By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Bird Song of the Day
Great Horned Owl, P. Fenwick NFC – El Caminito Road, Monterey, California, United States. Scary!
Who? Who?
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Trump VP picks.
(2) Biden’s wall of Black support
(3) Pelosi: “Not so fast!”
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
2024
Less than a half a year to go!
First post-debate polling: Trump jumps a full point in the 5-way national race, which a Biden supporter might find concerning. OTOH, the Swing States seem relatively unaffected. Swing States (more here) still Brownian-motioning around. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. It would be hilarious if the Biden Debate debacle had exactly the same effect as Trump’s 34 bazillion felony convictions, i.e., none, both parties are so dug in.
Swing state motion:
NEW: @CookPolitical is shifting six Electoral College ratings towards Republicans.
AZ: Toss Up to Lean R
GA: Toss Up to Lean R
MN: Likely D to Lean D#NE02: Likely D to Lean D
NH: Likely D to Lean D
NV: Toss Up to Lean RFull analysis by @amyewalter: https://t.co/hxRQunsvoD
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) July 9, 2024
Judgment calls, of course. But Cook Political is old school, not into dogpiling.
* * * Trump (R): “As Dems end calls for Biden to step aside, window opens for Trump VP pick to take the spotlight” [Just The News]. “Among the candidates most discussed as potential running mates to Trump are Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.” • Little Marco? Surely not.
Trump (R) (Smith/Cannon; Smith/Chutkan): “Jack Smith Isn’t a Special Counsel ‘by Law'” [Michael Mukasey, Wall Street Journal]. “The Constitution’s Appointments Clause limits how executive offices can be created and how they may be filled…. It empowers the president to nominate and appoint “officers of the United States” not specifically provided for in the Constitution only with the advice and consent of the Senate, and only to offices “which shall be established by Law.” Authority for appointment of the current special counsel doesn’t exist ‘by Law,’ but rather through a set of regulations put in place unilaterally by U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno in 1999. They don’t have the force of a law passed by Congress and signed by the president, and can be changed at any time by any attorney general…. If Congress had wished to allow the attorney general to create an office of special prosecutor, it would have done so with a statute as simple and direct as those that give the power to create offices to other cabinet secretaries—including the secretaries of transportation, agriculture, health and human services and education. It wouldn’t have relied on gossamer emanations from four statutes.”
* * * Biden (D): A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet on Biden’s NATO speech:
Watch this. The whole thing. Is he old? Yes. Is he reading from a teleprompter? Yes. Does he understand what he’s saying? Yes. Absolutely. Is he saying what he wishes to say, what he & his government *believe* in, and what he stands for on behalf of the United States? Yes. Could… https://t.co/9ZFTZmRt6Z
— Jorie Graham (@jorie_graham) July 10, 2024
* * * Biden (D): “Joe Biden Hasn’t Lost Dems on Capitol Hill. Keeping Them Won’t Be So Simple” [Notus]. “‘They’ve outflanked us with the CBC and others,’ this lawmaker texted, referring to Biden’s efforts to gather support from the Congressional Black Caucus. ‘Members are becoming resigned to Biden holding all the cards here, and us having no real say in the matter.” And: “In that sense, with more bad news on the horizon, Monday was more of a stay of execution than a definitive decision on Biden’s future. But if Biden can make it through this week, he may be in a much stronger position. Next week is the Republican National Convention, where the focus will almost certainly be back on Donald Trump and the GOP. Moreover, Congress will be out of town. It will again be difficult for a jailbreak moment of Democrats coming together against Biden to move the president.” • Of course, a week is a long time in politics.
Biden (D): “Black House Democrats embrace Biden at another critical juncture” [WaPo]. “The desire to defend Biden appears to be so widespread among CBC members, three people aligned with the group said, that it is possible the group will formalize its support for him in a statement over the next several days. The group’s influence could blunt widespread concerns among other colleagues about Biden, and possibly sway Jeffries’s opinion about how House Democrats should respond in an unprecedented moment.” • Does “the next several days” mean this week? We’ll see if this statement comes out.
Biden (D): “After Propelling Biden in 2020, Black Women Aren’t Eager to Abandon Him Now” [WaPo]. “Interviews with nearly two dozen Black Democratic women, including many of the grass-roots organizers credited as instrumental to Mr. Biden’s victory four years ago, indicate that a vast majority of this loyal voting group is not yet prepared to abandon him or Ms. Harris. Their continued backing is driven in part by pragmatism. If he were to drop out, many argued, it would throw the Democratic Party into disarray and gravely imperil their chances of defeating former President Donald J. Trump, whom they see as a threat to democracy and to the racial progress made over the last several decades. … But Ms. Harris is also a significant factor in their support, they said, sharing concerns that attempts to undermine Mr. Biden could also undercut her as part of the ticket and do damage to her future prospects. Should Mr. Biden step aside and Democrats select a candidate other than the vice president, it would all but assure a monumental loss of Black support, many suggested.” And: “A group of more than 150 Black female organizers who attended a gathering in Macon, Ga., one day after the debate said plans were immediately laid to reinforce support for the president. Some leaders are now planning weekly meetings to discuss turnout strategies. The heads of several of these organizing groups, which focus on both rural Black voters and those in the deep-blue Metro Atlanta region, say they will concentrate their efforts on young voters and men. They also plan to counter what they see as Republican-led disinformation efforts aimed at Black voters through in-person engagement.” • But the Democrats are extrremely unlikely to win Georgia. So….
Biden (D): “Opinion Biden has a new outsider strategy. Can he pull it off?” [Eugene Robinson, WaPo]. “On Sunday, at Mt Airy Church of God in Christ in Philadelphia, Biden was enthusiastically cheered by the African American congregation. Black voters are the most loyal of Democratic constituencies. They also tend to be, arguably, the most pragmatic — as they showed in the 2020 primaries, when African Americans in South Carolina, calculating that Biden was the candidate most likely to beat Trump, gave him a landslide triumph that propelled him to the nomination. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been among the most vocal House members in their continued support of Biden, and not one, thus far, has called for him to withdraw. The president is now attempting to revive the persona that won him those votes four years ago… Whatever congressional Democrats might be thinking, there was not even a new trickle of lawmakers calling for Biden to step aside Monday, let alone a flood. And for the rest of the week, Biden will be hosting NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit; his party is highly unlikely to say or do anything that might undermine him while he’s so visibly engaged in foreign policy. If his scheduled no-holds-barred news conference goes well on Thursday, Team Biden will argue that the debate is ancient history. He can play the insurgent card only once, though. If he falters again, he won’t be able to point the finger at antidemocratic “elites.” He’ll have no one to blame but himself.” • Yep.
* * * Biden (D): “Pelosi says it’s up to Biden ‘to decide if he’s going to run'” [New York Times]. “On Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the president should continue to weigh his options. ‘It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,’ she said. ‘We’re all encouraging him to to make that decision. Because time is running short.'” Encouraging Biden to make a decision he has said explicitly he has already made is, well, the reverse of encouraging….. Ms. Pelosi said she wanted to restart the conversations about Mr. Biden’s future after the NATO summit he is hosting this week in Washington, which on Thursday will include the president’s first news conference since his disastrous debate performance that raised questions about his mental acuity and fitness to remain in the race. ‘Let’s just hold off,’ she said. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, either tell somebody privately, but you don’t have to put that out on the table until we see how we go this week.'” • When I wrote yesterday that “by this Thursday it will have been two weeks since Biden slipped a cog in debate. That should be sufficient time for a dogplle like this one to die down” I seem to have been channeling Pelosi. That’s an odd feeling, to say the least (and I should have taken NATO into account).
Biden (D): “Why Is the Squad Backing Biden So Forcefully?” [New York Magazine]. “But the president is also getting strong backing from the Squad, the small group of House progressives who have often strongly disagreed with Biden on policy in the past. On Monday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that she was sticking with Biden after speaking to him over the weekend. ‘Joe Biden is our nominee. He is not leaving this race. He is in this race and I support him,’ she said…. Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, who has frequently challenged the Biden administration on its support for Israel’s war in Gaza, said that she, too, is behind the president. ‘He’s been the best president of my lifetime and we have his back,’ Omar said Monday.” But: “Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, though, has yet to weigh in on Biden following his debate performance. Tlaib, who is seen as Biden’s strongest progressive critic, supported a campaign for Michigan voters to vote ‘uncommitted.'”
