2:00PM Water Cooler 8/26/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Too-patient readers, I have encountered an unplanned major life event (don’t worry, not health- or mortality-related). I have no experience whatever in the matters at hand, and there is a lot of administrativia involved, so I’m going to have to spend hours on the phone and doing research. There is no slack in my daily schedule. Something has to give, which sadly will be researching and writing Water Cooler on the scale and to the depth you have become accustomed to. Given that life-saving and illness-preventing information is more important than material that is not neither, I’m going to cut back on political detail and focus on the pandemics. I anticipate this state of affairs will continue at least through Labor Day — that’s when things really pick up anyhow — but I shall certainly back in full spate by the time of the first debate on September 10 (assuming there is one). tl;dr: No orts and scraps. Perhaps a later start. Sorry, but there it is. Meanwhile, don’t feel shy about talking politics yourselves. Just be nice! –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Catbirds are in the Mimidae specie, like mockingbird and thrashers. Readers have said they like the mimicry, so hopefully MacCaulay Library has enough recordings to keep us all satisfied, at least for a time.

Black Catbird, San Miguel; Isla Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Democrat triumphalism out of control.
2. Suit filed against Nassau County’s mask ban.
3. Gustave Courbet, Berthe Morisot

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 Attempt

“Why would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks remains an infuriating enigma weeks after shooting” (New York Post). “When federal authorities raided his family’s modest home in the wake of the shooting, agents seized hardware including his laptop, two cellphones and multiple hard drives and flash drives. The large amount of data recovered (around 4.5 terabytes) is a potential technological treasure trove for forensics teams, but authorities said getting definitive answers has been slow going due to the sheer volume of information to sift through. However, it’s clear from congressional hearings — and the details that have emerged from FBI briefings with lawmakers — that investigators still have no satisfying answers for why Crooks targeted Trump…. Crooks’ internet presence, or lack thereof, is another layer of the mystery in a world where more than four-fifths of young adults use at least one social media platform. Despite the collective scrutiny of every law enforcement agency and investigative journalist in the country, no profiles definitively linked to Crooks have been unearthed. Investigators have homed in on several accounts believed to be linked to Crooks on foreign-based encrypted messaging services and social media platforms, but the FBI has yet to detail its findings so far.” • That’s really weird, because Crooks was technical.

LIHOP?

🚨🚨 NEW – Whistleblower says Secret Service HQ told agents working the Butler PA event NOT to request additional manpower resources for the rally & warned any such requests would be denied. Contradicts Director Rowe testimony, who said no resources were ever denied pic.twitter.com/85sHTAI82u

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) August 23, 2024

Biden Administration

“New Twitter Files raise question of how independent pre-Musk company was from Biden administration” (Just the News). “Where did the Biden administration end and Twitter begin? The latest batch of the Twitter Files, reported by former Senate Finance Committee investigator Paul Thacker from records turned over by the Elon Musk-owned company now called X, shows a curious timeline in the first couple months of Democratic President Joe Biden’s term. Within two weeks of the inauguration, the company covertly hired a ‘global strategic advisory and commercial diplomacy services’ firm cofounded and chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to seek State’s help dealing with censorship pressure from India. On the two-month anniversary of the Biden administration, Politico reported on a new ‘blob’ that had formed from alumni from the firm, Albright Stonebridge. At least 10 had taken top foreign-policy jobs including United Nations ambassador, deputy secretary of state, two undersecretaries of state, and deputy national assistant security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. Another became chief of staff to the now-Democratic nominee for president’s husband, first gentleman Doug Emhoff. The new tranche of internal emails ‘calls into sharp question claims by Democrats,’ including House Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee ranking member Delegate Stacey Plaskett, ‘and their allies in the media that Twitter did not collude with federal agencies and was free from Biden administration pressure to make its own censorship decisions,’ Thacker wrote.”

2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

Good news for Trump in that last week’s deterioration seems to have been slowed, although we shall have to see if Kamala gets a convention “bounce.” Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads — are within the margin of error. If you read most of the press, you’d think Kamala has this race in the bag. It’s not so. Do note, however, Trump’s deterioration in North Carolina: +2.4 last week to +0.9 this week, when OG pollster Sabato moved it to “toss-up” status from “lean Republican.” No wonder Trump held a rally there this week. NOTE With Kennedy, it would seem, about to drop out, I started tracking the national percentage as “Top Battlegrounds,” where Trump’s shrinking lead is +0.1 this week (as opposed to “5-Way RCP Average, where Harris led by +1.1 last week).

