By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Bird Song of the Day
California Thrasher, Mission Trails Regional Park, San Diego, California, United States. “Singing from Laurel Sumac in coastal sage scrub habitat.”
In Case You Might Miss…
- Shots fired, as Biden consigliere Anita Dunn lets loose on her way out.
- Coach, coach, coach! .
- Trump steps outside the bulletproof glass to check on a fainting crowd member.
- On euphemisms.
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 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.
“Where Harris Has Gained and Lost Support Compared With Biden” [New York Times]. “In this month’s New York Times/Siena College battleground polls, she led Donald J. Trump by two percentage points across the seven states likeliest to decide the presidency, compared with Mr. Trump’s five-point lead in May. It’s an enormous shift, but Vice President Harris didn’t improve equally among all demographic groups. Instead, she made big gains among young, nonwhite and female voters, and made relatively few or no gains among older voters and white men.” • Handy chart:
Senior Biden Advisor Anita Dunn, also defenestrated, lets loose:
“Leave the Dunn. Take the cannoli” [Politico] (August 20, 2024). At a White House gathering honoring her: “A group of senior advisers had just entered the room with the event in full swing — among them chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS, deputy chief of staff NATALIE QUILLIAN and national security adviser ELIZABETH SHERWOOD-RANDALL. Moments later, Dunn surprised people by announcing that she had ‘a few more things to say.’ Pulling out some notes, Dunn proceeded to speak in blunt terms for roughly 10 minutes, according to five people who were in the room, about themes that, to some, seemed laden with subtext: loyalty, revenge and advice from a career in bare-knuckle politics. ‘It was crazy — the most epic, jaw-dropping speech I’ve ever heard,’ one attendee told West Wing Playbook. “This was talked about for days.’ …. To understand how to succeed in Washington — to understand the use of power, she said, was to know ‘The Godfather.’ Having spent a good part of her final days on campus meeting with younger staffers looking for career advice, Dunn offered a few pearls of wisdom from the film for those in the room. ‘Never hate your enemies,’ she said. ‘It clouds your judgment.’ ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’ she continued, underlining the point that paying back those who’ve wronged you could take months, even years…. It seemed like she was making a point, that her words may have been meant for some of the other senior aides who weren’t there,” another attendee said. Over the weekend that followed, two attendees said, many of them watched ‘The Godfather’ for the first time.” • Who, I wonder, was “college boy” Michael Corleone? And—
“Why Biden Was Really Forced Out of the Race, According to Anita Dunn” [Politico] (August 9, 2024). This factoid on the Biden/Trump debate caught my eye: [DUNN:] “I watched the debate at home. I watch it on dial groups. I watched the dials.” Wired up to the dials were a panel of ndecided voters. And: “When you watch dial groups, people are instructed to start at 50 on their dials. That is the neutral position. If they feel better, they turn it to the right and the numbers go up. And if they don’t like what they’re hearing, they turn it to the left and the numbers go down.” And: “It’s immediate feedback. But you also do a focus group before with a vote and you do a focus group after with a vote. And you hear people’s reactions. And so voters experience this differently. And one of the things that was interesting was that voters didn’t particularly like Biden’s performance in the first half hour. He wasn’t scoring well at all. But it’s not as though they walked out. They very much liked a lot of the second half of the debate for Joe Biden. They hated Donald Trump. By the end of this, the first part of the strategy had absolutely worked in that people were like, ‘Oh, I’d forgotten. I really don’t like this guy. He’s all about himself, he’s bragging.’ I mean, they really did not like him. So Trump didn’t gain any ground in the debate whatsoever. And we actually picked up a few votes in the group. So it was a bad debate, but it didn’t feel catastrophic at all, certainly in terms of voters. And I think other people who did independent research saw roughly the same thing. If you go back and you look at the polls, what you will see is you didn’t see much movement whatsoever coming out of the debate because the structure of this campaign had been fairly static for a long time, and the debate didn’t change that. What did change it was 24 days of unremitting negative, horrible attacks on Joe Biden.” • So it wasn’t simply delusion that made the Biden team hang on; it was instrumented delusion; they had data they trusted that backed up their views. However, we at NC also watched the debate, and if somebody had wired us up to a dial, our reaction — universally — when Biden slipped his cog (and Trump drove the knife home) would have been very different and, I think, more representative of the voters. It’s interesting to speculate why Dunn’s dials misled her so. The sample could have been bad, but Dunn is obviously a stone professional, so that’s unlikely. I’m sure that there’s a technical word for this, but clearly the panel knew they were wired up for the purpose of evaluating Biden, and perhaos the social norming that Biden was “sharp as a tack” was so strong that even if they thought that somebody should take Biden’s car keys away they couldn’t communicate that to a person in authority (note that the dials are moved by conscious choice, and not measure autonomous nervous system stuff(.
* * * Democrat National Convention Vignettes:
Metaphor:
DNC attendees cover their ears as the names of dead Palestinian children are read as they leave the convention pic.twitter.com/9bueCbFeEr
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) August 22, 2024
* * * Back in 2020 (“‘What It Took’: The Price of Democrat Victory in 2020,” still worth reading) I made five claims about the Democrat base, the PMC, for which the attendees at the Democrat National Convention should be a good proxy. I think they’ve stood the test of time:
In the years 2016-2020:
1)The Professional Managerial Class (PMC) attained class consciousness.
2) The PMC was and is embubbled by a domestic psyop.
3) The press replaced reporting with advocacy.
4) Election legitimacy is determined by extra-Constitutional actors.
5) “Fascism” became an empty signifier, not an analytical tool.I would revise claim #2, because the RussiaGate psyop, though essential to creating Democrat/PMC embubblement, has now been superseded. However, I would argue that embubblement remains a key aspect for Democrat/PMC (as we see vividly above at “Metaphor,” and also in the mechanisms of denial and minimization that were so effective in social norming mass infection during our ongoing Covid pandemic). Indeed, one might argue that the purpose of the entire Censorship-Industrial Complex — including its use of lawfare — is designed to make sure that the Democrat bubble is never pricked. This, it seems, is an aspect of the modern Democrat Party at least as important as control of the ballot). I seem to remember that one feature of domesticated animals is that they retain the juvenile characteristics of their species. Hence the chanting (below) of “Coach, coach, coach!”
We also notice that claim #4 applies with even greater force today, as Biden was delegitimized and defenestrated by one extra-constitutional entity, a small group of electeds and former electeds at the apex of the Party, the Party itself being an extra-constitutional entity.
* * * “Coach’s Clinic: Tim Walz Delivers Emotional, Energetic DNC Speech” [HuffPo]. “Convention-goers welcomed him with signs that said “Coach Walz” and chanted “Coach, coach, coach!” The Minnesota delegation even held big cutouts of Walz’s face.” • Wowsers. Maybe high school was the last time these people were truly happy?
“Coach Walz: Win One for the Veeper” [The American Prospect]. “Just as the top banana of old vaudeville acts would be preceded on stage by a line of chorus girls, Walz was preceded by the now middle-aged members of Mankato West High School’s 1999 state champion football team, for whom Walz was defensive coordinator. Normie dads, some now way out of shape, led the way for Coach Walz to take the stage and deliver his distinctive normie American, good-neighbor, progressive Democrat acceptance speech. Some of it was adapted from the stump speech he’s been giving to great effect around the country. But it hit all the right notes for a national audience. If all this normie-ness didn’t fully normalize Walz’s progressive achievements, he took care to tout not only his enactment of paid sick leave and groundbreaking pro-union laws and universal school breakfasts and lunches, but also, repeatedly, the middle-class tax cuts he signed into law as well. Walz also spoke, more than I’ve heard him do so before, in his coach persona. There was a bit of John Madden drawing play diagrams in his delivery, and a touch of Pat O’Brien playing the sainted Knute Rockne in The Spirit of Notre Dame, telling Democrats to win one for—well, not for the Gipper (who had been played in that 1930s Warner Bros. film by a young Ronald Reagan)—but for Kamala, and the nation, and your kids.”
* * * “Influencers at the Convention: Pioneers of the Digital Frontier” [RealClearPolitics]. “Behind black curtains in United Center lies “Creator Lounge,” lit by the flattering glow of ring lights and teeming with social media influencers big and small. Charmed with free coffee and readily available charging stations, hundreds of content creators enjoy the Democrats’ hospitality as they remind traditional media that in 2024, digital dominates.” • Contrast the brutal treatment of the press described yesterday.
“The Convention Nobody Gets to See” [Prospect]. “Last night, press members weren’t allowed on the floor for indefinite periods, particularly during the party’s DJ-infused celebratory roll call. If you received your pass (which only lasts an hour) at the periodicals table before they shut the doors, then you missed most of your time allotment before the floor opened back up. One side of the halls last night featured a “blue carpet” event where a procession of politicians stopped by for interviews. The only media figures actually allowed on the blue carpet appeared to be DNC content creators and a few big networks. When I asked a DNC liaison about getting onto the carpet, she said you needed to have gone through a separate credentialing process other than the official credential. The apparent qualifications for scoring the blue carpet slots appeared to be more about if you could do the Apple dance than any particular lines of questioning.” And: “The degree of access for certain events and not others is also a window into the political operations of all the various groups trying to influence-peddle at the convention. Some policy groups want to spread their message far and wide, while others seem to be wary and fearful about the word getting out about their plans. Exclusivity is of course a coveted feature for big-money organizations courting donors. Most, though not all, of the closed-off events are corporate-sponsored, and they are typically packed with lobbyists and lawmakers.” • Well, naturally, but one wonders if the influencers were granted easy access.
