By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, I rebooted the syndemics section, so the politics section is temporarily very light. More soon! –lambert UPDATE All done!
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, Sharpsburg., Washington, Maryland, United States. Adult Northern Mockingbird imitating the flight song of Willow Flycatcher.” “Sharpsburg” makes me think perhaps I should do a tour of Civil War battlefields; I saw “Antietam” in passsing today also.
In Case You Might Miss…
- BIden addresses the nation.
- Deploy the Blame Cannons!.
- Ventilation in schools (in Australia and the United States).
- Mushroom color atlas.
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 Post Mortem
“I told you so” [Sam Kriss, Numb at the Lodge (DC)]. Good clean fun: “Do you remember Brat Summer? I remember Brat Summer. It was genuinely amazing, one of the most bizarre mass psychological phenomena I’ve ever seen. Before a clock spring popped out of Joe Biden’s forehead on live TV, Kamala Harris was the least popular Vice President in recent US history. There were a lot of reasons for this, but I think the big ones are these. Firstly, she was already deeply unpopular—0% polls, remember—before she became VP. Secondly, she’d done absolutely nothing with the position except emit strange and incomprehensible bromides whenever she opened her mouth. But as soon as she became the candidate, despite nothing about her actually changing, her approval rating skyrocketed. It turns out that all you have to do is tell the Democratic base that they ought to like someone, and they’ll just start liking her. I think this is evidence of an extraordinary generosity of spirit.” • Or Gleichschaltung.
* * * “Watch live: Biden addresses nation after Democrats’ election losses” [The Hill]. • Clip:
BIden: “To see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans.” Really? So all that stuff about “our democracy,” “fascism,” “Hitler”:
* * * “Why Kamala Harris lost the election” [Politico]. And after Democrats excised Biden from the ticket, [Kamala] rapidly consolidated her moribund party, rallying women, setting TikTok and Instagram creators ablaze with supportive memes and raising eye-popping sums from donors. But the momentum advisers insisted she’d built failed to materialize. She never sufficiently buried Biden’s ghost, severely hamstringing her ability to sell voters on the idea that hers was the turn-the-page candidacy. It happened, simply, because Harris refused to make a clean break from the last four years when voters indicated that’s what they wanted. … ‘We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president,’ grumbled one Harris aide granted anonymity to speak freely. ‘Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost tonight.” Another Harris aide said it was clear Biden should have made a graceful exit much sooner, allowing Democrats to hold a primary they believed Harris would have won.” And: “So resounding was the thumping that some of the party’s next-generation leaders were signaling the need for a deep autopsy of the party’s failures to stop the red wave.” • Lol. As if. Remember the Unity Reform Commission?
“This Time We Have to Hold the Democratic Party Elite Responsible for This Catastrophe” [Jeet Heer, The Nation]. “The key to understanding the Trump era is that the real divide in America is not between left and right but between pro-system and anti-system politics. Pro-system politics is the bipartisan consensus of establishment Democrats and Republicans: It’s the politics of NATO and other military alliances, of trade agreements, and of deference to economists (as when they say that price gouging isn’t the cause of inflation). Trump stands for no fixed ideology but rather a general thumbing of the nose at this consensus. The main fact of American politics in the post-Obama era is that an ever larger majority of Americans are angry at the status quo and open to anti-system politics.” And: “Democrats will need to radically reform themselves if they want to ever defeat the radical right. They have to realize that non-college-educated voters, who make up two-thirds of the electorate, need to be won over. They need to realize that, for anti-system Americans, a promised return to bipartisan comity is just ancien régime restoration. They need to become the party that aspires to be more than caretakers of a broken system but rather is willing to embrace radical policies to change that status quo. This is the only path for the party to rebuild itself and for Trumpism—which without such effective opposition is likely to long outlive its standard-bearer—to actually be defeated.” • So the Democrats are doomed then? (I know that parties do reinvent themselves, but this iteration of the Democrat Party seems unusually tenacious.)
