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2:00PM Water Cooler 6/10/2020

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

#COVID19

At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart. The data is the John Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site. Having done the South and the West last week, and the Midwest yesterday, here is the Northeast:

1000 daily confirmed cases still in New York…

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

Since we’re getting closer to the election, maybe it’s time to start looking at the electoral map, updated June 8 and unchanged:


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

So, taking the consensus as a given, 270 (total) – 204 (Trump’s) = 66. Trump must win 66 from the states in play: AZ (11), FL (29), MI (16), NC (15), PA (20), and WI (10) plus 1 to win not tie = 102. 102 – 66 = 36. So if Trump wins FL, MI, NC, and PA (29 + 16 + 15 + 20 = 80), he wins. That’s a heavy lift. I think I’ve got the math right this time!

* * *

2020

Biden (D)(1): “Biden: We must urgently root out systemic racism, from policing to housing to opportunity” [Joe Biden, USA Today]. “I’ve long been a firm believer in the power of community policing — getting cops out of their cruisers and building relationships with the people and the communities they are there to serve and protect. That’s why I’m proposing an additional $300 million to reinvigorate community policing in our country. Every single police department should have the money it needs to institute real reforms like adopting a national use of force standard, buying body cameras and recruiting more diverse police officers.” • So Biden hears “defund the police” and mentally translates that to “give the police $300 million.” Oh, and there are tax credits. Of course.

Biden (D)(2): “Biden targets young voters amid anger over racial inequality in new digital ad” [ABC]. “The latest ABC News-Washington Post poll shows the presumptive Democratic nominee is still struggling to win over the group. The majority of voters ages 18 to 29 hold an unfavorable opinion of the former vice president, according to the poll from late May.”

Sanders (D)(1): “Joe Biden is ‘more receptive’ to progressives than past Democrats, Bernie Sanders says” [CNBC]. • The headline, from this New Yorker interview:

Sanders (D)(2): “Bernie Sanders Is Not Done Fighting” (interview) [The New Yorker]. • Oh gawd, the “fighting for” trope…. More:

[SANDERS:] Longer-term, obviously, what I am trying to do is to bring people together to defeat Trump and to elect Biden. It is no great secret that Joe Biden and I have very serious political differences, but, at this particular moment in history, what is most important is to defeat Trump, who, as you implied a moment ago, is literally a threat to American democracy, and is moving this country not only in a dangerous way but in an authoritarian way, as well. Trump has got to be defeated and, in a variety of ways, I intend to play an active role in that process.

hirdly, it is not good enough just to elect Joe Biden. We’ve got to continue the movement in this country for transformative change, and to understand that we are way, way, way behind many other industrialized countries in providing for the needs of working families. So the fight continues for a Medicare for All single-payer program, and that becomes especially obvious when you have seen in recent months millions of people losing their jobs. They’re also losing their health care because, under our system, health care is an employee benefit not a human right. So I’m going to continue that fight, and, no question, we are gaining momentum at the grass roots. And on and on it goes.

Sanders (D)(3): “The Consultant Class Ran the Bernie Campaign to the Ground & Disenfranchised the Grassroots” [Bernie 2020 Autopsy CA (Arizona Slim)]. That’s into the ground. Although there’s much more, this graphic conveys the thesis:

I think the institutional issue is that you can’t base a movement on a political campaign (at least one run by professionals).

Sanders (D)(4): “Bernie Sanders Lost, But He Advanced the Class Struggle” [Jacobin]. “The gains made by Bernie’s campaigns may be lost on many in the liberal punditry, but anyone who has been on the activist left for any length of time must appreciate the sea change. We went from playing the most marginal of roles to influencing the national discussion and coming closer than anyone could have imagined to having a socialist in the White House. We can now speak of a national political platform around which a growing socialist left can organize.” • Subject to our famously free press being what it is, we’re in the midst of a recession and a pandemic, and we’ve had a strike wave and then a multi-city uprising that’s still going on, and so far as I can tell, “the left” has no presence in either. As Benjamin Studebaker commented (linked yesterday): “Sadly, our organizations are inferior to the organizations of the anarchists and the woke neoliberals, and for this reason they will continue to hasten the victory of the right nationalists, much to our chagrin.”

* * *

Lexington Herald-Leader endorses Booker:

Astonishing!

AOC’s challenger:

Obama Legacy

Aged like fine wine:

Stats Watch

At reader request, I added some business stats back in. Please give Econintersect click-throughs; they’re a good, old-school blog that covers more than stats. If anybody knows of other aggregators, please contact me at the email address below.

Inflation: “May 2020 CPI: Year-over-Year Inflation Rate Slows to 0.1%” [Econintersect]. “According to the BLS, the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) year-over-year inflation rate was 0.1 % year-over-year (down from the reported 0,3 % last month). The year-over-year core inflation (excludes energy and food) rate declined from 1.4 % to 1.2 % and remains above the target set by the Federal Reserve….The index for energy was the reason for the decline of the CPI-U. Medical care services cost inflation increased from 5.8 % to 5.9 % year-over-year.”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 67 Greed (previous close: 67 Greed;) [CNN]. One week ago: 61 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 10 at 1:31pm.

The Biosphere

“After COVID-19, green investment must deliver jobs to get political traction” [Nature]. “The most precipitous contraction of the global economy in a century has seen carbon emissions plummet. By the end of this year, emissions are likely to be 8% less than in 20191 — the largest annual percentage drop since the Second World War…. Breaking the historical iron law that links economic growth to carbon emissions requires energy supplies to be decarbonized, and is essential to stop global warming. But we must be honest. Nothing in history suggests that emissions can drop fast enough to limit warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels — an aspirational goal of the Paris agreement, which is up for review over the next few years. This would mean cutting emissions by an amount similar to that delivered by the current economic catastrophe every year for the next decade3. We need more pragmatic goals…. Rather than boosting green investment, in the past ten weeks, the United States, Mexico, South Africa and other nations have relaxed laws controlling pollution and standards for vehicle energy efficiency. The US rollback on fuel economy rules, finalized in March, will commit the nation to higher transport emissions — now the largest source of warming gases in the United States — for a decade or more.”

“Urban foxes may be self-domesticating in our midst” [Science]. “In a famous ongoing experiment started in 1960, scientists turned foxes into tame, doglike canines by breeding only the least aggressive ones generation after generation. The creatures developed stubby snouts, floppy ears, and even began to bark. Now, it appears that some rural red foxes in the United Kingdom are doing this on their own. When the animals moved from the forest to city habitats, they began to evolve doglike traits, new research reveals, potentially setting themselves on the path to domestication. … Like early dogs, urban foxes would need to overcome their fear of humans to get close enough to eat our trash. And that may have been the spark that led to a host of other biological changes. Foxes have started down this domestication path before in many parts of the world, Zeder notes. Their bones show up in early farming communities, for example. But unlike wildcats, who entered these communities and transformed into the furballs we know today, these foxes never become fully domesticated. “They never move any farther down the path to domestication,” Zeder says. ‘We don’t know why.'” • “Furballs”? In a science magazine?

