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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/6/2024

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Readers have been so happy with the mockingbirds I’m going to keep doing them. Now entering Day Two of Week Three!

Long-tailed Mockingbird, Quebrada El Limón (Valqui E4.2), Piura, Peru.

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In Case You Might Miss…

  1. Best Olympic story.
  2. Walz is Kamala’s VP choice.
  3. Climate tipping points unpredictable.
  4. Andy Warhol’s lost Amiga Art.

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Look for the Helpers

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

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

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Trump Assassination Attempt

“The Kill Box: Investigating the Trump Assassination, Benny Johnson With Reps. Eli Crane and Cory Mills” [RealClearPolitics]. “Kill box” is a phrase invented by the media personality, Johnson, and not by either of the two representatives, both of whom were snipers (!!). This caught my eye: “REP. ELI CRANE: When you get out on that site, if you have even an iota of training on security, long-distance shooting, and you get on that property, I mean, you see a water tower that covers the entire premises, basically you start asking yourself, ‘Why the hell wasn’t anybody up on that water tower?'” Johnson concludes: “We [I don’t thinik the two reps would agree with that, and would not use this language] have established beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump was intentionally put into the kill box on July 13th. So who’s responsible for this fatal security plan? Who cut the communication lines? Who kept Trump on stage, and who will be held criminally liable for these deadly decisions? We have so many questions after our investigation of the assassination site, but one thing is crystal clear: there are forces that wanted President Trump dead. The obscene security failures created the conditions for a live TV execution. These failures are unforgivable and have inspired regular Americans to ask questions like this: Was there a stand-down order issued? Was there a conspiracy to kill President Trump? The head of the Secret Service resigned in disgrace after this question, but her replacement continues the same failed policies that sent a bullet through Trump’s head.” • Not to minimize, but not (no doubt the regreat of some) “through his head.”

–>

2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

Drops for Trump across the board, including a 2.5% drop nationally (almost outside the margin of error, ha ha), and a blue triangle on the mao for the first time.

* * *

Biden Defenestration:

‘Presidential Agonistes, Half a Century Apart” [Michael Austin, RealClearPolitics]. “The summers of 1974 and 2024 are political theater of the highest kind, though the former had at least the semblance of a civics lesson, while the latter is pure bare-knuckle politics. They are also a reminder, in our digital and cable news age, that the power of the political party remains unchallenged and the most potent component of our political system. If Donald Trump’s resurgence, even after being written off in 2020, is due to his dominating his party, both Richard Nixon’s and Joe Biden’s demise was due to having been abandoned by theirs.”

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The Campaign Trail:

* * *

The VP choice:

Kamala (D): “Tim Walz. Hell yeah.” [Dave Karpf, Now and Then]. “Walz’s biography reads like a character ripped from the Aaron Sorkin extended universe. Small town boy from Nebraska, couple decades of military service, high school history teacher, part-time high school football coach who took the team to the state championship… went on to serve five terms in Congress as a Democrat in a conservative district, then became Governor and, with a small Democratic majority in the statehouse, signed a huge slate of progressive initiatives into law. But he doesn’t talk like a safe, scripted centrist. The guy has spent the past few weeks pitching a comms perfect-game. Every media interview has been clipped and shared on social media. He rolled out the ‘Trump and Vance are just plain weird‘ attack line. Listen to the guy on Ezra Klein’s podcast: he manufactures aww shucks midwestern-dad energy and converts it into body blows against his opponents. This is one of the interesting points about social media this election cycle. Twitter and Facebook aren’t anything like they once were. TikTok is mostly for young people, but the other social networks are still trying to emulate TikTok. Which means, effectively, that we’ve circled back around to short-form video being the dominant communications strategy. Tim Walz gives fantastic soundbites. And fantastic soundbites are what fuel viral media right now.” • I must confess that the video where Walz allowed his daughter to inveigle him into going on a heartstopping ride at the State Fair (or whichever fair) made me sit up and take notice. Very fresh. And then along came the school lunches, and getting that done with a one-vote (?) majority (quite in contrast to national Democrat whinging). A clip:

Kamala (D):

I don’t agree with this at all. First, we don’t know what Kamala wants to get done:

(Of course, even if there were a platform, Kamala could be lying, as Democrats did continuously over Biden’s cognitive deterioration).

Second, making the assumption that Walz is a progressive instead of just another liberal (see here), Democrats have a long history of embracing progressives just before stabbing them in the back (see under the Biden Transition Team).

Third, personnel is policy. And Kamala has a lot of people in her circle who would look askance at, say, free school lunches without complex eligibility requirements. Picking one of many examples:

Finally — and I don’t hate Walz — if he’s everything we’re being told he is, why in the name of all that is holy isn’t he at the top of the ticket? Maybe if the Democrats hadn’t wired the primaries for Biden [sorry, that name again?] he would be.

Kamala (D): “Walz’s handling of BLM riots, strict COVID rules under microscope after Harris VP pick” [FOX]. “Vice President Kamala Harris’ pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as a running mate will put the Democratic governor’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread riots in the state back in the national spotlight. ‘[H]e’s been a disaster for Minnesota and is by far the most partisan governor that I can remember having,’ Minnesota GOP Chairman David Hann told Fox News Digital last week. ‘Going back to 2020, certainly – he did nothing to try to stop the riots going on in Minneapolis. I think he was fearful of alienating his ‘progressive’ base, who were supporting the riots. Kamala Harris was raising money for the rioters.” And: “Meanwhile, critics point to Walz’s memorandum mandating indoor masking during the coronavirus pandemic, which he enacted in 2020 and ended in 2021. The Upper Midwest Law Center sued, calling the mandate unconstitutional, but an appellate court ultimately sided with Walz.” • Different framing:

“Unafraid to govern” (sounds like Stoller).

Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris chooses Tim Walz as running mate in US presidential election” [Financial Times]. Walz after a clip from 2021 went viral, in which Vance warned the US was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies”: “‘My God, they went after cat people — good luck with that. Turn on the internet and see what cat people do when you go after ‘em. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad,’ Walz said in one MSNBC appearance.” • Walz can stick the shiv in. I like that.

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Walz and Covid:

Kamala (D): “‘Buckle it up’: Walz orders MN to ‘stay at home’ to curb virus spread” [MPR News] (March 25, 2020 5:30 AM). “Gov. Tim Walz has ordered Minnesotans to stay at home for two weeks, at least, as part of the state’s ongoing efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus and COVID-19 disease. The order isn’t a complete lockdown and it allows essential activities and services to continue, Walz said. People will be allowed to exercise outdoors and visit the grocery store, for example, with proper social distancing. ‘Buckle it up for a few more weeks,’ the governor said. The order takes effect Saturday and lasts through April 10. Walz said it’s impossible to lessen the number of Minnesotans who will become infected with COVID-19, but the stay-home order is intended to push out the time of peak infections so there are intensive care unit beds available for those who need it. ‘The thing that Minnesota is going to do is ensure if you need an ICU, it’s there,’ Walz told the state in a livestreamed address Wednesday.” • Ah yes. “Flatten the curve.” We all did that, and then the PMC discovered they could work from home and have servants bring them stuff, at which point they threw the working class under the bus. Not Walz’s fault, but…

Kamala (D): “As cases fall and vaccination ramps up, Gov. Walz adjusts COVID-19 mitigation measures” [mpls downtown council] (March 12, 2021). “‘Minnesotans should continue to take simple steps to protect the progress we’ve made, but the data shows that we are beating COVID-19,’ said Governor Walz. ‘Our vaccine rollout is leading the nation, the most vulnerable Minnesotans are getting the shot, and it is becoming increasingly more safe to return to our daily lives. The sun is shining brighter.’ As vaccines have an impact, life is slowly returning to normal. In February, Governor Walz announced a plan to return more students to the classroom, and 90 percent of schools now offer in-person learning, while 60 percent of teachers have been vaccinated. Minnesota is weeks ahead of schedule on vaccinations. Nearly 1.2 million Minnesotans and more than 70 percent of seniors have gotten a shot. ‘There are more good days now than bad days,’ said Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan.” • Handy chart (and I love the file name: reanimation_guidelines_210312.png):

Shows a prime difficulty of lockdowns: They were organized by lines of business (churches, bars, etc.) instead of by ventilation (and surely a regulatory formula could have been worked out, even in 2020). Of course, in 2021, as today, the public health establishment was dug in against airborne transmission, so that wasn’t “politically feasible” as we say.

