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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/20/2024

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Thrashers 4EVA!

California Thrasher, Placerita Canyon Nature Center, Los Angeles, California, United States. Additional species: Spotted Towhee, Pipilo maculatus, Bewick’s Wren.

The flight of the honey buzzard:

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. Democrat National Convention vignettes.
  2. Highest Covid wave in two years.
  3. Stupid money and blood money.

* * *

Look for the Helpers

Citizen science:

A thread of people chiming in about how this corn is fun to grow. The seeds can be purchased at Alliance of Native Seed Keepers.

* * *

My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza). –>

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

* * *

Democrats en Déshabillé

“Democrats: Capitalism isn’t the problem and we have no solution” [Carl Beijer]. “I hate to spoil the wishful thinking of leftists who desperately want Democrats to sign on to radical politics, but as much as this sounds like a critique of capitalism, it’s not. In fact it is precisely because this sounds so much like a critique of capitalism that it is so dangerous. Democrats voice all of the familiar concerns about consolidation, profiteering, monopoly, and exploitation — but only so that, at the very last moment, they can insist that this bundle of problems isn’t capitalism. Instead, we learn that something called “corporate greed” is keeping us from True Capitalism… But if Democrats want to insist that we can get to True Capitalism by ridding America of corporate greed, they should tell us their plan for doing so. Maybe Kamala Harris can hold a series of fireside chats with Americans and beg us to stop being so greedy. Then in a press conference the next day the White House can explain that what she actually meant to condemn was corporate greed, apologies if any greedy capitalists took offense.” • Indeed.

2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

There is no good news here for Trump. The deterioration in both Pennsylvania and Georgia is especially marked. Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads — are within the margin of error. So the “joy” is based on, well, vibes.

* * *

Democrat National Convention Vignettes:

Warnock also owes me six hundred bucks:

Joy through Strength:

On the bright side, it’s good to see Democrat commitment to defending their own borders from incursions.

Ironclad commitement (1):

Ironclad commitment (2):

The voice of a new generation (1):

The voice of a new generation (2):

I’ll start getting excited about Shawn Fain if a 2028 General Strike actually comes to fruition and wins workers some actual power, and isn’t used as a [family blogging] bargaining chip at the start of Kamala’s second term.

And speaking of fascism:

Surgical removal of the sense of shame:

More Democrat National Convention:

“‘Now We Know We’re Going to Win’: Democratic Delegates Breathe With Relief” [Politico]. “Michelle McFall stood from her seat when Joe Biden took the stage. Down on the floor to the left of the lectern and a mere five rows from the front, as the president basked in the cheers on Monday on the first of the four nights of the Democratic National Convention, the Pennsylvania delegate had tears well in her eyes…. Beyond being a delegate, McFall, 55, from Murrysville, the political director for Malcolm Kenyatta’s campaign for auditor general and the chair of the Democratic Committee of Westmoreland County — a rural county in the western part of the state in which less than 40 percent of the registered voters are Democrats. ‘I wake up every day where it’s difficult to be a Democrat.” Good. It ought to be difficult being a Democrat, given the way they’ve stacked the bodies up. More: “‘We had one of my committee members in 2021 attacked by a Trump supporter,’ she said. But now? In the last few weeks? ‘It’s everything. It’s the way Joe Biden handed the torch,; she said. ‘We see it in counties like mine — where so many Democratic voters had sort of disengaged for a number of reasons. They’re not disengaged anymore.'” • Biden didn’t “pass the torch.” He was forced out by an Inner Party cabal (although, I suppose, institutionally it could be a good thing that the Democrats are as ruthless as the Tories). What I can’t figure out is if partisans like McFall are lying when they say these things, or whether they genuinely believe them. I’m inclining to the latter view, which is pretty frightening.

“4 Things Kamala Harris Needs to Pull Off at the DNC” [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. “It is difficult to overestimate the momentum change in Democratic prospects for 2024 that has accompanied Harris’s advent as presidential nominee. It’s evident in the top-line national polling numbers showing her leading Trump as much as Trump led Biden before the switcheroo. It’s also evident in the battleground state polling showing her with multiple paths to 270 electoral votes. And perhaps most of all, it’s evident in indices of Democratic enthusiasm that appears to be leading most Biden 2020 voters back into the corral with renewed interest in voting. These are the hard cold valuable facts beneath all the chatter about Harris’s memes and vibes. If Harris can keep this sense of momentum and optimism and enthusiasm alive beyond the convention, she will have a relatively short runway to November 5 (not to mention September and October, the start of early voting in most states) and an easy transition to get-out-the-vote efforts as opposed to the massive effort to turn around swing voters that Biden would have faced.”

“The Weirdness of Manufactured Joy” [Sasha Stone, Free Thinking]. From the right: “All that would matter would be chasing euphoria, pure joy, joy I hadn’t felt since 2008. That addiction to the rush of being a Good Liberal making the world a better place one manufactured victory at a time.” • A four-day liberalgasm…

“Barack and Michelle Obama look to add a flavor of 2008 to Harris’s bid” [WaPo]. “Former advisers say that, in his speech, Obama can try to re-create some of the mood and tenor of his 2008 campaign as well. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first White House chief of staff and currently U.S. ambassador to Japan, said, ‘He can speak to our better angels,’ offering a stark contrast with the current political environment. ‘This moment is not unlike the time when he was active in national politics,’ Axelrod said. ‘It was about the war and economy, but it was also about people who really wanted to turn the page on rancor and the grinding politics of Washington.'”

* * *

“Some protesters tear down security fence as thousands march outside Democratic National Convention” [Associated Press]. “Organizers had hoped at least 20,000 people would take part in Monday’s rally and march, but it appeared that only a few thousand were present, though city officials declined to give a crowd estimate.”

“Photos : Protests outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago” [USA Today]. • I can’t find an aerial photo to assess the size of the crowds. Are there no drones? Readers?

* * *

“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Prime-Time Speech Reflects Long March To Mainstream” [HuffPo]. “By handing her a prime-time speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday night, the Democratic Party has fully embraced New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a still-occasional insurgent against the party’s leadership who opened her career with the shocking ouster of an incumbent. It was not even Ocasio-Cortez’s idea to speak at the convention, according to a senior aide. The convention organizers contacted her about the opportunity and gave her a prime-time spot better than the slot given to New York’s governor. And she used it to deliver a stemwinder, generating some of the loudest cheers of the convention’s first night and leaving the crowd chanting “A-O-C” as she walked off the stage.” • What a waste of a great natural talent.