“Dems rage against Biden’s ‘arrogance’ after Harris loss” [Politico]. “According to interviews with nearly a dozen officials and party operatives, Biden squandered valuable months only to end in disaster on the debate stage. And by the time he decided to pass the torch, he had saddled Harris with too many challenges and far too little time to build a winning case for herself.” However: “[Biden] aides and allies contended, Tuesday’s defeat was so comprehensive it’s unclear any Democrat could’ve won under such circumstances. The anti-incumbency anger ignited by inflation that had swept across Europe in recent years finally arrived in the U.S. And as working-class voters shifted decisively toward Trump, they expressed doubt Harris could’ve cobbled together a workable coalition even if she’d had more time to campaign.” And: “But beyond the policy turning points, critics faulted the president and his close advisers for badly misreading Democrats’ 2020 victory as driven by a groundswell of support for Biden himself — rather than a temporary expression of dissatisfaction over the pandemic and an unpopular incumbent in Trump.” • Given that Biden, like Kamala, was installed by a cabal, it’s odd to think there was ever a “groundswell” in Biden’s favor in any case. Third time is the charm, though, so perhaps the next candidate selected by the Democrat[ic leadership] will do better.
“All the Wrong Moves: An Early Autopsy of Kamala Harris’ Campaign” [Newsweek]. Not too early, I trust; we wouldn’t want the body to twitch. More: “The first flawed assumption was that there were further inroads to be made with Republicans who are uncomfortable with Trump. As I argued here recently, most of those people have already switched parties and have been Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents for years. Nothing that Trump did over the past six months, as crazy as this seems, is much different from things he did beginning in 2015. If you were going to get off the Trump train, you did so six stops back. Harris was waiting patiently at the station for passengers who had already disembarked. That means that her closing flurry of campaign stops with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and indeed the whole “Republicans for Harris” effort along with the deeply conservative messaging and rhetoric that the campaign adopted beginning at the Democratic National Convention in August, was likely all for nothing. Worse, it may have actively alienated young people and lower-propensity voters who were looking for change. These are groups of voters who are disproportionately dissatisfied with the status quo, and nothing says “I am the status quo” more than cavorting with a widely disliked Republican congresswoman who is the icon of a long-vanished Republican political coalition that steered the country into several gigantic icebergs in the early 2000s and which no longer has any meaningful political constituency in America.” • I love the train metaphor, but surely with a billion dollars to spend, the Harris campaign did some internal polling on this? What happened?
“‘I’m Profoundly Disturbed!’ Sunny Hostin Denounces Trump Win as a ‘Referendum On Cultural Resentment’ in Jawdropping A-Block on ‘The View'” [Mediaite]. Hostin: ” And so I worry not about myself, actually, I don’t worry about my station in life. I worry about the working class.” • No, you really don’t.
* * * “The end of an American world” [Le Monde]. “The path on which Trump, strengthened for his second term by his party’s success in the Senate, will take his country diverges fundamentally from the one charted by the United States since the end of the Second World War. It marks the end of an American era, that of an open superpower committed to the world, eager to set itself up as a democratic model. It’s the famous “shining city on a hill,” extolled by President Ronald Reagan. The model had been challenged over the past two decades. Now, Trump’s return is putting a nail in its coffin. Trump views the world solely through the prism of American national interests. It’s a world of power struggles and trade wars, which scorns multilateralism. A world where transactional diplomacy replaces value-based alliances. A world, ultimately, where the US president reserves his harshest words for his allies but spares the autocrats, who are seen as partners rather than adversaries.” • What’s Le Monde been smoking? France, like Germany, is a vassal state. How on earth is NATO a “value-based” alliance?
* * * PA: “Why Kamala Harris lost the election” [Politico]. “Three weeks before Election Day in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state, Jewish Democrats and their allies met behind closed doors with Harris officials in Pittsburgh, according to four people who attended or were briefed on the discussion. They said the surrogate operation was not up to snuff, a complaint echoed in other key states. They said the Pennsylvania team lacked relationships with key elected officials; that this mattered because it meant validators weren’t effectively being used to help persuade voters to support a candidate they barely knew…. Across the state, in Philadelphia, Latino and Black Democrats held similar private meetings with Harris’ team in the weeks leading up to Election Day, where they made many of the same complaints. And on Wednesday, Democrats were also starting to point fingers at Harris’ data team. A Pennsylvania Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely, said that the Harris campaign predicted higher turnout in key counties such as Chester and Montgomery in the Philadelphia suburbs. ‘This is looking like Robby Mook 2.0,’ the person said.” • A point upgrade? Ouch!
