2:00PM Water Cooler 10/2/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Return to the mimidae!

Blue Mockingbird, Yecora, Km 262, Sonora, Mexico.

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Vance-Walz debate.
2. Boeing and Longshoremen strikes.
3. Effects of Helene on North Carolina election.

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)

Less than forty days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

This week’s crop of flag-of-convenience Democrat celebrities and generals didn’t turn the tide either. Despite the micturition and lamentation (very much including my own) about the Trump campaign dogging it when the election is theirs to win (see Gallup, “2024 Election Environment Favorable to GOP” on the issues) do note the steady deterioration in Kamala’s position in the (aggregated) top battlegrounds. (Of course, we on the outside might as well be examining the entrails of birds when we try to predict what will happen to a subset of voters (undecided; irregular) in a subset of states (swing), and the irregulars especially 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!}.

“Swing State Polling Finds Deadlocked Presidential Contest, ‘Blue Wall’ Senate Races Tighten” (Cook Political Report). • Handy chart:

“Democrats’ Unquestioning Support of Israeli War Crimes Puts 2024 at Increasing Risk” (Common Dreams). “Since we first began polling Arab Americans 30 years ago, the community has consistently favored the Democratic Party, with the margin of that support holding steady at nearly two to one for the past decade and a half. The Biden administration’s handling of the crisis in Gaza, however, has eroded that support resulting in Arab Americans now evenly divided between the two parties—38.5% for each. Equally revealing is the fact that by a slight margin (46% to 44%) voters in the community say they would prefer to see Republicans controlling the next Congress. Arab American voter turnout has consistently been in the 80% range. But this year only 63% of the community say they are enthusiastic about voting in November, likely impacting voter turnout in November…. More ominous for Harris is that when only considering likely voters, Trump leads 46% to 42%… All of the third-party candidates combined receive just 12% of the Arab American vote. Instead, it’s Trump who is the beneficiary of the community’s anger and, I might add, even despair over the Biden administration’s failure in addressing the crisis in Gaza.” • But Harris is ahead in Michigan, so….

* * *

Vance-Walz debate:

“Read the full VP debate transcript from the Walz-Vance showdown” (CBS). • Here it is, for those who want to check “Did he really say that?!”

“Vice presidential debate fact check: What Tim Walz, JD Vance got right (and wrong)” (USA Today). • Pretty good, like an old-school blogger would do it (and not in the moment, like the moderators were doing). More:

2) JD Vance lied on solar panels from China too. https://t.co/DMB39uuoqG

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) October 2, 2024

Here are a bunch of reactions to particular debate moments, most of which the NC commenters called out in real time, and discussed, last night. In no particular order:

“‘Damning non-answer’: Vance refuses to acknowledge Trump lost the 2020 election” (NBC). • Power move by Walz; “damning non-answer” sounds like high school debate, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. (This is The One Question That Mattered in the VP Debate and The only moment from the VP debate that mattered.) Maybe, unless you have this continued claim by Trump filed away under “Stuff Your Crazy Uncle Talks About.” I need to understand Republican plans for ballot counting and elector selection in 2024 much better, however.

“Vance: Kamala’s “Industrial-Scale” Censorship Is The Bigger Threat To Democracy” (RealClearPolitics). “I am really proud, especially given that I was raised by two lifelong blue-collar Democrats, to have the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, lifelong leaders in the Democratic coalition. They don’t agree with me and Donald Trump on every issue. We don’t have to agree. We are united behind a basic American First Amendment principle, which allows us to debate our differences fairly, argue about them, and persuade our fellow Americans. Harris is engaged in censorship on an industrial scale. She has done it over a number of issues. That’s a bigger threat to democracy than what Donald Trump said when he said protesters should peacefully protest on January 6.” • Don’t tell me Vance didn’t prepare (though his preparation may have been honing his talking points at a million high school auditoriumns and small-town TV interviews). I think Vance hit it out of the park on this one.