The Campaign Trail:

Kamala:

“Can Kamala Harris overcome her campaign’s biggest challenge?” [Vox]. “Since her campaign’s launch a month ago, Harris has sought to align herself with majority opinion in (at least) three distinct ways. First, she has moderated substantively, disavowing her most left-wing issue positions from 2020, while touting her support of a bipartisan border security bill and the toughness of her prosecutorial record. Second, she has made the case for liberal issue positions in philosophically conservative terms — framing her social policies as attempts to safeguard individual freedom from government overreach and her fiscal agenda as, among other things, a plan for helping strivers ‘build intergenerational wealth.’ Finally, Harris has painted herself as a tribune of the middle class and her opponent as a servant of the wealthy few. To claim the mantle of economic populism, Harris has not been afraid to tout ideas that are substantively left-wing yet broadly popular.” • “Helping strivers.” Well, maybe so.

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!

* * *

Transmission: Covid

“The US is experiencing its largest summer Covid wave in at least two years” [CNN]. “It may be time to dust off the face masks and air purifiers. The US is in the midst of a significant Covid-19 wave, with viral activity levels in wastewater the highest they’ve been for a summer surge since July 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s wastewater dashboard. The CDC’s measure of national Covid viral activity in wastewater rose to 8.82 on August 10 – falling shy of a peak of 9.56 in July 2022. The CDC says the most recent data is incomplete and may change. Before it started rising again in May, it was at 1.36. ‘Currently, the COVID-19 wastewater viral activity level is very high nationally, with the highest levels in the Western US region,’ Dr. Jonathan Yoder, deputy director of the CDC’s Wastewater Surveillance Program, said in an email. ‘This year’s COVID-19 wave is coming earlier than last year, which occurred in late August/early September.'” • I believe I started muttering about this oncoming wave a while ago….. Stay safe out there!

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Worth noting that national Emergency Room admissions are as high as they were in the first wave, in 2020.

Wastewater
★ This week[1] CDC August 12: Last Week[2] CDC July 22 (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC August 10 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 10

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data August 19: National [6] CDC July 27:

Positivity
★ National[7] Walgreens August 20: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 10:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC July 29: Variants[10] CDC July 29:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC July 27: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC July 27:

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. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. First showing of the new variant from China, XDV.1 (though it didn’t appear in traveler’s data).

[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Going down. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (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). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) Fiddling and diddling.

[8] (Cleveland) Jumping.

[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 range. 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) The new variant in China, XDV.1, is not showing up here.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

There are no statistics of interest today.

* * *

Tech: Dark patterns at Google:

And:

“I expected….” Musical interlude.

Supply Chain: “Consumer goods maker Newell Brands isn’t waiting to see what the impact of new trade policies will be on its manufacturing plans” [Logistics Report, Wall Street Journal]. “The company has shifted production of its Sharpie retractable pens, Oster blenders and other goods from China to its own plants in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as Southeast Asia…. Newell is among a growing set of companies that are recognizing that protectionism underpinned by tariffs will be a feature of U.S. trade policy in coming years no matter who wins the White House this fall. President Biden has left a swath of Trump administration tariffs in place, triggering a broad resetting of corporate supply chains, and Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t signaled that she would veer away from the tactic.”

Supply Chain: “China-Mexico flights reopen amid manufacturers’ Latin American push” [Nikkei Asia]. “China’s airlines are reopening direct services linking the country to Mexico after a hiatus during the coronavirus pandemic, as a wave of Chinese manufacturers set up shop in the North American production hub.”

Manufacturing: “What went wrong with Boeing’s spaceship” [NBC]. “Here’s what went wrong with Boeing’s Starliner capsule. NASA and Boeing have been monitoring two separate issues with the Starliner: one with a set of thrusters and the other involving helium leaks in its propulsion system. Engineers with NASA and Boeing have been using a test engine at the space agency’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico to study the performance of the thrusters…. Preliminary results indicated that all but one of the 28 reaction control system thrusters performed well, but NASA said various tests have shown that a tiny Teflon seal seemed to swell under high temperatures, which could block the flow of propellant into the thrusters…. However, Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said this month that the team ‘can’t totally prove with certainty what we’re seeing on orbit is exactly what’s been replicated on the ground.’… Separately, teams have also been monitoring slow helium leaks in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. Mission managers knew about one helium leak before Starliner’s launch but said at the time that the slow leak was manageable and unlikely to affect the mission or compromise the astronauts’ safety.” • What went wrong with Boeing’s spaceship is Boeing. That new CEO may have some decisions to make, fast.

Labor Market: “Fed Confronts Up to a Million US Jobs Vanishing in Revision” [Bloomberg]. “US job growth in the year through March was likely far less robust than initially estimated, which risks fueling concerns that the Federal Reserve is falling further behind the curve to lower interest rates. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. economists expect the government’s preliminary benchmark revisions on Wednesday to show payrolls growth in the year through March was at least 600,000 weaker than currently estimated — about 50,000 a month. While JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasters see a decline of about 360,000, Goldman Sachs indicates it could be as large as a million…. Powell and his colleagues have recently said they’re focusing more on the labor side of their dual mandate, and he’ll take the benchmark revisions into account in his Friday speech at the Fed’s annual symposium.”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Neutral (previous close: 41 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 35 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 20 at 1:00:43 PM ET.

Public Health

“The lice will always win” [WaPo]. The deck: “We’ve been losing the war against lice since the dawn of humanity. Should we change how we think about them?” • Let’s just hope they don’t become a vector.

Zeitgeist Watch

Mood:

strong>Guillotine Watch

Stupid money:

“New York Times erases Garry Tan’s ‘die slow’ tweet explosion” [The Nerd Reich]. “The New York Times Magazine published a story that glowingly depicted Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan as a paragon of mental health success thanks to executive coaching. But the story left out a crucial detail: Tan is the CEO who made headlines for getting drunk and tweeting ‘die slow’ at seven members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in January. That’s one hell of a fact to leave out of a piece that positioned executive ‘coaching’ as an alternative to real therapy…. [Tan] the tech CEO spearheading a campaign to take over San Francisco City Hall in November.” • California dreaming….

