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2:00PM Water Cooler 10/8/2024

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Kind readers, thanks to so many of you for asking after me yesterday, when I had described my fall. In fact, I am, as I thought I would be, in form today. No sprain or tear, which is what I was most worried about (since my back is stiff as the best of times). A few twinges in my knee. Scrapes nicely scabbed over. The whole episode brings home to me how lucky I have been, not only in this particular episode, but generally: Many, many people have experienced more pain in their lifetimes than I ever have. –lambert P.S. Also a hat tip to Big Pharma for the pills.

Bird Song of the Day

Back to the mimidae!

Tropical Mockingbird,Punto Sin Retorno, Ocotepeque, Honduras. “Imitando otras especies: 0:30 (Melanerpes aurifrons) 1:08 (Falco sparverius) 1:28 (Camptostoma imberbe) 2:00 (Piaya cayana) 2:08 (Rupornis magnirostris).” Quite a virtuoso!

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. New Trump’s 2020 polling underestimates vs. margins in the Swing States today.
  2. The Feds launder migrants through NGOs to firms owned by the American gentry.
  3. Boeing’s stock.

* * *

Look for the Helpers

It’s not like introverts need help, of course….

…. but it still can be nice.

* * *

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 forty days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

If you ignore the entire concept of margin of error, Trump gained a few inches of ground in the trench warfare (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 other day I muttered about making a map putting Trump’s 2020 voting underestimates against Trump (or Kamala’s) margins in Swing States. Hat tip to alert reader hk for doing the hard work and digging out the numbers. I did the easy part, which was making the handy map:

Legend: Numbers in Blue (Kamala) or Red (Trump) show the leading candidate in 2024. Naturally, orange numbers show Trump’s underestimates in 2020.

Obviously, if the polls in 2024 are off by as much, and in the same direction, as the polls in 2020, this election looks very, very different (and, in fact, in the bag for Trump). But are they? Opinions differ (“Infinite are the arguments of mages” –Ursula LeGuin).

Lambert here: I am not a polling maven!

“CNN data guru declares Trump will win White House if he outperforms current polling by one point” [FOX]. “CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said that the presidential race between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is so close that if Trump outperforms current polling by one point, he will win the White House. ‘We‘re talking about the closest campaign in a generation where a single point could make all the difference in the world,’ Enten told CNN anchor John Berman on Friday.” • Oh.

“The Asterisk on Kamala Harris’s Poll Numbers” [The Atlantic]. “The 2016 election lives in popular memory as perhaps the most infamous polling miss of all time, but 2020 was quietly even worse. The polls four years ago badly underestimated Trump’s support even as they correctly forecast a Joe Biden win. A comprehensive postmortem by the American Association for Public Opinion Research concluded that 2020 polls were the least accurate in decades, overstating Biden’s advantage by an average of 3.9 percentage points nationally and 4.3 percentage points at the state level over the final two weeks of the election…. According to The New York Times, Biden led by 10 points in Wisconsin but won it by less than 1 point; he led Michigan by 8 and won by 3; he led in Pennsylvania by 5 and won by about 1. As of this writing, Harris is up in all three states, but by less than Biden was. A 2020-size error would mean that she’s actually down—and poised to lose the Electoral College.” More: “[Don Levy, the director of the Siena College Research Institute] told me that, in 2020, the people working the phones for Siena frequently reported incidents of being yelled at by mistrustful Trump supporters. ‘In plain English, it was not uncommon for someone to say, ‘I’m voting for Trump—fuck you,'” and then hang up before completing the rest of the survey, he said. (So much for the ‘shy Trump voter’ hypothesis.) In 2020, those responses weren’t counted. This time around, they are. Levy told me that including these ‘partials’ in 2020 would have erased nearly half of Siena’s error rate.” What if Trump voters are so disaffected that they lie about supporting Harris? Nobody seems to have mentioned that possibility. And: “‘In 2016, the feeling was that the problem we had was not capturing non-college-educated white voters, particularly in the Midwest,’ Chris Jackson, the head of U.S. public polling at Ipsos, told me. ‘But what 2020 told us is that’s not actually sufficient. There is some kind of political-behavior dimension that wasn’t captured in that education-by-race crosstab. So, essentially, what the industry writ large has done is, we’ve started really looking much more strongly at political variables.’ If Trump outperforms the polls once again, it will be because even after all these years, something about his supporters remains a mystery.” • Perhaps the Republican and Democrat voters are fundamentally different not along ideological lines but in terms of capability. Republicans, after all, hated their party leadership and overthrew it. Democrats have done no such thing. Perhaps that level of commitment carries over to turnout (though I grant this possibility wouldn’t apply to undecided or irregular voters, unless they thought this capability worthy of emulation). One might speculate that Trump’s “fight, fight, fight!,” and continued presence on the campaign trail despite not one but two assassination attempts feeds into this propensity.

“Can we trust the polls this year?” [VOX]. Various: “It has been getting harder because of Trump’s ability to turn out the kinds of voters many polls have trouble capturing.” If these “kinds” of voters are irregular or disaffected, that would mean that Trump is making “our democracy” work better than Democrats. More: “The phrase I heard most in my conversations was a worry about ‘solving for the last problem’ or ‘fighting the last battle.’ In other words, lessons have been learned, but will those lessons apply this time around? In 2016, for example, pollsters addressed some of the reasons they overestimated Mitt Romney’s performance in 2012 but missed that state-level surveys were overrepresenting college graduates. That miss ended up artificially boosting Hillary Clinton’s support, especially in the Midwest battleground states that proved decisive.” And a list of the worries: Nonresponse bias, unlikely and late-deciding voters, hard-to-poll subgroups (approached by looking crosstab results that “can yield conclusions with margins of error much larger than those of a poll’s topline results”). And tips: Look at the sample size, methodology, firm, margin of error, and stay skeptical.

“So, you’re sure the presidential race will be close?” [Roll Call]. “Remember, polls are based on turnout assumptions, and if Harris generates stronger turnout among younger voters, voters of color, former Republicans, and college-educated whites, she could outperform the polling.” • I’m doubtful. I’m seeing two swing states where voters meet the “crawl over broken glass” turnout test. Both sets of voters are Trump voters. The first is PA, where Trump was almost assassinated in Butler. The second is NC, where Trump voters in WNC may feel they have been abandoned (and disrespected) by the Biden Administration’s response to Helene. Now, NC cuts both ways, because those Trump voters, motivated though they be, simply may not be able to reach the polls (the Post Office isn’t getting many absentee ballots right now, for example). However, if Republicans successfullly frame the Biden Administration’s response to Milton as similar to the response to Helene, then WNC sentiment may spread to Georgia, another swing state hit hard by Helene, or even go national. And I think the Democrat counter-messaging on abortion is preaching to the choir. From Georgia, KLG amplifies:

My sources have no reason to lie. Perhaps some exaggeration but it all seems too likely to me.