“‘I’m a Knucklehead’: Walz Gives Disastrous Answer When Questioned on Inaccurate Claims at Debate” (Mediaite). • I dunno; I thought “knucklehead” had a sort of sweet naivete about it. More problematic: Walz filibustered his first answer (“I was born in the middle class,” or whatever) and then owned up (“misspoke“) only when the moderator followed through (good job, moderator).

“Weird No More: Tim Walz, J.D. Vance Humanize One Another” (Guardian). • But one reason Walz is on the ticket is that he tagged Republicans with the moniker “wierd,” which went viral. That particular kind of joyful warrior-ing was one of his strengths. So why did Kamala’s staff not have him playing to that strength? Because they would have gotten a nasty phone call from Liz Cheney? Commentary:

The most bizarre part of that debate was how Tim Walz repeatedly and flagrantly undercut Dems’ core attack on Trump/Vance: that they’re “weird,” freakish dangers wildly out of the mainstream.

Everything Walz said treated Vance as a totally normal, reasonable, likable colleague.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 2, 2024

Especially since Walz originated the framing, which the base enthusiastically took up! More commentary:

I would like to fire whichever Dem operative told Walz to hold back, & be polite, and agree with Vance tonight.

Typical Dems, always trying to go high when it’s actually way past time to go low.

Vance should have been skewered tonight on his rhetoric and record, but he wasn’t.

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 2, 2024

More:

A lot of other people are pointing this out but it really is…odd…that Walz was really good at the TV and after Harris’ people got their hands on him he is not so good at the TV anymore.

— Tyler Austin Harper (@Tyler_A_Harper) October 2, 2024

As readers know, I was quite taken with Walz’s first video (at the State Fair with his daughter). That spoke to me of media competence.

And more:

I feel like no one told Tim he was debating one of Satan’s henchmen, so he came in a sincere space.

— Shay Stewart Bouley (@blackgirlinmain) October 2, 2024

Finally, from the other side of the aisle, a mirror image:

I would have liked to have seen JD Vance go for the jugular on several occasions.

That said–his lowkey, diplomatic, studious, even kindly performance was brilliant. He introduced himself to millions of Americans who have been told by the media he’s a woman-hating ogre and…

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) October 2, 2024

And the polls:

“Dead even: POLITICO snap poll shows stark division on debate” (Politico). • Handy chart:

O.G. Luntz:

Final focus group vote tonight after the #VPDebate: 12-2 in favor of JD Vance pic.twitter.com/LgahO2za7C

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 2, 2024

* * *

“JD Vance’s eyeliner steals spotlight in VP debate as fans say it’s putting Tim Walz off” (Express). “Viewers are convinced JD Vance has ‘doubled down‘ on his choice to wear eyeliner during his vice presidential debate with Tim Walz. The Republican candidate’s appearance seemed to distract many viewers from his policies just 10 minutes into the CBS event.” • What?

The menswear dude doesn’t mention eyeliner:

Let’s talk about how to choose a good tie. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/W8cX85mjt6

— derek guy (@dieworkwear) October 2, 2024

But the menswear dude should stay in his lane:

But you should also know what you’re communicating. A fuchsia raw silk tie is very casual because of its color and material. To me, this is something you wear with seersucker or cream linen suits to summertime garden parties. The tie says “I’m here to have fun.” pic.twitter.com/hujbQbH4w8

— derek guy (@dieworkwear) October 2, 2024

Quote: “The tie says ‘I’m here to have fun.’” That Vance was having fun was one of the striking things about his performance; a good debate is fun. So Vance’s choice of tie was successful communication.

No eyeliner here:

Karl Mack von Leiberich finding out Napoleon is already in his rear behind the Danube while he’s still assembling forces at Ulm. (October 1805, colorized) pic.twitter.com/XqkZb0ASC0

— Big Serge ☦️🇺🇸🇷🇺 (@witte_sergei) October 2, 2024

Russian orthodox communicant heard from….