Class Warfare

“Blood Money: Selling Plasma to Avoid High-Interest Loans” [The Review of Financial Studies]. ” We exploit dramatic growth in the U.S. blood plasma industry to shed light on the sellers of plasma. Sellers tend to be young and liquidity-constrained with low incomes and limited access to traditional credit. Plasma centers absorb demand for nontraditional credit. After a plasma center opens nearby, demand for payday loans falls by over 13% among young borrowers. Meanwhile, foot traffic increases by over 4% at nearby stores, suggesting that constrained households use plasma markets to smooth consumption without appealing to high-cost debt.” • It’s nice that our young people have options! Now do kidneys….

“Study Finds That Legalized Sports Betting Is Leading to More Bankruptcies, Lower Credit Scores” [Zaid Jilani, The American Saga]. “[A trio of California researchers found] an increase in auto loan delinquencies once sports gambling is legalized. For states with online access to gambling, they found a 28% increase in the likelihood of bankruptcy and an 8% increase in debt collection amounts. They also found a reduction in access to credit — shown through lower credit limits and a higher ratio of secured to unsecured loans.” • Caltrops wherever you look…

News of the Wired

“Uniqueness Bias: Why It Matters, How to Curb It” [arXiv]. The Abtract: “The paper explores ‘uniqueness bias,’ a behavioral bias defined as the tendency of planners and managers to see their decisions as singular. For the first time, uniqueness bias is correlated with forecasting accuracy and performance in real-world project investment decisions. We problematize the conventional framing of projects as unique and hypothesize that it leads to poor project performance. We test the thesis for a sample of 219 projects and find that perceived uniqueness is indeed highly statistically significantly associated with underperformance. Finally, we identify how decision makers can mitigate uniqueness bias in their projects through what Daniel Kahneman aptly called “decision hygiene,” specifically reference class forecasting, premortems, similarity-based forecasting, and noise audits.”

This strikes me as good advice:

* * *

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From Teton Time:

Plants in the Tetons.

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

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

Subscribe to Post Comments
94 comments

  1. SD

    Thank you for the wonderful Thrasher birdsongs over the past several days! I had literally never heard of Thrashers before you started posting these. Their songs are utterly delightful.

    1. John

      The purpose of the conventions was to nominate the candidates. Now we have huge media circuses concluding with a rubber stamp. Unless you are addicted to party propaganda, why bother.

      1. lyman alpha blob

        I tried watching Taibbi and Kirn watch the convention last night. It was interesting until they switched to actual convention footage, at which point I felt my brain start shrinking – the condescension coming out of every single Democrat mouth is incredibly annoying – and watched some sportsball instead.

      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        In high school, I was never one for “school spirit” or pep rallies, so I don’t get the mentality. But seems to be the only remaining purpose.

        Not merely the spectacle, but the internal spectcle of being moved by the spectacle, in the company of others similarly moved. I am sure Nuremburg rallies fed on the same knowledge of human nature.

  3. Mikel

    Reading a book about con men (written in 1940) and its description of the perfect target is indistinguishable from today’s too-online big tech oligarch pic.twitter.com/RhWzloneXy

    And the name of the book is??

    I’m thinking it’s :
    The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man – by David Maurer
    “The classic 1940 study of con men and con games that Luc Sante in Salon called “a bonanza of wild but credible stories, told concisely with deadpan humor, as sly and rich in atmosphere as anything this side of Mark Twain.”

    “Of all the grifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat,” wrote David Maurer, a proposition he definitely proved in The Big Con, one of the most colorful, well-researched, and entertaining works of criminology ever written. A professor of linguistics who specialized in underworld argot, Maurer won the trust of hundreds of swindlers, who let him in on not simply their language but their folkways and the astonishingly complex and elaborate schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed and dishonesty, were “taken off” – i.e. cheated—of thousands upon thousands of dollars.

    The Big Con is a treasure trove of American lingo (the write, the rag, the payoff, ropers, shills, the cold poke, the convincer, to put on the send) and indelible characters (Yellow Kid Weil, Barney the Patch, the Seldom Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie, Larry the Lug). It served as the source for the Oscar-winning film The Sting. ”

    Sounds like a great read!

    1. ambrit

      It also sounds like an excellent resource for understanding “local politics.” (As Alice X mentions, also known among “those in the know” as “politricks.”)

      1. Mikel

        “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

        Simple advice. Easily forgotten.

    2. Wukchumni

      My Adventures With Your Money, by George Graham Rice, is a chronicle of a conman in Nevada mining camps circa 1900…

      What a read!

      1. Wukchumni

        This is merely the Foreword:

        You are a member of a race of gamblers. The instinct to speculate dominates you. You feel that you simply must take a chance. You can’t win, yet you are going to speculate and to continue to speculate—and to lose. Lotteries, faro, roulette, and horse-race betting being illegal, you play the stock game. In the stock game the cards (quotations or market fluctuations) are shuffled and riffled and STACKED behind your back, AFTER the dealer (the manipulator) knows on what side you have placed your bet, and you haven’t got a chance. When you and your brother gamblers are long of stocks in thinly margined accounts with brokers, the market is manipulated down, and when you are short of them, the prices are manipulated up.

        You are on guard against the Get-Rich-Quick man, and you flatter yourself that you can detect his wiles at a glance. You can—one kind of Get-Rich-Quick operator. But not the dangerous kind. Modern Get-Rich-Quick Finance is insidious and unfrenzied. It is practised by the highest, and you are probably one of its easy victims.

        One class of Get-Rich-Quick operator uses crude methods, has little standing in the community, operates with comparatively small capital, and caters to those who do not think and have only small resources. He is not particularly dangerous.

        https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44274/44274-h/44274-h.htm

    3. LifelongLib

      If you’re clever enough you can probably cheat anybody. “You can’t cheat an honest man” is just another con.

    4. John Anthony La Pietra

      Another great read, though probably not quite as fact-based, is Donald Westlake’s “God Save the Mark”.

  4. hk

    There is something similar between Dems/Harris admin’s reaction towards Gaza and Covid: they say seemingly right things, but they do nothing, or worse, actovely subvert thibgs. It was, after all, Harris’ CDC that oversaw thw Covid mess past four years.

