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You are here: Home / Open Threads / First President of the United States to Join a Picket Line

First President of the United States to Join a Picket Line

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On Tuesday, Joe Biden will be the first president of the United States to Join a picket line.  Ever.

The Obama bros were talking about this possibility on Pod Save America last night.  Jon F. worried that Biden would be castigated for it, but Dan Pfeiffer said Biden should absolutely do it.  I think Dan has the best political instincts of the 4 Obama bros, and I am glad to see the announcement that Biden will be joining them on Tuesday.

As I like to say, if you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, then you have the luxury of doing exactly what you think is right!

I see that the Twit is going all in on killing twitter.  I keep thinking that he’s doing it because he wants to remove twitter as a messaging option for Biden and other democrats.  Is that a crazy idea?

Also, why is it (fairly) easy to get the Waffle with 4 stars left, but so much more difficult to complete with 5 stars left?  Sometimes I get 5 stars when a drag of a letter goes wrong, and a letter accidentally lands in the wrong place.  I really enjoy the show Waffle puts on when you finish with 5 stars left.

What else is going on that some of us may have missed today?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

108Comments

  6. 6.

    bbleh

    Holy jumping catfish, he’s gonna do it!  I figured he’d be sorely tempted, and I wondered where the debate would end up.  Good on him!  “Republican “party of the working class” my ass.

    And with Waffle you gotta look for single swaps or two-swap combinations that get all the letters (2 or 3 respectively) in the right places.  You get enough of those, you get the 5.  (There’s more math, if you’re interested…)

  7. 7.

    Scout211

    I though this was interesting news from today:

    Jack Smith adds war crimes prosecutor — his deputy from the Hague — to special counsel team

    Special counsel Jack Smith has added a veteran war crimes prosecutor — who served as Smith’s deputy during his stint at the Hague — to his team as it prepares to put former President Donald Trump on trial in Washington and Florida.

    . . .
    Whiting’s precise role on Smith’s team is unclear. A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment, and Whiting did not immediately return requests for comment. The prosecutors’ office in the Hague and Harvard University also did not respond to requests for comment about Whiting’s current employment status.

    But a POLITICO reporter observed Whiting at the U.S. district courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday and Thursday, spending several hours monitoring the trial of a Jan. 6 defendant. The judge in the case is Tanya Chutkan, who is slated to preside over Trump’s trial in March on federal charges stemming from his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

    ETA: added 2 paragraphs.

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    @bbleh: Oh, I know that!  (about Waffle)   I would say 4 stars is my most common result, but damn, there’s a lot of satisfaction in getting 5.  I really like the color show!

  13. 13.

    bbleh

    @Scout211: oh well, just another Yale-educated attorney who taught law classes at Harvard, what could he possibly add?

    I do like the stories about TIFG asking people what would happen if he were sentenced to confinement — “would I have to wear an orange jumpsuit” and so on.

  16. 16.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I keep thinking that he’s doing it because he wants to remove twitter as a messaging option for Biden and other democrats. Is that a crazy idea?

    Yes.  You’re pushing too hard for an explanation that fits with your worldview.  You aren’t an incompetent, narcissistic bigot who has resented for decades the one time people were able to tell him that one of his ideas was stupid and force him not to do it.  Accept that Musk is who he has shown himself to be, and the most likely explanations are stuff like ‘whiny tantrum’ and ‘dumbass flailing.’

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    @cain: I didn’t see that one.  What did Springsteen post?

    I love this whole thing because it not only humiliates David Brooks, but it skewers him for being such a fraud.

    He was caught red-handed being a fraud.  Love it.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    You aren’t an incompetent, narcissistic bigot who has resented for decades the one time people were able to tell him that one of his ideas was stupid and force him not to do it.

     

    You don’t know me, man.

  22. 22.

    schrodingers_cat

    In art supply acquisition news, I scored an entire set of Derwent Inktense pencils at less than half the price on eBay and they are hardly used. I am so stoked. I had been eyeing the set for a while now.

  24. 24.

    Alison Rose

    Like you said, Biden will be reamed by one group or another whatever he does. But if he joins the picket line, he’s getting shit from the anti-union jerks, and they can all fuck off. I’m glad he’s gonna do this. Kinda hope he arrives by train.

