Bird Song of the Day
Blue Mockingbird, Melanotis caerulesces, Presa Los Zompanties, Etla, Oaxaca, Mexico.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Michelle stays home.
- Trump to work the grill at McDonald’s in Philly.
- Trump’s “fascism”.
- Boeing borrows $10 billion, fights off junk status for now, faces break-up.
“Power-company workers get standing ovation during Lightning’s hurricane-delayed home opener” [Orlando Sentinel]. “There was a standing ovation late in the second period and it wasn’t for any of the Tampa Bay players. It was for a group of power-company workers from Vancouver who are assisting in recovery efforts. ‘How about the ovation that the Vancouver linemen got when they showed them on the big screen?’ Cooper asked. ‘I’m normally not looking up there a ton but that was a pretty moving moment for me. And it just shows you there’s a lot of good out there. When people come out and help each other it does make you feel good.'” • I’m violating my own guidelines a little bit here, but what the powerline workers are doing is called “mutual assistance,” and I think that’s how the workers see it (sure, overtime no doubt, structured by giant utilities to minimize slack. Nevertheless).
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
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!.
“The Known Unknowns of Election 2024” [Wall Street Journal]. “Even if there aren’t any more October surprises, many factors could influence the outcome. These include turnout, a possible undercount of Trump supporters, the effect of the Trump campaign’s advertising blitz against Ms. Harris on the transgender issue, and the movements of last-minute swing voters. Any of these known unknowns could prove decisive—a reminder that voters, not pundits, decide elections.” • Hmm.
“Suddenly, the Electoral College Is Posing a Problem for Trump” [Slate]. “Trump is, ironically, crashing into the same roadblock that has stymied Democrats for decades now: The Electoral College overvalues white votes at the expense of racial minorities, giving white voters considerably more influence over the presidential race…. A few examples drawn from current demographic data: Latinos make up about 40 percent of California’s population, and Trump appears to be making inroads with them there. But there is no chance that this trend will flip the heavily Democratic state toward Trump, so eroding Harris’ edge with California Latinos will not help him reach the White House. Latinos also make up about 40 percent of Texas’ population, yet Trump is essentially certain to carry the Lone Star State already, so additional votes from Texas Latinos won’t matter to him. Florida is an increasingly diverse state, and Trump may win an eye-popping number of nonwhite votes there. But he is overwhelmingly likely to win it no matter what, so this feat would not clinch him a second term. The same dynamic applies to smaller states. Black voters make up about 36 percent of Mississippi’s population, for instance, but winning over some of these voters will not boost Trump’s overall chance of victory because he already has Mississippi locked down. Conversely, Asian Americans make up 10 percent of New Jersey and Washington state, but Harris has both in the bag. So it will be irrelevant to Trump if these Asian American voters defect to him. There are, of course, exceptions to this dynamic: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina all have large numbers of nonwhite voters, and all are swing states. But Harris’ clearest path to victory remains a sweep of the famed tipping-point states—Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—which historically vote the same way. If she carries this so-called blue wall, along with the single electoral vote of Omaha, Nebraska, she’ll win the whole election. Pennsylvania in particular has emerged as the probable tipping-point state. That’s why Harris and Tim Walz, her vice presidential nominee, are spending the final weeks with a campaign blitz in the Rust Belt. Current polling suggests that winning these states is pretty much mandatory. Any victories in the more diverse Sun Belt will probably be a bonus.” • Entirely anecdotal, but an associate of mine tells me Black women he knows in California absolutely hate Kamala. And white women they know in Milwaukee (Milwaukee proper, not the burbs) absolutely love her (because of her performativity on abortion). One thing: Republicans, like Winston Wolfe, “solve problems” (though you may agree neither with the problem statement nor the solution). Like firing their elites (who then went and turned themselves into Democrats). Or recomposing the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. If fixing the electoral college is to their advantage, they will do it.
* * * Kamala (D): “Despite her call to ‘do something’ for Harris, Michelle Obama has yet to hit the campaign trail” [NBC]. “With just 20 days until the election, Michelle Obama has worked behind the scenes to boost turnout in key swing states, but she has yet to schedule an official appearance for Harris since the Democratic National Convention. Two people familiar with the matter said she has expressed fresh concerns about security following two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump…. Her low profile stands out after her rousing speech in August at the Democratic National Convention, when she implored members of her party not to get complacent about the November election and repeatedly urged voters to instead ‘do something!'” • So I guess Michelle doesn’t believe Trump is a fascist?
* * * Kamala (D): “Harris peppered with questions by Charlamagne tha God’s audience” [The Hill]. “Throughout the interview, Harris shared her position on topics such as reparations — which she said she supports studying — building up Black homeownership and the opportunity to grow generational wealth.” “Study”? Oh. More; “Harris released an “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men” on Monday, but one caller asked her why she didn’t do so sooner and why support for Black men is only sought out during election cycles. ‘I’ve been in this race about 70 days. You can look at all my work before those 70 days to know that this, what I’m talking about right now, is not new and is not for the sake of winning this election,’ Harris responded. ‘This is about a long-standing commitment, including the work that I’ve done as vice president and before, when I was senator.’ Harris’s time as a senator came up at another point in the interview when a caller from Nevada asked what she plans to do to address police brutality and its disproportionate impact on Black Americans. The vice president quickly pointed to her work on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) during her time in the upper chamber.” • So a bill that never passed is the best Harris can do? “Fighting for,” I suppose….
Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris’ greatest weakness is her inauthentic self — and black Americans can see right through it” [New York Post]. “Charlamagne Tha God of ‘The Breakfast Club’ invited Vice President Harris for an audio-only town hall in Detroit featuring prerecorded questions from the audience. From the very first question, her believability came under scrutiny by Charlamagne. ‘Folks say you come off as very scripted and like to stick to your talking points,’ he said — and she promptly interrupted him by saying, ‘Some people would call that disciplined.’ Charlamagne continued, ‘What do you say to the people that say you stay on the talking points?’ ‘I would say you’re welcome!’ Harris immediately responded.” Translation: Voters are stupid. They just don’t get it.. More: What summed up this interview was how she addressed a concern of a caller who questioned the motives behind sending money abroad in abundance when there are many pressing issues that remain here: ‘We can do it all!’ she claimed, unconvincingly.” • Editorializing. But I doubt Kamala will #MintTheCoin (and it’s clear to me how much capability we really have to do anything more than write apps and produce boutique weaponry, and that’s before we get to what’s happened to the workforce from Covid. Oh, and deliver stuff from China in boxes.
Kamala (D): “Opinion: Does Harris’ Fox interview mean she’s a conservative? Nope. She’s just scared” [USA Today]. “[T]his week, [Kamala’s] shaking things up and doing her first ever sit-down interview with Fox News. The interview will take place Wednesday with Fox News anchor Bret Baier. Baier has said that he won’t treat Harris with kid gloves during their conversation, and that any editing of the interview will only be for ‘timing’ and that ‘no topic is off the table.’ Sounds promising. Kudos to Harris for agreeing to appear on a network shunned by most of her progressive base – and one that may ask her tough questions.” • Going after Republican votes….
* * * Trump (R): “Donald Trump will ‘work the fry cooker’ at McDonald’s in the Philly area this weekend” [Philadelphia Inquirer]. “The former president will make the stop at a McDonald’s in the Philadelphia area, the source said, but the exact location is still unclear…. Trump has continuously claimed that Harris never worked at the fast-food chain, without evidence. He told a campaign crowd in Indiana, Pennsylvania last month that he wanted to work as a fry cook to ‘see how it is.'” • Allow me to hoist once more this insightful comment from alert reader Brian Beijer on August 29:
Now, to [Kamala’s] “I did fries. And then I did the cashier”. Not one of those workers respected the fries and cashier person. There was a begrudging respect for the drive thru cashier because they had to put up with so much grief (this word is out of respect for Yves). But, no one was really respected until they competently handled the grill during a rush hour. You earned real props after handling a bus or unexpected football team visit. I can totally understand why Kamala didn’t put McDonald’s on her resumè`, but I don’t understand why she’s reluctant to mention her experience there…unless she was just a cashier/fry person. Then, she never really got the experience of what working at McDonald’s really offered.
Trump doesn’t even have to be good. All he has to do is actually feel the heat of the grill and show respect for workers by entering their world (and not with performative empathy and bullet points on the Twitter).
Trump (R): “ABC ‘whistleblower’ hoaxster returns with sloppy attempt to frame Tim Walz” [Daily Dot]. A saga you may have followed here. “The account previously blew up for its claims it had proof an ABC whistleblower provided Vice President Kamala Harris questions before the presidential debate. [T]he proof never materialized.” • The Daily Dot claims that Trump signal boosted Black Insurrectionist’s claim, but gives no link or embedded Tweet. I can’t find it. Readers?
