Recent Items

2:00PM Water Cooler 12/3/2019

Posted on by

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Trade

“New fronts are opening in the global trade war. France is threatening to strike back if President Trump follows through on a plan to impose tariffs on up to $2.4 billion of French imports… the latest in a series of disputes that show tensions between the U.S. and trading partners are escalating” [Wall Street Journal]. “The president today signaled the trade tensions could drag on, saying that he has ‘no deadline’ for reaching an agreement with China.”

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

Here is a second counter for the Iowa Caucus, which is obviously just around the corner:

* * *

2020

Alert reader dk (not to be confused with DK) is in the process of developing the following interactive chart.

Here is (are) the latest Dem Primary Polling as of 12/3/2019, 12:00 PM EST. Biden leads, Sanders strong second, Warren five points back (!), Buttigeig trailing. Note that Morning Consult has a nice big fat sample size. This pattern seems temporarily stable. On to the next debate, and Iowa:

For grins, I removed the three-day averaging:

Imagine the narratives that could have been constructed from that “swoon” by Biden the averages smooth out?

Here is the latest, as of 12/3/2019, 12:00 PM EST:

UPDATE I think we have to track the polls because so much of the horse-race coverage is generated by them; and at least with these charts we’re insulating ourselves against getting excited about any one poll. That said, we should remember that the polling in 2016, as it turned out, was more about narrative than about sampling, and that this year is, if anything, even more so. In fact, one is entitled to ask, with the latest Buttigieg boomlet (bubble? (bezzle?)) which came first: The narrative, or the poll? One hears of push polling, to be sure, but not of collective push polling by herding pollsters. We should also worry about state polls with very small sample sizes and big gaps in coverage. And that’s before we get to the issues with cellphones (as well as whether voters in very small, very early states game their answers). So we are indeed following a horse-race, but the horses don’t stay in their lanes, some of the horses are not in it to win but to interfere with the others, the track is very muddy, and the mud has splattered our binoculars, such that it’s very hard to see what’s going on from the stands. Also, the track owners are crooked and the stewards are on the take. Everything’s fine.

I think dk has started a really neat project, and in the near future we’ll seek your feedback (within reason) for the tool “live.”

* * *

Bloomberg (D)(1): Greenwald’s theory of the case:

That “pledges” idea is a good one. Does anyone know if Bloomberg was forced to sign the DNC loyalty oath that Sanders was forced to sign?

Buttigieg (D)(1): “Column: Buttigieg is wrong — free college should be free for all, including children of the rich” [Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times]. “The argument that public programs designed to be universal are somehow flawed because they benefit all echelons of society, rich and poor alike, indeed is a common Republican talking point. It’s so superficially logical, in fact, that it’s not uncommon to hear it leaching into Democratic Party policy debates…. Yet as Ocasio-Cortez observed, the argument has a nasty subtext and ugly consequences. Social programs that serve limited economic groups, especially the middle-class and poor, are always more vulnerable to political attack than those that serve everyone… . The pioneer of this argument was hedge fund billionaire Pete Peterson, who waged a years-long campaign to cut Social Security benefits on the grounds that America, then as now the richest land on Earth, couldn’t afford them.” • Good for Hiltzik! The whole piece is worth reading.

Harris (D)(1): “Kamala Harris drops out of presidential race” [The Hill]. “Two campaign aides told The Hill that Harris informed staff Tuesday she would suspend the campaign…. ‘Californians can be proud of Sen. Harris,’ said Bob Mulholland, a Democratic National Committee member from California who supported her nomination. ‘There’s not enough length even on the L.A. freeway for these candidates, so she had a tough road but did well. Not this time.'” • Lol. My heart goes out to the donor class, especially those in the Hamptons and on Martha’s Vineyard. About the timing:

Sanders (D)(1): “Bernie Sanders, Rob Manfred meet over proposed minor-league cuts” [Associated Press]. “Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders met Monday with baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred to discuss MLB’s proposal that would drop 42 minor league teams from their leagues after the 2020 season…. Sanders, a senator from Vermont, sent Manfred a letter on Nov. 25 calling the plan ‘an absolute disaster for baseball fans, workers and communities throughout the country.'” • Imagine the tsunami of coverage if this were Buttigieg! Earned media of the best kind. For example:

Sanders (D)(2): “Recalling the Rainbow Roots of the Bernie Sanders Presidential Run” [The Nation]. • Cf. Matt 5:17. Worth reading in full. Also, oddly, this incident is not included: “In 1988, Sanders attended a non-binding Vermont Democratic-party caucus in Burlington, supporting Jesse Jackson. In Outsider in the House, he writes, ‘A number of old-line Dems stood up and turned around as I delivered my speech. And when I returned to my seat, a woman in the audience slapped me across the face.’ Sanders said it was the first and last time he ever participated in a formal Democratic-party function.”

Sanders (D)(3): Subtweeting Biden:

Sanders (D)(4): Subtweeting Bloomberg:

Trump (R)(1): “Mike Pence isn’t Donald Trump. And that’s exactly why he’s on the 2020 ticket.” [McClatchy]. “Mike Pence does not have the star power of President Donald Trump and is not one to draw large crowds on the campaign trail. His political team has crafted a 2020 strategy that both plays to the vice president’s strengths and compensates for what doesn’t come naturally to Trump: shaking hands in local diners and ice cream parlors. Pence recently completed a bus tour in Kentucky and has similar ones planned for Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three states his campaign strategists believe are critical to reelection and where they see the Republican politician’s midwestern roots as being most useful. The former Indiana governor will direct his energy to states heavily populated by white, working-class voters that he and Trump must win next November to stay in office. ‘The vice president can’t get the same audience as the president can on his own,’ Marc Short, chief of staff to Pence, candidly acknowledged [(!!)] in an interview. ‘Let the president do the giant rallies, and let the vice president do a lot more of the traveling through the district, getting local press attention leading into the big event with the president.’ The strategy is to complement ‘their styles,’ he said. Trump is at his most energetic and in his element when he’s facing an arena of people who waited in line for hours to listen to him speak. Pence is at his best when he’s making small talk with patrons of local restaurants, telling them anecdotes, and listening attentively to their comments, people close to him say.” • Or is Pence just a wooden public speaker? Readers?

Warren (D)(1): “What is happening with Elizabeth Warren?” [Chris Cilizza, CNN]. “Less than two months ago, it looked as though Elizabeth Warren might just run away with the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination…. Then that Warren wave hit a wall. Starting right around mid-October, Warren’s numbers not only stopped moving upward but also began trending down… Add it all up and there’s plenty of reason to believe that Warren’s full-fledged support for Medicare for All — coupled with her less-than-successful attempts to defend that position in the last two debates — led to her current reduced status in the race.” • If this were true, Sanders should drop as well. I think Cilizza should give consideration to the idea that not only did Warren botch the rollout, her plans were bad, and were seen as bad.

UPDATE Warren (D)(1): “Elizabeth Warren cries and tries to regain ground with voters” [Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe]. The deck: “Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, her ideological soulmate, rolls along, tears-free.” Ouch. More: “According to the Des Moines Register, “after a long pause and with tears in her eyes, the senator from Massachusetts said ‘yeah,’ before telling the story of the divorce from her first husband,” and how painful it was to tell her mother that her marriage was over. To showcase the significance of the encounter, Warren tweeted out a clip.” • Dead Lord. You don’t tweet out your own tears to show sincerity. Have somebody else do it! Isn’t anybody on her staff protecting her?

Impeachment

“Barr rejects key finding in report on Russia probe: report” [The Hill]. “People familiar with the matter told The Post that Barr said he does not agree with the report’s finding that the FBI had enough intelligence to initiate an investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016. The long-awaited report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to be made public in a week. But a draft is being discussed behind the scenes, and the attorney general reportedly is not persuaded that the FBI investigation was justified. The draft report is now being finalized and shown to the witnesses and offices investigated by Horowitz. People familiar with the matter told the newspaper that Barr believes information from other agencies such as the CIA could change Horowitz’s finding that the investigation was warranted.”

Our Famously Free Press

What next? The children’s edition?

I remember the Wall Street Journal hawked its books during the Clinton impeachment — right on the editorial page!

Realignment and Legitimacy

UPDATE “Democrats Should Make 2020 a Referendum on ‘More Socialism for Old People’” [Eric Levitz, New York Magazine]. “The Democrats’ leftward lurch on socialism for seniors is right on the merits: Owing in part to gains in life expectancy among the elderly, an American turning 65 today has somewhere between a 50 and 70 percent chance of eventually requiring long-term support by the end of his or her life. And yet, the U.S. is nearly alone among wealthy nations in lacking a universal long-term-care benefit…. America is in dire need of a wide variety of progressive reforms. And there are strong arguments against prioritizing new benefits for seniors over action on climate change or health care or voting rights, when and if Democrats retake the White House and Senate. But before worrying about exactly how they should wield power, progressives will first need to win it. And in both the primary and general elections, left-wing candidates have both an urgent need to increase their support among seniors and more to offer those voters than any of their rivals.” • I agree with the proposal on the merits and the politics. However, socialism, as Levitz surely knows, is not targeted at age groups (“ok boomer socialism” is not a thing). Universal concrete material benefits, especially for the working class, is the moral center here, not this or that cohort.