    (Deliberately emphasizing Harris’ role in the admin, lest we forget she’d been the VP last four years)

    1. ChrisRUEcon

      > … they say seemingly right things, but they do nothing, or worse, actively subvert things.

      This applies to anything that provides tangible material benefits to the lower 90%, or anything that falls into the category of a public good.

  5. Mikel

    Labor Market: “Fed Confronts Up to a Million US Jobs Vanishing in Revision” [Bloomberg].

    They can’t do anything but run narratives to create trading oppurtunities for the casino.
    Yeah…I called it narratives and not stats. Talk me down.

    How is an allegedly healthy economy unable to handle interest rates closer to the normal range historically?

    2. Screwball

      I read that article earlier. Strange. I wonder what the truth really is. Bad stats? Gamed numbers to make it look better? Something else?

      Makes you wonder about all the other data, and what is really going on. Nothing would surprise me these days.

    3. chris

      More importantly, the effects and causes here have to be assessed correctly in light of the changed data. If losing a million more employed citizens has barely moved the needle on inflation, this should be all the evidence we need to understand that interest rates and inflation in the current circumstances have nothing to do with each other. Also, if raising interest rates to low but more reasonable levels has cost us a million jobs, how can we say this is a good economy?

  6. Donald Obama

    How absolutely revealing of the putrid, deep rot in the American political system – suited political hacks bashing and taunting genocide protestors on behalf of their senile, corrupt warmonger.

  7. hk

    Taibbi’s take on “freedom from” rather than “freedom to.” I didn’t get to read most of it since it’s paywalled, but he brought up some of the points also during the DNC livestream with Kirn yesterday as well.

    https://www.racket.news/p/the-dncs-sinister-rebrand-of-freedom

    I thought the argument Taibbi was making is a bit peculiar, because the idea of “freedom from X” is rather older than Taibbi seems to think: two of FDR’s Four Freedoms are “freedom from X” (for some odd reason, I was thinking that all four were). Perhaps this says more about FDR than his hagiographers think: I alwyas thought FDR had a very sinister dark side that people don’t want to think about (Gabriel over the White House, a movie made roughly the same time as FDR’s election as the president, and supposedly, FDR contributed to its script, always struck me as a depiction of a proto-totalitarian dystopia, for example.) Now, in principle, “Freedom from fear,” as originally stated by FDR, “means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.” But even FDR did not, I’d assume, think that this applied to USA itself. Whether FDR meant it that way or not, the “everyone but us” rule applies pretty much to the way every “freedom from X” is conceived of by modern Dems (and many Reps, too): we reserve the right to use any tool, legal and illegal, to destroy whatever X we don’t like on the pretense that the people (who exactly?) have the right to be “free from X.” To me, this is a chilling use of terminology: the term “judenfrei” was, after all, use of the same concept, more or less, for far more sinister purpose at the same time (although FDR himself used the same interpretation towards one ethnic group, I suppose–nipponfrei, one might say).

    So we return to the distinction that Taibbi made, and the contradiction that has risen in American conception of freedom (that goes back much farther than Taibbi seems to think.) Promise of freedom “from X,” I thinik, is the siren call of a tyrant (to borrow Solzhenitsyn’s words) who is convinced that she is the embodiment of justice–and I am reminded that most lynch mobs were, at least in theory, guided by a misplaced sense of “justice”–typically involving alleged misdeeds of blacks, Jews, or Italians (or any other “outsiders”) against women of the community (or other valued members thereof. Thse are the people that you can’t reason with, I think, and have to be defeated and forced back into the dark holes they crawled out from, I’m convinced.

        1. flora

          Heh. I certainly didn’t have any choice in her being chosen by unknown party operatives. / ;)

        2. Skip Intro

          Saw a YouTube ad: “Hi I’m Tim Walz, I’m proud to be Kamala’s choice for…”
          With no dem primary, there are no campaign-vetted VP options, no voter choice or engagement.

      1. ambrit

        Sorry. The “moderne” Health Establishment is run on the new, new, neo-liberal style of Health Management: “Freedom to smallpox and measles.”

    3. flora

      Consider FDR’s “Four Freedoms”:

      1. Freedom of speech and expression
      2. Freedom of worship
      3. Freedom from want
      4. Freedom from fear

      The first two are already guaranteed in the Bill of Rights by the First Amendment.
      The second two were his admin’s govt aspirations that required new programs and greatly expanded government powers.

      Taibbi wrote of Hill’s speech:
      I’m not sure what Hillary’s “freedom from chaos” can mean except expanded policing rights, nor can her endorsement of the freedom to speak “honestly” do anything but frighten, since America already has the most expansive and successful laws protecting freedom of speech ever written.

      1. Big River Bandido

        They let HRC speak at that stupid thing? Great. All that much easier to tie the party to such an unpopular figure. Would have been smart to tell her to stay in Chappaqua and not to leave for anything except a walk in the woods.

      2. wol

        Hil speaking at the convention reminds me of a friend’s story about her student days as a wait at a bar in Philly. One slammed Saturday night a veteran wait in the kitchen said wearily, ” **** me hah-dah.”

      3. hk

        Freedom from fear, as I noted above, was explicitly about US foreign policy: “a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.” (I believe this is how FDR described what he meant himself). This is either “nice, but impractical” or extremely sinister, with the latter delineating basically what neocons and other warmongers think about what US should be doing. Does the same logic apply to US? Or, is US the exception whose aggression against its neighbors (or faraways countries) are never “aggression” because we are the good guys by definition?

        Freedom from want has same issues: “means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants, everywhere in the world.” So, are sanctions illegal, then? Or, is this something that applies only to the nations that US approves of?

        More important, the striking thing about Four Freedoms is that the two “freedoms from” are for the nations, not for individuals. I did not realize this until I looked up what FDR said about these. He did not say that the gov’t has the obligation, excuse, and right to ensure that the citizens’ “freedom from X” are enforced–by cracking down those (citizens) who encroach on these alleged freedoms of the individuals. This is, on second thought, a pretty striking difference.

      4. hk

        Just re-heard HRC’s speech via Taibbi and Kirn, and her version of “freedom of worship” just rubbed me the wrong way: “Freedom to worship as WE choose.” Well, who the heck are you (HRC and her gang) to tell us how to worship? This sounds like a “Freedom ™” to wipe down the First Amendment (along with the other alleged “freedoms” she harped about.)