* * * Trump (R): “Donald Trump’s debts and financial ties are a threat to national security” [Boston Globe]. “Heavy personal debts, unsavory associates, murky foreign financial ties — any of them could be a reason a security clearance is denied. The rules are premised on the common-sense idea that those individuals are more vulnerable to blackmail or bribery, or simply lack moral character. The president, like all constitutional officeholders, is exempt from this requirement. The president’s security clearance, as it were, is granted by the [stupid, untrustworthy, deplorable] electorate. Voters, though, have every reason to weigh in the voting booth the same kind of considerations that clearance-vetters in the government do when they’re assessing potential federal workers: Can this candidate be trusted in a sensitive national security job? The answer in the case of former president Donald Trump is clearly no. If Trump were required to pass even the lowest level of federal security clearance, he couldn’t.” • That’s terrible. Let’s fix it! Clearly, the intelligence community should vet any President, maybe even all candidates.
Trump (R): “Trump accused of ‘mimicking’ infamous Nazi rally with Madison Square Garden event” [Independent]. “Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville claimed that Donald Trump’s forthcoming rally at Madison Square Garden is mimicking a pro-Adolf Hitler Nazi event held at the venue more than 80 years ago.” • Oh ffs. See, e.g., “Address at Madison Square Garden, New York City,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We do’n: “For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.” That’s the stuff to give the troops, but we sure don’t hear it from today’s “fighting for” Democrats! Anyhow, I’m seeing this meme — Madison Square Garden = Hitler — all over the place. It’s so stupid. These people have lost their minds (just as badlly as that Black Insurrectionist dude, just on different tropes). Walter Kirn comments:
How cunning it was of the wily Trump to forego becoming a fascist dictator in his first term and wait until he maybe won a second term
Most power-mad monsters don't have that kind of patience!
— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) October 14, 2024
Trump (R): “Former President Trump calls the ‘enemy from within’ more dangerous than any foreign entity” [FOX]. I wish I could find the transcript on tnis, but I can’t. Here are the quotes from Sunday Morning Futures FOX pulled out:
Former President Trump explained how he would guard against bureaucrats undermining him as the potential next commander-in-chief if elected back to the White House.
“We have two enemies: We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries,” Trump said in an exclusive interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“But the thing that’s tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff — Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff,” Trump added.
“I call him the enemy from within,” he continued. “When you look at the danger he put our country in potentially with Russia — with a phony, made-up deal that he made up with Hillary and some bad people.””That started off as an excuse for why [Hillary Clinton] lost an election that a lot of people thought she should have won, because the polls indicated she might win,” Trump noted.
“And then she got beaten everywhere, virtually. When you look at that, and then they said, ‘Ah, it was Russia,’ they used it as an excuse, and then the fake news picked it up.”
So where’s the lie? Here is alternative coverage–
Trump (R): “Trump Suggesting He’d Use Military Against ‘Enemy From Within’ Sparks Alarm” [Newsweek]. Again, I have no transcript:
On Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, Bartiromo asked Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, “What are you expecting? Joe Biden said he doesn’t think it’s going to be a peaceful Election Day.”
During a White House press briefing, Biden said last week that he is confident that the upcoming election will be “free and fair,” but said he was concerned about the transfer of power being peaceful on account of Trump’s words and actions following his loss in 2020.
Trump responded, “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within…We have some very bad people, some sick people, radical left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
At another point during the interview, he said, “We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy. And, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries.”
Lambert here: So FOX doesn’t quote the part about “handling” “radical left lunatics” with the National Guard (one of the “enemies within”) and Newsweek doesn’t quote the material on RusssiaGate (the second of the “enemies” within). Some comments: I like “enemies within” a lot less than “deplorables,” which I didn’t like at all, even though both are dehumanizing; “enemies within” has a bad history. Further, the media reaction to Trump’s remarks shows a pervasive habit of mind or trope by Democrats: Things have have happened are put on the same set of scales as things that might happen. RussiaGate happened; an election day round-up of bad actors might happen. Of course, the irony is that most of the “radical left lunatics” are already in DHS Fusion Center databases developed under Democrats, and all their online uttterances are carefully monitored by the Censorship Industrial Complex. As I keep saying, the fascist smorgasboard is a rich repast from which both parties partake freely, indeed greedily.
* * * “Playbook: How litigation is defining the election” [Politico]. “The flurry of litigation is happening on all sides: For every DOJ lawsuit aimed at protecting voting access, sparking fury on the right, there are on many more being filed by conservatives looking to restrict access to voting and otherwise shape election procedures, said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice. ‘We saw a little bit of it in 2020, but it has exploded,’ she told us last night. ‘They’re using the courts to spread conspiracy theories, to put some veneer of legal belief to stoke conspiracy theories.’ Consider what happened after the 2020 election: When Trump’s campaign litigated its claims of a stolen election, some cases were thrown out by judges who said they should have gone to court earlier. They’re not making the same mistake this time. The Harris campaign is already involved in dozens of lawsuits — one official we spoke with last night boasted about winning nine out of ten cases that have already been decided — while assembling what they are calling the ‘biggest voter protection operation in presidential campaign history.'” • Expect continued volatility, even after election day. Interesting if true:
BREAKING: Biden's former White House Counsel DANA REMUS –who facilitated the FBI/DOJ investigation of Trump at Mar-a-Lago and then helped cover up Biden's own classified docs scandal –is now running Kamala Harris campaign's pre- and post-election LAWFARE operation against Trump
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) October 15, 2024
* * * PA: “Salena Zito: In 2024, Everything Is Happening in Pennsylvania” [RealClearPolitics]. “The first county I’m looking at is Cambria County home of Johnstown. This is a county that three years ago was majority Democrat, now they’re at almost 50,000 more registered Republicans…. Luzerne County up by Scranton I would watch. Erie and Northampton — with high cost of living and inflation…. I would give the edge to Trump just because I think the people that are in the middle of despair, in particular in the heavily Democrat area of the city of Erie, I’m not sure they’re turning up to vote. People have not seen them, they have not heard them. And everything else outside of Erie is Republican.” Well, except for Philly and (to a lesser extent?) Pittsburgh. More: “You will see what’s called the Frontier, which is sort of the Connecticut of Erie, the upper-middle-class suburbs. They don’t, they don’t care for Trump, but that’s also part of the city.” • The Frontier… Are any readers familiar with this locution?
* * *
Spook Country
The Censorship Insdusrial Complex is very online:
The term “misinformation” picked up popularity around 2016.
I wonder why 🧐 pic.twitter.com/83FV365Uzh
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) October 16, 2024
Democrats en Déshabillé
Well, possibly. Something to think about:
Mark Halperin has better political sources than anyone in media. He now believes Donald Trump is likely to win. If that happens, Halperin predicts the psychological collapse of the Democratic Party — “greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country.”
(1:23) The State… pic.twitter.com/YtMTq14T4u
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 15, 2024
Do note, however, that Trump has invaded the dreams of liberal Democrats (November 19, 2023). So there are indeed some mass psychological mechanisms at work (as in all of us).
“How Alarmed Should We Be If Trump Wins Again?” [Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker]. “But polarized nations don’t actually polarize around fixed poles. Civil confrontations invariably cross classes and castes, bringing together people from radically different social cohorts while separating seemingly natural allies. The English Revolution of the seventeenth century, like the French one of the eighteenth, did not array worn-out aristocrats against an ascendant bourgeoisie or fierce-eyed sansculottes. There were, one might say, good people on both sides. Or, rather, there were individual aristocrats, merchants, and laborers choosing different sides in these prerevolutionary moments. No civil war takes place between classes; coalitions of many kinds square off against one another.” But that’s just the warm-up before the pitch, from which I could quote nearly anything, but this will do: “Shuttling between the comic-book villain and the grimacing, red-faced, and unhinged man who may be reëlected President in a few weeks, one struggled to distinguish our culture’s most extravagant imagination of derangement from the real thing. The space is that strange, and the stakes that high.” • I don’t love Trump, I really don’t. But does Gopnik not think genocide is “unhinged”? Does Gopnick not think a proxy war with a nuclear power — a war we fomented, and are losing — is “unhinged”? If Gopnik got vaccinated — and you can be sure he did — the stuff in the syringe came from a program the “unhinged” orange man initiated. So what, exactly, is Gopnik so alarmed about that’s more alarming than genocide and nuclear war? Walter Kirn comments:
Treating the Trump candidacy as a hostile insurgency & his supporters as a cross between the Taliban, the Klan, & the Viet Cong feels to me like a conscience-clearing license for a very serious state crackdown & a permanent dilution of civil liberties
Boy do I pray I'm wrong
— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) October 15, 2024
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!
