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2:00PM Water Cooler 11/26/2024

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Antietam National Battlefield, Washington, Maryland, United States. “Male Northern Mockingbird singing from roadside Eastern Red Cedar. This birds plumage was brownish rather than black — therefore the age is not known for certain. Seems like a rather accomplished singing for a HY bird.” 12 minutes of mockingbird song! A good start to the week. Grab a cup of coffee! HY = Hatching Year.

“Learn to tune into birdsong – respite and fascination await” [David Logue, Psyche (AL)]. “On a typical day, I’m in the tropical forest long before dawn. I stand near a tree with a microphone, waiting for the bird that lives there to wake up and sing. When it finally does, I whisper ‘bird’ into the microphone. It’s a message to my future self that the bird on the recording is the one I meant to record. As the dawn chorus ramps up, I focus ever more on the sound of that bird. I whisper ‘bird’ after each of its songs, like a monk reciting his mantra. All of my attention is on the Adelaide’s warbler, singing from the top of the tamarind tree; there is none left for extraneous thought. I feel like I belong in the present moment, with no desire to be or do anything else. That feeling remains with me long after I leave the field site… Listening deeply to birdsong – that is, listening mindfully, with open attention – combines the benefits of mindfulness practice and those of listening to bird sounds. Here’s how to get started.” • “A tree” and “the bird” implies that every tree has its bird. Can that be true?

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. “Joy” at Bluesky.
  2. Trump team drags feet on signing ethics and transparency agreements.
  3. “Everyone is taking their skim” (of Democrat campaigns).
  4. Boeing 737 DHL plane crashes in Lithuania.

* * *

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 Assassination Attempts (Plural)

An example of “joy” at Bluesky:

One day, like a miracle. ☕️

[image or embed]

— 𝑀𝒶𝓎𝓇𝒶°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🫧🦋 (@lepapillonblue.bsky.social) November 24, 2024 at 10:06 AM

The comments are adorable.

Trump Transition

“Trump team barred from agencies amid legal standoff” [Politico]. “Advisers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reached out to the Health and Human Services Department multiple times after Donald Trump tapped him to lead the massive agency, hoping to jumpstart coordination before his takeover in late January. They were rebuffed. Kennedy’s inability to communicate with the agency he may soon manage, confirmed by an administration official with knowledge of the episodes granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations, is just one consequence of the president-elect’s continued foot-dragging on signing the standard trio of ethics and transparency agreements with the federal government — something his team pledged to do shortly after the election. … Both the Trump transition and the White House confirmed to POLITICO that negotiations on the agreements are still underway…. Watchdog groups, ethics experts and former government officials say the delay in coordination with federal agencies, which typically begins by mid-November, means the new administration won’t be up to speed on the state of the career workforce and budget and what headaches may await them when Trump takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. The failure thus far to sign the memorandums has also troubled Biden officials, who are particularly concerned about the potential national security implications. Without the agreements in place, Trump’s team can’t access any non-public government data — depriving it of a full view of efforts the White House and federal agencies are taking to safeguard against a range of threats.” • Part of me says that working only from public data would be a great idea, since otherwise you’re owned by the people who own the secrets.

“Trump Locks Bathroom Door So Elon Musk Can’t Follow Him In” [The Onion]. • The headline is better than the text. Nevertheless.

* * *

“Sexual-Misconduct Allegations Sank One Trump Nominee and Loom Over Kennedy” [Wall Street Journal]. “Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, has been accused of sexual assault in the late 1990s by a woman who is willing to testify before the Senate. Kennedy has said he is ‘not a church boy.'” And: “‘It seemed like he thought I was somebody else or wasn’t paying attention,’ she wrote in her diary at the time, which she showed to the Journal. ‘Like he would come to every once in a while and snap out of it or I would move away.’ Later in the journal entry she speculated whether he was ‘testing’ her.” • So, contemporaneous evidence (though in full “Smiley’s People” mode, I would want to authenticate that diary, down to the ink and paper, given the money, the stakes, and the players involved).

2024 Post Mortem

Deploy the Blame Cannons!

“‘Everyone is taking their skim’: How Democratic consultants cashed in on Harris’ losing campaign” [Salon]. A must-read. “While most political strategists agree that some spending on paid media is necessary to win a campaign in 2024, Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told Salon that the Harris campaign’s spending profile is indicative of a structural issue with how the Democratic Party approaches paid media and political strategy. According to Shakir, Democratic strategists often see cutting a new 30-second ad as a sort of cure-all to a campaign’s problems and a way for campaigns to address a weakness without re-evaluating the message or stances they’ve taken. “There’s no room you walk into in which saying we should run an ad sounds like bad advice,” he said…. ‘The opportunity to make money off of the firm that has created 30-second ads and the person who has placed the ads is ripe for abuse because there are hundreds of millions of dollars going into it and everyone is taking their skim,’ Shakir said. ‘There’s a huge escalation every step of the way because of a skim at every level.'” Of the rentiers, by the rentiers, for the rentiers. More: “ In some cases, Shakir said, even senior campaign staff will get a cut of ad spending.” Oh. More: “Reviewing the ad spending from the Harris campaign, it’s clear that the bulk of the money was funneled through firms run or owned by Democratic Party insiders…. Many of the FEC filings documenting payments from the Harris campaign to Media Buying and Analytics lump together media production and buying, meaning it’s impossible to distinguish how much the firm is being paid to create media for the campaign versus how much it is spending on air time and what sort of commission the firm is making on those ad buys.” And: “The core issue, as Shakir puts it, is that the party political operations are a closed loop with well-off consultants, politicians and donors all taking advice from each other with little outside input. ‘We have a working-class problem in the Democratic Party and when you have wealthy consultants talking to wealthy donors who are all living in an elite bubble, it can become detached from what messages will resonate with people who aren’t in the elite bubble.'” • Remember the Unity Reform Commission in 2016? Nothing has changed since this famous clip from Sanders supporter Nomiki Konst:

