2:00PM Water Cooler 8/13/2020

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173 comments

1. Lunker Walleye August 13, 2020 at 2:14 pm

   After 3 days without power after Derecho hit, I’m so glad to read NC again! Thanks for being there.
   1. Lambert Strether Post authorAugust 13, 2020 at 2:41 pm

      > 3 days without power

      Welcome back to the Third World!
      1. Ken W August 13, 2020 at 6:47 pm

         I still don’t have power, but I can recharge my phone in the car.
         1. Lunker Walleye August 13, 2020 at 9:19 pm

            Thanks Lambert. The Third World is better than whatever that other world level was — kind of like a forced alliance with the power company who was bringing in pros and ringers from across the country to remove the trees and repair the lines and the citizens who wanted electricity. I would have aligned with almost whomever could get the juice on the fastest in that world. No cells in this household but was happy to have a landline. Best wishes, Ken.
            1. Late Introvert August 13, 2020 at 9:48 pm

               I actually rode my bike over two downed power lines today that were still lying in the street. Iowa City got smoked by that thing.
2. farragut August 13, 2020 at 2:15 pm

   Re: the Biden clip introducing Harris. Biden looks tired, uninspired & simply going through the motions. But, to be fair, he has looked like that to me for the past ~12 months. To continue the discussion from this morning, I’ll vote down ballot, but will vote 3rd party or write-in on the national level, but it seems the choices get worse each cycle.
   1. Dr. John Carpenter August 13, 2020 at 3:01 pm

      Maybe it’s because I had to watch with the sound off, but I’d go so far to say he looks more life-like than I’ve seen in a while. But playing the amateur body language reader game, sans sound, that clip looks like dad explaining to the kids that they’re not going to Disneyland this year, not someone who is excited about his VP selection.
      1. L August 13, 2020 at 4:48 pm

         I have to say so far I’ve seen no proof he is somehow unfit. I know I look awful on a webcam too.

         But the bottom line is that even on his good days Biden is not a foreceful salesman for himself or his cause. He does not inpire with high flowing rhetoric, staight up folksiness or Trump’s Wallace-like ability to “let the crowd turn him on” as Hunter S. Thompson put it. That does not make him bad, or necessarily wrong. After all LBJ, according to many, couldn’t emote his way out of a wet paper bag but he was still an effective politician chiefly by his ability to work one on one. Right now Biden can’t do that.

         At the end of the day Biden spent years waiting his turn but he was noone’s first choice. The neoliberals, neocons, and never Trumpers tried on everyone else for size (except Sanders, Warren, and Gabbard of course) and none of them had the magic. Harris finished lower than she started despite massive fundraising connections. Beto and Buttegeg were so alike as to be forgettable and so vague as to be both unthreatening and uninteresting, and they had no record to run on. Klobuchar had a record, and under the circumstances it was all anchor no rocket. And Booker, never was clear about what he wanted to didn’t want except love. There is no place for that on the Campaign trail.

         Which left Biden, the only choice that neolib/neocon/neodems would take and the only one with a chance to get the support of older minority voters. On some level he has to know that, and that has to hurt. What he does with that is up to him.

         To reference another article above though on the Biden/FDR connection, I think that is not ever going to make sense. FDR campaigned on the New Deal. He fought for it from Day one. He didn’t have it pushed on him.

         But LBJ…

         LBJ was an old politician, picked as the sidekick of a young up and comer, who came out of his shadow late and who did not, by any indication, have strong convictions about the issues he is most known for. Others pushed him into the The Civil Rights act, and Vietnam (which to be fair he inherited). I don’t know enough of the history of the Great Society to be as sure of that.

         I think at best Biden will be LBJ, the only question is, who will be pushing, and where will he give?
         1. drumlin woodchuckles August 13, 2020 at 5:02 pm

            LBJ only inherited a smallish “police action and CIA intervention” in Vietnam. LBJ made his own free choice to escalate it into a big real war. And he couldn’t do that till Kennedy was safely out of the way.

            So, no. LBJ did not “inherit” Vietnam. He inherited a narrow opportunity which he moved heaven, earth and the Big Lie at the Gulf of Tonkin to deliberately on purpose turn it into the War he WANTED it to be.
         2. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 7:12 pm

            > He fought for it from Day one. He didn’t have it pushed on him.

            Debunked. Walter Karp, Indispensable Enemies, pp. 109-129, should disabuse one of the FDR myth. He was an oligarch doing the bare minimum to keep himself and his class off the gallows and in power.
            1. Darthbobber August 13, 2020 at 9:33 pm

               Karo fights his corner well, but I don’t think he really proves his case in Indispensable Enemies. Bare minimum isn’t really accurate, and most of Roosevelt’s class had in mind doing a helluva lot less. I think Karp found the whole party system aesthetically distasteful (though from a different perspective than Sorel, who had a different aesthetic.

               Karp sort of idealized his own image of Jeffersonian democracy (not the actually historical version), and I believe one of his last works portrayed Jimmy Carter of all people as the country’s last, best, hope, betrayed by a secret cabal of Democrats and Republicans to turn the country over to a tyrant (aka Ronald Reagan). As soap opera it works.
         3. voteforno6 August 13, 2020 at 7:28 pm

            LBJ was stronger on civil rights than Kennedy was…as Senate majority leader, he pushed through a civil rights bill during the late ’50s. It didn’t have much bite to it, but it was a start. His efforts were key to passing both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
         4. Phil in KC August 13, 2020 at 10:16 pm

            LBJ wasn’t an “old” politician, even by the standards of his day. In 1960, he was 52 years old, but looked older and more weathered, perhaps because he ate, smoked, and drank to excess. JFK was 9 years younger, Nixon only 5. If you look at photos of LBJ in 1960 and 1969, you can see how the office aged him even more. He died several months shy of his 65th birthday.

            Johnson was not JFK’s top pick for VP. JFK offered him the position with the expectation he would refuse, not wanting to give up his position as Majority Leader. The JFK people were shocked when he accepted.

            Johnson was able to wheel and deal in the Senate because he had Texas oil money to spread around, and he was physically intimidating. Biden has none of that. What he has–and what Harris has–is the backing of the Clinton donor class, along with Obama’s imprimatur. we will see what that is worth.
         5. Darius August 13, 2020 at 11:53 pm

            Listen to FDR’s fireside chat on banking, in which he prevented a nationwide run on the banks. He called cash hoarding, “an exceedingly unfashionable pastime.” It worked. I don’t see Biden having one hundredth of that leadership ability. FDR’s fireside chat of February 1942 reassured a nation severely rattled by a series of setbacks in the wake of Pearl Harbor. I don’t see Biden having that ability, either.
   2. Chris August 13, 2020 at 3:49 pm

      I’m with Matt Taibbi and others when it comes to Biden. I think in that clip he’s coming down from whatever stimulants they gave him.
   3. Darthbobber August 13, 2020 at 4:58 pm

      Well, I’d be tired, uninspired and going through the motions, too, if I was introducing a running mate I didn’t trust and hadn’t wanted.
   4. Phil in KC August 13, 2020 at 10:01 pm

      It was average Biden I saw–not pooped, but not jazzed up, either. It’ll do for now. I think KH will do the heavy lifting in this campaign. All Joe has to do is be a decent guy and allow Trump the space to be an ogre. What the Dems will need is a great ground game–getting the voters to vote. If B and H aren’t inspiring, at least you can get out the anti-Trump vote, yes?

      As for tired–looking, look no farther than Trump in his late afternoon pandemic briefings. He’s not so peppy-looking, either.
3. ambrit August 13, 2020 at 2:23 pm

   Re. ladybugs.
   Here in the NADS, the ladybugs are scarce just now. We do see them inside the house during periods of heavy rainfall. Now is an example. I have seen several of the dark red with little black spots variety of ladybug yesterday and today on the bedroom ceiling. There are transient heavy thunderstorms happening here now.
   That degree of population density, as in the antidote, is not something we see around here.
   Yesterday’s plantidote is a sign of just how big America is geographically. Her elderberries are flowering while ours have already flowered, fruited, and are being eaten by the birds. (We have several elderberry plants outside the kitchen window and have been watching the avian feeding frenzy for weeks already.)
   1. furies August 13, 2020 at 3:01 pm

      I’ve experienced swarms? of ladybugs a few times…in the Sierras and more recently, in the hills of Southern Humboldt County in the month of January. I also did whatever I could to not step on ’em.

      https://www.treehugger.com/why-do-ladybugs-gather-massive-swarms-4864379
   2. sierra7 August 13, 2020 at 5:32 pm

      Re: Lady Bugs:
      Years ago hiking in Spring on the fire road opposite the Carlon Falls Trail off Evergreen Rd. (CA 120 mile or so before the northern entrance to Yosemite) we would encounter a gazillion lady bugs……it was awesome and scary that you really had to be very careful where you stepped!
      There was also a particular time of the year when under the Evergreen Rd. bridge there accumulated thousands upon thousands of the Monarch Butterfly. A couple of nature’s wonderful creatures!
   3. Darius August 13, 2020 at 11:43 pm

      I think those are Asian lady beetles. They were brought here as some kind of superior form of ladybug, but now they are a pest and drive out native ladybugs. They also can form massive swarms inside the walls of houses in the fall, where they congregate seeking warmth. Another good thing made bad by human stupidity.
4. TBellT August 13, 2020 at 2:27 pm

   : “Low-income Americans could help oust Trump — if they show up”

   I’m going to guess the article doesn’t address Bernie’s primary strategy at all? If he couldn’t do it how could either of these two knuckleheads.