Transmission: H5N1
“Is it time to freak out about bird flu?” [STAT]. “If, however, you are more familiar with the history of this form of bird flu, you might be getting anxious. You might be worried that no one has figured out how one of the infected individuals, who lives in Missouri, contracted H5N1. Or you might recall that the virus has killed half of the 900-plus people known to have been infected with it over the past 27 years. Above all, you might fret that the virus is now circulating in thousands of cows in the U.S., exposing itself to some unknowable portion of the more than 100,000 dairy farmworkers in this country — the consequences of which could be, well, disastrous. Ongoing transmission in cattle means that every day in this country, a virus that is genetically suited to infecting wild birds is being given the opportunity to morph into one that can easily infect mammals. One of these spins of the genetic roulette wheel could result in a version of H5N1 that has a skill that is very much not in our interest to have it gain — the capacity to spread from person to person like seasonal flu viruses do. So is this freak-out time? Or is the fact that this virus still hasn’t cracked the code for easy access to human respiratory systems a sign that it may not have what it takes to do so? The answer, I’m afraid, is not comforting. Science currently has no way of knowing all the changes H5N1 would need to undergo to trigger a pandemic, or whether it is capable of making that leap. (This important article lays out what has been learned so far about some of the mutations H5N1 would have to acquire.) The truth is, when it comes to this virus, we’re in scientific limbo.” • I say let’s double down, roll the dice, and risk everything! But commentary:
Variants: Covid
“SARS-CoV-2 provides an unprecedented opportunity to watch evolution occur in real time” [T. Ryan Gregory, ThreadReader.app]. “SARS-CoV-2 provides an unprecedented opportunity to watch evolution occur in real time. It also happens to be showing the pervasiveness of many misconceptions about evolution, even among scientists with limited knowledge of evolutionary biology. Here’s a list and explanations. 🧵”
Misconceptions about evolution on display with SARS-CoV-2:
1. Typological thinking.
2. Variation seen as noise rather than signal.
3. Teleology.
4. Orthogenesis.
5. Not understanding how natural selection works.
6. Ignoring Orgel’s second rule.
7. Myths about human evolution.Worth reading in full. Perhaps evolutionary biologists in the readership will chime in.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC October 5 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC October 12 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC October 5 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data October 15: | National [6] CDC September 21: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens October 14: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic October 5: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC September 16: | Variants[10] CDC September 16: |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC September 28: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC September 28: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) 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
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Manufacturing: “The $25B Boeing Problem” [CEO Today]. “Boeing has obtained a credit agreement valued at $10 billion with a group of prime financial institutions, which includes Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan. The Analysts from Bank of America indicate that Boeing is expected to raise between $10 billion and $15 billion in equity to preserve its investment-grade credit rating.”
Manufacturing: “Has Boeing done enough to avoid the credit rating junk yard?” [Financial Times]. “Boeing is ‘too big to fail in the eyes of the US government‘, said a second bondholder. ‘However, it’s not too big to become high-yield.'” Ha ha! No indeed. More: “Our major concern is that the longer this goes, the [more likely it is that] rating agencies will be forced to take some action.'”
Manufacturing: “Daily Memo: Boeing’s Breakup Is Not If, But How And When” [Aviation Week]. Worth reading in full, especially if you play the ponies. “To be succinct, large commercial aircraft, and especially narrowbodies, are the future of cash generation.” Which could put Boeing Defense Services on the chopping block. Except: “What about divesting BDS as a whole? Many analysts and consultants see that as unlikely. For starters, the defense and space division obviously is full of enough money-losing fixed-price contracts to make it financially radioactive. Second, it is unlikely the U.S. executive branch would allow another large defense prime to buy it, considering monopoly concerns, while lawmakers could flinch at the prospect of a private equity buyer. Nevertheless, contracts can be sunsetted or sold off individually, and facilities shut down to achieve the same effect.” And: “Regardless of the path, Boeing’s breakup from its current conglomerate state is a safe bet. … [T]he end result could be Boeing more in name only rather than the business model many people think of now.
Manufacturing: “Emirates orders more Boeing 777F freighters, sources say” [Reuters]. ” Dubai’s Emirates, one of the world’s largest cargo carriers, is expanding its fleet of Boeing 777F freighters as it plans for a sharp increase in cargo trade, industry sources said. The order for more of the current-generation freighters emerged amid tensions between Emirates and Boeing over separate delays, but pre-dated Boeing’s announcement on Friday that its future 777X jetliner series would slip by another year to 2026…. Analysts note that delays in passenger planes and ongoing demand for dedicated freighter planes are not disconnected. Cirium Ascend head of global consultancy Rob Morris said demand for freighters was being supported by a shortage of passengers planes from Boeing and Airbus, since a large proportion of air freight travels in bellies of passenger jets. Average global cargo yields or unit revenues grew 12% in August, the highest annual increase in over two years, the International Air Transport Association said last week.” • Easier to produce, less risk of one of ’em falls out of the sky. And a reach-around for Boeing on cash flow?
Manufacturing: “After Boeing, Airbus to slash 2,500 jobs amid ongoing financial losses” [Business Standard]. “The Netherlands-headquartered Airbus is planning to cut up to 2,500 jobs within its defence and space division. This significant move aims to streamline the European aerospace giant’s operations as it grapples with ongoing financial difficulties. According to reports, these job cuts, which represent around 7 per cent of the division’s workforce, are expected to be implemented by mid-2026. While Airbus has not provided an official statement, the information comes amidst continued struggles in its defence and space sectors. Airbus has been facing substantial losses, particularly within its space systems division, where projects like OneSat have suffered from delays and increasing costs. In response, the company launched a wider efficiency review, code-named ATOM, aimed at addressing operational challenges and identifying cost-saving measures, according to AFP.”
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.
Personal risk assessment:
Could also be titled: “Portrait of a Young Person Entering the Job Market.” I truly dislike the cultural moment that valorizes nutty behavior like this (I can just see “founders” putting stills from it on t-shirts for their employees). Also, I wonder if there was ever snow on that mountain. It looks like the surface of Mars (Hi Elon [waves]).
Gallery
Sending this out to Kelly Ortberg:
'The Scrapheap.' (1944) In 1940, Stanley Spencer was commissioned by the War Artist’s Advisory Committee to illustrate the valuable contribution made by the British shipbuilding industry and its workers to the war effort. He was sent by the Ministry of Information to the Kingston… pic.twitter.com/CYFYJS2mcn
— Richard Morris (@ahistoryinart) October 16, 2024
“The Call Is Out for Mass, Simultaneous Strikes in 4 Years” [WorkDay Magazine]. “At its annual convention in July, the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.8 million members, passed a resolution titled, ‘Supporting The UAW’s Call To Align Contract Expirations For May 1.’ …. This union is not alone. The American Postal Workers Union also passed a supportive resolution at its national convention in July. And Brandon Mancilla, the elected UAW Region 9A director, told me that UAW has also ‘been having conversations with different healthcare unions’ that are interested in joining. The union United Electrical Workers is also having ‘active conversations’ about the call for contract alignment, the union’s general president, Carl Rosen, told me. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA who called for a general strike to end the government shutdown in 2019, told me over text message, ‘The call for aligning contract expirations and planning for a general strike is powerful in and of itself. The consciousness of the power of solidarity that grows from cross-sector organizing begins to change social order before feet hit the streets.’ Not every effort to get formal support, though, has been successful. The National Education Association voted down a new business item supporting the alignment on the first day of its representative assembly, before the National Education Association Staff Organization went on strike.” • How about the Longshoremen? Boeing’s machinists?
“How ham radio endures – and remains a disaster lifeline – in the iPhone era|” [ZDnet]. “In the aftermath of a catastrophe, ham radio operators play a vital role in relaying messages between disaster victims and their concerned friends and family members. These skilled volunteers use their equipment to establish communication networks, often when cell towers are down and internet access is unavailable…. In a disaster, ham radio operators create self-organized networks to relay messages in and out of affected areas. …. ” • Fun for the whole family! Get yourselves a license (along with your passport…).
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 MR:
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
MR writes: “Neither antidote nor plantidote, but wow! From last night, looking north from south shore of lake ontario outside Rochester, NY.” For this time only, as a conceptual dodge that will allow me to post this photo, I will deem th plant-derived construct at lower right a plant. And weren’t these Northern Lights pretty big and pretty far South? What’s up with that? Disturbance in the force?
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:
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#TrumpNCMole … 😂
> Trump (R): “Donald Trump will ‘work the fry cooker’ at McDonald’s in the Philly area this weekend” [Philadelphia Inquirer].