Stats Watch

Commodities: “OPEC+ Gambles That U.S. Shale’s Golden Age Is Over” [Bloomberg]. “For years, OPEC ignored the rise of the U.S. shale industry and came to regret its mistake. Now, the group is making another bold gamble on America’s oil revolution: that its golden age is over…. OPEC isn’t alone. Across the industry, oil traders and executives believe U.S. production will grow less in 2020 than this year, and at a significantly slower rate than in 2018. On paper, the cartel has the oil market under control.”

Retail: “Competition among parcel carriers this holiday season is turning into a race against the calendar. Delivery companies are facing the tightest schedule in years because Thanksgiving fell on the latest possible date… giving carriers just 23 days until Hanukkah and 26 days until Christmas to collectively handle more than two billion packages” [Wall Street Journal]. “SJ Consulting Group Inc. projects Amazon.com Inc. will deliver 275 million packages this season, double last season’s volume and a significant test for the company’s burgeoning logistics • Hence–

Retail: “Exclusive: Amazon’s Own Numbers Reveal Staggering Injury Rates at Staten Island Warehouse” [Gizmodo]. “Since opening in September 2018, Amazon’s massive fulfillment center on New York’s Staten Island has garnered a reputation as grueling and unsafe, even among a logistics network broadly criticized as such. Now, leaked company documents reveal that injury rates at the warehouse, known as JFK8, are over three times the industry average. What’s unclear is if these numbers are at all anomalous compared to Amazon’s other facilities.” • Doubtful, given the level of control Amazon exerts over all its warehouse workers — control that’s centralized in software.

Retail: “Horrifying Series Of Unspeakable Actions Result In $39 Crock-Pot Being Delivered To Man Same Day” [The Onion (RH)]. • Including–

Retail:

Amazon: Not just crockpots!

Shipping: “America’s Railroad System Is Great — for Freight” [Bloomberg]. “[T]he U.S. freight rail system [is] arguably the best and most efficient in the world. U.S. railroads carried 81% more ton-miles of freight in 2017 than in 1981, while average freight rates fell 46% in inflation-adjusted terms. Trains now carry almost as much freight (as measured in ton-miles or ton-kilometers) in the U.S. as trucks do, which certainly isn’t the case in Japan or the world’s other biggest economies….

Shipping: Handy chart:

Shipping: “Engineering shipyard consolidation may turn out to be as tough as building bigger ships. South Korea’s plan to merge its two big shipbuilders into a single behemoth is hitting bumps in Singapore… Merging the debt-ridden Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. would create a single builder controlling roughly 20% of the global market” [Wall Street Journal]. “Singaporean regulators are most concerned about the yards’ dominant role in building liquefied natural gas carriers, a business that puts the planned merger at the center of the world’s changing energy markets.”

The Bezzle: “Amazon Still Does not Collect Sales Tax on All the Items it Sells” [CEPR]. “Through much of its existence Amazon did not collect sales tax in most states. As this became more contentious and it had a physical presence in more states, Amazon eventually agreed to start collecting sales taxes in all states. However, it still does not collect sales taxes on the sales of its affiliates, who account for more than 40 percent of the sales through Amazon’s site. This is a massive subsidy with literally no policy rationale. In effect, the government is subsidizing purchases through Amazon at the expense of brick and mortar stores, many of which are small businesses. This policy is costing state and local governments billions of dollars in revenue and helping Amazon to grow at the expense of its competitors.” • The original act of regulatory arbitrage — or, in the vulgate, theft and fraud — that gave Amazon its edge. That’s what “innovation” and “disruption” generally mean in “startup culture.” You’d also think those “rule of law” Democrats might be doing something about this, given that this subsidy to Amazon gutted small town retail everywhere.

The Bezzle: “Uber loses London licence after TfL finds drivers faked identity” [Guardian]. “Uber has been stripped of its London licence after authorities found that more than 14,000 trips were taken with drivers who had faked their identity on the firm’s app…. The decision will not see Uber cars disappear from London immediately, as the firm has said it would appeal and could continue to operate pending the outcome, provided it launched official proceedings within 21 days.

The Bezzle: “Musk suggests Tesla has 200,000 orders for Cybertruck” [Reuters]. • At a hundred bucks a pop.

The Bezzle: “People have been ridiculing Tesla’s new Cybertruck for its unusual design — but some big names in Silicon Valley say they love the pickup” [Business Insider]. For example: “Outside of the technology landscape, Blade Runner artistic director Syd Mead thinks highly of Tesla’s Cybertruck, telling Business Insider’s Aaron Holmes in an emailed statement that it “has completely changed the vocabulary of the personal truck market design.” • My high concept of truck design vocabulary includes the idea that you can really load it up with stuff. Then tailgate, for example. A vehicle that can’t do that is a car, not a truck.

Honey for the Bears: “Look To Older Workers For Clues About The Next Recession” [Teresa Ghilarducci, Forbes]. “The last time a recession started, which turned out to be the Great Recession, the official start date was late in the year. Holiday season 2007 shares similar characteristics to now. The last time a recession started things were looking good for older workers, just as they are looking good now. Back then the unemployment rate was 3.2% for people over 55. In October 2019, the unemployment rate for older workers was even lower: 2.6%. Low, low—almost too low? In the glass-is-half-empty interpretation of the data, unemployment rates are often at their lowest right when a recession starts… Wages started falling from the exact same place, $961 in the last quarter of 2018, to $916 in the most recent report. Note that when the recession was officially called over in mid-2009, the median weekly wages for older workers were $963, $47 higher than today. In economics, things look good before they get worse. Jobless rates for all workers, including workers over age 55, are usually unbelievably low right before they get inhumanely high. Unemployment is low now, but we don’t know how low it can go. Yet falling wages for older workers are an ominous sign with jobless rates so low.” •

Honey for the Bears: “Recession odds ‘higher than normal,’ says Janet Yellen” [Business Insider]. Pre-Thanksgiving, still germane. “Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen doesn’t expect a recession in 2020, but mentioned two drivers of a potential downturn in a Thursday speech… Though recession fears have subsided from their summer highs, there are still risks coming together, Yellen said. She pointed to wealth inequality and the US-China trade war as two key threats to the record-long economic expansion, and signaled that the converging risks are setting a dim tone for investors moving forward. ‘I would bet there would not be a recession in the coming year,’ the former central bank chief said at the World Business Forum. ‘But I would have to say that the odds of a recession are higher than normal and at a level that frankly I am not comfortable with.'” • “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed.”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 60 Greed (previous close: 74 Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 69 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 3 at 12:14pm. Oy. That’s a big drop for one day.

The Biosphere

“ESG phone Hohn” [Reuters]. “Chris Hohn made his name by assaulting the entrenched boards of European companies. Now the boss of activist hedge fund TCI is deploying those skills for a higher purpose. He’s planning to vote against directors of companies that don’t disclose how their balance sheets would be hit by climate change, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. Doing so would help outgoing Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s push for greater transparency about the financial risks of global warming. Yet for Hohn there’s a fine line between being an outrider or a guinea pig. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, which Carney has championed, is founded on the notion that more information makes markets more efficient. If the body gets its way, every company will not only disclose its carbon emissions but also an analysis of the risks to its business from a warmer planet, and which assets could be devalued by the move to a zero-carbon world. That would allow markets to better sort sheep and goats, and value them accordingly. Greater clarity could then translate into higher multiples for stocks that Hohn owns, including Charter Communications and Airbus. The catch is that such lucidity is way off.”

“How to Talk Like a Climate Negotiator” [Bloomberg]. “There are energy and environment ministers from almost 200 countries at the COP25 climate meeting in Madrid this week, and they share one common language: the jargon of carbon diplomacy. This tongue mixes United Nations terms of art with technical shorthand absorbed from the energy industry. The result is among the most complex lexicons [uh oh] in use by any international institution — a vocabulary that scarcely existed two decades ago. It allows more than 15,000 delegates at COP25 to invoke past treaties and conduct minute deliberations on the mechanics of pollution credits.” • One buzzword:

Just Transition: New this year. Pressure groups are anxious that the wrenching changes required to slash fossil fuel emissions don’t hit the poorest. They want to see a transition that helps those affected adjust. The emphasis seems to be on helping poor nations, not necessarily coal miners in rich countries.

Get ready flyover! Here comes The Big Weinie again! (And the tragedy is that with a Green New Deal, IMNSHO, it wouldn’t have to be that way. I guess elites are committed to continuing the existing policy of depopulation; see falling life expectancy and birth rates.)

“Trees informing networks explaining trees” [The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks]. The lead: “Working at the coalface of evolution, one phenomenon always intrigued me: How does the signal in the data build up a tree? Especially since we have to assume some sort of reticulation happened at some point — evolution is rarely a strictly dichotomous process, which we would model by a tree. In earlier posts, we have covered the difference between clades and grades in a tree, and Hennig’s concepts of monophyly and paraphyly. Clearly, in the light of actual evolutionary processes, the cladistic approach synonymizing clades with monophyly is a simplification at best, and naive at worst.” • This looks fascinating, though I confess I don’t understand a word of it. It’s about trees, the data structure, not “real” trees.