“This smells.” It did eight years ago, and then stench is worse today. The difference that nobody back then was willing to name names, which this time around Shakir names the consultants; read the article. And how good it is to see a Sanders supporter putting the boot in. More like this, please.

“Mega-donor: Democratic overspending disqualifies Harris ‘forever'” [The Hill]. “[Political mega-donor John Morgan] added that the reported $1.5 billion spent in four months is proof that Harris shouldn’t run again. ‘I think this disqualifies her forever,’ Morgan said. ‘If you can’t run a campaign, you can’t run America.’ ‘The same thing is going to follow Harris for the rest of her career. She cannot be trusted with the money, and the donors are going to be, like, ‘Where is this money?” he added.”

* * *

“One Election Takeaway: Voters Hate Temporary Safety Nets” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. “One theme I regularly took up was the fact that congress responded to the Coronavirus pandemic with a series of economic measures which were powerful, but time limited. These covered the gamut, but the most important were the expansions and extensions to unemployment insurance —the direct economic payments (‘checks’) and the extensions to Medicaid. These programs were important not because they provided ‘fiscal stimulus’, but because they underpinned households’ livelihoods at a difficult time and facilitated ‘social distancing’. My worry then was that having such large programs on a time limited basis created what I called ‘fiscal cliffication’. That means politics would increasingly revolve around large fights over what to do as big programs approached their expiration dates.” And: “[T]he pandemic greatly impacted the volatility of labor market income and, at the same time, the expansions of the social safety net — particularly unemployment insurance — greatly reduced the volatility of overall income. This is especially the case for the bottom 50% of households, who always have far more volatile incomes than the top 50% of households…. The reason that households’ financial wellbeing improved significantly between 2019 and 2021 despite such a dramatically regressive depression is purely because of the pandemic safety net.” Concluding: “The last minute switchover to Harris was likely too short to dramatically change messages, or gain credibility as a ‘change’ candidate in a ‘change’ election In fact, it’s that Harris didn’t even really try. This is understandable given the unusual circumstances, but it was electoral poison given that there is nothing like the rage of falling financially behind while being told the ‘economy’ is going great.” • This is a very interesting paper and well worth a read (coffee cup in hand). The thesis in the headline, though intuitively obvious, is not really proven by the paper, but that should be the easy part, considering the work that Tankus already did.

* * *

“Democrats should stop mocking Trump’s ground game and start learning from it” [Astra Taylor, Guardian]. “Trump succeeded, at least in part, because he is a man who will say anything and do anything to win. And of course he was boosted by conservative media – by Fox News talkshows, conspiratorial podcasts, manosphere influencers, deceptive deepfakes, targeted ads, and “First Buddy” Elon Musk’s transformation of Twitter into X. But he also won because he had a strong ground game, even if it occasionally blundered and often looked different from what observers and experts expected from a get-out-the vote drive, including its use of ‘untraditional’ and ‘micro-targeted’ strategies aimed at reaching low- and mid-propensity voters who didn’t fit the usual Republican profile, including Latinos, Black men, and Asian and Arab Americans…. When Democrats insist that Trump had no ground game, they ignore the right wing’s investment and presence in spaces that are not purely electoral and that engage people year-round, including groups like Libre, along with the evangelical churches and student groups that increasingly function as social clubs recruiting people to the Maga cause. As Tiffany Dena Loftin details in the new issue of the Black leftist magazine Hammer & Hope, the right wing has spent decades systematically attacking and defunding progressive student unions and networks and building up their conservative counterparts.” And: “The Trump campaign built on this model, providing its base with community and purpose and organizing them, in turn, to mobilize others to turn out and vote. Before joining Trump’s team as campaign co-chair, Susie Wiles spent years working to lock down Florida for Republicans (she’s since been named Trump’s incoming chief of staff). Her tactics make people feel like an essential part of a group with a clear goal. Wiles piloted the ’10 for Trump’ Iowa caucus program, which gave a subset of 2,000 volunteers the title of ‘captain’, a limited-edition gold-embroidered hat, and the goal of motivating 10 people in their precincts to turn out.” • Susie Wiles is simply re-inventing the Precinct Captain, an age-old Democrat structure alert reader DCblogger often spoke of. And surprise, it works!

* * *

Please, no:

On what grounds would Kamala run again?

