By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
I thought I would try some nightingales….
Common Nightingale, Azenhas do Ervedal, Avis, Portalegre, Portugal.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Trump and the Blob.
- Kamala’s beliefs, if any, unknown, perhaps not knowable.
- Wall Street iffy on contract agreement; restructing begins?
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)
“James Carville to “Unknown” Host Charlie Stone: “I’m Not Very Interested In Being Very Fair” In Defeating Trump” (RealClearPolitics). Carville: “I think that this is literally a battle for the survival of the constitution…. And I think . I think we’re literally approaching the same place right now. I’m not talking about everybody stop. Don’t faint. I’m not talking about actually sweating a political opponent’s throat.” • Oh? The tendency of liberal Democrats to call for their political opponents’ deaths is well known (Matt Stoller, “On Mocking Dying Working Class White People“). So I don’t think Carville gets to go “Backsies!” on yet another example of stochastic terrorism.
2024
Two weeks to go!
Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:
Lambert here: Big Mo shifts toward Trump, this week, even in WI (that is, if you ignore the entire concept of margin of error). Of course, we on the outside might as well be examining the entrails of birds when we try to predict what will happen to the subset of voters (undecided; irregular) in a subset of states (swing), and the irregulars, especially, who will determine the outcome of the election but might as well be quantum foam, but presumably the campaign professionals have better data, and have the situation as under control as it can be MR SUBLIMINAL Fooled ya. Kidding!.
“Karl Rove: Harris ‘flatlining’ in polls while Trump rises” (The Hill). “‘What we’ve seen is Harris sort of flatlining and mostly declining, and Donald Trump modestly rising. And as a result, we’re seeing a 50-50 election; coin toss,’ Rove, a Fox News contributor, said on the network Monday…. Rove argued that with 15 days until Election Day, it’s going to be a “nail-biter” right until the end.” • As we all know, to the extent we know anything, and others say besides Rove.
“Unseen Middle-Class Black Voters Move Right” (RealClearPolitics). “‘I make it a point to visit barbershops. And oh, the conversations. When I first supported Trump, they were telling me, oh Barbara, what’s wrong with you? You crazy. And, girl, some people stopped speaking to me,’ she said, laughing. ‘But now, I was amazed. Just Monday, I went into the barbershop, and they were talking. And oh my God, the barbers was really supporting Trump. I was like, oh my God. I almost cried because they have woke up.’” • Maybe. A deep dive on Black barbershops would be interesting (not some New York Times bigfoot, either).
* * * Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris’s Hundred-Day Campaign” (The New Yorker). “A former Obama Administration official, now in finance, told me that his firm spends tens of thousands of dollars a month on lobbyists and consultants, and yet with ‘all these fancy-pants people, former members of Congress, nobody can tell me conclusively what she believes about anything.’” • As I keep saying: She doesn’t know who she is. As I keep saying: She doesn’t know who she is. And this is the ultra-blue New Yorker; they’re supposed to be on Kamala’s side!
Kamala (D): “The Chronically Underestimated Kamala Harris” (National Review). “I do think the caricature of Kamala Harris as a bumbling dunce makes it easy to underestimate her, particularly in the closing weeks of an exceptionally close and high-stakes presidential campaign. Harris’s past is littered with older and more experienced men who saw her as easy pickings and came up short on Election Day…. here’s this nagging complication — if Kamala Harris is as stupid as her critics claim, why does she have the Democratic presidential nomination and a roughly 50–50 shot of being the first female president in U.S. history? Do you know how many ruthlessly ambitious Democratic men and women have desperately yearned to get where she is? How many smart, tough, shrewd, often underhanded and cold-blooded pols have tried to claw their way up the greasy pole and fallen short?… The record indicates that whatever Harris’s results are on an I.Q. test or other measure of intellect, she is particularly talented by another measuring stick, one that may be even more important in politics: She is exceptionally skilled at getting other people emotionally invested in her success.” • Worth reading in full.
Kamala (D): “The Tight-Knit World of Kamala Harris’s Sorority” (The New Yorker). “A.K.A. members are a Who’s Who of political, cultural, and business luminaries. Minnijean Brown-Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine, and Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., both pledged A.K.A. Toni Morrison was an A.K.A., as is the poet Sonia Sanchez. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, before she became the first female President elected in Africa, joined A.K.A. It is the most represented sorority in Congress today. The first Black woman to go to space, the first W.N.B.A. player to score more than a thousand points, the first Black female mayor of a major American city, the first Black women to lead the Treasury and Energy Departments, the first Black woman to win a Grand Slam—and now the first Black woman to become a major party’s Presidential candidate—are all A.K.A.s.” • So, PMC?