    Don’t know if this was mentioned in an earlier thread, but good on her for saying this, even if the fascist fuckwagons on the court will never do it:

    Justice Elena Kagan said on Friday that the Supreme Court should adopt a code of ethics, saying that “it would be a good thing for the court to do that.”

    Her comment, part of a wide-ranging live-streamed public interview at Notre Dame Law School, came on the day ProPublica reported that Justice Clarence Thomas had twice attended an annual event for donors organized by the conservative political network established by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

    Justice Kagan did not discuss the report, but she said that an ethics code “would, I think, go far in persuading other people that we were adhering to the highest standards of conduct.” She added that “I hope we can make progress.”

    G. Marcus Cole, the law school’s dean, asked her to identify the holdout among the justices.

    She refused, saying the justices’ deliberations are private. “What goes on in the conference room stays in the conference room,” she said. She added that she did not want to suggest that there was a single holdout.

    “There are, you know, totally good-faith disagreements or concerns, if you will,” she said. “There are some things to be worked out. I hope we can get them worked out.”

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus: Excellent question.

    One plays the Waffle game.

    You get 15 moves to solve the regular Waffle.

    First President of the United States to Join a Picket Line

    A perfect score leaves you with 5 remaining stars, which means you didn’t make a single wrong move. If you do that, you get a fabulous color show with the waffle board.

    But you still “win” if you solve it with no remaining moves.

    edit: and on Sundays, you get the deluxe weffle that is 7 x 7, and you get 25 moves to solve it.

  28. 28.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Scout211: I used to have an adult tennis student who had previously worked as an attorney at The Hague, in the early 2000’s.  I believe he helped prosecute Kosovo/Bosnia war crimes.  He was a really good guy and we often talked about politics and how awful Trump is.  This was at least 4 years or so ago, so well before Jack Smith.  I wish he still came to lessons because I’m curious if he worked with Smith.

  31. 31.

    Jackie

    @bbleh:

    Holy jumping catfish, he’s gonna do it!

    Uncle Joe doesn’t just talk the talk; he walks the walk!

    I’m so happy he’s joining the Union strikers! His SS detail won’t be as happy 😁

    Unless they’re Unionized?

  36. 36.

    Chetan Murthy

    In my fantasies, Granpa Joe arranges for The Dropkick Murphys to come along and play an impromptu “Which Side Are You On?” while he’s on the line.  And all the networks are forced to cover it!

  37. 37.

    dc

    Also, why is it (fairly) easy to get the Waffle with 4 stars left, but so much more difficult to complete with 5 stars left? Sometimes I get 5 stars when a drag of a letter goes wrong, and a letter accidentally lands in the wrong place. I really enjoy the show Waffle puts on when you finish with 5 stars left.

     

     
    What does this mean?

  40. 40.

    WaterGirl

    @dc: Oh, sorry!

    Check out comment #26.  You trade one letter for another – that’s one move.  You want to be as strategic as possible, killing to birds with one stone if possible by choosing a trade that will get both letters in the right place.

    If the letter is green, it’s in the right place,  If the letter is yellow, it’s in that row (or column) but not in the right position.

  43. 43.

    Mousebumples

    I wrote 5 postcards for Ohio while the Badgers and Brewers were starting their games, and now both are cruising (*though Purdue just scored, so they’re within 14 now.).

    Looking forward to the postcard thread tomorrow night, if anyone can join me/us!

    @WaterGirl – i emailed you a photo.

  44. 44.

    FastEdD

    I loves me some O as much as the next person, coolest President ever. But I remember him saying, “When working people need me, I’ll put on my old walking shoes and I’ll be there.” During the recall effort of Snotty Scotty Walker, the guy who loved to crush unions, Obama was asked to visit. He never did. The recall failed. Biden is actually putting on his walking shoes and joining a picket line and I admire the hell out of him for it. Solidarity, from the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO local #1794.

  46. 46.

    bbleh

    @dc: it is a complex metaphor — indeed a metonymy, as “waffle” can also mean indecision — for careful observation, careful planning, and careful execution, wherein there are many ways to merely succeed, and fewer but still several ways to do very well, but only one way to do as well as possible.

    The real pisser is when you lose track of the similar words — there’s always two, like “rigor” and “rotor” — and swap letters for one into the spaces for the other.  “It didn’t turn green, dammit!”

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    @Mousebumples: Great reminder!