A lovely garden:

Aspirational!

Health Care

“Three big studies dim hopes that hydroxychloroquine can treat or prevent COVID-19” [Science]. “[N]ow three large studies, two in people exposed to the virus and at risk of infection and the other in severely ill patients, show no benefit from the drug. Coming on top of earlier smaller trials with disappointing findings, the new results mean it’s time to move on, some scientists say, and end most of the trials still in progress…. Another hope for hydroxychloroquine, that it might prevent people exposed to the virus from getting sick, also faded last week when David Boulware of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and colleagues published the results of the largest study to date of this strategy, called postexposure prophylaxis (PEP). The researchers sent either hydroxychloroquine or a placebo by mail to 821 people who had been in close contact with a COVID-19 patient for more than 10 minutes without proper protection. They reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that 12% of the people who took the drug went on to develop COVID-19 symptoms, versus 14% in a placebo group, a difference that was not statistically significant. A second large PEP trial has come up empty as well, its leader tells Science. Carried out in Barcelona, Spain, that study randomized more than 2300 people exposed to the virus to either hydroxychloroquine or the usual care…. The data are important because they come from large randomized trials…. There is one exception. Many researchers agree that a good case can be made for continuing to test whether hydroxychloroquine can prevent infection if given to people just in case they get exposed to the virus, for instance on the job at a hospital—a strategy called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).” • Readers will correct me, but my feeling is that the comentariat converged on PrEP (in conjunction with zinc) sometime ago. So we’ll see if this pans out. Weird how prevention is never a priority.

“Coronavirus research updates: Virus conscripts a pair of human proteins to invade cells” [Nature]. “A massive coronavirus testing campaign in Vietnam has found evidence that infected people who never show any symptoms can pass the virus to others…. Of roughly 14,000 people tested between mid-March and early April, 49 were infected. Le Van Tan at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and his colleagues monitored 30 of the 49 individuals and found that 13 developed no symptoms during their hospital stay…. Nasal swabbing showed that the infected but asymptomatic study participants had lower levels of viral RNA than infected people who felt ill at some point. But it’s “highly likely” that two of the asymptomatic participants were the source of infection for at least two other people, the authors say.” • I wish somebody would figure out how to run a study to find out if medical dogs can detect otherwise “asymptomatic” cases.

“In Japan and France, Riding Transit Looks Surprisingly Safe” [CItyLab]. Very interesting:

Between May 9 and June 3, 150 clusters of new coronavirus cases emerged in France, according to the country’s national public health body. Defined as three cases or more of Covid-19 linked by contact, these clusters occurred largely in the sort of places you might predict they would: healthcare facilities, workplaces and homeless shelters — all sites where people mix in enclosed spaces for long periods of time and, in the case of hospitals, where people who are already infected are likely to congregate.

What was striking however, was the number of clusters associated with public transit: There weren’t any. For almost a month, not a single Covid-19 cluster had emerged on France’s six metro systems, 26 tram and light rail networks or numerous urban bus routes.

Given the enclosed, ill-ventilated nature of subways and buses and the ease with which they can crowd even during lockdown periods, this apparent lack of clustered cases might come as a surprise. But the results from France closely parallel reports from Japan, whose coronavirus containment strategy focused intently on finding these Covid-19 clusters rather than strict lockdowns, social distancing regulations and mass testing. As Science reported when Japan lifted its state of emergency in late May, most infection clusters there were connected to gyms, bars, music clubs and karaoke rooms; none were traced to the country’s famously crowded commuter trains.

Suggested reasons: Masking, partial ventilation, brief exposures (and little conversation). These would distinguish theses cases from the (oddly withdrawn) Chinese bus study, where exposure was extended and there was air conditioning. It would be interesting to know if the same were true in New York’s subway system, but of course we don’t have the data for that.

Aggregate demand:

I sure as hell don’t.. But as I have said, my regular routine doesn’t include lot of interpersonal contact in any case.

* * *

“Italian woman prepares olives during brain tumour operation” [BBC]. “Italian media describe how the operating theatre resembled something of a kitchen during the procedure. A speciality of the Marche region of central Italy, [Ascoli olives] consist of pitted green olives wrapped around balls of seasoned meat, and are coated in flour, egg and breadcrumbs before being fried.” • There’ll always be an Italy!

Black Injustice Tipping Point

“Liberals: Don’t Be Afraid of Calls to Defund the Police” [Joan Walsh, The Nation]. “Even those who profess to support ‘defunding’ the police mean different things. For many, it starts with demilitarizing urban police forces by not investing in the armaments of war. For others, it’s putting significant chunks of police budgets into social services treating homelessness, mental health issues, and substance abuse. It can also mean disbanding police forces, as the Minneapolis City Council seems to envision—but even that proposal remains admittedly vague. And though he only uses the word “reform,” Minneapolis SEIU leader Javier Morillo laid out seven tough moves— to break the power of conservative, often brutal police unions that have blocked attempts at change in many cities, including his own.” • I dunno. Walsh and such-like seem to be working hard to make “defund the police” seem vague, much as they did with “Medicare for All,” and I would imagine for the same reasons. Frankly, I haven’t had time to sort this out, partly because I feel that the drivers are local left groupuscules I have to research, partly because there seem to be different proposals. However, “Defund the police” seems pretty straightforward to me conceptually: It means, for starters, taking their money away by gutting their budgets. Which seems a reasonable interpretation, given that the slogan comes who call themselves Abolitionists.

Reform vs. abolition:

Police State Watch

A long thread on the various protests/riots/rebellions. It begins in Minneapolis but moves to Seattle:

Well worth scanning through. The left has been out-organized by anarchists ffs.

For comparison purposes (WB):

WB writes: “In case you want to supplement the nice article about how to properly use rubber bullets, here is a photo we took in Derry, Northern Ireland last Fall, where our friends showed us their souvenirs from the Troubles. Gives a sense of scale.”

Class Warfare

“Evictions expected to spike as states end moratoriums that offered relief during COVID-19” [USA Today]. “So far, 24 states are now processing evictions again, and that number is expected to climb to at least 30 states by the end of June…. Not all renters in those jurisdictions are vulnerable, though. Nearly 30% continue to be protected by a federal moratorium under the CARES Act that will remain in place until July 25…. For these unprotected renters, the threat of eviction is very real – especially for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. With tens of millions of workers unemployed and the economy expected to remain shaky until there’s a vaccine and consumers feel safe enough to travel, dine out and go to theme parks and movies again — homelessness could come at any time. And like everything else that COVID-19 touches, it’s communities of color that face disproportionate risk.”