Biden (D): “‘There’s no way out’: Democrats feel powerless as ‘elites’ fall in line behind Biden” [NBC]. “‘I wish I was more brave,’ said one Democratic state party chair who thinks Biden should step aside. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation from the president’s camp. ‘I would be crucified by them if I spoke out of line,’ the chair continued. ‘I know when you get out of line they all of a sudden have a shift of priorities and your races, your state is no longer on the map.’ Now, they say, it’s happening again.”
BIden (D): “Stephanopoulos apologizes after saying Biden can’t serve another term” [Axios]. What Stephanopolous said, apparently to a passer-by (!!!): “I don’t think he can serve four more years.” • Not quite the same as the headline.
* * * Biden (D): “Biden’s Biggest Donors Left Powerless to Sway Him to End Bid” [Bloomberg]. “The view within Manhattan circles, one top Wall Street executive said on Monday, is largely unchanged since Joe Biden’s June 27 debate: A change at the top of the ticket will boost the Democrats’ chances…. But what’s clear to these ultra-rich bankers and investors is that there’s no obvious path to making the change happen themselves. Some also see sitting on the sidelines as a savvy option, wanting to avoid fueling a narrative that financiers are pushing Biden out.” But: “Money usually talks — but, perhaps, not in this case. Biden’s political operation has some $240 million on hand, and efforts from those like Mike Novogratz to drum up funds for a yet-to-be-determined alternative have thus far fallen far short of that kind of figure…. Donations to the campaign have thinned in recent days, with some wealthy donors saying they will withhold any future contributions until Biden is off the ticket, according to a person familiar with the fundraising efforts. The Biden campaign has said that grassroots contributions surged following the debate and reported raising more in June than any other month. Biden’s sizable war chest had been a selling point for donors, especially compared to Trump’s cash-poor campaign through the primaries. But since clinching the nomination, Trump has caught up and surpassed Biden, and now has $285 million cash on hand, according to his campaign. Unlike Trump, who’s spent little on television or offices in battleground states so far, Biden’s campaign is employing an expensive strategy. The campaign alone booked $48 million in advertising time last month, according to AdImpact.”
* * * Biden (D): Not an issue at all:
“I’ll be blunt,” President Biden says in Harrisonburg, Pa. “I ended the pandemic. He didn’t.” pic.twitter.com/9hnifE0zdX
— Matt Viser (@mviser) July 7, 2024
Biden getting dinged for slipping a cog after slaughtering a few hundred thousand people with his policy of mass infection without mitigation, while fully compose mentis. reminds me of Cuomo being taken down over a #MeToo case, but not for slaughtering a few tens of thousans of elders by shunting them into Covid-infested nursing homes.
* * * Biden (D): “The Terrible Debate” [Banned in Your State]. “And then, the debate began. Biden looked exhausted. One eye more open than the other. He kept looking down, which made it look like he was closing his eyes. Stumbling over his words, badly. He froze, at one point — four or five seconds of silence. But then, things seemed to get better, at least from my perspective. Sure, I couldn’t really understand what Biden was saying, but my hearing is pretty shot and it was a loud bar so I figured he probably didn’t sound as bad as he sounded to me (turns out he sounded worse: because I couldn’t entirely make out what he was saying, I missed how often he tripped over words and fumbled over facts). Sure, he was missing a lot of opportunities to hit back at Trump, but he was more or less coherent. He wasn’t freezing up. His mix-ups were relatively minor. Sure, Trump was giving the best debate performance of his political career (a very low bar), but this wasn’t catastrophic. Biden’s performance was so much better than I was expecting. I was enjoying my drink and laughing about the whole pathetic golf score exchange and feeling genuine relief when I heard Rachel Maddow — RACHEL MADDOW — declare that Biden had botched this horribly. Then I heard Joy Reid suggest that Biden should step down. Then I looked at my phone.” And: “The Democrats have smoothly transitioned from the delusion that Biden is a great candidate, never better, totally able to win this election and be President for four more years, to the delusion that Biden will step down for the sake of America. That anyone on this earth can convince him to do this.” • Fun piece.
* * * NY: “Biden support slips in deep blue New York: ‘We’re a battleground state now'” [Politico]. “Elected officials, union leaders and political consultants are panicking over polls showing a steady erosion of Biden’s support in a state he won by 23 points four years ago. They’re so worried they’ve been trying to convince the Biden team to pour resources into New York to shore up his campaign and boost Democrats running in a half-dozen swing districts that could determine control of the House…. The closely watched Siena College poll in June found Biden with an 8-point advantage over Trump. The same poll found only 28 percent of voters not enrolled in a major party supported Biden’s reelection, and 71 percent of them disapproved of the job Biden is doing. Biden’s support has declined since the winter, when he led Trump by 12 points in a February survey, according to the poll.”
PA: “The Pennsylvania County That Just Might Be 2024’s ‘Ground Zero'” [RealClearPolitics]. “The voters here are important. Very important, as Sen. John Fetterman told me in an interview. Every statewide election in Pennsylvania comes down to what Erie voters decide to do…. Once a solid county for Democrats in statewide gubernatorial elections as well as federal elections for president, U.S. Senate, and Congress, Erie shocked the world when the county went from supporting President Obama by a whopping 16 percentage points in 2012 to supporting Donald Trump in 2016 by 40,000 votes. Four years later, Biden would win the county by roughly the same amount; in between, Democrats Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman would also win the county for governor and U.S. Senate, and a Republican won the county executive’s race for the first time in decades. In short – win Erie, you win the state. The question is, going into the presidential election, who is winning the hearts and minds of Erie’s swing voters? Because where they go and what is on their minds heading into the election will tell us not just how Pennsylvania is doing, but also how states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona might go, states that are a little less Democratic than the Keystone State.” • Interview heavily biased toward small business owners.
Our Famously Free Press
Getting over the idea that the New York Times isn’t a player:
They actually chose to run the story in the print edition even after the WH denial, under a slightly caveated headline: "Parkinson’s Expert Visited White House 8 Times in 8 Months, but Why Is Unclear"
"Why Is Unclear" is not a phrase that should appear in a new headline. https://t.co/GM452NO3il
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) July 9, 2024
Republican Funhouse
The kind of question Democrats used to ask, oh well:
👀 At @NatConTalk conference, @HawleyMO puts corp tax cuts at top of list of economic policy mistakes from the past generation of Republicans, asks, “Why should labor ever be taxed more than capital? It should not be.” Calls for conservatives to embrace private-sector unions. pic.twitter.com/vvdAtixWoq
— Oren Cass (@oren_cass) July 9, 2024
Realignment and Legitimacy
“‘Dave’ Predicted the Biden Debacle” [Free Press]. The reference is to the movie Dave, but this caught my eye: “Is the president sane? Competent? Entirely alive? You need not ask yourself these questions, because the president is not the president; he’s just a figurehead, more of a mascot, really—like the Geico Gecko of the executive branch. The actual presidency consists of somewhere between five and 50 people, whose identities may or may not be public knowledge, who stand behind or around or sometimes on top of the president and execute the duties of the office according to their collective wisdom. Did you think, when you pulled the lever for Joe Biden in 2020, that you were actually voting for Joe Biden the singular human being? You fool. You absolute imbecile.” • I expressed the same concern here: “ian extra-constitutional entity at the head of the executive branch.”
“American academic freedom is in peril” [Science]. I’m reading along, nodding my head, and then I come on this: “Although the precise reasons for the recent dismantling of a misinformation research group [the Stanford Internet Observatory] at Stanford University are unclear and complicated, the cost—in time, reputation, and legal expenses—of defending itself against accusations of complicity in government censorship likely played a role.” • “Dismantling” is overblown; these are all Flexians and they’ll just set up shop in a new NGO. As for complicity, see here.