PA: “Harris concedes, telling supporters ‘do not despair;’ Pa. Senate race could head to a recount; Harris campaign pushes back on Philly Dem chair’s claims” [Philadelphia Inquirer]. “ice President Kamala Harris’ campaign sharply criticized Philadelphia Democratic Party Chairman Bob Brady after he laid blame with them for lower-than-expected turnout in the city. Brendan McPhillips, a senior adviser to the Harris campaign in Pennsylvania, said in a statement that their team ‘knocked more than two million doors in the weekend leading up to Election Day, which is two million more doors than Bob Brady’s organization can claim to have knocked during his entire tenure as party chairman.’ McPhillips added: ‘If there’s any immediate takeaway from Philadelphia’s turnout this cycle, it is that Chairman Brady’s decades-long practice of fleecing campaigns for money to make up for his own lack of fundraising ability or leadership is a worthless endeavor that no future campaign should ever be forced to entertain again.'” So why is Brady still chair? What does that say about the Party? More: “The criticism directed at Brady, the longtime head of the Democratic City Committee, came shortly after the former member of Congress told The Inquirer that he felt no responsibility for the red wave that descended on the state. Brady said money was an issue, and criticized the Harris campaign for paying only about ‘half’ of the money the city committee requested for its get-out-the-vote effort. Those funds, otherwise known as “street money,” are used to pay committee members to get out the vote.” • No walking around money? In Philly? Really?
Republican Funhouse
“Trump Wins Because He’s Just Better” [RealClearPolitics]. “Trump is noticeably more authentic, relatable, charming, clever, convincing, insightful, intuitive, and fun than Kamala. Trump won on both policy and personality.” • Back in 2023, Trump visited East Palestine, where Norfolk Southern’s toxic derailment occurred. I wrote:
“Watch: Trump stops at McDonald’s during East Palestine visit” [Fox8]. “While visiting the site of the horrific train derailment in East Palestine Wednesday, former President Donald Trump stopped in at a local restaurant — McDonald’s. ‘Is everyone willing to accept free food from Trump?’ he asked as he walked into the fast food spot, saying he planned to also purchase food for the local fire and police departments. He told the employees he knew the menu better than them and asked for a ‘nice array of things,’ while refraining to make an order for himself. Fielding questions from reporters, while getting his photo taken by nearby customers and employees alike, the President said he did not believe deregulation had anything to do with the train incident and that he had traveled to the area to make sure residents were taken care of.” • On “regulation,” see under Class Warfare; note that none of the reporters asked him about Precision Scheduled Railroading (and Trump, not being a detail person to say the least, probably doesn’t even know). Two Democrats react:
Combined IQ roughly 50 in the entire town. Trump trashed train safety rules. Now their water and land, not to mention themselves, are poisoned. I live 50 miles away from East Palestine, OH. I'm sorry for the people, but they made their own beds. https://t.co/KJE0L761AS
— Lincoln Belongs To The Ages (@Mr_Lincoln) February 22, 2023
Always good to see liberal Democrats calling for the deaths of their political opponents; it’s an ever-green trope! Note also the focus on being smart (vs. IQ of 50), the deregulation talking point (it’s Trump’s fault the brake systems are bad, not Precision Scheduled Railroading and the “hot box”). Then there’s the usual refusal to accept reponsibility (Trump and Biden killed a million people between them, Biden killed more, and in my view has the greater culpabiliity, because he should have known better than to adopt a policy of mass infection without mitigation).
Personally, I think this is a good look for Trump, and not just because Biden was off swanning about in Kiev; Trump looks good striding around on the February grass in the black coat and red hat, no tie; it’s a much better look than the pomp of Air Force One. Still waiting for quondam Presidential hopeful and Democrat, Sherrod Brown, to show up. Then again, why would be? They’re only citizens.
In many ways, this episode leads directly to the McDonald’s and garbage truck stunts. Trump really is very good, and clearly was the better candidate. (And it took Biden a year to make the same visit.)
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Airborne Transmission
“Calls for indoor air quality mandate and $10 billion for school ventilation” [ABC Australia]. “A recent study of 60 New South Wales public schools found if windows were shut, classroom carbon dioxide (CO2) levels easily exceeded 2,500 parts per million (ppm), which was ‘really bad ventilation’, according to Mr Hanmer. In Australia, outdoor CO2 levels sit at around 415ppm. Australia’s National Construction Code specifies indoor CO2 levels should not exceed 850ppm averaged over eight hours, but this is only a guideline. Mr Hanmer said when CO2 went above 1,200ppm, it started to impair people’s cognition, which was a big problem in a classroom environment.” • So maybe if we ventilate we can come out even on the brain damage. Worth a shot!