* * * “A protest carnival produces little heat in Chicago” [Semafor]. “The Coalition to March on the DNC started building Monday’s event last summer, before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. By the time delegates arrived in Chicago, the march was almost entirely about American support for Israel’s war. And the activists who wanted to give up on electoral politics, and demolish the Democrats, grew further away from the activists trying to bring their party in line…. Code Pink, the Party for Socialism & Liberation, the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Atlanta Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression — the 270-odd groups that marched to the DNC security perimeter were united around cutting off military aid to the Jewish state. Some wanted to abolish it altogether, dismantling one ‘settler-colonial’ nation on the way to dismantling all of them. Inside the convention, the three dozen uncommitted delegates, elected by anti-war protest voters, were just as focused. But their demands diverged. Democratic anti-war activists in the United Center wanted an immediate ceasefire and an ‘arms embargo’ on Israel. The Biden administration was working on the first, but unlikely to deliver the second, and Harris had essentially ruled it out. ‘The Vice President’s team has been engaging,’ said Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan and frequent spokesman for the faction. ‘They’ve been listening. I find that very encouraging. It is definitely a very big change from when we were trying to have conversations with President Biden.'” • I don’t see 270 organizations as a strength. Quite the reverse.
Trump (R): Good idea, especially if his content spreads instantly on TikTok (which I presume the campaign has arranged):
Former President Trump says he’s doing a live play-by-play on Kamala Harris’s speech tonight, as well as some other speeches given at the Democratic National Convention.
He’s doing it on Truth Social. pic.twitter.com/cV1i9aVovo
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 22, 2024
The Democrat propaganda is making me a bit counter-suggestible, so: In the firehose of “joy” it’s possible for even me to forget that Trump is, in fact, a formidable campaigner. 2016: Went through the Republican establishment like a knife through butter, then beat Clinton. 2020: Wins but for Covid. 2024: Having rebuilt the Republican Party, for good or ill, to be more Trumpian, he then knocks the Democrat candidate out of the race in debate. From the 30,000-foot view, that’s not a bad track record. All this with the press, the spooks, and large parts of the justice system serving as arms of the Democrat Party. Now, I do think he needs some re-adjustment of his schtick, but come on.
Trump (R): “Trump speaks from behind bulletproof glass at first outdoor rally since his attempted assassination” [Associated Press]. “At his first outdoor rally since last month’s attempted assassination, Donald Trump spoke from behind bulletproof glass Wednesday in North Carolina at an event focused on national security.” • Swing state. Oddly, or not, Biden never did give RFK Secret Service protection. It’s almost as if the Democrats were in LIHOP mode. Oddly, AP doesn’t mention this incident–
Trump (R): “Trump steps outside bulletproof glass to hug woman having a medical emergency in first outdoor rally since the shooting” [Daily Mail]. “Trump was in mid flow at a rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, his first outdoor event since he survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Suddenly, there was a commotion in the crowd and people could be heard shouting ‘Medic!’. Trump, who was talking about UFC and boxing, stopped and looked. He then said into the microphone: ‘A doctor, please…'” Video:
JUST IN: Donald Trump steps out from the bulletproof glass at his North Carolina rally to check on one of his supporters who passed out.
Today was Trump's first outdoor rally since the assas*ination attempt at his PA rally on July 13.
Trump is giving the speech at the North… pic.twitter.com/xVCdTIxBif
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 21, 2024
Say what you like about Trump, he’s got brass ones. (Not, as I have said, that courage is a virture. Courage is virtuous depending on the end it serves. Nevertheless.)
“RFK’s Running Mate Nicole Shanahan: DNC “Turned Us Into A Spoiler,” Made A Fair Election Impossible For Us” [RealClearPolitics]. Shanahan: “I did not put in tens of millions of dollars to be a spoiler candidate, I put in tens of millions of dollars to win and do the right things. ClearChoice, this DNC-aligned PAC that was created specifically to take us out, has spent millions of dollars to take us out. They have turned us into a spoiler. We didn’t want to be a spoiler, we wanted to win. We wanted a fair shot. The DNC made that impossible for us. They have banned us, shadowbanned us, kept us off stages, manipulated polls, used lawfare against us, sued us in every possible state, they’ve even planted insders into our campaign to disrupt it and create actual legal issues for us. The extent of the sabotage they’ve unleashed on us is mind-blowing, we’re still learning new ways they have sabotaged us. I really wanted a fair shot at this election, and I believed in the American that I pledged allegiance to as a little girl. And that is not where we are today, and it is not because of the Republican Party taking us out, it is the Democratic Party taking us out. And I am so disappointed I ever helped them, I am so disappointed I helped Chuck Schumer in that Georgia runoff, to secure the [Senate] majority. It is probably one of the biggest mistakes of my life.’ • I don’t disagree that the RFK campaign was in it to win it; getting on the ballot in as many states as they did was an extraordinary achievement.
* * * MT:
Cannot overstate how huge this is for any Harris/Walz agenda. Without Jon Tester winning reelection and maintaining a Senate majority, all these encouraging domestic agenda items could die on the vine. https://t.co/UMFU6J803a
— Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) August 21, 2024
Campaign Finance
“How Kamala Harris is winning over Wall Street” [CNN]. “But even before Harris revealed key details of her platform, Roger Altman, founder and senior chairman of Evercore, told CNBC last month that he supports Harris and that expects her campaign to be ‘very well financed.’ Blackstone president Jonathan Gray contributed $413,000 to the Harris Action Fund at the end of July, a source familiar with his giving told CNN. Alex Soros, son of billionaire liberal donor George Soros, endorsed Harris in an X post last month. George Soros also supports Harris, his spokesperson told CNN. Avenue Capital Group CEO Marc Lasry donated $100K to the Harris Action Fund in March, according to Federal Election Commission data. Sonnenfeld, known as the ‘CEO Whisperer,’ argued that Harris’ stronger relationship with Wall Street compared to Biden’s is because she toned down the ‘class warfare’ rhetoric and had a track record as California attorney general acting fairly — even if not overly favorably — with businesses. ‘She went after abuses but didn’t see the scale of enterprise itself as misconduct. She knows that thriving businesses are good for the economy and the average American worker,” Sonnenfeld said. Of course, some Wall Street bigwigs have made their support for Trump clear. Bill Ackman, billionaire hedge fund manager and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, endorsed Trump as president in a July X post. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman said in March that he is backing the former president’s bid. Key Square Group founder Scott Bessent is a supporter of Trump and attended his rally in Asheville, North Carolina.”
“Big Crypto, Big Spending: Crypto Corporations Spend an Unprecedented $119 Million Influencing Elections” [Public CItizen]. “Crypto corporations are by far the dominant corporate political spenders in 2024 as nearly half (48%) of all corporate money contributed during this year’s elections ($248 million so far) came from crypto backers.” • Cool, both parties are financed by fraudsters. Which makes sense.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Democratic platform favors slate of smaller goals over a health overhaul” [STAT]. “Gone are the days when Democrats bickered over wholesale reform of the American health care system — including Vice President Harris herself during the 2020 campaign cycle. Instead, their plan this election cycle evokes President Biden’s slogan to ‘finish the job’ — even though they’re running a new candidate. With the notable exception of calling to erase medical debt by working with states, Democrats are largely eyeing marginal extensions or reinstatements of their prior policy achievements.” • “Bickering.”
“Democrats Scrub Death Penalty Opposition From Campaign Platform” [HuffPo]. • Hmm. I wonder who former DA Kamala has in mind?
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!
Airborne Transmission
“Sources, compositions, spatio-temporal distributions, and human health risks of bioaerosols: A review” [Atmospheric Research]. From the Introduction: “Bioaerosols can be categorized in to natural and anthropogenic sources (Kathiriya et al., 2021). The bioaerosols from natural sources are generally less pathogenic and play crucial roles in material cycle, energy flow, and ecological balance…. Various pathogenic bioaerosols has been identified in urban atmosphere originating from man-made facilities. This leads to serious bioaerosol pollution inducing potential risks to the ecosystems, air quality and human health.”
Sequelae: Covid
“How wave of new dementias may be fueled by surprising culprit every home has been touched by” [Daily Mail]. • You’ll never guess the “culprit.” That’s right, Covid!
Elite Maleficence
Hard to see how the CDC could get it wrong on lice, but one parent’s experience says they did:
“Nits bond to the hair shaft and are unlikely to transfer to others”?? “Minimal risk of transmission”?? So we’re just lying at this point?? When my sister was in 3rd grade her class had a SEVERE lice outbreak that originated from a sleepover and spread like wildfire 🧵 https://t.co/kNLOhrHivp
— Meredith, M.Ed. (@thatmaskedgirly) August 21, 2024
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): | |
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| Variants [3] CDC August 10 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 10 | |
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| Hospitalization | ||
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data August 21: | National [6] CDC July 27: | |
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| Positivity | ||
| National[7] Walgreens August 20: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 17: | |
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| Travelers Data | ||
| Positivity[9] CDC July 29: | Variants[10] CDC July 29: | |
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| Deaths | ||
| ★ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC August 10: | ★ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC August 10: | |
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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.)
