2:00PM Water Cooler 8/29/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

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, CADO & STCU Alley, Chital Area, Louisville, Corozal, Belize.

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Kamala’s stint at McDonalds: Fact or fiction?
2. Kennedyon healthy food, and on the environment.
3. Section 230 decision: “The business model of Big Tech is over.”

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

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): “After Chicago: The Challenge Facing Harris” (The Nation). The deck: “Will she demonstrate clearly why she’s the true champion of working people?” • No.

Kamala (D):

Laugh at how desperate and dumb this is, but never stop being galled by the bad faith of MAGA loyalists who pretend to care about any kind of scruple. Low-character people this close to awesome power should fill you with contempt. https://t.co/uJzazwOyPa

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) August 29, 2024

I read the Washington Free Beacon story top and bottom (and it gives me no pleasure to say that). Besides being good oppo, I thought it was a solid piece of reporting (and it gives me no pleasure to say that). Readers, can you poke any holes in the story?

* * *

Trump (R): “Donald Trump lists the questions CNN must ask Kamala Harris in her first interview as the Democratic candidate” (Daily Mail). “When she finally sits for her first interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris must explain why she has flip-flopped on so many policies, why she has done nothing to secure the southern border while in power, and why she needs a human shield alongside her, according to one avid viewer of television news, former President Donald J. Trump…. At the top of his list: What is she hiding from? ‘Why isn’t it live? It’s not a live interview,’ he said. ‘It’s an interview that’s going to be taped and then edited and then put out. So that’s not even an interview.’” • He’s not wrong, is he? The Daily Mail interviewed Trump at Mar-a-Lago:

Holy moley, that’s an awful bad case of Empire-in-Decay decor. How preferable the elegant, youthful simplicity of Obama and Kamala’s tan suits. From this morning once more:

How it started. How it’s going.

Ten years later, and it’s still a good look! https://t.co/NKXRGNgJPv pic.twitter.com/KeI1gn7HSg

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 28, 2024

* * *

Kennedy (R): A Republican operative:

NEW: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes out with an ‘insane’ new proposal to end obesity in America which is not Ozempic.

Ready for it?

Giving everyone three healthy organic meals a day instead of paying $3 trillion for Ozempic.

RFK argued against a new proposal that would… pic.twitter.com/0wFsecW7Sb

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 28, 2024

Nevertheless, is Kennedy so wrong?

And is this so wrong?

Of course, we don’t actually know from what position Kennedy would reviving that consensus in the next Trump administration”

* * *

“The (Electoral) Politics of Age Gaps” (Crooked Timber). “Despite being a Boomer, you may have noticed that (Kamala’s) the young, exciting candidate…. Biden and Trump are really quite old…. It’s our electoral institutions cause the US to have such astronomically old leaders. The two-party system, lax campaign and especially campaign finance laws, and the primary system tilt the process heavily in favor of people with time, money and political interest — which, in our society, tends to be older people. Combine this with the Baby Boom and you get the current situation, playing out in slow motion, a demographic wave not crashing but seeping into and drowning our politics. It’s telling that the only way our institutions avoided replicating their mistakes was by a catastrophic failure. How can a younger politician win a primary in this system? They can’t! Harris became the nominee not by winning the primary but by default.” • By default? Is this dude kidding? Since when is coronation the default in a putatively democratic society?

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Democrats and Republicans greet Covid spike with a collective shrug” (Poltico). A tranche of a million corpses, and all they can do so shrug. To be fair, Trump can’t take credit for Operation Warp Speed because of the anti-vax dogmatists in his base (including Kennedy), and Biden can’t take credit for any instead of an enormously successfully public relations effort that destroyed the creditibility of public health as an ideal. Biden can also take credit for never giving Trump credit for the vaccines he bet the farm on with his “vax-only” strategy — a Trump legacy Biden promptly squandered. No wonder they’re silent. More: “‘Voters do not like it being brought up at all,’ said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster for Biden’s 2020 campaign, who marveled at the near-total absence of masks at a Democratic convention where roughly 20,000 people crammed into Chicago’s United Center for a week. ‘They want to get over it.’” • Ah, a Celinda Lake. She was the pollster who left “Medicare for All” off a voter survey on health care policy in Maine, until activists forced her to add it_{MR SUBLIMINAL Not that I’m one to harbor a grudge}‘These poeple. And: “”For most people, Covid is less about getting an infection and more about a period of time when our lives were super disrupted — and that is behind us,” said Ashish Jha, the Biden White House’s former Covid response coordinator. “We do still have a public health problem, but it is no longer in any way a substantive societal problem.’” • What a psycho Jha is. In what way is Long Covid not a “substantive societal problem”? Not to mention the increasingly visible loss of executive function on a mass basis.

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!