… lending credence to the “someone from the Trump campaign is reading NC” theory!
I was about to chime with the same observation as soon as I saw it, but, lo and behold, this is the first comment to WC! ;)
Right?! :)
Maybe we should start leaving more helpful hints in comments!
Like:
Work your magic, DJT Campaign lurker!
Hat tip tip to alert reader Brian Beijer. I only hope his head can still fit through the door.
But only you, Lambert, would repeatedly call that comment out, and very well done.
I would love to see Kamala work the fryer.
Thank you so much Lambert for the shout out. I apologize for not commenting sooner. I hope you see this despite it being in an old Water Cooler. When I saw my post in the thread, I called my wife over to show her. It really made my day.
I’ve recently turned 54, and I’m finding that my work schedule is more demanding on my body. I get up at 3:30 and come home at 7:00 in the evening. It’s an 1 1/2 hour commute to work, and I’ve always found that I work best in the time before anyone else arrives at the office. Another work ethic that McDonalds taught me is that you work until the job is done, not just until your shift ends. I’ve found that this work ethic has served me well since moving to Sweden. After 12 years of living here, I’m still crap at speaking the language, but I run circles around my co-workers. All this is to say that I find I have little energy lately to post here.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also learned that most often it’s better to let my thoughts remain uncommunicated. Especially these days, when so many people get so easily offended. I don’t have the time nor energy to bubble wrap my thoughts before expressing them. It’s just not worth it. It’s nice to know that, every once in a while, someone appreciates what I say.
In a pickle
Need some lettuce
A fast food job
Might cause a rumpus
All we ask is you super-size he
These big time auroras are the result of a surge of Coronal Mass Ejections from the surface of the Sun. The highly ‘energetic’ particles ‘interact’ with the Earth’s atmosphere to create glowing atoms floating in the atmosphere. The sun ‘matter’ is energetic and reacts with the Earth’s magnetic field and is funneled downwards at the poles.
See: https://www.britannica.com/science/aurora-atmospheric-phenomenon
Tonight in brief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIrJMO9Epgk&ab_channel=GalaxyQuest
I’ve started doing some photography, but I like doing two views: what the camera saw and what I saw. When I saw the auroras last week, I saw very faint red- and green-tinted blotches, morphing slowly in the sky. Still cool to view. My phone saw some awesome stuff that would give anyone FOMO, except that it shouldn’t be FOMO if my eyes can’t see it.
Same thing with the current comet in the West after sunset. Super faint with the naked eye if I’m in the very dark country. But with the iPhone, ooh, looks great.
Usually I can play with the camera a bit to get a close approximation to what my eyes are seeing.
serious solar storms for the past month or so. my sister who lives in North Carolina planned an extended aurora chasing trip (Sept-Oct) with base camp a short term rental in Minneapolis ranging due north to get away from the city lights, east along the north shore of Lake Superior, and down to the northeast corner of Wisconsin south of Duluth where the view is northward across the lake. she has texted me similarly amazing shots of the heavens!
The Airbus thing is interesting. They have a common supplier (Spirit) with Boeing so the general hooha affects them too to some extent.
I’m curious as to how Airbus extracts itself from this supply chain issue.
The Airbus thing is about defense/war (which apparently West can’t do) and space (which, apart from Musk, West also can’t do) divisions. The civilian airliners part is doing fine so far, although if Boeing implodes, I wonder how our American overlords will look at such important company being in non-US hands. The fate of Nokia comes to mind.
I read a Tweet about that interview. Seems the comments were not kind.
Only 20 days – thank goodness!!!
The end is near, and it’s getting more crazy by the day. Today, I watched some clips and talked to a few people.
Kamala at an airport telling an interviewer Trump should be given a cognizant test, and also people who worked with him while in office said he is unfit. (So now she can spot dementia?)
In a Kamala speech somewhere, with emphasis, she explains how Trump will use the militia and national guard to round up his enemies, or something along those lines. She might have won an Oscar for that performance.
A Joy Reid rant that says black and Hispanic people who want to vote for Trump are also fascist.
But the best of all was from my PMC friends, who are now at the talking themselves off the ledge stage of TDS. They were having quite the conversation about how many red state people died from COVID because they refused to get the shot. They didn’t quite come out and say it, but they are hoping the number to be “a lot.”
This is where we are. Hoping your fellow American’s have died so the POS you worship gets elected.
Sometimes I really don’t like my fellow Americans. And this was only in my first couple of hours today.
The Harris campaign has started attacking Jill Stein. Readying the blame cannons?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democrats-attack-green-party-s-jill-stein-amid-spoiler-fears/ar-AA1s6dpe
Yerp! (via NC)
… we can add Muslim/Arab-Americans and African American men as targets as well.
My sister sent me this one from her imaginary frieng, Thom Hartmann:
https://hartmannreport.com/p/jill-stein-the-grifter-who-may-hand-06e?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=ad0ux&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
From the link, quoting Stein –
“So they can’t win. There’s a fair amount of data now that suggests the Democrats have lost.
Unless they give up their genocide.”
And we can’t have that now, can we? So off with her head.
Also he claims Stein took money from big corporations and provides this link as proof: https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contributors?id=n00033776
The link explicitly says the money came from individuals who worked for those corporations or from their immediate family, and not necessarily from the corporations directly.
I heard some clips from the “Town Hall”:
Q: What about Obama wagging his fingers at black males?
KH: 200 Republicans support me.
Q: What about reparations?
KH: …I grew up in the middle class…
I kid you not. Jesus wept.
I gather tonight’s Fox News interview was another train wreck. I have zero pity for the Dems.
I have super earnest liberal friends and family who are utterly blinded by the genocide. It’s like they are just hoping it gets over soon because it’s wrecking their vibe.
What a litany!
> Kamala at an airport telling an interviewer Trump should be given a cognizant test, and also people who worked with him while in office said he is unfit. (So now she can spot dementia?)
[Emphasis mine] Yes, funny that. Her ascension was tacit acceptance that Joe wasn’t all there … even as she denied the reality of his cognitive decline and pledged fealty right up to the knives out moment.
> In a Kamala speech somewhere, with emphasis, she explains how Trump will use the militia and national guard to round up his enemies, or something along those lines. She might have won an Oscar for that performance.
Shades of Chris Matthews’ conniption after the February Dem Primary debate (via businessinsider.com). Chris wasn’t acting, though!
> A Joy Reid rant that says black and Hispanic people who want to vote for Trump are also fascist.
No need to preach to the choir here about what fascism really is, but gentle reminder that all those who work in the service of this country’s pluto-kleptocracy are effectively adjacent.
> But the best of all was from my PMC friends, who are now talking themselves off the ledge stage of TDS. They were having quite the conversation about how many red state people died from COVID because they refused to get the shot. They didn’t quite come out and say it, but they are hoping the number to be “a lot.”
Par for the course, but horrid nonetheless. Straight up nonsense talk too – perhaps they should actually look into the data.
She did fries and the cashier, too? Some people will do anything for free food. /s
Was Willie Brown the cashier? :)
On DJT and KDH working fries:
as someone currently working part time at a restaurant, fries is where we put all our biggest idiots. any random person off the street can do fries and serving. there’s some respect for servers at service heavy restaurants, but my job isnt service heavy. fries is easy. you can’t really mess up fries. fries are where you go when you are new and we need to put you somewhere where you’ll contribute some use, but don’t want to deal with training you. fries and serving have really high turnover rates. because they aren’t skilled trades. prep, line, and grill all take some level of skill and training. and you’ll only get trained if you stick around and don’t suck.
I hope this means the equipment has been made safer over the years. My brother-in-law, who is not an idiot, reports that he frequently got burned by hot oil splatter when he worked the fryers at KFC years ago.
Speaking from many years of full-time restaurant experience, in a fast-food environment where the fryers are only used for a single product (fries), the person working the two-hour lunch shift does not need to be very skilled. More skill is required during slower periods because everything needs to be done at about the same time or it won’t be hot. And filtering/changing the fryer grease is difficult and potentially dangerous.
Operating a bank of deep fryers can be very challenging indeed if you are doing something more complicated, such as producing a high volume of fresh battered fish.
Things may may have changed since I was a youngster, but in the three fast food places I worked the grill was considered to difficult for just anybody, and washing dishes was considered a “bad job,” but I don’t recall any other hierarchy. One place had management that only sent the biggest guys out to dumpsters at night, for safety, but dumpster was a coveted job for smokers.
Personally, I loved dishwasher. Didn’t have to talk to anyone and it was warm back there.
You provide evidence that fast food work requires skills that come only with experience. Those who complain that fast food workers getting paid $20 per hour (in CA) is an abomination because any Joe Blow or Jane Doe can do these jobs are just showing their ignorance. Smart fast food franchisee owners value their long term employees.