   Maybe I’m just in a foul mood lately but I’ve lost all faith in the American people to rise up and overthrow their masters. How bad does it have to get? I guess at this point everything is so internalized and that we’ll just see more deaths of despair. Completely freaking depressing.
   1. Geo August 13, 2020 at 3:01 pm

      The Axis of Idiots
      https://eand.co/america-and-the-axis-of-idiots-25a86ed4a421

      “Would you like…healthcare? No! How about a pension? Never! Uhh…retirement? Forget it! What the? The world’s baffled by all this. Who on earth chooses a worse life — the worst possible life on offer — over and over again? The answer is: Americans.”
      1. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 3:53 pm

         A London-based “disrutpive capitalist” PMC blaming the victims of a system explicitly and deliberately designed to exclude them from power, how unexpected!
         1. Avi Dreader August 13, 2020 at 5:55 pm

            I suspect you didn’t read it all the way through, if that is the conclusion you came to.

            The writer blames the problem in “Anglo nations” on their long standing culture of “aggression, exploitation, and abuse” and their history of “Brutality and enslavement”.
            1. JBird4049 August 14, 2020 at 3:46 am

               Too many refuse to see that the brutality and enslavement by the ruling classes of the Anglo nations was started with their own people. It’s like the PMC blaming the Deplorables of their own robbery.
      2. dougie August 13, 2020 at 4:07 pm

         I don’t usually go to links left in comments, but I am really glad that I did this time! Thanks!
         1. Andrew Thomas August 14, 2020 at 1:30 pm

            ?
   2. km August 13, 2020 at 3:51 pm

      According to Robert Michel, oligarchy is the default state of human society.

      He would probably say that what we are seeing now is simply reversion to the mean.

      That doesn’t make oligarchy a good thing.
   3. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 3:59 pm

      TV and, to a lesser extent, Internet are lines of communication for the counter-revolutionary forces (including the ca. 60% of American voters and their families who believe in the two-party system). Those lines have to be cut first to stop the noise and allow people time to find the conditions.

      To the existing self-declared management chain of the human species, $600 a week is good enough until they can get their weapons ready. That they stopped paying $600 a week suggests that they’re ready for us if we try something.
      1. John k August 13, 2020 at 8:13 pm

         Our weapon is the vote. After the election we are disarmed, which means austerity.
   4. Grant August 13, 2020 at 4:41 pm

      Most people don’t vote. So, the zombies that vote in the two rotten major parties don’t represent the American people. Clinton won the popular vote and only had about a quarter of the voting age population. I would guess that maybe 10% of the voting age population takes part in primaries in these two parties, and you can see the manufactured train wreck that was the Democratic primary from Iowa on. Far more people don’t belong to either party than those that do, and the percentage of those that don’t vote is often larger than the ones that do. It is not at all impossible that these people continue to give us horrible choices and there is massive social unrest, because a large share of the country doesn’t see any solutions within the political system.
      1. edmondo August 13, 2020 at 6:51 pm

         Now they are vote shaming the poors? I find the vote shaming for Joe Biden very telling. That “10% lead in the polls” must not be translating into a Electoral College landslide because the Dems are way, way too vocal on this.

         Keep an eye on this. Ten weeks to go and Biden has already peaked.
         1. Dr. John Carpenter August 13, 2020 at 9:36 pm

            The voter shaming in general feels much more intense lately. And I don’t remember it ever being this bad in 2016. I seem to recall a more belligerent tone of “we don’t need your vote” until the end.

            I agree. Something seems up.
      2. TBellT August 13, 2020 at 9:41 pm

         Yea I know there’s nothing on offer from voting here.

         But how do people not get so enraged to the point of general strikes or further actions of revolution. Instead people just turn their frustration with this system inward on themselves. We need Rob Williams from Good will hunting to tell people “it’s not your fault”
5. Louis Fyne August 13, 2020 at 2:27 pm

   So i watched a bit of Tucker Carlson (i know) to see what his reaction was to kamala…

   Lo and behold the first 4 min. of his monologue sounded straight from the mouth of an Occupy Wall St vet.

   Just saying and i won’t mind being shamed/take it personally for sharing the link

   https://video.foxnews.com/v/6180722551001/ (if you want to hear for yourself. )
   1. anon in so cal August 13, 2020 at 8:14 pm

      Tucker Carlson is the only pundit who denounced the US regime change attempt in Syria and who repeatedly debunks the Russiagate psy ops. He has stressed the importance of peace and diplomacy with Russia. In many clips, he’s articulated progressive policies along the lines of Bernie Sanders’ platform back in 2016 (before Sanders went full Woke)
      1. Darthbobber August 13, 2020 at 9:34 pm

         Alas, that’s hardly all Carlson does.
6. Stephen V. August 13, 2020 at 2:32 pm

   According to Michael Moore “Kamala will be the most progressive VP in U S. history.”
   If you need an emetic the full statement is here:
   https://m.facebook.com/24674986856/posts/10157140781011857/
   This is beyond Trump derangement syndrome. These peeps have arisen from the dead after drowning in Kool-aid.
   1. TBellT August 13, 2020 at 2:35 pm

      Moore’s skill is propaganda. Sometimes it’s good class consciousness propaganda, but he’s also willing to sell his skills to team Blue.
      1. Dr. John Carpenter August 13, 2020 at 3:04 pm

         +1

         He’s also never been as radical as his detractors (and some of his supporters) would like to believe. He’s one of the only Dems to understand why Trump won, but he can’t being himself to accept that the Dems aren’t the solution either.
   2. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 2:48 pm

      A lot of liberals have been using the term “progressive”sentimentally, i.e. narcissistically. In practice, “progressive” means letting the underclass have just enough to function as s–t-eaters in a class society without revolting (cf. Pradhan and Pandit’s class system model) . Like “liberty”, the ability to submit others to your personal will, these storied concepts and affinities, many of which have been more or less pushed on us as code words, are weapons that serve the working class far better when spiked, denying the manipulator class the ability to operate them.

      I’m pretty convinced the ROI of sabotage beats almost every other stratagem when facing gross overmatch on a booby-trapped playing field. As in season two of South Park Officer Barbrady once educated an eager young police cadet smacking criminals in the knees, “No, Eric, that’s not how you enforce the law. You hit ’em in the head so they go down quicker!”
   3. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 3:14 pm

      As veep, perhaps, but as President, she has a long history of being a sadist of negotiable affection.
   4. km August 13, 2020 at 3:52 pm

      Mr. Moore clearly never has heard of one Henry Wallace, or even Truman or LBJ, for that matter.
   5. pjay August 13, 2020 at 4:16 pm

      Shaun King, Bernie, Michael Moore. Gosh, maybe I was wrong about Biden and Harris. Maybe they really are progressive, but because of my fragile ideological purity standards I just can’t recognize it. Maybe I should really be more realistic and reconsider my feelings about voting Blue this year. Or…

      Maybe they are full of s**t!! Yeah, I’ll go with that one. I think 45 years of this crap is enough.
   6. Dan August 13, 2020 at 5:44 pm

      Perhaps Moore is giving KH the fealty she expects while also putting her on notice. I’m not a fan of Moore – he inserts himself into everything way beyond what I can stand – but he’s a bright guy, and he’s been around these politicos long enough to know how they operate, what they require to function. There’s no way he believes that “she’s sincere, she has heart, she’s on our side.” But if he makes her believe that he – and by extension his followers, progressives, lefties, etc. – believes that, then she’ll feel the proper fawning attentiveness has been given her. He can then go on to claim that “No, she’s not you or me. But we’re not on the ballot. WE are the movement, which in the long run is what is going to get us what we need. We keep building that movement, we will succeed.”

      And maybe, just maybe, she’ll listen, at least a little, cause, ya know, we all love her so much, just as she so desperately needs.
   7. rowlf August 13, 2020 at 9:48 pm

      Moore is beyond sell by date. I personally saw him fly on an airline that was going through a labor strike and being picketed by striking union members. As he was from Michigan he should have known better.

      Another example of media figures being less useful than cow pats.
7. Mike August 13, 2020 at 2:43 pm

   RE: Krystal Ball unloads on the Virginia Democrats

   Krystal and Saagar forget to mention several things related to the vote — 1) Gerrymandering of districts, 2) voter disenfranchisement and closure of locations to vote, 3) election machine fraud, tampering, and total domination by right-wing firms.

   Seems all the issues are lining up to allow for polls to reflect a big Democratic win while stomping on any margin of victory, especially in those swing states that are marginally ready to vote “Blue”.

