By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, Richard W. DeKorte Park, Bergen, New Jersey, United States. “I love how it’s ‘song’ includes sirens. The reason why became obvious as I listened to sirens coming from the Turnpike.”
In Case You Might Miss…
- Gaetz: Exit, stage right.
- Ortberg: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
- How the Democrats abandoned the working class.
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 Transition
“Gaetz withdraws as Trump’s pick for attorney general, averting confirmation battle in the Senate” [Associated Press]. “The Florida Republican’s announcement came one day after meeting with senators in an effort to win their support for his confirmation to lead the Justice Department. ‘While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,’ Gaetz said in a statement announcing his decision. ‘There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1.’ Trump, in a social media post, said: ‘I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!'” • Gracefully done — probably those Venmo transactions* did it — but I hate this play in the Democrat Playbook so much because it’s one more way for the Democrat Party — which has a (white) (male) workplace abuser as an honored and much-loved party elder — to avoid talking about policy (i.e. universal concrete material benefits (i.e. the working class)). And of course the moral preening is offensive. On the bright side, it looks like we won’t have a populist anti-truster at Justice (unless Trump does the unexpected). NOTE * One of the many advantages of our cash-free future!
“Republicans Must Defend Matt Gaetz To End The Use Of Salacious Lies As A Political Weapon” [The Federalist]. “The claims against Gaetz are but another information operation, however, mirroring the ones that previously targeted Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. And this pattern will continue unabated unless Americans unflinchingly condemn the tactic — no matter the target. We should have learned this lesson from Donald Trump’s first presidential run and time in office. From Crossfire Hurricane, to the pee-tape dossier, to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, unsupported and unbelievable accusations leaked to the public hampered Trump’s ability to advance his agenda. Time and again the charges proved unfounded, and yet in advance of the 2024 election, the lawfare continued. The country, however, had wised up by then and recognized the various criminal and civil charges leveled against Trump for what they were: an effort to interfere in the election. Why then is anyone giving credence to the accusations against Gaetz, especially given the FBI — after thoroughly investigating the matter for two years — decided not to charge Gaetz?” • Strange bedfellows, Lambert and The Federalist, though here we are. (My position, however, is that even salacious truths should be deweaponized (adult to adult, consensual being the standard. I’m sure Roger Stone would agree with me….).
“4 Trump administration picks have sexual misconduct allegations in their past” [CBS]. “Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Elon Musk are all in line to serve as top government leaders. All have faced varying degrees of sexual misconduct allegations. The president’s picks to carry out his agenda reflect an incoming administration hostile to the norms of the ‘Me Too’ movement.” Ah yes. #MeToo. Remember Time’s Up? Good times. Anyhow: “Behavior that might have gotten a person fired or canceled (or not nominated to a cabinet position) over the last several years, appears to be less problematic in the Trump 2.0 era. Machismo was often a centerpiece of Trump’s appeal to voters during the 2024 campaign. He regularly spoke about toughness — whether that trait applied to his immigration policy, combating illicit drug trade or surviving two assassination attempts. Wrestler Hulk Hogan delivered a primetime speech at the Republican National Convention, ripping off his shirt while lavishing praise on the nominee. And Trump also spent time on right-leaning podcasts with largely male audiences. His entreaties to male culture paid off in November.” • “Male culture.” Huh? Is that a thing now?
“Donald Trump gets a brutal reality check” [Politico]. “Donald Trump is not a monarch. That’s the unmistakable lesson of the ill-fated nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Rather than showcasing Trump’s absolute power over his GOP allies, it revealed his limits. The doomed nomination lasted just eight days — and its failure is an unwelcome lesson for the president-elect, who has been projecting invincibility and claiming a historic mandate despite his reed-thin popular vote victory. Though Republicans will control both chambers of Congress, the resistance from Senate Republicans to Gaetz’s nomination proved that there are still some checks on Trump — no matter how limited — that can hold, despite fear on the left that he will squeeze Congress into submission, get carte blanche from the conservative-dominated Supreme Court and enact his agenda at will. ‘I think it shows that Donald Trump cannot get anything [that is, everything] he wants,’ said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law. But Chemerinsky and others cautioned against extrapolating too much from the Gaetz debacle — he was so uniquely despised and compromised by legal and political scandal. ‘But the facts here are so egregious, and Gaetz so unqualified, that I would be cautious in generalizing too much from it.'” • By “unqualified” we mean “populist,” of course…
* * * “Trump taps Russ Vought, one of the authors of Project 2025, to lead budget office again” [CBS]. “President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Russ Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, according to two sources close to the transition. If confirmed, this will be Vought’s second time in the role. He served as OMB director during Trump’s first term, too. Earlier in the Trump administration, Vought was deputy OMB director and acting director. Before he joined the first Trump White House Vought was vice president of Heritage Action for America, which leads a grassroots effort to implement conservative policies across the U.S. It produces a conservative scorecard that grades members of Congress on their votes on conservative bills. Vought wrote a chapter of The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint — his chapter covers the ‘Executive Office of the President.’ The OMB director’s office develops the president’s proposed budget, and it’s responsible for executing the president’s agenda across the federal government.”
“Dr. Oz” [Daring Fireball]. “I met Dr. Oz ten years ago. It was after the Apple event on Tuesday, 9 September 2014, at the Flint Center in Cupertino…. I had a one-on-one off-the-record briefing with Jony Ive…. While I was waiting for my briefing with Ive, the only other person from the media waiting with me was Oz. It’s a weird thing to be alone, effectively, with someone of Oz’s celebrity. It’s like being in a room with a million dollars in $100 bills stacked in a perfectly-arranged pyramid. No matter how you to try to direct your attention, your mind keeps popping back to Holy shit, there’s a million dollars in cash right there. His hair was perfect…. We spent an unceasingly awkward 10 minutes…. He never shut up. He chattered, nonstop, with inane observations, like ‘Hey, look at that one, it’s orange! What’s that one, leather?” He was not talking to me, nor was he, really, talking to himself. It was like he was talking to a TV camera, as though we were being filmed for B-roll footage for his show — but there was no camera. It was just me and him, standing around that table exhibiting dozens of Apple Watch prototypes that we were unable to touch…. I came away with the impression that Mehmet Oz was, despite his well-deserved medical renown, preternaturally vapid and preening, and, thus, to me, an incongruous figure. Simultaneously a brilliant mind in the field of thoracic surgery, and yet dumb as a rock in everyday human interaction. I spent the first few minutes with him wondering if I should introduce myself. I spent the last few glad I hadn’t, because he was so obviously a staggeringly uninteresting and uninterested man.” • Not the only one….