“Ventilation in Schools, Offices, and Commercial Buildings” [United States Environmental Protection Agency]. New guidance. “Each year, respiratory viruses are responsible for millions of illnesses and thousands of hospitalizations and deaths in the United States. In addition to the virus that causes COVID-19, there are many other types of airborne respiratory viruses, including influenza (flu) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that can spread more easily indoors than outdoors since their concentration can build up indoors and people are often closer to each other. One important approach to reduce the spread of common respiratory viruses, is to increase ventilation, which is the amount of air moving in and out of a building. Ventilation removes indoor air that may be concentrated with airborne viruses and replaces it with fresh outdoor air. Ensuring proper ventilation is an important component of promoting good indoor air quality in general.” • Commentary:
This is not an endorsement, but here is the Korean nasal spray:
LUCA V Nasal Defense https://t.co/Ygjkbe430V
Should be back via Amazon shortly
— Adam Van Bavel (@AdamVanBavel) November 5, 2024
Transmission: Covid
“COVID Cases Update: Map Reveals Return of ‘Very High’ Water Virus Levels” [Newsweek]. “After weeks of decline, ‘very high’ levels of coronavirus have been detected in wastewater samples in the U.S. ‘High’ levels of viral activity are also on the rise with detections now in five U.S. states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ‘Very high’ levels of viral activity have been detected in Montana, with ‘high’ levels in Arkansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska and Wyoming.” • This is their map:
(You can tell that the map wasn’t created by CDC because it’s using red in a sensible way, instead of CDC’s horrid and incomprehensible colorway of greenish pastels). I don’t use this style of map except when I have to (Walgreens). I don’t believe state-level information about tranmission is useful to readers, especially for travel and masking purposes. “Covid is high in Helena, Montana” is useful. “Covid is high in Montana” is not.
Elite Maleficence
How eugenics plays out in the budget process:
Hey anyone remember thishttps://t.co/bo9piMWGxT pic.twitter.com/JdmwykM68w
— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) November 6, 2024
“Inside Canada’s chaotic response to avian flu” [CTV News]. “For years, Canadian farmers and government agencies have waged a fierce battle against the new wave of avian flu, which experts say is much more transmissible than previous variants of the virus. Now, newly uncovered documents reveal the [Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)] and industry were caught unprepared for the outbreak, which overwhelmed the agency’s resources and forced it to rely on third-party contractors who sometimes broke bio-security rules meant to keep the virus in check. The IJF and CTV News have reviewed thousands of pages of CFIA documentation about their response to the current outbreak, including field reports, manuals on preferred killing methods, internal correspondence and dozens of invoices. The records, which were obtained via access to information law by animal-rights group Animal Justice, paint a picture of the CFIA’s struggle to contain a massive outbreak of avian flu in which more than 11 million Canadian farm birds were killed. Internally, top CFIA officials described the industry, and the agency, as being unprepared for such an outbreak. At times, inspectors described running out of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas — the preferred tool for euthanizing large numbers of birds. CFIA employees sometimes arrived at farms where many birds were already dead. They also relied heavily on private companies, the documents said, who sometimes failed to follow bio-security protocols meant to stop the spread of the virus. ‘CFIA has taken the lead to date because industry was not prepared,’ wrote CFIA Atlantic regional veterinary officer Dr. Margaret McGeoghegan in an October 2022 email to colleagues.” • Well, let’s hope whichever entity ends up running the Trump administration’s response to H5N1 — assuming the Biden Administration doesn’t manage to let it loose in the transition period — won’t make the same mistakes.
Now that the election is over, CDC says that Bird Flu Is Bad:
The timing of this is once again, INTENTIONAL. 5pm on the Wednesday after a horrifying US election. No one is paying attention. And that’s what I have been talking about. It’s the weaponized incompetence that has been causing and is still causing SO. MUCH. HARM. https://t.co/aaYB8bt0Un
— Erin C. Sanders, MSN, WHNP-BC (She/Her) (@ErinSandersNP) November 7, 2024
To be fair, I haven’t checked the CDC site. More on “headache”:
So the #H5N1 symptoms may include 'headache'
Headache is the right word @CDCFlu? https://t.co/2p1weEDNxl pic.twitter.com/7R437duVyQ— Danielle Beckman (@DaniBeckman) November 7, 2024
Yeah, but which pandemic are they talking about?