The #Resistance

“This is the new progressive strategy for warring with Trump” [Politico]. “Progressive Democrats wrestling with how to navigate a second Donald Trump presidency are settling on a new approach: Take his populist, working-class proposals at his word — or at least pretend to. If he succeeds, they can take some credit for bringing him to the table.” Lol. No they can’t. More: ” If he doesn’t, they can bash him for it. It’s a change in strategy, emerging in private conversations among some liberal elected officials and operatives, that comes after years of resisting Trump ended with him returning to the White House.” And finally: “Progressives are clear-eyed that with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, many, if not most, of Trump’s populist campaign promises will not happen — if he were ever serious about them to begin with. But they believe that his voters want him to follow through. They also lack any power in Congress and are desperate for even an outside chance to influence policy.” • Not with a bang but a whimper. Hey, I’m so old I remember when Trump was a fascist!

Clinton Legacy

“People who wear ties”:

“People who actually know things.”

Democrats en déshabillé

Centrist dipshits, as Atrios calls them:

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!

Look for the Helpers

Mask Project:

“I Ran Operation Warp Speed. I’m Concerned About Bird Flu” [David A. Kessler, New York Times]. “As Donald Trump gets ready to return to the White House on Jan. 20, he must be prepared to tackle one issue immediately: the possibility that the spreading avian flu might mutate to enable human-to-human transmission….. I have been monitoring the spread of bird flu, also known as H5N1, and discussing the situation with colleagues around the country. My concern is growing…. Without mandatory testing, bird flu will continue circulating at farms across the country, which substantially increases the risk that the virus mutates and evolves to allow a human-to-human transmission that will be hard to stop…. No one knows how many mutations will be required to set off human-to- human respiratory spread. That could require many mutations and may never happen. But we could also be just two or three mutations away. If the virus begins to transmit efficiently among humans, it will be very difficult to contain, according to the Johns Hopkins assessment, and ‘the likelihood of a pandemic is very high.’ The incoming Trump administration needs to be prepared.” • I hope raw milk stans don’t have inordinate influence….

Vaccines

Although Adams had a position in the last Trump Adminisration, sadly he does not in the current one:

Personal Risk Assessment

Admirable commitment to the bit:

FAFO….

Elite Maleficence

I suppose the only solution is to put our trust in the billionaires, especially the tech bros:

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
★ This week[1] CDC November 18 Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC November 23 ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 16

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data November 25: National [6] CDC November 21:

Positivity
★ National[7] Walgreens November 25: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 16:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC November 4: Variants[10] CDC November 4:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 2: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 2:

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

Manufacturing: “United States Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The composite manufacturing index in the US Fifth District was unchanged… The reading showed that activity remained sluggish.”

Housing: “United States FHFA House Price Index” [Trading Economics]. “Housing Index in the United States decreased to 0.70 points in September from 427 points in August of 2024. Housing Index in the United States averaged 200.20 points from 1991 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 427.00 points in August of 2024 and a record low of 0.70 points in September of 2024” • What?

* * *

Manufacturing: “Chilling cockpit audio from doomed Boeing 737 DHL plane just before it crashed in fireball is revealed – along with recording of air traffic control scrambling to deal with aftermath: ‘We just got a crash'” [Daily Mail]. “The cause of the crash remains a mystery as Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre deployed experts to investigate… The incident follows reports in recent months that mysterious explosions had occurred at DHL warehouses in Leipzig and Birmingham amid fears of a Russian covert sabotage operation intended to explode aircraft flying in the West.” • Lithuania. Oh.

Manufacturing: “The unanswered questions surrounding the DHL Boeing 737 crash” [iNews]. “After departing from Leipzig, Germany, the Boeing 737 made a “forced landing” one kilometre from the airport, splitting into pieces upon impact and sliding more than 100m, leaving a trail of burning wreckage. Germany’s foreign minister suggested the incident could have been a hybrid attack in “volatile times”, apparently referring to suspected acts of sabotage by Russia against Ukraine’s EU allies…. On Tuesday afternoon, the Lithuanian Justice Ministry said the black boxes, containing flight data and voice recorders, had been found… In footage of the incident, the plane is seen turning quickly on its side moments before crashing in a residential area, near a road. The same movement was described by witness Kotryna Ciupailaite, who saw the plane flying over her car as she drove to work. ‘The right wing of the plane turned down before it crashed as if it was trying to turn,’ she said. ‘There was something shiny coming out of the right side of the plane, like sparks or a flame, before it hit the ground.'”

Manufacturing: “Boeing SC seeks more environmental permits ahead of planned 787 production hikes” [Post and Courier]. “Boeing Co. has filed a flurry of permit applications over the past year — including four this month — with an eye toward future expansion of its 787 plant in North Charleston, as the planemaker hopes to double the number of wide-bodies it builds in South Carolina…. The plans are being driven by Boeing’s projections that airlines globally will need 8,065 new wide-body commercial jets like the Dreamliner over the next 20 years as the demand for air travel outpaces economic growth. The need is particularly strong in the Middle East…”

Manufacturing: “China Southern Airlines Announces Plan To Sell Entire Fleet Of 10 Boeing 787-8s” [Simple Flying]. “[T]he 787-8 has gradually been overshadowed by its larger sibling, the Boeing 787-9. The 787-8, with its smaller passenger capacity and higher per-seat costs, is no longer as economically viable for airlines. In comparison, the 787-9 offers greater seating capacity and improved operational efficiency, making it a preferred choice for modern fleets. China Southern’s intent to sell all 10 of its 787-8s aligns with a broader industry trend among Chinese airlines to phase out older widebody aircraft in favor of more efficient models. Earlier this year, the airline retired its Airbus A380s and has significantly slowed widebody aircraft acquisitions, reflecting a shift toward narrowbody planes better suited for the post-pandemic recovery in domestic and regional markets.”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 64 Greed (previous close: 61 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 49 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 26 at 1:21:13 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?

