By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Blue-and-white Mockingbird, Montaña de Izopo–Sector Las Moras, Francisco Morazán, Honduras. “Longer cut of quiet song of clipped low phrases with sudden louder bursts interspersed, including mechanical-sounding vocalizations. Also heard are Painted Redstart, Dusky-capped Flycatcher, Wilson’s Warbler, Orange-billed Nightingale-Thrush, and Hairy Woodpecker.”
In Case You Might Miss…
- CIA Democrats.
- Kamala and Biden teams at odds.
- Trump singing and dancing Town Hall not the debacle portrayed.
- Boeing to borrow billions, delays 777X, plans drastic white-collar cuts.
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 thirty days to go!
Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:
If you ignore the entire concept of margin of error and go with the narrative, another good week for Trump, especially in MI and PA, tbough not, oddly, in the two hurricane swing states, GA and NC. Of course, we on the outside might as well be examining the entrails of birds when we try to predict what will happen to a subset of voters (undecided; irregular) in a subset of states (swing), and the irregulars especially might as well be quantum foam, but presumably the campaign professionals have better data, and have the situation as under control as it can be MR SUBLIMINAL Fooled ya. Kidding!.
* * * “Trump is in a better polling spot now than he was against Clinton or Biden” [USA Today]. “If polls are any guide – and there are many questions about them – Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is in better shape now than he was at this time in 2020 and in his winning White House campaign of 2016. Yes, Trump trails Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in most polls. But the all-important caveat is that he’s down against the incumbent vice president by smaller margins than he faced in his first two general elections – both of which saw him score higher with actual voters than the ones who responded to pollsters.” • Handy chart:
* * * Kamala (D): “Tensions rise between Harris and Biden teams as election nears” [Axios]. “Biden gave an impromptu press conference in the White House briefing room Friday just as Harris was about to do an event in Michigan, ensuring that her event would get less TV coverage than it otherwise would have. Earlier in the week, Harris criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for not taking her call about the recent hurricanes, only for Biden to praise DeSantis soon after for being ‘gracious’ and ‘cooperative.’ (A person familiar with the situation told Axios that Biden hadn’t been briefed on Harris’ comments.) Biden has been eager to boast about a robust jobs report, helping to end the strike by the longshoremen’s union and other perceived victories recently. Harris has been trying to focus on voters’ pocketbook concerns, including inflation. One person involved with Harris’ campaign told Axios: ‘The White House is lacking someone in the room thinking first and foremost about how things would affect the campaign.'” • I’m starting to think “room” needs to be one of those words. Once you notice it, it’s everywhere. Started witb “adults in the room,” I think. Remember them?
Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris’ press tour was a missed opportunity” [MSNBC]. “And that is the problem: The Harris campaign conducted this tour not because it had something new to say, but because it needed to redirect the media narrative about its candidate. ‘There is at times an impression that her campaign consists almost entirely of pivots,’ Alex Shephard smartly observed in The New Republic earlier this week, while a New York Times headline said she ‘Continues to Bob and Weave’ in interviews. It all adds to the very mood the press tour was supposed to dispel.” And: “As the media tour came to a close with a Univision town hall on Thursday night, I was left with the same vague impression I had before the press tour — which makes that tour a massive missed opportunity. There was no moment akin to Bill Clinton blowing the horn on ‘The Arsenio Hall Show’ in 1992, nothing surprising or unexpected. Running out the clock may [???] not be an option. ‘Polls coming in show Harris peaked and interviews not helping. Swing states trending away from Harris,’ veteran pollster Mark Penn wrote in a social media post. ‘It’s not over until it’s over and this is still on a razor’s edge so it can flip back but that’s a fair read of newest polling.’ And in The New York Times, the former Obama communications director Daniel Pfeiffer pointed out that Trump is making critical inroads with younger men by appearing on nontraditional podcasts and streaming shows. Pfeiffer observed that 13 million people watched Trump’s interview with comedian Theo Von, ‘about twice the viewership of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s much ballyhooed interview with Dana Bash of CNN.'”
Kamala (D): “Inside the media blitz: three days on the campaign trail with Kamala Harris” [Guardian]. “She was comfortable in her skin.” • I haven’t heard that one deployed in years.
Kamala (D): So much for Black Insurrectionist? He of the Tim Walz oppo?
Why did Black Insurrectionist change his bio since yesterday? Where’s the next drops? I think I’ve/we’ve been duped pic.twitter.com/cX0uU6mKm1
— 🇺🇸ULTRA MAGA 1776🇺🇸 (@MAGAMARIE3) October 14, 2024
Note the followers on the left hand screen shot, who disappeared on the right hand screen shot. And when you’ve lost Megyn Kelly:
I don’t know whether the stuff being peddled by a certain X account re: Tim Walz has even a scintilla of truth behind it. I see the many obvious red flags.
What I can report is that a month ago this same account claimed he had an ABC whistleblower (1) alleging serious ethical…— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) October 14, 2024
* * * Kamala (D): “Democratic voter registration raises red flags for Harris” [The Hill]. “Democrats’ voter registration advantage has dropped in three key battleground states — Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada — raising a red flag for Vice President Harris as experts cite a lack of enthusiasm for the Biden administration brand and the Democratic Party, generally, as problems.” And: “David Paleologos, the director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University in Boston, said Democrats had about a 666,000-person voter registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania in 2020, which has shrunk to a 354,000-person advantage in 2024. He said the Democrats’ voter registration advantage in North Carolina has shrunk from 393,000 voters in 2020 to approximately 130,000 voters in 2024. ‘The general shift has been away from being registered as a Democrat over the last four years,’ Paleologos told The Hill.’ It’s been more of a decrease of registered Democrats’ than a surge in Republican voter registrations, he explained. ‘I don’t think a lot of people have really put their arms around the fact that when Trump won North Carolina in 2020, there were like 390,000 more registered Democrats and he still won, and today the advantage of Democrats over Republicans is only like 130,000. It’s been cut by two-thirds of an advantage,” he said.” And: “In Nevada, Paleologos said Democrats have seen their voter registration advantage fall away. He said Democrats’ had a net registration advantage of nearly 79,000 in 2020. It has since fallen to a net advantage of 29,000 registered voters. ‘It could be enough to keep it close, or it could go to Trump, just because they’ve lost 50,000 net registered Democrats,’ he said.” •
Kamala (D): “CNN’s Enten: GOP Has Made Big Gains In Party Registration, Identification Since 2020” [RealClearPolitics]. “CNN’s Harry Enten looked at party registration data in the swing states and nationally ahead of the 2024 election, which he says compared to past elections, suggests Republicans are on track to win…. The question is: Where are they picking up ground? This, to me, says it all. If you look at Pennsylvania counties where the GOP has gained in registration, in counties where less than 50% of the population is non-college white voters, Republicans have gained just a point. But in areas where over 50% are non-college whites, look at this—Republicans have gained six points on average. They’re picking up ground in the areas you’d expect: non-college white-dominated areas, coal country in the northeast, southwest outside of Pittsburgh. The bottom line is, the registration trends we’ve been seeing over the last few cycles — with Republicans dominating among non-college white voters — are very much showing up in party registration.” And: “Party registration is when you’re actually registered with a party. Party ID is when you say, ‘I feel like a Democrat today’ or ‘I feel like a Republican.’ They’re correlated, but they’re not exactly the same. The GOP leads by a point in party identification right now. The average when the Republican Party loses is the Democrats ahead by eight. When the Republican Party wins, the average party ID advantage for Democrats is at three. Republicans right now, are doing even better than the average when they win. If there’s one little nugget that I think Republicans are really helpful for this party ID and this party registration data, it really points in a good direction for them and for Donald Trump.”