FEMA is a charlie foxtrot, whatever its apologists and administrators say. Almost every person who applies for the $750 is denied. For example, if you have insurance, no $750 because your benevolent insurance company will pay. Yeah, but for many, only after being dragged kicking and screaming to cut the check. An assistant rents her house in rural Georgia. Her losses are real but because she is a renter, no $200 to replace the farm produce and meat lost in her freezer due to a week without electricity. That’s all she asked for. $200B or whatever for Ukraine but no $200 for her. Some areas still do not know when power will be restored. Compared to the mountains of North Carolina, these are the fortunate. This is the message the people are getting…It is likely to get worse when Milton slams into Tampa-St. Pete Wednesday night. Sustained winds back up to 150 mph with 24 hours to go. This can be a killer.

If that assistant is not afflicted with TDS, there’s another potential “broken glass” voter in a swing state (and thirty days is time to marinate a lot of grievance).

“Polling isn’t broken, but pollsters still face Trump-era challenges” [ABC]. Report from the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in May: “[Cameron McPhee, chief methodologist for SSRS} told me the industry has moved toward agreement that multi-mode approaches are the best way to get a more representative sample. She stressed that it’s not that one mode is better, but rather a combination is ‘better than the sum of its parts.’ For instance, one SSRS survey experiment saw improved response rates for state-level surveys that recruited respondents by various means, including postcard or SMS text message, and gave respondents six potential access points to respond: URL, QR code (directing them to the survey), text, email, a phone number for respondents to call (inbound dialing) and SSRS reaching out to them by phone (outbound dialing).” • I wonder if the different recruitment mode affects the response. I might not be “the same person” answering a call as I am when making a considered response to email.

* * *

Kamala (D): “Kamala’s Comedown How the Harris campaign became a grim slog” [New York Magazine]. “Her once-ascendant polling numbers have stalled and her campaign has become cautious, granting TV interviews mostly to a handful of local news channels in swing states. If the first month of her candidacy was an exhalation after the suffocating defeatism under Biden, the last weeks before Election Day have felt like a collective holding of breath.” Perhaps to a Democrat. More: After the Vance-Walz debate, “[i]t was apparent that the Harris campaign had backed away from its primary value-add: the promise that it would break with the politics of the past… In response to Republican smears casting her as America’s ‘border czar’ responsible for a dysfunctional immigration system, Harris has pivoted rightward on the issue, promising a more restricted path for asylum seekers during a September trip to the U.S.-Mexico border… Harris’s deference to the status quo has been even more pronounced on foreign policy, which has been dominated by Israel’s grinding war in Gaza…. [S]elling nostalgia for a pre-Trump world raises the question of how Harris is any different from Biden. It also sends the message that Democrats have failed to convince voters that Trump and his acolytes are beyond the pale. So what’s to be done about a political reality in which voters want the opposing forces of liberalism and authoritarianism to be reconciled? The answer, for Harris, increasingly resembles a paradox: stave off Trumpian calamity through politics as usual.” • “Acolytes” being approximately half the population, deplorable though they may be?

Kamala (D): “Doug Emhoff was a foul-mouthed ‘a**hole’ and ‘misogynist’ who hired a ‘trophy secretary’ because she was ‘pretty’ and ‘retaliated against women who didn’t flirt back’ at LA law firm, ex-staff claim” [Daily Mail]. IOW, he was an entertainment lawyer? “Attorneys who worked with Doug Emhoff at his former firm Venable say he yelled expletives, held a men-only cocktail hour in the office, revoked work perks from women who didn’t flirt with him, and took only young, attractive associates in a limousine to a ball. A 2019 lawsuit also claimed sex discrimination by other partners in the LA office Emhoff ran, and that while engaged to Harris, he hired an ‘unqualified’ part-time model as a legal secretary ‘because she was young, attractive and friendly with the powerful men in the office’. The claims are the latest in a string of allegations revealed by DailyMail.com that threaten to shatter Emhoff’s image, heavily promoted by the Harris presidential campaign, of a feminist ally and ‘wife guy’. In August DailyMail.com revealed the Los Angeles lawyer cheated on his first wife and got his daughter’s grade school teacher-cum-nanny pregnant. And last week we uncovered claims that he struck his ex-girlfriend in 2012…. Now his former colleagues from the Venable Los Angeles office, which he ran from 2006 to 2017, are coming forward with allegations about his ‘inappropriate’ and ‘a**hole’ behavior in the workplace. They all spoke upon agreement they would not be named, fearing retaliation. One senior former staffer claimed Emhoff ‘bragged’ about yelling ‘get the f*** out of my office’ to a female partner at the firm, later telling his top male colleagues that he had ‘put her in her place’.” • Put the weight of evidence here against that presented during the Kavanaugh nomination, and compare the levels of hysteria.

* * *

Lambert here: Kamala’s said a whole raft of idiotic clarifying things in the past few days, but I have no time to aggregate the clips and review transcripts. Perhaps tomorrow.

Kamala (D): Sorry to quote World Net Daily, but here we are:

I’m so old I remember when Roger Mudd took down Teddy Kennedy — IIRC, while on Kennedy’s yacht — by asking Teddy to explain why he wanted to be President, and Teddy coughed up a giant hairball. This clip reminds me of that. Wouldn’t it be great to have a candidate whose voice you would actually enjoy hearing? For four years?

Kamala (D): Kamala’s Glock:

Can readers dig into the Glock? Guns are not my field of expertise.

Kamala (D): Why propagate a phrase like “what can be, unburdened by what has been” if you’re not going to use it when the time comes?

* * *

Kamala (D): “What Really Happened On Tim Walz’s Trips to China” [Politico]. Worth a read. From this story, those kids were lucky to have Walz as a teacher (and how stupid of the Harris campaign to frame him as “Coach.” I imagine the campaign felt that framing made Walz a manly man, solving some demographic problems for them, but being a fine teacher is one excellent form of manhood, and with way less bullshit than American football [snort]). And oppo me no oppo; if any appears, I’ll worry about it then.

* * *

Trump (R): “How Jack Smith Outsmarted the Supreme Court” [Sean Wilentz, The Atlantic]. “Smith’s filing tries to slice through the Court’s security shield regarding the insurrection. Skillfully quoting from or alluding to language in the Court majority’s own opinion, the filing demolishes the notion that Trump’s activities, culminating on January 6, deserve immunity. Outwardly, Smith’s filing respects the Court’s dubious ruling about the immunity of official presidential acts. Legally, Smith had no choice but to operate within that ruling, a fact that sharply limited how far his filing could go. But even though it never challenges the conservative majority directly, the filing makes a case, incontrovertible in its logic and factual detail, that the core of Trump’s subversion involved no official actions whatsoever. It persuasively argues, with fact after fact, that Trump was the head of an entirely private criminal plot as a candidate to overthrow the election, hatched months before the election itself. In remounting his case, Smith has taken the opportunity to release previously unknown details, some of which he says he doesn’t even plan to present at trial, that underscore the depravity as well as the extent of Trump’s criminal actions.” • Unless trying a case in the court of public opinion leads to conviction, Wilentz’s use of “criminal” is question-begging. Further, I don’t much like the outcome of Trump vs. United States myself. But the ruling is a case of “hard cases make bad law.” And IMNSHO case was “hard” because Democrat lawfare put Smith/Chutkan in the public mind, along with Smith/Cannon (dead), Bragg/Merchan (mind-bogglingly trivial, and appealed), James/Engoron (appealed, court dubious), and Willis/McAfee (farcial, not tried). Perhaps if the Democrats had tried for a clean kill with January 6, instead of starting five separate cases on the theory that one would prevail, FAFO would not have applied. (But perhaps they also felt internally — having held hearings on the matter including a documentary film, ffs — that a January 6 case was not all that strong.)