    Postcard and music thread at 8 pm blog time on Saturday – even if you’re not writing postcards, we need music!

    I also have addresses and a script from the OH Indivisible group that wrote a zillion postcards for the Wisconsin election.  I hope we can return the favor!

    We’ll list all the postcard options (that I’m aware of) in the post tomorrow, so if you think you might be interested in writing, you can see what the options are

  51. 51.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @FastEdD: Actually, speaking as someone who was involved in the protests in 2011, the consensus was that Obama should not come because it would make it a battle between him and Walker not the people and Walker.  And I can also say that Obama not showing up on the picket lines in Madison was not the reason that the recalls failed.  They were a strategic mistake.  The effort and anger put into them in 2011 would have better spent on taking back the state in 2012.

  53. 53.

    grumbles

    Fundamentally, I think Space Karen is breaking Xitter because he doesn’t understand it,  and doesn’t like the business it is in.  People like that break things they don’t understand, because feeling dumb makes them angry.

    I think he honestly believed some of his goofy ideas would “work”, because he doesn’t understand what normal people want. And being wrong makes him angry.

    As for adrev, I think he’s really frustrated. He’s frustrated because he’s fundamentally insulted that advertisers don’t want their ads next to “his people”, but he has to pretend to cater to them. Note how much he gets off at opportunities to threaten advertisers – he hates being on the bottom of the power dynamic. So that makes him angry.

    And ultimately he hates that he got suckered by Agrawal & company way back when, when he was trying to play alpha troll. Getting judo-flipped by someone he looks down on makes him angry.

    So that’s why.

    (Sorry that got long. I live walking distance from Xitter HQ, a lot of my friends used to work there, although I never did. It is still a bit personal.)

  54. 54.

    SpaceUnit

    This is a good move by Joe Biden.  The worst thing the Democrats ever did was to let slip their support of unions and workplace issues beginning in the late eighties so that they could more easily chase corporate money.  It was a fool’s bargain.

    All it gave us was decades of Reaganomics

  56. 56.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I keep thinking that he’s doing it because he wants to remove twitter as a messaging option for Biden and other democrats. Is that a crazy idea?

    I’m not convinced twitter has been a net positive for Democrats….

  58. 58.

    Ken

    Sometimes I get 5 stars when a drag of a letter goes wrong, and a letter accidentally lands in the wrong place.

    That counts, totally.  However if I accidentally drag a letter to a place I didn’t intend, I consider it fair to close the page and clear my recent browser history, so I can start fresh.

  59. 59.

    narya

    @Mousebumples: I might be able to join! Friend is volunteering tomorrow night (and now is just about to start watching the recording of the Badgers game . . .), and I want to make sure I DO THIS postcard thing.

  60. 60.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @cain: Ha! Go Bruce!

    Brooks tried to stammer out an explanation on the PBS Newshour, I think he said he was trying to make a joking point about inflation at his own privileged expense. He would’ve been better off admitting he was drunk, or just calling in sick this week

  61. 61.

    Eunicecycle

    @Mousebumples: I did my first 10 postcards today and put them in the mail. It is very satisfying! I can’t join the writing party tomorrow because we’re having a sleep over with some of our grandchildren but I have more blank postcards so I’ll get some more addresses on Monday.

  62. 62.

    Mousebumples

    @Omnes Omnibus: you’re right. They allowed a run. How dare they. 😂

    I appreciate that the former AL MVP (Donaldson) has decided now is a good time to hit home runs again, I will say. Props to the front office for signing him after the Yankees designated him for assignment. (lol, so many words on baseball to say “cut”)

  64. 64.

    narya

    I just listened to the Pod Save America thing today, and, yes, they’re in favor of Joe going, and I think I am, too. As another podcast said yesterday, the Rs are saying it’s the fault of going woke electric cars, blah blah blah. But Slotkin (who was a guest) was saying the WORLD is moving in this direction, and she’d much rather that the vehicles and batteries be built here than elsewhere. She also pointed out how workers gave up a lot when we taxpayers bailed out the auto industry, and the workers now want a share of the success they helped enable and worked to make happen. That is a pretty simple message for Joe to deliver.

  65. 65.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Another Scott: Anyone else remember a few months/years ago when the GQP whispers were saying that the GQP was going to pivot to being the party of the “working man”??