Games

“Inside Twitch’s Wildest Talk Show” [Kotaku]. • Do we have any Twitch users in the audience? I do note that “live on camera to an average audience of 20,000” is rather small, so perhaps my horrified revulsion existential despair fear and trembling concerns are misplaced.

News of the Wired

This is apparently not a parody:

This year’s winner, “Best Creepster Come-On”…

I never got the comic strip Nancy when I was a kid. However, Nancy now seems to have a new artist, and is rejuvenated (and often pleasingly off-kilter, though this strip is not):

But how did they make up all the different names?

Beautiful:

See the whole thread, because the comments are lovely.

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (GF):

GF: “The attached image shows fall colors in Canyon de Chelly AZ with cottonwood trees providing the color. I did not take this photo and don’t know who did – I am using it as an illustration of some differences between east (more red colors) and west (mostly yellow colors) during fall. Probably due to more hardwoods in the east and softer wood trees dominant in the west.” With my New Englander bias, I had assumed that red dominated in fall colors everywhere. Not so! Clearly, I am still catching up with autumn images, but perhaps the bright colors will be welcome in the short days, just as snowy pictures will be welcome when the snow is past!

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:




Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated.

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on by .

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

Subscribe to Post Comments
178 comments

  1. ptb

    “Does anyone know if Bloomberg was forced to sign the DNC loyalty oath that Sanders was forced to sign?”

    Quite possibly the other way around. I mean if you’re gonna blow $100 mill on TV time, why not throw in a sponsorship of the party’s national HQ? It worked for Clinton….

    1. The Rev Kev

      They should be careful about that concept. Normally, for example, when a guy becomes a citizen of a new country he swears an oath of loyalty to that new country. But back in the 1920s when a certain Austrian become a citizen of Germany, it was the country that swore an oath of loyalty to the new citizen.
      It doesn’t pay to veer too far from tradition.

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > throw in a sponsorship of the party’s national HQ

      Yeah, but Clinton never got naming rights. I bet Bloomberg could drive a harder bargain.

      The Michael “Mike” Bloomberg Wing of the Democrat National Committee™…. Plaque not merely bronze, but solid gold.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      Thank you, that’s terrific. I’m sure many have pored over it already. From Section VI:

      The term “presidential candidate” herein shall mean any person who, as determined by the National Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, has accrued delegates in the nominating process and plans to seek the nomination, has established substantial support for their nomination as the Democratic candidate for the Office of the President of the United States, is a bona fide Democrat whose record of public service, accomplishment, public writings and/or public statements affirmatively demonstrates that the candidate is faithful to the interests, welfare and success of the Democratic Party of the United States, and will participate in the Convention in good faith. At the time a presidential candidate announces their candidacy publicly, they must publicly affirm that they are a Democrat. Each candidate pursuing the Democratic nomination shall affirm, in writing, to the National Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee that they:
      A. are a member of the Democratic Party;
      B. will accept the Democratic nomination; and
      C. will run and serve as a member of the Democratic Party.

      (The “written affirmation” is Appendix A.)

      Here are the Google results for ‘bloomberg democrat “written affirmation”‘.

      It seems reasonable that Bloomberg would have signed it. However, there’s no evidence he actually did.

      1. JTMcPhee

        Bigger question — did Bernie sign it? And he sure does not seem to tick all the boxes in the chart of “acceptable Democratic candidate.” Will be interesting if the Dems pull the rug out from under him on the basis that he is “no true Democrat…”

        1. EarlErland

          I googled and qwanticated “Bloomberg Democratic Loyalty Pledge”. I did not get any relevant results for Bloomberg on either site. However Bernie rules the results. I do not understand why certain results float to the top of Google, or Qwant. I can only hope that Thanksgiving discussions as to whether Bernie is a Democrat ended with a link to the Sanders Loyalty Pledge articles!

        2. EarlErland

          He did. Googling and Qwantiforticating cannot produce a result for the query “Bloomberg Democratic Loyalty Pledge” that is relevant to Bloomberg, but Sanders decision to sign the Pledge is THE result on both.

          1. Darius

            If you google Democratic Party loyalty pledge Bloomberg, all the hits on the top page are about Sanders, except the last one, which is the December 3, Water Cooler. Good show, everyone!

      3. WJ

        Are we certain that Section VI contains the entirety of the provisions of the “loyalty oath”? I ask because it is not at all clear that the conditions specified by this agreement preclude somebody from running as a third-party candidate after the Democratic nomination process is over. If there is no further document we’re missing, I suspect that Section VI contains an exoteric and an esoteric meaning. The exoteric meaning is the one advertised as binding on Sanders, et. al. The esoteric meaning is the one that the Party will actually adopt if, say, Sanders is nominated and Bloomberg wants to run third-party.

        Neither (B) nor (C) rules out running as a third-party candidate as best I can tell.
        What does it mean to “accept the Democratic nomination”? It means, first of all, to accept the nomination if you are nominated. It also means, plausibly, to accept that the Democratic nominee is X even if you are Y and don’t like X. But I can “accept” that X is the Democratic nominee and then decide to run as an Independent, can’t I?

        Criterion “C” most plausibly means run “*for the Democratic nomination* as a member of the Democratic Party and, if elected, serve as one too.” But I can run for the Democratic nomination as a Democrat, lose the nomination, accept the Democratic nominee, and then decide–after the Democratic Nomination Process is over–to run as an Independent, can’t I? Where is this explicitly ruled out by Section VI?

        What does it mean to “accept” the Democratic

  3. a different chris

    My point-and-laugh-at-Elon-Musk quotient at I would argue is as high as anybody. It’s a shame such a clownshow is leading a really world-important project.

    But I’m not sure what you mean by “the idea that you can really load it up with stuff. Then tailgate, for example. A vehicle that can’t do that is a car, not a truck.”

    It seems to me that you can really load it up? It *has* a tailgate, quite a useful one in fact (extends out to a ramp). It also has a big bed with no wheel wells, which if you ever loaded hay you would immediately go ga-ga over. No more “crap should I invest in a flatbed? But if I do then I cant do other things…” Maybe I’m not quite getting what you are saying?

    https://www.autoblog.com/2019/11/22/tesla-cyberquad-atv-reveal/

    How it looks, hmmm well taste is in the eye of the beholder. How it actually would function is to be seen. But the layout itself is pretty darn good.

    1. drumlin woodchuckles

      The visual styling of the Teslatruck looks designed to appeal to the style sense of people raised on imaginary dystopias of the future . . . like Blade Runner and Escape From New York and so forth. That could well be millions of people, and several hundred thousand of them could be rich enough to buy a Teslatruck.

      So the styling could be a sales winner, especially in Whateverwood, Silicon Whatever, etc.

      1. Mo's Bike Shop

        The basic idea of an El Camino is brilliant. Yet the results always make me recoil with a Mary Shelly-level of ‘what have you done?’ A anything more car-like than a blinged out courier truck just crosses my uncanny valley.

    2. The Rev Kev

      Principals for designing a truck-

      Rule # 1 – It must be functional as a truck.

      Rule # 2 – See Rule # 1

      That is not a truck but a case of boys and their toys. Actually rich boys and their toys. And fan boys at that.

    3. Acacia

      Kind of a basic question, but why does the Muskotruck need to be steel-ball and sledgehammer-proof in the first place? Of course it’s a demonstration of “toughness” (which pranged OM*G rather hilariously) but isn’t Musk’s subtext sort of “and THIS is the cruiser you want to ride through our inevitable Mad Max future, bro”?

      1. The Rev Kev

        The answer is that it is a gimmick. So much of what Musk does is really about gimmicks. But we don’t call it that due to the insane amounts of money spent. Pity he couldn’t spend some of that money doing stuff to actually helping people instead of rich boy’s toys.

        1. Wukchumni

          The $100 deposit gambit is interesting, it’d be like leaving a Cent deposit on a Happy Meal @ Mickey D’s.

      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        > why does the Muskotruck need to be steel-ball and sledgehammer-proof

        So you can get out of Dodge when all the zombies homeless people and starving workers have other ideas about what you should do.

    4. Mel

      Drywall. I have a benchmark: guys from the building center came around this morning with a delivery in a pickup (sic) truck. I want to see how a dozen sheets of drywall come out of that thing. And 12-foot lengths of lumber.

      1. Fiery Hunt

        Dozen’s a pretty hefty load of dry wall…
        Would think twice about putting it in my Ranger…then I’d load it.

        Musk’s 1999 Moon Rover?
        Hell to the no.
        Repairs cost too much and the wait times?..

        No way.

    5. Lambert Strether Post author

      I’m wrong, which is what I get for reacting to the styling (“all sharp angles and flat surfaces”). Looking at the link you sent, I still find a lot of typical truck uses hard to imagine. Can I really pile it high with whatever, put a tarp over it, and strap the whole mess down? Where are the tie-downs? Where do I put the gun rack? Can I really pull my boat up next to a body of water?

      1. a different chris

        Yes this.