* * * “Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government” [Wall Street Journal]. “Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections. This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem.” Highlights from MSN: “According to Musk and Ramaswamy, the group will leverage recent Supreme Court rulings, such as West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and Loper Bright v. Raimondo, to target regulations that lack clear congressional approval. ‘We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws,’ they wrote, describing the US Constitution as their ‘North Star.'” Hilariously, they steal a liberal Democrat trope (which I’ve always hated because it doesn’t mean anything). More: “One of their first initiatives involves identifying regulations that Trump could nullify immediately through executive action. These, they argued, would free businesses and individuals from the constraints of ‘illicit regulations’ and stimulate the economy. ‘When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat,’ they noted. Acknowledging the likelihood of political and legal pushback, Musk and Ramaswamy expressed confidence in their mandate. ‘With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government,’ they declared. The authors set an ambitious deadline of July 4, 2026, to finalise their reforms, framing their mission as a transformative effort to restore governance to its constitutional roots. ‘We expect to prevail,’ they concluded, signalling their readiness to confront entrenched interests in Washington.” • I’d like it if DOGE would unleash Lina Khan and the NLRB, and stop protecting the crypto bros, but none of that seems likely to happen.
“Could Trump actually get rid of the Department of Education?” [Vox]. “Even without literally shutting the doors to the federal agency, there could be ways a Trump administration could hollow the DOE and do significant damage, Valant and Kettl said. The administration could require the agency to cut the roles of agency employees, particularly those who ideologically disagree with the administration. It could also appoint officials with limited (or no) education expertise, hampering the department’s day-to-day work. Trump officials could also attempt changes to the department’s higher education practices. The department is one of several state and nongovernmental institutions involved in college accreditation, for example — and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) has threatened to weaponize the accreditation process against universities he believes to be too ‘woke.’ Finally, Trump could use the department’s leadership role to affect policy indirectly: ‘There’s power that comes from just communicating to states what you would like to see’ being taught in schools, Valant said. ‘And there are a lot of state leaders around the country who seem ready to follow that lead.’ Trump’s plans for the department will likely become clearer during [Linda] McMahon’s confirmation hearings. She has been an advocate for the school choice movement, and posted praise for the hands-on education gained through apprenticeships shortly before her nomination was made public.”
2024 Post Mortem
“The Time-Honored Tradition of Blaming the Left for Democratic Defeats” [Kate Aronoff, The New Republic]. “In the lead-up to this election, Harris and other leading Democrats decried Trump and MAGA Republicans as an existential threat to American democracy; now, newly elected House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has pledged to find “common ground” with them. That waffling and incoherence is less of a comms issue than a structural one. The ‘Democratic Party’ isn’t a distinct entity to be won but a somewhat random collection of politicians, staffers, and consultants aligned behind the loose goal of their own gainful employment, either via winning elections or telling people how to do so. Even if Democrats did have more institutional integrity, they would still find it challenging to simultaneously be a party of big business and organized labor, as they’ve long aspired to be. They would still struggle to turn out Arab voters in key swing states while sending Israel weapons to bomb their families in the Middle East. More often than not, these constituencies’ interests are fundamentally opposed to one another; no amount of smart messaging, or berating voters, can fully solve that. On some level, then, Jentleson is right to point to coalition management as a problem for the Democrats. But the solution isn’t to box out left-leaning constituency groups and leave politics up to supposedly more sober-minded pollsters and consultants, who have an obvious material interest in this argument. Debates over Democratic Party messaging obscure a thornier, more substantive one over who it is that party ought to represent.” The PMC, as it does now. Next question: “Campaigning on economic populism to appeal to the voters feeling the pain of high rents and insurance rates would piss off big donors in the finance and real estate sectors; actually enacting that agenda would require electoral majorities big enough to withstand the wrath of the country’s most powerful industries, which might be difficult to attain without those big donors. There’s no easy way out of this bind.” • Commentary:
At a post-election DSCC briefing with winning Dem candidates.
Elissa Slotkin: “I personally think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo.” Dems should take language “not from the faculty lounge, but the assembly line.”
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) November 19, 2024
Slotkin is a CIA Democrat, and this is in fact how a spook would think. You want to win the moustache vote? Put on a fake moustache (and take it off when your tour of duty is done).
“On the Democratic Party’s Cult of Powerlessness” [Matt Stoller, BIG]. “Anti-monopoly policy is immensely popular, and there hasn’t been an administration as aggressive on antitrust in our lifetimes as there was under Joe Biden. Yet, voters soundly rejected his successor, Kamala Harris, and thrashed the party in power. And while anti-monopoly politics sits uneasily in the Democratic Party, that is where it sits. Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra and Jonathan Kanter will be out of power soon. So what happened? And why did Democrats lose so badly? I don’t think the answer is simple, nor is it right to characterize the problem as solely one involving the Democratic Party. In 2006, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024, voters have voted against the incumbent party. If you look at the recriminations among Democrats, they reveal, unwittingly, a broad theme that I’ve noticed with roots that go back to the middle of the 20th century. And while these observations are focused on Democrats, people on the right will recognize in their institutions a similar set of challenges…. [A]s I watch the angry back and forth, and more broadly the institutional actors who were rejected by voters, I find a curious dynamic that explains far more than any tactical mistake. From local field organizers to the most prestigious people in the Democratic Party, like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, all seem to feel powerless.” I would argue that’s because the PMC, as a class, functions and has the strength to govern, but not to rule. And with respect to the ruling class, the governing class is helpless, especially with the Gini co-efficient where it is. More: “the Democratic Party in 2024, with its associated law firms, think tanks, elected officials, donors, and media outlets, was rejected by voters precisely because the core value on the left, center, and right is about embracing powerlessness. This pervasive belief has an intellectual and political origin, and it conflicts directly with the anti-monopoly framework.” • “To govern is to choose” (apparently Pierre Mendès France said this). I’m not sure I agree that the choice to do nothing is the same as “powerlessness,” as Stoller would have it. That said, it is true that I among others need to give an account of why the Biden Administration allowed Khan to, in Stoller’s framing, reject powerlessness as she did. (My theory was that all the big cases had a long way to run, and when settlement time came, Biden would step in, cut a deal, and cash in. Looks like that’s not happening with the Google case, though.)