Gallery

Perhaps I would prefer the photograph, the “original”?

Zeitgeist Watch

“‘What many of us feel’: why ‘enshittification’ is Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year” [Guardian]. “But enshittification not only won their vote, it took out the people’s choice award. ‘This word captures what many of us feel is happening to the world and to so many aspects of our lives at the moment,’ the [dictionary] committee said. Doctorow himself is surprisingly optimistic about where this could all end up. Action on competition to prevent market dominance, regulation on things such as digital privacy, more power for users to decide how they use platforms, and tackling the exploitation of workers could reverse the process, he wrote, because ‘everyone has a stake in disenshittification.’ Big tech can’t be fixed, he argues, but maybe it can be destroyed. He adds a fourth stage to the tech platforms’ scatological journey from being good to users, to abusing them in favour of their customers, to abusing their customers to serve themselves. ‘Then they die,’ he wrote.” •

Class Warfare

“Bossware is unfair (in the legal sense, too)” [Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic]. “You can get into a lot of trouble by assuming that rich people know what they’re doing. For example, might assume that ad-tech works – bypassing peoples’ critical faculties, reaching inside their minds and brainwashing them with Big Data insights, because if that’s not what’s happening, then why would rich people pour billions into those ads? You might assume that private equity looters make their investors rich, because otherwise, why would rich people hand over trillions for them to play with? The truth is, rich people are suckers like the rest of us. If anything, succeeding once or twice makes you an even bigger mark, with a sense of your own infallibility that inflates to fill the bubble your yes-men seal you inside of. But though rich people can fall for scams the same way you and I do, the way those scams play out is very different when the marks are wealthy. As Keynes had it, “The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” When the marks are rich (or worse, super-rich), they can be played for much longer before they go bust, creating the appearance of solidity.” • Followed by a discussion of Keynes and the concept of “the bezzle.”

News of the Wired

I am not feeing wired today.

* * *

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, 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. From a friend of Bob or Janet:

The friend writes: “Two weeks or so ago now, I discovered this adorable plant off to the side of the campus of my high school just up the hill from me: I used PlantNet to ID it first time around, and it gave me Geranium sibirica, but questioned it. I went to GoBotany, and discovered they have something called PlantShare (I think that’s how I remember it) and submitted my photo to them. I got an answer back from Arthur Haines of the Native Plant Trust saying he thought it was G. pratense and asked me for more photos and measurements, etc., eventually asking for pictures of the rhizomes and roots coming out of the rhizomes, ending up with asking for photo of the larger area where it is growing, which I sent along with my first video ever of the area. In consultation with some other botanists, he has confirmed that it is G. thunbergii, and that this is a first sighting in NH yet! He is going to add it to GoBotany’s distribution maps. I’ve had such a good time working with him, and he has been very appreciative of my interest and participation.” Interesting!

Readers, if you haven’t sent in a plant photo to Water Cooler, why not try it? It’s easy, it’s fun, and you get some nice compliments! (If you need directions, see below.)

* * *

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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.

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93 comments

  1. MaryLand

    Passenger Shows Up For American Airlines “Flight”—Finds Bus Waiting At Gate

    American Airlines introduced bus services, operated by Landline, from Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Allentown, Pennsylvania, to its Philadelphia hub, replacing flights on these short routes, the National Public Radio (NPR) reported in 2022.

    “As an agent, we get this call all the time, like it says right on it when you book, ‘operated by landline bus company,’ ppl don’t be reading.”

    “It’s very clearly marked as a bus upon booking,” a viewer countered.

    “But it’s also a lot more economically sustainable, and it’s better for the environment.” Also helps with pilot shortages.

    https://www.aol.com/man-american-airlines-flight-hilariously-123638489.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADU0pSAsP-WSVnorVWYIvZhThBtRZys1aJeSMRTclhLMIxRmpMrlCBD_-avJGMoGj-ar7CXs5S2Kko2WhBsR6k97tOYnD5xtATQkhhKJRUa5XQoBoBi4ZuA7JkPO42D1j55CqIlyMHtwSNONBIDGDHuSrM5_Za97C6dXcB7Nvmyj

    Reply ↓
    2. Pat

      I suppose my question is could the passengers get a cheaper bus to the Philadelphia hub than by booking what they think is a flight? I’m pretty sure that it is ‘economically sustainable’ for only one party in the transaction.

      Reply ↓
  2. lyman alpha blob

    Noah Smith says Bernie supporters have “disdain for the business world” like that’s a bad thing. Ran into an old friend last weekend who is currently a hotel doorman. He told me he had a six figure office job years ago, but that it was very high stress and soul crushing so he quit.

    Maybe rather than labeling people as “lazy” who don’t want to push papers as moderately high paid office drones, the allegedly “friend of the working person” Democrat party could see to it that people who do the actual work that keeps society humming get paid a far better wage.

    Once again, I’ll leave this here from Bertrand Russell – In Praise of Idleness. A highlight –

    “Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”

    And as a wise man (Les Claypool) once said, Those Damned Blue Collar Tweekers, they’re the backbone of this town.