Leaked footage of the CDC handling the pandemic pic.twitter.com/uok7C9TJsR
— Outbreak Updates (@outbreakupdates) November 5, 2024
Lambert here: I have rebooted Table 1. There are, surprisingly, no bad surprises, except that New York Hospitalization has no new data (my oldest and most reliable data series, sigh). I think that if, during and after the Thanksgiving, there is no surge, I will rethink this presenation.
| Wastewater | |
| ★ This week[1] CDC October 28 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| ★Variants [3] CDC October 26 | ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC October 26 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| New York[5] New York State, data October 23: | ★ National [6] CDC October 31: |
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| Positivity | |
| ★ National[7] Walgreens November 4: | ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 2: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| ★ Positivity[9] CDC October 14: | ★ Variants[10] CDC October 14: |
|
|
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| Deaths | |
| ★ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC October 28: | ★ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC October 28: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Good news!
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* still popular. XEC has entered the chat.
[4] (ED) Down.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Actually improved.
[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
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of individuals filing for unemployment benefits in the US edged higher by 3,000 from the previous week to 221,000 in the last week of October, aligned with market expectations. Despite the slight increase, the count remained well below averages from earlier in the month, continuing to point to some degree of resilience in the US labor market. ”
Tech: “16 U.S. States Still Ban Community-Owned Broadband Networks Because AT&T and Comcast Told Them To” [TechDirt]. “For years we’ve noted how U.S. broadband is expansive, patchy, and slow thanks to mindless consolidation, regulatory capture, regional monopolization, and limited competition. That’s resulted in a growing number of pissed off towns, cities, cooperatives, and city-owned utilities building their own, locally-owned broadband networks in a bid for better, cheaper, faster broadband. Regional giants like Comcast, Charter, or AT&T could have responded to this organic trend by offering better, cheaper, faster service. But ultimately they found it far cheaper to undermine these efforts via regulatory capture, congressional lobbying, lawsuits, protectionist state laws, and misleading disinformation. Currently sixteen states have laws — usually ghost written by regional telecom monopolies — restrict or outright ban community broadband. Some of these laws are outright bans on community broadband, basically letting Comcast or AT&T veto your local infrastructure voting rights. Others erect elaborate, cumbersome restrictions on the financing and expansion of such networks and pretend that’s not a ban. The good news: The Institute For Local Self Reliance (where I study and write about broadband access) notes that these sixteen laws are a notable reduction from the 21 state laws we had in 2020. What caused the change? The pandemic home education and telecommuting boom highlighted the essential nature of broadband (or more accurately, the expensive, sluggish, terrible nature of monopoly options).
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 60 Greed (previous close: 57 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 7 at 2:06:30 PM ET.
Permaculture
“Gardens reduce seasonal hunger gaps for farmland pollinators” [Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences]. “Gardens can benefit pollinators living in surrounding farmland landscapes, but the reason for their value is not clear. Gardens are no different from many semi-natural farmland habitats in terms of the quantity of floral resources (pollen and nectar) they produce, but the timing of their resource supply is very different, which may explain their value. We show that gardens provide 15% of overall annual nectar in farmland landscapes in Southwest UK, but between 50% and 95% during early spring and late summer when farmland supplies are low. Gardens can therefore reduce seasonal nectar gaps experienced by farmland bumblebees. Consistent with this pattern, bumblebee activity increased in gardens relative to farmland during early spring and late summer…. We show that over 90% of farmland in Great Britain is within 1 km of a garden and therefore positive actions by gardeners could have widespread spillover benefits for pollinators across the country. Given the widespread distribution of gardens around the world, we highlight their important interplay with surrounding landscapes for pollinator ecology and conservation.” • Land use very different in the UK, I think, but the principle is the same.
Gallery
“Home” [Mushroom Color Atlas]. “The Mushroom Color Atlas is a resource and reference for everyone curious about mushrooms and the beautiful and subtle colors derived from dyeing with mushrooms. But it is also the start of a journey and a point of departure, introducing you to the kaleidoscopic fungi kingdom and our connection to it. My hope is that through this Atlas everyone will be inspired to learn more about the mycological world, and begin to understand the importance of the networks, connections and symbiotic relationships that live in our forests. Most importantly, understanding our impact on these delicate networks and our role as stewards of the land, bringing positive change to our local environments and our planet.” • Some swatches:
Book Nook
“It’s time to radicalize your book club” [Literary Hub]. “It’s important to get together — it’s time to activate your communities: your book club, your running group, your knitting circle, your group texts. We have to draw those bonds of community tighter. We don’t have time to wait four years…. To quote Kwame Ture, it’s the ‘height of bourgeois propaganda’ to think that your ‘responsibility is limited to a one-day vote. Politics is every day, every minute.’ Get your book club and your communities involved. Let’s start inviting each other into community organizations, mutual aid groups, unions, and political organizations working for something brighter. It’s time for solidarity and collective action.” • Fair enough, but “always has been.”