“Harris rallies in a Pennsylvania bellwether county, calling Trump too ‘unstable and unhinged’ to be president” [NBC]. “To make up for any losses in rural areas, Harris’ campaign has sought to court Nikki Haley voters from the GOP primaries, who are concentrated largely in well-educated suburbs and could help Harris grow her coalition and improve on Biden’s 2020 margins.” • Hence, Dick Cheney’s spawn.
* * * Kamala (D): “Harris Fights to Counter Trump’s Appeal With Black Men” [Wall Street Journal]. On Obama’s intervention: “”‘While I understand the sentiment of having a desire to see increased engagement, chastising voters has never worked, and it won’t work this time either,’ said [Quentin James, founder and president of the Collective PAC, a pro-Harris group], who gave the Harris campaign feedback on the new set of policies rolled out on Monday aimed at improving the economic position of Black men. Asked if it would be helpful for Obama to reiterate those comments at future campaign stops, James said: ‘If the goal is to increase Black male engagement, hell no.'” More: “The new policies and football meetup [stereotype] are part of Harris’s latest efforts to reach out to Black men, a core constituency for the party. Polling shows a potential lack of enthusiasm among those voters with early voting already under way in some states. Securing the support of Black men could prove decisive in key battleground races, particularly as Harris attempts to drive up turnout in places like Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta. The vice president wants to offer one million forgivable business loans for Black entrepreneurs to use to start businesses, create more training and apprenticeship programs and study diseases, such as diabetes and sickle cell anemia, that predominantly affect Black men…. The Harris campaign’s self-described ‘opportunity agenda for Black men’ would regulate cryptocurrency and digital currencies to protect Black investors, promote more Black men into the teaching profession and reiterate the vice president’s support for legalizing marijuana.” • Maybe I didn’t get the memo, but I don’t see how crypto fits in here. Also, speaking of an “opportunity economy,” how about an amnesty for the marijuana growers and dealers who built a business sector now worth billions? Legalization is not enough.
Kamala (D): Maybe the the “Manly Man” ad wasn’t aimed at men at all? Hat tip Nippersdad:
Maybe I’m assuming the Harris hive mind is more Machiavellian than it really is, but maybe the ad — hear me out — was aimed at suburban women? (“We promise men will be as men are in this ad”). Sort of a very light touch version of Lysistratic Non-Action. Just a thought! And on white women:
Harris is doing the best for a Democratic presidential candidate among white women in the 21st century… That's big cause they make up such a large chunk of the electorate…
Why is Harris doing so well? It would appear that abortion rights is a driving force… pic.twitter.com/zQHFifAwcf
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) October 15, 2024
* * * Trump (R): “Trump’s Pennsylvania town hall, interrupted by medical emergencies in crowd, turned into an impromptu concert” [ABC]. “Former President Donald Trump’s town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, on Monday evening was interrupted twice by medical emergencies in a very warm Greater Philadelphia Expo Center and Fairgrounds before he pivoted — turning the concert into an impromptu concert where he stood on stage swaying to music for nearly 45 minutes. There was a medical emergency that required an attendee to be placed on a stretcher about 30 minutes into the event. As the crowd started singing ‘God Bless America,’ Trump requested that ‘Ave Maria’ be played on the loudspeakers as medics tended to the man. Moments later, there was a second medical emergency…. Following the medical emergencies, Trump requested that the doors be opened but he was advised that for security reasons that wasn’t possible. Both Trump and moderator South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem commented on the heat in the room…. He continued, “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music fest. Who the hell wants to hear questions right? Isn’t that beautiful?” The former president, adamant about playing his music, stood on stage for nearly 45 minutes swaying to several songs on his playlist as the crowd sang and danced along. The crowd slowly dispersed, but many stayed for the entirety of the campaign event.” ¨• There’s a lot of dogpiling over this on the Twitter, but if the crowd was singing and dancing along, and they didn’t leave, I think that’s great, and great word-of-mouth for Trump (reminds me of a Grateful Dead concert when the sound system failed). Hard to imagine Kamala doing this (no experience with show business, no similar connection to the crowd, I’m guessing, and no capacity to improvise as Trump did. I imagine the staff would have shut the rally down entirely, which would have been a debacle).
* * * PA: “Harris rallies in a Pennsylvania bellwether county, calling Trump too ‘unstable and unhinged’ to be president” [NBC]. “ERIE, Pa. — Vice President Kamala Harris rallied a packed crowd Monday night in Erie County, a bellwether that has a knack for predicting who carries Pennsylvania, having mirrored the outcome of this crucial battleground state in the last four elections. Harris sharpened her attacks on Donald Trump, using a big screen to play clips of the former president calling for outlawing dissent and criticisms among ‘the enemy within.'” The big screen is new, I think. More: “[Erie’s] median income is lower than the national average, as is its share of college-educated people…. Fetterman won the state by maximizing votes in the metropolitan areas and limiting his margins of defeat in the red-trending rural areas. Now, he’s trying to help Harris do the same. While Obama and Gov. Josh Shapiro rallied Thursday in Pittsburgh, Fetterman toured the red counties to make the case for her…. ‘Sometimes it’s not about turning these counties blue. You’re not going to change the culture of rural-county Pennsylvania. It’s about reaching out to reachable people,’ he said. ‘I would be surprised if she wins by 3 points. She will win Pennsylvania, but I would expect it might be closer than that.'”
PA: “How Pittsburgh’s Suburbs Could Flip Pennsylvania to Trump” [RealClearPennsylvania]. ” Instead, the focus lies on subdivision-spawned places like Cranberry Township to the north, the bedroom communities of southern Butler County, and the once-solid Rust Belt Democrat precincts of Washington County to the south. These areas, many of which have been reliable parts of the Democratic coalition since the time of the New Deal, are trending Republican in ways that should alarm party strategists. This oversight is partly understandable – the Philadelphia metro area is significantly larger (6.3 million people as opposed to Pittsburgh’s 2.37 million), richer, and several hours closer to major media markets. But it’s a mistake that could lead to how-could-it-happen-here headlines on election night if the GOP secures a win on the back of southwestern Pennsylvania’s suburban voters. The numbers paint a stark picture of this evolution. In 2000, Democrats carried Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, plus the seven surrounding counties by nearly 86,000 votes. By 2020, despite massive Democratic gains within Pittsburgh city limits, this same region swung to the Republicans by 38,000 votes. In a state decided by razor-thin margins in recent presidential contests, this 124,000-vote swing is seismic. Cranberry Township exemplifies this change. Once a sleepy rural community, it’s now a booming strip mall and chain eatery-lined suburb of over 30,000 people, more than 90% of whom are white, with a decidedly Republican lean. In 2020, Donald Trump carried Cranberry with over 60% of the vote, a margin unthinkable just a few decades ago when union-affiliated Democratic voters dominated the region. The transformation is even more pronounced in Washington County, once the very definition of a union stronghold. Trump won the county by a staggering 22-point margin in 2020.”
PA: “A week in a swing state taught me a lot about the Maga cult, and gave me hope for Kamala Harris” [Guardian]. Worth a read, but holy moley. This editorial note sums it up: “This article was amended on 13 October 2024 because an earlier version said that Hurricane Helene “ripped through the south-west”. In fact the hurricane affected the south-east region.” Here is a writer who really knows America!