   Is the fix a sure lock? No, but we seem to forget that Obama’s victories guaranteed an ultimate victory for the right-wingers anyway. He was a “known unknown”, or, better yet, a “bought unbought” signalling a will to take big money and change nothing fundamental. There was no gamble for the financial sector, big health, pharma, the Israeli lobby, or silicon valley. Who else runs the nation and its media???
   1. Skip Intro August 13, 2020 at 11:16 pm

      #2 and #3 were the primary weapons the Dem. establishment used to beat Sanders. Live by the voter suppression, die by the voter suppression.
8. anon August 13, 2020 at 2:44 pm

   What does Biden link learning about “roaches” and kids sitting on his lap, which he apparently likes?
9. Crazy Train August 13, 2020 at 2:46 pm

   You got to give it to the Trumps, that Biden-train was hysterically fun. I have not laughed so hard for a loooong time. Wouldn’t say that Trump really signify a powerload train, but Biden on a draisine rambling is spot on on every level.
   1. dcblogger August 13, 2020 at 5:42 pm

      really? I thought it was completely stupid and ineffective.
      1. Crazy Train August 13, 2020 at 6:14 pm

         Sure, Absolutely stupid and maybe ineffective, I don’t know and I don’t care. Between Trump and Biden I see very little difference.
         However watching the movie the fifth time I still laugh out loud. It is congenial in overall and specifics.
         It plays on so many levels:
         – Biden definitely has the vitality and relevance of a draisine. He offers zero novelty. On the contrary his Wall Street donors seem really happy
         – of all things Biden has said choosing when Biden is rambling about hairy legs and kids is just hilarious and puts him so near to the Epstein stuff
         – Trump is doing his comedy stick and he does that better than others. He could smack down the professional political clowns in 2016 and apprently still can
         – USA the greatest nation on earth, the global empire has come to this – a political bum fight. It is really tragically comic that the choice is between Trump and Biden/Harris. The country has sunk so low now it is really just so sad you cannot but laugh at it.
         1. rowlf August 13, 2020 at 9:52 pm

            a political bum fight

            Oh, that’s good. I’m sharing that with my overseas friends.
10. Krystyn Podgajski August 13, 2020 at 2:48 pm

    “Air pollution is much worse than we thought”

    Air pollution on the East Coast is the worst, anywhere east of the Mississippi for that matter. I could feel the difference the first time I lived out west. Night and day, and I can’t wait to go back.

    And I really noticed it when I lived in an area of Hawaii with the lowest air pollution in the U.S., it was wonderful.

    But people live in this junk 24×7 and just think it is normal. A slow creep of a new normal everyday. Don’t look to your leaders for help, just like with COVID. Look out for those who will listen.
    1. Arizona Slim August 13, 2020 at 3:38 pm

       Right now, I know of someone who is spending the summer in the LA area. Santa Monica, to be exact. She’s staying just four blocks from the beach. And, get this, she’s really enjoying the air.

       Yup. You read that right. Someone saying nice things about LA area air quality.
       1. Ed Miller August 14, 2020 at 12:39 am

          Four blocks from the beach in Santa Monica says it all. I lived in LA for 18 years, about 3 miles from the beach (Westchester). Air quality was not bad at all there, except for during Santa Ana winds, in spite of LAX being just to the south of me.

          The rest of LA metro was mostly an air quality disaster. Ocean breezes are the difference.
    2. Dan August 13, 2020 at 6:34 pm

       Anecdotally, the air quality seems noticeably better to me here in NJ the past few months. But I’d say the best thing by far is the lack of air travel. Practically the entire state of NJ is flight path central. The gargantuan reduction in airplane noise has been a godsend to me.
    3. Copeland August 13, 2020 at 11:28 pm

       >I can’t wait to go back

       KP, I for one have been wondering why you’ve been on the east coast for the last few months after having been in the PNW last summer and the SW in early winter, as I recall. What is you medium to long term plan?
11. NotTimothyGeithner August 13, 2020 at 2:49 pm

    Re: Krystal Ball and Virginia

    I didn’t watch the whole thing just a couple of minutes, but yeah, the Virginia Democratic Party is really just trash. There are a handful of good ones. Deeds, Edwards, Howell, Barker (I was astonished by this, he really threw himself into it when he retired) are decent enough in the State Senate. Deeds and Edwards might be limited in their vision by their districts and time invested. They do a lot of actual legislative work. Virginia legislatures have the budget for one or two staffers and an intern when in session. Guys like Saslaw and Peterson are just utter trash. Also Virginia has a part time legislature, so everyone is either retired, rich, or working full time. I think Deeds is still the country lawyer for his side of the mountain.

    The House of Delegates has a few good ones who do ALL THE WORK. A few trashy ones who throw tantrums over Dominion not making enough in profit for selling electricity. Most of the rest are recruited to be not offend the local Chamber of Commerce and self fund. Dave Marsden is still a state senator. Trust me, the guy is a doofus and lazy.

    After all, this is a state party that actually let Terry MacAuliffe become the nominee.

    The other problem is Dillon’s law is particularly strong in Virginia, so a surprising amount of work is effectively what other places would consider to be local government because everything has to be approved. When Roem ran, I couldn’t believe she would waste her time, but I saw her platform. It was all stuff that her district has to get approved by the state and one wacky promise which isn’t happening regardless of what the locals of Prince William County fantasize about. She beat Bob Marshall, a world class nasty guy, but Bob use to take care of those items. The scuttlebutt is he stopped doing that work and did his anti-human decency campaign full time. To a large extent, her legislative work is just local issues that reflect the place of Dillon’s law. I assume she has a real job that funds things like rent and food.

    As for next years governor’s race, its Foy or McClellan for me in the primary. The other candidates are just…

    Full disclosure: I’ve thought the focus of the legislature on local issues and its part time nature does fill up time. The relative commerce from Keynesian multipliers in Nova distracts from problems too.
    1. Fred1 August 13, 2020 at 5:58 pm

       What underlies Ball’s comparison, while true as far as it goes, obscures more than it explains. The state wide election map looks similar to the national election map – a sea of sparsely populated red surrounding islands of heavily populated blue. Describing Virginia as blue is very optimistic. Purple is more like it. I have lived in a very red part for 30 years. The Rs here fully intend to regain control of the General Assembly in the next election in 2021. All predictions will be based on tribal loyalty and are not worth the paper they’re written on. It will be close.
       1. voteforno6 August 13, 2020 at 7:36 pm

          The Republicans there may want to retake the assembly, but it will be difficult. Trump is not very popular in NoVa, and that part of the state seems to be pushing its influence further out with each passing year.
       2. southern appalachian August 13, 2020 at 7:45 pm

          Agree, and Northern Va has dramatically increased their influence over the last few decades; SW Virgina lost a bit with the decline of coal. Ms. Ball is very accurate in my opinion. Don’t know if that’s the future or not, due to my priors- a period of changes, not small. Think it’s more a description of the hope of the elite.

          Trillbillie territory west of Charlottesville, Southside. Income disparity is marked, but not unusual, I think. Useful lense before wandering about the commonwealth, imho, John Jackson, A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time.

          And again like the nation, blue cities and towns and red rural areas. Lots of college towns, interesting to see the profs going for Warren, people maintaining the quads Bernie or CSA.

          Complete disconnect there, both socially and professionally, working v. elite.
          Oh, and yes, Deeds, very good. He’s a D. Hanger, an R, also.
12. allan August 13, 2020 at 2:54 pm

    The Disproportionate Effects of COVID-19 on Households with Children [NY Fed]

    A growing body of evidence points to large negative economic and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on low-income, Black, and Hispanic Americans (see this LSE post and reports by Pew Research and Harvard). Beyond the consequences of school cancellations and lost social interactions, there exists considerable concern about the long-lasting effects of economic hardship on children. …

    We find evidence of disproportionate hardship: households with children have been more likely to suffer job and income losses, contributing to a greater need to dig into savings, a higher rate of missed rent and debt payments, and food insufficiency. …

    We find economic hardship to be considerably higher among single-parent households, 71.8 percent of which are headed by a female and 64.7 percent headed by someone who is non-Hispanic white. …

    An ugly read.
13. Synoia August 13, 2020 at 2:55 pm

    Here’s a Manzanita tree loaded with ladybugs. Sometimes when we hike up here, we have to stop and turn around, because you’d kill 50 of them with each step forward, they’re so thick.” That seems… odd. Readers, have you noticed anything similar?

    Absolutely. The halls of Congress are filled with similar swarms of lobbyists.
14. dcblogger August 13, 2020 at 3:08 pm

    Krystal Ball is way off in my never was humble opinion. Now I have not lived in Virginia since 2007, but what she says does not match my observations. Unless you include tech workers as PMC (and I don’t think so) NoVa is NOT all PMC. The population of NoVa is heavily immigrant, with a very large Muslim population. After 9/11 Republicans went full scale racist. Muslims were frightened that they would wind up in camps like the Japanese. That vote, which had been Republican, overnight become Democratic.