        The whole thing would be *quite interesting* as a show concept vehicle with everybody understanding a lot of changes would need to be made.

        But that’s not how Musk works, of course.

        1. a different chris

          Oh, and (and remember I’m an EE and thus love electric vehicles, but putting on my “practical goggles”)

          Unless you have one of those beloved old IH pick-me-ups (the joke among IH owners was “10mpg uphill, downhill, headwind, tailwind, trailer or not”) the mpg does really vary depending on the load. For my 2017 gasser it’s a solid 33% drop towing 7000 pounds @70mph. Not sure how the diesels behave, TBH.

          But electric engines are more efficient — which paradoxically means they are even more sensitive to load changes (see the IH example again, an engine whose inefficiency dwarfed all other considerations! But boy could it haul….).

          So if Elon is nursing 400 miles out of a charge, he may only get say 1/3 that with a decent sized trailer. And given that weekend warriors will haul a trailer generally to go off the beaten path (horse or camping), that could be a real serious problem.

          On the more general subject of electric trucks, commercial “city” trucks (made by somebody more sensible than Musk) are really interesting. Not high speeds, so aero becomes less important, and you can control the routes (remember UPS doesn’t make left hand turns unless they absolutely have to) so charging stops aren’t hit or miss, nor that far away.

          1. ambrit

            We had an old IH Scout 2 to tow the ’63 Airstream with. Your mileage quip is right on the money. The 305c.i. eight banger with extra towing gear did almost anything you asked it to.

      2. Carey

        Among many other things wrong with it, the center of gravity is absurdly
        high on that horrifically-ugly thing.

    6. TheHoarseWhisperer

      Note lack of any rear view mirrors. No window in the back either. I assume when you are in reverse you are driving by camera.

      What happens when the camera malfunctions?

      I guess it never happens in Teslas…

  4. funemployed

    Why does “concentration-camp bath towel” feel to me like the sort of product that would be invented by software?

    I really can’t imagine that any human (even the very awful ones) would want that, or that it would occur to any human that another human might want that.

  5. NotTimothyGeithner

    D.C. Fontana died. She’s basically the creator of everything associated with Star Trek besides the name.

    1. Mark Gisleson

      ? Never knew she was female, but I’ve certainly been seeing her name most of my viewing life. R.I.P.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        It was how she solicited manuscripts when she was starting out, but then she happened to be working as Roddenberry’s secretary and told him she was trying to be a writer. He encouraged her, then the show he was working on at the time was canceled, and he started to come up with Star Trek. She came along and developed the early episodes before there was a show to work on, so the pen name was not really necessary except for shielding her from suits who would be upset by a literate woman.

        The Deep Space Nine episode “Far Beyond the Stars” referenced her pen name.

      2. Angie Neer

        I suspect that “D.C.” did not raise eyebrows in the world of TeeVee the way “Dorothy” would have.

        1. Jeff W

          The gender-blind “D.C.” was indeed intentional. Fontana in one interview:

          I also found out that, as a woman, it was hard to sell action adventure scripts – despite the fact that they were all I had written and sold to date! Eventually, I started using “D.C. Fontana” as a byline I could get a spec script read without a pre-judgment based on gender.

        2. HotFlash

          Ursula K. LeGuinn published a story inPlaynoy, but they insisted that the byline be U. K. LeGuinn.

    3. Elim Garak

      How terribly sad! I consider myself an avid Trekkie but never heard the name until now. So many wonderful people helped to create these series.

      It seems like she had a lot to do with TOS and the animated series, but only wrote one episode of TNG, which is definitely more my wheelhouse than the originals (although DS9 is clearly the best Trek imo).

      I’m very excited for the upcoming Picard series and hope it brings us back to the sort of thoughtful stories and moral ambiguities that made the earlier iterations so fantastic. I feel like Discovery kind of dropped the ball on that one.

    4. The Rev Kev

      That is sad to hear that. She goes right back to the original days of Star Trek. It was through the work of such women that it became possible to have a female starship Captain in Voyager as the lead role, in spite of the opposition of studio executives. RIP

  6. JohnnyGL

    For those who are interested in what’s happened at the Real News, here’s a frustrating segment:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOI6T3OcvI

    I like all the presenters, Luqman, Steiner, and Fletcher. They’re all quite thoughtful and have interesting things to say on various topics and stories. However, this whole segment got on my nerves. I came away thinking:

    “Why on earth are they providing unsolicited campaign advice to Mayor Pete?!?!?”

    Instead, the tone and premise of the segment should have been about how the Mayor has basically failed the black community in South Bend, failures the Mayor himself has admitted to in a few moments of humility that are nice to see from major political figures.

    The problem is that Pete’s candidacy essentially asks voters to vote for him with a pitch that goes like this, “My record shows I’ve made mistakes and need to improve, but promote me anyway because I had the courage to admit my mistakes.”

    No one touched on the colossal arrogance it takes to demand a promotion while admitting you did a subpar job!!! The guy’s patently unqualified to be president. The three of them should have pointed this out instead of trying to teach him how to talk to black people.

    1. inode_buddha

      “No one touched on the colossal arrogance it takes to demand a promotion while admitting you did a subpar job!!! The guy’s patently unqualified to be president. The three of them should have pointed this out instead of trying to teach him how to talk to black people.”

      This sort of thing is routine nowdays, when some company is going bankrupt and the top officers demand (and get) retention bonuses.

      1. Martin Oline

        I can’t help but think of the “Peter Principle” where individuals are promoted until they reach a level of incompetence, where they stay, doing a poor job.
        Mayo Pete seems to think he deserves to move beyond this point. I wonder if he is of an age where all of those who took part in team efforts were routinely given awards for participation. Trophies for everyone!

      2. Mo's Bike Shop

        No one touched on the colossal arrogance it takes to demand a promotion while admitting you did a subpar job!!

        I had copied the quote already to say that that is how it generally goes in Academic Admin.

    2. JohnnyGL

      https://twitter.com/PramilaJayapal/status/1201903336594837504

      Jayapal sticks the knife in beautifully. She calls it ‘unacceptable’ that he was ‘slow to realize’ how segregation really works. She should go further and just call him ‘unqualified’.

      Look at the waves of educated white libruls throw fits about it in the replies. Looks to me like a bunch of people that don’t want to see their candidate tested or questioned or maybe just don’t want to understand how race works in American society.

      You could easily paraphrase Pete’s remarks by saying, “Would you believe white flight happened as a response to federal desegregation orders? Crazy, huh?”

      Imagine just figuring out a long term demographic and political phenomenon that’s gone on in just about every major American city since the 1970s.

      All of this is beside the point because he did NOT DO ANYTHING about it as Mayor and now he wants a promotion. All the people in the replies screaming about ‘bad faith’ are either too ignorant to understand or like the way he sounds when he talks like he’s doing social commentary.

      1. JohnnyGL

        This is seriously infuriating….”He’s young like you are. People make mistakes. He’s at least admitted to his mistakes.”

        https://twitter.com/dal2077/status/1201366888120553472

        WTF is wrong with these people?!?! He’s not an entry level employee that was just hired as your coworker, he’s running to be president. Imagine a guy interviewing to be your boss talking about how he recently learned what the company’s business model is…when you’ve been there 20 years.

        Utterly unqualified….and he’s laying it out there for all to see.

      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        I especially like the one that quotes the transcript to defend Buttigieg against Jayapal when the transcript in fact supports Jayapal.

        Are we really to believe that a Mayor who isn’t aware of his surrounding county is ready for the Presidency?

        “What I slowly realized was that while that was true with the limits of the United States… if you looked at the entire continent, Canada has a single payer system that works quite well.”

  7. WheresOurTeddy

    First the leftists came for Beto, and I did not stand up, for I was not for Beto.
    Then the leftists came for Kamala, and I did not stand up, for I was not for Kamala.
    Warren in progress.
    Pete next.
    then Joe
    then Donald
    Sanders 2020

  8. Summer

    “Does anyone know if Bloomberg was forced to sign the DNC loyalty oath that Sanders was forced to sign?”

    Excellent question

      1. inode_buddha

        “Does the emoluments clause apply to him too?”

        Excellent         question! I am sure the GOP will make sure that it does.

        1. Summer

          I think both parties are afraid to go there because of who could all be implicated in those types of investigations.

  9. a different chris

    Two countries separated by a common language, again!

    Actually I’m not sure about the US overall, but at least in Western Pa (famous for it’s own language mangling) a “ditch” is not a stream at all, but an excavation – natural or otherwise – that does *not* have any water in it.

    Once there is water in it, it stops being a ditch and becomes a puddle or a pond or even a stream if it can flow.

    1. Joey

      You’re on your own if a ditch ceases to be a ditch when it gets wet!

      Not sure that even makes sense unless the ditch is merely decorative and grandma doesn’t want you kids messing around- like that vase I filled that terrible Easter.

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      Really? In my flat part of the Midwest, a ditch could definitely have water in it, though flowing at best like drainage, i.e. not a real stream. Perhaps in mountainous PA they don’t have ditches by the side of the road?

    1. Hepativore

      I take it that they never forced her to sign a loyalty oath to the Democratic Party, particularly the part of accepting the results of the nomination.