“Harris is Democrats’ preferred choice for 2028: Poll” [The Hill]. • That’s only because the leadership hasn’t told them yet who their “preferred choice” should be.
The #Resistance
“Trump’s Cabinet Blitz Is Straight From Orban’s Playbook” (interview) [Kim Lane Scheppele, Bloomberg (VerifyFirst)]. Scheppele bio. On resistance:
If you’re civil society in the US, or the Democratic Party, how do you put the brakes on this rush to authoritarianism?
[SCHEPPELE:] The first thing you have to do is call it out. You can’t accept any of it as normal. You have to object every single time. It’s tedious and it’s time-consuming and it’s nerve-wracking. But you have to call it out. The second thing is to realize that just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. And you have to start thinking that way. I’m a long-time legalist who always thought that you follow the law because it’s the law and because it is the right thing to do. But if the law is written by people who are trying to conquer you, who are trying to take away your freedom, then are you really as obligated to follow that law? I’m certainly not advocating violence, but you need a different attitude toward this kind of instrumental legality that they use to lock themselves in power. At the very least you resist. And then you try to use whatever democratic means you have left to change it.
Are there extra-legal ways to address it?
[SCHEPPELE:] We still have federalism. I’ve been reading about blue-state attorneys general getting together, the way the red-state attorneys general have already done, to think about how to resist these attacks, to beef up state governments to provide a face of resistance, to shore up the civil sector with private donations or whatever. It’s going to require a lot of mobilization.
You can’t just mobilize for an election cycle and then demobilize. In Poland, once the autocratic takeover occurred, masses of people went to the streets every time there was a new law. And they were much more successful than the Hungarians. Here in the US, all the groups that worked together in the last election can’t stand down. They need to stand up for the mass pushback that’s required to prevent autocracy from being imposed in the United States.
Let me pause here to quote Scheppele on Maidan: “So fast forward to 2014, there’s a kind of revolution. Many people may remember the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians that showed up in Maidan Square in Kiev, and basically toppled the corrupt Russian-backed government.” Naive at best (though to be fair to Scheppele, a reasonable search turned up a lot of academic connections, but nothing explicitly spook-related, like an Atlantic Council fellowship or something). In any case, all this sounds very color-revolution-ish (a state capacity I speculated on here). And from the same interview, here is Scheppele on NGOs, since NGOs have played, and are playing, such a large role in Color Revolutions worldwide:
The phrase “Defund the Left” has been around for quite some time in right-wing US circles. As the GOP grows overtly authoritarian, there are lots of institutions whose funding they can attack.
[SCHEPPELE:] That’s right. And that’s probably how it would happen if they’re copying Orban. The way Orban did it, there were lots of things that were state-funded, and he defunded everything that wasn’t supportive of him. There are a lot of places where that’s going to be true in the US. I’m sitting here in a university, and universities, even private universities, get huge amounts of funding from the federal government — through research grants, Pell Grants for students. Imagine if the Trump administration says, ‘If we catch you caving in to ‘woke gender’ anything, you will lose all your federal funding.’
I was thinking of foundations also because they’re a conduit of funds to various types of NGOs, including those doing pro-democracy work in the US.
[SCHEPPELE:] There are so many ways in which the tax code, complex as it is, creates incentives and disincentives for different kinds of activities…. Think about the whole NGO sector in the US where every NGO that’s active in the political sector has a 501c-3 side and a 501c-4 side. Suppose that they just pass a law that says if you are a 501c-3, you may not have a 501c-4. They can make technical changes to the tax code and suddenly make certain kinds of activities non-viable.
FWIW, I think defunding “woke” academics would be good clean fun and a vote-getter, but if you want to go for political power, you uncover the publicly funded NGOs that the Biden Administration has been using to “place” migrants in places like Springfield, OH, given that this entirely sub rosa effort has the potential to affect the composition of the electorate for years to come (presumbly still implementing Tiexiera’s “coalition of the ascendant,” even though Tiexiera himself was repudiated his own theory). All this said, I insist that the same class of people who are paid to think about and incite color revolutions abroad are thinking about the same topics here at home; you can’t put Trump and Orban in the same box and not think that way.
