By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, Cape Island – Crewe House, Cape May, New Jersey, United States. “Night-singing from a single perch in the neighbor’s hedge at night; I walked right up and recorded it from just a few meters away.” Lots of variety!
“Bird brain from the age of dinosaurs reveals roots of avian intelligence” (press release) [University of Cambridge]. “Researchers have identified a remarkably well-preserved fossil bird, roughly the size of a starling, from the Mesozoic Era. The complete skull has been preserved almost intact: a rarity for any fossil bird, but particularly for one so ancient, making this one of the most significant finds of its kind. The extraordinary three-dimensional preservation of the skull allowed the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, to digitally reconstruct the brain of the bird… Navaornis had a larger cerebrum than Archaeopteryx, suggesting it had more advanced cognitive capabilities than the earliest bird-like dinosaurs. However, most areas of its brain, like the cerebellum, were less developed, suggesting that it hadn’t yet evolved the complex flight control mechanisms of modern birds… ‘Modern birds have some of the most advanced cognitive capabilities in the animal kingdom, comparable only with mammals,’ said Professor Daniel Field from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, senior author of the research. ‘But scientists have struggled to understand how and when the unique brains and remarkable intelligence of birds evolved—the field has been awaiting the discovery of a fossil exactly like this one.'” • Neat! (The original from Nature, which I cannot translate into English.)
In Case You Might Miss…
- About those camps…
- Blame Cannons: Biden staffers, Axelrove, Fetterman unload.
- Boeing’s management challenges., layoffs.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Trump Transition
“House Probe Into Matt Gaetz Relies On Witnesses DOJ Found Lacked Credibility” [Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist]. The deck: “A convicted felon said he was paying the legal fees of Matt Gaetz’s accuser and controlling her.” More: “Among the many powerful figures in Washington, D.C. opposed to the Gaetz nomination are some who are attempting to thwart it by releasing a report from the House Ethics Committee that will attempt to tie Gaetz to salacious allegations involving child sex trafficking. The report comes years after DOJ dropped its investigation into the same claims on the grounds that the two central witnesses had serious credibility issues. Yet these are the same two central witnesses the House Ethics Committee has relied on for its critical report of Gaetz—the same report it is leaking to compliant reporters as part of a coordinated effort to thwart his nomination as President-elect Donald Trump’s next attorney general…. The politicized employees at DOJ have shown themselves willing to explore novel legal theories and bend federal rules to the breaking point in pursuit of their most reviled political opponents, most notably former and future President Trump. Gaetz has a reputation as one of the most tenacious cross-examiners of DOJ officials from his perch on the House Judiciary Committee. Yet even the DOJ was unwilling to exploit Greenberg’s unsubstantiated claims — apart from leaking them to the press to hurt Gaetz’s reputation. They announced their closure of the investigation in 2022.” • Worth reading in full for detail on the accuser.
* * * “Here Come Trump’s Concentration Camps” [The Tyee]. From Canada. “[T]he stocks of private prison corporations have risen since the election, signalling that investors anticipate a flood of federal money to pay for building migrant detention centres. Whatever they might be called, concentration camps will be necessary under this new administration. Project 2025, the dossier of policy proposals to substantially overhaul the American federal government authored by Trump’s supporters, has a chapter on homeland security and border control. It calls for a ‘significant increase in detention space,’ noting about 100,000 beds would be needed on a daily basis — up from around 60,000 at present. Even if 100,000 deportees could be arrested every day and flown out the next day, it would take 110 days to ship 11 million people out of the United States. (And with perhaps 200 passengers per flight, that would require 500 passenger jets daily, or their equivalent in trains and buses.) They’d stay in camps until their flight was called.” • Let’s assume, as immigrants do, that only undocumented immigrants who are guilty of having committed crimes (other than being undocumented) are targeted. “In 2018, the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 782 per 100,000 illegal immigrants.” Assuming we have 11,000,000 immigrants, that rate implies 86,020 deportees (430 flights in total, not 500 daily for 110 days). Now, I personally don’t think our government should be creating a three-ring binder for how to round people up and put them in detention facilities, because once we use that binder for one purpose, we’ll pull it out and use it for other purposes; I imagine any small-government conservative would agree (“Of all the works of Sauron, the only fair”). It seems to me that this issue would be better addressed through law enforcement at the firm, not law enforcement on the streets, despite any squawking from the American gentry who tend to do such hiring. Yves takes a look at our operational capacity for this project, and has other suggestions here. The entire issue is a good litmus test not only for Trump, but for his staff. Flaky pie-crust loons or nah? NOTE The “13,099 Illegal Immigrant Murderers” talking point that’s running around is a mess, per Cato.
2024 Post Mortem
“EXCLUSIVE’It’s a blood bath’: Inside the White House blame game as backstabbing staffers and score-settling pundits rock a Democratic Party in crisis” [Daily Mail]. Fun stuff. This caught my eye: “As that same former Biden staffer put it: ‘[Obama’s staffers were] signed up as the saviors of the campaign only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama.'” And: “In the end, no matter who ends up with the blame, the Democratic Party will have to move on to [hopefully not] survive. A new generation of ambitious Democrats are already said to be plotting their 2028 campaigns – governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Maryland’s Wes Moore.” • That’s the bench for 2028? Really? “Stature” is not a word that comes to mind.
“John Fetterman says Democrats need to stop ‘freaking out’ over everything Trump does” (interview) [NBC]. “‘I’ve said this before, it’s like, clutch those pearls harder and scold louder — that’s not going to win,’ Fetterman, D-Pa., said. ‘And that’s been demonstrated in this cycle.'” Fascinating to see “clutch those pearls” make it into mainstream, idiomatic English; “clutch your pearls and head for the fainting couch” was a trope I encountered as a blogger c. 2003 (on the Democrat side. I don’t think Republicans clutch their pearls, but what do they do instead? Grab their guns?). Fetterman on the Democrat loss in PA: “[FETTERMAN:] I pointed out there were two very incredibly unique situations, and one of them was the assassination [attempt]. … [T]his never happened when it’s the year of an election and when the individual survived. And he responded in a very distinctive way of ‘fight, fight, fight,’ and it created very powerful kind of imagery. And I felt, ‘Hey, that’s definitely going to make things even more difficult.’ And then [Elon] Musk. Surrogates are common in our business, but someone like that is different, and I’ve maintained that he can move the needle, and I do believe he did … that’s why we’ve lost two of our colleagues in the House, and we’ve lost every row office statewide, as well.” • I don’t like Fetterman much on policy, but he’s worth listening to for the campaign he ran. (Fetterman tactfully doesn’t mention the Shapiro v. Walz controversy, but I think Shapiro would have gone down in the face of ‘fight, fight, fight’ also. There was absolutely no way the Pennsylvania Republicans were going to lose that race.
