By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
I thought I would try some nightingales….
Common Nightingale, Azenhas do Ervedal, Avis, Portalegre, Portugal.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Trump and the Blob.
- Kamala’s beliefs, if any, unknown, perhaps not knowable.
- Wall Street iffy on contract agreement; restructing begins?
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
Trump Assassination Attempts (Plural)
“James Carville to “Unknown” Host Charlie Stone: “I’m Not Very Interested In Being Very Fair” In Defeating Trump” [RealClearPolitics]. Carville: “I think that this is literally a battle for the survival of the constitution…. And I think we should have, you know, gone behind him in the lines and cut their goddamn throats because that was what was at stake. I think we’re literally approaching the same place right now. I’m not talking about everybody stop. Don’t faint. I’m not talking about actually sweating a political opponent’s throat.” • Oh? The tendency of liberal Democrats to call for their political opponents’ deaths is well known (Matt Stoller, “On Mocking Dying Working Class White People“). So I don’t think Carville gets to go “Backsies!” on yet another example of stochastic terrorism.
2024
Two weeks to go!
Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:
Lambert here: Big Mo shifts toward Trump, this week, even in WI (that is, if you ignore the entire concept of margin of error). Of course, we on the outside might as well be examining the entrails of birds when we try to predict what will happen to the subset of voters (undecided; irregular) in a subset of states (swing), and the irregulars, especially, who will determine the outcome of the election but 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!.
“Karl Rove: Harris ‘flatlining’ in polls while Trump rises” [The Hill]. “‘What we’ve seen is Harris sort of flatlining and mostly declining, and Donald Trump modestly rising. And as a result, we’re seeing a 50-50 election; coin toss,’ Rove, a Fox News contributor, said on the network Monday…. Rove argued that with 15 days until Election Day, it’s going to be a “nail-biter” right until the end.” • As we all know, to the extent we know anything, and others say besides Rove.
“Unseen Middle-Class Black Voters Move Right” [RealClearPolitics]. “‘I make it a point to visit barbershops. And oh, the conversations. When I first supported Trump, they were telling me, oh Barbara, what’s wrong with you? You crazy. And, girl, some people stopped speaking to me,’ she said, laughing. ‘But now, I was amazed. Just Monday, I went into the barbershop, and they were talking. And oh my God, the barbers was really supporting Trump. I was like, oh my God. I almost cried because they have woke up.'” • Maybe. A deep dive on Black barbershops would be interesting (not some New York Times bigfoot, either).
* * * Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris’s Hundred-Day Campaign” [The New Yorker]. “A former Obama Administration official, now in finance, told me that his firm spends tens of thousands of dollars a month on lobbyists and consultants, and yet with ‘all these fancy-pants people, former members of Congress, nobody can tell me conclusively what she believes about anything.'” • As I keep saying: She doesn’t know who she is. As I keep saying: She doesn’t know who she is. And this is the ultra-blue New Yorker; they’re supposed to be on Kamala’s side!
Kamala (D): “The Chronically Underestimated Kamala Harris” [National Review]. “I do think the caricature of Kamala Harris as a bumbling dunce makes it easy to underestimate her, particularly in the closing weeks of an exceptionally close and high-stakes presidential campaign. Harris’s past is littered with older and more experienced men who saw her as easy pickings and came up short on Election Day…. here’s this nagging complication — if Kamala Harris is as stupid as her critics claim, why does she have the Democratic presidential nomination and a roughly 50–50 shot of being the first female president in U.S. history? Do you know how many ruthlessly ambitious Democratic men and women have desperately yearned to get where she is? How many smart, tough, shrewd, often underhanded and cold-blooded pols have tried to claw their way up the greasy pole and fallen short?… The record indicates that whatever Harris’s results are on an I.Q. test or other measure of intellect, she is particularly talented by another measuring stick, one that may be even more important in politics: She is exceptionally skilled at getting other people emotionally invested in her success.” • Worth reading in full.
Kamala (D): “The Tight-Knit World of Kamala Harris’s Sorority” [The New Yorker]. “A.K.A. members are a Who’s Who of political, cultural, and business luminaries. Minnijean Brown-Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine, and Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., both pledged A.K.A. Toni Morrison was an A.K.A., as is the poet Sonia Sanchez. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, before she became the first female President elected in Africa, joined A.K.A. It is the most represented sorority in Congress today. The first Black woman to go to space, the first W.N.B.A. player to score more than a thousand points, the first Black female mayor of a major American city, the first Black women to lead the Treasury and Energy Departments, the first Black woman to win a Grand Slam—and now the first Black woman to become a major party’s Presidential candidate—are all A.K.A.s.” • So, PMC?
* * * Just to underscore the point about Trump being the sole national politician aggressively questioning the core tenets of disastrous DC bipartisan foreign policy over decades, here's the progressive foreign policy expert @stephenwertheim in the NYT today making a similar point: pic.twitter.com/qTKdtkWIgE
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 21, 2024
With one exception, of course:
(None of this, by the way, includes US financing and arming of Israel. Both parties are devoted to that policy with equal religious-like fervor and a petrified unwillingness even to consider alternatives):https://t.co/p6v564Axk3
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 21, 2024
* * * Trump (R): “Trump’s genius McDonald’s stunt will fry Kamala at the ballot box” [Piers Morgan, New York Post]. “As political stunts go, this might have been the best I’ve ever seen, because it served two very powerful purposes in the presidential race. First, it reminded voters that his rival, Kamala Harris, has repeatedly boasted about having a summer job at McDonald’s to make her sound more relatable to her fellow Americans, but to date, not a single person has been able to verify this…. The second reason why Trump’s stunt worked so effectively is because McDonald’s is about the purest personification imaginable of the American free market dream — a place where everyone can afford to eat, and equally, where everyone has a shot at potentially running a McDonald’s franchise one day.” • “Potentially” is doing a lot work, there.
Trump (R): “Trump’s McDonald’s visit served up four brilliant political moments” [FOX]. “First, Trump’s playful manner with employees and supporters alike, clearly humanizes a man that Democrats need to convince voters is some kind of combination of Stalin, Hitler, and the Hamburglar. Second, Trump’s campaign completely dominated the news cycle all day at a stage in the campaign when winning each day is the central and most important goal. Third, Trump had the opportunity to further mock Harris over her alleged stolen McDonald’s valor. Finally, and most importantly, the spectacle made it completely obvious that Trump is neither exhausted, nor senile, a lie that the entire liberal media sang in chorus all weekend like it was Handel’s ‘Messiah.'” And: “If you don’t think the event was a Happy Meal for Team Trump, just look at the toy inside, an action figure of the liberal media with its hair on fire.” • Indeed!
Trump (R): “Walz slams Trump over McDonald’s appearance” [Anadolu Agency]. “”Vice President Harris and I grew up middle class. We understand that. She actually worked in a McDonald’s. She didn’t go and pander and disrespect McDonald’s workers by standing there in your red tie and take a picture,” Walz said.” • Walz’s wife was the debate coach at the school where they both taught in Minnesota (IIRC, she had some extraordinary numbers of kids, like forty). So Walz surely knows what the burden of proof is, and where it lies: With the person making the claim. So far, we have no actual evidence (contemporaneous recollections, letters, etc.) that she did so. So Walz also knows that Kamala’s making a false claim (“baseless,” as we say). Nor do I think Trump’s tie disrespected anyone; it’s his costume, he wears it at all times.