Spook Country
“The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone” [The New Yorker]. “In September, the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) signed a two-million-dollar contract with Paragon, an Israeli firm whose spyware product Graphite focusses on breaching encrypted-messaging applications such as Telegram and Signal. Wired first reported that the technology was acquired by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—an agency within D.H.S. that will soon be involved in executing the Trump Administration’s promises of mass deportations and crackdowns on border crossings. A source at Paragon told me that the deal followed a vetting process, during which the company was able to demonstrate that it had robust tools to prevent other countries that purchase its spyware from hacking Americans—but that wouldn’t limit the U.S. government’s ability to target its own citizens.” And the Israelis would never lie to us! More: “The technology is part of a booming multibillion-dollar market for intrusive phone-hacking software that is making government surveillance increasingly cheap and accessible. In recent years, a number of Western democracies have been roiled by controversies in which spyware has been used, apparently by defense and intelligence agencies, to target opposition politicians, journalists, and apolitical civilians caught up in Orwellian surveillance dragnets. Now Donald Trump and incoming members of his Administration will decide whether to curtail or expand the U.S. government’s use of this kind of technology.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“The Democrats’ Long Goodbye to the Working Class” [Michael Baharaeen, The Liberal Patriot]. Worth reading in full, but here are some highlights: “[B]y the 1990s, the country was growing more diverse and better educated. Bill Clinton was a beneficiary of this new reality, as he made sweeping gains with women, young people, voters of color (especially Hispanics), and college-educated voters. Importantly, he also retained significant support from white Americans and lower-educated voters, who made up the vast majority of the electorate. As Clinton rode this coalition to victory twice—marking the first time since FDR that a Democrat had won two full terms as president—some political observers, including my colleague, Ruy Teixeira, saw the emergence of a new majority, one that could consistently win elections using the formula Clinton had used…. Obama’s two wins confirmed for many Democrats and Republicans the validity of the ’emerging Democratic majority’ thesis. Gone were the days when Democrats needed to win a majority of white voters, a feat they had found nearly impossible to achieve since the 1960s. Now, the party that represented America’s demographic future stood to lead it as well.” But: “The Obama coalition is not a coalition, but rather a moment,” Is “The Obama Coalition” Even a Thing? Was It Ever? (2016). And indeed: “But no sooner had that consensus come into focus than Donald Trump arrived on the scene. Trump disrupted the Democrats’ plans for building a dominant coalition and, in the process, helped precipitate a dramatic realignment between the two parties—one rooted in economic and social class. This change has tipped the demographic advantage in favor of Republicans and left Democrats at very real risk of losing many of the voters who not long ago were expected to deliver them an enduring majority.” And here we are: “[T]he transformation of the parties along class lines appears to be moving full steam ahead. Harris retained higher levels of support among college-educated voters, winning them by 14 points. But perhaps just as telling: she carried high-income earners (those earning at least $100,000) by seven points—by far the largest margin for a Democratic nominee in the modern era. On the other side, Trump became the first Republican nominee on record to win low-income voters, narrowly carrying them by three points. He also continued growing his advantage with non-college voters, winning them by 13 points—the largest margin for the GOP since at least 1988. And his 44 percent support from union households marked the greatest share for a Republican since Ronald Reagan. Looking at this picture, it’s hard not to see that the Democrats are becoming the very thing they have long fought against: the party of the elites. This stands in sharp contrast to their longtime image as the champions of the working class.” • Not “are becoming,” “have become,” especially if you substitute “PMC” for “elites,” which, after all, could include billionaires. And the Democrats certainly didn’t “fight” very hard! In fact, you could argue that the transformation was fully in place by 2008, given Obama’s disparate response in the financial crisis to the banksters and the working class, even if the PMC only achieved class consciousness in 2016-2020.
“Trump’s dictatorship is a fait accompli” [John Q, Crooked Timber]. Handy flowchart:
With Gaetz flaming out, I’d say we’re on the way to “Governs Constitutionally” (granted, for some definition of “Constitutionally”).
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!
Elite Maleficence
“Grief can be ‘really overwhelming’ for teenagers and young people” [BBC]. • As of April 2024, there were 230,000 deaths from Covid in the UK. I was 100% certain Covid wouldn’t be mentioned in this article, and sure enough, it wasn’t.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC November 11 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC November 9 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 9 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data November 20: | National [6] CDC November 14: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens November 18: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 16: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC October 28: | Variants[10] CDC October 28: |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 2: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 2: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Good news!
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* still popular. XEC has entered the chat. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) Down.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Actually improved; it’s now one of the few charts to show the entire course of the pandemic to the present day.
[7] (Walgreens) Down.
[8] (Cleveland) Down.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Now XEC.
[11] Deaths low, positivity down.
[12] Deaths low, ED down.
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Manufacturing: “Boeing CEO to Employees: We Can’t Afford Another Mistake” [Wall Street Journal]. “The company, Ortberg said, is burning through billions of dollars and can’t tap investors for another rescue. The company recently sold $24 billion worth of new shares to bolster its cash reserves. Some research and development spending could be delayed, the CEO said. He said Boeing won’t turn cash-flow positive until it ramps up 737 production to the 38-per-month target it initially aimed to hit by the end of 2023. And he said the company simply lacks the money to launch a new plane program but it doesn’t imminently need one.” No, but it needs development to start imminently. More: “Ortberg also told employees that he spoke with President-elect Donald Trump recently and that the two discussed the impact of potential tariffs on Boeing, one of the country’s biggest exporters. The Boeing chief warned employees that any trade war with China would weigh on the company, given that Boeing sells jets to Chinese airlines while the U.S. doesn’t import any aircraft from the country.” And: “‘Don’t sit at the water cooler and bitch about people,’ he said. ‘Let’s focus on the task at hand.'” • The beatings will continue until morale improves. Also, doesn’t one stand around a water cooler, not “sit at” one? Anyhow, if I were a Boeing machinist, I don’t know if I’d “bitch” about “people.” I might share my considered views about Boeing management and union management combining their efforts to eliminate defined benefit pensions forever.
Manufacturing: “Boeing CEO Calls on Employees to Take Ownership of Turnaround” [Bloomberg]. “Ortberg bluntly told employees during a companywide address on Wednesday that they control the company’s destiny, according to people familiar with the matter. The CEO, who took the helm a little more than 100 days ago, said it’s up to all workers to turn the company around, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The comments mark Ortberg’s most impassioned plea yet to rally workers behind his turnaround plan since he took over as CEO in August.” • “Take ownership” seems to be a fanciful invention by a Bloomberg editor, since Ortberg is not quoted to that effect in the text. Anyhow, if workers “taking ownership” of Boeing was the goal, they would at least have a seat on the Board, no?
Manufacturing: “Boeing’s CEO tells staff to stop ‘bitching by the water cooler’ and focus on beating Airbus” [Fortune]. “In an all-hands meeting this week, Ortberg gave his staff some brutal feedback, telling them to cut back on complaining and focus on beating competitor Airbus. ‘Don’t sit at the water cooler and bitch about people,’ Ortberg told his colleagues, according to a meeting recording obtained by the Wall Street Journal. ‘Let’s focus on the task at hand.’ ‘We spend more time arguing amongst ourselves than thinking about how we’re going to beat Airbus. Everybody is tired of the drumbeat of what’s wrong with Boeing. I’m tired of it and I haven’t been here that long,’ he said.” • It may be this was all well-received on the shop floor; presumably there will be reporting to come on that (oddly, as of this writing, there’s nothing from Dominic Gates at the Seattle Times on this story). But to me… Ortberg? A snowflake? Suck it up, buttercup!