* * * “From New Jersey to Hawaii, Trump made inroads in surprising places in his path to the White House” [Associated Press]. “Common themes emerged in the AP VoteCast data. Voters were most likely to see the economy and immigration as top issues facing the country. More voters said their family’s financial situation was ‘falling behind,’ compared with 2020. When they voted, Trump supporters were thinking about high prices for gas, groceries and other goods and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
“The Democrats’ Defeat” [Adam Tooze, London Review of Books (AG)]. Let me pull out some salient paragraphs: “The defining feature of US politics in the current era is how small the margins are. This election saw large movements in specific groups: Latino men to Trump; college graduates to Harris; better-off voters to the Democrats; working-class Americans to the Republicans. But it remains a matter of a few percentage points, with the vast majority of the electorate entrenched in two camps and most of the country barely contested. What moves those voters who do change their minds from election to election remains obscure.” And: “But in terms of defending existing rights and power positions, in terms of retaining the possibility of further change, in terms of preventing the worst, what was at stake on 5 November were the 270 seats in the electoral college. And to have a decent chance of winning them, it was not necessary to build a historic progressive bloc. It was necessary to run a competent campaign and to field candidates capable of presenting America’s reality, both its promises and its challenges, in language that was compelling and reassuring at the same time. Biden and Harris both failed to do that, and Biden’s outrageous refusal to step aside until the last moment robbed the party of any chance of finding a stronger candidate.” • I always enjoy Tooze, but for some reason this article reminded me of nobody so much as David Brooks (and his Irish setter, “Moral Hazard”). The trope that popped into my head was “‘You can’t buff a turd’ is fractal.” Is any kind of problem-solving in this environment really possible?
“Democratic turnout plummeted in 2024 — but only in safe states” [Semafor]. “The vast majority of votes from this election have been counted, with just a few million ballots outstanding in western states. Total turnout is on track to fall just short of 2020, well ahead of some observers’ expectations on Election Night, when conspiracy theories about more than 10 million “missing Biden voters” flourished among Democrats. Harris will win fewer votes than President Joe Biden did four years ago — but the decline was significantly steeper in safely red or blue states than in swing states. Where there was no national campaign spending on turnout, and where voters knew that they were unlikely to change the outcome, Harris ran further behind Biden.”
Campaign Finance
“Political Ads Can’t Buy the Presidency” [Bloomberg]. The deck: “Democrats outspent Republicans by more than $300 million in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. Yet Harris won none of the swing states where the vast majority of spending went.” More: “Money doesn’t win US elections, but it often helps. In bids for the Senate, the candidate who spends the most is typically the victor. That pattern held this year: In 21 of 33 Senate races, the candidate who spent the most on advertising—generally the major expenditure for a campaign—was the winner…. The link between spending and winning has always been weaker in presidential contests…. Given that turnout had a large impact on election outcomes in 2024, [Adam Bonica, a professor of political science at Stanford University] suggests that, in the future, both parties should consider rethinking their spending. ‘Maybe it’s not advertising they need to do,’ he says. ‘Maybe they should be putting more of the resources into mobilization and registration and party building.'” • Money can’t win an election if you set it on fire and throw it into the air!
“Oprah town hall cost Harris campaign far more than initially claimed: report” [FOX]. “A new report revealed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign paid more than double what was previously reported for the Oprah Winfrey town hall event. FEC filings, first reported by the Washington Examiner, show the Harris campaign made two $500,000 payments to Winfrey’s Harpo Productions on Oct. 15, a month after Winfrey’s town hall with Harris and weeks before the pair appeared at a Harris Philadelphia rally. Now, two sources have told The New York Times the full price of the event with Winfrey was closer to $2.5 million…. The bulk of the extravagant spending reportedly went to celebrity appearances and performances and influencer partnerships meant to boost campaign events.” And: “Winfrey, a billionaire, insisted she was ‘paid nothing’ when confronted by TMZ. A Harpo Productions spokesperson acknowledged to Variety that the company took money from the campaign but claimed it was for ‘production costs.’… ‘Oprah Winfrey was at no point during the campaign paid a personal fee, nor did she receive a fee from Harpo,’ the spokesperson said.” • I don’t know how Hollywood accounting works, but that statement seems carefully engineered to me.
Republican Funhouse
“An Appeal to Democratic Voters” [Patria with Steve Cortes]. “[H]ere are the three most compelling reasons to at least consider joining our America First cause — and to vote Republican into the future. (1) The Democrat Leadership Disrespects You…. (2) The GOP Is Now the Party of Workers; (3) The Democratic Party Obsesses with Social Radicalism.” • I think “of workers” is telling. “Of,” as opposed to “of, by, and for,” which would imply quite a different party.
“League of American Workers President: ‘Arizonans realize that the American Dream has become out of reach'” [Grand Canyon Times]. “Steve Cortes, president and founder of the League of American Workers (LAW), today said that poll results released by his organization show Arizona voters no longer feel the American Dream is reachable. That poll showed 84% of Arizona voters say families in the state cannot live on a single income.” • More on the League of American Workers.
Spook Country
“CISA Director Jen Easterly to depart on Inauguration Day” [NextGov]. “Jen Easterly, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s stalwart champion and a figurehead among cybersecurity and intelligence community practitioners, will leave her post Jan. 20 next year when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated back into the White House, people familiar with her plans said… The future of CISA in an incoming Trump administration remains uncertain, as GOP allegations of censorship stemming from CISA’s interactions with social media companies — claims that Easterly has adamantly refuted — played a prominent role in a recent Supreme Court case, which the Biden administration ultimately won.” • More on Easterly here.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Axelrod: Democrats Can’t Approach ‘Working People’ Like Missionaries And Say, ‘We’re Here To Help You Become More Like Us'” [RealClearPolitics]. “”I do have concerns about the way the Democratic Party relates to working-class voters in this country. The only group that Democrats gained within the election on Tuesday was White college graduates, and among working-class voters, there was a significant decline. The only group they won among– Democrats won were people who make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. You can’t win national elections that way, and it certainly shouldn’t be that way for a party that fashions itself as the party of working people.” • Not “fashions itself.” “Fancies itself.”