Lambert here: Since things are bad out on the West Coast, I went looking for California hospitalization data to compare with New York’s, and found this: “Due to changes in reporting requirements for hospitals, CDPH is no longer including hospitalization data on the CDPH dashboard. CDPH remains committed to monitoring the severe outcomes of COVID-19 and influenza, including the impact on hospitals. CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) will remain open to accept data, and CDC and CDPH strongly encourage all facilities to continue reporting.” Thanks, Mandy!
[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
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US rose by 4,000 from the previous week to 232,000 on the period ending August 17th, slightly ahead of market expectations of 230,000 to mark a three-week high. The increase held initial claim counts well above their averages from earlier this year, consolidating the trend of a softening labor market outlined by the July jobs report and the large downward revision to nonfarm payrolls for the year ending in March, backing bets that the Federal Reserve will deliver rate cuts in every decision remaining this year.”
Manufacturing: “United States Kansas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Kansas City Fed’s Manufacturing Production index rose to 6 in August 2024, the highest in one year, from -12 in July.”
The Economy: “United States Chicago Fed National Activity Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Chicago Fed National Activity Index fell to -0.34 in July 2024 from a revised -0.09 in June, compared with market expectations of +0.03.”
The Bezzle: “Banks obtained crucial jobs data while report was delayed” [Bloomberg]. “At least three banks managed to obtain key payroll numbers Wednesday while the rest of Wall Street was kept waiting for a half-hour by a government delay that whipsawed markets and sowed confusion on trading desks…. Once the data was publicly released, there was a surge of trading.” • And those got the data early did very well for themselves, didn’t they?
Tech: “Apple splits App Store team in two, introduces new leadership” [Ars Technica]. “Apple is comprehensively restructuring its long-standing App Store team, splitting the team into two separate divisions as the executive who has run it for more than a decade says goodbye to the company. There will now be one team for the familiar, Apple-run App Store, and another one to handle alternative app stores in the European Union. Apple recently partially opened the platform to third-party app stores in response to the Digital Markets Act, a set of European regulations meant to break up what legislators and regulators deemed to be app store monopolies.” • The App Store has a horrible UI/UX, and whoever made or let that happen should have left long ago (of course, it was a monopoly, so there’s no incentive to improve it. Maybe the EU did us all a favor).
Tech: “Elon Musk’s X must disclose full ownership structure, judge rules” [Fortune]. “In a Tuesday ruling, a federal judge in California decided that a detailed corporate disclosure statement from X Holdings should be unsealed, a move that would effectively pull the curtain back to reveal the list of stakeholders in the parent company of X, formerly known as Twitter, and X.ai, an AI startup that Musk launched in 2023. Musk acquired Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion, taking the company private and laying off roughly three-quarters of its staff.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 49 Neutral (previous close: 50 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 33 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 22 at 1:19:03 PM ET.
Book Nook
“Dorothy Richardson and the Stream of Consciousness” [JSTOR Daily]. “Is a brainchild still your brainchild even when you don’t claim it as your own? This question could have been posed to British author Dorothy Miller Richardson (1873–1957). Though Virginia Woolf is often credited as the first woman writer to use a ‘stream of consciousness’ method in her work, Richardson employed the technique some twenty years before did Woolf. So why isn’t she credited as often she should be? As a narrative device, ‘stream of consciousness’ allows characters’ inner musings to develop on the page as would a real thought process. Stylistically, this often results in an internalized monologue that incorporates unconventionally structured sentences and fragments. Proper punctuation may be omitted altogether, as old thoughts quickly transition into new ones. Literary critic Annika J. Lindskog suggests that ‘[t]he freedom from restrictive punctuation creates a flow in the text which represents the experience of reality through consciousness in the moment: unstructured and unstoppable.’ Ultimately, it can create both challenges and rewards for the reader, inviting them into the inner workings of another’s mind.” • I went and found Richardson’s “Pointed Roofs.” Maybe I’m so imbued with modernism already I’m missing the technique.
The 420
“How I Learned to Love Mushrooms (and MDMA, Ayahusca and LSD)” [The Daily Beast]. “Microdosing involves taking small, sub-perceptible amounts of a psychedelic drug like LSD or psilocybin (the psychedelic agent in ‘magic mushrooms’) every four days. Not enough to get all Lucy-in-the-Sky, but enough to lighten the mood and open up new creative pathways. I’ve been doing it for five years, and it’s been hugely helpful to me during the writing process. In my business, you only get paid when you turn in the script, and five micrograms of LSD twice a week for three weeks gets me to that payday.” And: “Which was a fair question. I’m a man in my late fifties—exactly how late is none of your business—and for most of my life I’ve been a buttoned-up establishment Republican. I’m still pretty buttoned up (though I haven’t been a Republican since 12:01 p.m. on January 20th, 2017) but now, every few months, I like to blast my brain with psychedelic medicine and see what comes up.” • And still on mushrooms–
Gallery
“Learn to Forage and Process Your Own Natural Pigments with ‘The Mushroom Color Atlas'” [This is Colossal]. “[Julie] Beeler’s new book, The Mushroom Color Atlas: A Guide to Dyes and Pigments Made From Fungi, dives into the chromatic world of mushrooms. Published by Chronicle Books, the volume is part field guide and part how-to, shepherding readers through identifying different species, harvesting, and distilling a range of hues. The author has created 500 swatches to illustrate the phenomenal range of natural colors that can be made from different varieties. While Beeler provides step-by-step instructions for making your own hues, above all The Mushroom Color Atlas emphasizes foraging and hand-processing pigments as a way to more intimately connect with nature, sparking the joy of discovery through creativity and exploration.”
“Euphemise this” [Aeon]. “What the cognitive psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker has artfully termed ‘the euphemism treadmill’ is not a tic or a stunt. It is an inevitable and, more to the point, healthy process, necessary in view of the eternal gulf between language and opinion. We think of euphemisms as one-time events, where one prissily coins a way of saying something that detracts from something unpleasant about it. That serves perfectly well as a definition of what euphemism is, but misses the point that euphemism tends to require regular renewal. This is because thought changes more slowly than we can change the words for it, and has a way of catching up with our new coinages. Since that is likely eternal, we must accept that we’ll change our terms just like we change our underwear, as a part of linguistic life in a civilised society…. A word, then, is like a bell tone, with a central pitch seasoned by overtones. As the tone fades away, the overtones can hang in the air. Words are similar, with opinion, assumption and, more to the point, bias as equivalents to the overtones. Crippled began as a sympathetic term. However, a sad reality of human society is that there are negative associations and even dismissal harboured against those with disabilities. Thus crippled became accreted with those overtones, so to speak, to the point that handicapped was fashioned as a replacement term free from such baggage.”
“What If Data Is a Bad Idea?” [Beyond the Frame]. “Data is inherently objectifying. This property is an asset when describing inert phenomenon such as the composition of soil or the properties of various metals. Data enables the applied work of engineers and there are no direct ethical considerations.There are plenty of systemic ethical considerations when using these resources. But that’s beyond the scope of this article. The problems become apparent when we start talking about people. Data cannot express a meaningful distinction between intelligent actors and the things they act upon; a database that tracks widget production can also store information about the people who buy those widgets. Databases then turn intelligent actors – who are often human beings – into things to be acted upon. This is where data can quickly become a ‘bad idea.'”
“1 in 4 Unresponsive People with Brain Injuries May Be Conscious” [Scientific American]. “At least one-quarter of people who have severe brain injuries and cannot respond physically to commands are actually conscious, according to the first international study of its kind. Although these people could not, say, give a thumbs-up when prompted, they nevertheless repeatedly showed brain activity when asked to imagine themselves moving or exercising. ‘This is one of the very big landmark studies’ in the field of coma and other consciousness disorders, says Daniel Kondziella, a neurologist at Rigshospitalet, the teaching hospital for Copenhagen University. The results mean that a substantial number of people with brain injuries who seem unresponsive can hear things going on around them and might even be able to use brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) to communicate, says study leader Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.”
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If you talk to my PMC friends this election is OVER. It’s in the bag for Kamalot. The gushing over the last 3 nights is off the charts. They even shed tears for these incredible people. But tonight is the big one – a mystery person as speaker – who will it be????? The drama builds…
Taylor Swift is the hope, or Beyonce, or both they say. Wouldn’t that be the greatest thing EVER – to have those two bring in Kamala – one on each arm.
I can see the Nazi salute about this time, along with tears of joy running down their face, while screaming screw Trump – this is over!!!! We are so great how can we lose?
Personally, I’m more worried about WWIII.
And were your friends ever not going to vote for the Democrat, whoever it may have been?
Trump’s very far from done but I agree that the “shes a commie” tack is stale and poor counter programming. I’d say the Dems are far more vulnerable on the cultural front. They openly reject half the country as people.
Tampon Tim is going around.
The Dems are vulnerable on the trans issue. I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The PMC moms and dads (mostly moms) will be a major swing vote. The bathroom issue was a tremendous dividing line in this area. Many people who may hate Trump also hate people who do not know basic biology.
Perhaps it will all come down to how much Trump really wants to win. After all he is in his late 70s and has accomplished his goal of dispatching Biden. The Swift Boat style attack on Walz was effective and will percolate down. Now do Kamala?
And Harris self destructing is also a possibility. She does seem fairly vacuous. It’s early to start assuming anything IMO.
Nixon/Agnew/Pat Buchanan/Kevin Phillips/ etc. began the “rejecting half the country as people” strategy. I remember Pat Buchanan saying ( in paraphrase) . . . ” we plan to divide the country in half and take the bigger half.”
After enough years of that kind of weaponized culture-war psyop aggression, it was inevitable that the “rejected half” would turn right around and reject the rejecting half in return.