      I wonder if part of it might even be lingering resentment at Sanders for stealing her crown at the coronation. If she did enter the race, I wonder if she will magically get the 15% vote threshold somehow. After all, we have to get that brokered convention going, just in case.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        The Sanders loyalty oath was just to make him seem unpalatable to Yellow Dog Democrats in the primary. The last thing HRC or the Team Blue establishment wants is for voters to actually compare Biden and Sanders or Buttigieg and AOC.

        I’m not sure HRC is as mad at Sanders as she is at Warren and Susan Sarandon. I’ve felt the Clinton camp has an attitude that support is owed to Hillary from name brand Democrats, and they are the ones who betrayed Mother.

      2. petal

        I think she’s waiting for the right time-wait until the bottom feeders drop out. Then it’ll be easier to hit that 15%, yeah? The murky water clears up a bit. Hem and haw, more drop out, then boom, she’s in. Plus, it’s less campaigning/traveling that she has to do.

    2. polecat

      Thank you Tulsi Gabbard – for your part in dispatching the lesser Queen Cobra !

      … wonder if Tulsi was a Mongoose in a past life … humm.

      1. VietnamVet

        Kamala Harris was the rebirth of the globalist person of color candidate that worked in 2008. But, her spouse was a white lawyer, a true 10% technocrat family. Michelle gave Barrack the Chicago black credentials that got him elected and which still obscures his neo-liberal globalist soul.

    3. Pavel

      I see that Kamala is blaming her failure on the fact that “Americans aren’t ready to vote for a woman of colour yet” for President. I guess that bodes ill for Liz Warren, the first woman of colour professor at Harvard!

      1. Arizona Slim

        Oh, come on. I’m old enough to remember Shirley Chisholm. ISTR that she ran a pretty serious campaign.

        And Barbara Jordan? All I can say is this: MS, I hate you. You truly are a terrible disease.

        Had Rep. Jordan remained healthy, I think she could have been a strong presidential candidate.

      2. dearieme

        Americans aren’t ready to vote for a woman of colour yet

        That should be “Dems aren’t ready to vote for a woman of colour yet”.

        1. Darius

          A woman of color who’s also a lame phony tripping all over herself to cater to the establishment and couldn’t come up with a compelling reason to support her to save her life. In the Democratic Party, being a woman of color should be a powerful advantage. Ask Barack Obama. In the end, she was lamer than Biden. A way-too-obvious grifter who can’t approach Obama’s level of smooth. Of course the predatory prosecutor and big-bank sellout issues are a longer but equally relevant discussion. Go away Kamala. Please.

          1. albrt

            +1000

            With the news of Kamala Harris dropping out, I am sensing a slim possibility that I might actually be able to vote for the Democrat nominee next year.

          1. Lambert Strether Post author

            Nonsense. This was a Democrat primary. All that “Listen to Black women” foorfra from liberal Democrats, and then the only Black women is out of the race. Just because it stings doesn’t make it trolling.

      3. VietnamVet

        Kamala Harris was the rebirth of the globalist person of color candidate that worked in 2008. But, her spouse was a white lawyer, a true 10% technocrat family. Michelle gave Barrack the Chicago black credentials that got him elected and which still obscures his neo-liberal globalist soul.

    4. drumlin woodchuckles

      The one good thing about Clinton for DemPrez nominee is that she would lose the election by 40 states or more. The more the better . . . IF it would help to finally remove the Clinton Mafia from public life and politics.

  11. JTMcPhee

    Lambert analogizes the polling phase of the electoral period to a horse race, with appropriate caveats.

    Looks to me more like a morphing of Roller Derby, with its kayfabe and predetermined outcome, into Rollerball, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) Lots of, to me at least, eerie resonances with the current state of the political economy.

    Bernie as Jonathan?

    1. neo-realist

      Ancient roller derby was kayfabe and predetermined outcome, but present day roller derby is very much a serious professional sport, granted without the heavy corporate dollars of mainstream professional sports, but still very pro: https://wftda.com/

      Rollerball was a fun film, with excellent stunt and camera work for the games. Also an interesting theme regarding the use of the sport as a means of channeling the futility of fighting the corporate state.

  12. Massinissa

    For a Twitch Stream, 20,000 is HUGE. It means 20,000 *at one time*.People rarely watch an entire Twitch stream so its larger than it seems. Twitch viewership is calculated by the peak during the stream. Also you can watch a Twitch stream after it airs, so its the amount of viewers watching live, at one time.

  13. dearieme

    public programs designed to be universal are somehow flawed because they benefit all echelons of society, rich and poor alike … Social programs that serve limited economic groups, especially the middle-class and poor, are always more vulnerable to political attack than those that serve everyone…

    When I was young if you went to university in Britain then the state “grant” was as follows (from memory). First, tuition fees. They were 50 GBP per year! And the government gave everyone the fifty quid, be your father rich as Croesus. Next ‘maintenance’ i.e. your money for rent and food, books and beer: the government gave you 320 GBP per year if your parents had low income. If they earned more than some threshold they declared it and then would get a reply saying something like ‘the government will pay your child 120 GBP; you are invited to make up the missing 200 GBP as “parental contribution”.’ This expensive system worked well for years, but then not many of us went to university.

    Eventually as more and more students attended, the system was switched over to a mixture of the grant and loans. The tuition fee, however, still fell far short of the real costs. The loan was cheap in terms of interest. The repayment terms were generous, or extravagant, depending on your point of view. The more you earned the faster you had to repay the loan. If you still owed money at some magic age (50?) the remaining loan was simply written off.

    Then came the General Election of 1997. Mr Blair, leader of what he liked to call New Labour, went through all the usual nonsense about the Tories will privatise both the NHS and your grandma. He very firmly promised that student grants would be safe under his government whereas the Tories would abolish it and spend the money instead on … I dunno, the vivisection of puppies.

    Can you see where this is going? The twerp abolished grants in his first few months in office.

    Conclusion: state subsidies are never secure – they wax and wane according to the interests of the people standing for office.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      One criticism I have seen about universal basic income is that, being universal, the rich would also benefit.

      I don’t think that matter too much.

      1. JTMcPhee

        Russian peasant humor:

        Peasant is scrounging in the forest for firewood. He digs out and pulls up the roots of a fallen tree. In the roots is a strange bottle. He pries it out and opens it. A Djinn pops out, chats with him for a bit, then says, “For freeing me from the bottle, I will grant you one wish. But I will grant your neighbor double of what I grant you.” Peasant thinks for a while, mulling over all the things he could wish for — gold, a bigger farm, a prettier wife. Then recalls all the gripes he has with said neighbor. He then says, “I’ve considered carefully. You say my neighbor will get twice what you give me? then make me blind in one eye.”

        1. drumlin woodchuckles

          I have seen other versions of that same story with other characters. For example, several decades ago, Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute illustrated “revenge culture” with the story of the Greek and the Turk.

          God HimSelf appeared to the Greek Peasant hoping to teach the Greek Peasant something about charity and kindness to others. So God said to the Greek Peasant . . . ” I will grant you one wish, any wish at all. And whatever you wish for, I will give your Turkish neighbor twice as much of it.”

          So Greek Peasant says: “Put out one of my eyes.”

        2. The Rev Kev

          The one I heard included a gold mansion, a fast car and a bevy of supermodels – but to have their sex libido cut by half!

  14. DJG

    We already know that Americans are unable to flirt. Americans don’t like the uncertainty. Americans don’t like wordplay. Americans don’t want to be seen as sexual (that’s for under the covers). And especially—Americans don’t like to look at each other.

    But is this the solution?
    I’ve been having some sexual thoughts about you I’d like to share over text if you’d enjoy that

    Note
    Not even over a glass of wine. Not over a picnic. Not during a potentially amusing call with heavy breathing. Not with a bouquet of flowers. Not even glances across a pumpkin-spice lattée

    It has all the charm of, May I share the video of my colonoscopy with you?

    Suddenly I’m feeling like a diehard romantic.

    2. Vegetius

      Feminism has become a cancer on society. Was this an inevitable outcome of the second wave, or was a wrong turn taken somewhere along the line?

      The real tale is all the millennial women who are hitting the reproductive wall and drinking themselves to death. These women, and not Atwood’s cardboard props, are the real handmaidens.

      1. dcblogger

        yeah, let’s go back to the good old days of illegal abortions, when women could not apply to state supported universities, the days of Help Wanted Men and Help Wanted Women.

        Millennials live in a world of crushing student debt, zero economic opportunity, and a world where a healthy birth costs $10,0000. they are not all drinking themselves to death, and I don’t think sneering at human despair provides insight into our times.

      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        I think this is end stage bourgeois feminism, not feminism itself.

        It’s written not only like an HR person, but like a lawyer. I doubt very much that MacKinnon, or Dworkin, let alone Shulamith Firestone, envisaged this outcome.

        But here we are. Language beaten within an inch of its life by credentialed professionals. Whose intentions are, of course, good (arbitrary firings, moar lawsuits).

    3. Massinissa

      To be fair, I’ve never really understood sexting in general. I don’t really see the point.