Manufacturing: “FAA administrator plans to meet with Boeing CEO in Seattle” [Reuters]. “AA Administrator Michael Whitaker said on Thursday he plans to soon visit Boeing’s (BA.N), opens new tab Seattle offices to meet with CEO Kelly Ortberg as the planemaker resumes 737 MAX production. Earlier this month, the Federal Aviation Administration said it would boost its oversight of Boeing as the planemaker prepares to resume production of its 737 MAX jets following a 53-day strike that ended two weeks ago. ‘We are working closely with Boeing to make sure the safety management system is driving their actions during’ the restart of production, Whitaker said, who spoke to Ortberg earlier this month on the production plan. Boeing did not immediately comment. The FAA noted that it maintained its enhanced on-site presence at Boeing factories throughout the strike ‘and will further strengthen and target our oversight as the company begins its return-to-work plan.'” • While Boeing’s cash flow depends on ramping up production…
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 58 Greed (previous close: 50 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 58 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 21 at 1:21:24 PM ET.
Gallery
“The color purple is unlike all others, in a physical sense” [ZME Science]. “But there is one color we can see that isn’t quite like the rest. This color, purple, is known as a non-spectral color. Unlike all its peers it doesn’t correspond to a single type of electromagnetic radiation, and must always be born out of a mix of two others… If you look at orange, which is a combination of yellow and red, you can see that its wavelength is roughly the average of those of its constituent colors. It works with pretty much every color combination, such as blue-yellow (for green) or red-green (for more orange). Now, the real kicker with purple, which we know we can get by mixing in red with blue, is that by averaging the wavelengths of its two parent colors, you’d get something in the green-yellow transition area. Which is a decidedly not-purple color. That’s all nice and good, but why are we able to perceive purple, then? Well, the short of it is “because brain”. Although purple isn’t a spectral color in the makeup of light, it is a color that can exist naturally and in the visible spectrum, so our brains evolved the ability to perceive it; that’s the ‘why’.” • Other non-spectral colors? Black, white, grey. And metallic colors!
Globalization and typography:
“Archaeologists discover 12,000-year-old pebbles that could provide new insights about the wheel” [FOX]. “12,000-year-old perforated stones found over years of excavations in Israel may “represent early evidence for the adoption of spinning with the ‘spindle and whorl’ device,” according to newly published research in PLOS ONE…. ‘In a cumulative evolutionary trend, they manifest early phases of the development of rotational technologies by laying the mechanical principle of the wheel and axle,’ the researcher wrote in their study. “All in all, it reflects on the technological innovations that played an important part in the Neolithization processes of the Southern Levant.'” • It would indeed be interesting if the chariot wheel began as the spindle….
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 converger:
Converger writes: “This afternoon in the South African section of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum.”
Kind readers, the stock of plant pictures is still not quite there… .
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Anyone feel a tinge of happiness at this NYT Opinion?
It’s a step in the right direction, but requires other Democratic leadership to join in consensus or some kind-of internal coup that throws out the old-guard like Nancy Pelosi and the head of the DNC. Both rejected Bernie’s opinion piece, quite arrogantly too.
I want to see this build momentum in the Democrats but I’m not building my hopes up too much. Also the comment section is a garbage barge.
Bernie needs to go too. In my opinion.
Worst case, Bernie is controlled opposition. Best case, he’s a well-meaning octogenarian who’s just too tired to fight round 15, and best suited to fill an emeritus position developing a deep bench of new leaders.
Not holding my breath as Bernie has not spent the last 8 years building an institution /movementthat would carry on his flash-in-the-pan legacy
> Not holding my breath as Bernie has not spent the last 8 years building an institution /movementthat would carry on his flash-in-the-pan legacy
No, it was not in him to do.
It was a psycho-personal weakness, not a hidden sheepdog agenda . . . much as “jilted lover” progressives might want to think so.
What stops all the “small donors for Bernie” from getting the band back together without a leader? What stops them from going right ahead and communicating with eachother, and maybe even forming a ” 27 Club” which contributes $27/month and decides through some bottom up and side-to-side process what political – economic battle to spend it on?
What if all the “small donors for Bernie” pooled all those monthly donations into a fund to pay all the workers at a selected Amazon warehouse to stop working and keeps paying them to stay stopped working? Especially if it could pay them more not to work than Amazon is willing to pay them to work? And offer the same deal to every new hire that Amazon finds for that particular warehouse? And keeps doing it till that Warehouse goes extinct? And then similarly extincted the next Warehouse? And the next? And the next? ( Just a speculative example of what a mean vicious “Bernie-band without Bernie” could do if it were self-motivated).
The 2016 campaign was such a phenomenon, I don’t think Sanders probably ever intended to have a solid shot at the nomination, nor did the Democrats realize at first that they’d need to knife him, thus giving an opportunity for success in quite a few primaries. But the “amendment king” is all about incremental change, while talking a big game. That seems to be Sanders, in a nutshell. Social Democratic ideals, but committed to incrementalism. That’s schizophrenic, honestly.
Perfectly put. A complete house cleaning is the only way any glimmer of change happens. (Truthfully though, I think the Dems structure is too committed to being the Republican Party of 20 years ago to ever change.)
Ref DOGE:
For those that are not quite sure of what or where this idea comes from, more so the thought leaders that people like Elon et al have gifted their minds too – with abandon … will fix everything so utopia arrives thingy …. wait for it …
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
He was a genius
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859437922639872385
BTW so funnie that Rand broke with Trump over use of the Government Military used to deport immigrants over the Classic Libertarian deal with FORCE, but, probably would be cool with private market place for profit force …
Sorry can’t help myself and thinking if Rand had a son = Elon Musk.
P.S. Ayn Rand.