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC November 11 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC November 9 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 9 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data November 15: | National [6] CDC November 14: |
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| Positivity | |
| ★ National[7] Walgreens November 11: | ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 16: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC October 28: | Variants[10] CDC October 28: |
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| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 2: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 2: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Good news!
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* still popular. XEC has entered the chat. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) Down.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Actually improved; it’s now one of the few charts to show the entire course of the pandemic to the present day.
[7] (Walgreens) Down.
[8] (Cleveland) Down.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Now XEC.
[11] Deaths low, positivity down.
[12] Deaths low, ED down.
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Manufacturing: “Boeing’s Recent Quality Issues: 5 Key Developments” [Simple Flying]. (1) “Executive resignation amid production restarts”; (2) “FAA mandates a comprehensive quality improvement plan”; (3) “Quality defects discovered in undelivered 787 Dreamliners”; (4) “Whistleblowers expose systemic safety violations”; (5) “Ongoing quality issues affect the 737 MAX program.” • That’s a lot.
Manufacturing: “Boeing strike post mortem: Ortberg has work to do” (excerpt) [Leeham News and Analysis]. “Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg’s performance during the IAM strike is getting low marks from the men and women who will do the work that turns Boeing around-–the mechanics, techs, and engineers in the factories, according to those LNA has spoken with. Ortberg came in talking about a “reset” in the company’s relationship with its unionized workforce. He took a good symbolic step by announcing he’d relocate to Seattle and work from there. But while Wall Street hailed the move, it didn’t land as well as it could have. Ortberg spent one day in the Renton factory before the strike. Boeing got a good photo of him touring the factory floor, but it’s unclear if he met with many workers.” Ouch! More: “Likewise, it’s unclear how much Ortberg was involved in one of the biggest crises his new company faced when he took over: the Machinists Union negotiations.” • Sadly, the material about Ortberg is mostly behind the paywall; however, it appears that he “went with Calhoun’s plan” (Calhoun being the previous CEO who was forced out).
Tech: “Maybe Bluesky has ‘won'” [Gavin Anderegg]. “When writing about Bluesky, I’ve seen folks mention that it’s either federated or decentralized. I’m here to tell you that it’s currently neither. This one really irks me because the service is getting the credit for work it hasn’t done….. All this to say: the Bluesky team seems like they’re earnestly working toward a decentralized platform, but they have a lot of work ahead of them. Years of effort, in my estimation. In the meantime, Bluesky is slightly more decentralized than, say, Facebook — but not by much. Yes, you can host your own data. Yes, you can scrape all of the content on the network. But you can’t do anything with it unless you’re attached to the Bluesky service. I believe this will change with time, but it will be prohibitively expensive and we’re not there yet.” • With discussion of the advantages of Mastodon’s simple ActivityPub protocol, vs. Bluesky’s complicated AT Protocol (“atproto”). I haven’t tried Bluesky, because I’m not sympathetic to liberal Democrats making themselves even more embubbled than they already are. I have tried Mastodon, but compared to Twitter it feels like a provincial backwater. That said, the PMC migrating to a Silicon Valley-centric, not open-source, and enshittifiable platform (yet another platform) is rather telling. Maybe it’s the “Blue” in “Bluesky” that triggers them.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 51 Neutral (previous close: 50 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 68 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 18 at 1:23:03 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes up one on Drought. “A very large area of the nation is under general drought conditions” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Do these people know something we don’t?
Permaculture
“The Way of Mushrooms: Russula, the Trickster Mushroom” [The Meaning of Water]. “It was early October on a warm gentle day when I chose to walk a different path in the Trent Nature Sanctuary forest. And there, in the cedar-birch-poplar forest, I discovered beautiful fanned-shaped saprotrophic mushrooms arranged like street trees on a boulevard and stitching an enchanting network of crisscrossing lines of creamy ‘flowers’ on the forest floor. I noticed that they were arranged in close to what looked like a fairy circle in the thick duff amid dead logs and branches of several fallen poplar and birch trees; no doubt obtaining their nourishment from the decaying wood.” • But how to identify them?
Gallery
So few lines:
Fishing Boat near an Island #artbots #rembrandt pic.twitter.com/HnL3YxvB4w
— Rembrandt (@artistrembrandt) November 11, 2024
“Comment: Was Boeing contract unions’ last big win for now?” [Everett Herald]. “Yet these contract wins at Boeing, UPS, General Motors and the other two big Detroit automakers, and beyond, expose the limits of organized labor’s power today. These workers belong to unions organized decades ago, and they’ve obtained higher pay and much better benefits through collective bargaining on new contracts. But increasing the number of U.S. workers represented by unions remains difficult. The percentage of U.S. workers belonging to a union continues to shrink, declining to 10 percent of the labor force in 2023. As Joe Biden, arguably the most pro-labor president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, departs the White House, and Donald Trump’s team gets ready to move back in, I believe that prospects for the growth in union members in the near future appear exceedingly bleak.”
“Teach Yourself to Echolocate” [Atlas Obscura]. “fter losing his vision as an infant, Kish taught himself to move around with the help of echolocation. Like bats, Kish uses his mouth to produce a series of short, crisp clicking sounds, and then listens to how those sounds bounce off the surrounding landscape. (Our winged neighbors tend to emit these clicks at frequencies humans can’t hear, but Kish’s clicks are perfectly audible to human ears.) From there, Kish makes a mental map of his environment, considering everything from broad contours—like walls and doors—down to textural details. Kish now teaches echolocation, mostly to students who are blind…. Whatever your sightedness, there’s something to be said for learning to listen more attentively to sonic scenery. Kish believes that vision has a way of blunting the other senses unless people work to really flex them. Deft echolocators, he says, are able to perceive fine differences—distinguishing, say, between an oleander bush (“a million sharp returns”) and an evergreen (“wisps closely packed together, which sound like a bit like a sponge or a curtain”). They’re discovering sonic wonder wherever they go. We asked Kish to tailor a lesson for first-timers just learning to listen to the landscape.” • Interesting! And I imagine it would work in the dark…
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Principal author interviewed on most recent episode of Science Friday (9:31 min. audio)
> Principal author interviewed
Thank you!
I live in swing state North Carolina.
I saw, easily, ten Harris ads for every one Trump ad.