      1. JacobiteInTraining

        An old girlfriend of mine who had moved to SF once encouraged me to get rid of my flipphone and buy an iPhone “because we can have more fun with it’ (with lots of winky-sultry text emojis)

        Me, doing the usual guy thing, *immediately* rushed right out and bought an iPhone (my first real smartphone) and after tearing it out of its box and wrapping & seeing its video/facetime/etc functionality wondered salaciously what new features she would start utilizing first to spice up our long-distance romance.

        Soon thereafter I started getting multiple (and HIGHLY detailed) texts, links, reports, and data regarding her exhaustive search for a property suitable for lease and renovation into a restaurant as she sought additional opinions and analysis from me on their relative merits, cost-benefit ratios, traffic patterns, and likely lunch/dinner crowd given proximity to tech companies and offices.

        Needless to say, she managed to get a successful gourmet burger joint going that lasted for a few years (profitably) before she sold and moved on to other enterprises, doubled her net worth far beyond me.

        We exchange Christmas and Birthday greetings still, but darnit…..I’m still waiting for my first sext. :(

          1. JacobiteInTraining

            To her credit, yes she did. As often as I cared to visit.

            But since she was born in Korea I was always waaaayyy more interested in her home cooking. Bibimbap and all that. Actually, now that you mention it….we did kinda do some ‘food porn’ texts back and forth. I would exchange racy shots of my fresh king crab/king salmon spreads in exchange for some sexy kimchee, bulgogi or (*shivers with pre-diabetic pleasure*) …hotteok centerfolds!

        2. Massinissa

          Not the answer I was expecting, but definitely the answer that I needed, because this story greatly amuses me!

          Also your username is great. Wha’ll be King but Charley?

    4. shtove

      I, for one, would like to view the colonoscopy video. Does the mic pick up the “I’ve never heard that one before” banter with the jaded colonoscopist?

    6. ewmayer

      To paraphrase Joss Whedon (line in an episode of Buffy), Americans are masters of the single entendre.

    7. Daryl

      > This is apparently not a parody:

      I’d be immensely more creeped out by “I’ve been having some sexual thoughts about you that I’d like to share” than by some casual sexting…

    8. Joey

      To their credit, a quick Twitter responder pointed out the fact that asking if I can be sexual, is in fact unsolicited sexuality.

    9. Basil Pesto

      young, well-travelled, not-unattractive-from-certain-angles-in-certain-lighting-conditions man here: Americans are highly capable flirters, and the most sexually liberal nationality that I’ve come across.

      The tweet is awful but thankfully it’s a fringe position

  15. XXYY

    If you had a couple billion dollars, you could announce your candidacy for president and be taken seriously, even if you were the dumbest person on Earth.

    This describes Howard Schultz’s campaign to a T. The media fawned all over this dim coffee oligarch (while he lasted) and transcribed his every ridiculous utterance with great seriousness. I’m sure he would still be getting great press to this day if he hadn’t bailed.

  16. John k

    IMO people that would vote for Bloomberg third party are those that would either sit it out or vote trump if sanders is the nominee. Granted there are a lot of those among the elite dems, but not a big number in, say, the rust belt.
    Most of those with tds, and there are far more of these, would vote sanders with varying enthusiasm.
    Besides, how does he get ballot access? Buy it from the greens? Libertarian? Doesn’t seem a good fit.

    1. Pat

      Putting on my prognostication hat, let me say that I don’t think Bloomberg cares about the rust belt. As for getting on the ballot Bloomberg can and would buy what he needed to get onto the ballots.

      In my mind this is all about the electoral college map. There could be a substantial slice of voters in NY, Massachusetts and California who might go for Bloomberg. Making those safe Democratic states in the electoral college vote more volatile, and thus requiring more attention from a Sanders campaign.

      If the votes are counted accurately in those states, I do not think it will be enough to actually switch those Electoral College votes from Sanders to Trump or anyone else. The thing is I’m pretty sure the vote count in NY could be gamed, and there is evidence from 2016 that it could be done in California as well. Something that probably isn’t possible without a strong third party run that would cut into the substantial Democratic lead for cover.

      Since I think Virginia could be a toss up for Sanders because of the MIC vote, A Bloomberg run could destabilize the situation allowing an even larger ‘landslide’ for Trump or god forbid Pence or Haley.
      And that would be a huge win for the oligarchs, who despite all their bad mouthing have done well under Trump, as it would allow the story to be about how Sanders took the worst beating since Dukakis and it was all because he was too left for the American public.

      I would hope our 1 to15% would not be so stupid as to vote for him, but like discussions here the past few days, the managerial class is in protective mode so all bets are off.

      1. alex morfesis

        Bloomberg tends to forget and want the world to forget how if one certain fernando ferrer had not done an adlei stevenson and gotten into an ugly snit fit with mark green of fake populist (nader raydr) rich real estate family fame, no way Bloomberg wins the 9/11 election….as that fateful day allowed rudy and hence bloomberg to look leaderish while ferrer and green decided to be petty.

  17. Wukchumni

    The Navajo that lived @ Canyon de Chelly had some 4,000 peach trees, that is until Kit Carson & the US Army cut them all down in 1864.

    It’s a most interesting place to visit, as the Native Americans still live & farm in the bottoms, amidst the ruins.

  18. allan

    Charlie Savage @charlie_savage

    Phone records show Lev Parnas, the indicted Giuliani colleague, was in close contact with John Solomon as he wrote his notorious pieces in The Hill

    Good thing no one ever took Solomon’s work product seriously … oh, wait …

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      The fraction of RussiaGate/UkraineGate that can be taken seriously is quite small. An enormous amount of it is “it’s ok when we do it”-level material. Difficult to sort without presenting a range encompassing all factions.

      It’s possible I’m too jaded, but “reporters presents material derived from his political faction” isn’t all that exciting, since I don’t belong to either of the factions engaged in this battle. I remember the Lewinsky Matter, WMDs, and (see today’s Links), being smeared by Prop0rNot, and UkraineGate just a little too well.

      1. allan

        Yes, but there is a difference between advocacy journalism and being an instrumental part of one faction. More on Mr. Solomon’s “reporting”:

        Andrew Bates @AndrewBatesNC

        As the [Washington Post] fact checking team worked on this [factchecking] piece giving Graham and Nunes 4 Pinocchios for their Biden smears, they shared the findings w/ their [Graham’s and Nunes’] staffs — but instead of getting an immediate response were called “out of the blue” by John Solomon.

        Judy Miller would be envious.

        1. integer

          Maybe she would, but it’s the anti-Russia/anti-Trump crowd who are pushing for war, not Solomon.

  19. XXYY

    I think Cilizza should give consideration to the idea that not only did Warren botch the rollout, her plans were bad, and were seen as bad.

    The establishment is trying mightily to salvage something useful from Warren’s surprisingly rapid decline in the polls, constantly pushing the refrain that M4A was somehow the kiss of death for her. In fact, she rose to prominence by riding on Sanders policies like Medicare for All, canceling student debt, and free college. “I’m with Bernie” was her frequent reply on several policy issues, and she co-sponsored Sanders’ Medicare for All Senate bill to great effect on her own “progressive” cred.

    IMO it was her later waffling, insincerity, and backtracking on M4A that caused progressives to realize not only that she was not committed to solving the most important issue identified by Dem voters, but that she may not have a fire in her belly to address the nation’s other urgent crises and would likely accommodate to powerful interests in Obama-esque fashion.

    1. Mo's Bike Shop

      Six years wait for the ACA to piss almost everyone off. Trump as the not-Democrat has such an edge among the disaffected who are still angry enough to vote. Especially since the whole and only DNC message will be ‘you can’t possibly vote for Trump!!!’

  20. Pat

    As for Harris quitting, I hope all the consultants got paid. And I wonder how many spent the Thanksgiving holiday trying to line up new positions.

    The most terrifying comment I have seen regarding her dropping out so far has her being appointed to be Attorney General by the newly elected Democratic President. That is one seriously deluded…sorry…idiot, who apparently missed all the evidence of how badly she performed in her previous legal positions in California as an attorney general and district attorney. Well unless they want someone clearly more interested in lining up the donor class than in actually prosecuting those who break the law and protecting the rights and way of life of the voters.

    1. jo6pac

      Well unless they want someone clearly more interested in lining up the donor class than in actually prosecuting those who break the law and protecting the rights and way of life of the voters.

      That worked really well for obomber and eric the holder;-)

    2. Danny

      I predict she could do far more damage as attorney general than Eric “Place” Holder, who did nothing for taxpayers or the American people.

      Kamala Harris actually took a campaign donation payoff from a grateful Mnuchin, whose OneWest Bank she failed to prosecute after he shafted 30,000 California mortgage holders.

      https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/kamala-harris-tells-big-lie-2012-mortgage-settlement-good-deal-homeowners.html

      Speaking of donations, Harris has something like Ten Million dollars in cash from her loyal investors, does she return it? Use it to support other candidates? Or, keep it for her attempt to get reelected to the senate in three years?

      1. ambrit

        She’s a classic grifter. She keeps it to fund ‘Seminars’ in exotic locales, and a ‘fitting’ lifestyle for an American Politico.