        Very Orwellian, this gang….

        1. hk

          Makes for an interesting complement to the ban of the historical Ukrainian Orthodox Church by that shining Democracy ™ on the Dniepr…

    4. Doubt

      Promise of freedom “from X,” I thinik, is the siren call of a tyrant (to borrow Solzhenitsyn’s words) who is convinced that she is the embodiment of justice–and I am reminded that most lynch mobs were, at least in theory, guided by a misplaced sense of “justice”–typically involving alleged misdeeds of blacks, Jews, or Italians (or any other “outsiders”) against women of the community (or other valued members thereof.

      Those opposed to lynch mobs were also guided by a sense of justice; believing that you’re on the side of right, the good, or the just is hardly definitive of lynch mobs.

      You could just as easily turn this entire framing around: “freedom from lynch mobs” vs. “freedom to form lynch mobs.” While “freedom from lynch mobs” does imply the empowerment of the state such that it can prevent individuals from forming lynch mobs, most people would not find this exercise of state power objectionable. My point isn’t that this is ultimately the correct framing of the issue; in fact, the example is more intended to show how a “freedom from” can be regarded as a “freedom to” if it’s seen in another light.

      While “freedom from” can be read as sinister and someone using it may not mean it or may mean it with implicit (or explicit) restrictions, there’s no need to wring blood from the stone of a mere phrase. For Clinton’s “freedom from violence and injustice,” it’s enough to look at Clinton’s record as Secretary of State to see that she can’t possibly mean it in any universal sense, and very likely doesn’t even mean it in a restricted sense.

      The second paragraph just seems too much like a word association game to me, though. It’d be ludicrous to suggest that someone advocating “freedom from hunger” must really mean that we should place all hungry people in concentration camps.

      The article itself is paywall restricted, and I don’t want to criticize Taibbi’s article without reading it since there’s a chance it goes in a different direction, but, even if we leave aside the extent to which this can be regarded as a problem of phrasing alone, attacking “freedom from” as illegitimate per se strikes me as being too close to Cold War liberals’ attack on “positive liberty” in favor of “negative liberty” (after Isaiah Berlin); early neoliberals took up this theme as well since it aligned with their political goals.

  8. Googoogajoob

    Re: Study Finds That Legalized Sports Betting Is Leading to More Bankruptcies, Lower Credit Scores”

    I was generally ok with sports betting being proliferated as it was already a fairly common thing albeit largely under the table but seeing how shamelessly it is advertised and marketed has me thinking twice about it (as well as impacting the integrity of the games themselves).

    What I do end up wondering though is how much of this is related to the aspirational goal of earning money through nothing that has been a more pressing theme, especially as precarity spreads through societies. An observation that I’ve seen made is that legal sports gambling likely had an impact on crypto gambling as there’s a lower bar of entry. Either way, at a minimum I feel like there has to be some severe ratching down on the advertising as it is giving a ‘ick’ vibe similar to how cigarettes were advertised back then.

    1. Mikel

      “What I do end up wondering though is how much of this is related to the aspirational goal of earning money through nothing that has been a more pressing theme, especially as precarity spreads through societies…”

      You’re not the only one:
      America’s Gambling Addiction Is Metastasizing – The Atlantic (2021)

      When life feels this precarious, it’s only natural to roll the dice on just about everything.
      https://archive.ph/hnMGX/

      And it’s a global trend.

      1. poopinator

        I’d argue that the re-emergence and popularity of day trading should be included in this conversation. Take a quick scroll of the degenerates at /r/wallstreetbets and you’ll see the same patterns. As long as the insiders are making off like bandits, it’ll be near impossible to legislate the mess we’ve created.

    2. Wukchumni

      Most pro sports re long on droll and short on frenzied excitement, and I suspect many young adults used to go-go-go only really follow them (the average age of an MLB fan is nearing 60) on account of online wagering.

      Once there is a good golly gambling scandal that rankles pro sports reputation, you might see a sudden pullback of online gambling, and why would a 26 year old want to just watch sports, if you can’t bet on it?

      1. Mikel

        I don’t know about scandal making people wary when desperation and delusion is involved.
        All that amnesia out there as well.

        1. Wukchumni

          The NFL is worth around 1/4 Trillion $, and imagine a scandal involving top players on say both teams trying to throw the very same match, or something like that.

          Why the NFL would risk it all in allowing rampant gambling is one heck of a mystery.

          1. NotTimothyGeithner

            Besides greed, I think mlb’s seeming fall from grace is a part of it. The NBA strike/lockout around 20 to 25 years ago made no dent in the ratings at TNT and TBS compared to the old movies and law and order reruns they tan instead. People pretend to like Kobe, but they really like LeBron. Bird but they really like Magic. What happens when the best player is simply a hole all the time?

            All of this is to stay on the phones. A rumor on a UVA football message board claims they’ve lost 10k non UVA alum ticket holders from two non heavily populated areas over an hour away. A point made by an alum was there was more to do locally (not football) than when those missing fans started going. Besides better tvs, why drive an hour for Aramark food? On field performance is an issue too.

            This is the fear. People will simply stop caring.

    3. eg

      As an old sportball fan, I find the proliferation of gambling ads gross enough, but the intrusion of the various gambling angles into the sports broadcast commentary itself a complete turnoff.

    4. griffen

      Found something tangential to sports and the online betting boom. NCAA has been fairly toothless and a lackluster enforcement agent on organizational misdeeds and general nonsense by it’s members for quite some time. Exhibit A… Miami booster is up to his eyeballs in some financial shenanigans…NIL endorsements and booster money just is the natural offspring springing forth, dating back to the heady days of SMU football in the 1980s.

      https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/40884354/substantial-doubt-company-miami-booster-john-ruiz

  9. lyman alpha blob

    “Harris has sought to align herself with majority opinion in (at least) three distinct ways. First, she has moderated substantively, disavowing her most left-wing issue positions from 2020, while touting her support of a bipartisan border security bill and the toughness of her prosecutorial record.”

    It strikes me that “align herself with majority opinion” and “disavowing” could also be seen as “flip flopping” or, as many have termed it in the past when politicians speak in weasel words, “lying”.

    You know damn well that’s how it would be described were it Trump doing a personal “rebrand”. The man can’t even claim water to be wet without some Democrat factotum having to fact check it.