Kamala (D): “Walz: Jensen’s COVID-19 stance is ‘killing people'” [Minnesota Reformer] (August 10, 2022). “‘Putting out false information around COVID, yourself not being vaccinated and telling others (not) to — it’s killing people,’ Walz told MPR News editor Mike Mulcahy. ‘I think giving a platform for that … that’s not who we are.’ … .In the early days of the pandemic, [his gubernatorial opponent Scott Jensen] called COVID-19 a “mild four-day respiratory illness which poses little risk to more than 95% of people.'” • Rhetorically, that’s the stuff to give the troops.

Lambert here: Maybe Covid will finally enter the political arena through the back door. From my distinctly minority perspective, neither party has a record they can coherently defend. Trump instituted Operation Warp Speed (OWS), which if it had included sterilizing nasal vaccines, would have been seen as a moonshot, instead of the technical triumph it was. Unfortunately, Trump’s base is disportionately anti-vax, so he can’t take credit for vax, and the Democrats won’t give it to him. Further, Trump modeled masking by denigrating it, when it ought at the very least to have been a fallback position. Meanwhile, Biden took the great gift that Trump gave him, and squandered it (which their base prevents the Republicans from saying): Rather than pursue a layered strategy that included vax, with a second OWS for mitigation, Biden bet the farm on vax, most especially with vaccine mandates. Unfortunately, the vaccines didn’t prevent transmission, safety studies were hardly optimal, and we ended up with wave after wave of mass infection while CDC continued Trump’s work by simultaneously ruining non-pharmaceutical interventions. Across-the-board elite denial that Covid was even a problem, combined with social norming has worked for awhile, but reality does seem to be breaking through (give it a couple more years). How is Biden’s strategy defensible? At least the Republican messaging about freedom — vax bad, no mandates, no masking — is coherent. What do Democrats have in response? “We did our best”? They didn’t!

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Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris earns majority of Democratic roll call votes, achieving historic presidential nominatio” [ABC]. • Historic in that Harris is the first candidate ever to run for President whle never winning a single primary running for President.

Kamala (D): “The Crucial Week Is Here. Can Kamala Keep This Crazy Enthusiasm Going?” [Michael Tomasky, The New Republic]. Extended liberalgasm, oh good. “It was impossible to predict the explosion [(!!)] of relief, enthusiasm, and sense of mission that has greeted Kamala Harris’s presumptive—and now, as of Friday, official—nomination for president. I choose those three descriptors with special care because each represents a critical component of a political phenomenon that has been greater than any of us—most definitely including Donald Trump—could have imagined.” Actually, the key descriptor is “explosion.” More: “This third week of the Harris candidacy is a crucial one. The initial burst of excitement is fading, a little, which is inevitable. The veep announcement and whistle-stop tour are well timed to regenerate excitement and keep the money rolling in. Non-MAGA America is united and energized. The mission this week is to keep it that way.” • Tomasky seems to believe that the Democrats have what used to be called a “natural majority” (“Non-MAGA America”). For good or ill, they don’t–

Kamala (D): “Is Kamala Harris beating Donald Trump in the polls?” [VOX]. “Kamala Harris entered the presidential race a little over two weeks ago as an underdog. Since then, Democrats’ vibes have been fantastic — and Harris’s polling has gotten better. But it hasn’t improved as much as you might think. At least not yet. Per polls, Trump is no longer the clear favorite to win. But Harris hasn’t taken a clear lead either. Polling, particularly in swing states, suggests an extremely close race that could go either way.” • IOW, Non-MAGA America is half the country, give or take.

Kamala (D): “” [Lee Fang]. “Even in this dynamic, there are two Kamalas. In her first bid for office, Harris leaned into her Indian background. She introduced herself to the local press as ‘Kamala Devi Harris,’ using her full name. ‘In terms of Indian culture, my name represents the beautiful lotus flower,’ she said at one of her first campaign events. ‘I grew up with a strong Indian culture,’ she told Asian Week in 2003. By the time she ran for the presidency in 2019, the mention of her Indian background had been removed from her campaign. An archive of her website shows that her biography listed her as the ‘second African American woman in history to be elected to the U.S. Senate.’ There was no hint of her South Asian lineage.” • Chameleon…

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Trump (R): “At Trump rally in Atlanta, Black attendees say Kamala Harris playing ‘race card’ for votes” [USA Today]. ” When Vice President Kamala Harris entered the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump tried to dismiss her identity as the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent on a major party ticket by labeling her a “DEI hire,” suggesting that her historic achievements are due to her race and gender. The talking point seemed to be sticking with Trump supporters at a rally in Atlanta on Saturday, even among those who identified as people of color. Andrea Smith, a Black woman who volunteers with the Trump campaign and is running for state representative in Georgia’s District 41 north of Atlanta, asserted that Democrats were leaning into identity politics to win the election.” • Here is a fine example–

Trump (R): ‘‘Ruthless’: How Kamala Harris Won Her First Race” [Politico] (2019). “Harris vaulted past Fazio and into the runoff, where she defeated Hallinan in a landslide and became the state’s first African-American district attorney. Not only did she cut into Hallinan’s progressive base—especially with black and female voters—but she also carried more conservative areas of the city, garnering votes that had gone to Fazio. The campaign’s closing argument was, Prozan said, ‘one of the most effective mail pieces that we did.’ The words were familiar and prosaic: ‘It’s time for a change.’ The images told the story. Harris’ staff had gone to the library and retrieved photographs of more than a century’s worth of San Francisco’s district attorneys, every one from 1900 to 2003. They were all white men.” • Of course, the “change” (where have I heard that before?) it was “time for”… Not quite perhaps all that one might have hoped for. The mailer:

So if we hear anything like “never played the race card”… No.

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Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr. grapples with torrent of negative headlines” [The Hill]. “Democratic groups have taken the lead in attacking Kennedy, with the White House staying out of the mix. The DNC has been at the forefront of fighting back against what party officials see as a possible threat to President Biden and now Vice President Harris’s candidacy against former President Trump. Other liberal outfits have also joined in their effort, with several organizations holding conference calls to outline his mounting flaws.” • Kennedy responds:

I see the logic. But it’s a big ask.

Kennedy (I): “Dead bear another strange twist in RFK Jr’s faltering campaign” [BBC]. “In a move to get ahead of a lengthy profile published on Monday in the New Yorker magazine, he released a video where he discusses an accident involving a bear cub a decade ago – and the unlikely series of events that followed.” • Hilarity ensues:

Peter Luger has a butcher shop. Why not put the bear in the fridge?

Kennedy (I):

Sigh.