“Chaos In The Time Of Covid” [Chris Arnade, American Compass]. “Rural residents are frustrated with urban residents, who in their minds, unleashed the crisis with needless global travel only to then spend it holed up in apartments getting paid to write scolding essays while they are not allowed to work. In cities, the well-to-do are angry at the hicks and their ‘just the flu’ mantra. Meanwhile, the poor, only a few neighborhoods away, are angry at the well-to-do, who tweet #AloneTogether from book-lined rooms, while they crowd into fourth-floor walkups with one bathroom, a bible, and dreams of not having to go to the Laundromat. At every income level, entrepreneurs, bearing the brunt of the economic lockdown, are mad at the risk averse, for wanting to lock down forever: The hair dresser who can’t work is mad at the neighbor on disability, the bar owner at the bureaucrats with their weekly check, and the CEOs of troubled companies at academics happily Zooming away from home. Meanwhile the working class, mostly blacks and latinos, have died in numbers that should be the national disgrace. But that has been drowned out by everyone else complaining about lesser problems.” • Everything’s going according to. plan!

“The gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening sharply” [Financial Times]. “As economists debate the letter-form trajectory of the recovery ahead, it is not too soon to identify the letter shape of what has occurred so far. At best, it might be called a K-shaped recovery. While we panicked together in March, since then there have been two vastly divergent experiences…. Put simply, the haves are largely back to where they were before the outbreak, while, despite unprecedented fiscal and monetary policy action, the have-nots have even less. For most of the world’s largest companies, the wealthy and the work-from-home crowd, there has been a bungee jump-like rebound in confidence. Meanwhile, for small businesses, the clearly overleveraged, the working class and many in essential roles, conditions have deteriorated further….. With many public support programmes nearing an end, and financial markets pricing in a V-shaped recovery, policymakers would be wise to consider the divide that now exists. We must address the adverse consequences of the K-shaped recovery or they could easily lead to an L-shaped recovery for all.” • Considering what happened the last time we had a K-shaped and prolonged “recovery,” it’s worth asking what will happen if we have one again.

News of the Wired

“Democracy of Speed” (photo essay) [The Bitter Southerner]. Eighteen years ago: “The first thing I noticed after I parked the car and walked toward the pits, is that I wasn’t the only African American there. Far from it. Many of the racers were black. So were plenty of the spectators and one or two of the track’s personnel. Most of the people at the track, from racers to workers, were white, and many of them had friendly relationships with the black people who were there. (I was to learn that these friendships often went back decades…. It turns out that no motorsport has been more open to African Americans and to other people of color than drag racing. What I saw on my first trip to the track is duplicated all over the country, from small, grassroots dragstrips, like Eastside, to the large corporate tracks that attract the National Hot Rod Association’s top professional racers. The same is true for women racers, and it’s been this way for a long time. African Americans started racing at Eastside when it opened in 1965 — that is, when the “Whites Only” signs were only beginning to come down throughout the South. Women were racing there by the 1970s. Elsewhere, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans had been a part of the drag racing scene since its beginnings as a formal sport in the late 1940s. Women also have an extensive history in the sport, one that starts in the 1950s and includes world champions like the late Carolyn “Bunny” Burkett, who appears in several of these photos.” • Well worth a read, and spectular black-and-white photos.

Yarn diagrams in the wild. Thread with many examples, some from literature:

* * *
Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi 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. Today’s plant (PI):

PI writes: “Stopped for this pic near Lake Los Angeles, CA in the Antelope Valley today. Thought you’d enjoy it. The mountains are the San Gabriels. Los Angeles proper is on the other side…” Lake Los Angeles is a splendid example of California real estate speculation, but the high desert is often very beautiful.

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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114 comments

  1. jo6pac

    Obama Legacy
    Aged like fine wine:

    I would like to point out fine wine shouldn’t be used with obomber name. obomber legacy goes along Pi$$ in the wind.

        1. jo6pac

          I’m a big fan of Colin’s when he was just a really good Q and getting better. The last place I would want him to play for are the ne cheaters;-) That won’t happen because owner is a close friend of the trumpster.

        2. The Rev Kev

          How about this instead-

          “Kaepernick asks Obama to think about pain he’s causing military families by getting troops killed in unnecessary wars.”

      2. ChiGal in Carolina

        I am no fan of obama but this is beneath NC;
        this is the NOT selectively edited quote:

        “I want (the protesters) to listen to the pain that that may cause somebody who, for example, had a spouse or a child who was killed in combat and why it hurts them to see somebody not standing,” Obama said. “But I also want people to think about the pain he may be expressing about somebody who’s lost a loved one that they think was unfairly shot.”

        this thread is an echo chamber of unproductive snark

        1. flora

          ChiGal, with greatest respect:

          How is O’s exhortation NOT using the troops as a ploy or a shielding skirt to shut down legitimate protest at home. How does soft-shaming protestors – and I think that’s what this is – not undermine the very things – the bill of rights, the constitution, the right to assembly/petition for redress of grievances – that military soldiers and sailors enlisted to uphold?

          This is not a got’cha question or a snark.

          1. flora

            adding: I understand the full quote, and imo the time for straddling issues and playing both sides, the ‘3rd way’ as the DLC called it, has run out of room. My 2 cents.

          2. ChiGal in Carolina

            with equally great respect, flora, he was asked by someone what does he say to members of the military who feel dissed by K. and he DID affirm that K was exercising his Constitutional rights.

            I know all about his craven pretense of drinking Flint water and will never forget the litany of broken promises he left behind: never put on his boots to march in solidarity with anybody, never delivered on national healthcare (my biggest disappointment), never closed Guantanamo, never stood up to Wall Street on behalf of Main Street, never brought transparency to the White House, in fact doubled down on whistleblowers and expanding the surveillance state, to his eternal shame treating Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden like pariahs. Not to mention being the first Nobel Peace Prize winner who turned out to be really good at blowing brown people into pink mist. Oh, and he is building a monument to himself that will break up a beautiful 19th century expanse of parkland by the lake in my neighborhood.

            I cannot stand to look at the man or listen to his mellifluous voice. I had such high hopes for him and he turned out to be such weak tea.

            but I find that tweet disingenuous at best. Since I am not as informed a member of the commentariat as you and many others here, it’s hardly my place to pass judgment. Yet and still, I read the comments every day and value the critical thinking that goes on here, and sometimes when I see a long string of the same old well-worn witty jabs whose only purpose is to reinforce that we in the bubble have it right or know better, I am moved to say so.

            2. Lambert Strether Post author

              > the same old well-worn witty jabs

              I try to keep the witty jabs fresh, but maybe I need to work harder at that! It’s been a discouraging few months.

          3. randomworker

            I know this site is ODS Central, but read the piece.

            Obama was asked about the controversy over the football player’s protest move during a CNN town hall with members of America’s armed forces community on Wednesday. Kaepernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, has sat or kneeled when the national anthem is played during recent games to draw attention to racial oppression in the U.S., especially police shootings of black men.

            Advertisement

            The president defended Kaepernick and others who have joined him in such acts, which many Americans consider offensive, saying, “We fight sometimes so that people can do things that we disagree with.”