This is more or less true, but now it is normal to demonize half of Americans during any campaign. Even if the candidate does not do it, everyone on his “side” does it.
And now, the demonize, divide, and then conquer strategy seems to be the first, last, and only one followed by our entire political class, not just by one or the other.
And that behavior is one of the Empire’s main “colorful” exports. What a wonderful place has been built for us. What wonder that the rest of the world is sick of us. Bullies used to twisting weakling’s arms up behind their backs and demanding that they “say Uncle.” Now finding they have enough muscle to successfully resist:
Maybe it will create an opening among the ” tired of this sh!t” community ( of which I hope there is one) to start the long slow boring work of growing a political-cultural party-movement for a New Deal Revival or a Newer Deal Revival or some such thing, engineered to meet our current needs, conditions and situation.
The masters of co-demonization will immediately and steadily work to divide such a movement and recapture its wanted-to-be members and send them back into one or the other of the Two Halves.
Part of a Newer Deal Revival movement’s effort to make itself resistant to this effort would be to face the fact of it and study closely the history and mechanics of creating the Two Halves reality and enforcing and renewing it in our own day. Part of that method involved and involves inventing and pursuing ongoing Culture Wars. This might require Liberals and Leftiberals to recognize and admit to their own Culture War initiatives. ” Gun Control” for example was intended as a Culture War against the Gun Culture and its members. ” Ammosexual” and “Gun Humper” are left wing epithets of derision and mockery against members of the Gun Culture. They are certainly not intended to win over any members of the Gun Culture Community to any vision of gun social-safety regulation.
So if a wannabe new emerging party movement and its wannabe members can bear to understand and face that and work against it among themselves and eachother to make themselves more resistant to penetration and subversion and redivision by the Masters of Two Halves, then they can work on a Short List Agenda of some items which are not innately Culture-War Two-Halves sides-taking. And they can devote their party-movement to restricting itself to making adherence to those items only as the only necessary condition for being a part of that movement-party.
In practice, that might mean such things as ” The Newer Deal Revival Party has no Party Position on Abortion one way or another in any direction. A Newer Deal Revival Party member who seeks elective office can be as probortion or antibortion as they like and if they support and always vote for and with the Short List Agenda, they will be supported by the Newer Deal Revival Party.” And the same for Gun Rights versus Gun Control. The Newer Deal Revival Party would take Zero position on that and any NDRP officeseeker could take any personal-political position on that with Zero repercussion from the NDRP ( New Deal Revival Party). ( Or whatever it wants to call itself).
That would create a Neutral Territory Zone for such a Party to be able to pursue its Short List Agenda without being compromised or weakened when various of its members decide to stay part of the raging Culture Wars all around that Party so long as
these Culture Wars are not exploited to reduce or dilute the NDRPs committment to its narrow Few Items Agenda.
Bibi would seem a suitable choice — if he can prompt 58 standing ovations before Congress, just imagine how many he would get in this venue.
I was pulling for Bibi to have been the VP
Hell, just have him as the Prez. He’s calling the shots anyway.
> The gushing over the last 3 nights is off the charts.
Embubblement: The major — the only remaining? — function of the Democrat National Convention!
“Coach, coach, coach!” From adults! The atmosphere in that hall must be quite something.
As for Taylor Swift, good call. She’s excellent at superspreading events.
Freude macht frei …
Dukakis was 17 points ahead of GHWB in 1988 for all the good it did him. It’s looking like KH will win, but I wouldn’t like to bet my life on it – long way to go – and the weaknesses she had as a candidate in 2020 haven’t gone away.
Trump needs to cop himself on though. And wow, was Vance a horrible choice.
Wasn’t Hillary always several points ahead of Trump throughout the 2016 campaign? Trump voters do not tell pollsters, for the same reason that Macy did not tell Gimbel.
I could do a play by play on Trump. Mostly it would be something like “WTF is he talking about?”
I have actually done play-by-play on Trump, more than once.
And you know what? I added some value by not simply regurgitating canned Democrat memes.
While I’m honored that the site is being targeted by bots, nevertheless I feel we will both be happier if you ply your trade elsewhere. Have a blessed day!
Thanks for dispatching that bot with a reference to your Essay in Applied Albert Lord, Singer of Tales. I swooned with delight (figuratively speaking) while reading that piece first time and have been looking in vain for it ever since. Happy.
-cheers, a.v.
The rhetoric from the Praetorian Guard who selected the fearless leader for the demi crat party has been rather pointed this year. First it was “Biden is as sharp as a task.” Now we are told Kamala is as “tough as nails.” Will she ‘needle’ him during the debate and afterwards call him a pinhead?
My made in China crystal ball isn’t bad, but is good typically only a month out, 6 weeks tops on predictions…
Trump becomes even more elusive than Melania and pulls out of the race, pitting JD Vance versus Kamala~
Early this year, I was on the phone with a friend and they asked me who I was going to vote for: Trump or Biden.
I said, “No guarantee either of them will be on the ballot in November.”
For this voter (who hasn’t voted in 20 years), that would clarify the choice.
> Trump becomes even more elusive than Melania
Doubtful. Trump doesn’t walk out from behind the bulletproof glass with that outcome in mind.
Now, will Trump be allowed to take office, assuming he’s 270+ in the electoral college? Very doubtful, especially if one takes the views of the Democrats on this matter seriously, as I do; this they’re not lying about.
Keep in mind this is a PRC version, not a Taiwanese crystal ball.
US Venezuela voting rules used in the US? /s
LOL
They’re gonna call in the OAS goons to declare fraud!
#BitersBitten
When Harris wins the popular vote by double digits and gets 400 EV I wonder if pootie poot will still think this site is worth the investment?
Well, speaking as a long time commenter, first time reader, there are valuable articles to be had, such as
“1 in 4 Unresponsive People with Brain Injuries May Be Conscious” [Scientific American]
Well, now I need a new keyboard.
K G T:
Hillary, is that you? Did you get into the liquor cabinet again? Put down that bottle of Cupcake Chardonnay.
Not the best sobriquet for someone apparently advocating for more Democrat inspired war. The sound I just heard must have been Vonnegut rolling over in his grave.
kill-Gore is an odd name for a Harris supporter. Would have thought you’d have gone with Killmonger Trout in honor of Wakanda, the mythical country where your mythical votes are coming from.
> pootie poot
As I wrote above, albeit not yet with your comment in mind:
I guess some bitter/cling-tos are still hugging RussiaGate to their withered selves. And as I also wrote:
Have a blessed day!
NOTE On 400 EV: Maybe she will. We don’t know yet. I always find Democrat triumphalism so interesting!
David Brock aka CTR has entered the chat…
Ha! #IYKYK … :)
I have been listening to this convention put on by the DNC, as if it is Lucy presenting the football for voters to run after. The sheer number of times I have heard caveats “If we win the House and Senate” is innumerable. I hear it as them already giving excuses to the voter that they will pull away that football as soon as a minimum wage/Medicare for all/raising corporate tax back to 28% vote comes up.
Never. Forget. The. 111th. Congress. (via Wikipedia)
They had it all in 2009! And did jack …
Yet your marketing preferences were pegged for future reference …
What If Data Is a Bad Idea?
Hey, what if the author of the post defined what he was talking about. A datum is an individual observation. Data are (plural) many observations. Data can be arranged in distributions so as to interpret them.
The author doesn’t seem to distinguish between “data is” and “information.” Is the ethical problem in collecting personal information? Then say so. Instead, there is a lot of “data is” sloshing around and doing all kinds of things, some of which are inscrutable.
Then we get to:
Agre argued that “living data” must be able to express 1. a sense of ownership, 2. error bars, 3. sensitivity, 4. dependency, and 5. semantics.
Those “living data” thingies aren’t data. They involve interpretations, standards, communication, and ethics.
Learning to name things correctly will avoid long columns on imaginary problems with imaginary beasts like “data is…”
You expected a technocrat to examine who controls data?
Looks like the link doesn’t work…jiggling and wiggling….
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/Respiratory-Viruses/RespiratoryDashboard.aspx
“1 in 4 Unresponsive People with Brain Injuries May Be Conscious” [Scientific American]. “At least one-quarter of people who have severe brain injuries and cannot respond physically to commands are actually conscious, according to the first international study of its kind.
This is horrifying. How do you say ‘kill me’ with brain waves?
Metallica, One
As someone who has been around unconscious patients for many years, either from brain trauma or induced with meds, I have always had a very eerie feeling that they are far more awake than we believe. Not the least of which reasons is on several occasions, I have had patients recall to me things that happened in the ICU or ER while they were supposedly “out”.
I ALWAYS encourage family members to talk to the patients as if they were awake. I know that I do. This comes from a lifetime of watching heart monitors react when loved ones are holding their hands and talking. And I certainly have been horrified all of my career by the MDs and nurses who talk about things in the room that are entirely inappropriate. I always tell my students to only say things in front of the unconscious that you would happily say to them if awake. In the old days, we called that respect and integrity.
In 2005 during cardiac catheter cryoablation – which requires the patient to be conscious so they can zap the heart into SVT and thus “map” where the short circuit is and I only had mild local anaesthetic in the groin where they inserted the 3 or 4 tubes to access the artery to enable the cardiac zapping and camerawork – they didn’t even bother to try to hide their inappropriate conversations.
Almost 6 hours of me hearing them bitching (about general stuff, then about me because my heart wouldn’t oblige and get back down below 80 bpm after adenosine to enable the zapping properly).