Spook Country

“EXCLUSIVE – Federal Air Marshal Whistleblowers Report Tulsi Gabbard Actively Under Surveillance via Quiet Skies Program” [UncoveredDC]. This article is noticeable light on actual documentation. Still, since the story is out there: “In an exclusive breaking story, several Federal Air Marshal whistleblowers have come forward with information showing that former U.S. Representative and Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is currently enrolled in the Quiet Skies program. Quiet Skies is a TSA surveillance program with its own compartmentalized suspected terrorist watchlist. It is the same program being weaponized against J6 defendants and their families. Quiet Skies is allegedly used to protect traveling Americans from suspected domestic terrorists…. For what the Federal Government calls national security reasons, an individual is enrolled in the program without knowledge. Teams of Federal Air Marshals are assigned to individuals, following and tracking them from when they enter the airport and then on all their flights and transits until they reach their destination. Enrolled individuals usually have a Quad S (SSSS) on the bottom right-hand corner of their boarding passes, but not always. They are often flagged for extra searches, frequently so lengthy that they miss their flights.” • Hmm. In case you get an SSSS, here’s more.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Hollywood Loves Drama Of Kamala Harris’ Veepstakes Decision, But Has A Clear Favorite” [Deadline]. “‘This is like a mini-primary for the second spot, with one vote that matters,’ a producer with deep Democratic donor ties told Deadline. ‘Harris can do no wrong right now, so whoever she picks people will get behind,’ he went on to say.” • A primary with one vote is nothing like a primary, at least not a democratic one. What’s wrong with these people?

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

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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!

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Maskstravaganza

“Are You Serious? Covid-19 Hasn’t Gone Away?” [John Snow Project]. “Instead of blithe nihilism and the abandonment of principles of public health that have advanced human society for centuries, governments could instruct their public health and regulatory agencies to insist on cleaner air policies, mandating air quality that protects human health, in the same way we mandate water quality. Malaria prevention is not perfect, but that doesn’t stop us using every possible tool at our disposal to minimize the impact of the disease around the world. Many engineers have decried the idea of needing a random trial to prove physics, but a Norwegian team did one anyway, examining whether surgical masks help prevent infection by respiratory viruses.They found surgical masks were 30% effective at reducing symptoms of respiratory infection17. This is no surprise. It’s long been established that surgical masks have a minor impact on airborne infection control, but they aren’t worn by anyone who is serious about avoiding SARS-CoV-2 or any other respiratory pathogen. A 2008 UK Health and Safety Executive evaluation demonstrated that surgical masks provide a 6-fold reduction against aerosolized virus, while respirator masks provide at least a 100-fold reduction18. Perhaps one of the biggest calamities of the COVID-19 pandemic was robbing people of one of the most effective forms of protection: respirator masks. Many people believe masks don’t work, or if they do that they primarily protect others from infection and don’t protect the wearer. This belief is completely unfounded and wholly wrong. Respirators have long been used to protect people working with some of the most dangerous pathogens imaginable, and FFP3/N99 respirators have been shown to offer up to 100% protection against SARS-CoV-2 in healthcare settings19. Imagine how many lives might have been saved and how many cases of Long Covid could have been avoided globally if people had been told that a well fitted mask of the correct grade (N95/FFP2 or higher) can offer complete protection against infection. We don’t need a magic bullet to solve the problem of COVID-19.” • Say what you will for blithe nihilism, at least it’s an ethos.

–>

Sequelae: Covid

Big if true:

I read the article, but can’t penetrate the prose. Perhaps an expert reader will oblige.

Celebrity Watch

We’ll always have Paris:

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TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC July 29: Last Week[2] CDC July 22 (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC August 3 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC July 20

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data August 5: National [6] CDC July 13:

Positivity
★ National[7] Walgreens August 5: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic July 27:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC July 15: Variants[10] CDC July 15:

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

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular.

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

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveling off. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) An optimist would see a peak.

[8] (Cleveland) Slowing. Comment on the Cleveland Clinic:

Ka-ching.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time rasnge. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) Same deal. Those sh*theads.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Logistics: “United States LMI Logistics Managers Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Logistics Manager’s Index in the US increased to 56.5 in July 2024, the highest in four months, compared to 55.3 in June, and marking eight consecutive months of expansion in the logistics sector. Transportation continued its recovery, as Transportation Prices went up (+2.8 to 63.8, the highest since May of 2022) and Transportation Capacity expanded slightly (+0.9 to 50.9). It is the 3rd consecutive month the prices have exceeded capacity due to excess capacity contraction and increasing demand. Respondents are predicting that these dynamics will hold, suggesting that the freight recession is potentially ending. Warehousing also remained strong….”

* * *

“The consumer may be preparing to leave the party.” [Logistics Report, Wall Street Journal]. “From McDonald’s to Mercedes-Benz, executives say that many consumers in China and the U.S. are pulling back on spending. …[T]he countries are under different stresses, with U.S. consumers increasingly showing signs of weariness after a run of high inflation while Chinese households focus more on saving than spending. If consumers in the U.S. do falter, it would mean a double whammy for multinational companies, which have been facing weak demand in China. PepsiCo sounded an early alarm on consumer spending in both the U.S. and China, and reported a 4% drop in North American sales volume in the latest quarter. Many American importers have been rushing in goods early ahead of the traditional peak season to get ahead of shipping disruptions. A pullback by consumers would leave them with another inventory overhang.” • Not the same as what economist Alfred Kahn memorable called “a banana,” but nevertheless a sign of weekness. And that early shipping data point is interesting.

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 21 Exreme Fear (previous close: 19 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 47 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 6 at 11:51:12 AM ET. I turn my back for one minute…..

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Where are there people getting their news?!

Book Nook

“Uncovered Euripides fragments are ‘kind of a big deal'” (press release) [University of Colorado Boulder]. “Working together, Trnka-Amrhein and renowned classics Professor John Gibert embarked on many months of grueling work, meticulously poring over a high-resolution photo of the 10.5-square-inch papyrus. They made out words and ensured that the words they thought they were seeing fit the norms of tragic style and meter. Eventually, they became confident that they were working with new material from two fragmentary Euripides plays, Polyidus and Ino.” And: “Polyidus retells an ancient Cretan myth in which King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë demand that the eponymous seer resurrect their son Glaucus after he drowns in a vat of honey.” • What.

Zeitgeist Watch

“‘No Salt'” [Jake Seliger, The Story’s Story]. “So I opted for something simple: a shakshuka. Tomatoes, vegetables, sauce, and mild flavorings, topped with feta cheese, eggs, and basil. I reached for the salt, and found the bottle empty. I’m not sure why, but I started weeping. No salt. No salt means that he’s not cooking. He’ll never cook again.”

“Is The Collapse Of Civilization Boring To You?” [Nate Bear, ¡Do Not Panic!]. “[A] bunch of environmental groups came out in support of Kamala Harris just two days after she renounced her previous anti-fracking position. She did this because she wants to win pro-fracking votes in Pennsylvania. Maybe no one has told her that there probably won’t be an entity called Pennsylvania at some point in the next few decades if fracking continues. Or that Trump has a lock on the pro-fracking bloc and no one she wants to convince of her new anti-fracking stance will believe her. Fracking, of course, has seen the US surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest oil producer. Fracking initiated by Obama[1] and continued by Trump, then by Biden and will continue under Harris or Trump 2.0. How thin the politics. How meagre the demands of some activists have become.” And relevant to yesterday’s post: “I was thinking about this when I sat outside every evening for four nights on an island in southern Europe, on a well-lit patio at the end of quiet, carless street expecting to see moths swarming the lights. I know well the trouble insects are in, but I still expected to see moths. I saw one. Moths are critical night-time pollinators, an essential part of the ecology that supports our food chain. In Australia, a type of moth that you could find by the tens of thousands in individual caves suddenly disappeared in the space of a few months. How quickly things can collapse.” • Thinking of this post, and the comments to yesterday’s post on an insect apocalypse, it occurs to me that this “Silent Summer” on a grand scale might be something that everybody can be brought to see and to understand. That hasn’t been easy to do with climate change. NOTE [1] The best starting point for the fracking timeline is Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force (and the “Halliburton Loophole”) under Bush the Younger, not Obama. It’s bipartisan!

Climate

“Uncertainties too large to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data” [Science]. “One way to warn of forthcoming critical transitions in Earth system components is using observations to detect declining system stability. It has also been suggested to extrapolate such stability changes into the future and predict tipping times. Here, we argue that the involved uncertainties are too high to robustly predict tipping times. We raise concerns regarding (i) the modeling assumptions underlying any extrapolation of historical results into the future, (ii) the representativeness of individual Earth system component time series, and (iii) the impact of uncertainties and preprocessing of used observational datasets, with focus on nonstationary observational coverage and gap filling. We explore these uncertainties in general and specifically for the example of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. We argue that even under the assumption that a given Earth system component has an approaching tipping point, the uncertainties are too large to reliably estimate tipping times by extrapolating historical information.” • Oh.