    1. steppenwolf fetchit

      Actually, it isn’t the water which is “wet”. It is the thing the water touches which is “wet”.

  10. CA

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/politics/biden-nuclear-china-russia.html

    August 20, 2024

    Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat
    In a classified document approved in March, the president ordered U.S. forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.
    By David E. Sanger

    President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan for the United States that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal.

    The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade.

    The White House never announced that Mr. Biden had approved the revised strategy, called the “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which also seeks, for the first time, to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. The document, updated every four years or so, is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, only a small number of hard copies distributed to a few national security officials and Pentagon commanders…

    1. CA

      “Biden Approved Secret Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on Chinese Threat”

      This to me is American madness, an outcome of irrational political focus on China as a threat from April 2011 and the Congressional passing and Presidential signing of the Wolf Amendment, to China containment, and on and on.

    2. upstater

      I was going to read this earlier courtesy of archive, but then realized I already knew this was their plan.

    3. John Anthony La Pietra

      So we’re not planning for using nuclear weapons, just employing them?

      Oh, well, that’s very different . . . never mind. . . .

  11. John k

    Yesterday’s sabato annotated map shows that if trump wins Maine 3:1 he wouldn’t need PA, he gets to 270 with AZ, GA and UT. Granted they’re all close, and PA would pretty much seal the deal for him, so imo lots of bucks going there. Seems to me it’s still his to lose, I’m surprised I haven’t heard him ask, ‘are you better off now than you were 4 years ago when I was pres?’ Or even, do the dems owe you $600?

    1. John Anthony La Pietra

      I’ve seen an ad a few times — coming during shows my daughters watch on YouTube, Disney+, etc. — in which Trump introduces Ronald Reagan “who wants to ask you some questions” . . . and you know what the first one is. . . .

      Not sure — the girls are good at skipping stuff they don’t want to watch — but this might be it.

  13. Randall Flagg

    That Volcano, would enjoy knowing how they made out. An entry for the 2024 Darwin Award?

  14. FreeMarketApologist

    Re: Google Drive: For heaven’s sake, get it set it up correctly. My geographically diverse group uses GD to share and store files. But, we do so by having local copies on our own PCs, with software that keeps the GD copy in sync with our local copy, thus, nothing to manually upload/download, and we could disconnect from GD whenever we wanted (to switch to another provider, or to a private cloud). To the group, it looks like everything is local, which it is, and the synchronization happens automagically in the background.

    1. Bugs

      I was just posting a similar comment and saw yours, omg seriously, right? Maybe people should actually read the documentation.

      1. FreeMarketApologist

        We’re using the software from Synology that comes with their local NAS drives, which we all have. (which also solves the quantity of data problem that Jason notes below – but we’re not super data heavy…)

    3. Jason Boxman

      The default is cloud caching or whatever they call it, rather than mirroring which is what you (and I) use for Google Drive. For use cases that require massive storage, though, this might not be realistic. TBs and TBs of data. But then you might not be using Google Drive for that, anyway, but a customized solution.

  15. Bugs

    Re Google Drive, you actually have to read the documentation to make it function like a hard drive in the cloud have it mount it locally. It’s not that complicated. When you download multiple files, it automatically zips them. I really do not understand the complaint. It’s extremely useful and free up to 15GB. If you want privacy, you can encrypt your files before uploading. Easy peasy.

  16. Wukchumni

    She’s a one-trick pony
    One trick is all that Kamlala can do
    She does, one trick only
    It’s the principal source of her revenue
    But when she steps into the spotlight
    You can feel the heat of her heart
    Come rising through

    See how she dances
    See how she does word loops from side to side
    See how she prances
    The way her bonafides seem to glide
    She’s just a one-trick pony, that’s all she is,
    But she turn that trick with pride

    She makes it
    Look so easy, it looks so clean
    She moves like an immaculate word salad processor machine
    She makes me
    Think about, all these extra moves the DNC made
    And all this herky-jerky motion
    And the bag of rhetorical tricks it takes
    To get her through her working day
    One-trick pony

    She’s a one-trick pony
    She either fails or she succeeds
    She gives her testimony
    Then she relaxes in the weeds
    She’s got one trick to last a lifetime
    But that’s all a pony needs
    Yeah, that’s all she needs

    Looks so easy, it looks so clean
    She moves like an immaculate word salad processor machine
    She makes me
    Think about, all these extra moves the Donkey Show make
    And all this herky-jerky motion
    And the bag of rhetorical tricks it takes
    To get her through her working day
    One-trick pony
    One-trick pony
    One-trick pony
    One-trick pony
    One-trick Sparkle Pony*

    One-Trick-Pony, by Paul Simon

    * In Burning Man parlance, a Sparkle Pony is typically a female Burner who brings 3 suitcases full of outfits to wear, but didn’t bring much food or water and sponges off of other campmates constantly and never lends a hand helping out. One year in our camp we had this know-it-all lesbian Sparkle Pony from Portland, She was downright insufferable and earned the sobriquet: ‘Looks Fabulous-Looks Can Be Deceiving’

  18. Wukchumni

    A conflagration that was 28 acres when I first mentioned it a week ago, is now over 1,300 acres on its way to maybe 5,000 to 10,000 acres, and i’m not worried too much about it, in fact i’m glad in a way its happening, as it helps fill in the fire mosaic over the past 4 years here. The area where the fire is burning presently hasn’t seen a wildfire since the Rutherford B. Hayes administration, a bit overdue.

    The Coffeepot Fire will run into the path of the 1,430 acre 2018 Eden Fire on one side, and into the path of the 175,000 acre 2020 SQF Complex on the other side, with an assist from the 88,000 acre 2021 KNP Fire as it heads downhill into it, with no buildings of any sort in its way.

    Yeah, that sounds crazy, Wuk is telling you to be in a burned up area, but its also pretty safe in the aftermath.

    When its all said and done and because the Coffeepot Fire will need to be attacked from the air quite a bit, i’m guessing the bill will approach $50 million if not more.

    The money to fight fires always seems to be there, but what if it isn’t sometime in the future?

  19. John k

    Really liked the honey buzzard, amazing what animals can do. When she deviated it seems she knew exactly how to get back on the true path. Wonder if mom /dad taught her?
    Maybe in addition to avoiding large bodies of water she doesn’t like deserts. Or maybe she grabs a bite in the Nile valley?