However, these were Bristol cardiologists. Anyone unfamiliar with that particular set of people should google “Bristol heart scandal” and learn what the ethics of that particular hospital was…..Worst and most unprofessional clinicians in my life – and I experienced a lot of clinicians personally and professionally over a quarter of a century.
Ted Gioia posted this link today;
https://www.brainstimjrnl.com/article/S1935-861X(16)30200-5/abstract?utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack
Crazy stuff?
“Doctors literally raised a patient from a death-like state with this electronic music.”
Amen, Doc! When my grandmother was near death in the hospital, I had to ask her personal physician to refrain from talking about her in the past tense in her room.
> I ALWAYS encourage family members to talk to the patients as if they were awake. I know that I do. This comes from a lifetime of watching heart monitors react when loved ones are holding their hands and talking.
This is lovely, IM Doc.
I have had to give the same instructions when my Mom (with Alzheimer’s!) was in the room. “You need to treat her with respect and don’t talk ABOUT her like she isn’t in the room”
IM Doc, you are much appreciated.
A personal anecdote to add to the conversation about consciousness. I was in a car accident where I was thrown up over the dash to break the windshield with my head. As far as anyone knew, I was knocked unconscious for about three minutes. However, I’ve never forgotten the experience of being hyper-conscious during that time, although I spent it “whooshing” out of my body to have a classic NDE.
Consciousness remains a puzzle or, as some neuroscientists like to call it, the hard problem.
It’s my sincere hope that the people conscious in their coma receive diagnosis and assistance today.
This is related to why I removed the organ donor option from my drivers license, even though I am quite old. Nietzsche observed, “What doesn’t kill me makes me old and bitter.” If you are dying they don’t give you anesthesia, they just strap you down and cut. No complaints yet from the donors so it’s all good.
And another feature and benefit of the violence in Palestine and Ukraine is that it provides a massive supply of slightly used human organs and tissues to the wondrous international capitalist franchise of Organ Transplants For Wealthy Folks.
On Israeli involvement: https://humantraffickingsearch.org/resource/israel-became-hub-in-international-organ-trade-over-past-decade/
And Country 404: “Blood libel: Kremlin claims organs harvested by Ukraine end up in Israel” https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bj4uif4cs
It started long before that, but no one cared:
https://balkaninsight.com/2015/09/04/kosovo-organ-trafficking-how-the-claims-were-exposed-09-04-2015-1/
“How Kamala Harris is winning over Wall Street” [CNN]
She won them over as AG showing how not tough she would be on their crimes.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/22/kamala-harris-attorney-general-california-housing-053716/
New book whacks Kamala Harris’ AG record during housing crisis
And the other choice has a slumlord history and all manner of real estate nefariousness to his name.
Re the Altman quote: Robert Altman has been through the business / politics revolving door so many times that he hardly knows which side he’s on any more. Ex Lehman, Carter administration, Blackstone, DNC fundraiser, Treasury under Clinton, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderburg Group. They don’t get much more embedded than that.
RE: Euphemise this
Interesting and a propos. Weren’t we just discussing how “weird” once had a completely different meaning than it does today? Although that isn’t necessarily a euphemism (which literally means “speaking well”), just a gradual change in meaning.
The author mentions how “retarded” has gotten an upgrade. The piece doesn’t mention it, but I believe “retarded” itself was once the euphemism created to replace “mongoloid”. When “special education” came out during my school days, it took all of about five minutes before kids in those classes were derogatorily referred to as “speds”.
I suspect this phenomenon of turning euphemisms into insults has only increased with the advent of the interwebs. The problem is people today can’t keep it simple, and often replace one currently offending word with a longer, clunky phrase. I am a fan of the neologism if done well, but politically correct bafflegab tends to abrade my eardrums. I prefer something a little more tintinnabulous.
Yeah, the value of the word is based on what it refers to, not any intrinsic quality of the letters. If a group A referred to by term B has a low social status (which in a capitalistic society mostly means little money and less access to capital, but can also mean being the target of hate crimes) then term B is likely to also be used as a slur. Changing to term C changes what word is used as a slur.
Changing the status of the group appears to stop the euphemistic treadmill.
Anita Dunn will collect a short ton of flesh one pound at a time, count on it. If I was going to speculate, it would be that Team Biden was going to reverse course and take mpox very seriously so they could encourage early voting by mail/dropoff box. Because the states and some remarkably partisan judges shut down Trump’s challenges in 2020, the early voting system hasn’t been properly vetted. I strongly suspect many states systems have vulnerabilities known to friends of Joe. I think Biden’s folks were simply planning to steal the election just like they did in 2020. They got away with it once when they weren’t in charge so why not do it again?
I still find it uncredible that Joe Biden holds the US record for most votes received in an election ever. During a pandemic when people were staying home. After a tainted primary season from which you would normally expect blowback (Hillary’s PUMAs for example). Then a fedsurrection to silence the voices of those who suspected foul play followed up by massive lawfare against the protesters and Trump himself.
Republicans have had four years to simmer and will boil over come election time. I suspect a lot of poll respondents are lying, waiting — like Anita Dunn — to exact their revenge later.
> mail/dropoff box.
I don’t buy that theory. Evidence please.
So far as I can tell (and it’s a rat-hole I haven’t had time to go down) (a) our election system is vulnerable to election theft, certainly due to electronic voting, and possibly due to 2020 balloting innovations, and (b) given the concept of a phishing equilibrium (“If fraud can happen, then it has already happened, it follows that (c) election theft has in fact taken place in the past, but (d) the lunatics in charge of that aspect of Trump’s 2020 campaign sh*t the bed, and subsequent investigations didn’t prove out (in AZ especially, where the election theft crowd had every advantage).
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court recently ruled that mobile drop boxes had been illegally used in the 2020 election, that the Wisconsin Election Commission had overstepped its authority. Their ruling suggests drop boxes are illegal in Wisconsin (trying to take from CNN on this, the conservative sites are writing about this at encyclopedic length).
The number of votes cast in this manner appear to be more than Biden’s margin of victory in Wisconsin. For four years I’ve been reading partisan stories about irregularities around the state (which are devlishly hard to prove).
I’m not really a footnotes kind of guy. In politics if you wait for the historians to sort it out, you lose sight of what’s happening. I see the Democrats again ignoring traditional forms of labor intensive campaigning in favor of shoveling donations to crony consultants all of whom have huge faith in absentee/dropbox voting as the path to victory. This kind of GOTV is invisible to the general public and a great place to launder money. Even if done to the letter of the law, it’s not a process you can monitor except in the receiving of the ballots. It’s nothing like watching every voter walk through a door, sign in and then vote.
If it’s possible to cheat, people will cheat. If it’s easy to cheat, they’ll cheat their asses off.
It all keeps adding up, for me at least. On an old-fashioned campaign analysis consisted of sitting around and chewing on the same fat over and over and over again. Facts are part of that but a good campaign taps into the zeitgeist which is not always easily measured by facts.
I think Harris-Walz has tapped into a poltergeist and there’s no chance of their arbitrarily chosen messages resononating with the general public. More to the point, I think they know that. They’re counting on something else and I think Anita Dunn knows what it is. My guess is stuffing the dropboxes.
Touché
> I’m not really a footnotes kind of guy.
That’s the niftiest way of saying “I can make sh*t up” I’ve ever seen. Kudos.
Do note that you’re shifting the goalposts. See points (b) and (c) above; they speak to technical possibilities, as I took “properly vetted” to mean, not legalities.
Of course, the Wisconsin court might have taken a suspicious margin of victory into account. But because you don’t do links, and I won’t do your work for you, the readership lacks the value add required to sort the matter.
The only links I could give you are from publications I don’t really trust. Once you get past J6, Revolver is intensely biased. I have caught these sources making stuff up and they routinely interpret stories uncharitably but otoh they have solid stories like the J6 pipe bomb. No one else is running with the pipe bomb story in mainstream, so there are no “good” links to point to. That’s a tell, btw. Legit media would stay on these stories.
You see this election as something that can be analzyed with charts. I see it as a poker game.* Stats tell me stat stuff but I’m more interested in the “tells” of the players at the table. I look for the things that should be happening (but aren’t) and I note the things that are happening (but shouldn’t be). The more wrong things I spot, the hotter the hair on my head gets. This cycle everything is wrong.
Hair on fire is my starting point here. Something is wrong. Corruption in govt and the party are givens. At this point I’m not looking for stats or facts, I’m trying to think of every bad possibility. You make a list of the bad maybes, quick cross off the most unlikely ones until you’re down to the most likely options. For me that’s the assumption that the Democrats are planning to cheat their asses off this fall. Like I believe they did in 2020 and like it’s possible they tried to do in 2016.†
The other options are that for whatever reason Trump won’t make it to the election.
These and other possibiliteis have to be seen in light of the fact that the Democrats CANNOT LOSE. I think we all reaslize they’ve been abusing their powers and getting away with it in ways that can’t be legal. The Blob has gone all in and if Trump wins, The Blob is busted.
I know a lot of people who know and respect Walz but he ain’t the guy to tell The Blob to eff off. Anything but a Trump victory is more business as usual.
The usual business has included the monstrous war in Ukraine (with clear corruption ties to Biden) and the enabling of Israel’s genocide. Not to mention our humiliating exit from Afghanistan. To be Lakhoffian, this is the frame for the election. Plus a crappy economy for most and a healthcare system that terrifies everyone.