Spook Country
“FBI’s role in Hunter Biden laptop scandal is worse than you know” [Andrew McCarthy, FOX]. “Still, the enduring relevance of the laptop is not as a Biden story, but as a story of the political corruption of the government’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus – pillars of our rule of law and our national security. Think about this: The FBI took possession of the laptop in December 2019, and quickly authenticated it – not hard to do because there was a mountain of publicly available information for purposes of corroborating the data, which was incontestably Hunter Biden’s. What’s the significance of that? Well, Election Day wasn’t until November 3, 2020. Hence, while early voting was already underway in the weeks before the election, the FBI had already known for nearly a year that the laptop was the real deal. Despite that, the bureau induced major social media titans, such as Twitter (now X) and Facebook, to suppress derogatory reporting about the Bidens – specifically, the New York Post’s mid-October 2020 reporting on the laptop. How? By deceptively intimating that the Post’s reporting was likely the result of an influence operation carried out by Russian intelligence. In reality, this was an influence operation carried out by current and former U.S. intelligence officials. The FBI was not alone. The government’s ‘Intelligence Community’ routinely shares information. The IC, too, is prone to hype Russian ‘interference’ in U.S. elections. Yet, such ‘influence operations’ are longstanding: Moscow interfered in American politics throughout the Cold War; it has continued to do so since the Soviet Union’s fall up to the present day. Influence ops are also reciprocal: U.S. spy agencies routinely sought to influence Soviet politics and, now, seek to undermine Putin. If they didn’t, what good would they be? For all the heavy-breathing by the media-Democrat complex, modern Russia is a basket-case country run by a mafia-style regime whose election-influence ops are often laughably amateurish. They are, moreover, a negligible ripple in the multi-billion-dollar ocean of American campaign messaging.”
Democrats en Déshabillé
“The CIA Democrats in the 2024 elections” [WSWS] From September. “There are 34 Democrats drawn from the ranks of the military-intelligence apparatus who are running for Congress this year, a continuation of the influx that began in force in 2018. For the fourth consecutive election, the CIA Democrats will grow in influence and numbers, further cementing the ties between this big business party and the most lethal agencies of the capitalist state…. Besides the numerical increase, the influx of CIA Democrats is escalating qualitatively. Two of the original class of CIA Democrats who won seats in the House of Representatives in 2018 are now seeking to move up to the Senate. Former CIA agent and Pentagon official Elissa Slotkin is giving up her Michigan House seat to run for the Senate seat left vacant by the retirement of three-term Senator Debbie Stabenow. Former National Security Council official turned congressman Andy Kim is running in New Jersey to replace incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who was convicted on corruption charges and resigned. Both are favored to win…. In Virginia, former CIA agent Abigail Spanberger is not seeking reelection to her House seat, announcing plans instead to run for governor of Virginia next year, when Republican Glenn Youngkin leaves after the single term he is allowed under the state constitution. Spanberger is the heavy favorite to win the Democratic nomination. Spanberger’s replacement in the House is likely to be the most prominent new military-intelligence Democrat: Eugene Vindman, a career military officer born in Ukraine.” Oh man. Vindman? More: “Besides Eugene Vindman, another high-profile military-intelligence operative is seeking a House seat as a Democrat: Maggie Goodlander, the wife of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.” The bottom line: “These numbers demonstrate that the influx of State Department, National Security Council, Pentagon and CIA operatives into Congress, by means of the Democratic Party, is not an accidental phenomenon, or the product of one election cycle. It is the outcome of a definite policy, which has two components. First, the Democratic Party leadership is deliberately cultivating military-intelligence candidates and creating opportunities for them to run in Democratic-leaning congressional districts where they are likely to be elected. Second, sizeable sections of the national security apparatus see the Democratic Party as their preferred vehicle for advancing the interests of American imperialism, to which they have devoted their own careers.” • We might as well be in Tsarist Russia, except the Okhrana got itself elected to the Duma. And to sloganize: “Democrats are spooks who want to mess with your head.” Something like that (which has the merit of being perhaps a chiaroscuro version of the truth).
Realignment and Legitimacy
“ActBlue lobbies up amid GOP probes” [Politico]. “ActBlue, the left’s favored online donation platform, is turning to K Street as it looks to beat back accusations of lax security and donor fraud brought forward by state and federal Republican officials. Covington & Burling’s Matthew Shapanka, a former Senate Rules aide who helped craft the updated bipartisan Electoral Count Act reform bill in 2022, began lobbying for ActBlue on Sept. 9 on the Secure Handling of Internet Electronic Donations — or SHIELD — Act, according to a disclosure filing. The SHIELD Act had been introduced days earlier by House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.). It stemmed from an investigation into concerns that ActBlue wasn’t verifying its donors properly because it did not require them to provide the three-digit CVV codes on the back of their cards. Among other things, Steil’s bill would bar political committees from accepting contributions if a CVV code was not provided and would also bar donations made using gift cards, pre-paid credit or debit cards or gift certificates.”
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 (wastewater); 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, KidDoc, 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: Covid
“Can the infection risk in elevators be negligible? A comparative study of airborne infection probability in elevators and conference rooms” [Energy and Buildings]. From the Abstract: “The results showed that the infection probability in the elevator with 5 min (average 2.70%) was higher than that in the conference room with 50 min (average 1.77%).” • As Michael Osterholm should know.
Transmission: H5N1
Ulp (1):
Ulp (2):
“milking: ~12 hours a day in close contact w/ cows.
udders ~ high viral loads
need PPE to stop H5N1 bird flu and protect farmworkers, but hard to wear for hours in heat.
need full head helmet w/ powered, purified airflow.”https://t.co/qwMz0MelAD@RanuDhillon https://t.co/kTxu72t2v1
— Devabhaktuni "Sri" Srikrishna (@sri_srikrishna) October 15, 2024
If we were planning for a second pandemic — on top of Covid already weakened immunue systems at a population level — it’s to see how we could be doing a better job. And wastewater:
Vaccines
“New Nasal Vaccines Offer Better Protection from COVID and Flu—No Needle Needed” [Scientific American]. “Vaccines delivered through the nose are now being tested for several diseases. In the U.S., early clinical trials are showing success. Two of these vaccines have generated multiple immune system responses against the COVID-causing virus in people who received them through a puff up the nose; earlier this year their makers received nearly $20 million from Project NextGen, the Biden-Harris administration’s COVID medical initiative. Researchers are optimistic that a nasal spray delivering a COVID vaccine could be ready for the U.S. as soon as 2027. Although recent efforts have focused on inoculations against SARS-CoV-2, nasal vaccines could also protect us against the flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more.” • 2027 [bangs head on desk].
Sequelae: Covid
“COVID-19 raises the stakes for heart attacks, strokes, and even death long after infection, new study finds” [Fortune]. “Practically from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers and medical experts feared–and often loudly warned–that the virus wasn’t like other infections that people might encounter during, say, flu season. SARS-CoV-2 was different. It was worse. And the potential long-term effects, as we reported two years ago, were even more worrisome. A new large-scale study puts those longer-range concerns into bold relief. The results are as unforgiving as many experts had hypothesized. The study, involving nearly a quarter-million adults, found that those with any type of COVID-19 infection in 2020 had twice the risk of suffering a major cardiac event—a heart attack, stroke, or even death—in the three years after a diagnosis than those who weren’t infected. People whose infections were severe enough to warrant hospitalization faced nearly a four times greater risk of a major cardiac event or death than the uninfected group. ‘These findings are undeniable and extremely troubling,’ says David Putrino, the director of the Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illness at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. ‘The significance of this work is that our current public health policy surrounding COVID-19 is inadequate. People need to be informed of the risks they are incurring to their long-term health by being repeatedly infected with SARS-CoV-2.'” • Oh, yeah, personal risk assessment, that’s been working great. Why not clean the air?
“Long COVID Rates in Kids Revised Upward: What to Know” [MedScape]. “In the most expansive study of its kind, researchers have for the first time shown serious and prevalent symptoms of long COVID in kids and teens. The August study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is among the first large comprehensive studies of the disorder in this age group. The study, which followed 5367 children, found that 20% of kids (ages 6-11) and 14% of teens met researchers’ threshold for long COVID. Until now, research has been lacking because children were thought to be less susceptible to both acute COVID-19 and long COVID, experts say. But by some estimates, up to 5.8 million kids and teens have the disorder. Study author Rachel Gross, MD, an associate professor in the departments of pediatrics and population health at NYU Langone, is in line with the percentage of adults diagnosed with long COVID.” • Remember in the beginning, when the minimizers told us children didn’t even get Covid? Good times. Handy chart:
Social Norming
Another reason for denial:
my dad exposed me to covid, i got it, got longcovid, lost everything. we havent spoken since it happened, he hasnt even attempted to nor said he loves me since i got sick. he disappeared rather than admit he messed up. https://t.co/Z5zCSQSWLT
— 🎨Artsy M*rxist 🎨 (commissions waitlist open) (@ArtsyMarx1st) October 15, 2024
Rule #2 is universal in scope:
* * *
Wastewater
This week[1] CDC October 5
Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):
Variants [3] CDC October 12
Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC October 5
Hospitalization
New York[5] New York State, data October 10:
National [6] CDC September 21:
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens October 7:
Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic October 5:
Travelers Data Positivity[9] CDC September 16: Variants[10] CDC September 16:
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC September 28:
Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC September 28:
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) Still some hot spots, but I can’t draw circles around entire regions this week. Good news!