            1. The Rev Kev

              Did he say that before or after unleashing a military-style crackdown on his fellow Americans at the Occupy Wall Street camps? Like Hillary, he too had a private and a public position many topics but at heart he was a sociopath.

            2. Massinissa

              What does ODS stand for? I genuinely don’t know, and couldn’t find anything on google.

            3. Lambert Strether Post author

              > I know this site is ODS Central

              You can’t know what isn’t so. You’re not seeing Birtherism here for example. Or any of a number of conspiracies I’m not going to mention because I don’t want to spend time cleaning out of comments section.

              Obama betrayed the hopes of a great many people. And it looks like the Obama Alumni Association is going to clamber back into the saddle to deal with this Crash, having butchered the last one. It’s not a good position to be in. Pushing back on that is neither deranged nor a syndrome.

        2. Pat

          I might want someone who expanded military operations in the Middle East for no reason that helped or made better the lives of most ground military or their families to perhaps spend more time demanding they get more benefits than applause at a football game and a “thank you for your service” before using them to attempt to shut down someone’s highly public protest. You know the one that might embarrass him because his administration was clearly not going to do squat to try to address either the events or the system that had enabled them which were being protested.

          Obama faked drinking water in Flint rather than calling out the political malfeasance. That tweet isn’t so much taking him out of context but correctly translating the statement.

        3. Pavel

          The same Obama who planned his weekly drone killing lists.

          He (illegally) assassinated an American citizen for espousing pro-Muslim views, along with the 16 year-old son (“collateral damage”).

          When asked about the latter, Obama’s press secretary callously stated, “He should have chosen better parents.”

          Bah bloody humbug. Psychopaths the lot of them.

        4. Lambert Strether Post author

          > “I want (the protesters) to listen to the pain that that may cause somebody who, for example, had a spouse or a child who was killed in combat and why it hurts them to see somebody not standing”

          This shows the cul de sac that “support the troops but not the war” has gotten us into. I support the troops in the sense that I don’t think that the military should be the only way out for the sons and daughters of families in deindustrialized America. And I have some sympathy for the families’ need to believe that these deaths are meaningful. But they are not. Obama’s “listen to the pain” — how reminiscent of Clinton’s “feel your pain” — and “killed in combat” are grotesque sentimentalities. They were not “killed in combat.” They were killed in war. And there hasn’t been a war that our political class decided to fight in the last twenty years that was worth one single American life (let alone all the other lives), and that’s being generous.

          So I think Obama’s statement was piffle and bafflegab all the way through, whether thin-sliced or thick-sliced. There isn’t a dichotomy of A (“family pain for unjust shooting”) vs. B (“military family pain for death in combat”), as Obama would have it. It’s A = B, which you can see as soon as you think of how many former troops come home and join our militarized police force. In short, I think Politico’s paraphrase was accurate.

          I have no idea how to defuse this vile combination of sentimentality, militarism, and American exceptionalism, but it’s worth noting that in 2016, back when Trump said (paraphrasing) that the Iraq War was stupid, that counties that suffered troop casualties voted disproportionately for him. Liberal Democrats should take note, but of course they won’t.

          1. ChiGal in Carolina

            so you’re saying that Obama was part of the state apparatus that prioritizes war over the actual well-being of the citizenry?

            I too was disappointed that he fell in line with American exceptionalism and didn’t challenge the MIC—but have any recent presidents?

            I know, I know, he got our hopes up. But how much energy are we going to continue to invest in reminding each other here at NC that he let us down? We mostly all already know that! Let’s move on.

    2. ambrit

      How about this?

      Chateau PL”O”NK : What you need to make the nasty reality go away.

      1. flora

        Don’t ‘cha love the way O and the Dem estab always talks down to their voters, always scolds their voters, and always in a ‘concerned’ voice. How much is that house on Marthas Vinyard? My 2 cents.

  2. Wukchumni

    “Evictions expected to spike as states end moratoriums that offered relief during COVID-19”

    Knock knock:

    Who’s there?

    For

    For who?

    Foreclosure, you got an hour to get your stuff out of here.

    1. John Anthony La Pietra

      You’d think that a self-labeled national newspaper would name the 24 => 30 states where foreclosure is active again/still . . . or give a link, at least . . .

      BUT NOOOOOO! . . . . . .

      1. Jessica

        News often presents the information necessary to draw attention but not the information you would need to made an intelligent judgment on the subject.

    1. patrickD

      Thank you for the Orville S. link. He moderated a panel at UCB last Jan. or so that was on the same topic. The voice of reason lost in gathering clouds.

  4. The Historian

    I loved Esotouric’s Secret LA Gardens picture. If I could, that is exactly how my yard would look. But unfortunately, my HOA demands that I grow the most useless crop known to mankind, lawn grass.

    1. Samuel Conner

      If the HOA permits pets to be kept indoors, mow before the lawn service arrives, bag the clippings and feed them (assuming the lawn service doesn’t apply toxic substances to the lawn) to compost worms, concealed in bins in a corner of the basement. They will thank you with offerings suitable for growing nice decoratives (and perhaps a few low-height vegetables hidden among the decorative plantings).

      Lawn grass isn’t entirely useless.

      Depending on what herbicides are used, perhaps salt the lawn with a small height clover? Outside Pride sells a mini-clover that is lawn-height. It fixes nitrogen, improving the soil fertility. Don’t know if one has to add an inoculant when sowing.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > my HOA demands

      HOA’s are one of those uncovered stories. I wonder if there’s a map anywhere that shows the jurisdictions/land mass that is subject to them…

      1. Basil Pesto

        blimey, I just had to look up HOA. Are they particularly commonplace over there?

        (I’m familiar with owner’s corporations for apartment buildings with shared facilities; I am renting in one such place. They seem to make a certain amount of sense. but having a lawn mandated for your front yard? yeesh, I thought you guys were all about Freedom ™)

        1. LarryB

          You’ve obviously never been exposed to an HOA board member, freedom is the last thing on their mind. Rigid uniformity is their goal. Petty mindedness is their forte.

          After my experience with an HOA with the first house I bought, the first thing on my house must-have list for subsequent houses was “NO HOA!”. period.

          A few years ago, a little south of where I am now, someone had the temerity to paint his house an unapproved color, the HOA came to him and said “you have to use these colors”, so he did, every one of them, came to be called “the rainbow house”.

  5. Krystyn Podgajski

    RE: “Three big studies dim hopes that hydroxychloroquine can treat or prevent COVID-19”

    Thoughts: One is that the HCQ dose may be too high becasue they need it to be that high when there is not enough extracellular zinc (Zinc Deficiency). Then, the high dose of HCQ reduces extracellular zinc and that causes the deaths they are seeing in the patients. So high doses of zinc plus much lower doses of HCQ could work on all populations, pre and post infection, with less risk of side effects from HCQ.