The worst case scenarios look most likely to me. Remind me next year and I’ll give you the links then. Sorry to motormouth but political activists really do talk these things to death. The facts and stats are givens but perceptions are the real stock in trade.
I’m out of the game, my money’s off the table. This game is rigged and the cops (news media) are in on the fix.
* I mean that literally. In 2015 when I realized HRC’s donors had maxed out under the current rules and couldn’t donate to her again until the general, I went all in on Bernie because he was a lock to run the Spring primaries when Hillary couldn’t buy ads because she was broke. I think it’s fair to say she cheated her way around that blunder that would have been fatal for any other candidate. The current incarnation of the party is that of a bunch of dirty cheaters. Not invective, an accurate description!
† No link but I’ve been told that at least for a while the CIA was telling folks that Putin really did hack the ’16 election but not how people think. The electronic voting machines were systemically hacked and with a single instruction would artfully flip the election to Clinton. Putin somehow put the kibosh on that and the results came out untampered with. Outrageous story but the reaction to the results were very consistent with that kind of certainty. And it’s possible (think Iowa Caucus app) that Putin had nothing to do with it and that Team Clinton/Crowdstrike? screwed up the steal. I don’t know this to be true but it is a real thing going around.
Please clarify “the early voting system” and “hasn’t been vetted.” States have varying early voting procedures. Since 2020 states have made changes – both more and less restrictive; and have used and audited early and same-day voting procedures in many elections since.
Whether or not you agree with the general perspective, there’s information about post-2020 changes in both links. All kinds of state-level information about election procedures and audits are available at the National Conference of State Legislatures website. The 60+ 2020 cases that Trump and his allies lost in multiple states were argued before a variety of judges.
There are likely known and unknown vulnerabilities in electronic and manual components of voting systems and in audit and control procedures. The existence of a vast conspiracy of Democrats capable of exploiting them in many forms, in many places, undetected continues to be, imo, debatable.
https://votingrightslab.org/2023/10/05/battleground-2024-how-swing-states-wchanged-voting-rules-after-the-2020-election/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-voting-laws-have-changed-battleground-states-2020
> Please clarify “the early voting system” and “hasn’t been vetted.”
My objections to so-called early voting are not technical but, well, moral; I think they reward exactly the sort of “team spirit” approach to politics that is degrading to “our democracy.” (There is the parallel argument against “drop boxes,” and I haven’t seen a clearly evidence cased against them at the, as it were, epidemiological level, i.e. a ballot box was stuffed, counted, and changed an election outcome. Sure, it’s possible…
> There are likely known and unknown vulnerabilities in electronic and manual components of voting systems and in audit and control procedures. The existence of a vast conspiracy of Democrats
That’s a bit of a straw man. In fact, there exist a small number of bent technicians who can consult in this area (like that Repblican operative whose small plane went down in Ohio). And these technicians would be hired and tasked only at the highest levels of the campaign (like RussiaGate), and not by a “vast conspiracy.”
I can’t evaluate the technical possibilities of designing and installing manipulations of electronic systems; or of detecting them in pre- or post-election audits. I’m not arguing it can’t happen or hasn’t happened. If there’s both a theoretical mechanism (changing executable code remotely, swapping components in and out manually…I can’t even speculate on mechanisms with any expertise), and a practical way of implementing it, I’d like to understand more, but I don’t.
Whether it has been the correct approach or not, for Trump and in most accusations about 2020 since, issues other than electronic manipulation (drop boxes, “fake” ballots, signature verification, etc.) have been cited.
> I can’t evaluate the technical possibilities of designing and installing manipulations of electronic systems; or of detecting them in pre- or post-election audits
I am not going to dig out and post, again, the links I have provided on this topic. If you didn’t and don’t want to engage with them, that’s a you problem.
I’ve posted links myself! I didn’t say they don’t exist, just that I can’t evaluate them as to whether votes can be/have been manipulated, or what the evidence would be if they had been manipulated.
For something like drop box stuffing, or fake ballots, or other such claims I’m comfortable expressing an opinion on how likely, at what scale, involving how many people – mostly ordinary election workers – it would take.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/links-6-17-2023.html#comment-3897910
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/02/links-2-25-2021.html#comment-3513860
What got my attention in 2019 was how quickly and high-handedly the judges had dismissed Trump’s challenges, even when there was substantial proof of ‘something’ not being right. I missed it in real time, attributed it to sour grapes.
Proper vetting would mean trying these cases in court with discovery and evidence and a jury. When that didn’t happen, I got skittish. A case being dismissed doesn’t mean all the allegations were resolved. In a democracy, these things should be followed up on.
Sorry, I do not accept all the “proof” of voting being OK. Before you figure out how to cheat, you figure out how not to get caught. They’re cheating, I’d bet my life on it.
In some cases Trumpists acknowledged they had no evidence. Some cases were about procedural changes to facilitate absentee voting without following the official state process. Trump won one of those – an extended ballot deadline, if I recall correctly – and some ballots were withheld from the count. In another case a judge said that sometimes this kind of failure to follow official procedures happened, and election officials were fined, or lost their jobs; but voters who had voted in good faith according to published procedures weren’t disenfranchised after the fact. Some cases were dismissed because of timing or standing. However, it’s been nearly 4 years and evidence supporting those cases has not appeared for evaluation in the court of public opinion.
Here’s a summary of 10 of the cases decided “on the merits.”
https://campaignlegal.org/results-lawsuits-regarding-2020-elections
This comment is not offered as “the “proof” of voting being OK.”
Thanks, I admit I tranced out trying to read all those case summaries but woke up when I got to the end and Trump lawyers were being sanctioned.
This is all supposed to be about Trump not taking his loss gracefully but the flip side is that if the Democrats have gone all Blob it’s reasonable to suspect that there’s been a lot of judicial misconduct. I say that because of the remarkably punitive way the DC courts went after J6 protesters. What they’re doing in DC is what they would do anywhere they ‘own’ a judge. The NY case is another example. I’m at a point where I assume bad faith because that’s all I’ve seen from this prosecution-happy administration.
See and watch “DNC attendees cover their ears as the names of dead Palestinian children are read as they leave the convention.” in the links above.
When people become that morally bankrupt in order to support their tribe/group, they are often willing to do whatever it takes as part of their support. Would stuffing ballot boxes, etc really be that difficult for them?
Since “most votes ever” is a moving target, I went to Wikipedia and checked turnout. Turnout among eligible voters was in 2020 the highest since McKinley Vs Jennings Bryan in the year 1900. Of course, a smaller percentage of the population were eligible to vote back then.
I am not making an argument, I just figured I would spare anyone else the wiki-dive.
“The App Store has a horrible UI/UX, and whoever made or let that happen should have left long ago (of course, it was a monopoly, so there’s no incentive to improve it. Maybe the EU did us all a favor).“
It is my own humble opinion that Apple destroyed the mobile game market with abysmal discoverability on iOS App Store. First mover effect became almost insurmountable and a generation of devs threw their lives away trying to chase the success stories that were held up. Valve has acted similarly on pc, where the only games that seem to break through are whatever streamers are bribed to play (or existing AAA dev output).
It’s a hard problem to be able to let people find things that you don’t already know about, and apple was clearly not up to solving it.
> Cannot overstate how huge this is for any Harris/Walz agenda
I haven’t been paying attention to the DNC; am I right in interpreting the presence of “any” in place of the definite article to be a hint that the Platform Committee didn’t produce much output this cycle?
I don’t get the reference. I linked to the platform three days ago.
I have added orts and scraps. Much DNC stuff (and some setting in context).
re: tweet about CDC and lice. photo quote apparently from CDC is particularly about eggs attached to hair stems (nits) not about live lice, which indeed are quite contagious. I don’t know how accurate the info in the photo is, but the tweeter seems to misunderstand it.
So eggs don’t hatch?
I remember the story similar to Dunn’s coming out of Dem operatives right after the debate: I was thinking then that that was an attempt at spin that seemed ludicrous, but apparently, some, or even many, people really did believe this!
Which, the dial story? It’s most certainly not ridiculous; it’s what a professional with a budget would do. (Also, there’s a long tradition of “exit interviews” by campaign consulants in which they are more or less truthful. For one thing, all the insiders know the story already; for another, the consultants have their next client to think of, and need to show they weren’t derelict in their duties, or neglect the obvious.)
Yup. I didn’t know about the “dials,” but some Dem operatives were pushing back against the view that Biden did badly by claiming that they have data–I think they actually did say focus group data at the time, I think–that shows Biden in fact more than made up for early stumbles in the latter half of the debate. I wondered at that time, and, I guess I still wonder, what it is that the focus group saw that was different from what most other people saw.
If the focus group data is legit, at least in terms of the data not being made up, it begs the question as to what was going on. Where did they recruit the panelists? What was their demographic composition? Did they interact with each other? (Not a good idea, but keeping them isolated from each other has its own issues), and so on. I don’t think the data they got was necessarily “bad,” but the divergence demands an explanation, which, in turn, can help us figure out what is and isn’t going on.
My gut is Dem party hacks and the electeds too bought their bs about Trump and simply couldn’t conceive how “Biden The Great” could be in polling trouble. They simply told a story that all would be set right once people saw Trump could run again, be the front runner, be the nominee…and now they are actually debating. Don’t worry! Trump can’t speak! Biden will mop the floor….breathes into paperbag….