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XEC has entered the chat.
[4] (ED) Down, but worth noting that Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). I see the “everything in greenish pastels” crowd has gotten to this chart.
[7] (Walgreens) Big drop continues!
[8] (Cleveland) Dropping.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up, though lagged.
[10] (Travelers: Variants).
[11] Deaths low, positivity down.
[12] Deaths low, ED down.
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States NY Empire State Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The NY Empire State Manufacturing Index plummeted to -11.9 in October 2024, down from 11.5 in September and surprising analysts who expected it at 3.8. This marks the worst reading since May, pointing to a renewed contraction in the New York State and at a solid pace.”
* * * Manufacturing: “Boeing’s crisis is getting worse. Now it’s borrowing tens of billions of dollars” [CNN]. “In a regulatory filing early Tuesday, the company announced plans to borrow $10 billion from a consortium of banks. It also separately announced plans to raise $25 billion by selling stock and debt. The $10 billion borrowing plans would be included in the $25 billion that Boeing filed to raise…. Boeing’s credit rating has plunged to the lowest investment-grade level – just above “junk bond” status – and major credit rating agencies have warned Boeing is in danger of being downgraded to junk. That would raise its cost of borrowing.”
Manufacturing: “Official: Boeing 777X delivery delayed until at least 2026” [Mile Lion]. “Up till recently, Boeing was still making optimistic noises about a late 2025 debut for the aircraft, with Emirates CEO Tim Clark stating at the 2023 Dubai Airshow that he hoped to get his first B777-9 by October 2025. But that was always going to be a tall order, and now we have official confirmation of what’s perhaps the worst-kept secret in aviation: the Boeing 777X is officially delayed till at least 2026. Keep in mind, it’s not just the work stoppage that’s the problem. The B777X has had a torrid time with its certification, with the FAA chiding the airline at one point that its proposed certification schedule was ‘outdated and no longer reflect the programme activities.’ While the all-important Type Inspection Authorisation (TIA) was granted in July 2024, enabling the company to begin the certification process, it’s not all been smooth sailing. Just a couple of months ago, the test fleet was grounded after a routine post-flight inspection revealed the failure of a thrust link that mounts the engine to the aircraft.” • Yikes.
Manufacturing: “Emirates’ Clark raises ‘looming’ specter of Boeing bankruptcy protection” [The Air Current]. “In an email to The Air Current following the announced Oct. 11 delay to the certification of Boeing’s 777-9 flagship jetliner, [Emirates president Sir Tim Clark, Boeing’s largest twin-aisle jet customer,] said, ‘Unless the company is able to raise funds through a Rights Issue, I see an imminent investment downgrade with Chapter 11 looming on the horizon.'” • Or nationalization.
Manufacturing: “Boeing Is Flexing the Financial Muscle It Has Left” [Bloomberg]. The deck: “Investors are betting that a backlog of almost 5,500 aircraft will eventually unlock a mountain of cash.” More: “Well, the company has about 5,500 aircraft that it has already sold and only needs to assemble and deliver. Investors see a mountain of cash locked up in that backlog. All the company has to do is settle a nasty strike of 33,000 machinists, revamp its work culture to put quality above all, stabilize its supply chain, finish work on the new 777X aircraft and crank out planes. In fewer words, Boeing needs to execute. This is a daunting task, and most investors believe the company has finally chosen the right person to pull off this historic turnaround after Kelly Ortberg was hired as chief executive officer in August. The thermometer for investor sentiment around Boeing’s ability to right the ship will be reflected in the price of the new shares, which could raise $10 billion or more to help shore up its finances.” • So I guess that’s why Ortberg is busting the machinist’s chops? For “investor sentiment”?
Manufacturing: “Boeing layoff plan suggests deep white-collar job cuts” [Seattle Times]. “The exclusion for now of 33,000 Machinists from the planned cuts means that Boeing can reach the 10% target stated in the slides for the Commercial Airplanes unit only through deep cuts among the white-collar staff, including engineers and nonunion salaried employees…. Perhaps the thinking is that laying off Machinists now might inflame passions and make the strike more difficult to settle. If that’s so, blue-collar layoffs could come later. Still, the need for the layoffs has little to do with the Machinists’ strike. It’s a restructuring by new CEO Kelly Ortberg designed to address the broader and deeper problems Boeing faces….The only way forward for Boeing is to start building planes again and to ramp up production back to the rates planned before the January blowout. To achieve those rates, it had been hiring machinists at a rapid clip. Whenever the strike ends, it will need most of those machinists ready to swing into action.”
* * * Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 74 Greed (previous close: 76 Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 70 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 15 at 1:03:44 PM ET.
The
CurrentCinemaThe production process for silent films:
On this day in 1893, silent superstar Lillian Gish was born in Springfield, Ohio. In 1988, I wrote to her asking if silent films had actual dialogue written out in the scripts or if there was just a general description of what was being said. This was her remarkable reply. pic.twitter.com/Tzv8EgnZhz
— Steve Stoliar (@StoliarSteve) October 14, 2024
Photo Book
Via alert reader Wukchumi:
“Time is what you make of it.” I wish!
Slaves (implicit):
yeah the clear goal of this technology is to be able to outsource in-person service jobs to hyper-exploited workers in the global south, not liberate human labor from service work. https://t.co/AvXwuqtVlH
— Cassie Pritchard (@hecubian_devil) October 13, 2024
Of course, the goal is never to “liberate human labor.” Who would be silly enough to imagine that?
Slaves (explicit). ANC = African National Congress:
Imagine having a housekeeper that doesn't vote ANC, doesn't have 55 uncle's funerals to attend every year, won't steal your food, and you only have to pay for it once?
Sign me up pic.twitter.com/IW8XrREn5Q
— Keanu (@Keanubtc) October 11, 2024
“You only have to pay for it once.” Indeed. Now if we can just get them to reproduce…
News of the Wired
I am not feeling wired today.* * * Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From TH:
TH writes: “Here in Westminster, California, a rose society lives at the Civic center, so, due to their many gardens of roses, I have an abundant supply of rose photos. Sorry if the border is a bit much. Feel free to crop.”
* * * Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. If you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
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Antifa posted a brilliant song parody of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things” this morning. I was inspired to use the same tune:
Bright H-bomb flashes, high up o’er the ocean
Hegemon dreams soon were set off in motion
Looking past ruins after World War Two
Mili’try contractors said “Peace will not do!”
“There’s cash to be made, if we just sow division
“Keep lots of people, on paths of collision
“Fund politicians who’ll go with our drift
“Screw Eisenhower! It’s on with the grift!”
Napalming Asia, and bombing Iraqis
Marking up prices, from missiles to khakis
De-railing Minsk Two, when peace was at hand
Not having wars will harm Raytheon’s brand!
When our Congress
Is a whorehouse
Wars will run, like mad
Partners in media
Fog up the air
So no one will feel…
So bad
The world is our chessboard, no matter who suffers
Tax dollars spent arming, bought foreign snuffers
Stir hornets’ nests so the war profits grow
The racket will run ‘til there’s nuclear glow!