    They make the noise, but they cannot give up that sweet, sweet parasite billionaire campaign cash.

  66. 66.

    Mousebumples

    @narya: Great! I hope to see you then – or at a future one, if not tomorrow.

    @Eunicecycle: totally understand! My littles are 1 & 4 so hopefully in bed by postcard time. Hopefully, we’ll see you at a future thread party!

  71. 71.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Alison Rose: Yeah I don’t really see much downside to Biden joining the picket line.  His pro-Labor sentiments are pretty well known. Might as well squarely make the Dem Party the party of the workers, as officially as possible.  I mean anyone with a functioning brain knows it already but it’s a good reminder and gets Unions even more on our side leading into 2024.

  72. 72.

    mvr

    @grumbles: I think Space Karen is breaking Xitter because he doesn’t understand it,

    That makes sense to me. He doesn’t really understand people so he doesn’t understand why people spend time on Twitter.

    I didn’t get it myself until early in the pandemic Facebook drove me off by making me unhappy with my friends on there saying dumb things. I needed an outlet where I could find new people to talk, rant & joke with when I was stuck at home frustrated, bored and unhappy. And a good source of news and little ways to boost Biden as someone who is nobody. Then I kind of got why people used it.

  73. 73.

    Mousebumples

    @narya: p.s. I’m currently drinking a New Glarus beer . . . a Raspberry Kringle, as we needed a dessert beer.

    Sounds delicious! We picked up a key lime/strawberry cheesecake earlier today since it’s our anniversary. My parents are babysitting tomorrow afternoon, but we’re home tonight. Good cheesecake. And that I might need to find some of that beer…

  74. 74.

    mvr

    @Villago Delenda Est: Yeah, they’d actually have to do something for working people to be the party of working people so it isn’t going to happen for the Rs. They might be the party of the aggrieved better off part of the white working class though.

  77. 77.

    narya

    @Mousebumples: I love their Raspberry Tart, and, a few years ago, the Serendipity with Door County cherries . . . they often have some good stuff at the Great Taste of the Midwest, though I might have missed them this year! The Thumbprint series has had some good stuff, too.

  78. 78.

    mvr

    Brooks’s apology, now that I’ve seen it is a joke. The last bit just underlines that he can’t go for one minute without trying to undercut Democrats. Which was what the tweet itself was doing. Inflation is in fact coming down and people still have jobs. That’s the news he needs to report. But no, he makes his mistake out to be making light of inflation.

  79. 79.

    Ken

    @NotMax: I’m not a Post subscriber. When they say “controversies”, are they talking about stuffing a turkey with a block of cheese (from TaMara’s earlier thread), or is it more like Duggar family horrors?

  80. 80.

    mvr

    @Villago Delenda Est: Please don’t remind me of 1969 and the Cubs.  Though I admit it is even worse than that cubs debacle that they were bought by the same folks who bought one of the two Senate seats (and the governorship to pull that off) in my now home state of Nebraska.

  81. 81.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus: The Mariners had the (then) Cleveland Indians up against the wall on 5 August 2001.  The Indians rallied in the 7th to catch up with a 14-2 Mariner lead and to defeat them 15-14 in 11 innings.  It ain’t over until the fat lady sings, as someone once said.

  82. 82.

    Ken

    @mvr: I needed an outlet where I could find new people to talk, rant & joke with when I was stuck at home frustrated, bored and unhappy. And a good source of news and little ways to boost Biden as someone who is nobody.

    (sniffle) And Balloon Juice wasn’t enough? (sob)

  85. 85.

    NotMax

    @Ken

    An extended excerpt of only some examples.

    Franke was, until a few weeks ago, best known as the Utah mom of six behind the YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which boasted more than 2 million followers. Franke rose to online fame by sharing videos detailing her family life and parenting strategies. Some of those videos raised viewers’ eyebrows, like when Franke’s 5-year-old daughter forgot to bring her lunch to school and Franke refused to bring the child food. “Hopefully no one steps in and gives her a lunch,” Franke says. “Then she’s not going to learn from the natural outcome.”

    On Sept. 1, Franke and her business partner were charged with multiple accounts of aggravated child abuse after her 12-year-old son escaped to a neighbor’s house appearing to be malnourished and have open wounds. Police found Franke’s 10-year-old daughter appearing similarly malnourished. Franke’s arrest (and the subsequent deep dives done by online sleuths into her past content) has reignited recent debates around the ethics and monetary complexities of family vlogging and child influencers — and it has some viewers questioning their own allegiances.