Musical Interlude
“Emptyset – ash” [neural.it]. “James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas, aka Emptyset, mark the fiftieth release for the Subtext label (founded by Ginzberg) with Ash. It is somewhat of a return to the label’s roots– the duo recorded the album in 2023 in Bristol, the city where Subtext was founded. Emptyset take advantage of spatialized recording techniques, dynamic controls, and a series of analogue machines, giving life to polymorphic, synthetic and sculptural compositional structures, echoing the sound system culture which have been central to everything that has emerged from Bristol since the nineties.” • Bristol is the home of Massive Attack, so, interesting. I’m not sure I like this, but here it is anyhow:
“A Symphony of Terror” (press release) [NewsWise]. “The screech of a dissonant violin, a ghostly whisper, a cry in the night, a sinister laugh, a distant rumble, a howling wind. These unsettling sounds are the stuff of horror films and haunted houses. They can make our blood run cold…. [P]sychoacoustics measures a sound’s timbre or quality on a scale of bright to dark. A joyful sound is generally ‘bright,’ energetic, harmonious and richer in the high frequencies. However, if the timbre is more dissonant, high frequencies can also arouse fear or terror because of their resemblance to human screams.”
“The English Paradox: Four Decades of Life and Language in Japan” [TokyoDev].
“The Powerful Density of Hypertextual Writing” [Kottke.org]. Keying off this New York Times opinion piece: “What makes this piece so effective is its plain language and its information density. This density is a real strength of hypertext that is often overlooked and taken for granted. Only 110 words in that paragraph but it contains 27 links to other NYT opinion pieces published over the last several months that expand on each linked statement or argument. If you were inclined to follow these links, you could spend hours reading about how unfit Trump is for office. A simple list of headlines would have done the same basic job, but by presenting it this way, the Times editorial board is simultaneously able to deliver a strong opinion; each of those links is like a fist pounding on the desk for emphasis… [B]am! bam! bam! bam! bam! Here! Are! The! Fucking! Receipts! How the links are deployed is an integral part of how the piece is read; it’s a style of writing that is native to the web, pioneered by sites like Suck in the mid-90s. It looks so simple, but IMO, this is top-notch, subtle information design.” • 100% correct, and of course this is one approach any blogger will be very famliar with. That said, while style is its own truth, it is not truth, and perhaps not even a partial truth.
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 SK:
SK writes: “You’ve been skirting the edges, so thought I’d send you this. There are plants there… It was sprinkling ever so lightly this AM when I went out front to get the paper. There were spots of blue sky amidst the still-pink low clouds, but arcing over all was a complete rainbow. Ten minutes later boy #2 sent me this shot, from 5 miles away, looking across Corte Madera Creek at Mt. Tamalpais.” I suppose I could make an occasional exception for spectacular natural phenomena. But where are the ponies?
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But where are the ponies?
There’s No ponies only Unicorns;-) at the end of rainbows.
I need to make lunch.
Marin County is an outlier. Wealthy, desireable, clean, green, safe, and if one is paying the tuition for a child in a San Francisco private school; (only a sadist would sent them to public there), not that expensive after sending them to Marin public schools.
We made the move decades ago. Smartest thing we ever did.
I lived not far from where that pic was taken (Larkspur). Truly a lovely area. We moved to Connecticut three years ago, and while it’s quite lovely here too, nothing compares to Marin.
Marin county is largely lily white. They refuse to allow BART to service the county in order to keep out “undesirables” from the East Bay. Marin is a Stepford Wives kind of place. It has great natural beauty, but it is a bubble of its own making. I would not desire to live there. I prefer more rough and tumble kind of places.
The public schools in San Francisco are great. They also have a good latitude of teaching critical thinking and even the Howard zinn course is taught by some. I’ve known teachers in them, for 35 years. They love it. And test scores are good too. Especially considering they are mix of recent immigrants and of many poor families who have many hurdles to jump. I’ve also lived within blocks of them for 35 years. Just amazing kids. When I see them on Muni all happy swinging their feet on the way to school , I have faith again……
I love the photo! The rainbow frames Mt. Tam beautifully. Thank you, SK for sharing it.