For me in a small-town county seat in Michigan, the ratio wasn’t quite that high — two or three to one, I’d guess. OTOH, one likely confounding factor was that almost all the ads I saw were on line (including many while I read NC) . . . at least, as long as we count the ones delivered via FiberNet with the eclectic mix of YouTube/Amazon Prime/Disney+/etc. videos my daughters watch.
What you were watching could be at play. This is part of the Harris Campaign didn’t know where to spend their cash issue. In 2016, the infotainment channel for Hillary was interrupted by HIllary Clinton campaign commercials. Obviously, it was a quid pro quo, but instead of going beyond the captive audience, they just threw money at one thing.
I saw a few good Harris campaign ads, but then they just kept coming and became a drone.
I received one or more text blasts per day in Michigan for the last couple of weeks of the election season. Some stragglers from Democratic Youth Wave (oh, you charmer!) arrived as late as Friday. I don’t know whether someone signed me up out of spite or Bernie gave up his list.
Oh, during the Russian interference shift, you mean? /s
I don’t know if he gave up his list, but ‘Our Revolution’ was emailing me on behalf of Harris. They were given a proper scolding and blocked.
I don’t believe in ads. For what they spend on ad buys they could hire multitudes of doorknockers. People are conditioned against advertising, their subconcious minds resist repeated nudgings.
People are now most vulnerable to other living people who when standing on their doorstep are 1000x more real than the perfect hair headshot reading them the news on their ultra hi-def wall-sized screens. When’s the last time you went to a store and someone there tried to sell you something? Truth is, many of us have lost our resistance to an in-person hard sales pitch simply because we never encounter them other than when buying a car or house.
Most important, your doorknocking teams are the McDonalds of political first jobs. The more you invest in volunteers and lower tier workers, the more you grow your party.
Average people are drowning in ads even as they thirst for human contact. How many personable people would apply for a $30/hr job to do four hours of doorknocking a day (late afternoon/early evening)? That’s $120 per worker per shift and $1.5 billion buys 12.5 million shifts or 50 million hours of doorknocking which would mean EVERY door in the USA (that’s accessible) could have been knocked on.
Sadly, no one gets a commission on doorknockers, not to mention that it’s “good” work (fresh air/exercise, challenging conversations). Shorter hours make it a great seasonal second job, letting you use an actual cross-section of society to knock doors for you instead of the usual armies of college kids and seniors. Those workers bond, form relationships and bring energy back into local politics. All that was lost when the neoliberals made the Democrats a pay-to-play party.
I like your idea but would argue it’s anathema to the current DNC for a number of reasons.
First, it’s not a technocratic solution, it does not require any of the shibboleth’s of the DNC courtier class, and instead places power into the hands of the general population of “low end” members of the party. The DNC has worked very hard to wrest as much power as possible from it’s actual members. Your suggestion would give a massive amount of it back, and give them a platform to push for reform inside the DNC itself.
Second, it is functionally the exact opposite of the DNC’s purpose (as I see it) which is to not “win” elections, but to funnel money to the “right” people. After all if the DNC do better with basic boots on the ground, 50 state solution actions like large scale face to face, door to door campaigning, then all those NGO’s and media consultants, and celebrities don’t get rich.
Third, it would require a large expenditure of labor, and to be frank, I don’t think the DNC in anyway shape or form wants to support actual labor. I also don’t think they are capable of recruiting a large base of people who could effectively do this job. You would only have a shallow pool of DNC faithful and activists who, I think, would be inclined to do this. And well, your average DNC faithful, IMO, is less likely to convert an undecided voter leaning towards Trump or to possibly flip a GOP voter then absolutely antagonize and argue about “why are you not voting the way us smart, educated, non deplorable non garbage people are”, if they are not receptive. As for the activist class, same thing, they are far more likely to pick a fight with a “misogynist” “privileged” “white” or “white adjacent” person then provide either a cogent argument for the DNC or have the ability to simply say thank you for your time and walk away from a dissenting person.
The DNC’s ( and Inner DemParty’s) mission is not just to funnel money to all the right people. It is also to keep the wrong people from getting nominated and posing the risk of winning under the Democratic Party label.
The DemParty primaried Tulsi Gabbard in order to get her de-elected from her Seat in Congress. The DemParty engineered Sanders out of two primary seasons in a row. The Pelosi division of the DemParty discriminated against tough old legacy Democrats in the House by handing out power-assignments within the House DemParty according to how much money House Democrats could collect, thereby excluding from leadership positions tough old legacy Democrats like Marcy Kaptur who lived in and represented poorish districts where there was not much donatable money to be had.
( I remember some years ago going to a State Democrat level fundraising bean dinner in Michigan. We were given a choice of whether to target our bean money towards the National DemParty or towards the Michigan DemParty strictly and only. I targeted my bean money towards the State Party strictly and only because ” I don’t want Pelosi to get any of the money.” They understood and didn’t seem offended at all.)
( On the other hand, I also remember local Democratic public-facing booth-manners and table-manners acting like the people your last paragraph describes. The more Clintonite and then Clintobamazoid they became over time, the more boring they became over time. Meanwhile the Republican booth-manners were much more interesting as people. Their greater interestingness wasn’t enough to sell their ideology, but it was enough to make being around them for a minute or three mildly fun.)
I live in a true blue state. I saw no ads. But I contribute that to the large amount of adblockers I have installed – I don’t see ads in general. It’s always a shocker when I use someone else’s laptop and there are ads before youtube videos. I did, however, see trump supporters regularly doing standouts downtown. (I live in a purple district in a blue state.)
RE: Here Come Trump’s Concentration Camps
I’m so old I remember the talk about Bush/Cheney building internment camps and thinking it was a distinct possibility at the time. Well that never happened, at least not in the way it was presented at the time.
Will there be scads of federal money given to build even more prisons? Quite likely! Will elected officials come up with novel and potentially personally profitable methods to fill all those new cells? Yessirree! Because that has happened over many decades across multiple administrations now.
The first big hoopla about concentration camps I recall was after the 76 election when I was stationed in Germany. Larouche’s USLP had pamphleteers everyplace there was an army base (which at the time was pretty much everyplace) and their stuff was all about how Ford had really won the election and how Carter, the Rockefellers, and Leonard Woodcock (then head of the UAW, not sure what their real grudge against him was) were building internment camps for their political enemies.
I remember reading about them in the 1960’s, in The Guardian (US), an Old Left newspaper that has been defunct for years. Charles Mingus mentions them as he introduces Meditations On Integration on his Live at Town Hall date from 1964.