    Reply ↓
    1. ambrit

      She will thunderously tweak the third transactional transcendence to twirl towards tweedom.
      Her career trajectory is a worry to the elites. If she does not continue to fail upwards, the entire propaganda campaign that upholds the dominance of the Oligarchs and their PMC compradors begins to unravel.
      On the other hand, Harris’ career so far has been based on the conjectural truism: Nothing succeeds like excess.
      In Harris, we are seeing the collision of Reality(TM) and “The Narrative.” The ways in which various players in this drama react will be educational to say the least.
      The sad spectacle of Big Gretch ‘domesticating’ one of her supporters suggests that many of the Elites think that the deplorables enjoy the beatings. Again, Reality(TM) meets “The Narrative,” with potentially explosive results. [And to think that I used to like Doritos.]

      Reply ↓
    2. Tom Doak

      She will run again on the platform of having no Y chromosome. Surely once Trump is in the rear view mirror there will be no resistance to electing a female President, because it’s their turn.

      Reply ↓
  4. Screwball

    An example of “joy” at Bluesky:

    My PMC friends have all migrated to Bluesky and they love it. Today they were celebrating someone (can’t remember who) who was once on TV and I guess did not get the shot and now has died. They say what shame he didn’t live long enough to see his hero become president again. Of course these are the same people who wished anyone who didn’t get the shot dead. The hate just radiates off these people.

    I also ran into the below on Twitter. I think it was from the guy on CNN who they all hate because he says things they don’t like, but this sums it all up pretty well IMO.

    This video is a perfect encapsulation of the Twitter/X transformation.

    Twitter used to be a Left-wing echo chamber that censored Conservatives and facts. Elon simply leveled the playing field, and the Left got crushed by truth.

    The Left could only survive in an environment where opposing opinions were censored. They cannot survive in a marketplace of free speech.

    The Left were so used to having zero opposition, that an even surface feels unfair to them. They are used to having anything they don’t like be cancelled, censored, or blacklisted.

    Their Orwellian machine was taken from them, and now their ideology faces extinction, because their positions are illogical, in many cases outright insane, and are unable to withstand scrutiny.

    I don’t know if Musk really leveled the playing field, but the rest makes sense. YMMV.

    Reply ↓
      1. lyman alpha blob

        At the rate liberal media is cratering these days, what with the problems at CNN, MSNBC, etc., another appropriate slogan might be –

        “Bluesky is for the week.”

        Reply ↓
    2. John k

      Thanks.
      He needs about 3b net revenue/year for the 47b investment to make sense, I wander if he’s anywhere close, but great for free speech.

      Reply ↓
      1. Random

        Don’t think he cares that much about twitter actually making money if he can use the platform to push/amplify messaging that benefits his other businesses or political ideas.

        Reply ↓
    3. The Rev Kev

      The government use to have a corner office at the old Twitter HQ where they would tell Twitter who to amplify, who to censor, whose posts to make obscure and who to actually kick off twitter. Musk, for all his faults, kicked them out along with all those not actually running Twitter but doing their own personal projects. So will Bluesky start to recruit all those people back on their platform now?

      Reply ↓
      1. wendigo

        Since Musk will be part of the future US government, doesn’t that mean the government will soon be getting the corner office back at Twitter?

        Reply ↓
    4. playon

      I like bluesky myself, but I was on the platform well before the mass exodus from twitter. I found a lot of lefties there — now there are a ton of PMC types, but it’s easy to avoid them. Having been on facebook where it’s mainly boomers (most of whom are nice people but clueless) it’s a relief to see posts from socialists, communists and others who don’t buy into the mainstream media narratives.

      Reply ↓
  5. Sub-Boreal

    “post-pandemic” – a very efficient red flag filter for identifying untrustworthy individuals / institutions!

    Reply ↓
    1. Rolf

      Thank you for the link.

      “We are now on notice that the world — bitter to write this — is condemned to unceasing chaos and violence so long as the American imperium’s ideologues are capable of mounting a resistance against against the world as it struggles to be.”

      Seems like this is how we live now, at least in the US, but for how long? Events administered by a flailing clique indifferent to their expired shelf life, and to the fact that much of the Rest of the World, the majority, has moved on.

      Reply ↓
  8. Jason Boxman

    Part of me says that working only from public data would be a great idea, since otherwise you’re owned by the people who own the secrets.

    Yep. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State dated the start of the national security state with our nuclear weapons. (Garry Wills)

    Hilariously I heard about that I think on, of all places, NPR. I haven’t listened to NPR in over a decade now.

    It’s interesting on sexual harassment, and rape, as I recall Biden’s Senate archives are still sealed, and were certainly not made available during his last, successful for the presidency. Curious.

    Reply ↓
  10. Jason Boxman

    I still don’t know what a Noah Smith is; Is this some kind of parody chat bot or something? Or is someone actually that viciously stupid and proud of it?

    Reply ↓
    2. Randall Flagg

      I want to know who this guy” Noah Vale ” is. He seems to be the most inept person of all in every single sport he plays. For instance in the NFL, he’ll throw great passes that are dropped, bad passes, he plays wide receiver and drops great passes that hit him right in the hands. He’s a running back that fumbles after a great run. In baseball he boots an easy grounder, watches a fastball down the pipe for a third strike.On and on.
      He’s gotta go.