* * *

Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris Isn’t Winning This Race Yet” (Freddie DeBoer). Worth reading in full. This caught my eye: “Above is the latest polling breakdown from the New York Times. As you might notice, it does not currently project a Kamala Harris victory! She’s leading at the national level, but as everyone suddenly forgot in 2016, the United States does not have a national popular vote system. She’s leading in two of the three “blue wall” states, but the outcomes are within the margin of error, and most paths to victory require her to carry all three. She’s tied in Pennsylvania and Arizona. The only state here where a lead exceeds the margin of victory is Georgia, which favors Donald Trump. If Harris’s recent gains regress back to this state of affairs in the coming months, it’s a coinflip election where Trump could easily squeak out victory in Pennsylvania and Arizona and regain the White House. That’s not some wild hypothetical! It’s an entirely plausible state of affairs! Much more plausible than Trump winning in 2016, where it took Hillary’s wild unpopularity, Robby Mook’s incompetence, and decades-long indifference among Democrats towards the collapse of the Rust Belt. This election is very, very close. And yet .” • I agree. Most ginormous liberalgasm ever. I’m not sure that DeBoer’s “blue wall” — hate the term, states and regions are not “walls” — match Fridays’ RCP averages, but directionally DeBoer is surely correct, as readers know who’ve been watching them. (It will be interesting to see this Friday and next whether Kamala gets a convention “bounce”, or whether some combination of RFK’s announcement and the mysterious inner processes of voters responding the the Democrat National Convention eats the expected bounce up.)

Kamala (D): “Will the DNC shake up the polls in Harris’s favor?” (The Hill). “Between July and August, there was an 11-point increase in voters under 40 years old saying they support the Democratic nominee, and a 4-point increase in the share of both Hispanic and Black voters saying the same. In that same vein, more than 6 in 10 (62 percent) Democrats said they were ‘strong’ Harris supporters, almost double the number who had said the same of Biden in previous polling conducted by ABC/Ipsos. That being said, despite the successful convention and a likely post-convention polling boost, it is an open question whether Harris did enough to overcome the vulnerabilities that were evident in pre-convention polling.” But: “Similarly, the aforementioned ABC poll suggests that while rallying traditionally Democratic voters, Harris has not yet improved on Biden’s 2020 margins with two key voting blocs. The vice president’s 5-point lead with suburban voters (50 percent to 45 percent) is roughly half of Biden’s 11-point advantage in 2020, and her 34 percent support among white non-college voters is virtually identical to Biden’s 33 percent four years ago, according to Pew Research. How opinions of the vice president change among these two groups of voters will be critical to watch, particularly after a successful DNC. If Harris can move the needle in her direction with these key groups, the vice president’s honeymoon period may, in fact, last through the 2024 election. ”

* * *

“The Plague” does seem appropriate:

* * *

Trump (R): “Lest we Forget the Horrors: a Catalog of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes” (McSweeney’s). “Early in President Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. This election year, with the very real possibility of Trump returning to office, we know it’s important to be reminded of these horrors and to head to the polls in November to avoid experiencing new cruelties, collusions, corruption, and crimes.” • “One of Terry Pratchett’s more entertaining villains, Mr. Pin, has ‘Not a Nice Person at All’ done in pokerwork on his wallet. ‘I wonder kind of person would put that on a wallet?’ ‘Somebody who wasn’t a very nice person.’”

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 (dashboard); 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, 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!

Maskstravaganza

Mask bans (1):

At a faculty senate meeting. A Columbia professor called Palestinian students reading the names of those murdered in Gaza “KKK members” for wearing masks.

— Layla 🪬 (@itslaylas) August 23, 2024

Mask bans (2): “Lawsuit challenging Nassau’s mask ban filed in federal court” (Newsday). “Two Nassau residents have filed a federal class-action lawsuit alleging the county’s mask ban discriminates against people with disabilities by depriving them of equal access to public life, court records show. The complaint, filed in Eastern District Court in Central Islip on Thursday by the Albany area advocacy group Disability Rights New York, names Nassau County and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman as defendants. It alleges the mask ban violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, and seeks for the court to declare the ban unconstitutional and order Nassau County to end it. ‘This mask ban poses a direct threat to public health and discriminates against people with disabilities,’ DRNY executive director Timothy A. Clune said in a statement. The organization, which is also seeking an injunction and temporary restraining order staying the ban, also says it will limit services available for people who wear masks in public due to a disability.” • Good.

Elite Maleficence

HICPAC* back in November, having accomplished nothing (For more on HICPAC at NC, see here, here, here, here, and here).

So a long working day for HICPAC- started late after 9:10 ended at 2:43, 1.5 hour lunch and a 1 hour “break” so just couldn’t get to updating guidance now that @WHO said back in November that COVID is AIRBORNE. They said they will discuss at their next meeting in NOVEMBER despite…

— 💜Martha Young- JD, MBA, N95-clean the air: (@mryoung151) August 22, 2024

Yes, but could the Committee members collect a per diem?