The Gallery

“Andy Warhol’s lost Amiga art found” [The Silicon UnderGround]. “To a casual viewer, they look like low resolution images with a very limited number of colors, and it’s not completely unfair to say they bear some resemblance to something my kids would have created in Microsoft Paint when they were little. But when I showed the images to my wife, a former high school art teacher, the first thing she noticed was his choice of colors. He deliberately chose colors that contrasted with each other, and the other colors he used were colors you would get from mixing two or more of the other colors he used. Rule number one of painting, she said, is to never use black or brown, but make your own from the other colors you’re using. Warhol’s images contain odd shades that result from mixing other colors in the image together. When you look at Andy Warhol paintings, his style suited these specific tools. He often worked from photographs, creating stark images containing bold flood fills with only a few colors. Sometimes he would cut up photographs, or have someone else cut up the photographs, then he would arrange the pieces and then paint what he saw. With the Amiga, he could do all of this digitally. So the choice of Andy Warhol to demonstrate how to use the machine was a brilliant idea. This computer with advanced graphics capabilities for its time, and the ability to multitask and switch between different tools so he could cut up and resize images and then paste the result into the image he was working on couldn’t have suited him any better if he’d designed it himself. Problem was, he didn’t know how to use a computer.” • Worth a read!

Turner as Giger?!

News of the Wired

I am not yet feeling wired today.

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KW writes: “Fog on the Marsh, Madison,Wisconsin. The Ho Chunk word for fog is ruują.”

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About Lambert Strether

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

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114 comments

  1. Screwball

    This is off topic, so I apologize to start with, but I am frankly shocked. Let me explain in as few words as possible.

    I live in Ohio, if that matters (it might). I had a neighbor who died last summer. He was alone and his kids are now the executor of his estate. They are having an online auction to sell all his belongings. This is where it gets nuts.

    I heard yesterday from another neighbor it was now online, so I checked. Over 100 pictures showing items to be bid on. Truck, motorcycle, lawn tracker, clothes, furniture, household items, and GUNS. Lot’s and lots of guns (and ammo). I about fell out of my chair when I saw the arsenal this guy possessed. There were at least a dozen or more long guns, including an AR-15, 8 or 10 hand held guns, and dozens of pictures of boxes of ammo. Unbelievable.

    I know people do this, and I knew the guy (grew up with him actually) so I wasn’t worried about him. I knew he had some weapons, but this many? Wow! No idea. But that’s not the part that worries me. Here are dozens and dozens of pictures on a Auctioneer’s website showing these items you can bid on.

    How can you do this – legally? Apparently, you can. Seems too easy. Then, the what if…What if some crazy person watches these auction sites for the very reason to find guns? Not a stretch of the imagination at all. There is thousands of dollars worth of guns and ammo – what prevents some criminal that sees this and decides to break in and steal it all. After all, they are advertising this – on the internet – and criminals don’t care.

    This may be common, I have no idea, but I doesn’t make me feel too comfortable living less than 100 yards away from what appears to be a small armory and no one home.

    Sorry, had to vent.

    1. MaryLand

      Possibly the heirs have the items you are worried about stashed elsewhere. They must have thought about theft.

      1. Screwball

        I don’t think so. My garage faces the house. I sit in the garage at night all the time. If there is anyone there, I see them. I also have 2 security cameras that show the house. I have not witnessed anything being taken out. Everything is in there, I’m sure.

    2. flora

      He sounds like a gun collector and possibly a hunter or target shooter. It’s a sport. I imagine the guns and ammo have since been removed to elsewhere or are kept in a locked gun safe in the house. I wouldn’t worry about it. / my 2 cents

      1. barefoot charley

        Many people in small towns especially collect guns like Wuk collected coins and stamps. They’re well-machined machines, some with interesting histories. And like anything else, once you’ve got the bug . . .

        1. Wukchumni

          I was that rare numismatist who didn’t collect coins, stopped collecting when I was 14.

          The only thing I ever really collected was memories of being in the wilderness, light as a feather they were.

          I know a few ‘gun collectors’ or so is often the claim, so as not to be thought of as a gunbug for having oh so many, and oodles of ammo.

          I suppose you could put the hurt on somebody by throwing a 1975 Panama 20 Balboa at them, but nobody ever got shot by one.

      2. Jack

        Guns are a repository of wealth in Ohio, like gold or stocks are elsewhere. Gun shows are trading floors. Guns are stolen from homes frequently.

        1. ambrit

          Around here, guns are often stolen from out of cars and trucks. Lazy or inattentive people will leave the firearm in the auto overnight. Petty thieves break into cars here regularly, even when parked in driveways and garages. Last week, a local crook was caught on camera stealing tools from inside a garage, by the cameras from across the street. There are a very few positives concerning the Panopticon.

        2. Harold

          This is true of rural Maryland where I vacation sometimes.. They may not have a bank account or a credit card, but when someone goes to a gun show, all the neighbors put in an order.

    3. Anonymous

      Quick googling says that there are more guns in USA than citizens. If you don’t own one, someone has two. If none of your friends or family members does, then some guy have to compensate for all of you. Complaining about too many guns in USA is like complaining about too many white people in Scotland.

      1. Yves Smith

        That is not accurate. A few people own many guns. My father, a mere hunter and not a gun fetishist, owned at least ten rifles for different purposes and a couple of pistols (to finish off wounded critters). He stored them all unloaded under lock and key and kept his ammo locked separately. The gun humpers routinely own over 100.

        1. Anonymous

          Which part is not accurate? Are there not more guns than people? If that is true, and not everyone owns a gun (especially kids, and significant percentage of females), then some guys must own loads of guns in order for math to check out. It’s just like with wealth, and pretty much everything else in the Land of the Equals.

          As far as complaining about too many white people in Scotland goes,
          https://x.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/status/1627369836907986947

          1. Yves Smith

            It is not even close to “everyone owns a gun”. You are doubling down on Making Shit Up.

            I take serious umbrage when commenters, particularly anons who can’t be dinged for their violations, play broken record, which along with Making Shit Up is a violation of site Policies. You did not bother finding facts before persisting in your bogus argument.

            Only 1/3 of adults own a gun, FFS.

            https://ammo.com/articles/how-many-gun-owners-in-america

            .

            1. Anonymous

              No one ever claimed that “everyone owns a gun”. It’s a quote that you just made up, for some reason (while blaming me for making stuff up).You are doubling down of fighting a strawman, which is not me.

              What I did say is that “there are more guns in USA than citizens”, which is completly different thing. Your link says that there are “393 million civilian-owned firearms in the U.S.” How many citzens are in the USA? Is the number of guns bigger than the number of citizenes? If so, then that claim of mine is right, mathematically. Distribution of those guns is unequal, which is what I also wrote in both posts (and the link agrees with).

              I have no problem admitting that some things I wrote are indeed bogus, but it would make sense to point me to them first, instead of the straman stuff.

              P,S, Everyone is anon on sites where no registration is required. You should not discriminate between comments based on username, but based on content.

              1. Yves Smith

                You never ONCE looked up what the facts on distribution of gun ownership were. It is incumbent on commentors to provide links substantiating their assertions, particularly when challenged.

                You said in various formulas both that some owned a lot of guns AND kept depicting gun ownership as prevalent, when that population is still a minority, even if a large minority. Since you were refusing to provide data, I gave the Economist treatment of your position: “Simplify and exaggerate”. What I said was not inconsistent with what you wrote.

    4. scott s.