Trump (R): “No, McDonald’s didn’t confirm Trump’s baseless claim about Kamala Harris” [Philip Bump, WaPo]. “That detail is, in fact, murky. Last month, in an effort to unearth evidence of Harris’s employment, I tried to contact McDonald’s and the owners of the franchises on the island of Alameda, where she worked. But 1983 was in the pre-digital-data era, and employment records for short-term workers at franchised fast-food chains from that period were almost certainly not considered essential documents to retain. I was able to find no evidence of her employment. Trump and his allies used that informational vacuum to suggest that she never worked there at all.” • Again, the burden of proof is on whoever’s making the claim.
Trump (R): “McDonald’s workers roast Trump over ‘insulting cosplay’ stunt at restaurant that failed health inspection” [Independent]. “[Trump] worked the fry cooker at a Pennsylvania branch — without a hairnet or gloves… [S]ome have pointed out that he wasn’t taking proper precautions — at a location that has previously been cited for health code violations.” • Fair enough! Staff failure.
* * * “Momentum vs. Machine” [New York Magazine]. “While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs. Despite some increasingly erratic public appearances, Donald Trump has the momentum: He has managed to narrow Harris’s already microscopic lead in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada while holding steady in the battleground states where he has a small advantage: North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona. But the Trump campaign — called an unstoppable force by its own officials — is about to run headlong into what the Harris team describes as an immovable object: the vast get-out-the-vote apparatus that Democrats have built over the past four years. ‘We have the MAGA coalition,’ one Trump official said. ‘But we also know that it is not enough. And so we need to form a broader coalition, mostly with people who have never voted before. The other side has the easier task. You never want to plan a victory party that is dependent on new voters.'” And: “What we are left with, then, is an election that could be the closest in American polling history, one in which even the slightest shift in voter turnout or conviction will affect the outcome. The variables, like the voters, are too vast to even be knowable. ‘My advice to everyone is that you just need to stop trying to read the tea leaves,’ said [Adam Carlson, a former Democratic pollster]. ‘Polls aren’t built to do what everyone wants them to do at this point, which is to tell us the winner. We all are just going to have to learn to embrace uncertainty.'” • Temperamentally and analytically, I’m with Carlson. OTOH, when (almost) all the pundits are saying the same thing, my spidey sense tingles a bit. On the other hand–
The internals:
Do you know how I know the internals must look fine?
This 👇 https://t.co/baS5xs3fgn
— Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆🌴🥥🇺🇸 (@RachelBitecofer) October 22, 2024
But the same argument applies to Trump, whose Madison Square Garden rally is in a state he’ll never win. In any case… Should we be assuming that insiders always know what they’re doing?
“Why There Are ‘More Warning Signs’ for Harris Than for Trump” (interview) [Dave Wasserman, New York Magazine]. I like Wasserman; he’s an O.G. “It’s commonly thought that Harris’s best path to victory is the “Blue Wall” Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, as opposed to the Sun Belt, where she’s doing slightly worse. If so, is that because there are fewer undecided voters in those places or because the demographics are more favorable to her there? To be honest, I’m skeptical that we have a real handle on where these states stand in relation to one another because polls in Sun Belt states in the past ten years have underestimated Democrats slightly or been more on target, whereas polls in the northern battlegrounds have underestimated Trump by more. So for polling averages to have Harris up by one or a fraction of a point in the Great Lakes states and down by one or two in those Sun Belt states, I have very low confidence that Harris is meaningfully performing better in those Great Lakes states than in the Sun Belt states. It’s possible we’ll see a somewhat disjointed election result where there’s not a neat relationship between how these states vote.” • Worth reading in full.
* * *
Realignment and Legitimacy
Reader query:
What's the name of the logical fallacy in which people rationalize their tacit support for a current real evil because they believe a future hypothetical evil would be worse?
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) October 22, 2024
This fallacy happens all the time in liberal Democrat discourse: Independent: “Candidate D [has done bad thing in past].” Democrat: “But Candidate R [will do bad thing in future]!!” The fallacy of relative privation (“dismissing an argument or complaint due to what are perceived to be more important problems”) doesn’t quite get at the time aspect of this exchange. Can any reader answer Gregory’s question?
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!
| Wastewater | |
| ★This week[1] CDC October 14 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
|
|
|
| Variants [3] CDC October 12 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC October 12 |
|
|
|
| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data October 21: | National [6] CDC September 28: |
|
|
|
| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens October 21: | ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic October 19: |
|
|
|
| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC September 30: | Variants[10] CDC September 30: |
|
|
|
| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC October 12: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC October 12: |
|
|
|
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) Good news!
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XEC has entered the chat.
[4] (ED) Down.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). I see the “everything in greenish pastels” crowd has gotten to this chart.
[7] (Walgreens) A pause.
[8] (Cleveland) Dropping.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). No XEC.
[11] Deaths low, positivity down.
[12] Deaths low, ED down.
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The composite manufacturing index in the US Fifth District was at -14 in October of 2024, pointing to less pessimism than the -21 in the previous month, but completing twelve consecutive negative figures to mark a whole year of declining activity.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing shares rise after labor offer but analysts wary of worker pushback” [Reuters]. “Boeing shares rose 3% on Monday on hopes of an end to a crippling strike, although some analysts questioned whether a proposed labor contract unveiled over the weekend would muster enough support from the U.S. planemaker’s workers…. Wells Fargo analyst Matthew Akers, who has a bearish view on Boeing stock, said the offer may not be ratified, citing activity online that leaned negative, though not as strongly as after the first contract agreement that employees rejected. ‘Our analysis of over 1,000 online comments implies a more constructive view but still not enough to pass,’ Akers said in a note.”
Manufacturing: “Striking Boeing Workers to Vote on New Offer” [American Machinist]. “According to the IAM, the new proposal was negotiated with Boeing with assistance by acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su.:
Mnaufacturing: “New Boeing CEO to give clues on company’s future, while striking workers vote on new contract” [CNBC]. “When Ortberg speaks at 10:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, investors will be on the lookout for clues about what a smaller Boeing could look like, and which programs or assets could be on the chopping block. ‘We believe [Boeing] is poised for further restructuring as the company looks to potentially divest parts of the portfolio and continues to focus on strengthening its supply chain,’ said RBC analyst Ken Herbert in a note Sunday.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing sells small defense surveillance unit to Thales” [Reuters]. “Boeing closed a deal this month to sell a small defense subsidiary that makes surveillance equipment for the U.S. military, the company said on Sunday, as the planemaker looks to shore up its struggling finances.” • Let the dismemberment begin!
Tech: “Streaming’s Slow Enshittification Continues As Netflix Kicks Users Off Cheapest Ad-Free Tiers” [TechDirt]. From July: “Streaming giants want to drive users to advertising because there’s greater profit potential in charging more for ad placement and collecting user behavioral ad data than there is in subscriptions. So that’s the direction the industry is headed, whether consumers like it or not. Some people don’t mind the ads; personally they just remind me that I’m living in a shallow dystopia.” • Enshittification:
We've been staying in a lot of places with Netflix lately, and I am struggling to conceive of how they stay in business.
Any well-known or classic film title: they don't have it. Oodles of obscure, no-name shows, and the search function is basically "spray and pray" — search…
— 𝙷𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚖𝚊𝚗 (@shagbark_hick) October 22, 2024
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 71 Greed (previous close: 73 Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 66 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 22 at 2:37:54 PM ET.