Celebrity Watch

“Neil Young Explains Crazy Horse Tour Cancelation, Says He’s Planning To Return To The Road With Promise Of The Real” (Stereogum). Young: “‘I was doing great and we were moving right along,’ Young said. ‘Everybody’s loving the shows. Then I just woke up one morning on the bus and I said, ‘I can’t do this. I gotta stop.’ It was like I felt sick when I thought of going on stage. My body was telling me, ‘You gotta stop.’ So I listened to my body. Then it gets into all the legal matters: ‘You got this, you got that, people bought tickets, they did this, they did that.’ I understand that. What matters to me is the art of playing, and the music. That’s what matters. That’s what people loved. That’s what they come to see. But if that’s not there, me going is not happening. My body told me to not do it.’” • Fine as far as it goes, and more honest than most, but why not worry about infecting the fans?

Elite Maleficence

CDC will not or cannot think through the consequences of the fact that #CovidIsAirborne, one of which is protection needs to be layered, Swiss Cheese-style:

Glad to see. Would add KN95 masks or N95 respirators are highly effective at reducing amount of viruses inhaled if someone else is sick in a home, and isolation of an infected person in a negatively pressurized space is generally easy (fan blowing out window) & reduces spread. https://t.co/3Q7Plfqyjk

— Richard Corsi, PhD, PE (Texas) (@CorsIAQ) August 28, 2024

All the layers must be advocated for, and the general principle explained.

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

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” (Trading Economics). “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US fell by 2,000 from the previous week to 231,000 on the period ending August 24th, in line with market expectations of 232,000. Despite this decrease, the figure remained well above the averages seen earlier this year, reinforcing the ongoing trend of a softening labor market, as highlighted by the July jobs report and the significant downward revision to nonfarm payrolls for the year ending in March.”

GDP: “United States GDP Growth Rate” (Trading Economics). “Real gross domestic product (GDP) in the US grew at an annual rate of 3.0% in the second quarter of 2024, up from 2.8% in the initial estimate and 1.4% in the first quarter. The upward revision was mainly due to increased consumer spending (2.9% vs 2.3% earlier reported).”

Profits: “United States Corporate Profits” (Trading Economics). “Corporate profits in the US rose by 1.7% from the previous period to $2,774 trillion in the second quarter of 2024, rebounding from the 2.7% decline in the earlier quarter, according to a preliminary estimate. The rebound was led by the bounce in undistributed profits (5.6% vs -11.6% in Q1) amid the recovery for net cash flow with inventory valuation adjustment (3.3% vs -2.9%).” • Whatever that means.

Retail: “Amazon is using my grocery purchases to sell me prescription drugs” (Vox). “he weirdest thing happened to me recently. I ordered some groceries on Amazon Fresh. When you check out, Amazon recommends more things you might like to buy, usually related to your purchase. But this time, Amazon offered up ‘Treatments for High Cholesterol’ along with a link for an Amazon One Medical consultation as well as links to prescription medications. That’s weird, because my doctor and my wife are the only people who know about my cholesterol numbers. They’re pretty good, too! But there are certainly data points, including my age, my food preferences, and my past purchases, maybe even news stories I’ve read elsewhere on the web, that might suggest I’d be a good candidate for a statin, the type of cholesterol-lowering medication Amazon recommended to me.” • Ah, statins.

Tech: “Judges Rule Big Tech’s Free Ride on Section 230 Is Over” (Matt Stoller, BIG). The deck: “Algorithms are no longer a Get out of Jail free card. The Third Circuit ruled that TikTok must stand trial for manipulating children into harming themselves. The business model of big tech is over.” • Big if true.

Tech: “I spent an evening on a fictitious web” (Paul Kinlan). Read the bio first: “I lead the Chrome Developer Relations team at Google.” Now read the post and imagine what to means for humans who actually create the content harvested by AI thieves.

Tech: “X caught blocking links to NPR, claiming the news site may be ‘unsafe’” (Tech Crunch). “X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter, is marking some links to news organization NPR’s website as ‘unsafe’ when users click through to read the latest story about an altercation between a Trump campaign staffer and an Arlington National Cemetery employee. The warning being displayed is typically applied to malicious links, like those containing malware, and other types of misleading content or spam. However, in this case, the web page being blocked is an NPR news report, raising questions about whether or not Musk’s X is actively trying to stop the news story from spreading.” • News report, or dogpile? Hard to tell these days…

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 52 Neutral (previous close: 52 Neutral) (CNN). One week ago: 51 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 28 at 12:57:20 PM ET.

Gallery

I suppose might view the tree as having been flattened onto the canvas, rather like a Mercator projection, but I think apple trees should be round (so call me a Philistine).

News of the Wired

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 AM:

AM writes: “Hydrangeas in full force.”

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