      Not an expert on Ohio, but it appears that “(A) No person shall do any of the following:
      (1) Recklessly sell, lend, give, or furnish any firearm to any person prohibited by § 2923.13 or 2923.15 of the Revised Code from acquiring or using any firearm”

      So goes a bit further than federal law on in-state transfers, but in general you can transfer firearms in-state between state residents. Ohio does have additional requirements for “dangerous ordnance” which mostly tracks federal NFA definition of “firearm”.

      From a liability standpoint suspect most auctions would require transfer through an FFL.

      As far as owning a few firearms, don’t see the problem, nor owning ammo for them.

    5. kcp

      I’m also from Ohio! Grew up near dayton and went to OSU. Anyway – one thing that occurred to me while reading this is that if anyone pursues a hobby for long enough, they will accumulate some equipment. For instance, if I kept all the tennis rackets I’ve ever owned, I’d have maybe 20? I just don’t, because at some point they’re too old to be useful. Golf clubs might fall into a similar category? Guns are kind of different, in that they don’t go bad and they always have historical interest.

      I also think it’s absolutely bonkers to have 100 guns and I think your discomfort is reasonable but I can kinda understand how you’d end up with a bunch of guns at the end of your life if you collect them for 30-40 years.

    6. Vicky Cookies

      400,000,000 guns in America, but gun ownership doesn’t smooth this out over the population. It’s not as if everyone is walking around armed to the teeth; It is consumer hoards like your neighbors which push those numbers to where they are.

      Interesting history of this: after the Civil War, arms manufacturers (think Colt) had a surplus they needed to offload, and so made use of the public relations industry which was coming of age to do so. Exhibit Z in our continuing course on supply creating demand.

    7. kareninca

      People collect guns. Look at it this way – you lived all those years near this guy, and had no idea. He wasn’t doing anything bad with his guns. That is actually the norm for gun owners.

  3. Carolinian

    Waltz sounds like quite the health care expert. Did he get an MD after his teaching career? But then Sorkin style wonks just have to act smart and not necessarily be smart. After all it’s only television–oh wait.

    Of course Trump is a television guy too and not exactly a genius even though he declared himself one.

    And on the plus side at least it wasn’t onetime Bibi fanboy Josh. One wonders what Waltz thinks about Gaza or foreign policy in general since that’s a bit more in the presidential wheel house than fine tuning lockdowns.

    Bottom line: it’s all in the public’s hands now. Either way we’ll get what we asked for good and hard. But I wouldn’t necessarily say that an activist Democrat is a reassuring prospect unless his name is Roosevelt.

    1. Mikel

      “And on the plus side at least it wasn’t onetime Bibi fanboy Josh.”

      If elected, Kamala didn’t want to be looking over her shoulder for a projectile headed her way that would be blamed on Russia or Iran.

    2. Screwball

      He has a Tweet from Feb 21 (I think it was) that Minnesota supports Ukraine and their fight for freedom and democracy. I looked it up, it’s there. Just guessing he’s all in for more $$$$ to Z and the wars.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > Just guessing he’s all in for more $$$$ to Z and the wars

        Probably. I do think, though, that Shapiro actually joining the IDF was going the extra mile.

        The question that matters here, at the VP level in the Democrat Party, is how Waltz nets out compared to the alternatives….

        1. ambrit

          “..nets out..” We talking votes or dollars? (Silly question, I realize. But Walz as a funds-raiser is a cypher at the moment.)

    3. pjay

      Here’s the Middle East Eye assessment of Walz on Israel:

      https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/harris-vp-pick-tim-walz-and-his-views-palestine-israel-and-gaza-protests

      “Not only is Governor Walz an accomplished and beloved leader in the state of Minnesota, having been elected six times to the House of Representatives and twice to the governorship, but he is also a proud pro-Israel Democrat with a strong record of supporting the US Israel relationship,” Mark Mellman, a chair of DFMI [Democratic Majority for Israel], said in a statement.”

      Apparently Walz attended the Congressional ass-kissing session for Netanyahu as well; I don’t think he was holding up a ‘Genocide’ sign. He was slightly less critical toward pro-Palestinian protestors than Shapiro. Granted Shapiro’s comparing them to the KKK is a low bar.

      The FOX News response above illustrates what the Republican playbook will be. They want to smear Harris as a “radical leftist.” Walz, from Minnesota, will be the governor who let BLM run rampant and championed COVID lockdowns. Given that agenda, I hope Walz does have the sound-bite skills to counter that bulls**t. But I’m long past any “hope and change” expectations for any Democrat. I do think this was probably a smart choice by Harris’ handlers. But despite all the pro-Harris lollipops and rainbows in the media, I don’t think it will matter much.

      1. pjay

        To clarify, my reference to the Bibi ass-kissing session was to the one in 2015 when he was a member of Congress. Also nauseating, even if the conditions were not yet quite as genocidal.

      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        > The FOX News response above illustrates what the Republican playbook will be. They want to smear Harris as a “radical leftist.”

        I wish!

        > Walz, from Minnesota, will be the governor who let BLM run rampant and championed COVID lockdowns. Given that agenda, I hope Walz does have the sound-bite skills to counter that bulls**t.

        Yes, that will be interesting. Again, it’s interesting to see Covid enter politics through the back door. It would be nice if the Democrats could offer a full-throated, full-on defense of public health as such. I don’t think it’s in them, and they can’t on the policies they pursued.

      3. hk

        He does seem to have a quick mouth (ymmv as to he is actually witty). I can’t find the page now, but while glancing through RCP page earlier today, I saw him quoted as “Vance should get off the couch soon. See what I did there.” (Might not be an actual quote, as I can’t seem to track it down again.) Still, it seems to fit what I’ve seen of his character.

    4. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Waltz sounds like quite the health care expert.

      If you followed the Covid story, you know he was doing the best he could given CDC guidance. NC readers know the guidance was eugenicist bullshit, but that would have been hard for a politician to see and accept in 2020/2021, absent a public health establishment very different from the one we had at that time, or have today.

      Take the lockdowns. Libertarian grifters whinge about them, but they’re only quarantines, which have been with us since, IIRC, before the Black Death (and have a good track record). But as I point out, they were implemented by type of firm, so church-goers heard “We’re singling you out because you’re a church,” and not “We’re closing your doors because you have death-dealing ventilation for a space your size, just as we do for bars and corner stores.” Maybe if the public health establishment hadn’t been fighting them tooth and nail, some aerosol scientists could have broken through to an elected like Walz and shown the political advantages of a better approach. We’ll never know.

  4. flora

    Taibbi on Walz pick, no paywall.

    White Guys Are Back! Recapping the Tim Walz Rollout: ATW Live Tonight, 5:30 ET
    How close did Swami Walter Kirn come to predicting coverage of the Tim Walz-a-ganza? Tune in tonight for a brief live recap

    https://www.racket.news/p/white-guys-are-back-recapping-the

    One para from his post:
    “CNN Legal analyst Jeffery Evan Gold will have to consult a doctor for a Walz-on far exceeding four hours, making Peter Travers blush with reviews like “Coach Walz sells well from left to right,” “Nobody will believe this guy is anything but their neighbor,” and “America will love Coach Walz!” He’s authentic, jocular, everybody’s favorite uncle, and an affable, engaging, rural ex-teacher with “dad energy”….

    Sounds like the way the GOP sold us frmr Congressman Dennis Hastert back in the day. You remember “Coach Hastert.” / ;)

    2. AG

      watching…
      Trump and Vance I don´t care about.
      Her, I don´t like.
      The speech is bad. (as Kirn points out correctly)
      And as usual if a crook tells you everyone is a crook it goes down better than the crook calling the others crooks but herself a D.A…Well, nice fo you lady.
      See you at the exit polls…

    3. hk

      Yeah, Hastert is exactly what Walz reminded me of. Personally, I always thought Hastert was creepy amd I turned out to be right, fwiw.