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Maskstravaganza
“Trip report: Summer ISO C++ standards meeting (St Louis, MO, USA)” [Sutter’s Mill]. They took a group photo:
Transmission: Covid
“Evidence for transmission of SARS-CoV-2 at religious mass gatherings: A systematic review” [New Microbes and New Infections]. Systematic Review, N = 10. From the Abstract: “No cases of SARS-CoV-2 were detected at 2020 and 2021 [Grand Magal of Touba (GMT)] or at the 2020 Hajj. In a small study, 7 % of tested individuals were positive after the 2022 GMT. SARS-CoV-2 prevalence during the 2021–2022 Hajj and Umrah seasons varied from 0 to 15 % in different studies. At the 2021 Kumbh Mela, 0.4 million COVID-19 cases were diagnosed among returning pilgrims across India and 1 % tested positive during a one-day survey conducted on participants. During the 2021 Arbaeen pilgrimage, 3 % pilgrims were tested positive. No relevant data were found in relation to SARS-CoV-2 transmission at the 2021 Arbaeen and Lourdes pilgrimages.”
“Detection of active SARS-CoV-2 in cough aerosols from COVID-19 patients” [Infectious Diseases]. Not loogies (droplets) but actual aerosols. From the Abstract: “Twenty-five patients in 21 rooms were included in the study. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was found in cough aerosols from 16 out of 22 patients that produced voluntary cough. As demonstrated by plaque-forming unit assays, active virus was isolated from 11 of these 16 patients. Using mainly molecular detection, the virus was also found in air, on high-contact surfaces, and no-touch surfaces from the room of the COVID-19 patients. These results show that infectious SARS-CoV-2 circulating in air can originate from patient cough and should be considered against the risk of acquiring COVID-19 through inhalation.”
Another aircraft study:
Florian Webber speaking on the safest seat on an aircraft in terms of COVID 19 with simulations of infector in every possible seat. pic.twitter.com/zHxMfIUdhf
— Richard Corsi, PhD, PE (Texas) (@CorsIAQ) July 9, 2024
With the same conclusion:
Back seat furthest from the aisle, fewest ppl seated, walking up and down near you or breathing forward behind you.
Top right says seat 14e 0%
— 🐝 berman jewish databank peruser (@cholent_lover) July 9, 2024
Infection
“‘Playing COVID roulette’: Some infected by FLiRT variants report their most unpleasant symptoms yet” [Los Angeles Times]. “But some doctors say this latest COVID rise challenges a long-held myth: Although new COVID infections are often mild compared with a first brush with the disease, they still can cause severe illness. Even if someone doesn’t need to visit the emergency room or be hospitalized, people sometimes describe agonizing symptoms…. “The dogma is that every time you get COVID, it’s milder. But I think we need to keep our minds open to the possibility that some people have worse symptoms,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert. Each time you get COVID, he said, is ‘kind of like playing COVID roulette.’ This underscores the need for caution during summer travel and activities, even though the overall risk remains relatively mild.”
“FLiRT was dominating COVID-19 cases, now we’re onto the FLuQE subvariants” [ABC Australia]. “Now FLiRT has further mutated, and FLuQE has become the fastest growing member of the family. While many ingredients in the variant soup are similar, there is an additional mutation experts say makes it more contagious. And it is increasing risks of re-infection as vaccine updates lag behind how fast the virus is changing.” • If only we had some solutions other than vaccines! Something that would prevent the virus from spreading through the air….
Sequelae: Covid
“Long COVID and Post-COVID Conditions” [Pandemic Patients]. The deck: “Overview of the Medium- and Long-Term Complications Associated with COVID-19.”• Massive resource.
Morbidity and Mortality
“Complex patterns of multimorbidity associated with severe COVID-19 and long COVID” [Nature]. Plain Language Summary: “Early in the COVID-19 pandemic it was clear that people with multiple chronic diseases were vulnerable and needed special protection, such as shielding. However, many people without such diseases required hospital care or died from COVID-19. Here, we investigated the importance of underlying diseases, including mild diseases not requiring hospitalization, for COVID-19 outcomes. Using information from electronic health records we find that many severe, but also less severe diseases increase the risk for severe COVID-19 and its impact on health even months after acute infection (Long COVID). This included an almost two-fold higher risk among people that reported poor well-being and fatigue. Our findings show the value of using primary care health records and the need to consider all the medical history of patients to identify those in need of special protection.”
Elite Maleficence
In 2024, WHO still pushes baggy blues:
Travelling in crowded and poorly ventilated public transportation? #WearAMask to help keep you and your community safe from COVID-19, flu and other respiratory illnesses. #StaySafe pic.twitter.com/SPqDjTAhSy
— World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific (@WHOWPRO) July 10, 2024
I assume “indoors” means hospitals? How about public transportation?
It is completely inappropriate for the Dean of a public health school to call an effective public health tool "fringe", especially in the midst of a COVID wave where public health departments are trying to encourage people to take precautions.
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) July 9, 2024
Readers, there is no good news here at all, and this data does not include the Fourth of July weekend. It would sure be handy to have Biobot still in operation, so we could have a single indicator for infection, but of course that was not to be.
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
| Wastewater | ||
| This week[1] CDC June 24: | Last Week[2] CDC June 17 (until next week): | |
|
| |
| Variants [3] CDC July 6 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC June 29 | |
 |
 |
|
| Hospitalization | ||
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data July 9: | National [6] CDC June 8: | |
|
|
|
| Positivity | ||
| National[7] Walgreens July 8: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic July 6: | |
 |
 |
|
| Travelers Data | ||
| Positivity[9] CDC June 17: | Variants[10] CDC June 17: | |
|
 |
|
| Deaths | ||
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC June 29: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC June 29: | |
 |
” alt=”” width=”310″ class=”alignleft size-full wp-image-273838″ /> |
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Worse than two weeks ago. New York is a hot again, and Covid is spreading up the Maine Coast just in time for the Fourth of July weekend, in another triumph for Administration policy. On that Bay area hotspot:
Examples —
Marin: https://t.co/pMS1d89ZQ2
Santa Clara County: https://t.co/m1Sjbfmork
— Violet Blue® (@violetblue) June 27, 2024
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) LB.1 coming up on the outside.
[4] (ER) This is the best I can do for now. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Now acceleration, which is compatible with a wastewater decrease, but still not a good feeling .(The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). This is the best I can do for now. Note the assumption that Covid is seasonal is built into the presentation, which in fact shows that Covid is not seasonal. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[7] (Walgreens) Still going up! (Because there is data in “current view” tab, I think white states here have experienced “no change,” as opposed to have no data.)
[8] (Cleveland) Still going up!
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time rasnge. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) Same deal. Those sh*theads. I’m leaving this here for another week because I loathe them so much:
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.
[12] Deaths low, ED up.
Stats Watch
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 57 Greed (previous close: 52 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 53 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 10 at 1:38:28 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 186. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Not what the climate coverage implies.
The Gallery
Hot weather:
Matisse, Open Window, Collioure pic.twitter.com/12BXvJIOM3
— Impressions (@impression_ists) July 8, 2024
Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, a thread:
Bill Watterson created Calvin and Hobbes and got featured in 2,400 newspapers worldwide…
Then he rejected a film offer from Spielberg & LOST $400 million by never agreeing to a merchandizing deal
On Watterson's 66th birthday today…
Discover 11 lessons from a real maverick: pic.twitter.com/dxc8kPUwvh
— Jash Dholani (@oldbooksguy) July 5, 2024
I don’t much like the genre, which ends with a plug for the account’s book, but the thread does have some interesting information on the very impressive Watterson.
Class Warfare
“Kevin Bacon Spent a Day as a Regular Person: ‘I Was Like, This Sucks'” [Vanity Fair]. “Kevin Bacon has daydreamed about walking through life as a regular, nonfamous person… Then Bacon realized he could test out his fantasy by donning a disguise. … So the Golden Globe–winning actor and musician went a step further. “I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise,” Bacon says… To his initial delight, the disguise really worked. “Nobody recognized me,” he says. But then an unfamiliar sensation washed over Bacon: the feeling of being invisible…. At the Grove [mall], Bacon recalls, ‘People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.'”