Gallery
“In ‘Hidden Portraits,’ Volker Hermes Reimagines Historical Figures in Overwhelming Frippery” [This Is Colossal]. “Engulfed in their own finery, the subjects of Volker Hermes’ portraits epitomize a bygone era. From the Italian High Renaissance to French Rococo, his digital reinterpretations playfully hide the faces of wealthy and aristocratic sitters… Hermes expands upon the ornate silk gowns, brocade, and lace ruffs that characterized elite fashion through the centuries.” • For example, “‘Hidden van Mierevelt IV’ (2022), from ‘Portrait of a Man in a White Frill’ (1620s) by Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt”:
“The Right Believes It Has the Supreme Court Votes to Overturn Labor Law” [In These Times]. “The foundational 1935 labor law protecting workers is unconstitutional, according to major corporations and right-wing zealots who believe they have enough votes on the Supreme Court to overturn it. In the latest sign that anti-union forces will doggedly press the matter, a federal judge for the Northern District of Texas enjoined the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from processing any allegations of employer violations of workers’ rights. The National Review hailed the decision as ’A Welcome Blow to the NLRB.’ This is after Elon Musk’s SpaceX won a similar injunction against the NLRB before the Western District of Texas in July. Both cases will work their way up to the Fifth Circuit Court, which has served as an expressway to steer anti-regulatory legal appeals to the Supreme Court ever since Trump packed it with right-wing ideologues. ‘I don’t think a lot of labor folks are focused on this right now,’ says Stephen Lerner, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. … ‘This is the culmination of a 50-year anti-union agenda.’… But, in trying to repeal all the rights and protections workers gained during the New Deal, including the limited protections that workers currently enjoy for organizing and engaging in collective bargaining, killing the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) would also mean the lifting of a host of restrictions on unions’ ability to carry out solidarity activism and effective economic sanctions. Are unions prepared for a return to ’the law of the jungle?'” • Not under current leadership, no.
“New campus protest rules spur an outcry from college faculty” [Boston Globe]. “Professors also drew a connection to the growing percentage of lecturers, adjuncts and professors who do not have tenure protections. Professors increasingly see the issue of speech and academic freedom as a labor issue as a result of the crackdowns, said Risa Lieberwitz, AAUP’s general counsel. ‘We’re seeing unionization growing and increasing,’ she said. ‘I think to some extent it’s because it’s so important to organize, to claim democratic rights.’ [Todd Wolfson, a journalism and media studies professor at Rutgers University and the president of the American Association of University Professors] said professors must stand up for students’ rights to demonstrate and speak freely. ‘Their freedom of speech rights are the lifeblood of the university,’ Wolfson said. ‘We cannot have a university based on critical thinking and exploring questions if we’re going to clamp down on students’ rights to protest something they think is a massive problem, and if they see a way for the university to actually engage in it productively.'”
“The Thought Experiments That Fray the Fabric of Space-Time” [Quanta]. Mobile-friendly but for once an accessible Quanta article. Three takeaways: 1) “If no measurements can be made below the Planck scale, perhaps space-time as we know it doesn’t exist there.” 2) “It might be impossible to define physical properties of objects in space-time, so perhaps there’s some other level of organization that is exact and true.” 3) “Perhaps black holes — and by extension all regions of space-time — are holograms of data living on a two-dimensional surface of an unknown nature.” • I thought the headline meant actually fray: “Maybe if we all think real hard, we can stop this rain” –Woodstock (from memory). Oh well. Worth a read!
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: “This is a feature at the outdoor Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach, CA.”
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!
111 comments
Comments are closed.
RE: XEC variant and wastewater.
My prediction is that wastewater data will show that the holiday surge started early this year. In other years we see the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 reach a bottom in October between when the surge generated by summer travel dies down and when the surge generated by holiday travel ramps up. The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 starts ticking back up when the Halloween parties start happening.
This year, however, the holiday surge started early. XEC showed up from Germany during the first week of October. We will not be able to see these results on Los Angeles County’s weekly wastewater chart until the middle of November. When the data comes out, I’ll post it here.
I think it’s safe to say Trump was NEVER going to out a hairnet on while frying fries. I mean c’mon.
He wouldn’t wear a mask when touring that Ford plant some years ago, thereby validating and supporting the MAGA anti-mask movement.
> He wouldn’t wear a mask
One of many reasons I don’t love Trump. Not that Democrats did better.
No, they didn’t. They added a whole different layer of badness to the existing badness.
They built a huge mansion of covid denialism on top of Trump’s well laid foundation of covid dismissalism.
That’s why we need a whole new political party-movement/movement-party. Our tragedy is that it would take 50 years for such a p-m/m-p to conquer all the needed minimum foxholes, bunkers and fortresses of power, and we don’t have 50 years left. We only have a few years left to prepare our own survival, ideally in packs and groups.
Well, it’s been 28 years now since Ralph Nader let his name be put on the ballot as the Green Party’s candidate for President, and there are traces that run further back. Do you think building on that foundation might help?
At this point, people should do what they believe in the most, because they will do their best work for what they believe in the most. People who believe in the Green Party should treat it as the foundation to build on.
(Since I don’t believe in the Green Party, and haven’t ever since I met some nasty Green persons in the early 80’s, I don’t believe it is such a foundation. I especially don’t believe so ever since it deliberately on purpose ran a Republican named McGaw as its opponent to Paul Wellstone in his last election. Their stated hope was explicitly to get Wellstone defeated by drawing just enough votes to McGaw to get Coleman elected instead. I wonder if Minnesota’s Green Party members still visit Wellstone’s grave every plane-crash anniversary to dance on it.)
i was a cook/chef for almost 30 years.
always had long hair, and a beard and mustache(handlebar goatee thing).
they started doing the hairnet thing in more civilised places after i had moved way out here…the beard hairnet a while after.(neither net is currently a requirement…or at least enforced…out here, today).
so i never had to do that.
i just brushed my hair and facial hair vigorously before i left for work, tied up the hair, and wore some kind of do-rag, hat or, later(after i had earned it) a marshmallow.
i’d get the occasional complaint about what was obviously one of my footlong reddish hairs on a plate…but such complaints were always offset by the quality of my work.
what i wonder…is is there some scientific, public health justification for these nets? or is it just the ick factor of finding a hair in ones’ food?
is clean hair a vector of some hidden strength?
like, more than snot(which i have witnessed added as reverse lagniappe to the plates of particularly assholeish customers on more than a few occasions*)?
when i became aware of this being a thing in the cities and burbs, i chalked it up to just more punishing/marking of the poor….i mean have you seen fast food uniforms?
(*i never spat in food,lol…but im certain my dad consumed quite a bit of other peoples’ spit in his time, as he was “one of those customers”….always tip well, and be forbearing and patient and nice with the folks who handle your dinner)
When I worked in restaurant kitchens, we washed our hands all-the-time. Like every 10 minutes. Sometimes more. This was before gloves were a thing. Now with the gloves, I doubt anybody washes their hands that much anymore. They just keep the same nasty gloves on. Thus I am convinced the gloves are worse, before we even get into the waste issue, which also gets worse if they are changing them as much as they should. But it appears to make some observers feel better, that the cooks have gloves on.