When our Congress
Is a whorehouse
Wars will run, like mad
Partners in media
Fog up the air
So no one will feel…
So bad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IagRZBvLtw
Big hug and applause!
Rad, man.
I think there is a glitch in the matrix. There is no content beneath the birdsong and the plantidote refers to a rose border but the picture appears to be a Daliesque melting clock sculpture on the Burning Man playa. Are these your default mind settings these days, Lambert – melting and empty and no bed of roses? :-)
OK, some order is restored! There’s more of a post but the rose plantidote and the time is what you make of it sculpture are still transposed….
And is Wukschumi Wukchumni’s dimsum alter ego?
Fixed, thanks.
I am a bit surprised how little attention Boeing’s more or less inevitable bankruptcy/bailout is getting (not just on this site–I mean absolutely anywhere).
This sort of reminds me about the pre-lockdown period where the threat was looming but ignored and then suddenly took a life of its own.
Maybe this topic will get a lot more attention in a few months–but I think the implications are going to be pretty widespread.
If I were the union, I’d be getting worried. A bankruptcy could break that strike quickly. I’m getting flashbacks of the Blazing Saddles scene with the sheriff points his gun to his head.
The Boeing executives handling labor discussions and “unrelated” financial engineering, should be hit with a breach of duty class action suit.
Meritocracy for sure.
Boeing bk will boost both airbus and China. And breaking union might save pocket change but will worsen quality and schedules, airlines will not be impressed. The civvy side will need help, imo logical helper is China, but not gonna happen.
A worthwhile link here at the finance blog.
https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/15/two-words-that-haunt-so-many-hurricane-victims-claim-denied/
And since some forms of insurance are government required why aren’t these companies more highly regulated?
so they can continue to launder money for the rest of the FIRE pseudoeconomy.
my youngest, since he drives wifes car, which technically belongs to my mom, is on my mom’s insurance…required liability only.
eldest and i are also covered, so we can drive anything on the place.
my own insurance is almost invisible…no tickets in decades, ancient truck, boonies, 55.
mom’s for the 4 of us is 900 per 6 month period.
almost all of that is youngest.
he’s even more pricey than her full coverage on her spaceship.
and its gone up 3 years running….with no tickets or anything.
so they can cover for the losses along the coast and in the burned up places.
friends girlfriend works for either state farm or allstate…like forever.
she says they aint taking new clients like south of I-10…and are gonna pull out of texas(and one assumes the south) altogether soon.
and FIRE is an incestuous bunch…money doesnt stay in any of the 3 for long, but moves around, and gets sliced and tranched and cdo’d, etc…and blown up exponentially.
with all the giant payouts ahead…and yeah, they’ll wriggle free from a lot of it….theres no future in th insurance business.
add in that the most expensive real estate is on a coast(high tide in yer swanky living room kinda takes the shine off the place), and that’s 2 outa 3…can “Finance” survive without the other 2?
When the going gets tough, they get going…far away from the problem.
Insurance is now just mostly a bunch of crap they bundle up into financial products like they do loans.
They are no more interested in insuring the family home any more than the banks are interested financing the family home without govt subsidy. It’s about the financial products being created.
Yes, that usage of “room” needs to be beaten and then jailed along with “space” as in business space and political space.
The room where it happened.
It’s an antibiotic resistant ear worm.
There’s a storage bro on Twitter that is always crowing about (because he owns such a company) the value of having outsourced labour in South America to run calls and other tasks that can be done remotely for staffing his storage business. So there’s definitely a market for this in a big way, and these people will need some kind of jobs to do after LLMs significantly replace call center work, as is already happening in the Philippines call centers.
Plus, this way you have access to people still not entirely disabled by repeat COVID infections, anywhere you can find them.
> access to people still not entirely disabled by repeat COVID infections
A competitive advantage for Southeast Asia, interestingly.
“A competitive advantage for Southeast Asia, interestingly.”
Is this true though or just an accepted fact? I rarely see masks worn here in Vietnam and didn’t much when I was spending time in Thailand and Malaysia last year. People cough in public all the time.
The only place I’ve been since 2021 with much masking was Taiwan.
Perhaps I misunderstood your suggestion here?
I have added orts and scraps (and caught up with the election). There’s a lot of rich detail so please read carefully! That “all singing, all dancing” Trump Town Hall was also not at all what the usual suspects on Twitter claimed. There is also some important Covid and Bird Flu material. Too much going on! Enjoy! I also fixed a glitch or two.
P.S. And so much for “Black Insurrectionist”?
So now she tells them –
Harris and Marijuana
“reiterate the vice president’s support for legalizing marijuana”
How many young men did she put in the prison system and throw away the key for marijuana related issues? I happen to have 1 of them in my practice. He did his time under her years ago, but as is always with the American penal system, his life will never be the same.
If someone actually had any kind of shame, this would not be an issue they would be having front and center.
As I recall, this was the very point that Tulsi Gabbard fileted her with back in 2019. As Tulsa said at that time – “she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”
And to be honest – I have never heard a word out of Kamala’s mouth for the past several years as the marijuana issue was roiling around. Not a word.
Now all of a sudden – when the young people are deserting her in the droves – here it comes. I really hate to break it to her, but people are not this stupid. I did not see the video of this Kamala presentation today – but just like Tulsi Gabbard points out above – I am sure she was cackling all the while.
Kamala thinks voters support her; they do not, and she has no relation with them (unlike Trump, or either of the Clintons, or any successful politician over time). I think her voters support the party and hate Trump, and that may be enough for her to win, but they do not support her, personally, as a public figure. There hasn’t been time for her to create that support with the short election cycle, and she didn’t use her time as Vice President to create it, either).
Hence she goes forth and makes these proposals, as if she were a politician with a national following, but she isn’t, and so the proposals read as the empty gestures they are.
NOTE Speculating freely: It occurs to me that as the CIA Democrats increasingly infest the Democrat Party, their style of thinking about “our democracy” will end up a lot like color revolutions, not in a conspiratorial sense, but an administrative and logistical sense. This transition might bring about shorter election cycles that can be more influenced by staged or engineered events, for example. Kamala’s campaign might be a sort of dry run for that. She did serve on the Intelligence Community without a peep of complaint from anybody, so obviously the spooks are fine with her.
re:NOTE:
dern, Lambert!
sounds like a seed for a longer post.
i advise stewing over it for a time, though.
but, you’ve been flirting with this idea for some time, so perhaps you have stewed, already,lol.
ive been stewing over the idea of “Them” applying various counterinsurgency doctrines domestically for many moons(Jakarta is coming)….explains a lot, as it turns out(i recc US Army field manuals on the subject, pre95 0r so—and for the view from the other side, War of the Flea, which ended up being one of my fave books,lol)
same sort of boogerlights in the swamp, as it were.
“[Kamala Harris] did serve on the Intelligence Committee without a peep of complaint from anybody, so obviously the spooks are fine with her.”
The point of the “spooks” now is evidently to impress voters that Donald Trump is the choice of Russia and China:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/opinion/trump-china-election.html
October 14, 2024
What China’s Leaders Grasp About Another Trump Term
By Rush Doshi
At the beginning of the Biden presidency, many of us serving in the National Security Council gathered to read the intelligence and reached a key conclusion: The 2020s would be what we called the “decisive decade” in U.S. competition with China.
I don’t think the viciousness of the political class (Kamala, of course, included) is news to anyone.
Let’s not forget that Donald Trump played a disgusting role in the Central Park Five scandal, taking out adds calling for the state to bring back the death penalty so that the killers could be executed. This is on top of the misery he caused his tenants as a slum lord in 1980s New York. How many deaths do you think Trump contributed to due to stress and the unsanitary conditions his tenants had to live with day in and day out?
He is an extremely vicious person, but viciousness in a vicious time is a “virtue” that permits one to rise. Unfortunately, in times like ours, it is a “vice” to be decent.