News of the Wired
Droplet Dogma-like dogmas everywhere:
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— Jordan (@jordanbhx) June 20, 2024
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Feral hogs on their relentless march south: Wild ‘superpigs’ from Canada could soon invade some U.S. states, study suggests
“Wild boar were brought over from the U.K. in the ’80s and ’90s to try and diversify agriculture,” Brook told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald.
Those boar were then crossbred with domestic pigs to increase their size and reproduction capacity, leading to what Brook calls “superpigs” because “it supercharged their reproduction and it made them bigger.”
We should introduce Siberian tigers ( ‘supertigers’) to control the ‘superpigs’.
I didn’t know siberian tigers could survive in the washington dc climate/ecosystem…Plenty to eat, so theres that…Hmmm.
They are called “Siberian” tigers but should maybe be thought of as “Amurian” tigers. They live in the mildest-possible climate zone of Siberia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_tiger
I seriously bet they could live real well in Southern Appalachia . . . IF the people there were ready to tolerate their presence.
Be careful what you ask for. (See Season 2, Episode 2 of The Windsors.)
> We should introduce Siberian tigers
Perhaps, depending. Excerpt fom the genuinely scary The Tiger:
They’ve already crossed into ND and MT several times but have been pushed back. Hold the line!
Re: CBC & Biden
So, let me make sure I have this right. The Congressional Black Caucus is so hidebound to the ideology represented by a white, elderly dementia patient who has no agency to make policy decisions that they’re willing to go down with him, even if it means that the first female black president won’t be given the opportunity to take over what is essentially a ceremonial post.
M’kay.
I admit I was giving them far too much credit, but every strong black woman I knew from my youth had spent too much time caretaking of their family to buy for a moment that Biden was capable of going to the grocery store by himself much less anything involved with being President, not even the ceremonial bits. Apparently the advancement into the PMC requires leaving common sense behind.
Anybody curious about the relationship between the CBC and Kamala?
They may think Biden can beat Trump, then they call for Biden to step down.
It’s so all over the place…who knows…
Just spitballin’….
Occurred to me that maybe they’re fine backing Joe Biden, working like hell to elect the ticket, and get him past January 20, 2025. That he likely won’t serve more than a few [days/weeks/months] is the attraction of a Biden/Harris victory for those who stan for Que Mala.
That’s a good working theory … it doesn’t exactly seem like a ringing endorsement of Harris, though. There are polls showing her beating Trump or at least doing better than Joe.
My theory is that this is yet another example of how once you elect someone to Congress, they become so entrenched in preserving the status quo that they abandon all pretext of serving the folks who elected them.
The Congressional critters lie through their teeth to get elected. When they do get elected the smell of Green$$$ is too much to ignore. Our system is totally family blogged.
My gut is the CBC is dominated by extreme minority majority districts, and the members don’t want more “democracy” as the relative urban nature makes barnstorming by a challenger a possibility versus the old 5th district in Virginia (the largest east of the Mississippi). They don’t campaign as much as thwart challenges early.
Seeing Biden forced put when likely Team Blue voters don’t want them is just potential training for their own challengers. After all, what has Clyburn done for any of his constituents?
They think that going down with a last-minute replacement would be more likely than going down with Biden. If someone can convince them that a last-minute replacement is more likely to prevent the return of Trump than Biden himself is, then they would support making a last-minute replacement.
Didn’t Biden once say vote for me or “you ain’t black”? Not only is he running the world but also sees himself an uncanny mimic of African American speech. He’s like America’s second black president after Bill Clinton.
The Wizard of Kalorama™ is hurt that you left him off the list.
I was told in 2008 that I couldn’t make this joke–
“Obama’s black?”
It is just like Bagehot said about the bankers, better to fail normally along with all the other bankers than make a spectacle of yourself. The system will give you a new start if show loyalty to the system.
If you’re channeling Pelosi, switch your meds! Or take of your tinfoil hat, or put one on, whichever it is!
This could be really damaging!
The Apple newsfeed headline is more Pelosi dumps him than the actual statement. Which I would categorize as we will ignore statements that Joe has decided until he decides the way we want.
Yes, I heard that comment by Pelosi. I thought the same thing. Clearly Biden had said he has decided. She re-interprets that in her own brain as Biden needing to decide the way she would like Biden to decide. And Biden hasn’t really decided till he makes Pelosi’s preferred decision.
Of all the people to take advice from, Little Miss NAFTA isn’t one.
saw something the other day, re pelosi, that we must elect him in order to determine if he’s demented…
as has been said many times over the last 7 years…i sure am glad im not a comedian.
and…has anyone seen Kamala?
is she in a closet with a bong and a margarita machine?(thats how i like to think of her)
and remember, the only ringwraith with a proper name in all of Tolkien was the Witch King’s right hand, named Kemal.
just sayin’…
That was from a Babylon Bee article I think.
That was intentional satire, as RK suggests, I find comedy, fiction and satire where it can be found to be a sort of “comfort food” for the otherwise uninspiring daily torrent of nonsense in our real American Empire in decline.
Blazing Saddles or Caddyshack, heck I’ll include Trading Places and about anything from the mind of Mike Judge to be just the right amount of satire and wit.
Mark Twain couldn’t stay on top of this.
https://x.com/ChrisCuomo/status/1810661472042705137
Short video at the link.
He says there are “loud fringe voices from the left and the right,
the left that’s convinced the pandemic is as bad as ever and we should all be masking indoors…”
On the Froomkin tweet above about the visits to the WH of the Parkinson’s Doctor
In one tweet Froomkin states the NY Times printed this despite the WH “debunking” the story.
Then in the other tweet he states “denials by the White House”.
It seems to me that “debunking” and “denials” are 2 completely different things – especially in this White House where lying about dementia patients is the coin of the realm.
Has there been something I have missed about a “debunking” of this story?
No debunking. And a rather contentious discussion in the white house briefing with Biden’s spokeswoman losing her cool after effectively being called a liar covering up the president’s condition.
Froomkin is horrible. Just going by what I read it now seems pretty clear that Biden does have some form of Parkinson’s. Maybe Froomkin from his high perch simply doesn’t stay on top of things.
So it’s not just Biden pooping his pants as Whoopi said and the press has to at least address reality for a change.
Froomkin is a media critic, and has been for a couple of decades (I know him since the days of the blogosphere). The New York Times wrote a story saying that a neurologist paid X number of visits to the White House, purpose unknown. The White House released a letter saying that the neurologist (who had worked for previous administrations) did presentations/seminars on neurologists for people affiliated with the White House (military personnel, for example, often end up with neurological problems).
And there the matter rests. I’m happy to call it debunked, since the White House riposte (not delivered by their idiotic and three-ring-binder encumbered press secretary) should be easy to disprove and the Times has not, to my knowledge, done so. It’s a simple, prima facie case.
Froomkin, as a media critic, points out that front-paging a story with a headline that ends “But Why is Unclear” is absurd; it’s the literal definition of a non-story. He’s right. I don’t see why that conclusion makes him “horrid.”
NOTE * If Froomkin is horrid, it’s because last I checked he had a bad case of TDS, which in this instance means he’s speaking against interest (presuming that leaving Biden in makes Trump more likely to win).
Denied is not debunked–your Froomkin quote says “thoroughly debunked.” There are stories all over the web including from the hardly Trumpie LA Times saying very persuasively that Biden does in fact have Parkinson’s. In fact see IM Doc above.
What Froomkin should be condemning is the NYT timidity rather than their “innuendo.” His own timidity re the truth is not too impressive either. I agree with the Doc that the coverup of Biden’s medical condition is a major scandal, not a one or two day he said/he said story.
IMO it’s not just the press but also the “press critics” who have let us down. Look at Margaret Sullivan. The MSM these days don’t seem to be a breeding ground for reformers even when they set up their own shop. One great exception: Patrick Lawrence. Hedges too knows where “the bodies are buried” at his old employer.
The essential point:
Do try to stay on point. Let’s try to maintain some level of precision here, even if all the excitement does make it difficult.