* * *

Trump (R): On abortion, in ALL CAPS:

EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT, BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!). LIKE RONALD REAGAN BEFORE ME, I FULLY SUPPORT THE THREE…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2024

Trump (R): Seeing this meme here and there:

This is more relevant than ever. #Iran pic.twitter.com/Bdz8CxRfSL

— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) October 1, 2024

* * *

NC: “Voters Affected by Helene” (North Carolina State Board of Elections (SlayTheSmaugs)). “Total registered voters (25 disaster counties (i.e. WNC)): 1,275,054. Republican Party: 480,097; Democratic Party: 292,836.” • And the Democrats will be concentrated disprotionately in Asheville, which, all other things being equal, will recover first. See NC on Helene in NC here.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Who Are the ‘Undecided’?” (Rick Perlstein, The American Prospect). The deck: “It may not be about issues, but whether voters surrender to Trump’s invitation to return to the womb.” Has whoever wrote this deck lost their mind? Could we at least try to moderate the psychologizing slightly? More: “If the authoritarians in control of the Republican Party achieve enough power, they will start methodically knocking off liberal institutions, including politically independent journalism.” • Politically independent journalism sounds like something the Censorship Industrial Complex should be doing something about. If it’s not, is such journalism all that independent?

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!

Maskstravaganza

“Louisville mayor says city will bring back mask ban after recent shooting” (The Center Square). “Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg told reporters the city will begin to re-enforce a more than 40-year-old ordinance that bans the wearing of masks in public places. The move, which Greenberg revealed during his weekly press briefing, comes just days after a shooting that took place outside a high school football game. The alleged perpetrators were wearing surgical masks in the incident Sunday evening that injured two teenagers, one critically, at Pleasure Ridge Park High School in the southwestern part of the city. Greenberg said the decision to bring back enforcing the ban passed in 1983 happened after he spoke with Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Paul Humphrey regarding steps the city could take while it continues to seek additional help from Frankfort and Washington regarding gun violence. The mask ban had been suspended after the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Mask ban debated in St Louis:

Fight STL’s mask ban. STL’s Board Bill 2 criminalizes wearing a medical mask, hood, or facial covering in public to conceal your identity or while breaking another law. Get involved: https://t.co/SaQmzofREt pic.twitter.com/oaQBisMMPW

— MaskBlocStLouis (@MaskBlocStLouis) October 1, 2024

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Employment Situation: “United States ADP Employment Change” (Trading Economics). “Private businesses in the US added 143K workers to their payrolls in September 2024, the most in three months, following an upwardly revised 103K in August and well above forecasts of 120K. Job creation showed a widespread rebound after a five-month slowdown, with manufacturing adding jobs for the first time since April.”

Retail: “United States Total Vehicle Sales” (Trading Economics). “Total Vehicle Sales in the United States increased to 15.80 Million in September from 15.10 Million in August of 2024.”

Supply Chain: “Dockworkers may have the negotiating advantage in their strike against US ports” (Associated Press). “The 45,000 dockworkers who went on strike Tuesday for the first time in decades at 36 U.S. ports from Maine to Texas may wield the upper hand in their standoff with port operators over wages and the use of automation… Organized labor enjoys rising public support and has had a string of recent victories in other industries, in addition to the backing of the pro-union administration of President Joe Biden. The dockworkers’ negotiating stand is likely further strengthened by the nation’s supply chain of goods being under pressure in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which has coincided with the peak shipping season for holiday goods. The union is also pointing to shipping companies’ record profits, which have come in part because of shortages resulting from the pandemic, and to a more generous contract that West Coast dockworkers achieved last year. The longshoremen’s workloads also have increased, and the effects of inflation have eroded their pay in recent years. In addition, commerce into and out of the United States has been growing, playing to the union’s advantage. Further enhancing its leverage is a still-tight job market, with workers in some industries demanding, and in some cases receiving, a larger share of companies’ outsize profits.” • Handy chart:

Supply Chain: “US port workers union backed by White House in strike” (Reuters). “On Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s administration put pressure on U.S. port employers to raise their offer to secure a deal with dockworkers. Administration officials led by Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su have been urging both sides to return to the bargaining table.