Regarding urban legends of people doing nasty things to the food, I never once, in about half a dozen restaurant kitchens I worked in, saw or heard about anything of the sort.
i did see it…and cannot unsee it,lol.
i am always the best tipper.
and the most accommodating customer.
because i know what they go through, back and front of house…and i want them to be nice to me.
when i was in some kind of authority in the kitchen(usually, after the first 6 years or so), when i had some arse who was never satisfied(like my dad), i’d just try to go over and above and be done with that guy/gal…even to the point of comping them.
but i never had control over all the people on the line…until it was my place.
my place might have featured black beetles that somehow invaded the black beans(wierd year, everybody dealt with them)that nobody noticed(i didnt) and the odd long red hair…but my fare never had bodily fluids.
i forbad it.
regardless…ive never worn a hairnet…and especially a beardnet,lol.
I don’t know how food places relate to bars, and I’m coming from the bar angle after 14 years of doing so. We also dealt with food, so I can relate a bit, but food wasn’t our main gig.
Rule #1, and I think this applies to all venues – don’t piss off the bartender/cook/ waitress. It will not end well proportional to how big of a dick you are.
This isn’t difficult. You are participating too.
ON EDIT: this should have been a response to amfortas the hippie post above.
alil bit o respect is not that big an ask
Very much the same.
I spent several years at the local country club, started as a dishwasher. Worked my way up to the cold station (Garde Manger, “keeper of the cold” they told me). Started doing dinners, during which there was a non-human rated elevator that contained a hotbox to deliver the food to the upstairs members-only dining area. All of my dishes had to be hand-delivered (hotbox was not on during the lunch hours). Operating the human-rated elevator required touching unclean surfaces.
During that time, I developed a habit. When I re-entered the kitchen, I would hold the back of my hands together in front of my chest, kinda the opposite of praying. This served 2 purposes, first it was a reminder to myself that I needed to wash my hands ASAP, and second, as a sign to my co-workers not to hand me anything food related until I had a chance to wash up. Even if I hadn’t left the kitchen, whenever I touched something unclean, I would do this.
One day a state health inspector showed up (he actually helped work the line somewhat)… Asked me about the above and I explained (inspector seemed impressed). During Lunch, it was just me and the 2 chefs. When the dinner crew started to show, he kicked one of them off the line and demanded that he go put on a hair net (dude had average short men’s hair). That guy complained, but the health inspector pointed at the chefs, one of which was shaved bald, the other had extremely short hair (under 1/4″). He then pointed at me, who had/has long hair, long enough to entirely tie it back. Said that cook didn’t fit into either of those categories and needed one.
One of our cooks who had a long 1′ beard never wore a beard net, nor did anyone else there ever. But I never let mine get very long (always under 1/4″). I don’t think the long beard guy was there when the inspector popped by.
Disposable gloves were an option. I considered them more of a nuisance then anything. I much preferred religious hand washing, and the direct tactile feedback that allowed me when working with food. Not to mention that I consider myself an environmentalist, and the waste that would have produced…
Could have washed the gloves, but why not just wash your hands directly?
I would have liked if the staff pushed it and he went along. I suspect just that everyone got busy with the event and it was overlooked.
Was this trolling by Trump to do this on Harris’s birthday? I wonder if Harris pitched a Hillary fit.
RE: potentially running a McDonald’s franchise
When I was unemployed many years ago and forced to sit through various presentations at the unemployment office as a condition of being able to eat that week, one came from a businessman who pitched various franchises. There was something for everybody and all we recently laid off people had to do to get one for ourselves was pony up a hundred grand or two! So see, it really is the land of opportunity! – the opportunity to go into massive debt to try to sell poison food. Of course there was the small problem of getting a bank loan with no source of income and no savings – do they do NINJAs for commercial real estate too??!??
Likewise, I sat through one of them meetings with a pitch to own a franchise for this or that chain. I wanna say this was 2010, so increasing the personal burn rate of cash was not a priority whilst being unemployed…
Rumor has often been that a Chik Fil a is one of the more rigid franchises to get into, by rigid I mean to say a very high mark of net worth, and also liquid cash equivalents and available cash.
This a subject written about here at NC. I was wondering if anyone here is in the area of one of these fine Amerikans running for office?
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/10/21/class-of-2018-cia-pentagon-democrats-continue-to-advance-hawkish-policies-in-congress/
Nap time
It was indeed nap time, and I hope you enjoy yours!
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/politics/2024/10/21/voters-with-long-covid-disability-a-rising-force-rutgers-study-says/75720912007/
Will long COVID sway the 2024 election? These Rutgers researchers think it could
Awesome link. Let me peruse it.
Just a thought here…
What if trump suggested lowering ss age to 60? Bipartisan! Imo Hillary and Joe each hinted at that.
Or, prenatal care for the unborn! Wouldn’t evangelicals want that for the innocents? Who would fight that?
And think of the children! How about coverage until 18?
I assume tulsi and rfk would support.
“…lowering ss age to 60…”
he’d win handsdown among my cohort(im 55).
hell, i might even muster the gumption to go vote for him, then.
im otherwise not planning on bothering.
just seems so distant from my problems(need warm chick in my bed, etc) and so utterly pointless at this point(how jammed up they have the process, now).
why spend the gas to go to town for that?
unless it coincides with kegday, or something….
you know…priorities….
and if trump, or his people, lurk here(i think they do)…lol…HMU.
ask lambert.
and ask him along to report from the field…sufficiently anonymised,lol;
i’ll butcher a sheep special for that.
grilled lamb ribchops w pasta y (mostly my)veggies y gorgonzola alfredo.
toss in a couple o shots of dry vermouth, make it flame and caremelise…
I would have imagined the population of people injured by Covid under Biden would be very angry with him, and with Democrats, given the extensive lies Biden told before getting elected, and then doing none of that, plus dismantling what protections Trump left behind.
Sadly, the people who support Biden have shifted blame for all those deaths to Trump. Similarly with the long covid injury. It’s all Trumps fault. The memes tell them so…
I think the impact on this election will be miniscule, but look for greater influence in 2028, especially as more of the biters get bitten (thread via x.com).
German language interview in DER SPIEGEL with NATO bosses CAVOLI and BREUER.
This stuff is incompetent, stupid and one lie wrapped into another.
THEY are the enemy.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/ukraine-krieg-nato-oberbefehlshaber-und-generalinspekteur-ueber-folgen-und-perspektiven-a-9cb8d225-8bd8-454d-830d-009c9f46dfc9
or:
https://archive.is/us87F
excerpt:
“SPIEGEL: How immediate is the danger from Russia?
Cavoli: Russia is a permanent threat to the alliance and to security throughout Europe, because Moscow is increasingly playing along with players like China and North Korea. This makes it a global problem, a completely new dynamic. The threat is very serious. I prefer to describe how acute it is in relation to us. NATO must have more capabilities than our opponents. That is why we must quickly meet the requirements derived from the defense plans. When I say quickly, I mean we must be faster than the Russians. That is the only way we can deter them.
SPIEGEL: General Breuer, you know the secret plans. I am told that the Bundeswehr, for example, would have to set up five or even six new combat brigades very quickly. How do you intend to do that, given the precarious budget situation?
Breuer: There is simply no alternative to these plans and their implementation. We cannot argue away the threat or the need for sufficient military resources. The alliance is in the middle of voting on the provision of the necessary troops. What remains to be said is that we have experienced a long period of peace in Europe, we have valued this time, peace was our normality for over 30 years. I too wish it had stayed that way. But the situation has fundamentally changed since Russia’s attack on Ukraine. We have to adapt in order to continue to live in security. We have to understand that threat is the new normal and that we as a society have to invest in order to preserve our way of life. The heads of our intelligence services said it a few days ago: The Kremlin sees Germany as an enemy.