> their idiotic and three-ring-binder encumbered press secretary
Karine Jean-Pierre admits giving false information about Biden neurology visit after outcry over health misdirection NY Post
Beau of the Fifth Column made a video recently called ” Lets talk about Biden or Bernie or Newsom or Whitmer . . . ” It is a 5 minute and 48 second video. If one doesn’t want to lose 5 minutes and 48 seconds from one’s life watching/hearing a video, the fewest word gist is this:
Reliable-according-to-Beau polling indicates that the only “famous name Dem” who polls 1% better than Biden is . . . Harris. So people wanting Harris will vote for Biden now to get Harris later, after Biden’s quick merciful death in office after the election.
The other names poll less well than Biden. So they are less likely to defeat Trump than Biden is. Bernie is older than Biden so if the criticism of Biden is framed as ” too old”, Bernie has to be dismissed as ” too older”. And most of the famous names mentioned have already said they will not be the transplant.
So if this analysis is correct, then Froomkin’s suggestion to keep Biden is not against interest because any other famous name last-minute Dem candidate transplant would do even worse against Trump and have a higher chance of losing.
Beau may be wrong. We can never really know. The Dems can only do one thing or the other.
Anyway, here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAM8yvjGieA
DOC, there has been a lot of discussion of this issue on the Breaking Points podcast. The information they’ve presented says that the letter from the WH was issued purely in response to multiple people asking KJP questions and the Press Secretary stonewalling them. As to whether there’s more to the story… I can’t possibly say. It’s possible Biden has some malady that explains his even more rapid decline recently. It’s possible he’s just old and stupid. Whatever the WH is pushing to support the president can’t possibly be assumed as factual or true. Whatever the president’s opponents are pushing should also be considered propaganda. And as far as I’m concerned, none of them should be anywhere near the Capitol running our country.
> As to whether there’s more to the story… I can’t possibly say.
Exactly. Let the Times do the reporting. If they remember how, of course.
> Whatever the WH is pushing to support the president can’t possibly be assumed as factual or true.
Of course not. In this case, it should be quite easy for the Times to get the story.
See my response to Carolinian above. The White House response was not a simple denial; it came in the form of a letter describing other reasons for the neurologist to be attending the White House than examining Biden. Since a lie would be easy to demolish, and the Times hasn’t done so, I assume the Times is being tendentious, as usual.
Except physicians are compelled under grave consequence of federal law not to even acknowledge that they have a patient as long as the patient wants privacy. So a lie would not be easy to demolish.
Not sure how this could be defined as debunked, or given other neurological opinions, unnewsworthy.
They could have left the ‘why is unclear’ on the edit room floor and the doctor visits are still compelling information for the voting public.
A lot of Trump-rejecters are not really Biden-supporters. They are Biden-tolerators willing to go to election with whatever the DemParty is offering in hopes of keeping Trump from returning. If they fear a Dem-defeating Eagleton effect from replacing Biden this late in the game, then they will take a chance on losing with Biden to avoid the greater chance of losing with a last-moment replacement.
As Donald Rumsfeld once said: ” You go to election with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
It’s still quite a way to November and Joe has nowhere to go but down. As I see it they are fully entitled to dump him and are fools if they don’t. If he’s going to lose anyway it really doesn’t matter for him. And doing the right thing could help the party.
“Stonewalling”, “the coverup is worse than the crime”….these are phrases from a onetime Republican debacle.
Another meaningless statement from Donald Rumsfeld.
I searched for but cannot find a nearly 40-year-old political cartoon, Iran-Contra era, snarkily assuring readers that there is nothing to worry about, as the nation is in good hands. IIRC, it showed a chain of command, with “reassuring” verbiage at each level, proceeding through Oliver North, in Marine dress uniform, to John Poindexter, in Navy dress uniform, or maybe a business suit, and finally arriving at the President, Reagan, who was, IIRC, dressed in slippers and a bathrobe, reclining in a high-backed chair, fast asleep.
It was hilarious, but also troubling.
I suspect that JR “abed by 8PM” Biden is not out of the woods, yet.
That almost sounds like a cartoon that Patrick Oliphant could have done.
Well, that sent me down an old rathole. I didnt find your cartoon but this Herblock from the era seems evergreen: “It didn’t happen”
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/herblock/JoyToTheWorld/Assets/21958v_enlarge.jpg
A presidential tradition.
Re Trump’s VP choice:
During Powell’s senate briefing yesterday, JD Vance said that economists talk about immigration easing wage inflation and that’s a euphemism for keeping wages low for working people in the US. He added that there are two obvious ways to address labor shortages, either with immigration, or by raising wages high enough to lure workers off the sidelines. Powell told him that was a constructive way to look at the issue.
No idea who it will be and no love for Vance and his faux hillbilly origin story (if you want an earful on this check out the Trillbilly episodes on his book and again when the movie dropped) but he could resonate in some swing states.
It could also be SC senator Tim Scott.
BTW Nikki has released her delegates to Trump. So much for her big rebellion.
Rather ironic, as SC’s platform delegates were just dumped on orders of the Trump campaign.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/anti-abortion-delegates-committee-gop-platform-debate-00166323
And if Scott is picked, he would be another person in the Trump orbit targeted by the Capitol police…but for far different reasons….
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/tim-scott-capitol-racism-senate-225507
This won’t work forever with COVID disability. Eventually no workers.
I watched Biden’s speech. If he believes what he said, he is delusional … ok ill-informed by his minions. If he does not, he is a deeply cynical with murderous overtones. Doyou suppose he will bludgeon NATO into supporting the Gaza genocide?
> If he believes what he said, he is delusional
Our imperial delusions began and have persisted longer than Biden has been alive, and are shared by many people.
re: the elusiveness of wild pigs.
i can attest to this.
the mountain out back has what must be a herd/sounder of at least 60, last time i was up there(20 year probate battle ended up with unfriendlies inheriting in and taking my lock ive had for 30+ years)…but when id go aroamin up there(always with a 357mag on my hip…often with nothing else but boots,lol)…i could never find them.
only 150 acres…but the mountain is steep, and covers the long axis down the center.
now, given, my cripplehood prevents the kind of scrabblin up rock slides like former times,lol,,,,but dern.
i wanted to get a count…see how many salvageable shoats there were( to either harvest directly, or to capture and raise up in a pen)…and how many sows and boarhogs my neighbors and i would hafta dispatch to mae a dent in their numbers.
as for capturin them to raise…by all accounts, they are at worst 2 generations away from domestication…both ways.
ie…you capture the shoats…raise em up, and the next or the next after generation has learned to live with humans.
bacon is one of the things that is missing from what we produce.
and the little wild ones(like up to around 30#) are good eating….bigger, and theyre nasty and full of worms and ticks and such.
and further down on frelling oren cass’ x feed:
https://x.com/oren_cass/status/1810749947144245585
so its not just me…we’re all unrepresented…save, i suppose, the MIC and wall street types.
and, while i am definitely NOT a rightwinger…i like Oren…
heres from yesterday, or the day before…in the NYT, no less:
https://archive.ph/qCEeY
“Another American Compass poll found that Americans agree by 10 to one that “we need a stronger manufacturing sector,” most often because it “is important to a healthy, growing, innovative economy.” Asked to choose, most say they would much rather pay higher prices to strengthen domestic manufacturing than to combat climate change. Only the upper class was evenly split on this question. Is America a “nation of immigrants”? Perhaps. But while most Americans believe that immigration is a good thing for the country, at no time on record have more than around one-third wanted to increase immigration levels; support for decreasing the level is almost always much stronger.
The important feature of all these preferences is that they are inherently valid. No set of facts or statistical analyses, to which an expert might have superior access, overrides what people actually value and what trade-offs they would choose to make. Leaders might seek to shape public opinion and alter preferences — indeed, that is part of leading — but they must yield to the outcome. Their obligation is to pursue the community’s priorities, not their own.”
further evidence that the whole right/left dichotomy is dead.
we need new words.
and Oren actually says elsewhere that its really about the Elite vs everybody else.
what a strange world the bosses have given us.
and more…i mean…i could have said this sort of thing…and have, here at the wilderness bar:
” Smith was quite explicit: For the invisible hand to work, the capitalist must prefer “the support of domestic to that of foreign industry” and “direct that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value,” which would also “give revenue and employment to the greatest number of people of his own country.”