      Reply ↓
  11. DJG, Reality Czar

    Lambert Strether: Doing some time travel today? I’m writing you on Tuesday about your posting on Thursday. Hmmm.

    Space-time. It’s mysteriouser than I thought.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      It is true that H5N1 can infect the cornea (hence conjunctivitis, “bloody eyes,” as a symptom).

      However, it’s virtually certain that infecting the cornea is not bird flu’s only path — hard to imagine either birds or cows rubbing their eyes, how would that work — and aerosol tranmission remains a very life possibility.

      How on earth does Bonnie Henry remain in office?

      Reply ↓
      1. Sub-Boreal

        How on earth does Bonnie Henry remain in office?

        Well, she performs a useful function as a normalizer of pandemic minimization, and is still given a kid gloves treatment by the MSM, resulting in a surprisingly strong positive image, even after ~ 4 years of corpse accumulation. So she’s handy for the recently (but barely) re-elected provincial government, a late-stage neoliberalized “progressive” regime living off social democratic fumes. (See commenter “Ann” in Nick’s piece today for a good summary of recent BC political events: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/why-is-canada-threatening-to-push-mexico-out-of-usmca-is-it-really-about-china.html#comment-4138004.) Although on other matters, notably the response to the poisoned drug crisis, they’ve paid no attention to her most recent advice to expand access to a “safe supply”. They got too much flak from earlier efforts to decriminalize individual possession & other measures, and quickly retreated from any politically risky drug policies just before the recent election.

        Reply ↓
  13. IM Doc

    I need to say something about the Dennis Prager tweets above.

    Since COVID – I have found myself more and more comparing what is going on in front of me to the years of experience, trying to determine if and how things are different than established patterns, etc. Is this pattern I see before me something unique and unlike what has happened before? Or is this something that I am used to that I have seen in the past?

    The tweets may be on to something about his COVID stance or they actually may not be.

    After 35 years, I can tell you it is not uncommon at all to have elderly men fall, break bones ( back, hips, ribs, neck) – and then become immobilized in the hospital. Especially true when the fractures involve the back, the neck and the ribs ( my understanding is he broke his back), it causes the entire chest wall and respiratory mechanics to become severely affected. This leads to large parts of the lung tissue not expanding simply because it a) hurts so much or b) simply cannot be moved. The person then develops a type of lung collapse which is called atelactasis. And this can set up the perfect environment for infection in those lungs. If you have ever been in the hospital, there is usually a device that you are asked to blow into 10-15 times a day to help prevent this.

    What I am saying, it is very likely that atelactasis is the cause of his pneumonia. This is a very well known and very common pattern. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with COVID. I actually have an elderly man in the hospital right at this minute who has this exact issue. I do not know if Mr. Prager is a smoker, but that certainly makes this situation much worse.

    I have no inside knowledge and his issue may very well be COVID related; however, it is very likely not. And this kind of speculation in this tweet is where I think social media really fails us.

    Reply ↓
    1. southern appalachian

      “And this kind of speculation in this tweet is where I think social media really fails us.”
      Agree. Useful, but has taken on too much of a role. It’s my experience that the in-depth follow up rarely occurs. We can keep an eye out for it, but people move on.

      Reply ↓
    2. Angie Neer

      “this kind of speculation…is where social media really fails us.” Amen. This phenomenon is visible everywhere, including this blessed site, and in my brain and the brains of my friends and acquaintances. Confirmation bias is a great drug, all day, every day, and even cheaper than fentanyl.

      Reply ↓
    3. Lee

      Both my mother and maternal grandfather in their 80s took falls resulting in broken bones requiring confinement to bed who shortly thereafter succumbed to “the old man’s friend”, pneumonia.

      Reply ↓
    4. Greg Taylor

      If you carefully read the date on the screenshot, Prager purposefully caught Covid in 2021 and evidently recovered. Otherwise, the screenshots about his current conditions seem misleading at best. I don’t see any public indication (his family has described his conditions in public forums) that his fall, back-injury, or pneumonia are Covid-related or that he has been recently diagnosed with Covid.

      Reply ↓
    5. Jason Boxman

      Yep, we get this a lot in COVID twitter. And SARS2 is bad enough without random speculation as to whether some X negative outcome is actually from COVID or not. That said, without a functioning public health response, there is little to be done but speculate. And read and interpret studies as best we can, personal epidemiology, as it were.

      What a stupid timeline.

      Reply ↓
  14. southern appalachian

    Sirota tweet: “Democratic pundits berated Bernie’s coalition as “Bernie Bros” and also told people they were ingrates for not better appreciating the economy.

    Now they’re fusing those 2 threads together, asserting that Bernie supporters are mentally ill & lazy & *choosing* to be poor.”

    Calls to mind this NC post, anyone read her book? I have not, not yet. Maybe by January – https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/10/virtue-hoarders-the-case-against-the-professional-managerial-class-an-essay-review-in-memory-of-barbara-ehrenreich-1941-2022.html

    Reply ↓
    1. Martin Oline

      Thank you S A for the reminder about Babs. I checked my library online and they have at least three different titles in real, hold-it-in-yer-hands book form. It seems so many title these days are only available as Ebooks.