Cavoli: The fact that there is no alternative is the crucial point. Russia has suffered losses in Ukraine, quite heavy losses. But the Russian armed forces are learning, improving, and implementing the experiences from the war. At the end of the Ukraine war, whatever that looks like, the Russian military will be stronger than it is today. These armed forces will be on the border of our alliance. They will be commanded by the same people who already see us as enemies today and will then be pretty angry about how the war went. So we’re going to have an adversary that has real capabilities, mass and intent, so we need to be ready and have forces that can stand up to that.”
man, thats some 1950’s level dr strangelove coldwar bullshit, right there.
how is that guy anywhere near power?
if i, some crazy hippie dirt farmer on a dead end dirt road in the middle of bumf&ck texas know more about our supposed “enemies” than this guy does?
looks like an egregious failure of leadership, to me.
jeez. its not that hard to get informed about the thinking of the Kremlin, these days.
they have a website and everything.
in english, too!
and theyve been consistent since Putin took over…so…24, 25 years?…why the confusion?
Lavrov is consistent as well….and so far above the level of competency displayed by just about anybody in our gooberment….its a farce.
and Zakharova is a pleasure to watch in action.(still got a crush,lol)
“Cavoli: Russia is a permanent threat to the alliance and to security throughout Europe, because Moscow is increasingly playing along with players like China and North Korea. This makes it a global problem, a completely new dynamic. The threat is very serious. I prefer to describe how acute it is in relation to us. NATO must have more capabilities than our opponents…”
Imagine, the nuttiness of coming from Italy, a country that has grown a mere 4.4% since 2000 or 4.4% over the last 23 years and worrying about China.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1rnHz
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and Italy, 2000-2023
(Indexed to 2000)
Cavoli is just playing his book. He wants more money please and more power. If countries can’t afford it, then do what a previous US general said and just take a knife to social security programs and get that saved money to the MIC. And when Cavoli retires, you can bet that it will be to a MIC corporation. He’s just like Zelelnski always wanting more money and more weapons.
Someone finally called the cops on a Wall street bad guy!
BREAKING: Real Estate Exec Guilty Of $77M WeWork Stock Fraud
(The full article is paywalled; I just got the snippet and archive.ph not working for this link)
By Stewart Bishop
A Manhattan federal jury on Tuesday convicted the former CEO of real estate investment firm Arciterra for trying to manipulate the price of WeWork stock via a $77 million tender offer on the cusp of the office-sharing company’s bankruptcy filing in 2023.
#TheBezzle
The source is from law360.com
RE: Hidden Portraits
Digital reinterpretations?!!? Arcimboldo says “Pick up a brush and do it right the first time!”
I’m guessing the one exception is someone lime Jill Stein? (Greeneald’s tweet was repeated.)
> Greeneald’s tweet was repeated
Fixed, thanks
I have added orts and scraps. There’s a lot of cool-headed long-form material on Harris (and a 50/50 election cuts both ways, remember). Read carefully! But especially if you are a Trump stan who thinks after MacDonald’s the election is in the bag and need a splash of cold water in the face.
“….t especially if you are a Trump stan who thinks after MacDonald’s the election is in the bag.”
Do these people exist here on NC? I know people have agreed that Trump is a less effective evil and will vote for him reluctantly. The one thing I am sure of is – whichever one is declared president on November 32nd or whenever they get done counting the votes – that president will be a disaster. I’m kinda hoping that Trump wins and JD Vance visits him on January 22nd and tells him he is invoking the 25th Amendment.
The wails of grief coming from the Adelson apartment in the sky over Vegas would be deafening.
Neither side is going to accept that they lost, and one of them will lose.
One of Zizek’s favourite quotes is from Stalin, who was given two options and asked which was worse, to which he bellowed “They are both worse!”
The thing about Netflix is that they have probably 1-5 really good, quality movies to choose from that you might like. Those movies stay in circulation for about 2-3 months, then they leave, and a new set of 1-5 really good movies that you like will pop up. But it’s true that you have to spend a good 10 minutes searching for that movie.
For example, I just re-watched the Japanese animation classic, “Grave of the Fireflies”, on Netflix. It is an incredible film, but it won’t stay for long. I see a lot of 70s Robert Altman movies come in and out of Netflix. But mainly, it’s perusing Netflix’s crap or foreign country crime/soap opera dramas.
If you want something specific and now, Amazon Prime is usually waiting there, tentacles outstretched to rent it to you for $4.
I’ll put in a plug for the Usenet. If you have the time to set it up, there’s really nothing better for TV and movies. All content will automatically show up in your queue after you add it. Movies usually come in the day of streaming release. TV series a few minutes after broadcast. You can select the quality.
You’ll need a subscription to a newserver provider and an indexer. After that, no need for any other services, unless you want live sports; in most cases you can get that from local broadcast.
If TPTB were to offer such a service at say, twice the price, I’d gladly pay for it. But they don’t and won’t.
In order to enjoy Netflix to the fullest, one needs access to a VPN as well because some shows are region locked.
Who the hell is Margaret Sullivan?
The best involuntary joke of this – admittedly – young week:
“Media double standard? Or a 2016 lesson learned?
Also, what I told my ethics class about the media scandal du jour”
https://margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/media-double-standard-or-a-2016-lesson
“Who the hell is Margaret Sullivan?”
A person of no real importance. She considers herself an authority on press ethics but apparently is none too concerned about their truthfulness.
Of course the 2016 Russia did it claim was nonsense but don’t tell Margaret.
re: supremes nullifying NRLB/20th century:
man.
this is so old school gop,lol.
but those guys never give up.
as for down in the ditch, whenever ive argued with a right winger/republican about unions(and theyre all yammering about how theyre a vanguard of communism, etc)…i remind them that the bosses enjoy union protection as well: all the thousands of Chambers of Commerce, in every little town, every big city, every state, and the grandaddy CoC in DC….NAM…the Other NRA(foodservice),the million other Trade Organisations that i cant think of off the top of my head…
so its fine and dandy for the bosses to unionise, but not the workers?
over 35 years, this line of thought has had good effect…causing my interlocutors to look confused, then rethink, then, sometimes, agree.
and i reckon that it scales, too…or would scale, if we had a workers party in this country
and dammit, it seems rather obvious…and always had, to me…that the Right to form a union falls quite squarely under the Right to Association under the First Amendment…
of course, that amendment is currently under sort of bipartisan attack, as well…from Dems, certainly…but also from the rump reaganites.(we really need a better chart than that of the French Prerevolutionary Parliament,lol)
Nice! Bless you, Mr. The Hippie, bless you! I shall remember this.
(And see? Ya can’t tell me that it’s your dad that’s “Mr. The Hippie” 😁)
my dad was definitely not a hippy.
he was a pocket protector, horn rimmed nerd who did DSA and NASA.
then ran grandads company into the ground.
couldnt adapt.
and couldnt take his genius, but weird , son seriously.
(of course, if he had, i’d likely be part of the problem, by now. amor fati, and all)
>>>“James Carville to “Unknown” Host Charlie Stone:..
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
Newsflash: giving away hundreds of billions in corporate welfare and $7,500 off EVs w/0-60 times of under 6 seconds (Biden-Harris IRA), ostensibly in the name of the environment, doesn’t help the bottom 75%.
aye. havent heard a word about helicopter money in years and years.
a big wad of cash would help literally everyone i have ever known.
and, given whats actually in the federal budget, where theres a will, theres a way,lol.
its just that the will doesnt contemplate us little people.
Steph Kelton for Fed Chair.