Those are substantial constraints, which modern economists managed to miss. When larger, easier profits can be achieved by offshoring production to countries that exploit workers or bringing foreign workers who will accept lower wages into the country, corporations will do just that. When the highest compensation goes to Wall Street speculators and the developers of addictive social-media algorithms, the most promising business leaders will pursue those careers. What share of Ivy League graduates bring their talents to vocations that will improve the productivity, and with it the earning potential, of anyone without a college degree, or create booming new businesses in struggling regions? It should be no surprise that the productivity growth necessary for rising wages has slowed and, in manufacturing, turned negative, that the longtime pattern in American economic development of poorer areas catching up with richer ones no longer holds.
The tragedy, but also the good news, is that these trends are not inevitable. They represent foolish policy choices, which means we can choose differently. Instead of the globalization that cast aside workers like unsold inventory and hollowed out communities, we can structure our trade and industrial policies to ensure the path to profit runs through domestic investment that creates productive jobs throughout the country. Instead of allowing migrants to enter the country illegally and employers to exploit them, we can enforce our laws rigorously and further restrict entry into the labor market’s low end, forcing employers to offer good, highly productive jobs to American workers instead of undercutting them.
In the financial sector, deregulation, tax and bankruptcy laws, international agreements and the mismanagement of public pensions have all encouraged the smart money and top talent to gravitate toward manipulating and trading piles of assets rather than building anything. Capital markets that once served to deploy the nation’s accumulated wealth broadly now extract value from enterprises and communities to reaccumulate it in narrow enclaves. The financial sector keeps growing, salaries and profits keep rising, and yet my research has shown that actual investment has been weakening. This is not the capitalism that any coherent economics would celebrate. Some leaders on the right have now joined those on the left in arguing that its excesses must be discouraged, regulated, taxed and perhaps banned.”
sorry for the length, but i think that its an important development that such folks are coming into alignment on such matters with people like me,lol.
…i still take issue with their China=Bad fetishism, and many other jots and tittles, but its progress, no?
(and something about thom cotton really, really gives me the shivers…hawley, i could welcome around my fire, fer sure…rubio?,lol…idk if hes a windvane or really believes this turn to the small l left.)
and meanwhile, from a few days ago, from the demhivemind:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/how-to-pick-a-new-democratic-presidential-candidate-fast.html
“A party’s base, by definition, consists of people who are going to vote for it no matter what. The base lacks leverage precisely for this reason, which is why so much rhetorical effort always goes into inflating its importance.”
i’d love to see an academic treatment…from multiple angles…of just what “Our Democracy(tm)” actually is, at the current juncture.
Chaits arguing for a Star Chamber approach, it looks like, to me.
which doesnt really sound all that democratic, at all,lol.
sigh.
i at least de facto, if not de jure, seceded my part of the place(5 acres) years and years ago…and i dont regret it, at all.
i am so done with everything about those people.
Amfortas, I definitely hear what you’re saying re: Cass, and the thing is, Oren is very persuasive; but I do want to note, as I always do here in the style of Cato the Elder hear (Cartago delenda est) when Cass comes up, that I went to college for four years with Oren and worked closely with him. In my reading, the dude is a thorough opportunist. He believes _none_ of this stuff that he has been spouting for the last few years, and which is diametrically opposed to what he believed until he saw, with Henri of Navarre, that “Paris is worth a Mass.”
An illustrating anecdote: Cass was taking a Shakespeare class at our elite New England liberal arts college where I was a scholarship kid from a poor to working class (depending on our fortunes) family. I ran into him at the extracurricular activity where we worked together. I asked him about it, what were they reading that week. He said that they were reading “Othello.” Ah, Othello, I remarked, and commented on the beauty of the language (“I have seen antres vast and deserts idle, hills whose heads touch heaven….She loved me for the dangers I did pass, and I loved her that she loved me….”).
He cut me off, exhausted, almost disgusted. He explained very quickly that he was not reading Shakespeare because it was beautiful, or one of the foremost expressions of the human condition in English, all of which he basically refused to acknowledge, but rather, because it would give him entree into elite social circles in the worlds of business, politics, etc. I found that kind of nihilistic opportunism repulsive then, and I still do now. I also think it says something about the purely instrumental uses Cass is willing to put things, indeed, high and noble things like Shakespeare, in the service of his enormous ambition. It was no surprise he graduated to work at Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital (I became a historian, writer, and teacher). He is hypocrisy and self-seeking embodied, the epitome of the elites he decries, and I trust his conversion not at all.
Even if we were to accept at face value the unlikely proposition that Cass did in fact have some kind of Damascene conversion, it is not to anything that is left, but rather, to an American version of Christian Democracy a la’ Continental Europe.
In short, having known him for over two decades, I don’t believe Oren is sincere here; in his heart of hearts, he remains a Bain guy, wedded to hierarchy, and fearing democracy and equality and true liberty.
Of course, the Dems are so [redacted] stupid that they may well find themselves flanked by these posers. Ecrasez l’infame!
O tempora, O mores!
i remember your previous such warnings and anecdotes, and keep them inmind when im reading the dude….same with the gopteaers he lauds(vance, et alia)
but i also consider the audience he has…and is growing…
he makes a compelling case, however insincere its author.
and i can make hay with that at the damned feed store,lol.
he is an actual bridge, whether he really in his heart feels himself to be one, or not.
i foresee that this kind of “red/brown” alliance stuff is the stuff of the future…thats whats emerging, in spite of all the bullshit and pretending and pretence…its what i saw during the 2015-6 campaign for Bernie…at that feed store, no less.
(“aint he a soshulist?”)
lol.
use it, without being invested in the particulars of the players at this point, i say.
nobody i know that i would point to Oren will dig into his priors overmuch…
but pointing them to him will open windows of opportunity for further discourse about empire and rapine that have never been open to the Left in this country,at this level, at least since the New Deal generation died out.
Those are fair and well-made points, Amfortas. I do agree that using these things where one may is wise (“let each of us cultivate our own gardens”), and I am honored you remember my previous philippics against Cass, and am glad he would be useful at the feedstore (better the CDP than various hard-right elements, after all).
I do think one thing that I think is positive here is that, above all, Oren is on the side of the big battalions, so the fact that he has made this switch (he was on the side of Bain et al. in 2005, when they and neoliberalism were “up” and a belief in a social compact of any kind was “down”; the fact that he has switched is very interesting as a sign of power dynamics.)
And I definitely hear you on the feed store. I’m from one of the redder corners of the very Blue Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and one thing that I do often is appeal to our ancient Commonwealth tradition from the 17th and 18th centuries, and which formed the basis of John Adams’ excellent Mass. Constitution. This, I have found, with its view that there are public things (res publicae — e.g. the sea and the waters of the Commonwealth, the roads and public ways, the schools, etc.), that their end is the common good, and that private use of these for private profit constitutes corruption. In my local environmental activism, this has proven extremely persuasive to both MAGA die-hareds and crunchy artists and activists who live in the land of MSNBC. I would argue that this is because this ideology, which is a form of civic republicanism, literally precedes all US political party formations, and is the common ancestor of them all.
But a lot of that is particular to Massachusetts, which I recognize is not universal (e.g., our state constitution was written by a thorough Commonwealthman and small ‘r’ republican, e.g.)
I hope you’re staying cool! It’s so [redacted] muggy here that even my students from tropical Brazil say it is miserable. Hopefully it will cool down soon.
“…civic republicanism, literally precedes all US political party formations, and is the common ancestor of them all.”
aye!
this right here , is from whence i approach them from.
theres few of the old lefty/liberal germans that settled this place(the one treaty with indians that was never broken,btw.see: adelsverein,latin colonies, etc…i know their descendants)…all my feed store peeps are anglo derived…or mexican derived.
but i look at things in a heterodox manner.. class.
these are all working class folks, no matter their derivation.
and my appeals to class interests were met with openness and curiosity….to my great surprise.(all i did was put a bernie sticker on my tailgate, and be willing to jaw a bit after loading the truck)
there is a great hunger out here in the hinterlands for a politics that works for US….writ large…and all the racist, lgtbq shit they try to divide us with will only work for so long.
anything that helps in that regard is welcome…even if its from a pretentious shitbag.