    So if anyone knows anyone at risk of exposure; Capers, Green Tea, and zinc would be a good PrEP.

  6. DJG

    From the article on foxes: “They never move any farther down the path to domestication,” Zeder says. “We don’t know why.”

    The article notes that the urban foxes have stronger jaws to chew up the urban diet. There are some slight changes in skull size.

    Yet a fox knows many things, as Archilochus told us. Likewise, wolves and coyotes. The local coyotes here use a railroad embankment to get around the neighborhood, but that doesn’t make them railway workers.

    They may be much too social and intelligent to “self-domesticate” further. Because there is no benefit. They are in it for the food and shelter–a well-known characteristic of canines. To domesticate further, a human being has to steal some pups. The idea that animals would lose all fear of their main enemy as an evolutionary tactic does strike me as a tad daft.

  7. Jack 5

    AOC’s challenger
    Not as rich as Oprah but better off than a bartender. Career choice matters.

  8. L

    Subject to our famously free press being what it is, we’re in the midst of a recession and a pandemic, and we’ve had a strike wave and then a multi-city uprising that’s still going on, and so far as I can tell, “the left” has no presence in either. As Benjamin Studebaker commented (linked yesterday): “Sadly, our organizations are inferior to the organizations of the anarchists and the woke neoliberals, and for this reason they will continue to hasten the victory of the right nationalists, much to our chagrin.”

    I’m not sure I buy either point here. In the first case, at least on my local level, there have been “left” organizations involved in the protests and releasing demands, some of which the governor has heeded. But those have been the local left organizations not the national ones, many of whom still seem to be licking their wounds from the Sanders campaign or being eaten by the people who “ran” them/

    As to the second point, the neoliberals do have a head start and better funding, that is of course the point. What the anarchists have is energy, energy that they are willing to expend in the street.

    I agree that it is disappointing that Bernie has done so little. My 2c is that Sanders was blindsided by Obama (shouldn’t have been) but also that he, more than any other practicing politician, recognizes the real threat of Trump. As weak as his praise of Biden is, Sanders is making a point that he also made in his book when he talked about Hitler and Wall Street. At the end of the day he is trying to secure and defend real gains for working people. And underneath the off-kilter lunacy, Trump is trying to undermine all of that, all at once. Biden sucks. He is a weak-kneed political timeserver who is more neoliberal than Obama, and less concerned with structural change (and yes that is a low bar). But that said, he is better than Trump who masks a deliberate and concerted effort to dynamite everything that is holding people up.

    I also wish that groups like DSA were more active, but at this point even the NAACP and the Poor People’s Campaign seem to be playing catchup to a genuine expression of anger coming from all corners of America. At this point is is really locals setting the tone.

    1. mle detroit

      L@2:43

      I also wish that groups like DSA were more active, but at this point even the NAACP and the Poor People’s Campaign seem to be playing catchup to a genuine expression of anger coming from all corners of America. At this point is is really locals setting the tone.

      I think you’re right about locals. If that is true, the best thing the rest of us can do is support Charles Booker in the Senate Democrat primary in Kentucky on June 23.

      Lambert worried in the last few days about early voting before Charles Booker hit his stride. But requesting an absentee ballot, for those who weren’t already eligible, began on June 1 and ends next Monday, the 15th. I suspect that only the elderly, who were already establishment-aligned, would already be committed. “Early voting” started yesterday: It may not be too late.

      I think for both the primary and the general, Booker needs to run against his (Dem) governor, who has pledged to provide complete COVID-19 health care for “100%” of Kentucky’s black population. Booker’s already for real single-payer Medicare for All — including white people (and those famous green and purple friends of the fragile, too). He needs to get Bernie and Pramila and the nurses in to campaign with him. Sell all Kentuckians on the nice things they can have while McGrath takes her carpetbag home and McConnell retires on his wife’s millions.

      1. David J.

        I happily voted for Booker last week. I also happily support Gov. Beshear’s commitment to use existing tools and existing law to improve health care for the black community in KY.

        Contrary to those among the left who are accustomed to cutting off their nose to spite their face, just to preserve another idiotic form of ideological purity, it’s probably not a good idea to advise an upcoming progressive Black leader, who has a lot of promise, and whose constituency is in the largest black community in the state, to run against the a governor who, in a great breath of fresh air for this state, has committed his administration to a campaign to reach out and use existing law to enroll members of the under-served and all too frequently ignored black community in this state.

        Because the path to victory clearly lies in suggesting that Booker betray his own constituency while he simultaneously burns bridges with that part of the KY Dem establishment that is actually willing to expend political capital on improving the lives of that significant portion of the black community which, at this time, does not have adequate health care.

        1. Lambert Strether Post author

          > I happily voted for Booker last week. I also happily support Gov. Beshear’s commitment to use existing tools and existing law to improve health care for the black community in KY.

          That’s fine as a pragmatic matter, but Beshear shouldn’t spout nonsense about health care being a right, and then turn around and act in a manner that shows that he doesn’t think it is. Especially when he could be supporting Booker’s message and not undercutting it.

      2. Oh

        He needs to get Bernie and Pramila and the nurses in to campaign with him.

        Bernie and Premila have already gone over to the dark side. It’ll be a cold day in hell when they come to campaign for Booker. I hope I’m wrong.

    2. Aintnorep

      It’s not clear to me that Bernie—aside from lighting the world on fire and then self immolating his campaign— has done so little since the pandemic broke out. He’s done what he’s always done; run his live streams, introduced legislation to actually head off the coming depression (getting right wing Democrats and the odd Republican on board too) and gotten his people into Biden’s phony task forces, etc.

      Bernie has been playing the long game for 40 years and now his crazy ideas ARE the mainstream. You can accuse him and the campaign of anything you want, but Bernie’s not going to change. Bernie SHOULD have already weaponized his donor list, and knocked Our Revolution, Justice Democrats and the rest of them into a cohesive progressive fundraising and organizing machine to primary every Obama, Clinton and corporate Democrat running this year. Not to to have done so has undeniably left a vacuum on the Left and is probably a mistake, but Bernie is Bernie, and of course . . . the future is not written. We’ll see what happens next year, assuming we even have an election this one.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > Not to to have done so has undeniably left a vacuum on the Left and is probably a mistake, but Bernie is Bernie, and of course

        I don’t have a master theory for what happened to the Sanders campaign in 2020. When I do, I will have a failure matrix like this.

        However, Moses only glimpsed the Promised Land. He did not get to enter it. I am hoping that the extraordinary ferment of strikes and rebellion will bring forth battle-hardened new leaders — who don’t get decapitated.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > At this point is is really locals setting the tone.

      I agree. That’s frustrating from the purely blogging perspective, but it’s also a consequence of successful Democrat decapitation. I mean, it’s great that Ellison is the Minnesota AG, but if he had been running the DNC instead of Perez……

  9. JBird4049

    jo6pac @ 2:10

    How about like a good Italian cooking wine? Sweet, bitter, and sour all at once? Looks good, smells nice, taste awful.