Realignment and Legitimacy

Expect continued volatility:

Nice shoutout from Tkacik [lambert blushes modestly].

“A Troubled Place” [Christopher F. Rufo and Christina Buttons, CIty Journal] (Charleroi, PA). This is well worth reading in full. It pains me to quote the Manhattan Institute, but they went and got the story, credit due. Here is the nut graf: “The basic pattern in Charleroi has been replicated in thousands of cities and towns across America: the federal government has opened the borders to all comers; a web of publicly funded NGOs has facilitated the flow of migrants within the country; local industries have welcomed the arrival of cheap, pliant labor. And, under these enormous pressures, places like Charleroi often revert to an older form: that of the company town, in which an open conspiracy of government, charity, and industry reshapes the society to its advantage—whether the citizens want it or not.” And: “The best way to understand the migrant crisis is to follow the flow of people, money, and power—in other words, to trace the supply chain of human migration.” • So this is “our democracy.” I wondered who was driving where migrants would relocate (though I’m sure some is spontaneous): The (Democrat-leaning and -funded) NGOs. And all to service the American gentry, too (making them the real problem, what a surprise). Clamp down on “local industries” and problem solved.

“What Happens if a Hurricane Smashes Tampa?” [Matt Stoller, BIG]. “Regardless, we are entering a world beset by climate change, which will require a different political order. Last July, I wrote a piece on how we are forgetting the lessons from Covid. We are still highly dependent on China, and the fragility of our supply chains hasn’t improved. And that’s because, while there are some good policymakers in positions of authority like Lina Khan and Rohit Chopra, the bulk of our leadership class is still in thrall to a finance-friendly model of industrial fragility. And this dynamic is as much an ideological problem as anything else.” • Absent the sort of “change” that so many of us hope for, I think that our response to the Covid pandemic gives a clear precedent for our already-in-place “different political order”: The ruthless application of Rule #2. Stoller is more optimistic, and I hope he’s right.

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!

* * *

Ticks

“Another Reason to Hate Ticks” [The Atlantic]. “When Clark Giles first heard about ticks making people allergic to meat, he found the notion so unbelievable, he considered it “hogwash.” Then, in 2022, it happened to him. Following a spate of tick bites, he ate a hamburger and went into sudden anaphylaxis…. This unusual allergy is most often caused by the lone-star tick, whose saliva triggers an immune reaction against a molecule, alpha-gal, found in most mammals besides humans. The allergy is also known as alpha-gal syndrome, or AGS. In recent years, the lone-star tick has been creeping northward and westward from its historical range, in the southeastern United States. (Oklahoma is in fact right on the edge; ticks are more prevalent in its east than its west.) Alpha-gal syndrome, too, is suspected to be on the rise. Farmers who spend their days outdoors are particularly exposed to lone-star ticks, and repeated bites may cause more severe reactions. And so, Giles is among a group of farmers who have become, ironically, allergic to the animals that they raise…. Farmers with severe AGS find it difficult, and in some cases impossible, to care for their animals at all.” • One way to solve the factory faming problem, I suppose.

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: CDC’s wastewater map should have been updated by Friday at 8:00pm. This is Tuesday. It hasn’t been.

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC September 23 Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC September 28 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC September 28

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data October 7:

National [6] CDC September 14:

Positivity
★ National[7] Walgreens October 7: ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic October 5:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC September 16: Variants[10] CDC September 16:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC September 28: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC September 28:

LEGEND

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

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

NOTES

[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Much less intense!

[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).

[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: “Why Every Day the Boeing Strike Lasts Is a Bigger Problem for the Stock” [Barron’s]. “A month or so shouldn’t pressure Boeing’s balance sheet too much. Longer than that, the company, and its investors, will feel more significant pain…. The cash burn can go on for a while, though. Boeing ended the second quarter with almost $13 billion in cash and short-term investments on its books. Boeing also had $10 billion of unused borrowing capacity on its revolving credit lines. With some $23 billion available, Boeing can, in theory, survive for months. The fact that Boeing can survive a strike that long doesn’t mean it should, or that its lenders will be happy. CFO Brian West is meeting with company lenders this week. The lending syndicate, which includes many banks, will want an update about the strike, how Boeing will minimize its cash burn, and what cash flow will look like as production ramps up following the work stoppage. West will likely reiterate his recent messaging that Boeing is actively managing liquidity and that his company will maintain its investment-grade credit rating, which Wall Street has interpreted as a willingness to sell new stock to raise more cash…. Coming into Tuesday’s trading, Boeing stock was down about 37% since an emergency door plug blew out of a 737 MAX 9 jet while in flight on Jan. 5. Shares are down about 4% since the start of the strike. The relative moves show what investors are most concerned about. Production quality and the 737 MAX matter more than the strike—for now.” • Of course, the two are related. You can’t fix production quality without recreating a functional shop floor, and you can’t do that while screwing the workers as hard as you can.

Manufacturing: “Boeing, striking union to continue negotiations” [USA Today]. “Boeing and its largest union said they would continue contract talks on Tuesday, as both sides seek an agreement to end a strike by around 33,000 U.S. West Coast factory workers. The company and the union, whose members have been on strike for 25 days, had resumed contract talks on Monday in the presence of federal mediators. ‘Although we met with Boeing and federal mediators all day, there was no meaningful movement to report. We will be back at it tomorrow,’ The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said late on Monday.”

Manufacturing: “Boeing Starts Union ‘Education Sessions’ as Labor Movement Stirs” [Bloomberg]. “Boeing Co. has started offering workers at a planemaking factory in South Carolina “education sessions” about the implications of joining a union, as a crippling strike at its sites in the Pacific Northwest puts the spotlight on the resurgence of organized labor in the US. The company is holding the voluntary meetings in response to ‘questions and concerns from many of you about union organizing activity taking place’ at the facility in North Charleston, according to an Oct. 7 memo by Scott Stocker, a Boeing vice president and general manager of the 787 Dreamliner program. Workers at the site, which isn’t unionized, will gain insights into the legal consequences of signing cards authorizing a union vote and what to do should a labor organizer knock on their door, according to the memo viewed by Bloomberg.” • Oh, sure, “voluntary.” So one of Boeing’s responses to a strike in Redmondis to crank up union-busting in North Charleston, showing the machinists exactly what will happen to them if they don’t win, and win big. This Ortberg dude had to approve this, too. I thought he was supposed to be a breath of fresh air?