    5. spud

      by picking Walz, shows just how badly the nafta democrats are doing in the rust belt. although not perfect, Walz has delivered universal concrete material benefits, something no nafta democrat has done since 1993.

      shapiro or kelly were perfect choices if the nafta democrats were pretty sure they have things sewn up.

      Walz does nothing for the nafta democrats outside the rust belt.

      in reality, by picking Walz, its a sign of weakness.

  5. ambrit

    “Historic in that Harris is the first candidate ever to run for President while never winning a single primary running for President.”
    Au contraire. Harris seems to have won the Hamptons Donor Primary Election. That is now the “concentrated essence” of American “popular opinion.” (For those allowed to have opinions.)
    The late Isaac Asimov had a story about the “Resident of the United States,” a statistically chosen “average representative” of the Public Will.
    Today, we have a “Donor of the United States” to guide our politics. Dare I say it? We are faced with a Cult: Donateism. The prime principle of which is that aspiring Politicos must have perfect obedience to the Ways of the Donors.

      1. ambrit

        Alas, I have it from those “in the know” that Hamptons Populism is not a defensible position.

  6. Mark Gisleson

    I know there are a lot Minnesotans reading NC and I’d love to be factchecked on this. My take is that most of the Minnesota legislative stuff is thanks to Lt Governor Flanagan. I don’t follow MN legislature closely enough to know the real story but all these programs and bills sound like classic Flanagan, not Walz.

    ???

    Walz picking Flanagan was a political coup, btw, and iced his gubernatorial primary victory over stiff competition.

    One last thing about Walz. Wherever he is, he’s glad to be there. He’s not there to do the speech, he’s there because, well hey, he’s got to be somewhere. If he’s distracted, it’s by something in the room not some idle passing thought. Not the same thing as small room skills, the public Walz seems to be the same whatever the size of the room and can always tell you where all the exits are.

    1. IM Doc

      I have concerns/questions –

      It seems to me that all the varsity team – Newsom, Whitmer, et al – sat this one out. Walz appears to me to be a back bencher – I had never seen his name until the past few weeks.
      The videos of his wife wanting to smell small businesses burning to the ground during the Floyd riots while looking out her window are not a good look – and just on that alone I have serious reservations.
      In July, he was on the White House lawn stating how mentally healthy Biden was. An almost instant disqualification for me to take him seriously.
      He seems to be all in on sending Zelensky as many billions as can be stored in Swiss bank vaults. Again – instantly disqualifying.
      And last but not least – and something I do not really understand – every single Jewish physician where I work – every last one – was instantly repelled by this choice. I cannot really tell any difference at all anymore between the parties and their Israel support other than the GOP admits it – the Dems just lie about it. It seems to me that is a huge voting group in the traditional Dem tradition. That cannot be good. But who am I to know?

      1. Mark Gisleson

        He’s the kind of guy who’s for whatever everyone else in the room wants. If he wasn’t, he’d find a new room to be in. He’s going to say what Harris wants him to say and since he’s been saying what Biden wanted him to say that won’t be a difficult transition.

        In truth he’s every bit as calculating and political as Amy Klobuchar but with much better staff relations. I don’t know him to be that deep on issues but he knows how to count votes.

        I guess my gut relies on what I see and not what I hear and in politics “what I hear” includes words that come directly out of someone’s mouth. The party has been very hardline on issues and Walz is not a boat rocker.

        Jewish concern sounds more like Zionist concerns as the other candidates are locked in on Israel. If he suddenly became President we might find the real Tim Walz to lead differently than he’s followed. At the least, I would expect greater pragmatism and that kind of approach would be terrifying to Zionists who’ve relied on the USA for levels of support that have been irrationally exuberant.

        High school teacher, football coach and top sergeant in the Guard and whatever stereotype just popped into your head, yes, that’s Tim Walz.

        1. Lambert Strether Post author

          > High school teacher, football coach and top sergeant in the Guard and whatever stereotype just popped into your head, yes, that’s Tim Walz.

          Gotta say I prefer that to Shapiro, who graduated from Georgetown and went straight into politics.

          1. MaggieNC

            Going to hit that invisible “LIKE” button… Preferred here also…appreciate the varied life experiences…

          2. ambrit

            Interesting that a comment I made about how going to Georgetown is the beginning of many political careers, (as in the careers begin the minute you start at the place,) got eaten by the Internet Dragons.

          3. Jonathan Holland Becnel

            I’ve met a lot of lazy good for nothing braggarts in the National Guard aka Nasty Girls.

            He talks a good vernacular like Trump but he’s an empty vessel to me. Much like Harris and Obama.

            *Just saw SoCal Rhinos 🦏 Post below mine about Walz abandoning his unit. HAH yeah because going to Afghanistan in the Guard SUCKSSSS*

            They will say anything to get elected.

          4. Googoogajoob

            Saw this somewhere in a run down – he’s the first person on the Democrat ticket in 16 years that isn’t a lawyer (Unless you consider Gore to not be one since he dropped out of college one year before graduating to run for Congress).

        2. Robert Gray

          > [Tim Walz] … top sergeant in the Guard …

          Something about this national guard service doesn’t ring true, especially the early years. According to wikipedia, he enlisted in 1981 at the age of 17. Eight years later he graduated from university and then

          > … accepted a teaching position for a year with WorldTeach in China.

          So the national guard lets junior enlisted men just swan off for a year, and to Tiananmen Square-era China of all places?!?

          ‘Teaching position’, eh? Maybe this warrants a little investigation.

      2. Socal Rhino

        Apparently he quit his National Guard unit shortly before it deployed to Iraq, to campaign for office. Source was a member of his unit, who says Walz abandoned his team.

        It’s early but he strikes me as someone who will delight the base that loved HRC. And, the analysts tell us, VPs do not have much impact on votes.

        I never expected our governor to accept a VP spot, he’ll plan to run in four years if Trump wins.

            1. Lambert Strether Post author

              This certainly has the odor of Swiftboating, a well-proven tactic. Not saying it is, but that’s the odor. If this confirms to pattern, an NGO similar to “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” will be set up. Let’s wait and see.

              I went to your link, Daily Wire, and (as I must admit I expected) it sent me to a Facebook page with an image of a letter on it (not a document, a letter). So that in itself is worthless because digital evidence is not evidence; a good first step would be actual reporting with an interviw of the Guardsman. Searching on the first words of the letter, I do find an interview with the New York Post, which is a mix of quotes from the Facebook image and what seems like a short conversation with the Guardsman, “confirming” it.

              From the outside, it looks like a long-running political feud, just like Swiftboat veterans. What would settle the matter would be a really good timeline that shows Walz’s service record.

              That said, the Democrats strangled my dog and left him for dead in 2016; and then gave body a good kick again in 2020, just to make sure. So I don’t have a dog in this fight; I find technical aspects exciting or interesting.

              If this pans out for the Trump campaign, it’s an example of (a) superior oppo by the Republicans, and (b) horrid staffwork by the Harris campaign (especially as Walz has been fighting with these guys for some years, from letters to the editor; surely they asked him about this in the “intense” vetting process conducted by Holder, et al.?) Of course, after the Harris campaign outright faked an entire dogpile based on Vance’s supposed adventures with a couch in Hillbilly Elegy, so I can only say “you reap what you sow”…

          2. Socal Rhino

            Could have worded it better, my “apparently” was meant to convey that this story is floating out there and supposedly comes from his unit. A rumor until researched. Not offering as evidence, if there is any truth to it the RNC opposition people will grab it.

            Two interesting observations from Kirn: First, he seriously doubts that Vance is afraid of Walz as a competing midwestern voice and (more surprising to me) Kirn thinks Vance comes out on top in that comparison, second, he described Walz as a Sinclair Lewis (also from Minn) character, the type that wows the crowds until his secrets are exposed in the end.

            Bottom line is, he seems like the base will like him, unknown if he can help win any undecided voters.