    Also the Democratic take over of the legislature includes Lee Carter who is as white working class as it gets. Class analysis is useful, but you just can’t ignore the racial question. The Republicans have doubled down on Barry Goldwater’s win the white vote by racial demagoguery every year, but that only works where whites are a clear majority and vote like a monolith.

    Also NoVa is educated and pro-science. Voters want Darwin taught in their schools. It does not pay to belittle cultural issues.

    Also Krystal Ball’s job is to continuously attack Democrats. The Hill is very conservative. Now I think that Democrats NEED to be attacked from the left, but lets not kid ourselves what her script says.
    1. Oh August 13, 2020 at 5:17 pm

       I think you missed her point entirely. Her main message was that the DIms with control of the legislature and the govenorship still failed to increase the minimum wage or help the working class in any meaningful way. They have continued to pass things that their rich donors would not object to.
    2. Adam August 13, 2020 at 5:29 pm

       I’m fairly new to NOVA, but my roommate (who has lived here for a while and is a life-long Virginian) has noted that it’s gone pretty PMC in the last couple of years. It had already been trending that direction, but Trump hyper-accelerated that trend (and as someone who could be called a tech worker, tech workers are great candidates for PMCs as their financial needs are often taken care of and often have advanced degrees. That has been strongly reinforced in conversations I have with colleagues, even ones who consider themselves “progressive”).

       The Democratic party as an institution in VA deserves the scorn. They swept in the power and basically ignored anything they could do that would financially improve the lives of the workers even when it would be widely popular (repeal right to work) but engineered massive giveaways to Amazon.
    3. Chris August 13, 2020 at 9:43 pm

       Are you sure?

       My friends and colleagues in NoVA are pro-Afghan war, pro-Syria war, anti-breaking up FB/Google/Amazon, love their Ubers, and are classic front row kids who believe they earned all their good stuff because they were good in school. They hate deplorables and are genuflecting before the shambolic campaign beast Jo-mala as it carves its bloody path through social media. They can’t be convinced that anything bad happened prior to January 20, 2017. They’re currently filling my social media streams with talking points which state that Kamala didn’t imprison anyone or force hardships on black people, she was simply the AG who had to work with a racist system.

       I think if you talk to folks who work at BAH, Bechtel, Leidos, Lockheed-Martin, Battelle, anywhere on K street, all the busy people shopping in Tysons or commuting in from Alexandria, you’ll find similar beliefs. NoVA and DC are ground zero for the PMC. Always have been.
       1. JBird4049 August 14, 2020 at 4:31 am

          They are saying Harris didn’t do any of the bad things, but because it was the systemic racism?

          Oh. Well, I see that the free gifts of white wash and of Lethe brand bottled water has already started.

          As a native Californian, let me say that while the state is fairly (covertly) racist, her policies and actions were not that popular with perhaps the majority of the non-PMC population. Certainly not her hiding exculpatory evidence, knowing convicting an innocent man, or her office literally complaining to the judge that relieving prison overcrowding would reduce the availability of cheap labor. Then there was letting Mnuchin and his company getting away with destroying hundreds of thousands of homeowners with illegal foreclosures. Among other horrible actions.

          There are some things you should just not do. But that ruthless, insanely ambitious, power hungry, brown noser was happy to do so.

          Those dudes are drinking their Kool-Aid from a poisoned chalice. Of course, since they are members of the PMC, unlike me, they have little to fear from her as she prefers her victims to be the poor, the weak, or the vulnerable. For now.
15. Olga August 13, 2020 at 3:10 pm

    File under OMG?
    https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/verizon-pinpoints-location-centimeter-level-accuracy-for-road-safety-iot

    “The carrier on Thursday announced its Hyper Precise Location service, meant to pinpoint mobile location with centimeter-level accuracy by tapping RTK technology. That compares to an average of three- to nine-meters accuracy with GPS alone.”
    Will come in handy with drones, no doubt.
    1. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 3:24 pm

       Cute and fancy! It does require the BTS to broadcast a reference signal, which could potentially be hacked, interfered with, or simply turned off, so infrastructure might be hard to use hostilely. But if Verizon can find your phone to within a centimeter and drop a pin on Google Maps or whatever when you lose it, they won’t.
    2. WobblyTelomeres August 13, 2020 at 3:45 pm

       Nothing new, just Differential GPS. Basically, since they have fixed location cell towers everywhere, each tower can broadcast its surveyed location. And, yes, differential GPS is useful in drones and tractors.
16. jsn August 13, 2020 at 3:12 pm

    “Same people who were “you’re not even a real democrat” in March are unitonically retweeting “republicans for Biden” and donating to the Lincoln project.”

    Well duh!

    Everyone knows the Generals work for the Globetrotters! You can’t be letting any real players onto the court!
17. Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg August 13, 2020 at 3:18 pm

    Kamala Harris, having been shot down in flames by Gabbard during the primaries probably thinks she’s done an end-run around the nomination process and is on a short cut to the presidency when Biden bows out due to obvious ‘health reasons’. Then she can influence peddle all the livelong day. Perhaps Joe will cut her in on the Ukraine grift. Maybe the deal is Hunter will get to be her VP. Zero to Hero- just scream about Trump and you’re on side.
18. Pavel August 13, 2020 at 3:28 pm

    Christ that Trump train tracks anti-Biden advert is brutal. They didn’t wait a minute to take the gloves off.

    Separately, I think it was Saagar pointing out this morning that Kamala’s anti-gun stance won’t play well in some battleground states, especially with all the recent urban rioting and looting.

    Buckle your seatbelts, this is going to be the craziest election in history… and it won’t end 3rd November!
    1. Keith August 13, 2020 at 4:01 pm

       Add to that that the biggest surge in gun owners are black. It should be an interesting to see how it plays out, especially with the NRA fighting for its life in NY. There are other gun rights orgs waiting in the wings that take a harder line in defending those rights. Not sure if there is time for these issues to work themselves out in this cycle, but it could make things interesting in the future.
    2. a different chris August 13, 2020 at 7:20 pm

       ?????

       As dcblogger said above, it was…. terrible.

       The guy is supposed to be POTUS. He (well his team) comes up with a commercial that basically the high school nerd/geek would come up with – and show only to his closest friends because he doesn’t want to be hung up by his shorts on the nearest mailbox- about the starting quarterback that happens to be banging the girl the geek has a crush on.

       And I’m being generous with the “high school” part.
    3. Big Tap August 14, 2020 at 1:33 am

       Harris’s anti-fracking stance will not go down well in Pennsylvania.
    4. Big Tap August 14, 2020 at 1:36 am

       Did Eddy Grant approve of the music used in Trump’s ad?
19. DJG August 13, 2020 at 3:31 pm

    “They came back to a place they always had, of affinity for one another, even a love.’”

    This is typical of the Democratic Fan Club, in which, to become a member, one must have an emotional reaction, revelation, and/or/plus Hallmark movie script >> I was a lonely organic candlemaker and vegan fudge purveyor, running an on-line business till that fabulous day when I discovered the true depth of my emotions…

    Joe and Kamala and Me and Avocado Fudge: A Love Story

    Sign up now for 2020’s heart-warming holiday movie.

    [Also, too, on my FB feed, I am noticing typical Democratic pre-surrender in which the Democratic Fan Club members announce that they have placed themselves in the hands of a higher power: First we must defeat Trump, and then we’ll make Joe into the new FDR! Noam tells me to do so. Nancy Pelosi has ice cream.]

    {Yeah, sure, kids. Meanwhile, Sleepy FDR hasn’t asked for my vote in the form of ending the endless wars, a true Green New Deal, Medicare for All with Mental/Dental, reform of labor laws so that our fellow citizens won’t be thrown into unemployment at will, an end to defined-contribution pension-plan alphabet soup, and, oh, a functioning Post Office and Department of Justice. But I’m unreasonable.}
    1. DJG August 13, 2020 at 3:34 pm

       And soon to be red-baited.

       So I am off to make a batch of Red Velvet Fudge, as insurance.
       1. Arizona Slim August 13, 2020 at 3:40 pm

          I think I need to keep working on my Russian language speaking skills.
    2. Dan August 13, 2020 at 3:53 pm

       Brilliant!
    3. a different chris August 13, 2020 at 7:25 pm

       >n the form of ending the endless wars, a true Green New Deal, Medicare for All with Mental/Dental, reform of labor laws so that our fellow citizens won’t be thrown into unemployment at will, an end to defined-contribution pension-plan alphabet soup, and, oh, a functioning Post Office and Department of Justice.

       Neither Clinton nor Trump offered this stuff and almost 130 million people voted for them.

       You and I, I’m afraid, are a minority.
       1. John Anthony La Pietra August 13, 2020 at 11:36 pm

          Several million voted — but for someone else.
          And over 100 million didn’t vote for either one.

          We’re not quite a majority. But we’re a considerable plurality — and have been pretty consistently for years.

          https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
    4. Donald August 13, 2020 at 8:18 pm

       A liberal group blog I sometimes read just did a post on Kamala, spending almost all of it on her ethnicity with a few lines blowing off the criticism of her as a neoliberal.

