents, or running and eyeballing their products. When someone in my management asked how many words I wrote a day, I said I probably brought more value preventing words needing to be written by making a problem known across organizations and getting it fixed.

  111. 111.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Alison Rose:

    Anyone with a uterus gets asked for the date of their last period when they see a new doctor or go for a checkup.

    And also some of without uteruses — I get asked as well.

    I’m mostly amused when it happens.

    As far as the Florida law, the issue was that info about periods would’ve had to be shared beyond the girl’s doctor.

  112. 112.

    Soprano2

    @Martin: This is a good approach, but you can’t do any of it if everyone is working at home. This is to me another downside to the idea that we can all just sit in our houses and work forever and it will work just as well.

  113. 113.

    JML

    @Soprano2: the other issue is it can lead to decisions being made by whomever talks to the boss last, or the people who have the best people skills being the only ones who get heard (as the “managers walking around” gravitate to the people who are easier to talk to).

    Management by walking around can work for people that actually doing it correctly, but too many managers do it because they don’t actually trust their staff and are out there to make sure everyone is working and not slacking off. (my distrust of management has only grown in recent years after seeing up close how many of them don’t trust the people who work in their divisions and only want yes-men speaking up)

  114. 114.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: he’s lucky Mitt Romney has no influence in the party

    He’s lucky Mitt didn’t punch him in the adam’s apple & step on his throat as he writhed on the floor trying to breathe. Then again Rmoney is a vulture crapitalist – he murders peasants by the truckload that he never sees from his high office.

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