    1. Michael Fiorillo

      Yes, but still useful under the right conditions.

      Obama , on the other hand, is worse than useless.

  10. Altandmain

    Remember this?

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/controversial-dnc-chair-debbie-wasserman-schultz-to-face-progressive-tim-canova-in-an-august-primary.html

    This one seems to be a long shot, but a few of the Bernie Sanders supporters are trying to primary out the former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, who was forced to resign in disgrace due to the Wikileaks revelations of the DNC attempting to work against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. Jen Perelman is running in that district in the Democratic Primary and on Thursday at 7 pm (Eastern Time I assume), they are doing a stream.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/h02h2d/ama_announcement_jen_perelman_fl23_dem_primary/

    Debbie Wasserman-Schulz also has a bad reputation for taking money as well from Pay Day Loans.

    Hopefully we can see better results than Tim Canova who lost.

    If you are interested:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPP8U6tbsbg

    1. EricT

      Fat chance that her run succeeds. The election machinery is so corrupted in that district that its a losing proposition to even try a run. Its just a waste of time. If the government officials won’t adhere to the law and refuse to prosecute anyone who commits election fraud or not punish anyone who has defied the courts then what chance does anyone have in changing anything.

  11. JacobiteInTraining

    Some nights ago i watched a livestreamer – Regg – who spent quite a bit of time covering Minneapolis. What really struck me was the times he spent wandering in and around the George Floyd Tribute area (where Mr. Floyd died) and how even then, just a few nights in to the activities…the locals had flowers, signs, tributes, memorials. As well as scouts, barricades, overwatch, and security details.

    They were loosely organized, pretty well focused, and reasonably well-populated,

    It was *very* much like whats going on in Seattle, and seemed like the beginnings of a ‘Minneapolis Autonomous Zone’ – if you look at graffiti on the AutoZone sign in some of the reports, you see that very word graffitied in. I need to go check out twitter reports and see how that place is doing, I don’t think it has been ‘cleared by regime forces’ yet.

    I see a lot of gabbing about how these autonomous zones are just a bunch of spoiled kids LARPing at revolution. I dunno, I think they know EXACTLY what the stakes are and really care that what they are doing freaking WORKS this time.

    BTW – Regg’s streams of Minn, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMhxfrpJvYmz5J_QVbfyVjA/videos check out ‘Minneapolis MN: Pt.1 A Tribute To George Floyd R.I.P’ and Part 2, zoom around the timeline until you see the Tribute zone, if interested in their really *early* state of calm, organization, and committment.

    1. Amfortas the hippie

      for the origin of the terms:
      https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-t-a-z-the-temporary-autonomous-zone-ontological-anarchy-poetic-terrorism

      I read this,again, and i think about the several hippie(ish) communes i’ve visited, and the swamp rat clan i stayed with in the Atchafalaya Basin(all in the early 90’s, during my Wild Years)>
      I didn’t read Bey…or any other anarchist…until I got the intertube machine, circa 1999…but i may as well have,lol.
      our farm is a sort of anarchist collective(with two doddering old folks still clinging to power and the old ways, to boot!)
      I also like the idea of Rhizomes…like a great mat of water hyacinths…rather than the usual heirarchical structures we keep doing.
      (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy) although Bey is a much easier read)

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      Subject to correction, I think the left and anarchists have very different views of the state. My left/liberal/conservative triad works for electoral politics. Perhaps I need to make it a quadrilateral, given that electoralism seems to have its limitation.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > I see a lot of gabbing about how these autonomous zones are just a bunch of spoiled kids LARPing at revolution. I dunno, I think they know EXACTLY what the stakes are and really care that what they are doing freaking WORKS this time.

      Purely from the visuals, I don’t see the class markers that would show me “a bunch of spoiled kids.” Although it’s not like we can take an exit poll.

      Though I’m not sure the “kids” in the autonomous zones are the same as the “crowd” in Minneapolis, either.

  12. tommystrange

    Maybe I’m totally wrong, but with that Benjamin article and comments I’m getting the feeling that progressives and ‘leftists’ on NC and else where are kinda playing into the ‘anarchists are some special grouping’. This is feeding into the bull trope of Antifa swooping in and out, which I KNOW you all know is crazy. But it is truth that the FBI and such are ‘hunting now’….well yeah…always have been since the Palmer raids heh. Still My point is, do you Lambert and all the great commentators on NC know that us anarchists have been involved in every damn mutual aid, or eviction defense or starting street sheets and homeless coalitions and food not bombs and prison literature and yes, were the backbone of occupy at least in the big cities? Urban mutual aid since the early 1980’s? That we don’t wear badges, and since we don’t run political candidates, it’s uhhhh….sometimes hard…to see who in the org is anarchist. But ‘we’, often in San Francisco, Chicago and LA and NYC, even engage in political ballot stuff and even candidates? Sorry if I’m being overbearing, but just want to point out…..every food co op, every bottom up org since the 1980’s probably has ‘some’ anarchists involved. It’s a social, economic and political philosophy, not a political organization. It’s very healthy in that way. Cannot be co opted, nor destroyed by leadership betrayal or imprisonment. Of course the failure of USA anarchism, is the complete lack of mass organization from the 1990’s to present of a militant non ballot box bottom up mutual aid, to engage power seriously, and offering of a better world. If anarchists could mostly ‘do’ Seattle 1999, and then shut down SF against Iraq war, why didn’t it transfer to mass urban assemblies, and international mass federation?….I will agree there……we failed……..big time…..

    1. Krystyn Podgajski

      Maybe I’m totally wrong, but with that Benjamin article and comments I’m getting the feeling that progressives and ‘leftists’ on NC and else where are kinda playing into the ‘anarchists are some special grouping’.

      You are not wrong. I felt it as well, but I am used to it.

    2. ShamanicFallout

      I’ll take a stab at “why it didn’t transfer into mass urban assemblies”. Most (and I mean most) people don’t want anything to do with a “mass urban assembly” or be part of an “autonomous collective” (whatever that is). I know I don’t. Sounds like a Monty Python send-up.
      I ask this in all honesty- do people actually want to ‘self govern from the bottom up?’?
      An example- at my business all of the employees who had been there for a while we invited to become owners in business at zero cost to them. They would then all be part of the business, part of its decision-making, sharing risk and reward. Exactly two people accepted. I talked to those who declined and heard, essentially across the board, “I just want to get my paycheck and my bonus and not be bothered with that stuff”. An anecdote to be sure, but I bet this is a very widespread attitude

      1. Krystyn Podgajski

        This is how people who do not understand Anarchism react.

        The difference is between an authority you can choose and one you are force to live under. A coop’s members choose the leadership. And they have more agency as a result.

        I mean why do you vote? Why be bothered with it?

        I’ll agree with you though, most people do not want to be free. And it bothers me that that does not concern you.