What is it with this sudden working-class-hierarchy stuff? Let me tell you, when I worked cashier, it sucked. It was hard. We would get slammed, especially in the morning, and the customers were very pushy and sometimes borderline aggressive/threatening. It was hard on the nerves.
When I made french fries, it was tough. I don’t think I’m an idiot for having done so, and I resent the implication that all my friends who worked fries were idiots. It was hot, I was burnt constantly by splashing oil. When I got home, I stunk of grease. It was hard work, and people like fries! Someone’s gotta make em.
This NC line of “Kamala is inauthentic for having worked fries and cashier!” is bizarre. It stinks of Kamala-derangement-syndrome.
(I, myself, think Kamala is awful–but I guess I expect more measured takes from NC. One of the reasons the Water Cooler site was a breath of fresh air, politically, for so long was because it did not succumb to Trump-Derangement-Syndrome)
One more thing: I don’t remember any kind of hierarchy mattering except that between the workers and the managers. Among the workers who were there for more than a week or two and who actually came to work, there was real camaraderie. We didn’t look down on each other because one person washed dishes while the other made sandwiches or because one person did cashier while the other made drinks or took out the trash. Running the place required everyone to work together, and at the end of our shifts, we chatted with each other, waved goodbye, and shared a more or less friendly regard after a job well done.
Tough love: you had a sh*tty job but it wasn’t “hard” work.
Grease burns, rude customers, rush hour chaos, horrible cleaning jobs are classic features of sh*tty jobs. Sh*tty jobs are the worst jobs and sometimes they are hard but for the most part people who do them as a career develop skills you apparently lacked, in this case an ability to summon up a zen-like resolve to just go with the flow. Not every customer has their order ready, that’s like taking a break while on the job. You learn to focus on what you’re doing and ignore the noise (you’d hate working in heavy manufacturing). Eventually you find good shoes and that helps but it’s still a sh•tty job.
Working hard doesn’t make your job hard. You can work hard at an easy job but it’s still less hard than taking it easy on a hard job. When that highway crew wasn’t leaning on their shovels? They were working with hot asphalt or operating heavy equipment.
/old guy lecture about what it was like when he was your age ; )
You can take your lecture elsewhere. I’ve worked a lot of jobs, including physically demanding duties at factories and warehouses, and the shifts at the restaurant were just as grueling. While the warehouse work was probably the most physically exhausting (I’d be falling asleep in my dinner after a shift!), it did not have an ounce of the emotional exhaustion I felt after a long shift in food service. And it wasn’t even as bad for me because I wasn’t a woman, like most of my co-workers. They endured some seriously f-ed up stuff.
And by the way, the lifers who’d worked at the restaurant for years–some for decades–it took a real toll on them. They were no “Zen” sages there. Our assistant manager, who was about 15-years in and who came work six days a week, after being harangued by a rough customer, would find an excuse to go to the back office. She’d return with sunglasses so that other customers couldn’t see that she’d been sobbing.
This happened often enough that we had a short hand for it–“One of those days, X had to put on her sunglasses.”
aye. food service work is real work.
dishroom hurts yer back, grill(where i always was) is hotter than hell, and to keep up during a rush, i’d often be working 20-30 tickets at a time.
fryers…most places i worked had 2…can be a pita…and yes, the less experienced got put there. but they had me walking them through the rush(i need 20 CFS…keep the french fry fryer full until i tell you to stop, etc).
my talent was as calm center of the storm…so yeah, very zen.
i coordinated the entire operation from the grill, yelling for waitresses, banging on the bell with my chef’s knife, yelling for dishgirl to go back there and slice 10# of tomatoes, or pull more hamburger patties, etc.
most places i worked were mom and pop…and at most, i’d have 3 others on the line with me.
i’d tell them early and often:”just stay in this spot…because i’ll be moving all around you”,lol.
and yeah…being such a whirlwind does take it out of you.
my skeleton is the proof.
i’m 55, but my bones are closer to 85, per the doctors.
and…low pay, relative…no pension…no healthcare…and high turnover even for ninjahs like me…because i’d end up getting cross with the boss, and fire them(ie; go somewheres else)…i, otoh, have never once been fired…because i made myself indefensible.
to do it well takes talent and fortitude.
i couldnt do it, today.
indispensable,lol
You’re missing my point on sh•tty jobs. They suck. Yours seem to have sucked more than they should have. Asst managers who don’t cry develop even worse health problems. If you’re going strictly by mortality rates, being an asst manager in fast food or convenience probably ranks right behind behing a lumberjack and for all the wrong reasons.
But the physical demands are exaggerated by stress. I do sympathize because I’ve been where you’ve been (srsly, over 40 jobs) and the earliest jobs were the hardest because I didn’t know how to do them. The best skill when doing a sh*tty job is to not give a sh*t. Not sarcasm, sincerely good advice. The asst manager gets paid to cry, no one else gets paid enough to care.
We’re just different people, you and I.
I know that “don’t give a shit” feeling. When I couldn’t overcome it, I wouldn’t last long. The alienation was too much. You’re there for 8 hours+ a day. It would start to wear on me, the nihilism.
My strategy for lasting was kind of the opposite of what you suggest. I would try to find some aspect of my “shitty job” to do well. So, for example, when I was working a convenience store counter, I would try to master the cigarette display. I’m not a smoker, so this was new territory for me.
I had no idea that cigarettes came in such variety and in so many weird niche brands. There was a guy who smoked Kents (!), so we always had a carton around, but it was inevitably buried in the weirdest places. I tried to familiarize myself with the tastes of the regulars so I could have their purchase ready before they even got to the counter (Joe likes X brand soft pack, while Jane prefers menthol slims hard pack). It brought a smile to their faces, this insignificant courtesy, and it made me feel good.
Trying to do a decent job, even if in just one small aspect (while I slacked in others), helped me get through the day. And in these jobs, it’s best to take it one day at time, so to speak.
Knowing tobacco is an interesting way of selling yourself in an interview. That you mastered something you don’t do or knew anything about previously is good to share (that it’s about tobacco makes it “sexy” from an HR perspective).
Workplaces are not being run well. Even shitty jobs should be rewarding in some way. We need to fix this.
Fwiw, hard jobs can actually make you stronger. Rarely true of sh*tty jobs. Restaurant work can be either but the one job you don’t want is the one Amfortas was doing ; )
I have a different take. For a period of a few months I worked for IBM in their storage systems division. I had the most absolutely boring job one can imagine. To this day, 30+ years later, I am still traumatized in a PTSD kind of way. I quit the job after four months. My co-workers advised me to stay since at that time IBM was actually a decent place to work, but sheer boredom really takes its toll on the psyche.
I also have a different hardest and worst job perspective. Never did big time fast food, but was a barista/ice cream scooper. My restaurant experience was as a waitress which I was terrible at. Still learned that how grueling the kitchen is and got to see up close how hard and underpaid most restaurant work is period. But the job I couldn’t hack was in a call center, selling a discount booklet to people. Cold calling lonely people and selling them something useless and being good at it because I liked them and tried to talk them out of it. It literally made me sick to my stomach. I only managed one day, and decades later can still feel nauseous just thinking about that day. I was lucky in that I could walk away. But give me a food service job any day over that.
On the above conversation on sh*tty jobs.
In 1973, in the middle of the oil embargo, I worked at a gas station when we had to ration gas every day. Only allowed to pump so many gallons a day, then we had to close. Cars were lined up for blocks. It was all nuts, and sometimes not very fun. This was even in a small town of 20k.
I was a junior in high school, armed with a mechanical coin changer on my belt, and a wad of bills in my shirt pocket. We didn’t have a cash register.
My main point in this; let’s see how many today could make change under those circumstances without a calculator, adding machine, or cash register. We even pumped the gas, washed the windows, checked the oil, and sold cigarettes and snacks.
I’m a retired engineer and teach at a local state college (6th year). I have students who can’t read, write, operate a computer, or add and subtract. I have no clue how they got through high school.
This country is a mess.
Feels like a good spot to drop in a reference to Archie and Edith…”those were the days…”. I am much younger but not that much honestly and my roles never included fast food or restaurants. Part time roles circa 1990 – 1994 for a regional retailer called Rose’s, and a Pensacola Winn Dixie off of Brent Lane I think. I think there are still open locations of Rose’s but it’s really a different company now.
Stocking shelves, rotating product, running a register , setting displays and pushing pallets of Clorox cases. Yes as glamorous as it sounds. I had higher aims while working through college, which I suspect mostly would ring true for many. I’ll do cash and the simple math in my head for the rest of my days I will suppose.
this link,
https://www.statnews.com/2024/10/16/bird-flu-pandemic-overall-risk-low-continued-h5n1-outbreak-dairy-cattle-worrisome/
works better in my browser for reaching the STAT item on H5N1
Thanks, fixed.