Processing facilities can be set up all along the border and near select airports and bases in less than two weeks — if it is handled by the military and FEMA.
These would be primarily trailers similar to the kinds used to process people into and out of emergency response situations. People arrive, are processed, and are either driven or flown out of the country. No one who is thinking seriously about this action wants permanent camps.
The Federal government owns over 2,000 buses and 50,000 vans. The airlines will be encouraged to participate, the way they have for certain large deployments of troops. Spirit Airlines, which has just declared bankruptcy, has over 200 planes alone. Sounds like there may be plenty of displaced federal employees who can be re-assigned to this effort.
The cost of all of this will be less than the war in Ukriane, and taxes/fees on legal remittances should not only help defer these but will also drive a wedge between legal and illegal immigrants.
I think the worst thing for the left to do would be to continue to act as useful idiots for the globalists and treat the re-establishment of national sovereignity as if it is 1938 Berlin, because it is not. It’s just going to be produced by the legacy MSM to appear that way.
But since every day is either 1938/68 for some people, I expect a lot of pointless and self-defeating signalling. Sort of like when some of them indicated that their fellow citizens should be encamped for refusing to subject themselves to certain medical treatments.
Maybe a pronoun-less AOC will go cry on another fence. I doubt the globalists are going to roll out anitfa out for this one as they will be immediately arrested and RICO’d. Trump may try to provoke them, as he will certainly be trying to provoke the cartels. President Sheinbaum would do well to tread lightly and appear helpful.
I expect Stephen Miller has spent the last four years composing memos to deal with all of this that will be signed on Gaetz’s first day. What is going to be interesting is to see what happens after Trump/Holman starts telling federal judges to try and enforce their orders in the face of a declared emergency.
And then the ordinary people who support this project will know for sure that they now live in a country where privileged elite ghouls spend four years planning ways to inflict great harm on “other” ordinary people; and they’ll know those elites have detailed plans, armed enforcers, an extensive incarceration system, a legal system that serves the elites, and buses! and vans! and planes, hundreds of planes! to inflict wide-spread harm on ordinary people.
And they’ll cheer, thinking the privileged elite ghouls built this system on their behalf.
Turns out that people who worried about “FEMA camps” aren’t worried about a society and a government that sends people to “FEMA camps,” but just want to make sure they’re not (at least this time around) the ones being sent there.
This topic of deportation by the next administration was discussed this past Saturday on the Michael Smerconish show on CNN. The number of suspected to be criminals and criminal adjacent appears to number close to 700,000. That’s an immediate focus I want to believe .
Adding in this video clip as well. My humble thoughts, maybe ICE or Border Patrol have kept up on the paperwork and can ably determine who traveled to where to live with whom or who went to work at any large employer ( employment agency ). I have serious doubts.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/16/politics/video/smerconish-trump-immigration-carlos-trujillo-digvid
Hold my pearls, Brad, the “secret FEMA camps” meme gets a new lease on life !
Thread that discusses the votes at the 11/14-15 HICPAC meeting:
https://x.com/TogetherWeMask/status/1857610298770812934
video of the meeting:
https://www.youtube.com/live/rnf2gWXMtNI
Thank you! Dare I look…
UPDATE Illustrates why airborne specialists were allowed into workgroups, but not given a vote on the Committee itself.
RE: Gaetz nomination
Pretty clear that Trump’s election was a giant middle finger by the electorate to the Democrat party in the first place. Now Trump is giving a second [family blog] you by appointing so many of those the Democrats tried to cancel. Unlike several others though, Gaetz has always been a Republican as far as I know. Gabbard was a Democrat though. So was RFKJr. So was Musk if I remember right. And so was the Big Cheeto himself at one point in time. While a lot was made of a potential Liz Cheney cabinet position in a Harris administration, nobody seems to be mentioning all the Democrats on Trump’s team. Funny that.
One other note about Gaetz – the Democrat party has done a bang up job of smearing him again and sowing confusion. I’m a few minutes into the latest Useful Idiots podcast and they lead off with Gaetz and admit to not knowing a whole lot of the details. Aaaron Mate does mention the possibility it could be political retribution, and while they do mention that the DoJ already declined to press charges against Gaetz in a sex trafficking case, they fail to note that the Democrats latest accusations are the very same case. Spoke to a friend a few days ago who pays pretty close attention to politics and who brought up the Gaetz story, which had me confused at the time. I said it was old news and the case had been closed. Took me a bit to realize the Democrats were teasing their own Congressional investigation of Gaetz, which I didn’t even know existed (and why should it given the DoJ decision?!??). I’m not seeing much about the DoJ decision and the possible extortion against Gaetz in any discussuion of this story, except of course here at NC.
Here’s the podcast for anyone interested – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASNVbjn9CNE
Stoller points out that Gaetz is very sound on anti-trust (a “Kahnservative”). And yet somehow the populist aspect of Gaetz’s politics is never mentioned.
Well, it’s not the Democrats’ house investigation, since the GOP controls the ethics committee. He has plenty of non-friends among his fellow GOP congressfolk, and they can smear just as well as the donkeys.
There was a meme passing around on Twitter of Trump, JFK Jr., Tulsi, and Musk standing together somewhere (It maybe is even AI generated but it doesn’t matter) and the caption said something along the lines of “hey, look, the democrats won” or “they all used to be democrats” or something like that. Of course most didn’t see one bit of humor in it.
It sure seemed like a giant middle finger, and then Trump rubs the democrats nose in it by appointing people they hate with a thousand suns. It worked. Many are in a complete tizzy and having their own meltdowns. A couple in particular I got a kick out of are Krystal Kolinski and Kyle Ball. I guess Krystal is rich and can do what she wants. I don’t know about Kyle, but how do he/they make a living out of publishing agastitute and calling people stupid all day on Twitter? But I digress…
There was some postings recently that Mitch McConnell said there will be no recess appointments. I don’t know if that is true or not to be honest. There was a video I watched of him saying this but he didn’t say anything – he was frozen at the mike. Did he say it or not? I have no idea, but I read it elsewhere too. Unless they can pull that off, I don’t see how some of his picks get confirmed. My guess, JFK, Gaetz, and probably even Tulsi will never make it. Maybe others as well. But who knows…
I’d like to see Gaetz confirmed, both for the reason Lambert notes above, and for the same reason that I enjoyed Musk’s twitter takeover – he’s going to turn over some rocks and I want to see what;s underneath. The fear of that happening is why there will likely be a full court press to keep him out.