* * * Just to underscore the point about Trump being the sole national politician aggressively questioning the core tenets of disastrous DC bipartisan foreign policy over decades, here’s the progressive foreign policy expert @stephenwertheim in the NYT today making a similar point: pic.twitter.com/qTKdtkWIgE
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 21, 2024
With one exception, of course:
Just to underscore the point about Trump being the sole national politician aggressively questioning the core tenets of disastrous DC bipartisan foreign policy over decades, here’s the progressive foreign policy expert @stephenwertheim in the NYT today making a similar point: pic.twitter.com/qTKdtkWIgE
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 21, 2024
* * * Trump (R): “Trump’s genius McDonald’s stunt will fry Kamala at the ballot box” (Piers Morgan, New York Post). “As political stunts go, this might have been the best I’ve ever seen, because it served two very powerful purposes in the presidential race. First, it reminded voters that his rival, Kamala Harris, has repeatedly boasted about having a summer job at McDonald’s to make her sound more relatable to her fellow Americans, but to date, not a single person has been able to verify this…. The second reason why Trump’s stunt worked so effectively is because McDonald’s is about the purest personification imaginable of the American free market dream — a place where everyone can afford to eat, and equally, where everyone has a shot at potentially running a McDonald’s franchise one day.” • “Potentially” is doing a lot work, there.
Trump (R): “Trump’s McDonald’s visit served up four brilliant political moments” (FOX). “First, Trump’s playful manner with employees and supporters alike, clearly humanizes a man that Democrats need to convince voters is some kind of combination of Stalin, Hitler, and the Hamburglar. Second, Trump’s campaign completely dominated the news cycle all day at a stage in the campaign when winning each day is the central and most important goal. Third, Trump had the opportunity to further mock Harris over her alleged stolen McDonald’s valor. Finally, and most importantly, the spectacle made it completely obvious that Trump is neither exhausted, nor senile, a lie that the entire liberal media sang in chorus all weekend like it was Handel’s ‘Messiah.’” And: “If you don’t think the event was a Happy Meal for Team Trump, just look at the toy inside, an action figure of the liberal media with its hair on fire.” • Indeed!
Trump (R): “Walz slams Trump over McDonald’s appearance” (Anadolu Agency). “”Vice President Harris and I grew up middle class. We understand that. She actually worked in a McDonald’s. She didn’t go and pander and disrespect McDonald’s workers by standing there in your red tie and take a picture,” Walz said.” • Walz’s wife was the debate coach at the school where they both taught in Minnesota (IIRC, she had some extraordinary numbers of kids, like forty). So Walz surely knows what the burden of proof is, and where it lies: With the person making the claim. So far, we have no actual evidence (contemporaneous recollections, letters, etc.) that she did so. So Walz also knows that Kamala’s making a false claim (“baseless,” as we say). Nor do I think Trump’s tie disrespected anyone; it’s his costume, he wears it at all times.
Trump (R): “No, McDonald’s didn’t confirm Trump’s baseless claim about Kamala Harris” (Philip Bump, WaPo). “That detail is, in fact, murky. Last month, in an effort to unearth evidence of Harris’s employment, I tried to contact McDonald’s and the owners of the franchises on the island of Alameda, where she worked. But 1983 was in the pre-digital-data era, and employment records for short-term workers at franchised fast-food chains from that period were almost certainly not considered essential documents to retain. I was able to find no evidence of her employment. Trump and his allies used that informational vacuum to suggest that she never worked there at all.” • Again, the burden of proof is on whoever’s making the claim.
Trump (R): “McDonald’s workers roast Trump over ‘insulting cosplay’ stunt at restaurant that failed health inspection” (Independent). “(Trump) worked the fry cooker at a Pennsylvania branch — without a hairnet or gloves… (S)ome have pointed out that he wasn’t taking proper precautions — at a location that has previously been cited for health code violations.” • Fair enough! Staff failure.
* * * “Momentum vs. Machine” (New York Magazine). “While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs. Despite some increasingly erratic public appearances, Donald Trump has the momentum: He has managed to narrow Harris’s already microscopic lead in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada while holding steady in the battleground states where he has a small advantage: North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona. But the Trump campaign — called an unstoppable force by its own officials — is about to run headlong into what the Harris team describes as an immovable object: the vast get-out-the-vote apparatus that Democrats have built over the past four years. ‘We have the MAGA coalition,’ one Trump official said. ‘But we also know that it is not enough. And so we need to form a broader coalition, mostly with people who have never voted before. The other side has the easier task. You never want to plan a victory party that is dependent on new voters.’” And: “What we are left with, then, is an election that could be the closest in American polling history, one in which even the slightest shift in voter turnout or conviction will affect the outcome. The variables, like the voters, are too vast to even be knowable. ‘My advice to everyone is that you just need to stop trying to read the tea leaves,’ said (Adam Carlson, a former Democratic pollster). ‘Polls aren’t built to do what everyone wants them to do at this point, which is to tell us the winner. We all are just going to have to learn to embrace uncertainty.’” • Temperamentally and analytically, I’m with Carlson. OTOH, when (almost) all the pundits are saying the same thing, my spidey sense tingles a bit. On the other hand–
The internals:
Do you know how I know the internals must look fine?