NOTE * “HICPAC is a federal advisory committee appointed to provide advice and guidance to DHHS and CDC regarding the practice of infection control and strategies for surveillance, prevention, and control of healthcare-associated infections, antimicrobial resistance and related events in United States healthcare settings.”

@Algorithmus22‘s transcript of Yaneer Bar-Yam’s testimony at the HICPAC meetings just passed. The screenshots overlap a bit:

No quorum?!?!

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Since things are bad out on the West Coast, I went looking for California hospitalization data to compare with New York’s, and found this: “Due to changes in reporting requirements for hospitals, CDPH is no longer including hospitalization data on the CDPH dashboard. CDPH remains committed to monitoring the severe outcomes of COVID-19 and influenza, including the impact on hospitals. CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) will remain open to accept data, and CDC and CDPH strongly encourage all facilities to continue reporting.” Thanks, Mandy!

(6) (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

(7) (Walgreens) Fiddling and diddling.

(8) (Cleveland) Jumping.

(9) (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

(10) (Travelers: Variants) The new variant in China, XDV.1, is not showing up here.

(11) Deaths low, but positivity up.

(12) Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Manufacturing: “United States Durable Goods Orders” (Trading Economics). “New orders for manufactured durable goods in the US surged by 9.9% from the previous month in July of 2024, making up for the downwardly revised 6.9% decline in the earlier period, the most since May 2020 and firmly above market expectations of a 5% expansion.”

Manufacturing: “United States Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index” (Trading Economics). “The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ general business activity index for manufacturing in Texas rose to -9.7 in August of 2024 from -17.5 in the previous month, marking the lowest contraction level since January 2023.”

Retail: “Complicated Starbucks Orders Is A Language I Don’t Speak None To Good” (Ordinary Times). “Starbucks will be yet another case study in a brand shooting to the heights of success, but not knowing how to sustain itself when the mandate from the shareholders is more, more, more and the fundamental rule of investment is ‘trees don’t grow to the sky’ or the blunter ‘pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.’ Starbucks the brand is transitioning from the hot, expanding, cool brand to a legacy brand that’s been around for generational business. Kids who grew up with their parents going are now the parents of their own kids, and so forth. If there was a defined line between being a well-known brand with almost universal recognition and folks getting tired of the brand, then far fewer businesses would fall off Mount Success… But the biggest problem Starbucks has might be generational. The shopping center I described is right across from the high school. Which is smart business, but over the past year has revealed something else Starbucks has to fight. You rarely ever see teenagers there. They don’t like to go into Starbucks. Too many old people on Facebook hanging around.” • I don’t play the ponies, so I don’t know the phrase “pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.” Can some kind reader elucidate?

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 55 Neutral (previous close: 52 Neutral) (CNN). One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 26 at 1:32:02 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged (Rapture Ready). Record High, October 10, 2016: 182. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Where are there people getting their news?

Gallery

“Berthe Morisot, Early Impressionist Criticism and the Aesthetics of the Plein-air Interior” (Nonesite). From May, still germane. “Morisot dressed her models in her own clothes and accessories and placed them in her own home.98 While this was no doubt a pragmatic decision to create a sense of realism, it also allowed Morisot to be present in her artworks in a way that was less available to her male counterparts, and the intimate effect of these private scenes is therefore enhanced. It may be argued that in works such as Woman at her Toilette, the male gaze is thwarted via the careful orchestration of the personal objects of the artist and the use of paint. Instead, Morisot’s very personal self-expression, in its restraint and power, translated through the effects of light, color and skin, comes to the fore.” • Hmm. I think the male gaze takes a lot of thwarting. But the detail of the Morisot’s workflow is terrific. A Morisot:

Sadly, there is no Morisot bot.

News of the Wired

“Matching dinosaur footprints found on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean” (Phys.org). “An international team of researchers led by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs has found matching sets of Early Cretaceous dinosaur footprints on what are now two different continents. More than 260 footprints were discovered in Brazil and in Cameroon, showing where land-dwelling dinosaurs were last able to freely cross between South America and Africa millions of years ago before the two continents split apart. ‘We determined that in terms of age, these footprints were similar,’ Jacobs said. ‘In their geological and plate tectonic contexts, they were also similar. In terms of their shapes, they are almost identical.’”

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 TH:

TH writes: “Also in the gardens of the Getty Center are walkway ramps that are sometimes lower than the gardens, so one can get the less common view of the undersides of flowers without stooping. Dahlias.” Wow!

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