Economists have said the strike will not initially raise consumer prices as companies accelerated shipments in recent months for key goods. However, a prolonged stoppage will eventually filter through, with food prices likely to react first, according to Morgan Stanley economists…. Morgan Stanley economists said in a late Tuesday note that the strike could hit growth and raise inflation “but only if it is long-lasting,” noting that the implication for transport should be limited unless the strike lingers. The strike, the ILA’s first major stoppage since 1977, affects 36 ports – including New York, Baltimore and Houston – that handle a range of containerized goods ranging from bananas to clothing to cars. The walkout could cost the American economy roughly $5 billion a day, JP Morgan analysts estimate.” • Administration statement:

Supply Chain: “At issue in the longshoremen’s strike: How much automation is appropriate at ports?” (MarketWatch). “Dockworkers want language in their next contract that protects them from the robots and software and now AI that threaten to do a lot of their jobs, from moving and stacking containers to checking in the trucks that take those containers away…. ome ports on the Eastern Seaboard are what’s known in the shipping industry as semi-automated. ‘That means that a longshore worker will still move the container from the ship to the backland, the storage area,’ explained Geraldine Knatz, the former director of the Port of Los Angeles. ‘This is one sector where we are woefully inefficient, we’ve resisted essentially as many efforts at automation as possible in comparison to our peers in China or in Europe,’ said Jason Miller, a supply chain professor at Michigan State. Miller says the U.S. consumer bears the cost of that inefficiency in the form of higher import prices. Port operators have typically tried to reassure longshoremen that they can be reassigned to a different role once the robots arrive, says Jim Kruse at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.”

“Dockworkers strike could compound supply-chain problems for Boeing and Airbus” (Business Insider). “Ports on the East and Gulf Coasts have been shut down as 45,000 workers represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike Tuesday…. Boeing also has a plant in Charleston, South Carolina for the 787 Dreamliner. Most parts are sent by air, but some arrive by sea, aerospace outlet Leeham News reported…. If dockworkers remain on strike for some time, Airbus could also face disruption as it has a plant in Mobile, Alabama. The factory is the final assembly line for some North American customers’ A319, A320, A321, and A220 jets.”

Manufacturing: “33,000 Boeing workers lose health care coverage” (Freight Waves). “Boeing has cut health care coverage for 33,000 of its workers and their families as machinists union strikes continue to halt production in the Pacific Northwest…. ‘Boeing executives cannot make up their minds,’ said IAM International President Brian Bryant in the release. ‘One day they say they want to win back the trust of their workforce. The next moment, on the heels of many recent missteps by their labor relations team, Boeing executives are now tripping over dollars to get pennies by cutting a benefit that is essential to the lives of children and families, but is nothing compared to the cost of the larger problems Boeing executives have created for their workforce and for the company itself over the last ten years. Their missteps are costing not just the workers but our nation.’”

Manufacturing: “Boeing 737 deliveries ‘held steady’ in September despite strike concerns – BofA” (Investing). “Boeing’s (NYSE:BA) deliveries of its 737 jets “held firm” in September thanks in part to measures taken by the aerospace giant to offset the impact of an ongoing strike by workers in the US Pacific Northwest, according to analysts at Bank of America. Boeing delivered around 28 of the planes during the month, down slightly from 32 units in August, the BofA analysts said, citing data from aviation analytics group Cirlum. Calling the total ‘solid,’ the analysts noted that 70% of the monthly deliveries were carried out prior to the onset of the work stoppage. Third-quarter deliveries also remained ‘strong,’ with approximately 92 of Boeing’s popular 737s delivered during the period, up from 70 in the second and third quarters, the data showed. However, when compared to the corresponding timeframes in 2023 and 2022, 737 deliveries are down 20% and 17%, respectively, the BofA analysts said. They flagged that the company’s delivery performance going forward ‘will largely depend’ on the duration of the strike, which is now in its third week.” • Indeed!