    3. Mo's Bike Shop

      I’m appalled by the two year election campaign. When did she peak? And it looks to me like ImpeachmentGate will leave only Fox News paying any attention to the fact that a primary is going on when the actual voting starts.

      I am, however, looking forward to any really jaundiced views on how the propaganda was catapulted here.

      1. Charger01

        Her performance during the Kavanaugh confirmation performance is truly legandary. Go back to C-Span and check it out. The Dems couldn’t have failed any harder if they tried…and they simply didn’t show up to win.

  22. Field Marshal McLuhan

    On the Twitch thing:

    A few years ago I was sitting at home on an average weekday morning, playing a popular computer game. It was early. I was wearing a bathrobe and slippers and had a steaming hot cup of coffee sitting next to me. I’d decided to try a round or two as a bit of harmless distraction before starting on my day.

    I started a game against a random online opponent and waited for the game to start. As soon as I saw my opponent’s name I damn near sprayed my coffee all over the keyboard. I recognized his name, because I frequently and regularly watched his game-strategy videos on YouTube. I’d been randomly paired against one of the game’s most popular and influential players, a guy who has tens of thousands of people watching every match. Purely by chance, my lazy morning had turned into a public spectacle.

    It only took him a few minutes to mop the floor with me – I’m nowhere near a competitive-tier player. And then, like that, the match was over. I had just spent a few minutes having thousands of people watch me get my backside handed to me. It was one of the most bizarre, surreal experiences of my life.

    And worst of all, I was so distracted my coffee got cold.

    2. BrianC - PDX

      Both of my sons have had similar experiences. One was playing Hearthstone at Grandmaster level, while in middle school, and was matched with the top ranked Hearthstone player at the time. He was playing a Priest deck, which no one played competitively. My son won the match and then got to watch as the streamer guy spent 30 minutes going over the replay on his twitch stream to analyze why he lost. :)

      My other son was playing Team League HoTS, in high school, and was ranked for awhile among the top 100 players in NA for several months. Almost everyone he played with or against was streaming. He even had a twitch stream for awhile and made some coin off of it. Not enough, alas, to offset his college costs at U of AZ. ::sadface:: It was a learning experience for him when Blizzard Entertainment shut down their competitive HoTS business. (As Lambert? says if you don’t own the platform, you don’t have a business.)

      Twitch is essentially an electronic share cropping scheme. They are making serious coin off of the streamers they host… (I read the terms when my minor son created his Twitch stream.)

  23. ChrisPacific

    The poll graph without three day averaging is a great visual illustration of the margin of error concept. It’s even clear in the averaged version. I guarantee people are NOT changing their minds that fast, and I’m sure all the issues Lambert highlighted are contributing to the inaccuracies.

    That said, a few trends are clear. Biden is trending steadily (but very slowly) downward. Sanders and Buttigieg are trending up, Sanders slowly and Buttigieg somewhat faster, while Warren is settling back to her long term average after a bump in October. Harris’ decision to withdraw looks like a good one. Undecided numbers are all over the place, and tend to spike up when other lines spike down, so I’m guessing that’s down to differing polling methodologies and how hard people are pushed to make a call.

    1. Mo's Bike Shop

      Are these pollsters reading all twenty names over the telephone? Or is the polled asked to name a candidate? I can’t get my head around how to manage a list of this many candidates by voice without ‘Name Recognition’ being the first choice.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > Are these pollsters reading all twenty names over the telephone?

        That’s a very good question. Is the list of names so long — I don’t think we’ve ever had one so long — that it enables pollsters to game the polls in new ways? Could be such a simple and obvious mode of rigging that we did not see it.

        Polling mavens?

        1. dk

          The short answer is yes, the full list of names is read at least once. But the number of candidates can vary between pollsters and polls.

          For example in the Dec 1 polls:

          HarrisX (C+)
          Nov 30 – Dec 1
          Sat – Sun
          437 Reg’d
          National
          18 candidate names, plus “Other” and “Unsure” (not present in data source, derived in app)
          Details here: https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/472629-bloomberg-overtakes-harris-in-new-poll

          Morning Consult (B/C)
          Nov 25 – Dec 1
          Mon – Sun
          15,773 Likely
          National
          16 candidate names, plus “Someone else” (not present in data source, derived in app)
          Details here: https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/

          The differences are Joe Sestak and Steve Bullock in HarrisX but not MC, going to guess that MC decided not to list them because they dropped, and if they asked the names during the survey their report them in the conveniently names “Someone else” category.

          Regarding ChrisPacific’s point about Undecideds, yes, this is affected by methodology and whose polls came out on a particular day.

          And more generally, we should expect to see noise in this data. These are minuscule samples compared to the actual voting universe of over 65 million. The “Margin of Error” / “Confidence Interval” claims are based on the assumption that all polls are distributed as a uniform bell curve. Arguably useful for getting the noise out of stats for physical observations of mechanical models, but absurd for human polling. Pollsters (who work mostly in marketing) use MoE/CI to convince clients spend money on small polls and then spin out reassuring MoE or CI (which scale to each other, bigger MoE = narrower CI). (Tangentially, on political campaigns, the tactical advantages to be found in population data come from looking into what’s happening in the noise, not from smoothing it out and then assessing the distorted surface).

          And as in most viscous media, quick changes tend to snap back to origin, slow ones push though. Consider also that a) these candidates are introducing themselves, impressions develop over time, and engagement is still low. Also, the context of US society may be gradually changing, but it would take a sudden shock (like 9/11 at the time) to change the background context and be reflected in a suddenly shift in Dem Primary polls.

        2. anonymous

          I participated in the last Des Moines Register/CNN Iowa poll. The pollster was required to read all of the names, even when I could name one immediately.

          The call came on my cell phone from a restricted number. I asked for what company or candidate the poll was being conducted; the interviewer said that she was not given that information, but at the very end I was asked whether I would be willing to talk to a reporter from CNN or the DMR (I declined). She did tell me the research firm for which she worked, which I later saw was the name of the firm that had conducted the poll. When I saw the original release, I wondered whether I was correct that this was the poll, since I remembered a question about my preference for a health care system that wasn’t in the original release. That result was released at a later date.
          The M4A option for that question was simply M4A, without additional information or qualifiers. I, as is usual for me, couldn’t simply answer a multiple choice question, but explained that I supported improved M4A, and that current Medicare is still expensive. The interviewer told me that she herself has trouble affording Medicare, and that she particularly has trouble paying for her medication. (We got a little chatty.)

          The research firm was also contacting Republicans. She said that I had been the first Democrat that she had reached that day, and that Republicans got different questions. She did not know whom she was calling and, at the end, asked my first name so that her company could verify that she had reached the right individual.

          I’ll check back here in case there are any other questions about the poll that I might be able to answer. If anyone is interested in the questions themselves, those are already available online.

          Why did I agree to participate? To have my support for Bernie counted, of course!

        3. ChrisPacific

          The paper ballot for our local body elections randomizes the order of the names, on a per-voter basis. I looked at the one my wife received and the order was totally different from mine.

          Thanks to dk and anonymous for the extra background.

  24. Synoia

    Pence is at his best when he’s making small talk with patrons of local restaurants, telling them anecdotes, and listening attentively to their comments, people close to him say.

    Patrons of local restaurants: Drawn from what demographic, not McD Customers I suspect, more like $300 per plate…

    1. Mo's Bike Shop

      Easy to amass plenty of video of local community leaders for ‘homey’ ads played over and over during the Media Spending Season. Pence has to be a cameraman’s dream, his head is just a q-tip.

  25. Fiery Hunt

    All I gotta say re: Harris campaign…

    #ThankYouTulsi
    Truly knifed and didn’t know it for months.

    Now do Liz. And Mayo.

    1. Massinissa

      Pretty sure Pete won’t be quitting.

      I don’t think Lizzie has a leg to stand on, but I think she might be stubborn enough to press on. I mean, other than Bloomberg (for different reason) shes the only one who could potentially stop Bernie.

  26. Matt Alfalfafield

    Regular Twitch user here. 20,000 viewers is huge for Twitch, but you have to remember that it’s a live-stream site, so the numbers aren’t directly comparable to something like YouTube, where views accumulate over time. A streamer with a regular viewership of 20,000 likely has a million followers, some of whom are diehard and most of whom watch sporadically or not at all. (I follow one streamer who has a quarter million followers and a regular viewership of 2000-3000. Around 5000 viewers subscribe to his channel on a monthly basis in exchange for exclusive emotes and chat badges, and I think that’s a pretty typical ratio for mid-tier streamers.)

    Also, as a general rule, the larger a Twitch stream is, the more toxic the chat is. It’s impossible to have a manageable conversation with much more than 2000 viewers – at that point, the chat is mostly spammed emotes and snark, and the streamer can’t really interact with individual viewers. Don’t judge Twitch by its biggest streamers – they’re not really representative of what the platform can be like.