Michael Hudson for Secretary of Treasury.
Lina Khan right where she’s at, but with a bigger budget.
Why would the Feds debauch the value of the almighty buck by distributing it unevenly to the proles, when they can give it evenly to the .01% and nobody is the wiser among the general population?
Years ago it was reported that the best method the government had to improve the economy was food stamps. They were inevitably all spent. Where they were spent meant they were then spent again, purchasing more food to sell, and the money stayed in the American economy.
I would posit that while other government support of lower 50% might not have that threefold economic improvement limited to Americans and business filled with American workers, that every dollar spent there did more for economy than any ten or more dollars spent on corporate tax credits, bailouts, and other more PMC acceptable money give always. Especially as far too often the money just ends up in the stock market or even foreign banks sometimes.
But as courting the people with those accounts is the main goal of most Democrats and almost as many Republicans the ridiculous mostly useless choice will be the one they go with.
re:quanta thing.
this echoes the Through the Looking Glass thing the other day.
the closer/broader we look, the more layers we find.
there was an animation thing, years ago, where you could start with Earth, and run the scroll wheel down to plank length, and up to the largest structures in the universe(afawk).
i used it on a few datenights to blow wife’s mind….and, when they were touching on related things in science class, to blow the boys’ minds, too.
i love that sort of thing…so, thanks.
prolly 26 years ago, when most of the gardening was still at mom’s, i was over there on a bright spring day after a rain…puddles everywhere.
i just happened to notice bright purple patches in many of the puddles.
so i ran home to get th magnifier…not good enough…so i ran home to obtain a lil jar, captured some, then ran back home again to stick em on a slide and put them under mom’s mid-50’s microscope.
Springtails!..having an orgy!
i watched for a bit, then put them back into a puddle.
just the Universe reminding us that we just think we know stuff.
It is excellent, sent it to wife and daughter just now. Will send it to others.
Excellent use of advanced HTML/Javascript animation (if it runs in my browser, it runs anywhere).
I tell all my friends and family we don’t know anything.
You may be thinking of this:
https://scaleofuniverse.com/en
BTW, the music loop is Kevin MacLeod’s “Frozen Star”.
The Cold War impacts open source:
Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Russian-Linux-Maintainers-Drop
But one has to assume even Linux has been backdoored by certain governments by now:
Linus Torvalds – Backdoor In Linux
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gRsgkdfYJ8
(For those where video is TL;DW, Linus answers NO while nodding YES if he has been asked to backdoor Linux.)
i intuit that this is Important, Glen, but i dont understand any of it.
i mean, i understand Klingon or Quenya better.
The Linux software team is open source, world wide. Some of the software team were in Russia, and those people have been dropped from the team.
As to back doors – this means a government entity (normally NSA) has asked the software company (or in Linux’s case, the software developer) to put code in the operating system (OS) which allows the external entity to essentially take over the OS, and read/write all the files, or crash the OS, or whatever. We can assume that ALL of the Western commercially available OSs (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, etc) have back doors. Dumping Russian developers would be to ensure that they don’t put back doors in their code too. But it’s also notable that the US Government has banned buying any Lenovo PCs or laptops since the assumption is that the Chinese government has embedded HARDWARE back doors.
About thirty years ago, when the DARPA net was transitioning to the Internet, we were told that our Navy base was going to have an NSA security audit which we all thought was pretty cool, we get to met some spooks. No, we were told, just leave all your computers on over the weekend. My buddy came back in Monday morning, logged back on to his Sun SPARC workstation only to find an open form from the NSA that he had to fill out reporting that they had broken into his PC. I think I was using a Mac, and it was apparently not broken into at that time.
you live on a whole other planet, from me,lol.
i only deal w tech if i must….like being a part of a community, or something,lol.
but that gels nicely with what my dad said the two times he spoke of his government work(DIA and NASA)
“they”‘ve been after Panopticon for real, and for a long time.
Well, I spent most of the day moving concrete blocks around with the front loader on the tractor, putting together a concrete block patio next to the old workshed that my wife can use when she’s up in the morning getting feed out for her chickens. The blocks are re-used concrete chunks that I had to cut up and bust out to replace 60 year old plumbing to the house so they’re random sizes (but I try to re-use everything). Then I walked the dirt road to our place, dragging down branches back, and chipped them up with the wood chipper into the compost heap. Now my back hurts so I’m having an apple cider before I bring wood in from the woodshed to lite the wood stove for the evening.
I may may have had different work experiences, but once you have a bit of land and an old homestead for a house, I think we have quite a bit in common. I’d love to see how you’re fixing your place up to to be more self sufficient
The servers that most websites run on, including almost all websites using WordPress, such as NC, run Linux.
> (For those where video is TL;DW, Linus answers NO while nodding YES if he has been asked to backdoor Linux.)
I cite “Reflections on Trusting Trust” when writing about voting machines, but it applies here as well (Thompson backdoored a compiler, then hid the backdoor. Of course, that couldn’t happen nowadays).
However, I agree with the other commenter than a little more explantion would be welcome.
been doin leaf studies…if i could ever get my androidfone to talk to my laptop.
decay, over time.
like rimboud’ photographing same tired greenbriar leaf, as it dwindles into senescence.
You should be able to connect the phone to the laptop with a USB cable and transfer the photo files around. This MIGHT help:
Transfer files between your computer & Android device https://support.google.com/android/answer/9064445?hl=en
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/196/35/E1208
Did I not get the memo?
Essay by a covid conscious physician who is trying not to get covid and trying to protect her patients.
re: Kamala in Texas
I had a strong WTF reaction to that because as someone who spends a lot of time in Texas and in close proximity to Texans my kneejerk reaction to the likelihood of it going blue was no effin’ way. But I checked 270towin on the matter and even though it hasn’t gone blue since 1976, it’s gotten more blue in recent years, and in 2020 it was 46.5% (dem) to 52.1% (gop). So maybe their internal polling really is showing they are close to 49.5%+? TX is 40 electoral votes so that would go far in the final math..
It’s “more fun” to campaign among the believers in Austin than shake 2,000 unclean hands in Michigan and PA.
IMO, there’s a lot of gatekeeping (is that the right word?) among campaign strategists….their message is not universal, it’s only available to the chosen ones.
Does that remind you of any geopolitical conflict?
https://search.brave.com/search?q=universal+religion
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_religion
the problem with texdems, Rasberry(stop by sometime, ask Lambert) is they tend to only focus on things that alienate Texans….abortion, hugely.
but also why rampant immigration is cool, etc.
i stopped talking to the party bigwigs long ago, but the locals…as a proxy..are united in all the things that totally alienate actual voters…are averse to anything that might bring in new voters…and are pretty much parrots for the national party line at this point.
which is why they dont waste any money on outreach, or a phone number locally,lol.
my local dems, when i can find them…are always furtive,lol…scurrying about to get what they need from town, and then running back to their hillforts…where…one imagines…they look down on all us deplorables with disdain.
i think that scales, as well.
> So maybe their internal polling really is showing they are close to 49.5%+? TX is 40 electoral votes so that would go far in the final math..
If the Democrats won Texas that would be extraordinary. They always say they’re going to, and then always fall flat. Same with Florida. I grant that the Texas Republican Party is unusually pernicious.
If the Democrats were going to win Texas, Ted Cruz would be losing. Everyone hates Ted Cruz and he’s still beating his opponent.