Tech: “Bots, so many Bots” (WakaTime). “ProductHunt has over 1 million user signups. More than 60% of those are bots…. Is launching on ProductHunt worth it? Even though most comments and upvotes are bots, there’s probably still some real humans using ProductHunt… maybe. If you pay the bots and get featured in the newsletter, my guess is more real humans will see your product…. Overall, in my opinion it’s still worth launching on ProductHunt however I wouldn’t spend more than a few minutes preparing the launch and definitely don’t waste time replying to comments.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 68 Greed (previous close: 75 Extreme Greed) (CNN). One week ago: 66 (Hreed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 1 at 1:46:30 PM ET.

“We Don’t Deserve Dogs”

I would hate for this feel-good story to be false:

Have any readers had similar experiences?

Gallery

The framing and cropping reminds me of the way Manet’s race track paintings:

Photographic avant la lettre, in 1819.

Does anyone know if Monet really got the train schedules changed so he would have better light?

Healthcare

“Epic Systems, a lethal health record monopolist” (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic). Note “#thanks-obama” in the URL. “Epic Systems makes the dominant electronic health record (EHR) system in America; if you’re a doctor, chances are you are required to use it, and for every hour a doctor spends with a patient, they have to spend two hours doing clinically useless bureaucratic data-entry on an Epic EHR. How could a product so manifestly unfit for purpose be the absolute market leader? Simple: as Robert Kuttner describes in an excellent feature in The American Prospect, Epic may be a clinical disaster, but it’s a profit-generating miracle: At the core of Epic’s value proposition is ‘upcoding,’ a form of billing fraud that is beloved of hospital administrators, including the ‘nonprofit’ hospitals that generate vast fortunes that are somehow not characterized as profits.” • On upcoding, see NC in March and April 2017.

Book Nook

“The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books” (The Atlantic). “Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books. This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover. ‘My jaw dropped,’ Dames told me. The anecdote helped explain the change he was seeing in his students: It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading. It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.” • Can readers confirm this isn’t just The Atlantic fomenting a moral panic?

“Math from Three to Seven, by Alexander Zvonkin” (Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf). “Today, those same Russians are all over Wall Street and Silicon Valley and Ivy League math departments, still overrepresented in technical fields. What explains it? Are Russians just naturally better at math and physics?…. in the interviews I’ve read with Soviet mathematicians and scientists, the things that comes up over and over again are “mathematical circles,” a practice that originated in the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and then spread far and wide through the Soviet Union. A mathematical circle is an informal group of teenagers and adults who really enjoy math and want to spend a lot of time thinking and talking about it. They’re a little bit like sports teams, in that they develop their own high-intensity internal culture and camaraderie, and often have a “coach” who is especially talented or famous. But they’re also very unlike sports teams, because they don’t compete with each other or play in leagues or anything like that, and usually any given circle will contain members of widely varying skill levels. Maybe a better analogy is a neighborhood musical ensemble that gets together and jams on a regular basis, but for math. The most important thing to understand about mathematical circles is that the math they jam on is completely unlike the math you study in school, and also completely unlike the “competition” math that bright kids in the United States sometimes do. The bread and butter of the mathematical circle is solving problems together, as a team. There is no time here for exercises; you can do that lame stuff at school. Sometimes the coach picks a problem for you, something just beyond your ability, just the thing you need to hone your edge. But sometimes the whole circle works together on a problem that nobody has the answer to and that challenges the very best members. These problems are the most important, because with them you see great minds, men older and more talented than you, stretched to the breaking point and occasionally beaten.” • Sounds like D&D!

Zeitgeist Watch

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 TH:

TH writes: “When I entered “meaning of a white rose” in the Chrome search engine, and got a blog ( https://www.snapblooms.com/blog/white-rose-meaning/ ) one of the entries was:

The color white in roses signifies innocence, humility, and fresh starts, making them a fitting choice to promote peace in political affairs. The white rose significance in such situations is powerful and universal.

Hmmm. Those aren’t words I expect to find side by side these days — Peace in politics? Oxymoron? One can always hope. 😊”

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