    1. Lee

      Wikipedia has an 8 minute video on the honey buzzard feeding. Little niches making the world go ’round.

      It is a specialist feeder, living mainly on the larvae and nests of wasps and hornets, although it will take small mammals, reptiles, and birds. It is the only known predator of the Asian hornet.[16] It spends large amounts of time on the forest floor excavating wasp nests. It is equipped with long toes and claws adapted to raking and digging, and scale-like feathering on its head, thought to be a defence against the stings of its prey.[17] Honey buzzards are thought to have a chemical deterrent in their feathers that protects them from wasp attacks.[18]

    1. ChrisRUEcon

      Where Copium Ends And Begins …

      The End of Liberal Copium
      I am not sufficiently versed in psychology to express myself adequately here, so kind members of the commentariat, feel free to chime in. It would seem to me, however, that there must be some term for breaking someone or some set of people down by exhausting them … starving them almost. And almost immediately … my brain kicks in! See?! NC is good for the mind! Siege! Siege is the word that comes to mind here. You can lay siege to some aspect of human consciousness, and in so doing starve it of some necessary function or emotion … such that, when it is released from that depleted state, the result is … well … joy! Not a real or absolute joy, however, but rather a relative joy of sorts that can be easily exploited. Eddie Murphy alluded to this in a joke he told in one of his comedy stand up specials. The joke begins as a tale about being made to wait to errr … have conjugal relations with someone being pursued, but Eddie turns it into a metaphor on being served a cracker after being starved … LOL (via YouTube; warning for adult language; the joke is covered in the first minute or so)

      I would say that all this enthusiasm and joy, is really a result of being starved and exhausted. No Dem voter wanted Biden v Trump II … not a one. And as the reality of it set in, everyone was just fed up. Hence the Copium. Those that were trying to put on a brave face were living on Copium … daily doses of it, trying to convince themselves that running the cognitively impaired Biden was the right/only thing to do. And here is where I don’t know if the Democrats got lucky? Or if someone actually planned it that way? I mean, that would be bizarre, but also truly (evil) genius. Was the Wizard Of Kalorama™ the genius who, like Captain Jack Sparrow, knew he had to wait for the most opportune moment? Did he/they/whoever time it perfectly? Just long enough so that the ebb in the Dem base’s enthusiasm would hit its nadir … just short enough of a runway to the election such that it would be infeasible to talk about primaries, and instead an anointing would take place; short enough to catch Trump and the GOP out – since it would be unexpected to pull a swap that late while avoiding any primary/convention shenanigans. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, even when you’re applying the dagger MacBeth style.

      So Kamala becomes something akin to Murphy’s post-starvation saltine … not something inherently great … but something that feels amazing because it follows a period of emotional siege.

      1. ChrisRUEcon

        The Rise Of Conservative Copium

        In deference to the calling out of the faux joy of the current liberalgasm, however … as I read some of the fare from the right, it does come off a bit like: “how dare you remove Joe Biden, whom we were so confident of beating that we felt that we didn’t have to actually do anything but show up and show him up as the cognitively impaired man he is” … :)

        I’m reminded of this old adage from primary school – “if you fail to prepare, then prepare to fail”. And what’s quite obvious post-Biden-ousting is that Trump and the GOP are woefully underprepared to actually run a campaign against a cognitively competent candidate. So the GOP is in the Copium den now! The whole “Y’all were so mean to remove Joe!” and “Kamala never won anything!” coming from the right rings hollow. Lest we forget, Biden’s Dem nomination win was the result of almost as much internal shenanigans as Kamala’s ascension. The irony of Biden being knifed in the back after his rise was orchestrated by knifing Bernie in the back is straight up “circle of life” vibes … LOL #HakunaMatata

        Trump (still) being a chaos candidate doesn’t help the GOP either. Meandering diatribes and doubling-down on internal feuds ain’t gonna help. Is the feral GOP going to circle the wagons around him? Or are they going to hang him out to dry hoping that a second loss – to Kamala of all people – will put paid to all future political ambitions?! I dunno … I’m leaning toward the latter. Unless Trump shows a turnaround in form and discipline, I think the understated consensus will be something like this (via YouTube). In other words, no knives out per se, but not looking to save Trump from himself this time.

        #WeShallSee

  21. flora

    In 2016 after the election, Thomas Frank wrote a great article for Harper’s Magazine about the press reporting on the Sanders’ campaign. Three paras toward the end describe the modern US MSM pretty well, imo.

    …

    Think of all the grand ideas that flicker in the background of the Sanders-denouncing stories I have just recounted. There is the admiration for consensus, the worship of pragmatism and bipartisanship, the contempt for populist outcry, the repeated equating of dissent with partisan disloyalty. And think of the specific policy pratfalls: the cheers for TARP, the jeers aimed at bank regulation, the dismissal of single-payer health care as a preposterous dream.

    This stuff is not mysterious. We can easily identify the political orientation behind it from one of the very first pages of the Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide to the Ideologies. This is common Seaboard Centrism, its markings of complacency and smugness as distinctive as ever, its habitat the familiar Beltway precincts of comfort and exclusivity. Whether you encounter it during a recession or a bull market, its call is the same: it reassures us that the experts who head up our system of government have everything well under control.

    It is, of course, an ideology of the professional class, of sound-minded East Coast strivers, fresh out of Princeton or Harvard, eagerly quoting as “authorities” their peers in the other professions, whether economists at MIT or analysts at Credit Suisse or political scientists at Brookings. Above all, this is an insider’s ideology; a way of thinking that comes from a place of economic security and takes a view of the common people that is distinctly patrician.

    https://harpers.org/archive/2016/11/swat-team-2/

  22. Tom Stone

    The Harris fervor is bizarre.
    She has a record and it is one of utter servility to the rich and powerful and as much cruelty toward the weak and helpless as she can get away with.
    She protected child rapists, FFS.
    Kamala Harris ,”The People’s Choice” may well be our next President, if she is I predict she will be the most authoritarian President in American History.
    And not by a small amount.

    1. Lee

      Throw the incumbent bums out seems to be the electoral rule of the day. Harris is the new face, or at least a retread, Trump and Biden are the old ones.

      Our politics are like watching Ping-Pong or tennis, the boundaries of play are strictly circumscribed.