One of the most important & beautiful images of 2024 in my humble opinion. It’s an image of quarks and gluons that make up the protons & neutrons in atomic nuclei.
I remember being wowed as a kid when IBM made and imaged their logo with individual atoms. And now we can actually peer into nuclear particles instead of only inferring the existence of quarks via high energy particle collisions.
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-coherent-picture-atomic-nucleus-quarks.html
Science is popping! Here is the image:
Wow, an image below the line! There’ll be silent moving images next and one day sound. :-)
Sorry to disappoint but when one clicks through to the underlying paper, it is about the distribution functions of the quarks and gluon’s and the correspondence principle, that these distributions under quantumchromodynamics should explain the behaviour already seen and predicted with the quantum (but not QCD) nuclear model of protons and neutrons. Currently there us a gap in the theory.
The lovely image appears nowhere in the paper! Just a lot of graphs….
Oops, I just noticed a community of introverts and autists had already rained on the parade in comments below. I love NC!
Wait! You don’t appreciate the autisinal nature of most science?
Also, that image looks eerily like how Lovecraft described a shoggoth:
It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.
— H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
So that is a very pretty artistic rendering of a nucleus, but it doesn’t really have a lot to do with what a nucleus “looks” like. The research seems interesting because it offers experimental evidence supporting a theory about how a colliding particle interacts with the components of a nucleus in different energy domains. Interesting, but as far as I can tell not groundbreaking. Long, long ago in another life (God! over 40 years ago) I wrote my bachelor’s thesis on “The Momentum Distribution of Antiquarks Within the Proton”, so I would hope there has been significant progress…
But, pretty.
Much as I hesitate to say it, that photo looks eerily like one of those “dream sequences” from a 1960s Disney ‘live action’ cat film.
Ah ha! Phyl says it was from the opening title sequence for the television program, “Family Affair.”
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfgz-PGZra8&ab_channel=jed6271
That was an interesting article (way way over my head to comment on), however, their “picture” =/= image in the same way the IBM one was. They’re still talking about the mathematical model of what’s going on inside the atom. The image is an artists rendering. Still cool for the ideas it illustrates, but the IBM image was produced by a camera.
(not sure why this was worth commenting on, maybe needing to push back against AI generated bs, newspeak & Humpty’s ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean….’)
I agree with cafrenkel; I don’t think that picture is an image formed from imaging technology observations of a nucleus.
I think that’s an “artist’s conception” representation of a nucleus with nucleon constituents (quarks and gluons) visualized. The “coherent picture” in the phys.org title refers, I think, to an improved physics characterization of the distribution of sub-nucleonic constituents. There is no image in the underlying Physical Review Letters article.
Good heavens. Now even Science has become an exercise in Narrative construction, with ‘neat’ shiny visuals.
TBF, it’s always been that. I spent a lot of time twisting plastic models of molecules around when I was young, for example, even though we all knew that’s not how real atoms “looked like,” only because that was the cheap way of conceptualizing stereochemistry. The one difference is that the representations became fancier.
The postmodernists used to say that it never was anything else.
I never thought I’d come to the state where I say this, but I actually miss them.
As a syndicalist, you’d think nothing would make me more happy to see national unions organize for maybe a general strike. But it’s the saddest thing I’ve seen outside our wars, etc. Four years? And only for contracts and wage increases. This displays how conservative and useless our union leadership has been since WW2. No general strike about lack of health care, while over 100,000 of their own citizens die a year, and over 5 million homeless, and over genocide. And then giving warning too. My god. No general strike over taft Hartley, and massive evictions, and….climate change. etc. and etc. Useless. 4 years. indeed.
> Useless
Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, or a slap on the belly with a wet fish….
I agree with you. Taft-Hartley needs to go. Congress needs to feel so much heat their shoes melt. Massive strikes everywhere, wildcat strikes, 5 million persons marches, overwhelm the “authorities” and directly challenge their authority. It will take guts and it will take passion. Apparently, both are in very short supply.
It’s a bargaining chip, the mere *threat* of a general strike. It’s weak, but it’s arguably the most ‘innovative’ gambit union leadership has played in 70+ years.
I fancy myself as a bit of a syndicalist myself, Tommy. It wasn’t that long ago that I was a card-carrying Wob.
We’ve had this discussion here before, and part of the reason for the four-year “delay” is to allow as many unions as possible to align their contracts to avoid T-H’s prohibition of general and sympathy strikes. Pretty clever given the legal context, it seems to me. At least it is if you think there’s some value in these unions trying to avoid complete annihilation.
It also seems to me that four years is scant time to organize a real general strike with any chance of success. Think of how long Spain’s CNT, the ultimate syndicalist union, built community and mutual aid. It would be irresponsible to expose the membership to the intense backlash that’s bound to come without lots of preparation to protect the strikers and their families as much as possible.
Choices were made long ago in the American labor movement to choose members’ material benefits over being truly revolutionary organizations. The Wagner Act, Taft-Hartley, the NLRB and the courts have done everything possible to box unions into this approach. The IWW and UE are examples of what happens to you if you stray outside that box. (Kudos for the UE joining in this.)
I think Fain and his colleagues at the UAW are the most innovative labor leaders we’ve seen in a long time. I’d also laud the Chicago Teachers’ Union who’ve tried to enlarge the bargaining to protect inner-city children and schools. But the membership must be prepared for something like a general strike, and four years isn’t very long.
I’d love to hear what Staughton Lynd would have to say, but alas, he’s gone now. His Solidarity Unionism outlines a radically different approach from the old Wagner Act regime. Now would be a good time for pro-labor folks to explore it.
We can steal a trope from the Olde Comrades and call it a Four Year Plan.
Heh… maybe more like “4 años más” :
https://ibb.co/TLVf3JM
…from Friedkin’s brilliant Sorcerer (1977).
The Times says that thanks to Big Brother we have overfulfilled our quota. Proles throng the streets to celebrate our new, happy life.
(Sounds like an election advertisement, doesn’t it?)
https://x.com/CorsIAQ/status/1846406533271506985
I added orts and scraps. There’s a lot of detail, especially about the “Fascism!” talking point, so please read carefully!
The Walter Kirn Twit sums it up for me. If Trump was the fascist dictator they claim he is, he would still be in office and we wouldn’t be talking about an election.
The first link is NYP saying that he said it to them in an interviews. Found a report (forgot to save the link) saying that he said it to Fox and Friends. Followed that to the second link that’s a F&F phone interview. Per closed captions he said it was “rigged” but was referring to moderators fact checking him but not her. They talk about the debate for about the first 6 minutes, then other topics for another 6 or so minutes, then it cuts off, so I don’t know if there was more. The third link has a tweet saying he said it, with a picture of Trump that looks like what’s in the F&F clip, and few seconds of a recording. Nothing conclusive imo.
https://nypost.com/2024/09/12/us-news/trump-tells-the-post-why-he-wont-debate-harris-again-just-dont-think-that-theres-any-need-for-it/
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6361831295112
https://newrepublic.com/post/185882/maga-conspiracy-trump-harris-debate-rigged
(This was a response to the “Trump (R): “ABC ‘whistleblower’ hoaxster” item above.)
> Nothing conclusive imo
Thanks!!
Why does the Democrat party hate democracy so much?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/georgia-judge-blocks-rule-requiring-counties-hand-count-ballots-rcna175632
And do note the evidence-free hand wave –
“Hand-counting ballots has captured the attention of many on the right in recent years in response to baseless claims about hacked voting machines, despite ample evidence that counting by hand is more expensive and less accurate than using ballot tabulators.”
And it isn’t just “many on the right” who would like to see this happen. Why this is portrayed as a partisan issue is beyond me.
Then there’s this about PA mail in votes from 60 Minutes – https://x.com/WarClandestine/status/1845875690614542467
I can’t say I agree at all with the twixter’s unsubstantiated claims about ballot trafficking in Philly, but the video is interesting. At the end the elections administrator mentions that the ballots need to be refolded to smooth them out. I did not see this segment when it ran, but I’m assuming that the reason they need to be refolded is because they are NOT going to be counted by hand, but by machine, with the implication being that the machine would have difficulty counting overly creased ballots.
Which seems like a very good reason to count them by hand. And a good reason to have a national holiday long weekend so everyone can vote in person, and skip the mail in altogether.