  28. DonCoyote

    I followed Lambert’s links on the history of Bernie Sanders/Jesse Jackson, and hoisted something out if 20 Things you didn’t know about Bernie Sanders

    During his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders said he wanted to end fracking entirely, that there has never been a single U.S. trade agreement with a foreign country that he’s been comfortable with, and declared, “It makes no sense that students and their parents pay higher interest rates for college than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages.” The comparison ignores the concept of collateral and the fact that most homeowners and car buyers put money down at the time of purchase. It is difficult to repossess an education.

    This was written at the end of 2018, before Sanders entered the current race, but the “faux fact-checking smear” is already much in evidence. Collateral is not needed on student loans, because unlike car loans or mortgages, they can’t be gotten rid of in bankruptcy. Thanks to Bernie’s friend, “No Malarkey” Biden.

  29. drumlin woodchuckles

    ” Amazon’s own numbers reveal staggering injury rates at Staten Island Warehouse” . . .

    I know we have at least one fellow reader-commenter here who is proud to support Amazon with his/her business in the full and complete knowledge that his/her support for Amazon helps injure these workers.

    Will that fellow reader-commenter identify hermself by jumping up to defend herm’s comment and condemn my comment? Time will tell . . . .

  30. ewmayer

    Honey for the Bears: “Look To Older Workers For Clues About The Next Recession” [Teresa Ghilarducci, Forbes — classic exercise in cherry-picking the data. Says nothing about how well using older workers’ wages as a recession predictor works historically, just says said metric is now similar to 2007 – so what? Also I seem to recall 2007 had a little thing in form of the beginning of the implosion in a monstrous, historically unprecedented subprime-lending and securitization-fraud bubble – gosh, might that have had something to do with the ensuing recession? This is just the Forbes columnist making sh*t up in order to fill column space with stuff intended to make its subscribers feel like they are privy to secret economic knowledge.

    Comparing the 2007 subprime bubble to today’s Fed-sponsored “everything bubble” (to use Wolf Richter’s term for it), OTOH, might actually tell us something useful about the likelihood of another sequence of ‘market events’ and recession in the next few years – but “Look To The Frickin’ Obvious Macro Data For Clues About The Next Recession” is rather less-sexy sounding of a headline, I suppose. And digging into the macro data is harder than simply making sh*t up!

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > just says said metric is now similar to 2007 – so what?

      Fair enough, but do we really have more than straws in the wind and anecdote at this point? I honestly prefer what Ghilarducci said to what Yeltsin said.

  31. Carey

    Seems to me that Ms. Harris could and should face a strong people-oriented Senate primary challenge next time around..

  32. Amfortas the hippie

    “So we are indeed following a horse-race, but the horses don’t stay in their lanes, some of the horses are not in it to win but to interfere with the others, the track is very muddy, and the mud has splattered our binoculars, such that it’s very hard to see what’s going on from the stands. Also, the track owners are crooked and the stewards are on the take. Everything’s fine.”

    some of the horses happen to be dead, too.
    but if this is pointed out, the Owners get all apoplectic and start calling everybody Vlad, and must go down into the Vault and lay near the the Holy Cup of Triangulation, to be restored.
    it ain’t pretty

    +100
    ill get the beer. come see me next time you’re within a 150 mile radius of the middle of texas.

  33. The Rev Kev

    “What is happening with Elizabeth Warren?”

    I think that I can answer that. Jimmy Dore put out a 5-minute video showing her in action. A protestor heckled her in front of a meeting and she went into deer-in-spotlight mode and shut down. In the end she had to be rescued by Ayanna Pressley and I was thinking – “She really wants to debate Trump? Will she shut down then too?”. (Some language)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CeRiG9jdF0

  34. Amfortas the hippie

    Pence embodies “wooden”.
    the man is a full body hard-on.
    watch any video of him.
    are we really ready for an all-male white house staff?
    Hope Hicks is one of the few bright spots of the current regime.
    it’ll be a sad day when it’s Kenneth Parcell, instead.

  36. ambrit

    An anecdote concerning the “Holiday shopping Season” from Ye Deepe Southe.
    I managed to retain cordial relations with the sister, one of three wives of heirs to the ‘big’ health food and vitamin shop hereabouts, who manages the operation. Being the ‘only local game in town’ now has not benefited their business. This shop caters to the Ten Percenters and Evangelicals of the region. As a result, their prices are higher than the other places, all now sadly extinct. Today was a monthly percentage off sale day, usually a bustling scene. the place was only half full when I arrived. For over an hour, I viewed lackluster shopper traffic. Six months or more ago, this day would have had the store packed with people all day. The manageress had told me last year that the monthly sale day made a good bit of the stores volume. When I approached her today, she was distracted. Sales, she said, were much lower than expected. Indeed, she told me, sales for the last month were below par, way below par. This was not just limited to her operation. She had been hearing similar tales of woe from other small shop owners and managers she kept in touch with. “Christmas this year is looking to be a bust,” she said.
    This woman echoed the lament of the other vitamin shop owner I know who packed it in earlier this year; “The Internet is taking business away from the small stores.”
    My question is, when the breakdown of ‘cheap’ shipping happens, will there be anyone left who could revitalize the old ‘brick and mortar’ shops? Similarly, who has the skills set anymore to re-industrialize America when ‘cheap’ manufactured goods from overseas stop being ‘cheap?’
    I’m marginally handy. I cheerfully volunteer to build guillotines for the Jackpot.

    1. JBird4049

      There still survivors from the Great De-industrialization, but they probably will be mostly dead in a generation, so we better hurry.

    2. cnchal

      > My question is, when the breakdown of ‘cheap’ shipping happens . . .

      That has already happened, for the smallest businesses, depending on package volume and weight.

      At the end of June, USPS moar than tripled shipping rates for some, forcing the shippers to flee to UPS, where the end result was a mere doubling or so, of rates. Lots of peasants trying to make a little living are being snuffed out.

      Conversely, the bigger businesses negotiate with the big shippers and get a super special discounted rate.

      The news get’s way worse in the near future. At the end of this coming January USPS is raising rates for ground shipping and the counter clerks describe the coming rate increase as “crazy” and “astronomical”. Excepting of course the Chinese E-packets.

      Someone has to pay lots so the bigs and Chinese get free rides. It is going to backfire as the spend at the post office goes from thousands a year to zero due to the tiniest pinpricks of capitalism being killed by these rate increases.

      > . . . will there be anyone left who could revitalize the old ‘brick and mortar’ shops? Similarly, who has the skills set anymore to re-industrialize America when ‘cheap’ manufactured goods from overseas stop being ‘cheap?’

      No to the first question and I could do the second, but am on strike. The middle finger is the only one I will lift for this corrupt system.

      1. drumlin woodchuckles

        Has the USPS been backed into this triple-the-shipping-rates corner by the multi-year-running conspiracy to starve it of revenue by various clever devices such as the amazing pre-paid-retirement-requirement?

        Is this part of the plan to exterminate the USPS from existence and privatise the profitizable pieces?

        Can Blue-Minded states be ready in advance to sweep all the pieces within their own Blue State borders into Blue State postal services? So that mail and package delivery may continue within the Blue States?

        Because if they are not ready in advance to do exactly that very thing, they will get the same zero mail service that the Red States will get when the conspiracy to exterminate the USPS finally succeeds.

  37. richard

    Here is k.kulinski with a Medicare For All call to arms. I really do like kulinski, even if i can often guess what he will say about something. He has a talent for boiling things down to constituent elements, and expressing himself in an inspiring way.
    It is very depressing to think of few true allies we have in media and politics. We are not permitted to despair though. Apparently.

  39. Wukchumni

    So we are indeed following a horse-race, but the horses don’t stay in their lanes, some of the horses are not in it to win but to interfere with the others, the track is very muddy, and the mud has splattered our binoculars, such that it’s very hard to see what’s going on from the stands. Also, the track owners are crooked and the stewards are on the take. Everything’s fine.

    Seeing as a horse can be bought off very easily in this sort of from flag fall to that’s all contest, it’s fitting that our politicians be entered in a claiming race. ‘Claiming’ in this instance not being a candidates dubious claims, it’s more simple than that, merely the price for which they can be acquired.

  40. flora

    Thanks for the Michael Hiltzik article. It’s a must read. His points apply to more than higher education.

  41. Oregoncharles

    The Plantidote – yes, yellow is the dominant fall color here, too, esp. the Big Leaf Maples, which also have showy yellow flowers in spring. Ashes turn yellow, the oaks just turn brown.

    Our only native red is from vine maple, which is small but can put on quite a show en masse. I’m told the sumacs turn very red on the east side of the mountains, but I haven’t seen that.

  42. Big Tap

    A video from Tucker Carlson. Every once in a while he’s allowed to say things the mainstream media isn’t allowed to say. The video is about Paul Singer (Elliott Management) and his hedge fund buying into Cabela’s which was headquartered in Sydney, Nebraska. Cabela’s was merged with Bass Pro Shops and the town lost 2000 jobs and was hard hit by Singer and his fund but Elliott Management and Singer made a nice profit. It shows the people and town left behind after the jobs leave. Watching this was depressing.

    https://youtu.be/IdwH066g5lQ

    1. Pat

      Just reading the written article was depressing enough. And Elliot Management only had 11% of the business, but they dictated the need to sell.

Comments are closed.