Despite the problems with trying to have “undecideds” in a Trump/Biden matchup, they went through the motions, probably finding only Democrats who were willing to lie to fill the spots. The President and former President are more famous than Taylor Swift (my dad even knows who Taylor Swift is, Travis Kelce’s singer girlfriend, never change dad, never change). People who are legitimately undecided between Trump and Biden and willing to watch a debate are fringe weirdos.
The Dunn story amounts to Democratic Party hacks found out fringe weirdos like Biden more than Trump.
Heh, thst’s a more colorful way to describe what I was saying!
Every focus group I’ve ever been in paid me for my time. I imagine they have statistical tools to make up for that bias but it would have kept people turning those dials instead of throwing them at the screen.
There are focus groups and there are focus groups.
It’s well known in polls administered by people that participants have a bias to want to please the interviewer. Anyone leading a focus group has to be sure to maintain neutrality to get accurate results.
Whenever I could, I participated in focus groups in NYC. They were commercial, not political. In one noteworthy one (clearly for Cigna, which they should have disguised) they asked it we would want to do business with a health insurer that did X, Y, and Z. These were clearly ad messages AND it was way too clear that the focus group leader wanted us to approve.
I blew up the focus group and said repeatedly the promises were not credible, explained why, and said I would be prejudiced against an insurer that made such clearly bogus claim. The ad message would say that the insurer was in fact not trustworthy.
The focus group leader wasted a LOT of energy trying to browbeat me into agreement. I suspect her company had devised the messages.
This is a long-winded way of saying the focus group may have been administered by people who were biased. Even though Biden did better in the second half, lots of cognitive research has found that first impressions stick, so on the surface, it would seem reasonable that a good second half performance would not reverse the impact of the first half gaffes.
> Euphemise this” [Aeon].
>> We think of euphemisms as one-time events, where one prissily coins a way of saying something that detracts from something unpleasant about it.
Endemic euphemism interferes with understanding, especially when translated.
missed link for translated
https://preview.redd.it/why-the-dutch-are-considered-rude-v0-g45zbtv0d3kd1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=2cb9c651bc81cc94e7478a8b4e6389430bb1a810
I have been impressed (okay, astounded, gobsmacked, in awe of, etc) by the various kinds of courage shown by leaders of all kind at all levels of society in all kinds of movements and organizations, which seemed to fade away during the last thirty years. This, along with the seriousness, wisdom, competence, or just simple basic humanity of our (designated) leadership; the more money as the only measure of all things, the greater the fading.
There are still plenty of courageous people, but as money for most of them is unimportant, or at least not the sole meaning of everything, they are ignored; how does a young man or woman learn what is real or an older individual maintain the knowledge, when he has been entombed, and I use the word deliberately, in a building constructed of money built on a landscape of not fantasy, but of deliberate manufactured lies?
Yes, it seems corny to write this paragraph, but to me it truly looks and feels more true to say all this including the similes and metaphors, especially as modern writing is more about appearing solid by being facile, stripped of most complexity unless it adds to the confusion, unless it is academic writing where being incomprehensibly verbose is favored.
Our speech both in the writing and verbally seems to be decaying along with everything else and is that a coincidence? And is the decline also connected to a growing lack of courage or conviction of belief?
I wonder how what Trump graciously did would do for other candidates. Biden would never have done that and that person would have been hustled out of sight or covered by signs. RJK jr? Probably not. Kamala? Never. Jill Stein? Probably not. So maybe Trump is just a showman and that is why he did it but optics count and leaving the protection of bullet-proof glass after a recent assassination attempt to check on one of his fans is something that will be remembered. Gotta give the devil his due.
This one really puzzles me. As you so well said…
Is his showman ego big enough to make this a photo op, or actually care?
If it’s the latter, it’s like giving Hitler a Peace prize. :-)
What days we live in.
“1 in 4 Unresponsive People with Brain Injuries May Be Conscious”
This has always been my worst nightmare. That or being trapped potholing (spelunking).
Taibbi/Kirn livestream returns tonight at 9 ET
https://www.racket.news/p/atw-livestream-dnc-finale-walz-clinton
Yay!!!
I’ve always liked Taibbi’s writing, but always thought him less than ideal as a podcaster (Don’t know why exactly…but always thought he was missing a bit of “ooomph,” whatever that really is.) I never would have guessed Kirn would be such an amazing political/social commentator (I didn’t knew much of him besides his novels and such).
At the end of their livestream, Taibbi summed up his reaction as “building up anger” and I was happy to know that I’m not the only person who was getting madder and madder as the whole spectacle went on. I am curious if anyone else felt similar….
The problems, as Taibbi pointed out repeatedly (and I’m editing a bit), are that 1) Dems want to have cake and eat it, too, in every dimension. 2) They want to pretend that everything is starting from scratch, ignoring that they have controlled both the White House and whole/part of Congress for the past 4 years; 3) They are still peddling a variant of America is still great–or, rather, America would be great if not for the meddlesome Trump.” 4) They are both utterly inconsiderate of the many problems facing the American people and are insistent on staring at their own sense of righteousness–not just “let them eat cake,” but “let them see how awesome we are eating the cake that they don’t have.” I don’t see how Dems could get any bounce from this, since that would mean that they’d have to have impressed people who were not already part of their 47% (using the infamous Romney quote, but, the truth is that this is truism of American politics. You always have your 47% in the end. How much of the remaining 53% can you get). I don’t know how the Dems could possibly get anyone who don’t buy into their premises.
Ref: Lice
Seems driven by keeping students in school for economic reasons and not public health, e.g. covid. Wish proponents that forward this view had the joy[tm] of living in a open platoon sized Quonson hut on the DMZ and watch it rip through it via one individual. Then again watching VD/STD fallout post morning company formation for headcount and orders of the day was informative. Separate to sick call and almost always around a squad would line up and march off to the dispensary. Especially when off post passes during the whole week were a luxury as base had to keep an 80%+ force on base at all times.
Ref: Mushroom micro dosing
Due to some of my dating site misadventures, up to 2 hr drive away down south of the Gold Coast, Qld in the Northern beaches/hinterlands of NSW between Byron Bay and Burleigh Heads. Wellie it seems all the rage and wellness Dr’s are all over it. These are the sort of Dr’s that proclaim that all medicine is a lie and then promote various spiritual/natural[tm] alternatives. Booming businesses it seems, especially with the monied divorcees living in large homes/lots outside the small towns along the coast. Homes were bought during early covid whilst married and then went boom. So now all these ladies from mid 50s to early 60s are micro dosing, and various other distractions, too get through it all.
Seems the micro dosing has not helped with presented photos for consideration, so there is that and I end up getting the facts post a long drive. Netflix quality experiences lmmaso … buzzed through gate, popped out of ute, female silver back hug and kissed like a cow licking a salt block, stayed 30 min out of decorum and said it would not work, back in ute and 2 hr drive home. Got home and texted thank you for the talks and having me down to be met with … well I am looking for someone taller [I am 5’11” and she 5’5″] snort.
Phone video call after a few weeks chatting on phone on a Friday night with her GF present in the kitchen with her. Overdone blonde hairdo which seemed the result of an explosion going off behind her and a vibe I’ve experienced with some coked up well heeled middle age married ladies back in the 80s Calif days. Said I had been there and done that, no thank you, was not pleased to say the least …
Anyway brain chemistry is a funny thing and playing with it can have consequences in the near and far term. None of these people do any diligence on the subject matter and just blindly follow the pack. Will be interesting to watch how this all unfolds down the track …
‘Seems driven by keeping students in school for economic reasons and not public health, e.g. covid.’
Got it in one. That is exactly what it is all about. And as you say, just like with Covid.
Which then begs what this “economics thingy” – is – and how and why it supersedes all other things.
Its a convo I have had time and time again with local politicians, academics, accomplished business people and to a fault none have any idea how diverse the field is or how it all came to be. Its just accepted fait accompli.
On my new job in Bardon the owners visiting daughter is a geneticist working in Charleston, NC and after a bit of a chat find out she is doing a MBA. We had a chat about that and then I sent her mom a link to the recent NC post on how funding is not optimal and topped it off with a Sabine YT link on the subject matter. Basically just getting an MBA to both get funding and then administrate the research as one. Not to mention her Husband has a lab and doing cystic fibrosis research – ugh.
BTW first dating fail above was in Tyagarah, NSW deuaghter is well known female sport person and bondi rescue sort. If we ever have a beer I’ll have you on the floor with the story’s mate …
The standard test of level of consciousness used by nursing was the Glascow Coma Scale, a series of requests, commands and examinations, with graded responses. I had been doing this and charting the results for a year when I went to a CE workshop on the exam by a pair of researchers. The most interesting and helpful teachings were, when doing the exam, turn off any sedation, turn off the room TV, silence the monitors, dim the lights and ask the visitors to leave, or to remain silent. Then do comfort measures for the patient, and then allow the patient time to settle down. Then seating yourself at the bedside, address the patient in a conversational tone, speaking slowly and clearly, beginning with a personal introduction. Then explain to the patient what is happening. Then proceed with the exam. In administering the exam, allow the patient a lot of time to respond, minutes between questions. Doing the exam takes a lot of time and focus, which circumstances often don’t allow. The scene is seance-like. The best time for it is the night shift. Better examination technique gets more accurate results. I think philosophers of mind and consciousness would gain from work in a neuro step-down unit.
Thanks for this.
Thank you, Jack, that totally makes sense. I’m curious about the results, and how accuracy is determined.