You fooled me. I thought it was going to be this one – https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859230878234206497
Twitter is such a gateway into how stupid our elite are. Musk today? retweeted a tweet, the usual kind of meme single image idiocy that passes for insightful commentary on Twitter, comparing America to Rome.
And I said, yes, America is an oligarchy, but that’s probably not what you actually meant. Literally Musk getting to set policy is case in point. His only qualification seems to be he is stupid rich and was all in for Trump.
Musk seems to be a blithering idiot that scored big at PayPal, and was ousted before he could implement his moron “everything” store idea then.
At above,
Wellie … too use the old vernacular … waiting for him too – boot lick – M. Rothbard at this rate. Not to mention watching him in Trumps tow coming down the tunnel at the last weekends UFC to a rapturous applause was surreal. Elon had that lizard people look the whole time – ack – maybe that bloke was not wrong wink wink.
Same goes for Trumps econ team … its all mouth breathers regurgitating deductive rationalizations[tm] out of whole cloth and think it functional economics. Yet to a fault they all made packet off deregulation[consumer protections lmmao suckers] and Big Gov largess or tax breaks. So now we have one side of the oligarch camp wanting same old and the other side like naw lets get our freak on …
Anywho as a palliative too all this madness in the U.S. and Ukraine [zomg that last missile strike by Russia] is my interesting 38 yr old female friend is flying up from Sydney today for a weekend of hanging out, ludicrous BBQ, Margaritas, classic movies like strange love and blazing saddles, doggie walks, and basically chill out and see how it all flows … on the other hand … if you don’t hear from me again I have been ritually sacrificed or worse … till then …
I have it on good authority that being ritually sacrificed by an interesting 38 y.o. female friend is one of the better ways to go. Right up there with Spontaneous Combustion.
Godspeed!
Skippy, your weekend sounds like it could be totally mind blowing. 38! Amazing age for women. Savour every moment, i.e. don’t get too drunk.
I’m reminded of a female-related mind blowing experience when 24 year old me was walking on the Coast path in Wales with an intriguing, very attractive Swiss girl I had picked up at Paddington station a week before. As we looked over the ocean from an open cliff hundreds of feet up she put her hand on my shoulder and gently said: “You don’t know me. I’m crazy and am going to push you over the edge.” Without pulling away, I turned my head and answered that she should do it, that I would happily give up my life at that moment, because it could never get better. That was 45 years ago.
Anyone know if Airbus workers have pensions?
If Airbus wanted to set up a plant in Renton, I’m sure they could hire the machinists they need.
https://www.airbus.com/sites/g/files/jlcbta136/files/2023-08/schedule_1_booklet_2023.pdf
Do you have one for the Airbus Mobile Alabama facility?
A lot of Airbus Europe employees do not want to transfer to the US and work under US employment conditions. Mostly health care and vacation time changes.
$4.01k update
To claim i’m elated @ what my Bitcoin investment has achieved could be construed as an understatement of epic proportions, but allow me to bask in the moment, ah.
Sure, its only use is essentially as a de-hacking device, in paying off the bad guise, but isn’t that a growth industry?
Next stop: 6 figures.
Oh if Emily Post were posting, she’d be upset at my betiquette, and if it seemed that I was boasting out of turn, my apologies.
Never forget: The House always wins. (Plus a few Senators.)
Bitcoin’s only use is for clandestine operations. The Secret Service can trace bitcoin and have recovered many a ransom that was gained through fraud. It can’t be used to make anything since it’s not a raw material. It doesn’t pay a dividend or interest. And if a mass corona event occurs it will be gone in a blink of the eye. Bitcoin is just another name for Tulip bulbs and will end the same way.
Well . . . if we want to get technical and literal about the difference between tulip bulbs and Tulip! Bulbs!, we could note that after the price of Tulip! Bulbs! crashed back to earth; the proud owners of Tulip! Bulbs! still had tulip bulbs which could still be planted for getting some nice flowers.
Or could still be eaten in time of famine.
Can the same be said for Bitcoin?
It’s “use” is for speculation, and for getting people to invest grandpa’s 401k.
Trump rally continues. Wicks above 99k on the 1h.
Too bad about Gaetz. I find myself agreeing with the Federalist too.
Maybe he’d like to be Speaker of the House instead? I certainly wouldn’t mind not having the rather overzealous Xtian Armageddonist in charge any longer.
Except Gaetz already resigned his House seat.
Well, there is that little hitch in his giddyup, and how queer My Kevin and His Matt both resign within the space of a year from their offices, now just a couple of civilians on the outside looking in.
I thought he resigned only for the remainder of the current term and could come back in January since he won re-election, but maybe I misunderstood something. Ran across a couple headlines saying his political future was now questionable, so who knows?
I just saw that somewhere. If he can start over in January, then I assume the ethics committee goes back to work.
But he was re-elected, so he could still take his seat. Or even if he campaigned in the special election, he’d be sure to win. He won the re-election by a big margin.
One way for Gaetz to troll his enemies would be to get himself re-elected right back to Congress from his very same good old district.
Culture is a thing and has been for a long time. Male culture? not so much. Sounds like something you conjure up as yet another separate identity.
> Culture is a thing and has been for a long time. Male culture? not so much.
Any bets on how long “toxic male culture” becomes a thing?
Could it be Male culture is a kinder, gentler way of saying toxic masculinity?
I have heard Trump’s win described as a win for the ‘Brotocracy’ which is just idiotic. In any case, it turns out that you cannot denigrate half the population and saying the ‘the future is female’ but then expect them to vote for your side come a Federal election. Who knew? Of course if you looked at the last election through the lens of class a lot of what was seen would fall into place result wise but I do not expect Democrat leadership try that novel idea.
Trump gave Adin Ross an hour and a half long interview, and you can be sure the Donald could care less about twitch streaming, but was after the local kid’s vast audience of watchers, primarily males 20 to 30.
There is also the term the ‘broligarchy’-
‘How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/17/how-to-survive-the-broligarchy-20-lessons-for-the-post-truth-world-donald-trump
Carole Cadwalladr has a serious case of TDS.
I have added orts and scraps. Interesting times! The Scheppele interview (hat tip, VerifyFirst) is especially important, but Stoller’s musings are not far behind. Enjoy!