        1. CoryP

          Thanks for that link to An Anarchist FAQ the other day! I spent a good while reading some of it. Tho it really is an FAQ so I would suggest not just starting from the beginning and going straight through like I did.

          Very heavy on repetition, but then again, that’s how we learn.

        2. Jason Boxman

          Interestingly, I’m reading The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd, and pirate ships are anarchist, as the captain essentially serves at the pleasure of the crew. Important decisions are put to a vote, and the spoils are generally shared equally. Captured ships aren’t so lucky, however.

        3. Anarcissie

          Most humans have lived under slavery of one kind of another for many generations, so it is not surprising if this has had some kind of cultural or even genetic effect. It is hard to change something you are brought up to believe in from the day you’re born, so most people, deprived of a boss, go looking for another one. But not everyone. It’s a long shot, but there is some hope. I don’t see any hope for continued human existence if the present capitalist struggle for power and its war against humanity and nature continues.

    3. Henry Moon Pie

      There’s been a lively dialogue at NC between anarchists and more state-oriented leftists going way back. David Graeber once contributed articles here and commented regularly. My position is that we all need each other.

      There’s no question that anarchists are always the easy punching bags of the right-wing and have been for more than a century. Three poor, troubled kids I was acquainted with found themselves targets of the FBI because the woke PMC folks in the local Occupy found the kids’ waving a Circle-A flag while riding their skateboards to be uncouth. They’re not even halfway through their federal stints now.

      (I say “right-wing” when those boys suffered under a Dem President, AG and local mayor.)

      1. Massinissa

        “They’re not even halfway through their federal stints now.”

        What? 20 years for holding signs?

        1. Henry Moon Pie

          As targets of an FBI investigation, their crime was chosen, organized, funded and all but carried out by the fed informant and play actors. The dumb kids were just along for the ride. But it began with coarse language and a Circle-A flag.

    4. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Of course the failure of USA anarchism, is the complete lack of mass organization from the 1990’s to present of a militant non ballot box bottom up mutual aid, to engage power seriously, and offering of a better world. If anarchists could mostly ‘do’ Seattle 1999, and then shut down SF against Iraq war, why didn’t it transfer to mass urban assemblies, and international mass federation?….I will agree there……we failed……..big time…..

      Well, that’s the left’s problem, too. On the other hand, I genuinely do not see how something other than a “special grouping” can “transfer to mass urban assemblies,” I really don’t. Rhizomes (to use Amfortas’s term, and one I used myself back in the 2010s) do not, as it were, provide a canopy. For that, you need something really tall, like a tree.

      On yet another hand, the anarchists are out there taking action locally, so I have to give credit.

      To be clear, I, and I think others, have some lingering bitterness for the role that I feel black bloc played during Occupy. It seemed ego-driven (as in for the cameras*) and destructive. There is also the issue that the whole black bloc concept obviously made infiltration by the police incredibly easy. I’m not saying this to enourage anyone to pile on, but to make it clear where I am coming from.

      And all that said, do keep commenting. It’s interesting.

      * Although not, oddly, CCTV cameras.

  13. Toshiro_Mifune

    Urban foxes may be self-domesticating in our midst
    I know from my UK colleagues that foxes in London is very much a common sight. I’m in NJ though, really the heart of suburban NJ (yes, I do hate it) in a house that I bought from my parents and I grew up in. So I’m very very familiar with the area. In the last decade we’ve started to see foxes in my neighborhood, as well as deer and turkeys, which something that was unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago.

  14. Code Name D

    I can see from the electoral map how Biden is running away with the election. It just screams 14 point lead, doesn’t it. I sure hope Biden has picked out his drapes for the oval office by now.

    1. John Anthony La Pietra

      So, taking the consensus as a given, 270 (total) – 204 (Trump’s) = 66. Trump must win 66 from the states in play: AZ (11), FL (29), MI (16), NC (15), PA (20), and WI (10) plus 1 to win not tie = 102. 102 – 66 = 36. So if Trump wins FL, MI, NC, and PA (29 + 16 + 15 + 20 = 80), he wins. That’s a heavy lift. I think I’ve got the math right this time!

      If Trump needs 66 out of the 102 electoral votes from the “states in play”, then how about this scenario?

      * Trump loses Michigan (16) and Pennsylvania (20). 16 + 20 = 36.

      * Trump wins Arizona (11), Florida (29), North Carolina (15), and Wisconsin (10). 11 + 29 + 15 +10 = 65.

      That would put Trump at 269 and Biden at 268. Wait a minute — neither one has a majority?!

      Nope . . . because there’s one more EC vote shown as “in play”: the 2nd Congressional District in Nebraska.

      If Trump sweeps this up with the rest of the state, he wins. If Biden takes that district, he ties the race nationwide — and the House of Representatives (the outgoing House, IIRC) has a free hand to figure out who’s the third-place finisher they can also consider under the 12th Amendment. If an alternative party’s standard-bearer gets the vote, whether from the people or from a “faithless” elector . . . then that onezvote wonder is in the mix, and could conceivably be the compromise-candidate winner.

      (OTOH, if Trump loses NC but wins MI, then — all else being equal — that would put him at Lambert’s target of 270. . . .

      1. John k

        Biden is doing a better job than Hillary did in the deep blue states.
        The swings remain quite close. I see the election depending on what people think of the economie’s direction, and or the virus direction, when they vote.
        Will trump throw big bucks to the swings in q3?
        Might trump promise to sign m4a if it reaches his desk, in contrast to Biden’s promise to veto?
        Trump has options.
        It would be fun to hear again the dems fury with EC if trump steals another one…

        1. Oh

          He may have his options but his credibility like Biden’s is zero.

          I wish there’s a way where both these stinkers could lose.

          1. Pat

            When you give the people the choice between a lying racist misogynist serial sexual harasser and a lying racist misogynist serial sexual harasser the choice is clear. Both also exhibit narcissism. Unfortunately most won’t do the logical thing and vote for anybody else, they will search for some ridiculous crumb that says this one, or that, is better than the other.
            We have had two elections in a row where a sane and thinking populace would have told the main parties to stuff it, unfortunately one of those stellar choices will once again win. And I will bet that as in the last election when you add together the votes with the votes of those who just stayed home, 70% of American voters will not have voted for either the winner or the loser.

      2. John Anthony La Pietra

        Well, my math is good — though not exclusive; there are other tying combinations — but my 12th Amendment logic is a bit stretched. The House doesn’t have to pick from the top three; the text says “not exceeding three”, so they can stick to the top two.

        One other note: if the Presidential election goes to the House, the voting there is not member by member, but state by state. Each delegation gets a vote.

      1. Pat

        Probably dropped as too specific. As pointless as most of her advice is, none of it is likely to come back to kick her in the rear.
        Or simpler, none of her advice can fail, it can only be failed. The graduate demands certainty or isn’t nice to people or doesn’t always join in with the right movement…

  16. remmer

    “The Consultant Class Ran the Bernie Campaign to the Ground . . .”