As for marijuana legalization, I’m strongly against it for health reasons. Recent research has demonstrated that I was much too sanguine (ultimately, I was a victim of propaganda) as regards the health effects of smoking marijuana. It seems like it contributes to cardiovascular disease and mental illness. I now see kids vaping THC on the street all the time.
Certainly, it should be decriminalized and provided where medically relevant. But I do not think it should be sold for recreational use. I fear marijuana legalization, like gambling liberalization, will degrade the American people further–and from an already low baseline!
Absolutely –
There are very well-known medical uses for THC.
And please note the THC that is out there now bears no resemblance whatsoever to what our forebears were doing in the 1960s. I am not a proponent of recreational use – it is assuredly a gateway drug.
However, doing hard time for this as a 22 year old for 2 years is completely inappropriate. This is the big problem I have with her and this issue.
> marijuana legalization
The marijuana of today is not the marijuana of the 60s. When I supported marijuana legalization, it was very much with the idea that people could grow it themselves.
What we have now is corporate marijuana, so of course it’s harmful. THC concentration should be limited, just like alcohol, and it should not be marketed or advertised like the Big Ag/Big Food product it now is.
Adding: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” could be supplemented by “Smoke weed” (and not, by implication the hopped-up, steroidal, industrial product now sold).
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/cannabis-marijuana-risks-addiction.html
October 4, 2024
As America’s Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms
The drug, legal in much of the country, is widely seen as nonaddictive and safe. For some users, these assumptions are dangerously wrong.
By Megan Twohey, Danielle Ivory and Carson Kessler
but i should have the right to grow my own, dammit.
i’m not supporting cartels, or any crime, at all.
i’m growing an herb with psychoactive and medicinal properties(i also stick big sage leaves in both nostrils and inhale deeply when theres a sinus event coming on)
we, down here, are far too regulated…while the big boys are all but totally free to do as they wish…and when they screw up, bigly, there are no consequences.
when i dont screw up…but rather am caught(touch wood), i get the wringer.
thats the fuck-up in our(sic) “justice system”.
treat it like a tomato plant and the idiots will soon crash out and be no more of a problem.
darwin, and all.
and, lest we forget…this is weed…not heroin.
regulate the legit growers to limit the thc content….limit the thc content of the vapes(easier if it was legal nationwide, btw)…but also limit sensimilla(seedless), so us out here can save seed.
and grow our own in something like liberty.
and be let alone with it, finally.
Most excellent.
“treat it like a tomato plant”
That’s Tee shirt material – you could become rich. :-)
Central NY’s biggest legal weed seller takes his brand statewide syracuse.com archive
That 25% THC weed flies out the door… and on to highways and psych wards!
” Smoke weed. Not too much. Mostly home grown.”
Here in Michigan, the State-legal initiative we voted for permitted for the individual person to grow 12 personal plants per year for personal use.
When marijuana was illegal at all levels, it did not reduce the supply or availability of marijuana. Re-outlawing it will not reduce the supply or availability if tried again.
It will re-increase the marijuana-specific revenue going to the illegal marijuana industry. The International Banking and Money Laundering Industrial Complex would like that.
So I reject re-outlawing marijuana at any level. I would like to see it stricken off the Federal Drug Schedule altogether and made totally default-legal, obviously including for individual persons to grow for personal use, barter, sale, etc. I could even see a cottage industry arising based on the milder mellow marijuana of the good old days. ” This IS your grandfather’s marijuana.”
IM Doc I am reminded of the last episode of Curtis Century of the Self:
The Century Of The Self Part 4: Sipping Wine
This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfill the inner desires of the self.
Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mold their policies to people’s inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.
Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s.
The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn’t realize was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them. – snip
I would only add the scene in NFX show Barry where a wildly popular show with viewers is axed by the production company CEO because a marketing algorithm said too, oh and investors trust the algo more than admin. That is what reminds me of all the PR coming out of the Dem party.
I’m having a hell of a time finding it, but John Pilger made a documentary about the Jimmy Carter campaign (76 or 80, not sure which) and its use of the advertising/PR industry, pre-dating by about a half-century the observances of similar practices by the Obama campaign. If we look into advertising, and into public-facing information in general (who is the “public”?), I suspect we’ll find that there’s nothing new under the sun that Marx didn’t expose.
I would not disagree from a Marxist perspective that due to Capital – Democratic systems are now run/administrated as Businesses i.e, seek Capital to operate/expand/increase market share.
I think the difference today compared to Carter is advances PR/Marketing and now the effect of AI/Algos doing the leg work. Hence mangled rubbish.
Sounds like Street of Joy (1976), which you can watch here:
https://vimeo.com/16495818
So this is so disturbing, I bookmarked it on Twitter. A thread discussion on viral coevolution.
The whole thread is interesting, but the money shot:
And
We can’t really die our way out of this. Malaria is still bad news.
Now consider — because liberal Democrats surely aren’t — what’s going to happen to this recent crop of children; Will they be able to have children successfully? At or above the replacement rate? What about their children?
Everyone doesn’t have to die at once, after all. If this damages the long term prognosis for population replacement, humanity could theoretically ultimately be wiped out either by repeat SARS2 infection and/or concomitant damage by opportunistic infections due to immune dis-regulation. All that matters is if people live to reproduce, and that the cycle continues.
Fun though, eh?
Maybe I’m overstating it, but I don’t think so. If we can’t advance as a specious at at least the replacement rate, eventually you have depopulation on a large scale, and extinction. What’s going to happen as kids rack up, charitably, a dozen infections from birth through to reproduction age? Pregnancy puts a strain on the body, how many young woman will survive the process? What will the survivability of pregnancy be? And this is before considering neoliberalism makes starting a family a real loser economically. So maybe you make it to more than a dozen infections before starting a family. How is that going to go? Does a SARS2 infection during pregnancy damage the fetus? What about the cellular machinery itself? Is DNA damaged in the early stages?
This might be a much darker time than even I considered. And I’ve never been accused of being an optimist in. my life, believe me.
Happy Tuesday!
> We can’t really die our way out of this
ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.
im regarded as a pessimist, as well.
one gets used to it.
add in to your tale of woe and rending of garments, the idea that either covid, or the mrna vax, or both, have an effect on fertility…sperm count and motility, egg viability, ability for a fertilised egg to lodge in just the right spot, and so on, and so on, through all the miraculous and myriad steps it takes, automatically, and without our knowledge or understanding, to make a human.
i saw this early on…but then it was suppressed, and i havent had the time…or remembered to when i am before this machine ere the partial hogleg breaks…to go chase it down again.
that said….we’ve been through a severe population bottleneck before.
down to a few thousand individuals, in the horn of africa, some 200,000 years ago.
the world might be able to support such a population of hunter gatherers, even in her current, abused and decrepit state.
this is where i always disagreed with the nature bats last guy(knew him on LATOC).
regardless…the fundamental human problem, today…and for my lifetime and longer…is too many humans.
we’ve been in overshoot for a century.(plum island deer, various island rabbit/marmot/etc studies)
likely derived from the labor substitution of fossil fuels, so it may be self correcting, medium term.
Under your likely scenario, there is only one thing to do. Open up the southern border for reinforcements of cheap labour. And when they fall sick due to repeated infections, open up the border some more.
The people who have to die for evolution to do its work to produce some kind of immunity are strictly those of reproductive age or younger, because that way they can’t pass on their vulnerable genetic makeup, not old people who have already reproduced (as some erroneously seem to believe), but their children and grandchildren.
And this is why repeat infections of children is so harrowing.
RE: Trump’s Pennsylvania town hall
Your link doesn’t mention it, Lambert, but the one I posted earlier in today’s links led me to believe that perhaps Trump reads Water Cooler –
“We could do another question or two if you’d like,” Trump said, eliciting cheers from the crowd, before changing his mind. “How about this? We’ll play ‘YMCA,’ and we’ll go home.”