Part of me is worried about the gutting of the Department of Education. I know the grifters are all about funneling money to their for-profit and religious schools. On the other hand, education is currently a joke and the DOE doesn’t seem to do anything about it. Teachers are required to teach to tests. School systems pass kids that don’t know anything just to move them out of the system. Money is spent on administration and consultants instead of teachers and kids. Textbooks are written to appease one state (Texas). The list goes on.
Lemme tell ya, after O appointed Chicago guy Arne Duncan, who was a big, big promoter of private charter schools, I got no use for the Dept. of Education.
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/arne-duncan-ninth-u-s-education-secretary-biography-and-achievements/2017/08
The Dept of Education has become a (family blog) grift for computized teach-to-the-test salesmen, (hello MS and Apple and Neil Bush),and for private k-12 acadamys, aka charter or parochial schools that siphon public monies away from the public k-12 schools. I’ll stop now before my language gets (family blogging) excised from this polite comments section. Understand, please, I’ve spent my entire career in educational institutions.
adding, lest we forget, from Democracy Now, 2004:
No Bush Left Behind: When You’re Barred From Banking, Why Not Bank on Education?
https://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/12/no_bush_left_behind_when_youre
Heh and cannot forget Obama’s race to the top nonsense, where states had to fight other states, children against children, for desperately needed funding. Degenerate. Obama really is a monster.
I have seen a photo of Dubya Bush and a photo of Obama sharing the exactly same facial expression.
If someone were to find those photos, and set them up for projecting in a huge size on the concrete side of the Obama Temple in Chicago, and projected it there every time Obama showed up in Chicago, wouldn’t that be fun?
The two photos could be projected side by side with a caption at the bottom saying . . . ” separated at birth?”
Brothers from different mothers?
The only good news are that the states are getting rid of the requirement of passing the state exam to graduate. So soon all that is funneled into making sure the kids pass an exam will be useless.
Hmmm,,,is Gaetz not from Florida? Has Rubio’s Senate seat been promised to anybody else yet?
“The Democrats’ Long Goodbye to the Working Class” [Michael Baharaeen, The Liberal Patriot]
The asset bubbles play a role in creating this wedge. – and keeping it going.
It’s another elephant in the room.
Sorry peeps. This defies categorization
Too stupid. Didn’t read from the Arkansas
Times. Lawfarce perhaps?
https://arktimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Female-Orgasmic-Disorder-Qualifying-Condition-Decision.pdf
A self-described “orgasm queen” from Centerton had hoped to make Arkansas the latest state to add the disorder as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana
The medical marijuana movement has been the most fascinating topsy-turvy political phenomenon of the last 20 years. They just slowly convert states to ignore federal law, giving a new meaning to the phrase “state’s rights”.
Re: #Resistance, The Biden administration willingly and eagerly allied with self-described Nazis in Ukraine in order to launch a mini-genocide against Russian speaking Ukrainians to draw Russia into Ukraine.
Following which the Biden administration joined Israel in launching an ethno-nationalist genocide against poor, brown, Muslims in Palestine. Democrats knowingly voted for Biden’s co-genocidalist, Kamala Harris, knowing that she not only supported the genocide up to the time of the election, but thereafter as well.
If Democrats are worried about ‘authoritarianism,’ could someone please buy them a mirror?
re Gaetz: He has stepped back from the US Atty General/DoJ nomination. However, methinks he’s about to become a huge thorn in the side of Mitch McConnell’s wing of the GOP. / ;)
Spook related, as was:
I was recently delighted to find that both Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and Smiley’s People are available for free steaming on YouTube. I find this masterful depiction of cold war machinations a welcome diversion from the perils of the present.
Yes. My favorite versions. The remake “filmed” with digital “filming”, that is to say, digital quick sampling in sequence of lighted in scenes, trying to emulate the analogue film frame-by-frame reels, relies entirely too much on visual large light/dark patterns backgrounds instead of the earlier analogue film visual subtleties. Also, the story arc of the remakes were very hard to follow, at least for me.
And I knew the story line. / my 2 cents.
adding: to my friends who saw only the 2011 remake of the earlier 1979 BBC production and wondered what all the hoopla was about I advised to find the 1979 BBC version staring Alec Guinness and watch that version.
The Audience Hoops versions seem to be the shortened US versions. Try the longer TTSP at Internet Archive.
Le Carre’s later work after the Berlin Wall fell left me as flat as the Wall. When he lost the grand opera of the Cold War as backdrop…
Also, half the time I was on the villain’s side: Palestinian terrorists, international arms dealers selling top-quality British gear. Ok, testing drugs on Africans was definitely bad.
‘He said Boeing won’t turn cash-flow positive until it ramps up 737 production to the 38-per-month target it initially aimed to hit by the end of 2023.’
If production targets are going to be the top priority, then it sounds like things like safety and quality control will be taking a back seat to getting the numbers back up. That’s not a confidence builder for flying with Boeing that. It means that nothing will change on the production line and the pressure to get built planes out the door will mount up.
Re powerless–there is the possibility that most of today’s leading Dems are little more than grifters and climbers but Stoller doesn’t want to go there. Personally I’ve never found anything authentic about Obama and in 2008 I even preferred Hillary.
Hate to be right–about Obama if not Hillary.
The Obot is no different than Hill the Kill — I get Stoller’s emails and the “powerlessness” narrative doesn’t mean that they’re powerless, it’s to remind us that we’re powerless.
Under Inverted Totalitarianism the power resides with Our Billionaire Overlords. The Dems just shrug their shoulders because in order to keep their seats on the Gravy Train to Happyville they must serve their mistresses and masters, those who have the actual power in our totalitarian system.
“Powerless” would really mean they serve someone who has a particular will. They have plenty of power to serve that will. Implied, is that they lack power to do things outside of that serving.
I find Gorey’s “the Wuggly Ump” to be the best summation of this campaign cycle and it’s aftermath so far
And yet Trump manages it, somehow. Why can’t the Democrats? They have access to better arguments than he does, if they’re willing to use them.