      Reply ↓
    3. The Rev Kev

      Man, the days of the “Bernie Bros” was way, way back in 2016. These people never forgive and never forget. Their spite is all they have left to warm their souls with. Do they tell themselves that by now Hillary would be finishing up her second term as Madame President but that those Bernie bros wrecked all that?

      Reply ↓
    5. Rolf

      Calls to mind this NC post, anyone read her book?

      Catherine Liu’s? Yes (ebook), and it’s quite easy to read in one sitting.

      Reply ↓
  15. Tom Stone

    Harris contributed $1.2 Billion to the economy in 4 Months, not a small amount.
    And those consultants who “earned” that money spent it on Hookers and blow, nice cars and college educations for their kids.
    So I’d be happy if She ran for Governor and blew $500,000,000 or so on a losing campaign.
    Shit isn’t the only thing that flows downhill.

    Reply ↓
  16. Fastball

    The PMC political types work my last hate nerve despite my technical classification as a PMC. I came from the working poor and I identify as working class despite having slowly climbed the economic ladder. If we on the left are lazy and mentally ill, I would call them entitled arrogant Dunning Kruger victims.

    I’ve always wondered just who these people think they are, despite having been politically exposed to them for years, long before the “PMC” moniker surfaced.

    I have never in my life voted Republican but honestly these people drive me away with their snotty condescension. Even as a far far leftist they had me considering voting for Trump, just as a kind of “backhand across the face”. I didn’t, but I considered.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lee

      I would hazard a guess that you are among friends here. I too come from “humble” roots, son of a waitress and a restaurant cook, graced with an aptitude, through no fault or particularly concerted effort of my own, for abstract thinking, and having made a few bucks here and there so that I am now retired in modest comfort, have like you come to hate with burning heat those mthrphkrs who have forsaken their roots to become enthusiastic lickspittles of capital at the expense of labor. Carry on.

      Reply ↓
        1. scott s.

          It was a -400, aka “classic” (but not as old as the -200s we have had doing inter-island cargo). So from the era where presumably Boeing commercial aircraft were great.

          Reply ↓
    1. Acacia

      Yeah, this latest shoe0nhead is very good. MANY zingers, including this one about the Harris campaign:

      I wouldn’t be surprised if this was all like a big money laundering scheme because honestly that makes more sense than this being a legitimate presidential campaign

      Reply ↓
  20. Donaldo

    One day, like a miracle. ☕️

    Lot of people liked & reposted. In order to make this a fair game, they should post obituaries of those of them that don’t wake up one day to smell the coffee and check the obituaries. Some betting might be in order too.

    Reply ↓
  21. AndrewJ

    People who wear ties are not your friend. They belong in the dustbin of history along with lawns, and for the same reasons.
    Given the choice, I’d rather spend time with people who actually make things for their living, not pay someone else to; not the symbol manipulators and predators of the elites and elite aspirants.
    The same feelings also arise when Lambert expresses his love for well tailored suits – in my four decades on this rock, these are the costumes of people who will take your job, your home, and the sanctity of the environment around you because it’s convenient for them and makes them slightly richer. The finer the suit, the higher up the food chain, but no tie-wearer should ever be trusted.

    Reply ↓
    1. Sub-Boreal

      no tie-wearer should ever be trusted

      That, plus a spiky hairgel-assisted hairdo in guys, gets the “Ready” light glowing on my Psychopath Detector.

      Reply ↓
  23. Lefty Godot

    Is anyone else getting blocked when they try to access stories on Moon of Alabama? I’m getting an error page saying “Typepad.com” is blocking me as a security measure. Unsurprisingly, the name of the lamest cloud provider ever, Cloudflare, is also at the bottom of the error page.

    Reply ↓
    2. Keith Howard

      That just happened to me. I had just finished reading last week’s excellent Glenn Diesen piece and tried to go from there to MofA. I’m very weak in computer skills, so I am unsure what to do next.

      Reply ↓
    4. The Rev Kev

      Same with me here in Oz. One section on that page said helpfully-

      ‘Why have I been blocked?

      This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.’

      Hope that MoA isn’t under attack. Kunstler’s website got trashed recently and he had to move to a new substack site.

      Reply ↓
  24. kareninca

    I just chatted with an Asian American delivery guy. When he learned that the stuff I’d ordered was for a 100 year old relative who lives with us, he genuinely wanted to know how this relative had managed to live so long (and in very good shape, too; still following chess games online and able to walk albeit with a walker if for more than a few steps). He was interested in caloric restriction, which is I think the main reason for my relative’s good health (he has average longevity genes). He was disappointed to learn that the relative had never eaten much meat at all, and did eat bread (the kid was hoping that grass fed beef keto would be the thing).

    I could see why he wanted to know; he said that he wanted to live to 100 himself, but his skin tone looked bad; as if his circulation wasn’t good. Even though he was in his 20s. He told me that his father was in his early 60s but had already had a heart attack and a stroke and was on a tremendous number of medications and couldn’t really walk.

    Then came my mistake. I told him that I thought the most important thing was to not catch covid, and I mentioned a few things that can help (claritin, Xlear; I didn’t dare say mask). He didn’t want to hear about covid. At all. I am not too optimistic about how he and his dad will do.