The one I hope is not confirmed is Hegseth. That dude is held together by some rust and duct tape – all the screws got loose and fell out years ago. Even if Trump nominated him for performative purposes, which is highly likely (he is still playing reality show after all), I just don’t see the point. I’m hoping his nomination was due to his employer and appointing a Fox News anchor was just one more middle finger to the Democrats. He had to nominate a weekend guy though – Hannity isn’t going to do it because he probably makes a LOT more at Fox. Hegseth I’m assuming isn’t making top dollar.
Does Gabbard even need to be Senate-approved for her post?
> So was RFKJr.
The doomscroll delivers!
… time is a flat circle (via X/Twitter)
I added orts and scraps. Enjoy!
Russula, the Trickster Mushroom. The article is interesting, and the photos are excellent. One of the ways of learning about mushrooms is from well-taken photos from many angles, although experts like Patience Gray caution against too much reliance on photos.
The whole Russula family, and its cousins, the Lactarius, are problematicalicious.
Michael Kuo is quite funny about his exasperation:
https://www.mushroomexpert.com/russula.html
The only Russula that Patience Gray seemed willing to eat is Russula viriscens. Its jade-green cap makes it unmistakable. She gives the Catalan name as Puagra. I’m finding three Italian names. The Italian Wikipedia entry maintains that colombina verde can be eaten raw. The assertion is currently highlighted in pink by the editors — it is almost certainly wrong.
Lactarius also are a mess to figure out and eat. Gray maintained that northern Italians wouldn’t eat Lactarius, but that in her region, the Salentine, people gathered and ate some of the Lactarius species without croaking.
So one must learn one’s funghi. Mushrooms go way beyond micro-aggressions. They’ll just knock you out. My practice is not to eat any of them raw, not even the white buttons called “champignons” here in the Undisclosed Region.
I haven’t heard from Hillary Clinton in some two weeks. Maybe more. Did she go out a-mushrooming? Did anyone warn her about fly agaric?
Two dew claws up to Dusty. Great plantidote!
You could turn that photo into a great painting to hang.
Dusty! Scruffy goodness!
2.5 million to Oprah, but she wasn’t paid a fee. OK. I’m guessing Oprah is a smart lady, so she must know money is fungible, so I’m not buying what she’s selling. Just a little fib there Ops? Then again, I don’t trust her, Hollywood, or anything out of the Harris campaign.
I find that “during the campaign” to be both defining and specific. Either she is getting a fee or she isn’t. If she isn’t you don’t need the ‘during the campaign’, but if she is and it is something that will be done at a later date, well… Of course they could also be parsing the term ‘fee’, the thinking being that any royalty or profit sharing aspect of Winfrey’s overall contract with Harpo doesn’t count as ‘fee’ which would nominally be for a service.
Of course, there is the fact that that is one outrageous (and growing) fee for a rally, even with the Harris campaign having to pay the ‘entertainment’. The mere fact that Harpo was used and paid extravagantly could have been her payment. Keeping her company well in the black could be the quid pro quo that the Harris campaign provided.
Whatever the truth is, I believe the illusion that Oprah was not there out of the goodness of her heart, and deep sincere admiration of Harris has evaporated for all but the most deluded.
Hey, Oprah’s had a rough month. Give her a break.
It’s hard for her to keep track of all her money when she’s probably holing up in one of her mansions, binge watching RomCom’s and snorting lines of Ozempic all day.
So the money went to her production company. If she is an “employee” of that company and draws a “paycheck”, then maybe she got a special payment, or bonus, that would only show up in payroll records. Just a wild a** guess.
“That’s the bench for 2028? Really? “Stature” is not a word that comes to mind.”
Come on now. You can rely on Big Gretch to whip that bad old Congress into line. (And make them like it too!) “Be good or Donor Dom spank!”
The great thing is that even those who still insist that Harris was the perfect candidate don’t have her on their 2028 list. And Schiff has been gifted the California Senate seat, so she looks to be in a bit of a political box canyon.
I would guess that you can scratch Gretchen Whitmer from being a future Presidential candidate though. After that totally unnecessary Eucharist/Dorita stunt that she pulled recently, she is damaged goods to too many voters.
And what was Winfrey due, had Harris have won?
Re: the ‘blood bath’ article
I’m not convinced the Democrats are ‘in crisis’. The Harris faction has clearly taken a tumble and there’s a lot of jockeying for position going on. But losing elections doesn’t threaten their power, unless it happens by a large enough margin to diminish them as a credible threat to win and thereby jeopardize donor funding – which this one didn’t.
What threatens them is insurgent candidates like Bernie and third parties, and they are well and truly in the ascendancy on that front. I’m sure all this infighting is a great spectator sport, and the order of the chairs at the top table may well change considerably, but there will be no new seats.
I’m not so sure that the Harris loss isn’t going to affect fundraising. She supposedly raised over a billion, spent it all and more and didn’t even get the lousy t-shirt. Beside the dumb regular folk who fell for the thousands of emails and texts, there are probably more than a few bigger pocket donors who feel pretty dumb right at the moment.
I’m not saying that Democrats might not win them back, but I do not think the pockets will be quite so open and easy to pick next time around.
Yeah, but the consultants must have had a really prosperous year.
At least the donors for both parties are not in crisis. Actually it is mostly the same people.
I wonder how Oprah feels about Beyonce being paid 4X as much for her endorsement?
Old, probably.
All the covid charts looking… good? I honestly don’t know how to process positive news regarding covid at this point.
Anecdotally, I don’t know anyone currently down with it, which hasn’t been the case for a while. With Thanksgiving next week, is this just a temporary drop before the traditional holiday surge, or a sign that things are actually improving?
Hopefully we get a break before the bird flu pandemic blows up next…
Fishing Boat, Rembrandt
That looks like it’s done in pen on a laid paper and with no effort at all. He emphasized the fisherman and his boat with heavier strokes.
Similar to sumi. For even fewer lines: Cracked Ice Screen.
Early impressionist.
I ran across this woman who has been doing Kamala impressions on YouTube. Hilarious. This is her “not doing well” after the election:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzITUeUqXeE
Taibbi and Kirn. ATW tonight, no paywall.
America This Week
ATW Livestream Tonight at 8 PM ET/7 PM CT
https://www.racket.news/p/atw-livestream-tonight-at-8-pm-et7-f0f
Not especially newsworthy but an exceptionally insightful dialogue tonight. Best takeaway was Kirn consistently challenging the baseless smears and Russiagating.