Manufacturing: “El Segundo Boeing workers file whistleblower lawsuits alleging retaliation” [Los Angeles Times]. “Late last year, Boeing employee Craig Garriott says a 4-ton satellite inside an El Segundo plant fell after engineers failed to properly secure a clamp. No one was injured by the collapse of the $1 billion-plus satellite that happened over a weekend, but it could have been fatal if workers were present, Garriott claims. The incident highlighted a raft of safety violations that were ignored by management, according to a whistleblower lawsuit that was recently transferred to federal court in Los Angeles. In the lawsuit, the veteran Boeing employee alleges that his employer retaliated against him for speaking out about problems he saw at Boeing and Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing defense contractor that makes small satellites…. ‘This is another black eye,’ Dan Bubb, a professor of history with a focus on aviation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said of the lawsuits. ‘The punches just keep landing one after the other.’ Boeing acquired Millennium Space Systems in 2018 for an undisclosed amount.” • McDonnel-Douglas was such a success, so they bought Millenium?

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 72 Greed (previous close: 70 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 67 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 8 at 1:57:20 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes up one on Oil Supply/Price. “Conflict in the Middle East has driven up oil prices” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 180. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Do these people know something we don’t?

Photo Book

Looks like a chip:

Zeitgeist Watch

Nice smile on that guy:

News of the Wired

“The blogosphere is in full bloom. The rest of the internet has wilted” [Guardian]. “Like many of us, he realised that what came to be known as the blogosphere could be a modern realisation of Jürgen Habermas’s idea of “the public sphere” because it was open to all, everything was discussable and social rank didn’t determine who was allowed to speak. But what he – and we – underestimated was the speed and comprehensiveness that tech corporations such as Google and Facebook would enclose that public sphere with their own walled gardens in which “free speech” could be algorithmically curated while the speakers were intensively surveilled and their data mined for advertising purposes.” • Well worth a read. And allow to me beg everyone wjho can turn on their RSS feed to do so; RSS is great, and if the right vertical is populated by RSS, RSS is more effective than search, at least for covering daily beats.

* * *

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 SR:

SR writes: “More rabbit brush.”

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

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

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106 comments

  2. Wukchumni

    Glad you’re feeling better Lambert, self-inflicted wounds are the worst and I did something similar a few months ago in falling out of bed and landing square on my back on the oh so firm ground, ouch-e-wa-wa!

    I expect the Donkey Show to use some word salad magic when talking in regards to ‘Harris Pols’ which sounds an awful lot like Harris Polls’ if you know what I mean and I think you do.

    1. gk

      A friend of mine did something similar. But he was in Venice, and ended up in a canal. He couldn’t save the camera (or his phone).

      1. tegnost

        I can’t think venice canals without recalling this fantastic ray bradbury novel
        “Death is a Lonely Business”
        Just so, so great.

    2. Mo's Bike Shop

      Two weeks ago I tripped on the traffic cone that was put over the pothole in our office entry. Managed a roll and a scuffed knee. I was pulling my bike trailer out the door when I didn’t see it.

  3. Anon

    Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes Interview: Interview

    There were some insights here, but still no sense as to (paraphrasing Lambert) who she is as a person. Credit to her for doing media, even if it might be too late.

    1. IM Doc

      I will repeat what I said the other day.

      In a few weeks – I will be very busy with interviews for medical school positions. I am very very tough on these college seniors – I ask them deep and probing questions. In almost all cases, I could care less what they actually say – their body language, how confident they are, their tendency to be evasive, eye contact, and obvious dissembling are far far more important.

      These kids I will be interviewing will have people’s lives in their hands. If any of them dared show up and do an interview like Kamala has done now 3 times this week – I will personally call the head of the admissions committee and have them booted from consideration. I am not sure I have ever heard in decades of doing this with medical students, any of them be as unprepared and evasive as she has been in these interviews. I give her no credit at all – this is part of the job.

      Both she and Walz have had as a campaign strategy to evade everything. While Trump and Vance, as much as I may not personally like either one, have been on all kinds of shows with hostile questioners. Unfortunately, this showed loud and clear during that debate last week.

      Again, these medical students will have people’s lives in their hands. Whoever is president will be able to destroy the world in a blink of an eye. It is painfully obvious that she is not up to the job in any way. I say that as a professional person and as a lifelong Democrat.

      2. CA

        [ Kamala Harris was just asked on The View what she would have done differently than President Biden…

        “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” ]

        What a tragedy.

        1. Acacia

          I would say it’s not a tragedy. There was a discussion here a few months ago — “Biden Slips a Cog: Second Time as Tragedy, Second Time as Farce, or Both?” — during which I emphasized why there is really nothing tragic about Biden, at least not according to the original definition of tragedy that we get from Aristotle.

          Harris has just admitted that really she sees no difference between her own approach to policy and Biden’s, ergo that under a hypothetical Harris administration, there won’t be any change from Biden’s own “nothing would fundamentally change”.

          Given that Harris is pretty clearly an empty suit, it appears that she doesn’t really have any particular vision for the future of the US, other than just continuing the status quo ante. As Lambert says, she doesn’t even know who she herself is.

          Harris’ ‘vision’ (if we can even call it that) seems to be that “nothing would fundamentally change”, except that she should become the leading gravy train rider, having pushed aside all the other hogs at the feeding trough.

        1. SocalJimObjects

          Could be worse like “persevere to endeavor!!”

          Someone should organize a word salad competition so she can at least claim some kind of achievement, “I won the inaugural Word Salad Mixup Competition!!! Trump didn’t even dare to show up!!”

    2. Randall Flagg

      >There were some insights here, but still no sense as to (paraphrasing Lambert) who she is as a person. Credit to her for doing media, even if it might be too late.

      Wake me up when Harris finally goes before what one would call “hostile” media. Say, Fox News, New York Post, etc. I will give Bill Whitaker of CBS/60 minutes some credit for pushing back on her non answers but generally she has done nothing but creampuff interviews. And screwed the pooch on most of them while she was at it.

      1. Randall Flagg

        And while we’re at it, if this is the best she can do thinking on her feet when a teleprompter goes out, imagine her having to make any real time decisions that could lead to changes on a global scale.
        Like it was asked of Biden, who will REALLY be running the show if she wins? IM Doc’s last paragraph says all you need to know.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwOzbjnXsMg

        And the answer she gave on what she would have done differently than Biden,
        https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SJRk5PV588Q

        Not a thing…

        Couldn’t even dance on that in a reasonable manner that would be reasonably believable. It must have taken Trumps team about 30 seconds to make that response into a campaign ad if there are even remotely aware.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > still no sense as to (paraphrasing Lambert) who she is as a person

      That’s because she doesn’t know that, herself, a fact that is no doubt of great use to her handlers and backers.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        No no, not to worry. I think the real issue was situational awareness — stepping backward without being clear where my foot would land — and after that I did pretty well, all things considered. There are plenty of people who have “falls” in their homes and break a hip or whatever. I fell backwards onto concrete and got away with insignificant damage (though I must have twisted my body somehow, perhaps to cradle my camera, because I scraped a knee, and that wouldn’t have happened if I had fallen straight back).

        I was walking around pretty slowly last night, though. Now I’m walking OK, so that underlines my good luck.

        2. curlydan

          Great to hear that you feel better today. I’ve had a few falls and now often try to practice the 3 points of contact rule, especially going up and down stairs.

  5. Pat

    The two things that come to mind regarding polls and their accuracy both have to do with selection.