            1. Lambert Strether Post author

              > Could have worded it better, my “apparently”

              Thank you. The comment just above took a good deal of time to write; I don’t find the unevidenced repetition of party talking points particularly edifying to the readership. It’s all the came as Vance’s non-couch, to me, until proven.

              I grant that the Democrats are capable of lying, deception, and, shall we say, a certain amount of mental flexibility, for lying to themselves and to us about Biden’s issues with cognition for at least months (more likely, years) but only childishly binary, tribal thinking would imagine that the other party is not capable of exactly the same behavior.

            1. Jonathan Holland Becnel

              Technically I think the National Guard’s proper retirement starts at 25 Yrs and you get even more at 30 Yrs.

      3. Pat

        In some ways I appreciated the BLM protests in NYC more, the organized shoplifters used them to go after the big stores. Small businesses got hit as well, but the pain was more evenly spread than usual.

        But that is just a side note. I want to take your list with one addition for myself – promoting and passing gender affirming anything is an immediate disqualification for me anymore.

        But then I also have a distinct problem with electing people who say they are saving Democracy that circumvented the entire democratic process to get the nomination. (Biden might have been more show than democratic but somebody at least voted for him.)

        1. hk

          Yes. The entire Democrat Party has pulled this con on the American people, throwing away democracy in the name of “Our Democracy ™” This, I can never forgive. I can’t support this kind of people and I’ll have to make a sincere effort at pretending to like their enemies.

          2. John Anthony La Pietra

            There are alternatives in many if not most states. You could look it up. Or you could ask your local League of Women Voters or analogue, or your state or local elections office. Or if you have a particular alternative in mind, ask them.

            (Or if you can’t do any of that in your situation, I authorize Lambert to share my e-mail with you . . . so you can tell me your e-mail and your home state or territory.)

      4. Lambert Strether Post author

        > It seems to me that all the varsity team – Newsom, Whitmer, et al – sat this one out.

        Good. Now Newsom can spend his valuable time bulldozing homeless encampments. Sometimes the varsity needs to be purged.

        1. ambrit

          A good book title for a Newsome biography would be “The Grapes of Getty.” (“The Little Foxes” is already taken.)

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        Larry Sabato makes a good comment in USA Today:

        “It’s not very pleasant. The truth is, none of us is a saint,” said University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato. “We forget, they’re human beings. And in fact, they’re very, very human.”

        I could do with less moralizing and heavy breathing from all sides. Readers may correct me, but I believe I do try to restrict my moralizing to the topic areas of kicking down and (more globally) screwing over the working class. Hence my focus on Walz’s Covid record, given the million+ deaths due to Trump but especially Biden’s Covid policy*. Those deaths and that policy are, to me, more important — given the above caveats! — than gotchas from twenty or forty years ago, especially gotchas presented with great certitude and urgency that, when poked at, need further work (by me) to figure out.

        NOTE * Sadly, I don’t think an elected existed with the capability to implement a layered Covid strategy with ventilation mandates but no vax mandate, and certainly none of the subject matter experts in aerosol tranmission would have been able to reach them, given the intransigence of the public health establishment. So no point blaming Walz for what couldn’t be done, that nobody else could do, or think of doing [pounds head on desk].

  7. converger

    The inspiring story of Mutai and Fernandez is basically true, but not from the current Olympics. It happened about 12 years ago. The provenance of the photos is unclear.

    It does not detract at all from what true honor looks like. But especially in these times, accuracy does matter.

    Also: an alternative link from link of Walz being awesome, for anyone who wants to share with somebody who has fled the Twittiverse. Of course he’s going to get thrown under the bus in a Harris administration. But having a genuinely decent person in the mix is still a Very Good Thing.

          1. Lunker Walleye

            Oops, Art Dog. This is supposed to be a reply to your comment about the Turner painting above..

  8. Neutrino

    Each day brings another opportunity to ponder that Garrison quote.
    In politics, how many are earnest? Who equivocate, excuse and retreat?
    They seem to want to be heard, except when continuing to stand by principles.

  9. Mikel

    “Uncertainties too large to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data” [Science].

    “…Here, we argue that the involved uncertainties are too high to robustly predict tipping times. We raise concerns regarding (i) the modeling assumptions underlying any extrapolation of historical results into the future, (ii) the representativeness of individual Earth system component time series, and (iii) the impact of uncertainties and preprocessing of used observational datasets, with focus on nonstationary observational coverage and gap filling….”

    (iv) – the impact of the development of new or improved instruments/tools that allow even better observations and revelations

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      And your point? As I read it, you can’t predict what’s going to happen with individual bubbles when the pot boils over. Not that the pot isn’t at the boiling point.

  10. ceco

    Re: JMW Turner – Did you mean “Turner as Geiger” or “Turner as Giger” as in “H.R. Giger”, the Swiss artist best known for his work on Alien, Dead Kennedys album posters, and Omni magazine covers?

  12. DavidZ

    Trump Assassination
    —————————-

    Am I being asked to believe that Trump, a billionaire, with millions in political contributions – doesn’t have his own security?

    or

    that the billionaires backing him can’t send some of their security people to safe guard their investments?

    To me the whole thing stinks of a set up!

      1. Fred1

        Assuming for the purpose of conversation, the article is accurate, a presidential candidate should have his own security consultant on staff with which the candidate has a long standing personal and professional relationship and that is paid exceptionally well by the candidate out of personal funds to review Secret Service security arrangements and if necessary to advise the candidate to cancel an appearance.

  13. Fastball

    Re: Waltz. Sorry. Anyone supporting Israel at this point with the full knowledge of what is going on is a bad human being. Not that progressives have shied away from being bad human beings, making their supposed caring about the state of humanity an exercise in moral pick and choose.

    1. Mark Gisleson

      If we ever get a POTUS who’ll say no to Israel, it will be one who ran for office saying just the opposite.

      You’d think that running against Israel would be a no brainer but everyone who does gets Bernie’d.

      1. Fastball

        I think it’s time to stop kowtowing to the Israel lobby in the U.S. With all the kids Israel has murdered, past time, really.

        1. JTMcPhee

          Show of hands: how many rooting for Eretz Israel? And how many rooting for the (um) Axis of Resistance? And how many praying that we won’t all wake up dead in the next few days or weeks?

            2. taunger

              Meh, seems off to me. Living in the upper CT valley in W. Mass, I feel certain that Northfield Mountain would be a strategic target. One of the largest pumped storage facilities in the nation – seems much more important strategically than the other “economic” targets noted in W. Mass. But then again, I have the advantage of reading NC in the hindsight of our current conflict with Russia.

  14. code_jockey

    Just back after visiting family all of whom are Dem loyalists. Any political talk was 100% why Trump is bad. I tried explaining why Trump succeeded in 2016 after the Obama sell out to the Wall St banks but got nowhere. Any criticism of the Dems’ failures post 2008 was met with accusations of being for Trump, Putin, and North Korea (?) . When I questioned Harris’ qualifications to be president one of my relatives emphasized that she was a prosecutor. However, I doubt very much that the “prosecutor versus the felon” thing is going to play to anyone but Dem loyalists. I don’t see how Harris, completely untested in primaries or campaigning nationwide is going to be able to convince independent voters especially in battleground states that she would be a competent president. When I mentioned voting third-party I was told that I was “wasting my vote”. After trying to explain why that wasn’t true and getting nowhere I gave up and sat out any further political discussions.

    I should add that my relatives are not stupid people. Two of them have Ph.D.s in the natural sciences but they have apparently been overly influenced by MSDNC which they watch religiously. I was unsuccessful in convincing another one that Putin was neither seeking to nor able to take over Europe when I questioned what we are doing in Ukraine.

    I’m not a political analyst but I have hard time seeing how Harris/Walz are going to win this election if they have little to offer than not being Trump. I guess they’re banking on abortion being their ace in the hole. Maybe that will be enough but I think the Dems are again underestimating Trump’s appeal to anyone who is not a Dem loyalist and come November will be blaming another loss to Trump on racism.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > I’m not a political analyst but I have hard time seeing how Harris/Walz are going to win this election

      By persuading a hundred thousand or so votes in the Swing States, especially the upper Midwest….