Baseless smears are a specialty of the opposition. What else have they got at this point? / ;)
Alcohol has sufficed for countless generations of democracy’s losers. I am a former post-election 12-stepper: if you can take twelve steps without staggering, take another drink. Campaign memories are not easy to erase, but it can be done.
re: Taibbi on rumored nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health
Haven´t watched ATW yet.
Taibbi (probably while talking to Kirn live – secretly, simultaneously! – sending out his email):
It’s Time to Redefine “Fringe”
Critics of the rumored nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health need to check the election returns
Matt Taibbi
The Washington Post couldn’t get through an article about Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya without using the F-word. The sub-headline from Saturday read, “The Stanford physician was excoriated by NIH’s director in 2020 for his “fringe” ideas on Covid. Four years later, he’s poised for power in Trump’s Washington.”
It couldn’t leave out the C-word, either:
[Bhattacharya’s] stances — and alliances — have also alienated him from many public health professionals, including on Bhattacharya’s own college campus…”We need to have an honest conversation about how a handful of prominent contrarian academics backed by corporate interests continue to tank evidence-backed policy, including COVID-19 protections,” Mallory Harris, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland who received her PhD in biology from Stanford this year, wrote last month…
If Donald Trump creates the position, I volunteer to be Secretary of Feeding People to Komodo Dragons. The first round of tossings into the lizard-pit will involve “experts” who still use grossly snobbish terms like “fringe” and “contrarian” to describe beliefs held by most of the population:
From one of the members of the Covid Brain Trust:
And a reply from another:
At the very, very least ATW could have mentioned NPI’s like masking and ventilation (kirn scorned the 6 ft rule which imo is a good idea even if not “science” and aerosols don’t stop at 6 ft so…ymmv). My one known covid infection was unpleasant in the extreme, don’t want to get it again, and I’m not in a known risk group.
Manufacturing: Porsche recalls nearly 1,000 cars amid risk of ‘wheels falling off’
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/porsche-recalls-nearly-1-000-cars-amid-risk-of-wheels-falling-off/
it never gets old…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
You read my mind.
One thing Tooze ignores is that Biden’s “outrageous refusal to step aside” was aided and abetted until the last moment by the entire machine. Including those who ultimately defenestrated him.
I found it pretty obvious by the summer of 23 that there’s been some serious cognitive slippage and that it was getting bad. And many of those now willing to tell tales out of school admit now, when it doesn’t matter, to having seen the same.
But when it mattered they backed the lie, and even shortly before the debate the increasing public evidence was treated as either Russian or Republican disinformation. People even preposterously vouched that Biden was in decline only in public, but that privately he was as sharp as ever.
My personal belief is that they planned to jettison him for some time, but didn’t want to run the risk of involving the pesky voters in the process. Hence that agreement to an unusually early debate, which they (though not Biden) expected to go as it did.
Agree. It just seems impossible that the inner party “didn’t know” about Joe’s cognitive issues, or that they thought he could pass muster in the inevitable debates with Trump (he couldn’t).
It’s a lot more plausible that the inner party had already decided on Harris, probably in 2023.
They obviously don’t give a fig about the voters, so why would they suddenly change?
All these media types and pundits wondering “Why Trump Won?” . But they never think to 1) Ask people who voted for him and 2) Believe what those people tell them. It’s got to be racism, or sexism, or something other than “I think he will do a better job than the person you are running.” The cognitive dissonance is off the charts.
RE: Matt Gaetz
I hate to admit it, but I’ve been fooled because he looks like a generic frat douche so I haven’t questioned a lot of the mud that gets slung at him. This latest round of accusations however looks like more BS. The Dems don’t want to attack him for anything substantial, like policy, so they start the ad hominem attacks. Of course, it would all be a lot easier if these guys could just keep their pants on. But now my defenses are up whenever politicians start dubious rumors of sex crimes. With so many “boy who cried wolf” stories, my default position has switched from belief to disbelief.
If Trump rounds up and deports all the illegal immigrants working in the dairy industry the dairy industry will absolutely collapse. The rest of Ag is in the same or almost the same leaky boat. When their cheap labor is gone and they have to attempt to hire lazy white Americans for higher wages to do that work they will be screaming Bloody Murder.
Dairy farm owner/operators are overwhelmingly Republican as are the rest of Ag. Massively round up and deport illegals, naga happen.
Is it lazy? Few Americans even have the skills to perform this work at any price. And the working conditions are appalling. Bad enough even some undocumented eventually complain.
as are the rest of big Ag
There, fixed it…
Corporate farming takes lots of cheap labor and the profits start on the farm but they don’t stay there
I recall something known as 5 acres and independence from the stone ages of my youth.
hire lazy white Americans for higher wages
omg not that stupid trope again
people are people…they have bills to pay, and blackstone is a herd of verily overpaid people.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blognov24/defaults-crash11-24.html
monty comments…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAA-G947ofg&t=3s
and re blackstone…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=895eSm4oQRw
Stop it! You’re going to have me thinking that maybe Trump has a Jubilee up his sleeve.
[insert animated GIF of Homer Simpson drooling]
Here is the book Five Acres And Independence by M. G. Kains. Here is the link to a readable page-by-page pdf of it.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.49775/mode/2up
Could this be the ” 5 acres and independence” that you remember?
The propaganda must continue
How Tulsi Gabbard Became a Favorite of Russia’s State Media
Lol and the United States did and does.
Being unable to contemplate speaking to adversaries is the height of epic stupidity. So that’s what liberals believe.
Jason, the Defense Intelligence Agency believed it too, in 2012. There was a “report” declassified then that warned the State Department they were playing with fire by supporting ISIS.
re: CIA vs. Project 2025
CIA´s Substack Spytalk about “fears” of a “purge”
Breaking: Top Intelligence IG’s Resign
Project 2025 had advised Trump to appoint “their own IGs” so that they “have control of the people that work within that government.”
19/11/24
https://www.spytalk.co/p/breaking-top-intelligence-igs-resign
among the hyperlinks:
1) NYT
The Many Links Between Project 2025 and Trump’s World
22/10/24
By Elena Shao and Ashley Wu
https://archive.is/tpedR
2) POGO
Key Intelligence Watchdogs Resign in Wake of Trump’s Win
18/11/24
https://www.pogo.org/investigations/ic-and-cia-ig-investigation
POGO doesn´t really quote much more than a few attacks by trustworthy individuals such as Brennan and Bolton.