My brother-in-law (sadly deceased) disagrees: The Unfortunate Revival of Civic Republicanism
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3645&context=penn_law_review
“During the last decade, constitutional theory has been radically altered by the infusion of ideas loosely grouped under the title “civic republicanism.” Recent attention to these ideas initially surfaced during the sixties and seventies in the works of legal historians who argued that the founders of the American constitutional scheme were influenced as much by republican ideas as by traditional Lockean liberal theory.’ In the last decade, civic republican theory has become the primary concern of several prominent constitutional scholars. Nationally known scholars such as Frank Michelman, Cass Sunstein, and Mark Tushnet have written extensively of their desire for a more “republican” Constitution.
This article examines several different aspects of the civic
republican phenomenon. The first aspect involves the constitutional politics of civic republicanism. In particular, why are politically left-of-center constitutional scholars attracted to civic republicanism? Putting the matter differently, is civic republican theory truly congenial to the goals and aspirations of constitutional theorists who locate themselves on the left side of the political spectrum? The most obvious answer to these questions is that the political left shares with civic republican theory a theoretical focus on the community rather than the individual. Both civic republicans and members of the political left view the collective exercise of power more favorably than their political and theoretical adversaries.
Under this view, both civic republicans and members of the political left view government as the necessary agent for cultivating positive social values and developing a “good” society. Classical liberal theory and members of the political right, on the other hand, view government as at best an unfortunate necessity.
This explanation of the natural attraction between the left and
civic republicanism has one major problem: the left’s traditional support for civil liberties is incompatible in certain respects with civic republican theory. This is the second aspect of the civic republican phenomenon addressed in this article. The essence of the problem is this: if collective political decisions are favored-and if the government is the logical agent to implement the “good” society-then there is no reason for the government not to extend its power to make collective determinations into those areas traditionally protected as fundamental individual liberties. This has been a common reaction to republican theory, and several republican theorists have attempted to respond by reintroducing elements
of liberalism or “practical reason “‘ into their civic republican
theories…
I argue in the final section that modern civic republicans are
insufficiently sensitive to the democratic mandate of constant
change and flux. I believe that this flaw in modern civic republicanism is attributable to the fact that modern civic republicans view the world from the perspective of political winners. Thus, they do not sufficiently take account of what I call “losers’ principles,” some form of which every proper democratic theory must incorporate. The final section includes a discussion of three losers’ principles that seem incompatible with the most prominent modern versions of civic republicanism. I conclude that by rejecting these “losers’
principles,” civic republicanism ceases to be a truly democratic theory. I also argue that to the extent modern civic republicanism permits collective political power to override these losers’ principles, the theory also becomes an essentially conservative doctrine-a notable irony given the political predilections of most civic republican proponents. If these criticisms are correct, the article concludes that it may be time to bury the new, improved versions of civic republicanism alongside their classical predecessor.”
…”hate crime” is, imho, a good example
Blitzkrieg, thanks for the link to your late brother-in-law’s essay on civic republicanism. While I disagree with much of it, it nevertheless looks interesting and compelling and I’m glad to give it a look when my teaching schedule calms down in a few weeks.
I guess I would say in response that this view seems to me to take a backwards-looking, teleological response to civic republicanism, and it also is the approach of political theory, rather than political/legal history (poli sci vs. history depts.) I’d say this simplest counter to the idea that civic republicans don’t value individual liberties is the fact that they very prominently put bills of rights into the several republican constitutions of the new states in the 1780s.
I also think that mixing late 20th/early 21st c. notions of left and right with the republicanism vs. liberalism debate (one of the oldest and best in American historiography) risks obscuring critical things, and again, viewing the past through a teleological lens. I would say, for example, that hate crime is not civic republican so much as postmodern identitarian, which is in tension with a polity where each citizen participates as a citizen, not a member of an identity category.
But I do take your late brother-in-law’s point — there is a grave danger for civic republicanism if it ignores the good parts of rights-based liberalism. Fortunately, I don’t see evidence that the historical civic republicans did that, but I’m interested to read the case he makes. Thanks for sending it our way, I appreciate it.
throw a frelling net over that SOB and drag him to the wilderness bar,lol.
do him good, i expect, to not only meet the feral intelligentsia of this country, but to sleep on a couch on a porch, and fight off raccoons.
ill feed him well.
For the WHO video I find it interesting that they forgot to fill in the child’s pants with a color – it just has a blue outline and you can see the basic modeling of the bus seat. Similarly with the person just in frame to the left, except it’s their shirt.
Seems like everything is going just fine over there. SMH
Same thing with the guy on the left. Spooky!
Some sort of “What’s wrong with this picture?” gimmick?
Maybe they’re representing the visibility that you’ll have with Long-COVID. But my guess is organizational dysfunction letting a basic error slip through, or brain damage…probably both.
I have added orts and scraps. Reasonably caught up on Covid, not yet the flu….
fwiw, Carville is confident Biden will drop out.
Video: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/carville-dems-are-up-against-a-wall-clinton-and-obama-town-halls-a-solution-cuomo/vi-BB1pDJWs
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/james-carville-says-biden-exit-is-inevitable-everyone-knows-whats-going-on-here/ar-BB1pGVUK
James Carville Says Biden Exit Is ‘Inevitable’: ‘Everyone Knows What’s Going On Here’
in my somewhat addled mind, the question arises: but pray to whom?
moloch?
Cthulu?
that stone effigy of a grasshopper god in the basement of the NYSE?
will they also make sacrifices?
will JRB sniff the children to be so sacrificed?
people need to know!
I want to know who the “people” are that will get the message to him.
Note: They’re choosing “pray” rather than “follow the science” about his medical condition.
> They’ll pray on it
The efficacy of “thoughts and prayers” is well known.
every prayer has its price?
Good thing President Trump doesn’t consult me because my choices would be;
Senator Scott of SC, and Governor Youngkin of VA, toss up as to which is best.
As for Ohio Senator JD Vance, I wouldn’t select him on a bet (something about him makes me mistrust him), and while Governor Burgum of ND is sufficiently innocuous in a Pence sort of way, he simply doesn’t excite me. As for Little Marco, my home state of FL, senator? I wouldn’t urinate on him if he were on fire.
i’d rather he pick Tulsi….shes hot, and has that smoky voice, and all…and it would send the bluechecks into conniptions.
may as well have a hottie to look at on cnn, as we do the whole fall of rome thing in spades.
(“see? we even fall down more spectacularly than rome did…best empire evah!”)
A Tulsi pick for Trump would win in a landslide IMO.
He ain’t that smart. He will end up picking some slime like Rubio because he still hasn’t figure out he (as a casino owner no less) is the mark at the table.
#TSquared – Trump/Tulsi 2024
Disclosure; Not an endorsement
Doesn’t matter anyway, most of us are still screwed.
Rufio is a weenie. He’s a NYT style republican. Not gonna happen.
“It’s up to Biden to decide.”
Gee, where did we hear that one before? Biden has become the Ukraine. (Turns out that the Russians and the America(voter)s have a say on this, too…
Biden can win! He just needs more weapons! We can’t abandon him now.
Exclusive: House Oversight subpoenas top Biden aides over his mental fitness Axios
I don’t know if this is tactically clever (“Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”) it may even be principled (!).
not stated by axios(did they even ask, one wonders?) if there was any bipartisan support on that committee.
if even one dem on said committee signed on to such a subpoena, or whatever…i reckon that would be newsworthy.
If I was the Republicans, and only cared about winning, I’d fight like hell to keep Genocide Joe in the race. If I actually gave a damn about real democracy, not the “our” variety kind, I’d do everything I could to get him out of office like yesterday.
I think the question is will another candidate make campaign promises. My gut is they won’t. What if Biden or Hillary ran without the nostalgia?
Then Biden won’t step down.
Then there is the complicity factor. Who is clean in the Biden mess? I don’t think it’s a mistake outside of Harris or Pritzker having real ambitions, being the next FDR won’t take much. They are like petty Sullas not Caesars.
“They are like petty Sullas not Caesars”
wow. i love the NC commentariat.
i’ll allege tht there are no Caesars on any horizon, atm.
we’re into more jurgenthine shit, here.
petty and vile is the order of the day…and self-serving, of course!
we’ll wallow as we fall apart.