She’s there for a fund raiser.
dems aint gonna win texas.
if they were runnin on actual bread and butter, maybe…but they aint.
trump n vance in texas effectively nixes texas for dems.
the latter gets the texdems, outside the hive.
txhive has never once won an election, since Anne.
and she wouldnt be allowed to speak, today.
Adolf offered the tantalizing combo of Bread & Work to the German people in 1932, so there is precedence.
I have a really, really hard time even entertaining the possibility that Team Blue will win Texas. I agree with Not Again and Amfortas, if the Dems had a snowball’s chance Cruz wouldn’t be winning his race because that guy is well and truly hated by almost everyone.
However… a LOT of people have moved to Texas since 2020 (1.5 million, according to macrotrends) and most of them have moved to the cities. I don’t know how much this has really diluted the ‘traditional’ Texas ethnopolitical makeup (evangelical especially) since a lot of those people moved for employment or tax reasons based on my highly unscientific personal anecdata sampling.
So what I’m really curious to see is if the trend of Team Blue winning just a little bit more this round holds firm or is reversed. My gut says it’s going to be reversed by a few points, I don’t think the fabled California tax refugees who relocated to Dallas/Austin/Houston are enough to offset the hispanic and working class who turned to Team Red after the last ~7 years.
i am not in the city.rarely even visit our one real city in this county.
but whol county is smll-c conservative..’front porch conservative’.wendell berry conservative, if i sell it right.
and i could sell a new new deal with that.
“stop screwing us”.
that unites all the clans and cohorts.
weirdly…and even though i live here,…his people would have a better time finding suitable quarters for him, than i would(the one hotel is a shithole…unless he wants to continue with the whole man of the people thing,lol…because there they are!)
lotsa defensible BNB’s around here.
some of them quite nice.
Lambert, of course, is quite free to stay with me.
i’ll clean a bedroom.
and make 4 egg denver omelettes w brie,for second breakfast,lol.
(dont remember last time i bought eggs)
idk.
lost in moderation.
i invited trump to the Wilderness Bar, because i think either him or his people are lurking.
The story I’ve heard, don’t remember from where, is that the net immigration into Texas from the rest of the US is effectively keeping it red at the state level. The natives are net blue; as many live in the bigger cities. The people who are from places like Fresno, Orange County, and other red areas of blue states, are moving to 2nd ring suburbs and exurbs, turning them darker red.
thats what we get where i live.
orange county,CA, and etc.
red emmigrants.
(has led zepplin playin in head)
the worst, almost, of what Cali has to offr.
started movin out here abt 20 years ago, after having colonised austin, 20 years before(i was there)
mostly fracking money, so far..but increasingly tech money.
i worry about how theyll frell this isolate culture,of course…but i worry more about what theyll do to my tax rate.
The water cooler needs a nod to today’s newsflash: Trump to appear on Joe Rogan’s show.
If you thought memes of pets reacting to “they’re eating the dogs…” broke the internet, wait ’til Friday, Friday, Friday!
I’m not sure the fallacy tweet cites a bonafide logical fallacy.
For instance, I might hold that smoking is bad for me (an “evil”) but continue to smoke because I don’t want to get fat (a greater “evil,” if I would rather die than be fat).
I might hold that drinking too much is bad for me (an “evil”) but continue to drink out of fear that I’d kill myself without it (a greater “evil,” if I don’t want to die).
I might hold that a regional war is bad (an “evil”) but support that war if I think cessation of hostilities would lead to a world war (a greater “evil”).
One might argue that the greater evil is illusory or is in fact the lesser evil or whatever, but if we stipulate that the greater evil is indeed greater and that the lesser evil’s continuance will indeed forestall that greater evil, then I do not think it is a logical fallacy.
ay, Bazarov.
i gave up on smoking cessation due to wifes cancer.
i remain a hard core smoker(tm), lest i walk the earth,lol…ie: become a serial killer.
its actually good for society that i am allowed to smoke frelling cigs without penalty(tax).
Nice, all I have to do now is dream up something worse to justify my bad and I’m good.
Effective governance? Extra points if you can also bring your dreams to reality. That way the struggle is existential, and not merely schizophrenic.
My dear Lambert, the only book I hadn’t heard of in your My Life So Far in Writing Tools (Partly, at Least) post was Raymond Williams Keywords. I received it today, and having sampled Ideology with a side of Philosophy, am well pleased.
And thanks for all the Mimidae.
Lambert and Yves and crew send out knowledge challenges on a regular basis, much appreciated.
The establishment takes their political circus seriously.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-22/mcdonald-s-quarter-pounders-linked-to-e-coli-outbreak-cdc-says?srnd=homepage-americas/
McDonald’s Quarter Pounders Linked to Deadly E. Coli Outbreak, CDC Says
Amazing. I know it’s not that unusual to have an E. Coli outbreak, but the timing…and it’s getting a top of the page headline.
And this today…LOL…
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-casey-wyden-slam-mcdonalds-for-squeezing-customers-with-excessive-price-increases/
Warren, Casey, Wyden Slam McDonald’s for Squeezing Customers with Excessive Price Increases
I was barely paying attention to the whole campaign thing, but this just attracts more attention to it.
Are they serious?!?
” “While McDonald’s is not the only fast food restaurant that has increased prices significantly in recent years, its dominant market position as the largest fast food chain in the United States has an outsize impact on American consumers. While working families are trying to make ends meet, McDonald’s and its corporate counterparts have continued to grow their profits,” wrote the senators.”
In the 90s McDonald’s had $.69 cheeseburgers in Seattle for years. I don’t remember the exact price we used to pay in the 70s as a kid, but the 90s price was probably about the same or even less. The price of a cheeseburger not going up while everything else did made me think there probably wasn’t a whole lot of food in them and maybe i should avoid eating them. The price going up could mean better ingredients (although I doubt it) or better pay (which is happening in some places), which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Warren blames price gouging which may be true, but she’is a little vague on the details.
And why is Warren implying that poor people should be relying on McDonald’s for sustenance to begin with? It’s crap food and not good for anybody. I really used to like Warren back in the days when she was a regular guest on Bill Moyers’ program. She seemingly had some integrity. This is clearly just a political stunt to counter Trump’s and she might as well be saying “Let them eat s**t”.
“if Kamala Harris is as stupid as her critics claim, why does she have the Democratic presidential nomination and a roughly 50–50 shot of being the first female president in U.S. history?”
Uh, lessee. The press including the Bill Buckley rag are for her and all hate Trump. The polls are suspect. She’s running against a 78 year old who does have more than a few negatives. A huge amount of money has been poured into the effort.
The more appropriate question would be why, with all the establishment thumbs on the scales, isn’t she winning? I go with glass more than half empty on this one.
Meanwhile just out on Racket–a dynamite report on how some Brits are over here playing fast and loose with our campaign laws and out to make Harris the US Starmer. It could explain why she’s so reluctant to say the word “genocide.”
https://www.racket.news/p/election-exclusive-british-advisors
What with all of this chatter about ad buys, and focus groups, and political consultants, etc. etc., what I want to know is, what ever happened to good old-fashioned vote buying at the retail level? The Democrat Party is missing a huge opportunity. Just send out even a half of the long owed $600 USD to the voters and watch the “good will” flow. Trump understands it. He publicly bought an entire fast food crowd free lunch at a photo op.
Bring back “Walking Around Money” and watch the votes pour in. It might even be cheaper than suborning the electronic vote counting companies.
Stay safe. Vote early and vote often!
Alternately: “Stop Me Before I Vote Again” (title of a blog once favored by yours truly and Lambert likes the author).