As a parallel, this passage from Alkon’s “Memory’s Voice” has sticking power:
> I was drawn to the psychological effects of trauma partly because of my own early experience. Not a victim myself, I was, however, indirectly victimized. As a child, I witnessed repeated trauma to a young girl I will call Michelle. Michelle, whose story unfolds in the course of this book, was beaten frequently from the age of eight or nine until she was thirteen or fourteen.
> As she adopted strategies to cope, Michelle followed an anatomical path to torment. An assault on her senses was integrated and processed within her brain, determining behavioral outcomes. Working backwards along this path from behavior to sensing, she began by desperately casting about for a behavior that worked. Failing, she resorted to manipulating her own integrative processes. And with no choice left, she altered her sensing capacity itself.
“How I Learned to Love Mushrooms (and MDMA, Ayahusca and LSD)” [The Daily Beast]. “Microdosing involves taking small, sub-perceptible amounts of a psychedelic drug like LSD or psilocybin (the psychedelic agent in ‘magic mushrooms’) every four days. Not enough to get all Lucy-in-the-Sky, but enough to lighten the mood and open up new creative pathways. I’ve been doing it for five years, and it’s been hugely helpful to me during the writing process. In my business, you only get paid when you turn in the script, and five micrograms of LSD twice a week for three weeks gets me to that payday.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The root word of Fungi is of course Fun, and thanks to a Life magazine photo essay in 1957, Beatniks got hep to the possibilities and off to the races we went…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeking_the_Magic_Mushroom
Getting establishment Republicans high on acid was a fantasy of more than one subversive hippie in the 1960s, but actually “Captain” Al Hubbard had been quietly trying that approach for years: going to the movers and shakers and turning them on to LSD. It could have produced an unpublicized elite cultural fashion for LSD use over time, instead of the front page hysteria about all the teenage daughters getting turned into mindless zombies by the local street corner dealer. Right-wing Republicans like Clare Boothe Luce and her husband, Time-Life publisher Henry Luce, were among the select early few that got to experience LSD before any of the proles came along and messed things up. Of course the CIA also got in on the act, with malign intent. But Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey usually get the blame for spreading acid promiscuously and bringing on the moral panic that enveloped the whole topic from the mid-1960s on.
Nitwit.
1) A person with the wit (intelligence) of a Nit.
2) Someone who works for the CDC .
PR writes: “From a recent trip to NW Oregon and SW Washington state.”
That certainly is a lovely photo. Looking at it, I try to see past it when it was an actual living tree in a forest with animals going by and perhaps squirrels running up it. There is a story to be told of what it once was to what and where it is now.
#KamalaRising
> “Where Harris Has Gained and Lost Support Compared With Biden”
> “… but Vice President Harris didn’t improve equally among all demographic groups. Instead, she made big gains among young, nonwhite and female voters, and made relatively few or no gains among older voters and white men.”
In other words, the Dem constituency that was exhausted and uninspired (via NC) by old, cognitively-impaired Joe Biden.
#DunnDunn
Onomatopoeia perhaps, for that ominous Law & Order chime (via YouTube)
> So it wasn’t simply delusion that made the Biden team hang on; it was instrumented delusion
Well, if you’re on the same team that dials up push polls, then it’s probably more of the same. Dems don’t just lie to the electorate, they lie to themselves.
#Kamala #DNC
Well, she is on … #LiveCommentThread :)
Intro
Chants of “USA! USA!”
“Let’s get to business!”
She thanks the husband first. Next up is Joe Biden!
Coach is next! “You are going to be an incredible vice president!”
Weaving a tale of family …
“never complain … do something”
“never do something half-assed”
“a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us”
“no one should be made to fight alone”
Accepting The Nomination
“Kamala Harris … for the people” (as a prosecutor)
“One behalf of … ” (in accepting the nomination)
“Move past bitterness, cynicism of the past …”
“Promise to be a president for all Americans”
“Rule of Law, free fair elections, peaceful transfer of power”
“will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations”
Fight Theme
Fight for America’s future
It’s the most important election of our lives (again!)
Trump
She finally gets to him by name!
Consider the gravity of what has happened since he lost …
… (Jan 6 recap)
Fraud and sexual abuse convictions
Suggests Trump has explicit intent to:
Free Jan 6 convicted
Seek revenge against journalists and politicians
Mentions Supreme Court Immunity
Trump’s power serves the only client he’s ever had – himself!
#Project2025 mention
Economy
Middle Class
“Opportunity is not available to anyone” – recalling her mother
“The Opportunity Economy”
“I will bring together labor, businesses, entrepreneurs etc”
Claims Trump will give more tax breaks to billionaires
Counters with “middle class tax cuts”
Pivot to Abortion
Blames Trump for appointing Anti-Choice Supremes
Says Trump is not done. Claims Trump/GOP would ban abortion outside Congressional authority
“Why don’t they trust women?! We trust women!”
She would probably sign it into law … (Ha! Let’s see where we are at 100 days if she wins. We know where Obama ended up – “not a legislative priority”)
Immigration
Claims Trump killed Immigration Deal to benefit himself
Once again, she will “sign it into law”.
Foreign Policy
“As Commander In Chief, I will ensure that America has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world!”
Will never denigrate the troops.
Pledges to beat China on AI … LOL #Lordt
Yep … she’s gonna stand strong with Ukraine … Ugh
Now is the time to get a hostage and ceasefire deal done
OMG
Familyblog …
She repeats the faux Hamas sexual abuse claims and mentions the people killed at the music festival – wasn’t it proven that those people were actually killed by IDF?!
Well, she says what happened in Gaza is terrible … but yep she pledged to always support Zionists so …
The Big Finish
Let’s write the next chapter …
Beyoncé’s “Freedom” does regale the balloon-drop stage gathering.
#Fin
I missed the end of the Foreign Policy section where she said: “Biden and I are working to end this war. Such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends — and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.“
Video (via X)
Hay mate since antiquity the Ruling class writes its own history … cough … Egypt and Pharaohs. Then when a new one comes on the scene they can erase the old one with a chisel on temples … never happened …
The PR/Marketing you point out reminds me of that same period in history, where one of the most prominent fixtures on temple walls was the one of the Pharaoh holding a captives head by the hair, whilst holding an ax to deliver a blow. The funny thing is it was not to kill, holding the handle in the middle and not at the bottom end for more force. It was iconography to show subjugation of anyone that did not accept his will. Both undefeatable in battle, yet magnanimous in dealing with those defeated.
Our “Pharaohs” act with impunity, and have no empathy … the horrible normalization of COVID infection, for example, is tantamount to holding that axe handle at the bottom, and swinging away …
Yet the whole issue with Egypt was the notion of controlling chaos … hence the Pharaohs job was to advert it both in this world and the spiritual sense. Continuance of order was the only thing that mattered right or wrong under the rule of them.
Lots to regurgitate there.
IMO she should have attached “when servicing your donors” to “Never do something half-assed.” I get that wasn’t the situation when she learned that supposed pillar but considering her entire term as VP she would have to work harder to get to half-assed in most of her endeavors.
And I do love how Trump is entirely responsible for anti-choice judges. Can’t recognize that Dems were 1.) too busy fundraising off it to codify it. And 2.) have actively recruited and supported anti choice candidates that had all the right corporate donor approved qualities so 1. couldn’t happen. And 3.) they were dependable spoiler votes to block many rank and file Democratic agenda policies along with rubber stamping those anti or wobbly choice appointments regardless of who made them. On the judge score alone if it had really been important to Democrats most of the time those judges would never have gotten through the process to make it to the bench.
But then I’m an older voter who isn’t feeling either the joy or the hope.
They most likely turned from non-voters to voters. Now, that’s in contrast to where (when Biden was still around) Trump was making big gains (with the proviso that their turnout is uncertain): young, nonwhite, and male. This is where I’m curious: they almost certainly would not have been impressed by Harris for most part, but whatever’s going on with them?
Something that I didn’t see firsthand, but was shocked to see a clip thereof on Taibbi/Kirn podcast/livestream.
Walz proudly flaunting how terrible a teacher he is (nobody among my students went to Yale).
Hardly anyone among the American working class would ever think someone among their ranks going to Yale after overcoming all the hardship is a bad thing. For all his flaws, I know for fact that Bill Clinton was widely admired among many working class people (at least at one time) because he is a poor boy from rural Arkansas who went to top schools. If the working class hate the Yalies (and Harvardites), it’s because most of them are PMC twits who hold them in contempt or, as would have been the case for late stage Clinton, someone who decided to be part of the PMC against their old people, not because they raised themselved up by the bootstraps and got educated. Maybe Dems could dig up particulars about Vance that demonstrates that he has betrayed his people. But this is stupid.
This strikes as more a reminder that Walz is a caricature, or at least, playing one on TV, of the American working class that the PMC imagines to be. This is disgusting.
Tim was referring to his high school graduating class, not to the students he taught:
OK, so not quite what I was thinking. Still, a bit of deranged attack, in a party full of Yalies at the top. Surely, JD Vance (and he alone among the GOPers) could say exactly the same thing, and, for that matter, Bill Clinton. It’s such a bizarre point to raise given who they (the Dems) are and what kind of audience he’s addressing. The only interpretation that I could draw from it is Walz prostrating himself and saying that “I’m not one of those uppity n****rs who thinks he’s better than his station and I won’t think of going off the plantation.” Perhaps a too extreme an interpretation, but that is still the vibe that Walz is giving off everytime he opens his mouth.