    The methodology of data collection has to be both very complicated and yes, difficult. Phones aren’t answered, including mobile phones, emails are ignored, and how do you get the numbers or emails. Do you stand in the center of a shopping area and approach people, knock on doors, etc. I know there is a lot of supposed evidence that these things are ‘neutral’, but every method I have suggested involves a certain amount of ‘selection’ and exclusivity. And most allow many people to reject taking the polls, for whatever reason. Then there are the questions themselves. It isn’t just push polls that are biased. It is human nature to try to shape your world including asking people what they believe.
    My bias in this is that I believe that most of the people who write these polls, conduct them, and then aggregate the data are PMC or elite. They exclude the questions they need to ask or dismiss the responses they do not wish to understand in regards to Trump’s popularity. They are as captured by the deplorable myth as the most rabid DTS sufferer. I don’t think it is so hard to understand Trump’s popularity. I don’t like him but when I hear his supporters talk about what is important to them I recognize those concerns. I don’t automatically dismiss them as ignorant or racist. Personally I don’t believe either of the major parties has an exclusive on racist members, they just present it differently. Trump’s popularity is grounded in deep unhappiness with the priorities and the actions of the last fifty years that have wrought many problems in their lives. The only reason that they do not understand is that pollsters have recognition bias. A bias that will not allow to consider that their class and their leaders (both Democratic and Republican) have chosen to ignore huge swaths of the population because that might shatter their illusions of their own safety and place in the system.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > My bias in this is that I believe that most of the people who write these polls, conduct them, and then aggregate the data are PMC or elite.

      Yes, a poll should be considered an editorial product. Nothing wrong with that, as long as the editorial stance is clear (and the methodology is not opaque).

    2. hk

      There was a fairly infamous (for us anyways) set of mistakes in exit polling by Edison Research in 2000: apparently, their polling workers were quite biased in picking which voters to ask how they voted. This was highly consequential: if you recall, news orgs mistakenly called FL for Dems prematurely, hours before polls in the West were closing, partly because of the exit polls. Doubtful that the exit poll takers had an explicit agenda in 2000, but I tend to think this sort of presumably unconscious bias is quite common.

      1. ashley

        the dems won in 2000 but gore lacked a backbone. please read up on the brooks brothers riot – a whos who of republican operatives who later became supreme court justices and head honchos of public policy at facebook. and roger stone. of course.

  6. Lee

    Lambert, if you have chronic back problems, as do I, then a work station using a zero gravity recliner with an overhanging laptop table might be helpful. You could probably get the least expensive but still adequate version of this set up for under two hundred bucks.

    1. Waking Up

      My brother had excruciating back pain to the point of considering back surgery but had to wait a few months to see a back specialist. In the meantime, he regularly saw a physical therapist who suggested “the McKenzie Method” for lower back pain. Exercise #4 – Extension in Standing was particularly helpful and is something he does throughout the day.

      Here is a website with pictures:
      https://spineone.com/mckenzie-method-back-pain/

      1. Lee

        I used their method for sciatic pain, as recommended by NC member of the commentariat, Arizona Slim, who doesn’t seem to be around any more. It worked well.

        2. Glen

          Yes! Highly recommended!

          But I did have to warn my co-workers that if it looked like I was walking around the office doing the “chicken strut”, it was really for my bum back.

      2. Samuel Conner

        A sibling who has found relief from chronic neck issues cannot praise McKenzie method enough.

    2. GramSci

      “Ergonomic” computer chairs are such a scam: Zit up straight, like you’re hammering an Underwood, and repeat. !Sieg, heil!!

      For thirty years I bolted casters on the bottom of my Poangs. My cubemates, however, were compliant, but envious.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Lambert, if you have chronic back problems,

      I would say I do not (as long as I arrange my camera bag properly). My concern (not sure there’s a problem) is more lack of (physical) flexibility than pain. Unfortunately, I have an on-the-spectrum-like commitment to daily schedule, so it’s hard for me to integrate counter-measures (like swimming, for example).

  8. Mark Gisleson

    For some perspective on how insanely huge Nippon Steel is, this is an aerial view of the world’s largest tire factory, or at least it was when I worked there in the 19 aught ’70s.

    Google Images tried to show me other Bridgestone-Firestone plants but all factories do not look alike, not even close. The complexity that amazed Lambert is replicated inside my old factory where seemingly every department used elaborate equipment like nothing you would find anywhere else. Steel is much more straightforward but it does take up a lot of space. Energy consumed is astronomical both in the production of steel and then the business of moving it around. Steel is heavy!

    Near as I can tell, almost every rectangle is a building. At first glance I thought the smaller ones were trucks! I’m sure there are rail lines everywhere and that in some way accounts for the “wiring” in this chip-like industrial complex. The kind of place where they probably have internal mass trans to help workers get to their assigned areas. There were 2,300 people who worked in the tire factory, I can’t begin to imagine how many workers it takes to keep that “foundry” running around the clock.

      1. tegnost

        Don’t you mean half crocked?
        I’m guessing here, but AG’s are law enforcement and are likely given the option to have weapons training…
        I had it at camp indian springs in north florida when I was 10 or so…don’t mess with florida man…if there are any left after tomorrow…
        We also used to catch water mocassins at lunchtime and dissect them in science class…
        The good thing about washington, where I’m voter registered but currently absent for mom patrol, is there’s nothing to kill you…except the cougars, bears,rattlers, sasquatches, mushrooms, water (drowning) and small planes…ok there’s a few things, but not nearly as many as florida…

  11. Jeff N

    Glocks don’t have safeties because firearm safety rules tell us that occasionally-malfunctioning safeties are not a suitable workaround for safe gun handling.

    If the gun is never ever pointed at anyone, and the finger is kept off of the trigger until an enemy target is lined up in its sights, then things are safe.

    1. Carolinian

      There’s the Glock and also the Lady Glock which may have been the gun used by a woman in my neighborhood who returned to her long empty house a few years ago, found a homeless person living there and shot him. The local sheriff approved–Kamala too apparently.

      The victim survived so it’s all good say the Glock-ers.

    2. hk

      I am curious if anyone will ever ask Harris to show them how she handles a handgun safely….

      Five bucks says she doesn’t have a clue about how to handle a gun, safely or otherwise.

      2. Wukchumni

        I’m guessing 2/3rds of recent (as in the last decade) city buyers of guns have never actually shot them. In LA you had to drive hours to get to a free outdoor shooting range and indoor ranges are pretty spendy.

    4. Ian

      I carried a Glock for years. I have to agree: how you store, carry, draw and keep your finger off the trigger is way more important than the precise nature of the “safety.”

      Glocks do have a “safety” on the trigger, but it is meant to prevent accidental discharge (mostly from dropping). If you are truly worried, don’t store or carry it chambered.

      In a real world situation, adrenaline will be spiking, gun will be chambered and safety will be off… finger off the trigger until ready to fire (safe gun handling) is all you have left at the end anyway. Glock just removes one level of complexity.

  12. upstater

    Advertising works!