This 👇 https://t.co/baS5xs3fgn
— Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆🌴🥥🇺🇸 (@RachelBitecofer) October 22, 2024
But the same argument applies to Trump, whose Madison Square Garden rally is in a state he’ll never win. In any case… Should we be assuming that insiders always know what they’re doing?
“Why There Are ‘More Warning Signs’ for Harris Than for Trump” (interview) (Dave Wasserman, New York Magazine). I like Wasserman; he’s an O.G. “It’s commonly thought that Harris’s best path to victory is the “Blue Wall” Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, as opposed to the Sun Belt, where she’s doing slightly worse. If so, is that because there are fewer undecided voters in those places or because the demographics are more favorable to her there? To be honest, I’m skeptical that we have a real handle on where these states stand in relation to one another because polls in Sun Belt states in the past ten years have underestimated Democrats slightly or been more on target, whereas polls in the northern battlegrounds have underestimated Trump by more. So for polling averages to have Harris up by one or a fraction of a point in the Great Lakes states and down by one or two in those Sun Belt states, I have very low confidence that Harris is meaningfully performing better in those Great Lakes states than in the Sun Belt states. It’s possible we’ll see a somewhat disjointed election result where there’s not a neat relationship between how these states vote.” • Worth reading in full.
* * *
Realignment and Legitimacy
Reader query:
What’s the name of the logical fallacy in which people rationalize their tacit support for a current real evil because they believe a future hypothetical evil would be worse?
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) October 22, 2024
This fallacy happens all the time in liberal Democrat discourse: Independent: “Candidate D (has done bad thing in past).” Democrat: “But Candidate R (will do bad thing in future)!!” The fallacy of relative privation (“dismissing an argument or complaint due to what are perceived to be more important problems”) doesn’t quite get at the time aspect of this exchange. Can any reader answer Gregory’s question?
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
| Wastewater | |
| ★This week(1) CDC October 14 | Last Week(2) CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants (3) CDC October 12 | Emergency Room Visits(4) CDC October 12 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York(5) New York State, data October 21: | National (6) CDC September 28: |
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| Positivity | |
| National(7) Walgreens October 21: | ★ Ohio(8) Cleveland Clinic October 19: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity(9) CDC September 30: | Variants(10) CDC September 30: |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity (11) CDC October 12: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits (12) CDC October 12: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
(1) (CDC) Good news!
(2) (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
(3) (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XEC has entered the chat.
(4) (ED) Down.
(5) (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.
(6) (Hospitalization: CDC). I see the “everything in greenish pastels” crowd has gotten to this chart.
(7) (Walgreens) A pause.
(8) (Cleveland) Dropping.
(9) (Travelers: Positivity) Down.
(10) (Travelers: Variants). No 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 at -14 in October of 2024, pointing to less pessimism than the -21 in the previous month, but completing twelve consecutive negative figures to mark a whole year of declining activity.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing shares rise after labor offer but analysts wary of worker pushback” (Reuters). “Boeing shares rose 3% on Monday on hopes of an end to a crippling strike, although some analysts questioned whether a proposed labor contract unveiled over the weekend would muster enough support from the U.S. planemaker’s workers…. Wells Fargo analyst Matthew Akers, who has a bearish view on Boeing stock, said the offer may not be ratified, citing activity online that leaned negative, though not as strongly as after the first contract agreement that employees rejected. ‘Our analysis of over 1,000 online comments implies a more constructive view but still not enough to pass,’ Akers said in a note.”
Manufacturing: “Striking Boeing Workers to Vote on New Offer” (American Machinist). “According to the IAM, the new proposal was negotiated with Boeing with assistance by acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su.:
Mnaufacturing: “New Boeing CEO to give clues on company’s future, while striking workers vote on new contract” (CNBC). “When Ortberg speaks at 10:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, investors will be on the lookout for clues about what a smaller Boeing could look like, and which programs or assets could be on the chopping block. ‘We believe (Boeing) is poised for further restructuring as the company looks to potentially divest parts of the portfolio and continues to focus on strengthening its supply chain,’ said RBC analyst Ken Herbert in a note Sunday.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing sells small defense surveillance unit to Thales” (Reuters). “Boeing closed a deal this month to sell a small defense subsidiary that makes surveillance equipment for the U.S. military, the company said on Sunday, as the planemaker looks to shore up its struggling finances.” • Let the dismemberment begin!