      1. hk

        The thing is that Harris is not a new person: she’s a regime insider, theoretically headed by the man the real rulers just threw under the bus.

        The whole Democrat theatrics require that we forget the last four years and pretend that Harris popped out of nowhere, but then, if we did forget the last four years, why isn’t Biden still the Dem candidate?

  23. upstater

    Boeing just can’t keep out of the news:

    US FAA requires inspections of Boeing 787 planes following mid-air dive

    WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday it would require inspections of Boeing 787 Dreamliners following an incident in March when a LATAM Airlines went into a sudden mid-air dive that injured more than 50 passengers.
    The FAA said the apparent reason for the dive was the uncommanded movement of the captain’s seat, which caused the auto-pilot to disconnect. The agency said it had received a total of five reports of similar problems with the captain and first officer seats on 787s, the most recent in June, and two remain under investigation.

    Must have been assembled by the non-union ex-burger flippers in South Carolina.

  24. The Rev Kev

    ‘Arnaud Bertrand
    @RnaudBertrand
    This is hilarious and so telling: France’s main news channel @LCI
    showed a Ukrainian soldier currently in Russia proudly harboring a Nazi SS helmet on live TV and they’re so obviously embarrassed by it.’

    That video was already heavily cut to pieces. They were also filming themselves here harassing this small, 74 year-old pensioner who was wandering through and mocking & swearing at him in German. This old guy is now being held hostage along with other civilians which the Ukrainians want to swap for Azov guys captured at Mariupol-

    https://www.rt.com/russia/602771-elderly-man-intimidated-by-nazis/

      1. Bugs

        There’s a Museum of the French Resistance in upper Normandy, which is the only place I have ever seen the collaborationist propaganda like this on open display in France. You can easily spend an hour or so going through the chronology of artifacts from the Battle of France, Vichy, Occupation, Resistance, the retaking of Paris. Edifying. It’s run by a few local people as a non profit. Highly recommended.

        1. hk

          Thanks! If I ever go to France (not too improbable, since my favorite lady does have a French surname–but she’s Cajun), I’ll definitely go look (certainly tugs my amateur historian heart).

  25. Wukchumni

    Camping by the homeless — or anyone else — on sidewalks or other public property in unincorporated areas of Fresno County will be prohibited under a new ordinance that received final approval Tuesday from the county’s Board of Supervisors.

    The unanimous 5-0 vote comes a week after the city of Fresno adopted its own anti-camping ordinance covering areas within the city limits. The county ordinance was sponsored by Supervisor Steve Brandau, whose District 2 covers most of northeast and northwest Fresno.

    The law received its initial approval two weeks ago. Following Tuesday’s formal adoption, the ordinance will take effect in 30 days.

    The new law prohibits people from camping:

    On public property that’s not intended to serve as a campsite.

    On private property that’s not otherwise zoned for camping, or without permission of the property owner.

    On areas that would obstruct streets, sidewalks, alleys, trails, driveways by sitting, lying or sleeping or storing personal property.

    On any street, alley, sidewalk or other public property or right of way within 500 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds, child-care facilities or libraries; within 500 feet of railroad tracks or railroad property; within 100 feet of roadway over- or underpasses, freeway off- or on-ramps, tunnels or bridges; within 50 feet of a fire hydrant or designated fire lanes; or within 10 feet of driveways or loading docks.

    In addition, the ordinance forbids bathing in public fountains or other public water features, or urinating or defecating on public property.

    https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article291219750.html
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Most all of the Big Smokes in Cali are going to this extent, where in the 5th biggest city in the state, the rules state you dare not pitch a tent anywhere in Fresno.

    1. eg

      Per Anatole France, “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

  26. The Rev Kev

    ‘moe tkacik
    @moetkacik
    “Bill decided he could get us in if we offered to pick up the litter that had accumulated in the courtyard” …during a maintenance worker strike
    2 literal scabs are speaking at the DNC this week’

    I have wondered about this ‘legend’ from tie to time. Did it actually happen? Probably. But more important, this was their dog-whistle to elites while they were young that they were willing to play ball and co-operate. It was like their introduction card.

  27. rowlf

    While commuting with my son we heard this on the radio: How are pro-Palestinian Democrats balancing opposition to the U.S. Gaza policy?

    I liked how Georgia state Representative Ruwa Romman went Mick Lynch on the questions. I told my son she is likely not to ever be interviewed again.

    There is a transcript, but I like this in the opening:

    ROMMAN: So that’s an interesting framing of the question because we now have polling from Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona, I believe, by IMU, where it actually shows that when you ask Democrats and independents about how they feel about conditioning military aid, they actually say that it would make them more likely to vote for her. So this idea that it would hurt her chances is actually incorrect because it would prevent, you know, one of the few places where a rift could emerge in our coalitions.

    I really encourage listening to the interview or reading the transcript (if accurate).

    1. John k

      So it would be logical to condition the aid. But that goes against those running the show, so to say that she’d have to cross her fingers. Granted, dems have form on crossing fingers.

    2. albrt

      This is the basis for my (slim) hope with Harris. She has no principles, so it is possible she would eventually succumb to pressure to stop funding the genocide.

      No such possibility with Trump or Biden.

      I probably can’t vote for Harris because of her past support for genocide, but I have slightly more hope that things might change in unexpected directions if she gets “elected.”

      1. Carla

        I hope you’re not implying that either Trump or Biden would continue funding the genocide because they have principles.

  28. Kurtismayfield

    RE: AOC What a waste

    Do you really blame her for being co-opted by the DNC? After what just happened to some of her Squaddies and seeing what they did to Bernie? She had a choice and she took it.

    She will be like her mentor Ted, claim a few working class victories while never ruffling the feathers of who actually wields the power.

  29. fjallstrom

    Regarding lice.

    Lice are a disease vector, most notably for epidemic typhus.

    However, WaPo:s “The lice will always win” headline is over the top. What the article describe is lice being very controlled and defeated at each attempt at outbreak. At least in the middle class environments where you can admit that you “paid hundreds of dollars to a trained lice-removal specialist to quell my panic”.

    I would be more worried about people sleeping rough, or in jail or prison. Or those encampments where they put kids in cages. Where human value is already degraded by society, that is where lice will not be properly controlled. And that is where you can get outbreaks of nasty stuff like epidemic typhus.

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