Hey, those $2000 checks weren’t Biden’s idea. In fact, he was against it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-again-calls-2-000-checks-covid-aid-bill-remains-n1252359
I hate to burst this guy’s bubble, but it’s pure luck. Harris was a DEI hire on the 2020 Biden campaign, then Biden aged out of his second term and VP Kamala was kind of slipped in by Dem insiders as the main candidate without her ever receiving a single popular vote. Not too good.
(BTW, in her home state of CA she was polling fourth in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and subsequently dropped out. I won’t go into the role Willie Brown played in her rise through the offices in CA originally.)
I have nothing in particular against Harris, but I don’t go around marveling at her brains and popularity either.
> I hate to burst this guy’s bubble, but it’s pure luck.
No, I think you’re wrong. If you read the articles, you’ll see that she’s an extra-ordinary networker (blew off Willie Brown, kept the BMW, and didn’t miss a bit; I think this insight is worthwhile: “She is exceptionally skilled at getting other people emotionally invested in her success” (that is, in the accumulation of social capital). Now, whether that skill scales to voters is another question to which we are now finding out the answer. But not everything can be force-fit into the DEI-hire frame, which is a mere trope, and often a lazy one at that.
Agree with Lambert here. If you do some reading on CA big money, like the Newsom and Getty families, she was their gal, part of their network, and she’s probably there as part of the agreement for CA money to help fund and support Biden 2020.
And Obama was endowed with the same skills. Both of them are physically attractive and willing to tell powerful sponsors what they want to hear. It could be that all that enthusiasm is of the most superficial–or in some cases cynical–kind. We are talking about a political party that has come to believe that it’s “all about the PR.”
Obama was a bad president because character is indeed destiny. It does seem that the system now in place is almost designed to attract candidates with all the wrong motives. True egotism is needed to endure all the sucking up and personal appearances. I’d say that here Harris is different from Obama and her ego isn’t proving quite large enough. If she does win it’s likely she will even fail at the PR job. IMHO.
> But not everything can be force-fit into the DEI-hire frame, which is a mere trope, and often a lazy one at that.
Concur. Additionally, Kamala’s rise to the Vice Presidency is more accurately assessed as a direct payback to Clyburn from Biden. I’ve often pointed out that Amy Klobuchar had a rather interesting Freudian slip after “dropping out” in 2020 (via x.com). Clyburn wasn’t in the mood for any of that, though (via clyburnforcongress.com/Axios).
Definitely not a DEI hire. Her victory over Hallinan for DA has loose parallels with current DA Brooke Jenkins replacing Chesa Boudin. Each resulted in a WoC replacing a progressive white man (Boudin had no problem charging police misconduct which resulted in a recall). To my recollection Hallinan was considerably more liberal than Harris. Both Harris and Jenkins were political hires who showed up at the right time for themselves.
Re Gregory’s query: I think “lesser evilism” covers it. The time aspect is just because there is a choice between current evil and future possibly worse evil.
Noam Chomsky has an interesting take: “There’s another word for lesser evilism,” Chomsky replies. “It’s called rationality. Lesser evilism is not an illusion, it’s a rational position. But you don’t stop with lesser evilism. You begin with it, to prevent the worst, and then you go on to deal with the fundamental roots of what’s wrong, even with the lesser evils.”
Source:
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/scheer-intelligence/noam-chomsky-makes-the-case-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils
Some of Noam Chomsky’s recent positions have aged very poorly. This is one of them.
A major reason we currently have a genocide in Gaza is years and years of the “lesser evil” argument in action.
But the other half of Chomsky’s argument was that you use the time interval bought by preventing the greater evil to take action against the lesser evil and especially the roots of lesser evil in the meantime.
He never said vote for the lesser evil and then spend the next 4 years doing nothing in the meantime.
For example, if we succeed in electing the lesser evil Harris, we have bought the left a timespan of 4 years in which to buy millions of personal firearms and billions of rounds of personal ammunition and the time to learn how to use them. That would get the left a little more ready for when a Trumpist is elected 4 years from this November. Ready for what? Ready for Proud Boy MAGAnon wolfpacks running amok all over America, among other things.
But the plan only works if the left actually BUYS millions of firearms and billions of rounds of ammunition, and learns how to use them. If the left just spends the next four years sitting around and picking its nose and congratulating itself on defeating the greater evil Trumpemvance, then the left will have thrown away the preparation-time interval it would have bought itself by defeating Trumpenvance.
I think the problem is that we have not “[Gone] on to deal with the fundamental roots of what’s wrong, even with the lesser evils.” We have kept kicking the can down the road, which is why we have run out of lesser evils.
So if Kamala wanted to prove she worked at McDonalds, she could easily request her lifetime earnings records from Social Security, which show the employer (at least, mine did, back to 1974).
All you need to do is create an account on the Social Security site and your entire work history shows up. Not sure why no one has mentioned this – good spot.
Here is a rareinsults subreddit item titled: The Guy Roasted an Entire Generation. Actually , the guy could equally be credited with roasting the concept of roasting an entire generation. Anyway, here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rareinsults/comments/1g9pjte/the_guy_roasted_an_entire_generation/
2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, e-coli and onions on a sesame seed bun.
Eugyppius has a new post up, helping explain why most Germans are so monstrously and spectacularly misinformed about the state of U.S.
politics:
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/on-the-constant-unrelenting-and-unhinged
theres a bit of code, somewhere in the Verse,that will prevent the degredation of music files(jpg)
Fun stuff. Watercooler 2016. Look at the RCP averages from roughly 2 weeks out. Hillary had sizeable leads in some of the battlegrounds. Note all the trade agreement articles in the ‘cooler. The one positive that Trump accomplished was shutting most of that down.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/200pm-water-cooler-10242016.html
Now, THIS is FUNNy! From StrangeAndFunny, this is titled ” Bro Scammed the Scammer.”
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangeAndFunny/comments/1g9hf2x/bro_scammed_the_scammer/
Interesting. ‘Tulsi Gabbard joins Republican Party’
https://www.rt.com/news/606207-tulsi-gabbard-joins-republican-party/
I guess she wants to be in a party to the left of the Democrats. :)
She was betrayed several times at several levels by the Inner DemParty Overlords. I think she realized that revenge would be necessary. And she appears to believe that revenge is a dish best served over and over and over again.
I predicted that she would not be Trump’s VP running mate and I was right. I hope the reason is that she saw and sees very clearly the basic Trump pattern of exploiting and using people and then discarding their withered husks. If she is smart enough to see that ( and I hope she is), then she will draft in behind Trump’s partial vacuum without getting too close to the Trump truck itself. And then she will break out and speed up at a time and place of her own choosing.
“Tulsi Gabbard joins Republican Party”
The way in which Neera Tanden, president of the Democratic interest group CAP, set out to destroy Tulsi Gabbard, a prominent Democratic member of Congress and a commissioned military officer who had served in active duty in Iraq, because Gabbard courageously and rightly wanted to keep America from a needless and wrong war in Syria is beyond disgraceful and shows how horrid neocons came to dominate the Democrat Party.
https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/850491598517481474
Neera Tanden ✔@neeratanden
People of Hawaii’s 2nd district – was it not enough for you that your representative met with a murderous dictator? Will this move you?
https://twitter.com/cnn/status/850477149895131136 …
CNN ✔@CNN
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: “Yes, I’m skeptical” of claim Assad regime is behind chemical weapons attack
7:32 PM – 7 Apr 2017