    3% of American High Schoolers Identify as Transgender, First National Survey Finds NYT

    About 3.3 percent of high school students identify as transgender and another 2.2 percent are questioning their gender identity, according to the first nationally representative survey on these groups, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday. We live in a very sick society if the survey results are true.
    …
    About one in four transgender students said they had attempted suicide in the past year, compared with 11 percent of cisgender girls and 5 percent of cisgender boys.
    …
    “If the age trend holds, we would imagine as time goes on, that younger age group might have more youth identifying as trans,” she said. But that idea cannot be confirmed until the next batch of data from the C.D.C.’s survey, she said: “That is the gold standard for looking at something like that.”

    If one excludes the trans kids’ suicide attempts, are we to believe that of the 17.3 million high school students, half boys and half girls that nearly one million girls and 430,000 boys attempt suicide each year?

      1. upstater

        The article states “11 percent of cisgender girls and 5 percent of cisgender boys” attempted suicide in the past year. Cisgender are the 95% of kids that are NOT trans.

  13. Ranger Rick

    That immigration article is quite a story. We’ve gone from LIHOP border control to ineffective border walls to Temporary Protected Status for millions of refugees generated by meddling in South America and all of that only in the last decade. Business will not be denied its cheap labor.

    What many aren’t considering (the article at least brings up Great Replacement Theory) is what effects this will have decades down the line. US history is littered with mass migration movements that transformed the country and this one will be no different. The children of these refugees will be US citizens alongside millions of newly naturalized parents. Temporary Protected Status is only granted to people who are seeking at least resident alien status. Our culture will change in ways that are hard to predict, and some that may already have happened (the definition of “white” is certainly getting quite vague now).

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Great Replacement Theory

      As I keep saying, “Replacement Theory” is a translation of Teixiera’s “coalition of the ascendant” into Republican-ese. Reactionary, with all that implies. Looks like Democrats have doubled on the policy while abandoning public defense of the ideology (i.e., none of the operatives talk about Teixiera’s theory any more. Perhaps, since the NGOs have secured their funding, they don’t need to.

    2. griffen

      That makes for a compelling read and thought exercise. And behind all the rhetoric and machinations of moving these new non-native residents ( employees ) what are we finding? Government programs and money, NGO good thought ( in name maybe, in practice meh ) efforts to support and relocate these new residents, and a corporate employer exploiting the rules ( written or unwritten,employing cheap labor should be a condemnation ). The local school districts I’m sure are overwhelmed and perhaps, likely already underfunded.

      I’ll be sharing that one with a few key individuals, mostly just immediate family. I’ll include the sarcastic tag line of “capitalism yeah” and “government boo” to boost the point.

    3. gk

      > (the definition of “white” is certainly getting quite vague now)

      It now includes Sicilians, Irish and Jews. It’s just a matter of time before it includes Chinese and Japanese. Basically anybody except Blacks.

  14. curlydan

    As someone bitten by a lone star tick earlier this year and at least once more in a previous year, I have to say that tick research seems pretty bad.

    I did not get (yet?) alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), but I saw no research indicating what percent of bites from lone star ticks might result in AGS. Or maybe it’s a cumulative effect? Who knows, but the research seems bad, and any attempts at data collection seem crappy, too.

    How about asking people to keep a journal of bites and types of ticks?

    AGS and Lyme just seem to be in this fuzzy area of “we know where they come from” but we don’t know “exactly how it happens”. So can I be bitten by 5 lone star ticks and avoid AGS? Does removing the tick quickly help? Should anyone be able to walk into CVS with a tick bite and get 3-5 doxycycline pills? And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but should we test this on other primates?

    I’m on a Midwest hiking group on FB, and the number of people there with AGS is a bit scary.

    1. Skippy

      Interesting story behind AGS – https://news.virginia.edu/content/meet-doc-who-discovered-infamous-red-meat-allergy-spread-ticks

      We have it here in Oz as well, know a few with it. The largest group of people effected by it are landscapers, ED staff when presented by them, during the day, automatically ask if they have had say a meat pie for lunch.

      Anyway here is the data dump – The alpha gal story: Lessons learned from connecting the dots – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600073/

    2. Wukchumni

      Should anyone be able to walk into CVS with a tick bite and get 3-5 doxycycline pills?

      I get a tick on me about every 2-3 years and immediately after removing it, go on the Doxy for 10 days or whatever the length is-so far so good.

      A few years back a friend showed me a great way to remove them, you use a moistened Q-tip and rub your skin around the tick for about a minute in a circular motion, and the tick pulls itself out, couldn’t believe it when I saw her doing it

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > you use a moistened Q-tip and rub your skin around the tick for about a minute in a circular motion, and the tick pulls itself out, couldn’t believe it when I saw her doing it

        News you can use!

      2. Jorge

        Wow! Our system when I was a kid was to coat the tick in goo (vicks camphor, or any other goo) to make it need to breath. Then, light a match, blow it out, and hold the hot head over the tick. It will exit very quickly.

        And, just to explain to others: you want the tick to exit under its own power. If you just break the tick off, the head stays inside your skin and now you have a real problem.

    3. GramSci

      Sorry, curlydan. My dad complained of his ‘arthritis’, likely Lyme, contracted in the CCCs in N WI the 30s.

      Yves covers it, cuz she’s been there, but the city folk mostly don’t get it. But it’s not all their fault either, even most US country folk would rather have war.

  16. Carolinian

    I’m suddenly seeing a lot more Trump/Vance yard signs if that means anything. They’ve been hiding from the heavily armed (apparently) safe space contingent. Of course the truth is that my town and maybe even my neighborhood were always going Repub no matter what.

      2. Carolinian

        Just my feeble attempt at sarcasm. We have an old .22 revolver around here somewhere. I’ve never fired that or any other real gun.

        When I was a kid I loved reading about guns and weapons. I can tell you how they all work.

        1. The Rev Kev

          Personally I liked the Martini-Henry action in a .222 when I was a teenager but hey, that was just me.

          1. Wukchumni

            Learned how to shoot a .22 rifle in YMCA* summer camp on Catalina, circa 1973.

            * My parents could be rid of me for a whole week for around $100, such a deal.

  17. matt

    alright. chances of trump being elected are pretty high. but i gotta ask: what are the chances of him dying in office and getting replaced by JD Vance, and what would a Vance admin look like? i think i need to do research. (once I have the time.)

    2. Tom Stone

      I expect more attempts on Trump’s life and wouldn’t be surprised if He were killed either before the election or before being sworn into office.
      Vance is not overtly deranged or imbecilic so he is not life insurance the way Harris is…
      A normally corrupt mediocrity would be an improvement over what we have.

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > Vance is not overtly deranged or imbecilic so he is not life insurance the way Harris is…

        But to a liberal Democrat it’s the other way round.

        > I expect more attempts on Trump’s life and wouldn’t be surprised if He were killed either before the election or before being sworn into office.

        See Tkacik’s quote-tweet on this point. I do think that “they” will have recognized that stochastics are not enough; two attempts, after all, and no success. I think if “they” “give it another shot” they’ll have to double down, as “they” do, and call in a professional wet team. Safer plays include engineering a massive pre-Electoral College lawfare explosion as justification for suborning faithless electors (as at least experimented with in 2016). Trump had better be paying his aircraft mechanics really well. His body man can act as a food-taster.