    Reply ↓
  25. The Rev Kev

    “Conservative radio host caught Covid on purpose”

    Idjuts. There was this Conservative radio host about twenty years ago who was claiming that water-boarding was not so bad for suspects. In fact, he offered to be water-boarded in public to prove his point and it was all arranged in a grand demonstration. I forget how many seconds he actually lasted for but it was only single digits. They both of them effed around and found out.

    Reply ↓
  26. Vicky Cookies

    Israeli Security cabinet agrees to ceasefire, to begin at 4:00am; Israeli Air Force bombing the hell out of Beiruit on their way out, like in 2006.
    https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/unprecedented-israeli-strikes-on-beirut-ahead-of-anticipated
    Israel leaves to lick its wounds, Hezbollah moves north of the Litani, and the Lebanese army takes over in the south, along with the UN troops already there to enforce 1701.

    Col. Larry Wilkerson believes Netanyahu will violate the ceasefire. Iran reportedly is the guarantor of Hezbollah’s adherence.

    What this means for Gaza is unclear; we can at least feel some relief for Lebanese who will see a reprieve from this assault.

    Reply ↓
    1. ilsm

      Why would Hezbollah move anywhere?

      Netanyahu had three reasons for the cease fire:

      Concentrate on Iran, [We can’t beat their proxy next door, so we go 1500 km…..]

      Refit [worn down] forces with [new super]weapons. [Five divisions chewed up.]

      Hamas! [Not beaten……]

      Do any of these sound like Hezbollah is giving anything?

      Reply ↓
    2. Lefty Godot

      Sounds like everybody wants to take a breather and restock their ammo. Then we’ll see Round 3 (if this last year counts as Round 2). Meanwhile we have to wait to find out if Israel can get off a disabling strike on Iran first, or if Iran can get one off on Israel before that. And (another meanwhile) is the big defense agreement between Iran and Russia going to get signed anytime soon? Or is Russia waiting for Israel to take its best shot at Iran first?

      Reply ↓
  27. Jason Boxman

    FYI, that “mega donor” John Morgan is a neoliberal Democrat that supported Suzanne Kosmos’ disastrous single term in office, where she was out funding raising instead of attending the house finance committee meetings just after Obama got elected. Meanwhile, Alan Grayson was there, at the meetings. Morgan owns a central Florida law firm of his namesake that probably predates my birth even. Meanwhile, Florida gets redder and redder. And clowns like Morgan get to set policy by way of these “mega” donations. Must be working out great for them, for Americans and Floridians, not so much. (His wife is pro-life, too, as I recall.)

    Reply ↓
    1. Lee

      Driving along a road that follows a section of the Big Hole River in Montana (Not to be confused with Big Hole WY, where I once exchanged a friendly nod with Robert Duvall) about 20 years ago there was an insect hatch off the river and into the air so copious that it rendered my car’s windshield opaque. Haven’t been back since so I don’t know how things are now. I should go back and see sooner rather than later for tempus fugit.

      Reply ↓
  29. Jason Boxman

    From “Everyone is taking their skim”: How Democratic consultants cashed in on Harris’ losing campaign

    The problem, as Tobias puts it, is that Democratic campaigns have become reliant on the money of billionaires because years of attempting to appease wealthy donors via policy concessions have hollowed out the party’s base of support.

    And completely erases Sanders’ highly successful fundraising in 2016 almost exclusively from small, grassroots donors.

    Reply ↓
  30. Thistlebreath

    I’m also getting Cloud Flared out of Moon of Alabama today. I don’t post there, so this seems odd.

    When CF first got started, they almost killed our browser based virtual world. Not my favorite company. The CEO was beyond rude.

    Reply ↓
  31. Darthbobber

    So I’ve given up on bending over backwards to see Noah Smith as something beyond a bog standard hateful bigot. He couldn’t possibly make it more explicit

    Reply ↓
  32. Jason Boxman

    Live Updates: Cease-Fire in Lebanon Takes Effect

    A cease-fire deal to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon that went into effect on Wednesday morning in Lebanon relies in part on an international peacekeeping force already on the ground.

    The organization, known as the United Nations Interim Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, is made up of about 10,000 civilians and soldiers from 50 countries. Its primary job is to monitor and report any violations of a 2006 cease-fire deal that ended the last war between Israel and Hezbollah and that will also provide the basic framework for the latest cease-fire agreement.

    Hezbollah moving north of Litani seems big if true.

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/11/26/world/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-cease-fire

    Reply ↓
  33. steppenwolf fetchit

    What if Nomiki Konst and all the self-identified Democrats who think and feel the way she does were to leave the Democratic Party and form a Real Democrat Party of their own? The name itself would be a slap in the face to the Democratic Party and hopefully would be taken that way.

    The people who formed it would have enough knowledge of how to deter and deflect Democratic Party plans and methods to keep the Real Democrat Party off of ballots that such a Real Democrat Party would have a better chance of getting on ballots than the Green Party does. And if it could keep the malignant metastatic clintonoma cells and the Yersiniobama pestis political plague germs out of their membership, they could last long enough to see what they could achieve.

    They could use the portrait of FDR on their ballot logo and wherever else appropriate and let the Democratic Party dare to sue them about it. That would give them more publicity.

    And if anyone asked a Real Democrat about Trump or Republicans or Gaetz or Roger Stone or whomever, they could say . . . . ” I don’t have a problem with his methods. Its his beliefs and goals I don’t agree with.”

    Reply ↓

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