Democrats can make fun all they want, but if I were given the choice between a rally that turned into a dance party and one were the candidate or one of their minions browbeat the crowd for possibly not voting correctly, I know which one I’d rather be at.
> Democrats can make fun all they want, but if I were given the choice between a rally that turned into a dance party and one were the candidate or one of their minions browbeat the crowd for possibly not voting correctly, I know which one I’d rather be at.
Exactly.
It would be hilarious if Water Cooler were read by any member of the political class, let alone an elected. But I’ll take it as a compliment. That said, YMCA has been played at Trump rallies for some time (the Village People may even have sued the campaign, I’m not sure).
just curious…how many lurkers do we have, at the moment?
because you never know about the lurkers,lol.
they could be anybody.
LATOC was the only other forum where i was a regular of any sort…and we had all kinds of people come out of the closet at the end, when the spooks were after the owner for providing a forum for citizen journalism of high caliber.(pulls left lower eyelid down and stares at you, like wife’s cholo stepdad did with his glass eye…and then said “watchelay”)…thinking about it fer a minute, y’all might even have allies in high places that help out without yous ever knowing about it.
i remember richard rainwater helped out Matt at latoc for a bit…but he had gone off the reservation(class traitor)….so might have been a warning to such folks to keep quiet.
and here we have another fascinating concept to explore,lol…i wish i had time….and chaos-free time!…. to write about such things.
i would volunteer here that this behavior of trump, aside from equally likely other interpretations, makes me think of how might someone (of any character) act if he was quite sure there was a strong possibility that any day soon he could be a dead man.
i would imagine that for just about anyone, in some sense, that changes everything.
Enten of CNN also observed that Harris is the least popular Dem candidate among ylungish black males since the Civil Rights era,to counterbalance her popularity among white women.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/14/cnns_harry_enten_harris_margin_of_victory_among_young_black_men_half_of_obamas_in_2012_historically_weak.html
Strictly speaking, this is not a bad trade: white women vote, black men don’t. Still, this is such a surreal change, though…
“white women vote, black men don’t.”
Everybody on the ball court is now registered, thanks to a couple guys who had it with Obama’s preaching. 1 out of 14 voting for Harris.
Call us the “KDIA Lucky 13 for Trump.” Old radio Jingle.
My cousin in Pennsylvania’s ratted out a January contract to move modular components for pop up housing from Norfolk Naval to various towns. Not for our homeless brothers, not for our poor recovering addicts, not for working families either, for refugees, whoever they are. So Black men ARE going to vote.
Makes perfect sense if you believe that people tend to support people of their own race and gender.
Unless you believe that Harris is black, of course.
From the article:
Except that in the case of mRNA Covid vaccines it appears that effective memory B cell activation is absent. It has yet to be proven whether or not it is due to the virus’ prodigious shape shifting; whether this applies to more traditional vaccines such as Novavax or that it is a problem specific to any and all Covid vaccines developed as of yet or going forward. Lots of still unanswered questions. Stay safe out there.
SARS-CoV-2-specific plasma cells are not durably established in the bone marrow long-lived compartment after mRNA vaccination Nature Medicine
> PA: “Harris rallies in a Pennsylvania bellwether county, calling Trump too ‘unstable and unhinged’ to be president”
I suppose that, lacking hinges, DJT does not “pivot” as well as does KDH.
(Stein voter snarking, assuming that my early ballot is counted. If one marks a ballot but the ballot is not counted, did one vote?)
Here in Germany the presstitutes and PMC of the Asylindustrie are in thrall to the seven inch heels, her “gestylt” Wegovied appearance etc. She is the American Baerbock.
2027?
That’s just not serious. Still expecting my jetpack before a nasal vaccine.
I’ll get my $600.00 from Biden to bootstrap my Unicorn Ranch startup before then…
you know what else gores my ox?
cigarette taxes.
i like the seneca cayuga tribe’s brand.
use to be able to get it by the case through the mails, tax free…$20 per carton, or so.
but the anthony weiner(!!!) rammed through an amendment to some bill or another that made it illegal to send tobacco products through the mail(and fedex, ups, as well).
pure proto-woke bs, like all the anti-tobacco stuff has been.
it was a trial run for a new tactic.
cancel culture.
i was there when it began in austin, circa 1992.
the same hysteria and moral panic we see today against any heterodox thinking.
similar to andrea dworkin becoming the face of feminism.
the hateful, torquemada part.
and yeah, yeah, yeah…should quit and all.
but dammit.
its my choice.
i made the decision to continue after getting down to 3 actual cigs per day using Juul…but they went after them, too…right about the time Tam got cancer and i tossed the whole quitting thing out the window.
for all the gop’s rhetoric about social engineering, they havent said a word about this.
and their excuse is “well…public health expenditure”,lol.
i guess its good for all involved that us plebs remain divided and confused.
“Tensions rise between Harris and Biden teams as election nears”
What should happen is that the Biden team should be supporting the Harris team as they are on the final stretch of a Presidential election. But then there is old Joe to factor in. Not only is he still mad how he was pushed aside and resentful but he wants the Harris team to spend a lot of the remaining time talking about all the good that Biden did in the media to buff his legacy when there is for the Harris there is literally no time. They are trying to get Harris elected and at this point old Joe is just an albatross hung around their necks. Mind you, they deserve each other but that is for another conversation.
“Never underestimate Joe’s ability to f*ck things up…” – B. Obama
Well, when it comes to “f*cking things up”, Obama would certainly know.
Though Obama did a lot more “f*cking people over” than “f*cking things up”. He is reaping the big reward money today for the f*ckovers he engineered while in office.
Kirn/Taibbi with a good analysis of the campaign
ATW Live on Monday 10/14/24
https://rumble.com/v5inxn9-atw-live-on-monday-81424.html
Whether their projection is correct or not I cannot judge – the assumption that the ad campaign by Harris gives away some inconvenien truths in the polling makes sense.
How can anyone with a little sense of aesthetics and decency seriously listen to Rachel Madddows. I dont´t watch TV so I don´t know if the rest is as bad. But her perfomances are obnoxious.
At about TC 60:00 she is praising the economy under Biden in ways as if she were working for Prawda. May be wanna look into that.
Agreed. I was enjoying the show until they started watching her. “The economy is teh best evah in history!” according to her, with no details given as to why. Meanwhile I went to the store and paid $60 for one bag of groceries yesterday, and half the bag was full of cheap toilet paper. I had to turn it off a few minutes in to her appearance – too grating to listen to.
Someone might want to tell Taibbi that we all read/watch him because we can’t stand these other clowns and there’s no need for him to feature them, at least on video. I could probably stand a brief verbal description of whatever mendacity is broadcast on MSDNC.
The plagiarism issue already cost Baerbock dearly in the 2021 German election. Even though Americans I assume are not by far as much consumed by such krypto-snobistic tropes as Germans are (because its never about truth in academia in reality, of course, but something much more obscure.)
I wanted to see if I could find a picture of that “packed house” Harris spoke to in Erie. I went to a local NBC affiliate and their story has quite a few exterior pictures not one of which shows more than maybe 200-300 people.
The language of the article is curious, never actually saying it was a full house. There is however a Facebook post showing three pix of a big crowd. Two of the pix are of the exact same section of the arena. There is also video of the huuuuge line but if you watch the whole video, it’s the same couple of shots used over and over again.
Circumstantial evidence leads me to suspect they only used part of the arena and then controlled the hell out the media coverage. Arena seating for concerts is 9,500. When I helped with crowd control for Bernie in Iowa City in 2016 the capacity was 13000 and fire marshalls were standing at the doors to keep people out. Later someone who’d walked the entire line with a camera posted a sped-up clip on Twitter. You see nothing like those kinds of numbers here. Only difference between 9k and 13k people in line is the length of the line. Harris’ lines weren’t just shorter, they were shot from careful angles so you wouldn’t see the end of the line.