Tech: “Streaming’s Slow Enshittification Continues As Netflix Kicks Users Off Cheapest Ad-Free Tiers” (TechDirt). From July: “Streaming giants want to drive users to advertising because there’s greater profit potential in charging more for ad placement and collecting user behavioral ad data than there is in subscriptions. So that’s the direction the industry is headed, whether consumers like it or not. Some people don’t mind the ads; personally they just remind me that I’m living in a shallow dystopia.” • Enshittification:
We’ve been staying in a lot of places with Netflix lately, and I am struggling to conceive of how they stay in business.
Any well-known or classic film title: they don’t have it. Oodles of obscure, no-name shows, and the search function is basically “spray and pray” — search…
— 𝙷𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚖𝚊𝚗 (@shagbark_hick) October 22, 2024
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 71 Greed (previous close: 73 Extreme Greed) (CNN). One week ago: 66 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 22 at 2:37:54 PM ET.
Gallery
“In ‘Hidden Portraits,’ Volker Hermes Reimagines Historical Figures in Overwhelming Frippery” (This Is Colossal). “Engulfed in their own finery, the subjects of Volker Hermes’ portraits epitomize a bygone era. From the Italian High Renaissance to French Rococo, his digital reinterpretations playfully hide the faces of wealthy and aristocratic sitters… Hermes expands upon the ornate silk gowns, brocade, and lace ruffs that characterized elite fashion through the centuries.” • For example, “‘Hidden van Mierevelt IV’ (2022), from ‘Portrait of a Man in a White Frill’ (1620s) by Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt”:
“The Right Believes It Has the Supreme Court Votes to Overturn Labor Law” (In These Times). “The foundational 1935 labor law protecting workers is unconstitutional, according to major corporations and right-wing zealots who believe they have enough votes on the Supreme Court to overturn it. In the latest sign that anti-union forces will doggedly press the matter, a federal judge for the Northern District of Texas enjoined the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from processing any allegations of employer violations of workers’ rights. The National Review hailed the decision as ’A Welcome Blow to the NLRB.’ This is after Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a similar injunction against the NLRB before the Western District of Texas in July. Both cases will work their way up to the Fifth Circuit Court, which has served as an expressway to steer anti-regulatory legal appeals to the Supreme Court ever since Trump packed it with right-wing ideologues. ‘I don’t think a lot of labor folks are focused on this right now,’ says Stephen Lerner, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. … ‘This is the culmination of a 50-year anti-union agenda.’… But, in trying to repeal all the rights and protections workers gained during the New Deal, including the limited protections that workers currently enjoy for organizing and engaging in collective bargaining, killing the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) would also mean the lifting of a host of restrictions on unions’ ability to carry out solidarity activism and effective economic sanctions. Are unions prepared for a return to ’the law of the jungle?’” • Not under current leadership, no.
“New campus protest rules spur an outcry from college faculty” (Boston Globe). “Professors also drew a connection to the growing percentage of lecturers, adjuncts and professors who do not have tenure protections. Professors increasingly see the issue of speech and academic freedom as a labor issue as a result of the crackdowns, said Risa Lieberwitz, AAUP’s general counsel. ‘We’re seeing unionization growing and increasing,’ she said. ‘I think to some extent it’s because it’s so important to organize, to claim democratic rights.’ (Todd Wolfson, a journalism and media studies professor at Rutgers University and the president of the American Association of University Professors) said professors must stand up for students’ rights to demonstrate and speak freely. ‘Their freedom of speech rights are the lifeblood of the university,’ Wolfson said. ‘We cannot have a university based on critical thinking and exploring questions if we’re going to clamp down on students’ rights to protest something they think is a massive problem, and if they see a way for the university to actually engage in it productively.’”
“The Thought Experiments That Fray the Fabric of Space-Time” (Quanta). Mobile-friendly but for once an accessible Quanta article. Three takeaways: 1) “If no measurements can be made below the Planck scale, perhaps space-time as we know it doesn’t exist there.” 2) “It might be impossible to define physical properties of objects in space-time, so perhaps there’s some other level of organization that is exact and true.” 3) “Perhaps black holes — and by extension all regions of space-time — are holograms of data living on a two-dimensional surface of an unknown nature.” • I thought the headline meant actually fray: “Maybe if we all think real hard, we can stop this rain” –Woodstock (from memory). Oh well. Worth a read!
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