    Franke is part of a sprawling family social media apparatus in which her parents and all four of her siblings have their own dedicated YouTube channels, with combined followers around 5.5 million and views in the billions. Halterman found their content fascinating. It even made her feel closer to her faith, as both she and the Frankes are Mormon. “They looked perfect,” she says. But since Franke’s arrest, Halterman wonders if her interest in family vloggers is part of the problem. “I now see it for what it is — exploitation of these minor [children] and voyeurism on my part.” She’s wrestling with what to do next and why she became so interested in the first place. Is it possible to ethically continue to watch family channels? Or does she need to cut it off completely? She hasn’t decided yet, but she’s watching less than she was before news of Franke’s arrest.

    Annie, 20, started watching family channels during coronavirus lockdowns. It was a lonely time, she says, and she liked seeing how other people were living. She especially liked the LaBrant family, whose channel has 13 million YouTube subscribers, but that was before the LaBrants baited viewers into thinking their toddler daughter had cancer in 2021. A video titled “She got diagnosed with cancer. (documentary)” opened with the LaBrant parents talking about their toddler daughter going to the emergency room before eventually segueing into a story about an unrelated child’s fight with cancer. “That really rubbed me the wrong way,” says Annie, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used to protect her privacy. “Then the [Ruby] Franke stuff happened. I don’t think I will ever watch a family channel again. I’ve unfollowed all of them.”

  89. 89.

    Jackie

    @Villago Delenda Est: Thanks for the heartbreaking memory 😢

    But, you’re right. The game isn’t over until the last out. Unlike football or basketball, where you can take a knee or dribble the ball the last seconds to run down the clock.

  90. 90.

    narya

    @NotMax: Quinn Cummings has been on about this lately, and she says that it is child trafficking: the children have no say in what’s happening, and they are being monetized without their consent, which they are too young to provide in any case. She was particularly talking about celebrities who post pictures of their children on Social Media, but this would also qualify.

  91. 91.

    Cameron

    If the President wants to hit the picket line, he should go for it.  I wouldn’t do it, but I’m not POTUS, either.  I was a union member when I worked at the railroad, but Conrail showed us the door in 1995 and that was the end of my union career.

  92. 92.

    mvr

    @Cameron: I think it is brilliant as politics and has the advantage of also being on the right side.
    I’m finally a union member. AAUP joined the AFT last year. Now I live in a union household though we don’t have union where I work.
    My Dad was an engineeringdivision head at a machine tool design and manufacturing business in the rust belt and always got frustrated that he could not pick up a wrench to show people how things worked or to troubleshoot. But our household was still overall pro-union.

  94. 94.

    hotshoe

    @bbleh: ​ 

    two-swap combinations that get all the letters (2 or 3 respectively) in the right places. You get enough of those, you get the 5. (There’s more math, if you’re interested…)

    Well, yeah, I’m interested in the “more math” of it — I haven’t been playing Waffle lately because I’m frustrated that I only see forced single swaps which don’t solve quickly enough to keep all five stars.

    Because of this thread, I went and tried tonight’s Waffle. It was a little easier than I remember previous games because all four corners were already green, made it a little easier to keep track of the target words.

    What I’m really curious about — and I don’t see anything on the waffle site which helps — is what is the actual strategy that would have solved a particular problem in 10 moves … I don’t know that I could, or even would want to, master a perfect strategy in general but I would love to see some specific examples.​

  104. 104.

    dr. luba

    FWIW I was listening to Dean Obeidallah on Thursday night, and urging Biden to join the picket line was the topic of conversation on his show.

  106. 106.

    Geoduck

    People have already said it, but it’s amusing when someone posts on the latest Internet craze and just assumes that everyone knows what they are talking about. “Today on Snarffle I Flipped all seven of the Bloits!”

  108. 108.

    Jinchi

    Also, why is it (fairly) easy to get the Waffle with 4 stars left, but so much more difficult to complete with 5 stars left? Sometimes I get 5 stars when a drag of a letter goes wrong, and a letter accidentally lands in the wrong place.

    I now know what it would feel like to wake from a decades long coma to discover that all the words in the English language had completely changed meaning.

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