Here are a couple of Facebook posts by Corey Robin about Matt Gaetz from earlier today.
The first:
New headline at NYT website just now: “Matt Gaetz Withdraws as Attorney General Pick”
Three days ago, this is what was being reported: “President-elect Trump is personally calling senators to press them to confirm former Rep. Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general, according to senators who have spoken with Trump. Trump is digging in on his embattled and controversial nominee and is sending an unmistakable message to Senate Republicans that he expects him to be confirmed. ‘One thing about Donald Trump, people should never confuse his support for one of his nominees as a tactical or strategic tool for somebody else,’ [North Dakota Republican senator Kevin Cramer] said. ‘And at least to this point, he’s putting his own political capital behind it. And he’s a pretty persuasive guy.'”
Please do not be taken in by the hype of Trump’s power. I try to be careful about posting on this topic because it is so inflammatory on the left. But it hardly takes much sleuthing to find the daily drip-drip of articles, mainstream media articles, indicating, strongly indicating, that there was no way this nomination going through. You had people as high as John Cornyn making it clear that they were not happy about this. There were articles about Mitch McConnell working behind the scenes. There were articles about how House Republicans—House Republicans—were not going to cooperate with Trump’s plans for recess appointments. And there was very clear acknowledgment that the ethics report on Gaetz was going to be released, either formally or via leak, and that there was nothing Trump or his people could do about it.
Again, I try not to post too many of these pieces because I don’t want to be accused of being complacent or of downplaying the real damage Trump can do. But we’re not even a month out of the election—with still a long way to go before the Inauguration—and already the forces within the GOP are demonstrating their dissatisfaction and unwillingness to go with whatever Trump demands.
The second:
Four days ago I posted the following statement: “A common line on Trump’s appointments is that their competence is irrelevant. Trump chose loyalists who would say yes to whatever he asks of them and carry out his will. But those two actions—saying yes to the boss, and carrying out his will—are not the same thing. They require different skills. It’s easy to say yes to the boss. It’s a whole other matter to see that his demands are implemented, particularly when that implementation requires the coordinated actions of millions of other people.”
The Gaetz nomination fiasco is a perfect illustration of this reality. Trump liked Gaetz because he said all the right things to and about Trump. He was the ultimate loyalist. Yet he couldn’t even make it out of the starting gate. Hell, he couldn’t even make it to the starting gate. There is such a big difference between being a loyalist and being an effective enforcer of Trump’s will. Trump consistently falls for the flatterers and the made-for-TV tough guys. None of them ever delivers. Yet he keeps doing it. And despite all the talk about how Trump 2.0 learned his lesson, it’s clear that he hasn’t.
> I’d like it if DOGE would unleash Lina Khan and the NLRB, and stop protecting the crypto bros, but none of that seems likely to happen.
Unlikely indeed.
“Attorneys for Amazon and Elon Musk’s SpaceX argued in a federal appeals court Monday [11/18/2024] that the National Labor Relations Board’s structure is unconstitutional, advancing a legal fight that may last into the Trump administration where Musk is expected to oversee bureaucratic cost-cutting.”
https://apnews.com/article/amazon-nlrb-unconstitutional-spacex-elon-musk-ab42977117d883e97110a7bf8e8b257f
“Today [10/31/2024], SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, tweeted that he will get rid of his own regulator, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.”
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/elon-musk-lina-khan-will-be-fired
Unlikey indeed. Indeed.
Whitney Webb and colleague on utube present a highly skeptical assessment of what the next T admin will encompass. She presents T as one side of a pincer movement against democracy and the public at large. I can’t say she and her friend are wrong. As I’ve said, I’m very skeptical of the next T admin’s populist outreach and actions. But I could not vote for another 4 years like the last 4 years. Am I finding a way out or only being kettled? That’s a good question.
Free Markets all the way down flora, only difference is the brand of Bernays sauce being sold.
Stoller has said Khan will not serve under Trump. And she could not be chair. Has to be a R appointee and Rs would not confirm her.
Here’s something Marjorie Taylor Greene is alleged to have tweeted recently. ( What? Really? Did she reallly say that? And is it true? And if it is, what does it say about the DemParty electeds that they never exploited this knowledge, if they ever even had it?)
https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/1gwunfz/saying_the_quiet_part_out_loud/
It’s satire.
Oh . . . well . . . . I have a satire deficiency to go along with my irony deficiency.
Meanwhile, here is what I hope might be a completely antidote-worthy picture. It is titled: ” Completely irresponsible waxwing birds, tend to eat fermented fruit and then lie drunk on the side. ” And the picture completely fits the title.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1gwrtqo/completely_irresponsible_waxwing_birds_tend_to/
Oh boy. Do we ever have large numbers of cedar waxwings here in the winter months gobbling down the various tiny fruits of decorative crab apple trees and decorative pear trees and others small fruits. Mostly, they gather together in large groups around the trees and sound very raucous, very chirpity-chirping. / ;)
I enjoy cedar waxwings and I always have. I remember one time some decades ago in Upper State New York, my father and I went to see some reported Bohemian waxwings hanging out around someone’s feeder. And we saw them. I was impressed by how much more different they looked from cedar waxwings than I had expected them to. I was expecting a pleasurably tedious excercise in analyzing field marks and etc., and in fact they compared to cedar waxwings the way a goshawk would compare to a sharp-shinned hawk. At least to me they did.
Say, have you guys seen the latest ad for Jaguar? The sports car company?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLtFIrqhfng (30 secs)
Still can’t spot any cars.
A further point beyond the self-limiting advertising approach, is that manufacturing productivity in the UK, virtually stopped increasing 16 years ago. I do not understand why the faltering productivity, but that would appear to mean never being able to catch up in domestic vehicle brands in any price range.
Wut thuh akshewal eff?
I suppose that big long low rock is shaped vaguely car-like if you imaginate hard enough.
They were trying to not copy other auto adverts; by that metric, it was successful
Here is an advice video for a scenario which, you never know, might come up. It is called ” How to deal with aggressive bull.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/1gwvirj/how_to_deal_with_aggressive_bull/