PA:
Most states allow election workers to open, unfold, and stack mail-in ballots before election day. PA does not. There was an attempt to change this in 2020, but Republicans defeated it.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin
In PA 30% of election day in-person voters use ballot marking devices. Hand counting can potentially capture some but not all types of discrepancies introduced in the ballot marking process. I don’t know if there are initiatives in PA to convert to all hand-marked ballots.
https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEquip/mapType/normal/year/2024/state/42
GA:
Whatever NBC news and/or Democrats think of hand counting, the judge’s decision was based on timing (no time to provide training and support) and likely in violation of a statute establishing the process for election rule changes. His comments on the merit of the proposed hand count itself were positive.
https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/hand-count-injunction.pdf
GA uses ballot marking devices exclusively for in person voting (see Verified Voting link).
This comment is informational, not an argument for or against hand counting.
GA Addendum:
NEW: A Georgia judge has declared that seven election rule changes recently adopted by the State Election Board are “illegal, unconstitutional, and void.”
https://x.com/AnnaBower/status/1846699217923842242
Order filed 10/16/2024 5:27 PM. Hand count is item 7 on page 7.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25224290-seb-rule-relief-judge-cox
Thanks marym. The counting procedure mentioned in the GA link is pretty much the same we used in the hand recount I’ve mentioned here before. Encouraging that the judge seems to think it’s a valid procedure.
My problem is with the Democrats who challenged this in the first place. I get that there wasn’t a whole lot of time to implement everything, but this was just recounting the number of ballots to make sure it matches the machine total and I bet the Democrats could have pulled this off had they wanted to. I assume they are as smart as Republicans at counting to 50, which is about all that was required here.
Not just Democrats challenged the election board’s changes. A Republican group from the Savannah area sued them too, and the Republican AG told them they did not have standing to make the rule changes.
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/georgia-ag-says-new-rules-state-election-board-may-conflict-with-state-election-laws/NZFBCSKKLNG2FP5M6SU5TNEXWE/
The back story is that ballot counting was taken away from the Georgia Secretary of State, who did not cooperate with finding votes for Trump in the last election, and assigned to a majority Republican elections board set up by the state government. Hilarity ensued.
You can’t really recount Georgia ballots anyway. The printed ballot just has a non-human-readable QR code and you just have to trust the printout resembles what you tried to vote for.
Akerlof’s motion of a phishing equilibrium states that if a system enables fraud, then fraud has already happened. Since digital = hackable, the Republics are directionally correct, despite having utterly butchered the issue in 2020.
As to why Democrats insist on hackable voting, one can only speculate.
This is a real PMC tell, ‘nobody could collate all those pieces of paper! ZOMG!’
Although hand counts could be terrible: People might show up to watch. They might talk to other people. Hot dogs and silly hats might be available.
Yeah, I need to step up to Brian Beijer a little bit here. My after school job in the 70s was at a Burger King near god help me Macys in Herald Sq. Generally we were given stations and that was it. It was a grind, there was no “proving” except getting through the shift without incident. The only reason I pipe up is that I need to back Kamala up a bit here since we’re close in age. Things really were different then. Still got us to the hell scape we face today, but. Awful job, and decades before harassment protections.
cool wing suit proximity flying
I’ve flown wing suits from planes and they have gotten much better and more varied over the years
FDR speech at Madison Square Garden footage. How so fascist! (/s)
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/pres-franklin-roosevelt-at-madison-square-garden-campaign-news-footage/665762254
His famous line, “I welcome their hatred” is probably applicable too….
The Duran interviews and endorses Dennis Kucinich, Independent candidate for Congress in Ohio District 7.
DK raises the tantalizing possibility that the 2025 House session could be split 217D, 217R, 1I, with the “I” having the deciding vote on party-line matters.
I recall, from an earlier period of my life, when I was an R-thinker, that Kucinich scared me a little. To atone, ever so slightly, for my past sins of ignorance, I contributed some coin to his campaign, I don’t expect a happy outcome, but it is nice to dream, and perhaps he will also inspire other independent progressives to run.
—
One sour note, all too common, is that DK’s rhetoric appears to embrace “the deficit myth”. I’d like to think that he knows better, and this might be an illustration of a principle proposed by a commenter at today’s links page, that false statements about the deficit as a constraint are convenient for their utility in opposing costly expenditures of which one disapproves.
I’m proud to say that Dennis was in my living room once during his 2004 run for POTUS. We were having an afterparty for a political event he’d attended earlier, and the party was in full swing by the time he arrived. I remember one partygoer offering to smoke him out. He did not go the Bill Clinton route, but instead politely declined.
I think Kucinich is pretty MMT-savvy.
I remember him being on stage with Ellen Brown back ca. 2010, and here’s a “mint the coin”-adjacent interview from 2018:
https://np.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/70oqi0/i_met_dennis_kucinich_a_true_nutjob_story/
For Dennis, I think “balance-the-budget” and “nationalize-the-fed” means ‘stop the fed’s trickling money down so the Treasury pays interest on it to billionaire bondholders’. IMO, this is a reasonable simplification for a candidate to make on the hustings, so I slipped him some coin, too.
FWIW, the piece on the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 hits the highlights very well, as I thought would be the case when typological thinking was linked to the late, great Ernst Mayr. I have a handful of Heroes of Biology. He is one. Yes, people do argue about the historical details, but Mayr was correct. Evolutionary concepts from the Modern Synthesis forward are not hard, but it does take some effort to master them. We as a culture seem to be averse to this kind of work, or any kind for that matter, and our metacognitive skills are generally absent. That so many medical students, who did something to get this far, seem to generally have no clue about what they do not know is a continuing puzzlement. I blame the machine I am using to make this comment and its kraken-like appurtenances. But that’s just me, probably.
I’ve gotten several texts from National Nurses United saying they support Kamala and Elise Slotkin, and can they count on my vote?
I wrote back: so it’s Nurses for Genocide, all righty then…
They wrote back, Ok, have a great day.
Kill me now so I don’t have to see any more slaughtered women and children (or men)… ƒ¨ç˚
Where are nurses on COVID? This profession seems as rotten as doctors.
My best guess is they were smart enought to quit early, died, or survived multiple cases and now have brain damage.
Hoping 10 duplicate comments from me don’t show up on here. Apologies to the mods if something is awry at the mo’. I’ll wait till later.
Snagged a walkup car camping spot at Kodachrome state park in Utah, a breathtaking place and a much welcomed respite from what passes as politics these days.
Most of Utah is visually stunning in my humble O. You wonder if the inhabitants truly appreciate this.
I certainly do , but I am not a native. Moved to Utah from SE Texas in 1997 and stayed. I have been mountain biking and camping in Kodachrome basin.
Its the prettiest state in the union, but don’t tell anybody.
Yesterday, Vicky Cookies mentioned John Pilger’s documentary Street of Joy (1976) on the use of Madison Ave. in the 1976 Carter campaign. I posted a link to vimeo, but here’s a better one that includes a summary:
After posting yesterday, it struck me that we’ve perhaps come full circle, with the Harris campaign actually selling “joy” to only barely disguise “more of the same”.
To me one of the flaws of the show Mad Men was the conceit that the advertising business is glamorous and even admirable. After all these are the folks who once told us that nine out of ten doctors approved of smoking. To be sure some notable literary figures (example James Dickey) came out of that world but then English majors gotta live. Much of it is manipulation, and while B.F. Skinner and his pecking pigeons may have had mixed scientific impact he was big in the advertising world.
“SARS-CoV-2 provides an unprecedented opportunity to watch evolution occur in real time” [T. Ryan Gregory, ThreadReader.app].
From the link:
Evidently this is not strictly true in all instances.
Deep mutational scanning reveals functional constraints and antibody-escape potential of Lassa virus glycoprotein complex Immunity
These are the results of some grueling lab work and might be an instance where AI could be positively applied to ascertain pathogens’ mutational possibilities and limits in general and specifically to Covid. As to viruses driving species to extinction, at this time I’m more concerned about people driving people to extinction.
This paper is discussed at length, including biological hazard concerns involved in such research, beginning at minute 39:06 on This Week in Virology episode 1133.
YouTube of Harris’s Fox interview (26mins)
Don’t have the fortitude to listen so still hunting for a transcript.
I happened to watch it. She came 15 minutes late, so their 30 minute interview was 20 minutes, all of if spent with her not answering any questions, repeating the exact same phrases, which never applied to the question, and generally just got angry when Bret kept pressing her to answer the question.
But I’m sure she thinks it’s a Big Win. It’s like someone agreeing to a boxing match with a serious opponent, and then coming late, running around outside the ropes like a madwoman while the interviewer keeps trying to coax her into the ring.
But now she’ll crow that “I had the guts to go into enemy territory and take them on.”
It’s was Seinfeldian – an interview about nothing.
I sometimes wonder if Kamala is a psy-op to make us all more stupid.
Thank you for this – my keyboard, not so much.