    3. hk

      I actually expect Trump to be more of a European style “president” than an American one. I figure that Vance is the de facto presidential candidate even now and, if so, I think that’s a good thing.

  18. upstater

    re. “What Happens if a Hurricane Smashes Tampa?” [Matt Stoller, BIG]

    What does China have to do with 60% of IV solution and dialysis electrolytes coming from Baxter’s North Carolina plant. The second largest source or B. Braun, another major IV supplier, has an IV solutions manufacturing plant in Daytona Beach, Fla., which is in the projected path of Category 5 Hurricane Milton.

    https://www.statnews.com/2024/10/07/hurricane-helene-iv-fluid-shortage-baxter-closure-aha/

    How many other examples of fragile supply chains are wholly domestic constraints? Stoller as noted here has China Derangement Syndrome. Probably China will come to the rescue like they did for KN95s and the like.

  19. Wukchumni

    Watching the MLB playoffs, and every batter has the word ‘Strauss’ written across their helmet, and I wondered what it was all about, and apparently Strauss is a German workware company-which seems odd as Germans have not much history of baseball, and why not an American apparel company?

    This is coming off of MLB umpires wearing not 1, but 2 FTX patches on their uniforms a few years ago before the S B-F debacle hit.

  20. NYMutza

    There has to be a joke in there somewhere regarding alpha-gal syndrome. Hillary? Nancy? Kamala? Anyway you look at it it is to be avoided.

  21. steppenwolf fetchit

    When the article ” Another reason to hate ticks” notes the spread of the Lone Star tick and the anti-meat allergy it spreads ( only beef? Not sheep, goats, etc. as well?), it would seem to make immediate sense to consider the fate of factory farming in light of this, and the following thought has indeed come to mind . . .
    ” • One way to solve the factory faming problem, I suppose.”

    The problem is that it is not factory farming which will be solved by this. Factory farming can be further up-technologized and up-robotized if necessary to prevent humans from contacting the animals beyond a very minimal degree. And they can wear hazmat suits if necessary.

    It is artisanal ranching and home-hobby-livestock keeping which could be threatened by this. If every rancher gets bitten by the Lone Star tick, and they can’t do ranching anymore with all the daily handling of animals that requires, then there will be no more eco-friendly beef-on-pasture and Factory CAFO beef will be the only beef which will be left.

  22. Tom Stone

    The Glock is a much safer and more intuitive design than most, there’s an internal striker instead of a hammer so it can only be fired by pulling the trigger.
    Other than the operator the two major safety issues are that you have to pull the trigger to drop the striker in order to field strip the piece to clean it,if you get sloppy and left a round in the chamber…
    The other issue is the trigger, if something gets caught in the trigger guard while you are holstering the piece it can give you “Glock Leg”.
    There are pplenty of pics on line, don’t look if you are squeamish
    This is why I consider the “Striker Control Device” a mandatory upgrade for a Glock, you can feel the striker moving to full cock with your thumb as you holster the piece and thus avoid pain and embarrassment.

    2. The Infamous Oregon Lawhobbit

      Though with a 3rd Gen. Smith&Wesson anything caught in the trigger guard will move the exposed hammer and make me stop that reholstering process. Nobody talks about Smith Leg for a reason… ;-)

      Owned the original Glock 17 when they first came out (remember the Glock Sock? and how a section of inner tube was the predecessor?) and while it was pleasant to shoot (apologies, IM Doc) it was just not something I’d consider for carrying/defense purposes.

      And I say this as someone who’s comfortable with a cocked and locked 1911. But concealed striker pistols … not for me.

      @Joker – it is. Especially with that whole “femoral artery” thing…

      @Lambert – best wishes on the fall-down thing….

  23. The Rev Kev

    ‘the federal government has opened the borders to all comers; a web of publicly funded NGOs has facilitated the flow of migrants within the country’

    So has anybody gone to investigate up the food chain rather than just down? Gone to see who owns these NGOs and if they are financially connected? Looked to see if you have the same people behind them across different NGOs? I’m not saying that it may be Soros but that organization, as an example of how it is done, uses multiple NGOs that are connected both financially and by the people behind them. You see hundreds of NGOs but in reality it is just one organization. Saw the same in Georgia where most NGOs seem to have been funded by either the EU or the US State Department/spooks.

    1. Ben Panga

      There’s a RAND corporation paper from c2013-18 (that I frustratingly cannot find) that details the playbook for that. Wide network of NGOs including ‘independent media’; disguise US/outsider involvement and slowly build trust; directions for funding. Paper focused mainly on Ukraine iirc.

      I’ll search for it again. Unfortunately I had it on a long-dead laptop.

      1. Acacia

        I started scanning those RAND reports… there are a few dozen that speak to “independent media”, e.g.:

        Western Strategy for Ukraine
        https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2005/02/western-strategy-for-ukraine.html

        Key elements of an effective U.S. support package for Ukraine should include: […]
        Financial assistance designed to support economic reform, as well as measures to strengthen the independent media and civil society.

        A Compendium of Recommendations for Countering Russian and Other State-Sponsored Propaganda
        https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA800/RRA894-1/RAND_RRA894-1.pdf

        The U.S. Global Engagement Center (GEC) has also launched media support efforts for accurate reporting in North Macedonia, independent media in vulnerable European countries, and civil society efforts to build resistance to disinformation. The GEC has funded an implementer to train civil society actors in 14 European nations on ways that their organizations can help their communities rapidly identify and respond to disinformation in locally relevant ways (Gabrielle, 2019).

        […]

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Gone to see who owns these NGOs and if they are financially connected? Looked to see if you have the same people behind them across different NGOs?

      Next on the agenda. I’m just happy to have the migration supply chain clear (and it was bugging me, because it was a right-wing talking point that the government was sending migrants to the various locations, like Springfield, and in fact it’s the NGOs).

  25. The Rev Kev

    “Boeing Starts Union ‘Education Sessions’ as Labor Movement Stirs”

    What if this is just Boeing’s way to see who would be willing to act as scab labour?

  26. amfortas the hippie

    “…It also sends the message that Democrats have failed to convince voters that Trump and his acolytes are beyond the pale. So what’s to be done about a political reality in which voters want the opposing forces of liberalism and authoritarianism to be reconciled? The answer, for Harris, increasingly resembles a paradox: stave off Trumpian calamity through politics as usual.”…”

    given who trump has behind him, now…lauding him as savior of the republic, no less…
    kamala is not the woman to throw 50 years of machinations out the window.
    she’s a part of that system/mafia
    unless a giant majority somehow votes for Jill Stein, trump is all we got.
    maybe hell break things enough for some big reveal.
    the future of the lost republic relies on the random utterances of a megalomaniac lunatic.
    seems fitting, somehow.

    1. mrsyk

      That’s well put. I don’t know how much it’s going to matter. Look at where we are this very night.