It might be that one of the calculations is that “shining light” onto what has been going on in the background, in terms of the management of public perceptions of the President’s health status (and perhaps this has been going on since before the 2020 primary, which would look very bad), could be long-term very damaging to the D Party, even if in the short term it actually helps D electoral prospects by incentivizing changes in the name(s) on the ballot.
Two recent consumer awareness articles showing bad stuff being included in things we insert into our bodies.
https://www.sciencealert.com/concerning-levels-of-arsenic-and-lead-found-in-tampons-in-world-first-study
https://www.sciencealert.com/more-than-1-in-3-tattoo-inks-tested-in-us-harbor-a-potential-infection-risk
Helpfully the link tells you what you’re going to get.
“‘Dave’ Predicted the Biden Debacle” [Free Press]
” Did you think, when you pulled the lever for Joe Biden in 2020, that you were actually voting for Joe Biden the singular human being?”
Nah….No mention of the electoral college. That’s who chooses. Let a third party candidate win the popular vote one day. See what happens.
Maybe we do have ‘Dave’. Maybe the original Biden carked it back in late 2019 and they found this elderly actor to replace him but now this actor is also aging out. Time to call central casting again.
Just for a refresher on Dave the evil chief of staff finds a look alike to thwart the ascension of the nice vice president when the president has a stroke. Then it turns out everyone likes the fake better than the real thing.
Except for the VP angle we wish it was Dave. Maybe the Dems should switch to Kevin Kline. I once suggested Morgan Freeman and got a lot of flak.
Have you seen In or Out?
I’d vote the Kline ticket!
Kline24!
#ForDecency
‘ash Dholani
@oldbooksguy
Bill Watterson created Calvin and Hobbes and got featured in 2,400 newspapers worldwide…
Then he rejected a film offer from Spielberg & LOST $400 million by never agreeing to a merchandizing deal’
That was a bullet dodge as it would have been junk. Speilberg also wanted to film the very first Harry Potter film. But his idea was to make it as a cheap, American based, throwaway cartoon film with Haley Joel (‘I see dead people’) Osment being the voice of Harry Potter. But J.K. Rowling said forget it that she wanted it done as an actual film made in England and the rest is history.
‘Jorie Graham
@jorie_graham
Watch this. The whole thing. Is he old? Yes. Is he reading from a teleprompter? Yes. Does he understand what he’s saying? Yes. Absolutely. Is he saying what he wishes to say, what he & his government *believe* in, and what he stands for on behalf of the United States? Yes. Could he speak this fluidly extemporaneously? Probably not. No. Is he representing the values of a democratic government? Yes. He is saying what he means, what his administration stands for, and what the Democratic Party stands for in its relationship to the western alliance. Yes. So, what else do we want from him? This is the job. Hundreds of people have prepared this conference. Many have weighed in on the diplomatic language. Many others have made the military decisions, the strategic decisions with partners, the negotiated agreements. It’s a *government*. It’s thousands of people working on behalf of the country—many of them chosen by this President.’
This person does realize that any motivated actor could do all this and you do not need a real President for what he says. So perhaps Dave or maybe Ronald Reagan.
She says “government” but describes “the Blob” and Biden is the ideal President of the Blob. A zombie figurehead who will never challenge or interfere with the “normal” functioning of government.
“who will never challenge or interfere with the “normal” functioning of government”
Yes, so long as the normal function of government means that his briefers only tell him that Ukraine is winning. I am pretty sure any briefer who told him otherwise would find themselves outside the normal functioning of government pretty quickly.
For the same reason, I believe the Parkinsons doctor probably was not at the White House to examine Biden. Biden does not allow bad news.
And tonight giving the President’s SOTU as written by speechwriters is Oscar winner George Clooney! This evening addressing the LGBT community on the anniversary of Stonewall will be Tony award winning actor Nathan Lane giving President Biden’s speech as written by speechwriters. NATO is being addressed by actor Harrison Ford giving Joe Biden’s speech as written by speechwriters.
It never has to end. The Bidens have a new celebrity
chefactor every week!But now George Clooney has called for Biden to quit-
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/devastating-actor-george-clooney-makes-bombshell-call-on-biden/news-story/48669ca2489bd0cc7b6d670a5941f121
This is just piling on old Joe at this stage, but what the heck:
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-fails-recognize-someone-knew-well-says-nato-summit-attendee-1923449
Clooney says Biden was as gaga at the 30 million fundraiser as at the debate. So he knew. They all knew. They were just hoping the public didn’t know. As a strategist he is being forthright. As a citizen??
Clooney is wrong though that the Dems don’t believe in cults since they have become one. Much of the country sees Trump as proper vengeance–on the Dems. The rest of us will muddle on.
Clooney is only worth 500+ million so he’s a chump anyway.
I’d be surprised if he owns any student loan debt securities or whatever they are.
Hey, this is kind of fun!
George Clooney:
‘Turned on ya, Tune in to Kamala. Drop out.’
Heard it was 104 wherever Kevin Bacon is presently, just 6 degrees of separation away from yours truly.
Joe, Joe was a man who thought he was a 2-termer
But he knew it couldn’t last
Joe, Joe left the debate in Atlanta
For some coup d’grasp in the aftermath
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Joe, Joe
Go home
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Back to where you once belonged, yeah
Oh, get back, Joe
Sweet Kamala Harris thought she was a woman
But she was Willie Brown’s man
All the Harris pols around her say she’s got it coming
But she has to wait until she can
Oh, get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Get back Kamala, woo, woo
Go roam
Oh, get back, yeah, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Yeah, get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Ooh
Ooh, ooh
Get back to that action-figure pose
Your wardrobe’s waitin’ for you
Wearin’ those high-heel shoes
And a low risk mixed green word salad
Get back on cue, Kamala
Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged
Oh, get back, get back
Get back, oh yeah
Get Back, by the Beatles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEESfv-11ng
RE: “I ended the pandemic. He didn’t.”
It would have been more accurate to say “I started a war. He didn’t.”
Too lazy at this time of day to produce links, but my distinct recollection is that Biden and the rest of the liberal apparatchiks were yammering constantly about the “pandemic of the unvacccinated”, demonizing everybody who questioned the efficacy of the Pfizer/Moderrna shots (not sterilizing vaccines), even though they had said previously during the 2020 campaign season said that any remedy promoted by the Trump administration should not be trusted.
They hammered this narrative until the very day that Russia invaded Ukraine, which would most likely not have happened had not the Boden administration provoked it. Then not only did the demonization of the unvaccinated cease, but they stopped talking about it altogether.
They’d very much like to memory hole that sequence of events, but pandemics don’t just end because the military industrial complex managed to get their war on.
Scott Ritter with Danny Haiphong… if you have the time it’s worth a listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcTTyCv62hs
A nagging thought I haven’t been able to shake is that the Democrats secret now grudging continued support of a clearly incapable Biden says that
1. The President is even more of a figurehead anymore than the King of England. Although in the King’s case the people running the government are marginally elected whereas those running America are unelected bureaucrats, military and intelligence players of one faction of the government.
2. This would be also true of a Second Trump term, which means that Trump is no bigger threat to Democracy than Biden is. The names in his administration will be familiar from previous ones. The inner circle jousting for power aside, no matter who America elects democracy will have little to do with the running of the country, it will be people who have been there in the shadows before.
Democracy isn’t just dead because of our deeply corrupt contribution system, it is gone because it has rotted from the inside out. And no, saving it is not on the ballot.
Indeed The elites’ main problem with Trump isn’t that he’s an “authoritarian” or will be a “dictator”. It’s that when he refuses to read the lines they’ve given him and goes off script, it makes them all look bad.
@Pat. Yep. See: Glennon, Michael J. National security and double government. Oxford University Press, 2016.
I wonder if Biden hasn’t stepped down yet only because the DNC and donors haven’t met the price set by the Family.
Perhaps it’s even more than $200 mil.
Matisse’s Open Window, Collioure
Late to the game on this. There must have been great joy in creating the scene,
joy in selecting the palette,
joy in seeing the colors applied to canvas,
and for a few who appreciated his work, joy in viewing it.