       Policy doesn’t matter with the PMC types. Or rather, they don’t act like it matters because, I am guessing, they are secure enough not to be too concerned about it. But the culture war crap matters to them just as much as it does to the rightwing culture warriors. In fact it’s all they seem to care about.
20. Anonymous August 13, 2020 at 3:37 pm

    “Slave owners paid newspapers to publish advertisements that described the physical traits of slaves who had run away, offering rewards for their return. Those ads ‘were a lucrative and consistent source of revenue’ for newspaper printers, writes Jordan Taylor, visiting assistant history professor at Smith College, in a new paper published in the journal Early American Studies.

    Reminds me of:

    “You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall live with you in your midst, in the place which he shall choose in one of your towns where it pleases him; you shall not mistreat him. Deuteronomy 23:15-16
21. Toshiro_Mifune August 13, 2020 at 3:45 pm

    But I would kinda like a mask like that. (In fact, I’m imagining a clear plastic, astronaut-style helmet!)

    Where in the world does someone find a Gorn mask in 2020? ,,, Ok, there’s an obvious answer, but there are enough people still around who A) Know who/what the Gorn were and B) Want a mask of it to generate demand?
    1. farragut August 13, 2020 at 3:56 pm

       “Kiiiiirk, I weary of the chase.”

       My favorite episode.
    2. Keith August 13, 2020 at 4:05 pm

       Now I am thinking of a Darth Vador suit to wear this winter. I would also like to attach a radio that plays the Imperial March on a loop as I walk around.

       Who says a COVID winter will be dreary, it may become a festive Halloween season.
       1. carl August 13, 2020 at 9:40 pm

          Thinking of wearing the beekeeper outfit to the grocery store one of these days.
          1. WobblyTelomeres August 13, 2020 at 9:54 pm

             You’ll create quite the buzz with your Ralph Macchio imitation.

             Carl: “Wax on, wax off.”
             Cashier: “Ah, honey, you’re trying too hard.”
    3. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 4:32 pm

       “If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s never underestimate a Klingon licensing deal” -James T. Kirk. Or, for that matter, the ardor or budgets of the fandoms of the geekoisie.

       Was the obvious answer supposed to be 3D printing? Elastomers and post-painting being no big deal to the advanced operator, among which I am most certainly not.
    4. The Rev Kev August 13, 2020 at 7:27 pm

       Alex Jones is still an idiot as he is supposed to still wear a mask under that Gorn mask. But as the purpose of that is to protect other people, he would not care. In any case a coupla months ago there was a video clip here of a Chinese guy doing his shopping in a full dinosaur costume. Now that was style that – and he wore a mask under it.

       Where is a length of Bamboo, a diamond, saltpeter, carbon and sulphur when you need it?
22. Elizabeth August 13, 2020 at 3:45 pm

    I watched the Biden clip first with the sound off, and then on – he certainly does sound flat – and like he doesn’t give two family blogs about anything.
23. Chris August 13, 2020 at 3:46 pm

    “TOASTER BATH”

    My God. What an awful term. It’s hard to know whether there will be much of a country to preside over regardless of who wins in November. My kids are all talking about what other countries they’d like to live in because even the 10 year old doesn’t think they want to stay here. I hope we find some solution for this massive amount of suffering we’ve created in the last few years.

    On a selfish level, I also hope we figure stuff out before we get hordes of city people wondering if us rural dwellers have the food and money they need :(
    1. LawnDart August 13, 2020 at 4:01 pm

       I feel that “toaster bath” is a pretty good euphemism, more direct than “opting for self-checkout at St. Peters Gate” or the overused “kicked the bucket.”

       Grim times call for grim humor.
       1. John Anthony La Pietra August 13, 2020 at 11:41 pm

          Euphemism? I think it was a pretty clear and direct statement — though I also hope things don’t go that far.
24. LawnDart August 13, 2020 at 3:48 pm

    Toaster Bath

    Be far better taking that last $200, driving to the Statehouse in Sacramento, and torching that soon-to-be repo-ed car while enjoying some Girl Scout Cookies or OG Kush . But that’s me– I kinda have a twisted tendency to respect that sort of thing.

    I’m not a fan of self-harm, but I think that suicide does have its rare place (terminal illness, mostly); penury can be escaped, but the reaper is difficult to cheat.
    1. Late Introvert August 13, 2020 at 10:17 pm

       One my favorite jokes of the last decade, and sorry I don’t recall the comedian’s name, it was a black woman. Paraphrasing badly:

       I hear some white people have committed suicide because they owe money. Black people would never do that! Kill themselves over a BILL.
25. Sheldon August 13, 2020 at 3:48 pm

    “Rather, I don’t think that liberal Democrats, including those at the Times, can sell Harris as Black to the Blacks and Indian to the (subcontinental) Indians at the same time.”

    Kamaleon to the rescue. Maybe more like an octaroonpus
    that can change color depending on her surroundings.
    1. Greg Taylor August 13, 2020 at 3:54 pm

       Dems can sell her to both audiences. She’s AKA from Howard (HBCU.) All you need to know.
26. Sheldon August 13, 2020 at 3:49 pm

    “Rather, I don’t think that liberal Democrats, including those at the Times, can sell Harris as Black to the Blacks and Indian to the (subcontinental) Indians at the same time.”

    Kamaleon to the rescue. Maybe more like an octaroonpus
    that can change color depending on her surroundings?
27. Tom Stone August 13, 2020 at 4:21 pm

    A September surprise?
    Two possibilities come to mind, The Durham investigation and the possibility that HRC will finally be deposed under oath in regard to her Email system.

    The second is less likely, it largely depends on how resentful Mrs Clinton feels about being once again cheated out of her rightful place…
    1. voteforno6 August 13, 2020 at 7:41 pm

       How many people will take the Durham investigation seriously? Even if it were totally above board, very few people would take seriously anything come from a department headed by William Barr. The only ones who would are already for Trump.
28. occasional anonymous August 13, 2020 at 4:23 pm

    I can’t help but feel that we’re finally reaching the critical mass on identity politics. Both because idpol is itself reaching a level of cynical stupidity never seen before, and because it’s coming into contact with material reality (you can’t eat idpol, nor does it pay the rent).

    Or maybe I’m just being too hopeful.
    1. Dermot M O Connor August 14, 2020 at 12:07 am

       Occasional, that’s what I thought when Covid kicked off. A collision with material reality will crush the idpol delusion into its constituents, but instead look at what’s happened. If anything it’s grown worse. People obsessing about statues of dead 19th century slavers and racists, ignoring the actual slavery and wage-slavery by people alive today. Point this out and they’ll all but call you a nazi, while recording their latest ‘protest’ (performance) on their bloody smartphones (blissfully unaware of the working conditions and the child labour abuses inflicted on the miners in Africa).

       Like you, I live in hope, but I fear it’ll be a false one.
29. dcblogger August 13, 2020 at 4:40 pm

    This new tool is gonna make insurer & pharma $$ straight-up toxic Money with wingsSkull and crossbonesMoney with wings

    The SparklesDonation TrackerSparklespulls all the donations your elected/candidate has received from groups fighting #MedicareForAll
    https://twitter.com/HCNow/status/1293661468752318464
    1. Tom Doak August 13, 2020 at 6:41 pm

       I tried this link and Twitter warned me it was dangerous and spammy – because, of course, it provides real data on corporate contributions to candidates. We proles must be protected from that!
       1. shtove August 13, 2020 at 9:07 pm

          Out of interest, I tried it (tracker.healthcare-now.org) through the Twitter link on a well set up firefox browser in the UK through an EU server – no problems.
    2. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 7:27 pm

       Interesting to ponder what the five or six $200-$1000 donors to Rashida Tlaib were thinking. Insurance company employees? For or against the business, and with those names public, will the business or the industry retaliate in some typically opaque, deniable fashion?

       Interesting that Twitter labels it spammy. Maybe it’s time to report all neoliberal ideology on Twitter as a danger to self or others.
30. Stanley Dundee August 13, 2020 at 4:42 pm

    Lambert wins rant-of-the-day with this one:

    This drives me crazy…Well, the dirty little secret of identity politics is that if you want a truly multiracial, multicultural, multinational, multigendered, multi-whatever, you go to the working class. You do not go to the PMC (the Democrat’s present base) or to suburban Republicans (the base they seek to add).

    The other dirty secret is that identity politics has nurtured racism for at least a generation or two beyond when it was last dangerously threatened, in the 1960s, e.g. Bayard Rustin. Identity politics serves to preclude the possibility of effective working class unity. But Jane McAlevey has shown us some answers to that!
    1. Anonymous August 13, 2020 at 5:42 pm

       Identity politics is based on the notion that as long as anyone may become an oppressor that the system is fair; i.e. adequate opportunity oppression?

       E.g. black overseers justify black slavery?