      How either side can claim to represent “America” when each side only represents about half of it… But then, Ive never been a team sports kind of person. The mentality is completely beyond me.

      Adding, MSNBC skews old, as does cable, and “legacy” media generally. It would be interesting to see what “The Youth” are doing on TikTok (given that Facebook is, I am told, virtually moribund, and Twitter is for insiders and professing insiders). But, I’m begging you, please don’t make me master another social media platform…

      And adding, in 2008, at least in my personal experience, enthusiastic children skewed parents towards Obama in the Democrat primaries. It would be interesting to see if that same phenomenon happens in 2024. I don’t think it would work for parents who are either Blue or Red MAGA, but it might work for undecideds, independents, and (former) double haters.

  15. petal

    *waves* Hi. I’m one of those SSSS people, too. If you guys knew me irl and what I’m up to in my time outside of work, you’d laugh so hard about this you’d need to change your pants.
    Our country is so familyblogged.

  16. hk

    Kirn just gave a perfect characterization of Walz before wrapping up: the PMC’s idea of middle America–Prairie Home Companion reference seems apt. This could work: I might hate being on the other end of the PMC stereotype, but I did love Keillor.

    Strange that, in a way, Dems seem to be poised to run a “it’s morning in America:” type campaign. (But Reagan’s first term was very tumutuous, too…)

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > the PMC’s idea of middle America–Prairie Home Companion reference

      Prairie Companion was stellar when Keillor added some bitterness, irony, and suppressed anger (thoroughly appropriate to the Midwest). Then he married his high school crush, got happy, and the show got all sugary sweet (“Sorry, but my diabetes is acting up real bad”). I wonder which version of Keillor Walz will turn out to be, because I don’t think sugary will make it for him.

      1. hk

        I think Vance already has the bitter part (Kirn made this point too, if I remember right.) Dems are selling, at least as I see it at this admittedly very early moment, a Prairie Home Companion version of “America is already great” (with a bit of exaggeration) argument. Kirn was noting that “Minnesota” (the metaphorical place rather than the real place) has all the “Hillbily Elegy Problems” but tries to keep them well-hidden, in line with that angle. And coming face to face with the problems of the real life MN will force the Democrats address the not-so-shiny parts of Walz;’s record (post-Floyd riots and general uptick in crime (and other “city” problems) kept coming up.) If the Dems try to force the saccharine part down America’s throat, as I suspect they will, that probably won’t work, as you rightly say.

  17. The Rev Kev

    “Polyidus retells an ancient Cretan myth in which King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë demand that the eponymous seer resurrect their son Glaucus after he drowns in a vat of honey.”

    I put that sentence through a semantic analyzer and it came out that King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë had a son named Glaucus who got caught up in a honeypot operation which was threatening his career as Prince so wanted him free of this entanglement. So this was not so much of a seer as a PR flak being called in. This Prince sounds like a bit of a Hunter Biden to me.

  18. Wukchumni

    Hello Walz, (hello) (hello)
    How’d things go for you today?
    Don’t you miss Joe
    Since he up and walked away?
    And I’ll bet you dread to spend
    Another anticipatory night waiting with me
    But lonely Walz, I’ll keep you company

    Hello window of opportunity (hello) (hello)
    Well I see that you were still there
    Aren’t you lonely
    Since our darlin’ Genocide Joe’ disappeared?
    Well, look here, is that a teardrop
    In the corner of Hunter’s pane?
    Now don’t you try to tell me that it’s rain

    He went away and left us all alone
    The way he planned
    Guess we’ll have to learn to get along
    With a lame duck if we can

    Hello glass ceiling, (hello) (hello)
    I’m gonna stare at you awhile
    You know I can’t sleep
    So won’t you bear with me awhile?

    We must all stick together to the script or else
    We’ll lost to the likes of his kind
    I’ve got a feelin’, she’ll be in for a long, long 90 day wonder kind of time
    (Hello, hello)

    Hello Walls, by Faron Young

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mdKXsJCYYc

    1. B24S

      Wuk- I owe you an apology. The other day you suggested we listen to an alternative version of “White Rabbit” by some performer I’d never heard of (there’s lots of ’em). My thoughts were to effect of, if you were anywhere back then, flying on a couple hundred mics, with the Airplane cranked to 11, how in the heck could anyone else do it justice?

      After a few days I decided I could at least be polite, and give a listen.

      So I hereby apologize. That was, uhm, real good. Actually, I was cackling away (cackling isn’t trademarked by some lady, is it?). My wife liked it too, as do the few up here in the Michigan woods I’ve shown it to. Unfortunately, we have to go back to civilization, and California, tomorrow.

      Anyway, thank you. And I now have something to tell the boys to check out…

      1. Wukchumni

        Molly Tuttle and Golden Rainbow are quite something, glad to have turned you and yours onto such talent.

    2. Mark Gisleson

      I read this one thinking it was based on ELO’s song that starts out with a hello and then talks about telephone lines. Still worked (I just half remember songs, not a singing in the shower kind of guy).

  20. J.

    The covid spike paper is interesting because it shows that the mRNA vaccine spike protein is not toxic to cells in the same way as the wild type spike protein.

    The function of the spike protein is to fuse the virus membrane with the cell membrane. To do this, the spike first binds with proteins or sugars on the outside of the cell (the “host cell receptor”). After that the spike protein is cleaved by a protease on the cell membrane, which causes it to change shape, which in turn causes the virus membrane to fuse with the cell membrane and lets the virus into the cell.

    Infected cells make spike protein and it sticks out all over the cell membrane so it can be incorporated into new virions budding out of the cell, but if the spike protein hasn’t budded off the cell yet and the infected cell bumps into another cell, the spike proteins hanging off it can trigger fusion of the infected cell’s membrane to the other cell. Eventually you get a big multinucleated mess called a syncytium that is several sick infected cells stuck together. Syncytial cells senesce (start to die) and make heart disease worse in the mice they were looking at.

    The spike protein used in the mRNA vaccines has been changed slightly so it can’t be cleaved by the cell membrane protease, and therefore it can’t undergo the conformation change that triggers the membrane fusion between the virus and the cell.

    The authors found that cells making the wild-type spike protein only, without the rest of the virus, were sufficient to cause formation of syncytia and cell senescence. Extracellular vesicles containing the spike protein without the rest of the virus were also able to cause formation of syncytia and cell senescence. However cells making the vaccine spike protein did not form syncytia and did not trigger cell senescence.

    tl;dr: The wild type spike protein is directly toxic to cells and the vaccine version is not.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > tl;dr: The wild type spike protein is directly toxic to cells and the vaccine version is not.

      Thanks very much. That’s what the Tweet said; but Tweets don’t always match the linked papers….

  21. SocalJimObjects

    Sarcasm to follow …….

    Breaking News from Fox: Tim Walz is a CCP plant reporting directly to Xi Jinping!!!

    https://www.newsweek.com/tim-walz-kamala-harris-vp-china-connection-explained-1935361

    Having a VP who can speak “some Chinese” is certainly handy, but I’ve search Youtube for videos of Walz speaking Mandarin, and so far I have not been able to find any. Odds are his Mandarin is worse than Zuckerberg’s, but I am happy to be proven wrong.

  23. SocalJimObjects

    Good news on the Coronavirus front? https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240731/p2a/00m/0sc/043000c

    “A research team led by a Kyoto University professor announced that they have successfully developed immune cells capable of targeting and attacking cells infected with the coronavirus using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), which have the ability to differentiate into various cell types. ”

    But ……….

    “Clinical trials are set to begin around fiscal 2027 with the aim to launch practical use by fiscal 2029. ”

    There’s still time before the Jackpot …. or at least one hopes so.

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