    Who’s Brutus in that painting?

    1. The Rev Kev

      From what I heard, Jeff Weavers. Bernie and his wife have been rock solid with Jeff for years and will always back him.

  17. LaRuse

    Re: Domesticated foxes.
    I know someone that has a domesticated fox named Harriett here in Central VA. She is a gorgeous gray fox and I don’t know the full story on how she ended up with this family in Powhatan, VA, but she has been with them since she was a kit and lives in the house with the family and their dog.
    Harriett may be domesticated but she is at least as smart as your average kindergartner and goes out of her way to create trouble, steal food, and do otherwise “foxy” things, while also living more or less peaceably with her humans. She is very vocal about her opinions. I gather that domesticated or not, she isn’t always too easy to live with.
    If you aren’t too weirded out by the Book of the Face, you can check out Harriett here.

  18. anonymous

    Lambert wrote, “I wish somebody would figure out how to run a study to find out if medical dogs can detect otherwise ‘asymptomatic’ cases.”

    I’d expect that to come soon, now that the Finnish and French studies have established that dogs can detect a Covid odor. There is already some suggestion from those researchers that dogs will be able to detect asymptomatic or presymptomatic cases, which will be necessary if they are to provide the most useful screening.

    In the preprint (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.03.132134v1.full.pdf) from this am’s links, the French study using axillary sweat, the discussion section interestingly mentions, “In our proof-of-concept study, two negative samples, according to our described inclusion criteria for negative samples, were marked positive by two dogs; the information was immediately sent to the concerned hospital through the anonymous samples codes, and PCRs that were redone on the patients gave positive results.” 

    From a short article about the urine study from the University of Helsinki: (https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/05/dogs-sniff-covid19/): “Anna Hielm-Björkman, an associate professor of animal clinical research at the university, said that her team has collected urine samples from family members of COVID patients that had not yet been tested or had previously tested negative. In many cases, the dogs picked up on the presence of the disease and when researchers then asked those family members to submit to traditional tests, they were confirmed as positive. ‘We found that the dogs could see that a person was getting sick about four to five days before they got the disease. That was really encouraging because it means that the sensitivity of the dogs is better than the tests,’ Hielm-Björkman said.”

  20. ChrisAtRU

    #ObamaLegacy

    If retweeting were like “70’s kung-fu movie young disciple training sequences”, I’d be on the verge of bleeding out of my fingernails.

    What. A. Tweet.

  22. Tom Stone

    The support for Biden here in Sonoma County is almost palpable.
    Almost…
    “There was a young lady named Post who once made love to a ghost.
    At the height of orgasm she exclaimed to the Phantasm, I think I can feel it, almost”
    One bumper sticker so far, no signs.

  23. JWP

    I’m curious about the impacts the 12+ year drought combined with COVID and reduced food/ag demand will do to the water driven economies in AZ,CA, UT, etc? Haven’t seen much coverage on it besides this piece from Inside Climate News…
    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05062020/drought-southwest-us-agriculture-water-rain-climate-change

    Seems aggravated troubles ahead for the Navajo Nation, already hit hard by the virus, and cities and farms in the area. Maybe some of the SW readers have more personal insight?

  24. Bob kavanagh

    I love NC for articles like the one on drag racing. Tells me stuff I have no clue about.

    1. rowlf

      We had the same situation in SE Michigan when I was doing side work on racing cars, racing bikes and hot rods. Everyone ran their cars and bikes at the local tracks together. The only time things got weird was when the heavy duty street racers showed up for test-and-tune and always took their foot out of the end of the run so nobody could know their time.

      What always caused my brain to tumble like a gyro was when one of the older hillbilly types whose car/bike I was working on would be singing full cracker and then one of his black friends would show up and it was like the guy was the same as him. I worked on everyone’s cars and bikes and I could never reconcile the duality.

  25. farmboy

    “Well worth scanning through. The left has been out-organized by anarchists ffs”
    Don’t you get it? gotta gut punch when the time is right, no Woody Guthrie without the wobblies, no MLK without MalcomX, no Gandi without Tolstoi. threats waiting in the wings. Barely perciptable Antifa scaring Trump. No nuclear treaties without the USSR, red Joan had it right.

  26. jr

    There is a huge bicycle riding protest going off in the West Village as I type. It’s been 5 straight minutes of horns and bells and BLM slogans. It’s it has to be at least four blocks long, can’t tell where it’s headed…it’s a great idea though, bicycle protests, agile…

  27. The Rev Kev

    “Joe Biden is ‘more receptive’ to progressives than past Democrats, Bernie Sanders says”

    C’mon, man! Now that is Bernie just gaslighting people. Biden is well to the right of people like Nixon and Reagan and is the ultimate Washington insider. I could say something wild like ‘Biden hates Americans’ but would be able to find plenty of quotes and videos to prove such a statement.

    1. Massinissa

      I’m not an anarchist, but honestly, that statement is making me massively scratch my head, as well.

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      Subject to correction, I think the left and anarchists have very different views of the state. My left/liberal/conservative triad works for electoral politics. Perhaps I need to make it a quadrilateral, given that electoralism seems to have its limitation.

      1. TB

        I can respect the distinction you’re making, and some anarchists might make it too, but I do think traditionally anyway anarchists have been considered part of the left (unless you count so-called “anarcho-capitalists”, of course.) As for me, though I think voting is futile, I certainly do wish there was a genuine and decently organized left electoral party, if only to give people something to coalesce around. I would join.

    1. Daryl

      Wait, actually evaluating things to see whether they work and discarding them if they don’t? It’ll never catch on.

  30. Pat

    Has anybody found anything that Caruso-Cabrera’s production company has produced?

    Mind you that is not the only question I have. Unless I am missing something there are a few details missing like what type of income some items provide. It also left me wondering when and if CNBC talking heads have to disclose their Board and directorship positions.

    I do have to say that I have referred to her as a carpetbagger knowing she moved to Queens in the last year, but the Wikipedia search looking for the production company thing did provide the irony item that she moved there from Trump Tower.

    Kudos to whoever is keeping an eye on that Wiki page. Including the desire to eliminate Medicare and Social Security in the description of one of her books footnoted is a nice touch.

  31. Andrew Thomas

    I can’t find anything in the picture from N.I. that I can connect with the use of rubber bullets during the troubles. What am I missing? Serious, perhaps dumb question. I evidently don’t know what I am looking at. Thanks in advance.

    1. Democrita

      The point was the rather massive shell on the table — I’m sure another NCer can ID it.
      A comparison of mass death “bullet” vs rubber bullets.
      Took me a sec to spot it too.

  32. kiers

    That a clown like Caruso-Cabrera can even primary in the most diverse mixed congressional district which currently hosts AOC is testimony to the bankruptcy of the quality of democracy, whereas independent non monied liberal progressives can’t even get to that stage: https://youtu.be/qcgPyKt-ysY

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