       It’s also a clever way to co-opt would-be reformers?
       1. ChrisAtRU August 13, 2020 at 11:55 pm

          Ding! Ding! Ding!
    2. HotFlash August 13, 2020 at 9:05 pm

       Been biting my tongue, but perhaps this is the place to drop my observation (from a foreign country) that the Biden campaign deciding *in advance* that the VPpick would be “a woman of color” is, by definition, racist and sexist.
       1. ambrit August 14, 2020 at 1:52 am

          Canada is just an assemblage of not yet incorporated American “States.” The Power Brokers are cool with the trade off of the Southern Tier of American States in exchange for the Great White North. (If there is anything to this climate change story, it’s a clear winning bet.)
31. Tomonthebeach August 13, 2020 at 5:05 pm

    Lambert’s QAnon theory makes oodles of sense. Everybody feels morally superior to pedophile sex-slavers.

    Thus the GOP’s QAnon support is essentially telling impoverished voters not to vote for rich Democrat elites because they are pedophiles. Worse; not voting for Trump, God’s anointed crusader, will disrupt his campaign to imprison them all and free the abused children.
32. dcblogger August 13, 2020 at 5:31 pm

    prison stocks went up right after kamala harris was confirmed as vp
    https://twitter.com/besf0rt/status/1293592730560593920
    1. HotFlash August 13, 2020 at 9:07 pm

       A coincidence, I am sure.
    2. ChrisAtRU August 14, 2020 at 12:09 am

       PatrickStewartMildShock.GIF
33. Annus Horribilis August 13, 2020 at 5:47 pm

    Leitmotif: sex and paranoia.
    A.) D-grade off-the-shelf animation of Trump’s desire to display a faux Big Red One to the American people.
    B.) Kamala Harris’s parents and the historical Jamaican cultural heterotopia. The Jamaican dialect is a legacy of the bonded West African and Welsh servants’ exchange. Jamaica’s counter-cultural association with cannabis is an import from the South Asian diaspora.
    C.) Qanon. The Freudian disinformation stream as modern folklore generated by the Trump campaign as a substitute for the ability to mythologize. Titling the adolescent gibberish “The X-Files” probably presented the campaign with Murdoch-now-Disney IP issues.
    D.) Extending adolescence to the grave as a long-term political strategy. Novel idea personified by the President; however, lack of self-control is the defining characteristic of primate adolescence. Encouraging your supporters to not work well with others is self-defeating.
    1. hunkerdown August 13, 2020 at 7:32 pm

       Extending adolescence to the grave is the very essence of Libertarianism aka neoliberalism, at least, if you’re not part of the Market™ and His™ servants. Philip Mirowski’s “Hell is Truth Seen Too Late” details a lot of this. But anyone who’s cracked an Ayn Rand screed and grew out of it knows this intuitively.
34. Expat2Uruguay August 13, 2020 at 6:00 pm

    Lambert, yesterday you posted about the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors giving a great majority of their CARES funding to the salaries and overtime of the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department. This was covered very well in the last week by this podcast out of Sacramento. Given that you like the Trillbillies so much, I really recommend that you check out Voices: River City

    https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL3ZvaWNlc3JpdmVyY2l0eS9mZWVkLnhtbA&ep=14&episode=dm9pY2Vzcml2ZXJjaXR5LnBvZGJlYW4uY29tLzk1ZTY5ZmViLTc3NDItM2Y3MS1hYjgwLWQxOTU4MTVjOWRiZQ
35. LifelongLib August 13, 2020 at 6:39 pm

    ‘Confederate’ bird to be renamed:

    http://click.aaas.sciencepubs.org/?qs=dab9c514031018702cdbb04e0b3f052e1e3b0e628c696f0beeb3a1d042c7bd5942553a247f61c70d59f95eda5420442106f2fa44fe176150
36. XXYY August 13, 2020 at 6:40 pm

    Now that Corn Pop and the Cop ™ is the Democratic ticket, it’s interesting to reflect on the complete and total immolation of Senator Elizabeth Warren.

    Twice now she has debased herself and betrayed her supposed BFF Bernie Sanders in a desperate and increasingly pathetic quest to get some kind of a gig in a presidential administration, and twice now she has come away completely empty handed. The Dem establishment seems to have been able to play her like a violin without breaking a sweat: First, in 2016, Hillary spent months during the campaign having talks with Warren about a possible job in her administration during which she was convinced not to run. Then in 2020, Warren back-stabbed Sanders on the eve of the Super Tuesday vote with unlikely-sounding revelations of a supposed conversation the two had had a year earlier. She then hastily dropped out and endorsed Biden.

    As the 2020 DNC convention approaches, Warren seems to have little or nothing to show for her efforts and there are rumors of a primary challenge in MA in 2022.

    Quite remarkable.
    1. edmondo August 13, 2020 at 7:40 pm

       Yeah, it’s never a good idea to have Kennedy swimming around the pool of open offices. Young Mr. Kennedy has shown a proclivity for going after incumbent senators. And it’s only 2 years away.

       As Lambert would say, “That would be a damn shame.”

       https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/511752-new-poll-shows-markey-with-wide-lead-over-kennedy-in-massachusetts
37. dcblogger August 13, 2020 at 7:20 pm

    Documenatry Knocking Down the House, 2018 mid terms including AOC
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCSo2hZRcXk&t=855s
38. PKMKII August 13, 2020 at 7:35 pm

    Legal showdown brewing in the intersection of video games and smart devices: Epic Games recently added a “direct to Epic” method of making in-app purchases for the iOS version of Fortnite that are both cheaper, and circumvent the purchase going through Apple (and thus avoiding the 30% cut to Apple). Apple, in response, took Fortnite down from the App Store. Epic has now countered with a lawsuit against Apple. Big takeaway is that they’re not seeking financial damages, just challenging the legality, and they’re going directly on anti-monopoly grounds:

    This case concerns Apple’s use of a series of anti-competitive restraints and monopolistic practices in markets for (i) the distribution of software applications (“apps”) to users of mobile computing devices like smartphones and tablets, and (ii) the processing of consumers’ payments for digital content used within iOS mobile apps (“in-app content”). Apple imposes unreasonable and unlawful restraints to completely monopolize both markets and prevent software developers from reaching the over one billion users of its mobile devices (e.g., iPhone and iPad) unless they go through a single store controlled by Apple, the App Store, where Apple exacts an oppressive 30% tax on the sale of every app. Apple also requires software developers who wish to sell digital in-app content to those consumers to use a single payment processing option offered by Apple, In-App Purchase, which likewise carries a 30% tax.

    Which, ironically, sounds a lot like the grounds for the successful anti-trust case against Microsoft for the way IE was bundled into Windows. If Epic’s successful, it would mean a major hit to Apple profits practically overnight.
    1. Late Introvert August 13, 2020 at 10:23 pm

       I like that they are based in the Midwest Go get um Epic. Apple needs its legs cut off above the knee.

       BTW, I read tech and video blogs, and the insider tip for Apple is sell now, sell big. The WeChat thing alone, but also the ongoing crapification. Engineering staff in revolt.
39. ambrit August 13, 2020 at 7:35 pm

    Zeitgeist watch, local edition.
    A Hattiesburg couple, the man 40 and the woman 36, were arrested Tuesday and charged with murder. They supposedly killed a 30 year old man in his apartment. The two were arrested around midnight at the wooded area homeless campsite off of Fourth Street.
    The Homeless Plague is already beginning to bear fruit.
40. landline August 13, 2020 at 8:03 pm

    I’m calling it for Trump now. Harris is the half black Hillary Clinton whose appeal will be limited to the well to do. Working class Blacks decimated by the drug war, whose relatives are in jail for non-violent offenses because of people like Biden, Clinton and Harris, will rightfully judge Harris harshly and sit it out again in November.

    You can see the Dems approach and disconnection with common people when the first edict Biden and Harris announced is mandatory masks outside. Most people know that masks outside while away from other people are just a nuisance. Rather than address poverty, crowded living situations, little income support, a failed public health system….the real drivers of the failure to curb Covid spread, they give us mandatory masks. More rules, more reason for the cops to bug us, more fuel for unnecessary tension among those of us who can’t shelter in place. And basically useless.

    Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake.” Biden/Harris said, “Make them wear masks.” Can the tumbrils be far behind?
    1. voteforno6 August 13, 2020 at 8:36 pm

       Trump’s malicious incompetence has killed how many Americans? Yet, that can be ignored while Biden calls for something that will actually help fight the pandemic, apparently.

       As much as I dislike Biden & Harris, I’m not really sure that this country could survive four more years of Trump. There’s a large part of this country that would never accept that he could win an honest election. To be frank, he’s sure acting like someone who doesn’t exactly intend to allow an honest election to happen. How do you think both Trump and Barr would act, if given another four years to run roughshod over the tattered remnants of our democracy?

       The right wing nuts have been grumbling about accepting nothing less than a crushing Trump victory. Those aren’t the people to be worried about, though. There are a lot more people who don’t like Trump, and I don’t see them accepting that he could win a legitimate election. If anything, they’re getting more radicalized.
       1. The Rev Kev August 13, 2020 at 8:48 pm

          Well I’m sure that democrats like Nancy Pelosi would have a plan to help their fellow Americans-

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fbi0dEYBLA
          1. tegnost August 14, 2020 at 9:48 am

             “pray harder for those that won’t feed them.”…..
             um…ok?
    2. Darthbobber August 13, 2020 at 9:44 pm

       I think Harris is almost irrelevant. Hell, Biden’s almost irrelevant.