Reasons for those are Ratcliffe and and Gabbard.
Seems to me that POGO has forgotten its namesake’s most famous quote: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
I am having the impression “Google translate” does Russian -English translation intentionally in a botched manner. Deepl.com at least keeps to grammatically correct English sentences. Or am I crazy?
p.s. re: Gaza it was reported that Google tries to alter translations.
A few election observations from someone steeped in the choice modelling paradigm. Everyone knew EXACTLY what Trump was about courtesy of a first term and everything else. The “fixed utility” component was not gonna change. The fixed utility component for Kamala was by contrast very unstable since a short campaign with few in depth interviews meant nobody really could form a firm view of who she was.
The random utility component became particularly pertinent. The wide hill of Trump 2020 became a decidedly narrow massively high mountain in 2024, remember we’re considering the distribution of the error/ consistency function for each voter here. This was due to various factors: he displayed an uncharacteristically clear vision playing to what he got right during first term, the Liberal bubble self-immolating by no longer even touching the independent section in the electoral venn diagram and crucially a fundamental change in the paradigm behind “any and for what people vote “.
The old model – where stimuli typically “move the dial” is no longer working. The old school discrete choice experiment is Newtonian physics to a new world of general relativity and quantum stuff. Now people vote according to intrinsic attitudes. Ironically, a choice experiment can quantify these too. But you must know what you’re doing. People voting by attitude will indeed discount the fact the hypothetical candidate has shot someone in Times Square. Events don’t move the dial and when I kept seeing Lambert’s observation that the dial was not moving I concluded the paradigm had changed.
You are perfectly entitled to say that I never put my prediction up here beforehand. But I’ve put my money where my mouth was before – successfully (2017 UK General Election when I knew the pollsters and bookies were wrong). But the very clear and unbiased anecdotal reports here at NC made me conclude about 10 days before Nov 5th that Trump would win and although not by a landslide, random utility theory favoured wins in all the states that counted. Ironically, specific policies generally favoured by people (abortion etc) showed how traditional random utility theory can still work: tall mountains in the random component meant pretty firm victories. But because nobody had a both strongly positive AND “hard, not soft” view of Kamala, she was never gonna win. The “noise” vastly exceeded the signal. Choice modelling when applied in the traditional way, would and should make you very worried if you’re facing that.
PS in the light of wide but shallow support for the Democratic candidate, Trump merely had to not lose ground compared to 2020. Turnout suggests he did precisely this. On the other hand the increasingly shallow support for the Democratic Party meant they became extremely vulnerable: both in terms of actual votes cast but especially in terms of turnout – if you have a wide hill rather than a tall mountain then you are really vulnerable to low turnout. And the count data as of this date suggest Kamala haemorrhaged support.
This is yet another reason why I’d be very interested to see what went on in a bunch of specific down ballot races. My gut instinct is that issues “close to home” where a truly progressive Democrat was in line with local views got support even with a Trump top of the ballot vote.
More North Sea sabotage:
https://x.com/ajgormalec/status/1858773831831482368
FINLAND – A rupture in a 729-mile-long C-Lion1 submarine cable linking Finland to Germany and continental Europe has cut off all data communication being transmitted by the cable. It is the only submarine cable linking Finland to Central Europe, according to Finnish media.
…already being blamed on Russia 🙄
Well, it could be Russia . . . getting revenge for Nord Stream. And showing what it is capable of if NATO-EUFUKUS keeps pushing various issues.
The one interesting item in last night´s panel Ritter/Martyanov/Nixon was this:
Martyanov actually doesn´t believe that ATACMS decision has been made (yet).
After all so far it is merely an allegation by the NYT.
And as such could very well be only a PR test by those reporters sent forward by SoS.
US-actor Denzel Washington in an interview to Sunday Times with not overwhelming revelations but more insight than one would expect, this being the business where you are being lied to as much as nowhere else:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/denzel-washington-people-manipulated-both-political-sides-election-1236063902/
“Denzel Washington is sharing his thoughts on the current political landscape in the United States.
The two-time Oscar-winning actor, who stars in Ridley Scott’s upcoming Gladiator II, was recently asked about the 2024 presidential election, which saw Donald Trump defeat Kamala Harris earlier this month. During his interview with The Sunday Times, editor Jonathan Dean also noted a specific line in Gladiator II that felt timely given the election: “Empires fall, so do emperors.”
“You know, it’s so easy to stand outside America and say this and that,” Washington, 69, said in response. “Turn around, you know? Pick a country. Any one.”
“But listen,” the Training Day actor continued. “It’s all politics. All promises unkept. And now with the information age the way it is — if anything — left, right, whatever had better learn how to use those tools to manipulate the people. There was a great line in the first movie I did, [1981’s] Carbon Copy: ‘Power to the people? Yeah, they had it once — it was called the Stone Age.’”
“We’re all slaves to information now. We really are. We’re all slaves. So whatever you feel about the leaders, like this guy’s crazy or the other one is sane, you’d better realize you’re being manipulated by both sides. Period,” Washington added. “Yeah. So go to the movies.”
The Equalizer 3 star has previously been open about urging people to “open our eyes” and hold elected officials in office accountable.
“I think we, as Americans, need to unite and to hold all of our elected officials’ feet to the fire as it relates to working together,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, during which Trump was serving his first term as president. “We need to demand that they work together through our vote, that they work together to come up with solutions.”
” Come up with solutions” . . . yes, but what solutions?
If you think the problem is that ” Social Security is insolvent”, then you are already halfway to buying the ‘solution’ of “abolish Social Security.”
And if “work together” means that the Catfood Democrats and the Republicans work together ( like Erskine Bowles, Senator Simpson and Barak Obama worked together) to abolish Social Security, or at least try to abolish it, I prefer that the Electeds not be able to work together at all.
Denzel Washington is rich enough to where he does not have to worry about Social Security, so he can believe in “bipartisan” and “work together”. I am not rich enough to where I don’t have to worry about Social Security, so my survival requires that the manipulation continues and that the Electeds fail to “work together”.
Because the only “working together” that the Electeds are capable of doing is “conspiring together” against me and my Social Security.
So I would differ with Denzel Washington on that last point.
Am totally with you. “Third Way”/Clintonism/New Labour was always a mirage.
Trumpism is, at its heart, a recognition that this is so. Trump doesn’t have the cure but he sure knows how to get people to recognise the disease.