Watching the video clip on that page is exactly like watching MSNBC pitching for Harris. They’ve talked about different groups bused in from as far away as some place I’ve never heard of. The background noise had way too much echo in it like you would hear if the sound was loud but the arena only half full.
It’s possible the arena had 5,000 people in it, or half full. Still a good crowd for a weekday. Nothing, however, explains the effort NBC put into selling it as a “packed house” or their nonstop cheerleading for Harris.
Here’s a X post claiming video of the arena:
https://x.com/chriskay909/status/1846363971755946365
Admittedly, I haven’t done much digging, so I must defer to those who have.
Proof enough. NBC affiliate shot all their footage before things got started and did all the things I said. I guess they couldn’t afford to wait for the crowd to fully arrive before shooting their footage.
Still, Harris’ people should have footage from behind her showing her against a backdrop of the whole crowd. Their webpage touted this event with a picture of her and Walz at the DNC.
‘Steve Stoliar
@StoliarSteve
On this day in 1893, silent superstar Lillian Gish was born in Springfield, Ohio. In 1988, I wrote to her asking if silent films had actual dialogue written out in the scripts or if there was just a general description of what was being said. This was her remarkable reply.’
What a gracious lady. And through that exchange, an important part of how those early films were made was preserved-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Gish
Re; Imagine having a housekeeper that doesn’t vote ANC, doesn’t have 55 uncle’s funerals to attend every year, won’t steal your food, and you only have to pay for it once?
Jesus H. Christ.
If your bloody help is stealing food… fvck, I wish they’d discover cannabalism. And not to eat their own, but the fat ones.
If I, for some reason, thought that a robot mannekin housekeeper was a good idea, I’d never be able to get over the fear that it would one day be hacked and I’d wake up in the middle of the night with its cold, metallic, implacable fingers around my throat – or the smell of smoke, and the discovery that every escape had been barred.
Blecks have family! Blecks have got the vote! Blecks eat stuff! Shocking! Who knew?
Thank goodness, people who are upset about these things are back in power in South Africa, ready to replace the black working class with robots.
An interesting point, however; he thinks the robot will be working for him because he has bought it, and he has never heard of “upgrades” which have to be paid for (and, yes, steely fingers round your throat if you can’t afford it).
The South African white middle class has been voting for its own destruction for about four decades.
#AllThingsHarris
> … how about an amnesty for the marijuana growers and dealers who built a business sector now worth billions? Legalization is not enough
Sadly, Lambert … this is where tangible, material benefits meet resoundingly dull thud (via NC, yesterday).
#FromTheMinistryOfGoldfishBrains
… a.k.a. they have learned nothing
How is this any different from Chuck Schumer’s 2016 fetid “strategy”?!
It would be laughable were it not so pathetic.
#NasalVaccine
> … 2027 [bangs head on desk]
Bringing back this Naomi Wu banger from January 2023 (vi X/Twitter). Yep, receiving her CanSinoBio inhaled vaccine over 18 months ago in China.
America is an unserious nation.
>Troy Teslike
@TroyTeslike
·
Oct 12
It seems some people are still confused about how autonomous the Optimus bots were at the Tesla event. This clip is from another video Tesla released a while ago. It shows how the bots are controlled remotely using a haptic suit, kind of like puppets.
About that bot being controlled remotely. Think of the possibilities! Fighting chemical spills, fires, accidents, performing hazardous jobs with no danger to a real live human being. Wait, we can even arm them with weapons and go to war while we control them from a safe area back home. How easy will it be for Country A to fight Country B with no worries about a Country A’s populace not wanting to participate. No consequences, no human death, no disability for the rest of a soldiers life. I would think the Ukrainians would be ALL OVER this with their manpower shortages. Now, if we could only solve the collateral damage of destroyed infrastructure, civilians caught in the way, you know, the things that still make war so horrible.
I might be a slow learner but by now I too reckon, if one party here is fascist it´s news media people like Maddows. Since unlike Orange Man who is mostly mocking his adversaries, Maddows and friends genuinely hate him as a present force and want him dead for real. Each word she says, her attitude, it´s dead serious. And trying to make the fiction reality is fascist. And that´s what they are doing. Inventing things and alter reality in ways these inventions cause real costs (like Ukraine of course). See for that Mark Milley´s bullshit farewell speech. Besides, he was the one who in Ramstein I believe told AFU soldiers to cut the throats of their enemies while those are sleeping. Which to suggest was a crime committed by Milley according to the rules of military conduct.
Dr Jill cordially despises Harris since the debates, Joe, or what’s left of him, is resentful about being deposed but smart enough to be passive aggressive while trying to get even.
And there is always Madame Hillary who was DESTINED to be the first female President…I hope she’s getting hives due to not very well suppressed rage.
They are Democrats, the knife in the back is what they do.
Apropos of nothing, and apologies if this has been discussed before, but just seemed interesting: data sonification discussion on StarTalk show. https://youtu.be/sSl3bHuls80?si=OKzAjoCgOOuHRXGG
I think the first example is at the 4 minute 8 second mark.
What a lovely sentiment at the end of that letter: “May this be of help to you and it comes with my every good wish.”
I really need to up my letter/language game. Thank you.
“…modern Russia is a basket-case country run by a mafia-style regime whose election-influence ops are often laughably amateurish.” Projection, much?
Uh, what about the facts on the ground? Russia is winning the war and growing economically despite Western sanctions. They even have reasonably honest elections.
I know it is Fox News, but come on now. Reality gets a say.
Fox News: ‘You take that back!’
The CIA Democrats in the 2024 elections [WSWS]
“Democrats are spooks who want to mess with your head.” Something like that (which has the merit of being perhaps a chiaroscuro version of the truth).”
Spooks all over on both parties.
Been a long time since I’ve seen Republicans who want to cut a military budget either.
The Spook fascination with Democrats is all about trying to control young people since the perception is that Democrats attract more of youth vote.
But actually all that lock step thinking is going to get weird and fast. The creepy factor will be hard to disguise.
Trump did exactly what a person should do if s/he notices that people are getting sick in a big crowd. Try to get the doors open, and calm people down, and keep them safely distracted so that they don’t bolt en masse and crush each other. He may have been wondering if there was something in the air that was going to affect a lot of people; that would have been my first thought after there was a second fainting. If that had been how it was going, his decision would have saved lives.
Given the recent assassination attempts, it would be a valid consideration that some psychopath might decide the world would be better without all those deplorables. At the same time, having a panicked dash for the exits would definitely cause injuries.
God, I hate having to credit Trump with making a good call under pressure. Still can’t vote for the man. What is the world coming to…
This almost makes up for Walgreens’ monkey puzzle shopping carts that can’t be removed from the store:
CDC Flu
@CDCFlu
CDC is working with E-TrueNorth & Walgreens on a new pilot program to provide #flu testing of symptomatic people in CA & 1 other state that have confirmed #H5N1 bird flu infections. The program will increase testing of people for seasonal flu and triaged for H5 testing, if needed.
1:15 PM · Oct 15, 2024
A great response to the CDC tweet:
CaliforniaHeartBavariaHome 📯
@lgoshen: 12m
Will the Walgreens employees being intentionally exposed to H5N1 wear proper PPE, or will there be zero infection prevention in place as is currently the problem at these places? Won’t customers also have high risk of exposure if H5N1 patients are encouraged to visit Walgreens?
Maybe I won’t be shopping at Walgreens in the near future, if it is going to be Bird Flu Central. I always mask already, but I am not ready for goggles.
If Harris’ husband was seen hitting a girlfriend of his in public, and if he knocked up the family nanny who then had a “stress” miscarriage (how convenient), why aren’t people speculating about whether Harris is a beaten wife? I have literally not seen that suggested anywhere (apologies if I somehow missed it here). Do men really beat some women and then become model husbands all of a sudden? I don’t know much about the personality traits of beaten wives, but the constant laughter and gestures look like fear to me.