       Trump will either succeed in losing this or he will not.

       Harris may bring in some shekels they otherwise wouldn’t have collected, but I’d guess her vote-getting impact among blacks or the Desi will be very incremental. Maybe some gain among white pmc feminists, but they were coming out and voting anyway. No expansion of the base at all.
41. rivercry August 13, 2020 at 8:18 pm

    Instead of taking a toaster bath, you could have possibly spent the last six months at 1500 per week free money cutting your expenses. Further, you could have actually saved a bit for a rainy day.

    Lots of places in this country you could go and make half what you used to make and live better than you used to live. I know a place that will hire you now and net you 3400 per month and provide you a great retirement. Realize that 1000 per month will buy you a 2000 sf home in a nice neighborhood there.

    You work for the union?If you work in construction, of any type, and are skilled at it, you could probably make close to what you were making before, at least for now.
    1. TBellT August 13, 2020 at 9:33 pm

       Jesus what has happened to the comment section here?!

       Most people can’t reduce their spend because it’s all essentials. Also you ignore the poster is making almost a third less in unemployment.

       The “just move” argument ignores all the connections people make when they live somewhere. Leaving behind family/friends because of unemployment would be considered a travesty anywhere else.

       Also hiring for the trades out there is completely drying up. What are people supposed to just abandon everything to go looking for “jobs” out there in the unwelcoming hinterlands?
       1. Late Introvert August 13, 2020 at 10:26 pm

          Post that job listing Rivercry, please.

          TBellT, I think NC is getting negative attention because of it’s ongoing kicking of PMC booty.
          1. ambrit August 14, 2020 at 2:05 am

             Agreed about the ‘troll’ explosion recently.
             One thing ‘rivercry’ doesn’t understand about the unions is that a large part of their “job” is to act as gatekeepers to decent jobs. One way of keeping said jobs ‘decent’ today is to limit availability of said jobs. This works both ways of course, but a real union will require several years of working at low wages and harsher conditions to move on up. A real union is based on not just wage bargaining but also skills building in the trade.
             As for unemployment, around here in the NADS, unemployment payments for lower wage jobs are below the poverty level. (I speak from personal experience.)
             So, that extra $600 was probably tasked with drawing down debt. Title loans, personal credit cards, payday loans, legal fees for the unfortunates who had dealings with the Lawfare Scam; all were overhanging debt loads that were generally “kicked down the road” from month to month.
             Being poor in America is hard work, and doesn’t pay s—!
42. zagonostra August 13, 2020 at 8:25 pm

    >Alex Jone’s Reptilian COVID mask

    Wow! that line alone is enough to entertain me for the night. Thanks for posting…I don’t know how many folks here watch AJ, but I for one, having family and friends who watch him nightly, thought that was brilliant.

    The Ancient Greek’s view of the soul contained multiple parts, kind of like Dylan’s “I contain multitudes.” So if Alex can jab a finger into the eye at the establishment/elites using comedy and humor, kudos to him.

    If you have watched his show it is interesting to say the least, if you haven’t then you’re somewhat myopic as to how a significant swath of your fellow citizens view the world.
    1. Basil Pesto August 14, 2020 at 12:05 am

       “if you have read Enron’s prospectus, it is interesting to say the least. If you haven’t then you’re somewhat myopic as to how a significant swath of your fellow citizens view the world.“
    2. ambrit August 14, 2020 at 2:12 am

       What was fascinating was that the Target Corporation allowed him to film inside their premises and use some of their workers as speaking extras. That tells us a lot about the company.
       Like him or loath him, Alex Jones does express a legitimate point of view. The more he is demonized by the “respectable” elements in the media, the more he will be viewed positively by a large segment of the population. Everyone knows, for some definition of knowing, that things as depicted by the Main Stream Media are ‘not quite right.’ Jones might be off in some alternative universe somewhere, but he does express that disquiet and disbelief in the “Official Story” that many observant people experience.
       1. caucus99percenter August 14, 2020 at 6:20 am

          Whatever else Alex Jones may be saying, if I were Target Corp. management I might think, “Hey, unlike his detractors, at least this guy isn’t acting like trashing and looting our stores is no big deal, or even ‘reparations’ and a glorious thing, as long as it’s in the name of some social justice issue.”
    3. Lambert Strether Post authorAugust 14, 2020 at 7:14 am

       I don’t think much of Alex Jones. But I thought the masking was brilliant. I think our milieux would be greatly enhanced if there were more animal masks, Nixon masks, space helmets, etc. I also think that with proper engineering they would not be too heavy and would be easier to breath through that close masks. Also, a critical mass of masks might induce revelry, as in Venice; surely something our society needs!
       1. polecat August 14, 2020 at 11:45 am

          I would choose to go with the full KHAN!!! Alpha Ceti 6 outerware .. from head to toe, complete with a few of those ‘pets’, of course … to help ward off the craycrays from both the unenchanted spaced-out aisles on this ‘hopefully-to-NOT-become’ lifeless rock.

          So .. to expound from my nonsuperior intellect .. a question for the class : Is anyone up for a new political, ah .. ‘Genesis’?

          Anyone? Anyone at all??….
          How about you in the far right corner .. uhh, mr. …. Jones?

          Ah, Excellent!
43. zagonostra August 13, 2020 at 8:40 pm

    >Harris/Mnuchin,

    Does anyone find it curious that Biden’s VP, who is probably gonna be President was responsible for letting Trump’s Treasury Secretary off the hooks in the last crash. It’s certainly not lost on those who have come to the conclusion that Wall Street and the Bankers are really the ones controlling the machinery of gov’t and all the rest is but shadows – entertaining granted -dancing on the wall of the fire lite cave.But then maybe it’s the same as it every was…same as it every was…same as …

    Steven Terner Mnuchin is an American investment banker, movie producer, and public official who is serving as the 77th United States secretary of the treasury… Previously, Mnuchin had been a hedge fund manager and investor. Wikipedia

    In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, where she was noted as being “an able prosecutor on the way up“.[29] In 1994, California Assembly speaker Willie Brown (with whom Harris was in a relationship)[29] appointed Harris to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later the California Medical Assistance Commission. Harris took a leave of absence from her prosecutor job to serve in the positions.Wikipedia
    1. John Anthony La Pietra August 14, 2020 at 12:12 am

       Of course, neither Harris nor Pence will want to talk about Mnuchin. Now if someone else were on the debate stage with them. . . .
44. anon in so cal August 13, 2020 at 8:45 pm

    >More California:

    “California’s second surge of the coronavirus has resulted in a near doubling of weekly deaths since the spring — with almost 1,000 fatalities in the last week alone — and radically shifted the geography of the outbreak, a Times data analysis found.

    Suburban and agricultural areas that had been relatively spared during California’s first surge of the virus are now being ravaged. And urban areas such as Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area are reporting fatality numbers just as high, if not higher, than in the spring.

    The Central Valley has become home to one of the worst coronavirus hot spots in the country. In eight southern Central Valley counties, weekly COVID-19 deaths have jumped from about 20 a week in April to nearly 200 a week in the last two weeks, a Times analysis found. San Joaquin Valley residents make up 20% of recent deaths statewide, even though they account for about 10% of the state’s population.”

    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-12/second-surge-california-coronavirus-deaths-nearly-double
45. allan August 13, 2020 at 8:57 pm

    Amazon’s Cloud Unit to Offer Quantum Computing From 3 Tech Companies [WSJ]

    Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud division said Thursday it has launched a commercial service that allows millions of customers to experiment with quantum computing platforms produced by three technology companies. …

    Amazon Braket, part of Amazon Web Services, lets existing AWS customers experiment with early-stage quantum computing machines from D-Wave Systems Inc., IonQ Inc. and Rigetti Computing over its cloud. …

    In a recent test, Fidelity’s researchers used quantum computers running over Amazon’s cloud to build securities and generate price options for those securities. On conventional computers, those calculations can take hours. The experiment was completed “orders of magnitude faster” compared with a typical computer, Mr. Schouela said.

    Financial weapons of mass destruction, now with spooky action at a distance for more fun and profit.
46. allan August 13, 2020 at 9:25 pm

    Some interesting developments in the Morse story tonight.
    It looks like the College Dems and Neal are joined at the AHIP.
    1. Big Tap August 14, 2020 at 1:49 am

       Yep. One guy in College Democrats aspired to work for Neal. https://theintercept.com/2020/08/12/alex-morse-college-democrats-chats/

       https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/511867-huffpost-reporter-discusses-investigation-into-allegations-college-dems-made?jwsource=cl
47. bob August 13, 2020 at 9:29 pm

    You have been informed. Now stop all of the complaining and get ready for the cop to take over when the crazy old man dies trying to molest his toaster.

    Kenneth P. Vogel
    @kenvogel
    THE LEFT HAS FALLEN IN LINE: I spent the day reaching out to progressives who had publicly criticized @KamalaHarris
    on a particular issue.