Everyone at the age of 5 knows the rainbow on front of a cereal box means Lucky Charms for breakfast. Unbeknownst to myself, just finding this cereal is possibly a topic of review or discussion on say, Reddit.
“Magically Delicious!”
> Lucky Charms
Lucky Charms were my introduction to American dentistry, c. 1960.
The magical ponies are gleefully sliding down the rainbow Lambert!
(Agreed about breakfast cereals. The pot of gold at the end of the Lucky Charms rainbow is in the pockets of the dentists.)
Devastated Democrats Play the Blame Game, and Stare at a Dark Future (NY Times via archive.ph)
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
> a dark future
There’s that word “dark” again. Apparently, it’s very important to the PMC at this cultural moment, but I don’t understand why. For example, what about dark people? Don’t they like them? Do they feel that they are becoming dark?
Remember the B campaign selling Dark Brandon coffee mugs last year? / ;)
https://www.delish.com/food-news/a45156272/joe-biden-dark-brandon-mug/
Maybe it’s PMC gothic chic. / heh
Kamala says when it gets dark we can see stars. Very moving.
But I don’t think we should bash the hypocrisy of Harris or Biden when they say time to move on. I think this once routine election ritual is a good thing. As for the horrible Bob Woodward, he can sit on a tack.
Have you been marked safe from the Escaped Monkeys?
When it gets dark up your way, you may see monkeys.
Heard from a fly on the wall that Jay Powell is considering raising the primate, if one makes it to DC.
Escaped primates may be safer than escaped inmates, but it certainly depends on the totality of the circumstances.
Ya know what’s imian?
> raising the primate
Dad.
Yikes…glad the research facility is near to the coast. Monkeys escaping en masse is such a headline for 2024 !
> Kamala says when it gets dark we can see stars
Yeah, you “see stars” when you get hit over the head. Did she fire her competent speechwriters?
In her defense; the “seeing stars” meme is classic cartoon fare. She always struck me as a cartoon character. With Reagan, we got a President from Central Casting. With Harris we would have had a Presidenta from Termite Terrace.
Termite Terrace: https://looneytunes.fandom.com/wiki/Termite_Terrace
Now that she’s gone, we’re unburdened of one has-been.
Reminiscent of the ‘thousand points of light’ from Bush Sr., except that Kamala has ‘billions and billions’ of them. Inflation, perhaps?
They don’t see light at the end of the tunnel in which they find themselves.
What is the point of the D Party, if it can’t get its way with the electorate?
>They don’t see light at the end of the tunnel in which they find themselves.
That light was a Trump train that ran them over…
With all the extra passengers he picked up from the Black and Hispanic contingent.
“what about dark people? Don’t they like them?”
I’m not really sure they do. I’ve seen some very clarifying Twits from PMC Dems since election night expressing much anger at darker hewed folks for being too dumb to vote correctly. One particularly choice one (from a fella with pride flags in his username) went “(Family Blog) Arabs and Latinos. There, I said it. I hope you get deported and banned.”
It’s going to be really wild watching who gets thrown under the bus this time.
Neither party especially likes dark people who are muslim, or for that matter, light skinned people who also just happen to be muslim. If you’re a muslim just about anywhere, doing just about anything, there’s a bomb, probably signed by either mike pence or josh shapiro, that’s just waiting to drop down from heaven and blow you to smithereens.
I gather “dark” is a word that escaped from academia, and not just the “dark academia” aesthetic of haunted Twilight-esque libraries (which has somehow become associated with Yale).
E.g., Nick Land’s The Dark Enlightenment, or Andrew Culp’s Dark Deleuze, or Steven Smith on “the dark arts” (by which he basically means torture and assassination are cool).
So, the PMC has picked up this word and now use it as a synonym for “fascist” (again, leading back to Nick Land), applying it to Trump.
and the party’s approach to transgender issues.
Warner and maybe Kaine won’t, but this will be where Rightwing Democrats and the courtiers land.
According to random trans people online the main problems with being trans in the US is stuff like poverty, lack of health care and hate crimes. If the Biden administration had successfully tackled at least poverty or health care, I think Harris would have faired better. I understand those are problems for a lot of cis people too.
The obvious answer to an issue like paying for trans operations is “you bet, and I want to make sure your lasik is paid for, and mothers don’t have debts because they have a baby…debt to cancer…”
Instead they are going to blame RuPaul.
the grandest of ironies is that Trump and MAGA literally is a creation of the Democrats.