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      Purely from the standpoint of “our democracy,” Orange Man is the better choice. He was democratically selected for the top of the ticket in way Kamala certainly was not (not that the selection process was ideal, you understand). And once again, the Republican base hated their leadership and got rid of it, very much unlike the putative democrats. And while the Democrats seek to incorporate insiders like Cheney (and those thousands of generals and natsec goons) the Republicans are incorporating outsiders like RFK and Gabbard. So at the very least, institutionally, the two parties are very different (which doesn’t prevent them from serving squillionaire masters, of course).

      When I write “Purely from the standpoint of,” I am saying that there is no endorsement here from me. There are plenty of other standpoints. But it’s foolish to blind one’s self to differences in the two parties.

      1. Swamp Yankee

        I’m going to pretty vigorously disagree with that first paragraph, Lambert. As annoying as MSNBC et al. are with their “our democracy” talk, it has long been a commonplace of political science and history that “democracy” is not the same as “plebiscitary majoritarianism.” It includes a whole constellation of interrelated features: a juridical-constitutional order, a free press, vigorous though loyal opposition parties, and more.

        Indeed, I think it’s a strange canon of interpretation that makes being popularly elected in a primary election campaign the sine qua non of “democracy.” This fails to consider the fact that primary election campaigns as the deciding factor on who a party nominates are only about fifty years old, and language establishing them appears nowhere in the federal Constitution. If one objects that at least Harris ought to have been nominated by a contested party nominating convention, this runs into the problem that nominating conventions are an invention of the Jacksonian Age; if a candidate is ipso facto illegitimate for having not been nominated by either a mass primary campaign or a nominating convention, then that means that Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy Adams, and the first Jackson Administration were not legitimate. My view is that they were and are.

        By way of contrast, unlike party nominating processes, the counting of the Electoral College vote which Trump sought to disrupt on Jan. 6th, 2021, does actually appear in the body of the US Constitution: “The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed….” (US Const., Art. II, Sec. 1).

        So, yes, the disrupting of the peaceful transfer of power _as laid out in the plain language of the Constitution_ is in fact a graver threat to a constitutional democracy than one political party reverting to an archaic method of selecting its party nominee in the midst of a crisis brought on by its main candidate becoming unable to run for reelection — none of which appear in the language of the Constitution.

        Moreover, I don’t find the personalities and social strata that make up each party as dispositive a factor as some here evidently do. For me, Cheneys or RFKs or Gabbards or Oprahs notwithstanding, we have the party platforms. I do agree, however, that ” it’s foolish to blind one’s self to differences in the two parties.” (Lambert, supra). So with that in mind, let’s take a closer look at both parties.

        Here is what the 2024 GOP Platform says (Ch. 3 (1), https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2024-republican-party-platform) about regulating the economy: “Republicans will slash Regulations that stifle Jobs, Freedom, Innovation and make everything more expensive. We will implement Transparency and Common Sense in rulemaking.”

        Here’s a contrasting excerpt from the 2024 Democratic Platform: “Democrats are also working to shore up a safe, secure banking system that protects consumer deposits and holds investors accountable. Democrats have pushed for legislation to hold executives at all failed banks accountable, clawing back compensation and banning them from the industry. We’re working to limit out-of-control Wall Street bonuses that encourage risky bank practices that jeopardize our whole economy. And we’ll keep pushing to pass an updated Glass-Steagall Act, more clearly separating commercial and investment banking and expanding Volcker rule safeguards. We defeated Republican efforts to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at the Supreme Court this year; we’ll continue to protect and strengthen that agency and support its critical work.” (Democratic Platform, p. 23, https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf).

        To my mind, these represent two starkly differing visions of the role of the regulatory state. Frankly, I think that the latter passage has more closely aligned to the viewpoints that have been expressed on this blog (and beyond) regarding the necessity of a more closely regulated economy; this is why I find the embrace of Trump by certain commenters around here so puzzling (and this is not even touching the GOP platform’s crypto boosterism).

        Or take climate change. One of the things I have long admired about this blog has been its willingness to look squarely at the causes and consequences of climate change. Yet that is not what we find in the GOP Platform; rather, we find a determination to increase the output of fossil hydrocarbons and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

        “Under President Trump, the U.S. became the Number One Producer of Oil and Natural Gas in the World — and we will soon be again by lifting restrictions on American Energy Production and terminating the Socialist Green New Deal. Republicans will unleash Energy Production from all sources, including nuclear, to immediately slash Inflation and power American homes, cars, and factories with reliable, abundant, and affordable Energy.” (2024 GOP Platform, Ch. 1(1)).

        Contrast this with the 2024 Democratic Platform: “The climate crisis is decades in the making, an existential threat to future generations who deserve better. It’s a consequence of delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in Big Oil, who still deny what we all see happening right before our eyes.

        President Biden is delivering on the most aggressive climate agenda in history. His landmark
        legislation has unleashed a clean energy boom that’s slashing pollution, lowering energy
        costs, and has already created over 300,000 good-paying American clean energy jobs.
        America is now producing more energy than ever in its history. He has taken more
        environmental actions than any president before him – providing cleaner air and water,
        making communities more resilient, and forcing polluters to pay for the damage they’ve
        Done.” (2024 Democratic Platform, p. 30)

        Now, I can already hear the objections to my arguments, and many of them will be some variation on a tu quoque theme; I can likely summarize them by simply writing “But Democrats!”

        But again, I find it a strange position to take to say that the Democrats have failed at being the social-democratic or democratic-socialist party one wishes them to be, and therefore, let’s embrace the hard, red-baiting (see “Socialist” as scare-word supra) Right which is demonstrably worse in terms of emissions, the destruction of the regulatory state, and right-wing culture war fixation.

        My own position is that of Sen. Sanders, whom I agreed with 8 years ago and whom I agree with now: for anyone who considers themselves a New Dealer and concerns themselves with the constitutional order, voting for a candidate who has already demonstrated his deep antipathy to both of these (and yes, the New Deal was significantly regulatory in scope – e.g., the SEC) – and as someone who has walked a picket line, let me also note Trump’s thrill at Musk being able to just fire striking workers – is not a decision I would make.

        Your mileage may vary, as this blog often says, and people are of course free to support Trump if they wish – but I would respectfully suggest that while such support can be characterized in many ways, it cannot be fairly characterized as “Left.”

  27. lyman alpha blob

    RE: A Troubled Place

    From the article –

    “In addition, the White House has admitted more than 210,000 Haitians through its controversial Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), which it paused in early August and has since relaunched.”

    The author links to the US Customs and Border Protection website to back that up. Interesting that those countries whose immigrants are being fast tracked are all countries the US has or would very much like to “regime change”.

  28. tegnost

    About now, 28 days to go, the dems could really use to quote biden a couple years ago saying
    “Jeff Bezos has enough money to pay his workers so I’m strongly supporting Christian Smalls in his unionization efforts! And my administration will be suspending AWS contracts until Christian gets his job back and the union has it’s demands met!”
    But, no.
    And how about…
    ” I told bezos he can no longer use the postal service for his last mile deliveries unless he busts out some cash, and no sunday or holiday deliveries for his prime customers!”
    I know, I live in fantasyland…

  29. Swamp Yankee

    Also, I was remiss in not saying above — best wishes for a speedy recovery after your fall, Lambert.

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