    Very few were willing to be as critical as they had been previously, & many were unwilling to say anything critical at all on the record.
48. Darthbobber August 13, 2020 at 9:49 pm

    Where is our breathless flogger of Alex Morse “scandal”? Has the operation been aborted? Is Team Neal cutting it’s losses?
49. stefan August 13, 2020 at 11:03 pm

    interesting…
    https://the.ink/p/noam-chomsky-wants-you-to-vote-for
    1. drumlin woodchuckles August 14, 2020 at 1:33 am

       Reading the interview, I discover that Chomsky thinks the 1619 Project is truthful, fact-founded, reality-based history. If it isn’t, if the “Jamestown 20” were brought over as indentured servants who were set free after a term of service. . . for example . . . then what is the quality of Chomsky’s devotion to reality-based truthfulness?
       1. Basil Pesto August 14, 2020 at 4:53 am

          I think labouring under misapprehensions and erroneous beliefs happens to the best of us at one point or another – I’m not sure I’d be willing to draw conclusions about one’s devotion to ‘reality-based truthfulness’ when I seem them labouring under such a misapprehension.

          I suspect Chomsky isn’t particularly interested in the 1619 project qua history, and I doubt he’s familiar with the historiographic debate about it. He seems to be more interested in it – and this is the context in which he brought it up – as an example of a shift in the so-called Overton window, and his point there is hard to quibble with, even though in my opinion it has troubling implications precisely because if the historiographical debate and the dubious foundations of the project.

          A shame that he’s not as well-versed – not ‘woke’ enough, if you will – as those of us who are familiar with the historiographic debate, and so doesn’t
          speak to that*, but questioning the ‘quality of his devotion to reality-based truthfulness’ on that basis strikes me as sententious. Just seems like a well-intentioned intellectual cock-up to me. We’ve all been there.

          * I am making assumptions here; it’s possible he knows all about it and disagrees with it/chooses to ignore it. I prefer to be more charitable in my assumptions.
       2. Lambert Strether Post authorAugust 14, 2020 at 7:19 am

          > I discover that Chomsky thinks the 1619 Project is truthful, fact-founded, reality-based history.

          It isn’t (and see the sidebar for more). Hannah-Jones (of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s New America Foundation) got her Pulitzer for personal commentary. Not history.
50. Kurt Sperry August 13, 2020 at 11:04 pm

    “we find that leaded gasoline use in racing increases ambient lead, elevated blood lead rates, and elderly mortality.”

    This is odd. No modern racing engine would be race reliable with leaded fuel, it fouls the O2 sensors, which provide information the engine ECU very much needs for optimal performance. How big is vintage racing? Even they even could run unleaded with new valve seats (and race engines are apart a lot anyway) and maybe two head gaskets or a spacer.
51. VietnamVet August 13, 2020 at 11:13 pm

    The PBS NewsHour expose on QAnon was amazingly condescending and frightening at the same time. It said that reality, Russia had no meaningful interference in the 2016 election, there are well known Elite who are pedophiles, and the western intelligence community tried to remove Donald Trump are treasonous conspiracy theories. It proves that terrible things happen when the establishment believes its own propaganda. For example, a once in a century pandemic and 170,415 Americans dying to date.
    1. ambrit August 14, 2020 at 2:21 am

       I hear you. The infrastructure for an Inquisition has been laid. Now the ideological framework is being worked out. The recent demonstrations showed the forces of the State to be trying out different tactics of crowd control and, basically, oppression.
       All the signs are there.
52. ChrisAtRU August 14, 2020 at 12:02 am

    Biden (D)(2)

    It’s infuriating …

    ” … if you want a truly multiracial, multicultural, multinational, multigendered, multi-whatever, you go to the working class.”

    Ohhhh noooo, Lambert, we wouldn’t want that, would we? Or at the very least, if we did, we would utter words like these:

    “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
    1. ChrisAtRU August 14, 2020 at 12:06 am

       Biden (D)(1)

       Actually, over the course of the 1:26, Biden didn’t look as bad as he did when he had to travel for debates and campaigning. Perhaps the rest has done him good. Back when he was addressing crowds, he looked far more disjointed. But then again, speaking for less than five minutes at a time is probably better for him.
53. ChrisAtRU August 14, 2020 at 12:21 am

    Biden (D)(4)

    #EyeRoll … does Capehart even read the publication that employs him?

    “1.7 million people in 33 states and D.C. cast a ballot without voting in the presidential race”
    #WaPo – 12/14/16 {Oooooooh, interesting date, that!}

    Data from the article:
    Arizona. Margin, 91,234. Undervote, 88,332 — 96.8 percent of margin.
    Maine. Margin, 22,142. Undervote, 23,965 — 108.2 percent of margin.
    Florida. Margin, 112,911. Undervote, 160,450 — 142.1 percent of margin.
    Michigan. Margin, 10,704. Undervote, 75,335 — 703.8 percent of margin.

    Capehart: “But given the misery enveloping large swaths of the U.S.electorate, Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will have no choice but to address it.”

    LOL – Joe Biden repeatedly said he’d veto M4A during a pandemic. If they show up, you say? Even if they do …

    #YouHaveLearnedNothing
54. anon in so cal August 14, 2020 at 12:38 am

    not equivalent to “we came, we saw, he died,” but sort of in the same league:

    Kamala Harris cackling about her threatening letters to parents:

    https://twitter.com/michael_david41/status/1294127394752618496?s=20
    1. The Rev Kev August 14, 2020 at 12:55 am

       This was also in a Jimmy Dore video and when I saw it, began to wonder about her stability as a person. And agreed it was like Hillary’s cackle over a successful murder.
       1. anon in so cal August 14, 2020 at 10:52 am

          +1
    2. Basil Pesto August 14, 2020 at 4:56 am

       A word of caution (with the proviso that I think Harris is wretched and her policy was odious) there are some jump cuts in that clip that are entitled to make one suspicious: it could’ve just been edited for brevity, or it could’ve been edited to dishonestly recontextualise her laughter. I don’t know and I don’t care enough to dive deeper into the matter but it’s something to be mindful of.
       1. Lambert Strether Post authorAugust 14, 2020 at 7:21 am

          That’s the issue with video. With text you can always run a search for parallels…
          1. anon in so cal August 14, 2020 at 10:59 am

             Thanks, Basil Pesto and Lambert Strether! Didn’t realize that. There’s enough fully vetted material to sink KH. The dodgy material can undermine the validity of the legitimate criticism.
             1. ambrit August 15, 2020 at 8:13 pm

                That is an old counter espionage tactic. Releasing some “dodgy” attack info in your own candidate and then ‘debunking’ the oppo while blaming it all on the opposition!
                It not only makes the opposition look bad, it also inoculates your own candidate from any subsequent real ‘dirt’ that shows up.
                It’s a version of the trick of planting “hecklers” in a crowd your candidate is speaking before so as to feed straight lines to your candidate. It works! I have seen it done at the local level.
       2. John Anthony La Pietra August 14, 2020 at 10:49 am

          Well, the background says “Commonwealth Club”, so I did a quick DuckDuckGo search on that name and Kamala Harris (each in quotes) and found two videos of her appearance on 1/14/2010 — both the same 1:05:49 in length.

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

          and

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gNDf2x1qU

          The second of the two gives her speech title as “Smart on Crime: Elevating the Discussion in Our City, State and Nation” as well as the date. I searched on that title hoping to find a transcript; what I’ve found so far is this GritPost page:

          https://archive.is/nBQu2

          which links to this Twitter chain:

          https://mobile.twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/1089974205284798464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

          NOTE: This may be a better origin point for the chain:

          https://mobile.twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/1089831581030797312

          In this thread are links to what appear to be two excerpts from the Commonwealth Club speech. The first looks to be the source for all of the jump-cut clips in the “cackling” video (except Harris’s first sentence about not being where she was without the education she’d received).

          I say “appear to be” because I haven’t yet watched the full speech or hunted through it to fond the clip(s). I may not get to that immediately, and I welcome others taking that step first.

          (BTW, when I tried to save and post this comment via my phone, I was prompted for the first time to do a Captcha — and I couldn’t, because I don’t know how to tell the phone to accept cookies. I had to save the comment, text it to my PC, re-do the comment here, and do a Captcha here. I hope this is only because of the number of links included in this comment; if it’s a new general policy, it will likely mean fewer comments from me, since I can read nc more often and more easily on the phone.)
       3. John Anthony La Pietra August 14, 2020 at 11:12 am

          I’ve got a longer post in moderation detailing the not-terribly-hard work I did to get here, but suffice it in this post to say I think I’ve verified the source of all the jump-cuts.

          The original video I worked from is this one of Harris’s speech at the Commonwealth Club (identified in the background of the “jump-cut video”) on January 14, 2010:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gNDf2x1qU

          Start at about 15:45 in, and watch until about 18:05, and I think you’ll be safe enough in covering the whole range of the jump-cut video. You can also see the first clip included here:

          https://mobile.twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/1089974205284798464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

          which includes everything but Harris’s first sentence about not being where she was without the education she’d received — and adds some context discussion.

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