I’m still laughing as I fill in my name.
Is such a thing at all possible? Being Three Letter Agency adjacent, I would burden her with the descriptor: ‘Spy Op.’ (That effusion of obloquy was reserved for the CIA Democrats in Congress, but, hey, whatever fits.)
That works as liberal Democrats stand for nothing.
Sorry Jason, they do. Telling everyone else they know nothing. Even if they make no sense doing so.
Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots …. (you get the idea) … of … filler.
It feels a bit like the Harris/Trump debate. DJT preferred to run against a problem than to encourage Congress to fix it. She’s the only prosecutor in the race. etc.
Baier cornered KDH about regretting consequences of JRB border policy changes at the beginning of JRB administration. KDH sincerely sorry for the loss of life, but not gonna’ apologize for the policy changes.
It’s kind of an ambush. I don’t know whether there were objectively sound reasons for the policy changes, but if there were, KDH didn’t mention them (and perhaps in any event couldn’t because of the bad optics).
> Don’t have the fortitude to listen so still hunting for a transcript.
actually, hearing has some value — the tone of voice, the pregnant pauses.
I’m guessing that she’s not going to boast about changing JRB’s choice of FTC chair. But perhaps that’s implied by “I’m not Joe Biden.”
I gave up @ 16:45.
I don’t think this interview can have done much good for KDH with undecided voters.
I keep telling friends and family that Kamala has to win my vote. Most lethal military, Dick Cheney, and ongoing genocide have so far not done so.
Spin already running hot. Not pay walled.
The Point
Conversations and insights about the moment.
Lol. The vibe is what matters.
Black Mountain pharmacists navigate recovery after Helene
Late to the party, so nobody will see my thoughts, but I just finished watching the Vice President Harris interview with Bret Baier. To my surprise, she handled herself quite well. Better than expected. Honestly? I feel 30 minutes was a grossly insufficient amount of time. And I wish he would have shut up and quit interrupting.
So what disappointed? Well, what ‘I’ was wanting to see is what happened ‘after’ her canned answer. But he couldn’t shut up long enough.
He, for his part, clearly nervous and I forgive him but he ruined the interview. All I can say is this, how I wish she’d sit for an hour plus like President Trump did with a similarly hostile host for the WSJ, yesterday.
Saying the job is too important to leave any stone un-turned and both candidates should sit for questions until the interrogation is over, whether it’s one hour . . . or six. Anyway, I was more impressed than I thought I would be. Enough to reconsider my vote? No, not unless and until I see a lot more of her because I continue to feel an inauthentic vibe and importantly, a lack of depth.
That said, she gave as good as she took. Bodes well for America if she wins.
So she’s playing well with the unabashed republicans, which I think you will agree that you are?
I’m one of those unabashed lefties who see dick cheney and john bolton as a hard no.
As chuck schumer claimed, for every blue collar we lose in western pa, we’ll get two republican women in the suburbs or some such…
I’m a lost blue collar
Not really unabashed R, changed registration to Democrat a few years back to support Bernie Sanders and haven’t had sufficient reason to change it again. Of course, team Blue torpedoed Senator Bernie in SC in the run up to the election and by the time the circus rolled into FL it was game, set, match and VP Biden was ‘da man.
President Biden has never impressed me so I cast my vote for team Red that cycle despite the blue registration. So color me team Purple, with a large serving of competency-desired.
This time around? I’m actually more impressed with President Trump after watching his unedited interrogation (interview) with the WSJ. The guy made cogent arguments and of course, I know he can’t do squat without Congress. But that he’ll secure us better ‘deals’ around the world? Of that I have zero doubt (and i agree with him about we’ve been screwed by everybody due to a lack of primary competence of politicians using other people’s money).
Thanks, and yes, pondering your past comments I’d say purple is accurate enough for me.
Today, I noticed some email spam from the Harris campaign. They want money? Lol
Normally, the app sorts it into the “Promotions” folder and I never see it.
Punched “Kamala” into the search box and deleted the whole trash barge of results.
Afterwards, my inbox felt lighter and cleaner. ✨
My very first job was making french fries at McDonalds; I was in high school and it was 1979 (or so). The job market in my part of New England was so terrible that people were frantic for hours. I was 16 and not assertive so I only managed to get 2-4 hours per week. I did work at the cash register, too, and I think I cleaned the bathroom a few times. I was very happy to be working for money in the real world. My parents had good jobs (college professor and elementary school teacher), but earning $2.73/hour (I seem to remember) plus a free meal per shift felt very purposeful.
The problem with the french fry machine was not that it was low status; I don’t think any of us had any illusions about such things; it was that you could BURN yourself on the hot metal if you weren’t really careful. The big challenge was when people asked for fries made without salt; you had to clear the tray and then cook them separately and really there was still some salt.
I quit after a few months since I was able to get a job with more hours at a very old diner in my home town, where I washed dishes and ran the potato peeling machine. That was much better.
I am excited about the prospect of Trump making fries. I doubt I’m the only person who is eager to watch.
People can relate to leaders who are willing to get their hands dirty.
For a number of years I worked at a prominent Silicon Valley company.
When I started in the 1970’s, a co-worker mentioned that some years before the company had an open house on a Saturday.
This employee was at the plant and saw that someone was using a torch at the rear of the plant and he walked back to tell him to put it away.
He then saw that it was one of the founders, welding a broken fireplace grate.
My co-worker told me he muttered to himself “If I had his money, I wouldn’t be in here on a Saturday welding a broken fireplace grate”.
People appreciate when leaders experience, even briefly, what they do to survive.
There was a discussion above about “shitty jobs.” My mom and her sisters grew up in very small town New England in the 1950s. They had various jobs when they were in high school and afterwards, including working in a nursing home (too much pinching by old guys!!). When I was on a trip with one aunt, when I was in my 20s, she left a tip for the room cleaning lady at a hotel. I said to her, “yes, it’s a pretty dreadful job.” She told me firmly that there was nothing at all wrong with the job; it was the PAY that was the problem.
The Trump has an electoral college problem article may have it backward. Personally I don’t think that Trump has a problem with the electoral college, that is Harris’ problem. What I see them looking at is the inroads the Trump campaign is making with various demographic groups in non battleground states. That would mean that the Democrats might have a problem with the popular vote campaign.
Think about it. A different article has written off the Democrats being able to win the Sun Belt swing states leaving them with must wins in the Rust Belt, which shows a deterioration of support in states they won in 2020. Meanwhile if you look, despite TDS Trump has picked up votes in such strong holds as NY and California reducing the popular vote advantage the Democrats had in 2016 and 2020. We have Harris because Biden’s cratering support became obvious. At first it seemed to solve the problem that voters disliked the Democratic option more than they disliked Trump. Unfortunately for the Democrats, as in 2020, the more people see of Harris the less they like her. It is still a long shot, but Trump may get more votes than Harris if his voter outreach does well and her support deteriorates enough.
As I am more afraid of a psychotic break for rabid blue Democrats if they lose than from the so-called MAGA deplorables and deluded Trump voters on a Trump loss, I admit that even a remotely possible Trump electoral college AND popular vote victory is both terrifying and fascinating.
On Blue Cross Blue Shield To Pay Largest Settlement in U.S. Antitrust Health Care History: $2.8 Billion
I’ve been waiting for my settlement on this for years. I sent in my paperwork with my evidence of harm back at the end of 2021. (Always keep records! I had paystubs and such going back years.) I’ll probably still get stiffed, as the outsourcing contract firm I was working for at the time of harm was incompetent and the manner in which I paid health premiums perhaps won’t be recognized, so I might get nothing. (Straight up hourly reduction, no deductions on paystub for health insurance.) Fun times.
From Nuclear power could solve US electricity needs. But at what cost?
But that’s simply false. This is solely because of the AI wet dream. We don’t need LLMs, and we don’t need the electricity for this. And we don’t need Bitcoin, a gateway for fraud and extortion. What a stupid timeline. If liberal Democrats cared about Climate for reasons other than virtue signaling, we’d be banning this stuff. Full stop.
Literally, there you have it. Energy needs were decreasing.
Democrats are seriously bedwetting about a Harris loss, with the blame cannons firmly targeting Future Forward:
Inside the Secretive $700 Million Ad-Testing Factory for Kamala Harris (NY Times via archive.ph)
More Obamanauts!
Oh noes!
The Democrat infighting if Harris loses is gonna be epic! As epic as all those big salaries consultants be collecting.
> The Democrat infighting if Harris loses is gonna be epic!
I wonder if anyone will reflect that all of this could have been avoided if Sanders had won the nomination in 2016 or even in 2020.
Probably not; for these people, DJT, as terrifying as he is, is preferable to what Sanders might have accomplished.