If Team Clinton just kept their yap shut and not have surrogates encourage Trump to run (the “Pied Piper Strategy”), Trump would be golfing right now and getting ready for the 20th anniversary of “The Apprentice”
If Democrats/NY AG just let it go after Jan. 6 and didn’t indict him, the GOP probably would have torn itself apart over who lost 2022, what to do with Trump, who is really MAGA, etc.
> If Team Clinton just kept their yap shut and not have surrogates encourage Trump to run (the “Pied Piper Strategy”),
IIRC, the point of “Pied Piper Strategy” was to have an opponent whom HRC (“why am I not beating this guy by 50pts?”) could easily defeat.
The more fundamental problem was the HRC candidacy. Bernie would have won, both times.
Thank you, Jason, for posting the archive link.
Every Democrat interviewed, along with the paper that published it, was true to form. Matt Bennett of Third Way braying like an ass with OCD about how “we” need to move back to the center — that’s classic. Was that interview from 1995? Seth Moulton of MA ascribing the whole thing (without exactly saying it) to fear of attacks in women’s restrooms by trans women. These people are political professionals? Jesus, no wonder they lost 13 million votes from 4 years ago.
Honestly, I can’t remember all the stupid shyte I read in that thin piece of gruel, but there was no one Democrat with any insight to offer. They have learned nothing, forgotten nothing.
> “we” need to move back to the center
“We need to move back to the center” is like “Now would be a good time to buy gold.” A hardy perennial, always appropriate!
It sounded more sonorous coming from Joe Lieberman, though.
Does he mean from the right? That would be a good start. Is he suggesting they throw Liz Cheney under the bus? Figuratively?
These people are f**king stupid. So they trot out someone from Third Way suggesting Democrats needed to be “more moderate”.
Being endorsed by Cheney wasn’t moderate enough?
Harris ran a moderate Republican campaign and lost; How much more moderate are we talking about here? Why not just vote for Republicans?
Especially when several states that went for Trump simultaneously passed progressive ballot initiatives.
A party calling itself “centrist” is like wealthy people saying they’re “comfortable “.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Biden looks better than I’ve seen him in a long time in that clip, positively ebullient.
He must be quite satisfied with Harris’ loss, which he arguably engineered by endorsing her quickly, thus undermining Obama’s plans for a crash primary and depriving the forthcoming campaign of that legitimacy.
That’s a good theory.
Heard they are calling the failed candidate Kamalf in honor of the new Landon who lost the House, Senate and Presidency for the Donkey Show.
That’s really unfair to Alf Landon. / ;)
A quibble: Landon was a Republican who lost in a landslide TO (not *for) The Donkey Show.
Yes. He was a GOP candidate, a very good progressive GOP gov of Kansas, who in1936 during the Great Depression ran and lost to FDR. No GOP candidate for pres was going to win against FDR that year. The GOP’s last president was Herbert Hoover who was often blamed for the Great Depression and who was defeated by FDR.
Just a bit of context.
Pollsters should definitely take that to their cillective hearts. DMR, nice knowing ya, lime the Literary Digest.
I believe that some European countries stop all polling for X weeks before an election. I think we should do that.
I also think we should outlaw all forms of digital politcal advertising. This would have two advantages: (1) It would give newspapers a revenue base; (2) it would force candidates (and surrogates) to interact directly with voters. Think Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Combine that with paper ballots, handmarked, and hand-counted in public, plus Election Day as a national holiday, and we might be more likely to have electoral politics that didn’t suck.
I’m not sure I like giving the newspapers a revenue base. I remember the Vietnam War; WaPo and the NYT were the same then as they are now.
Just ban political advertising. Hell, ban all commercially sponsored ‘news’ shows. Make people talk to each other, instead of to the Machine.
She didn’t fail, she was presuccessful.
Electing Kamala was an educated wish
There was a past comment requesting a roundup of nasal sprays. Did that happen?
Has anyone used the Korean product posted above? I’m about to ask a friend if it’s widely used or if they know about it.
We’ve heard peroxide gargle, neosporin in the nose, German goop that’s been banned in several countries for permanent loss of smell, Enovid which is apparently based on what sick peoples bodies weren’t doing in the first waves and which is still sold but never really panned out, etc. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a round up with pros, cons, effectiveness, and how the method is supposed to work.
We have pretty good Covid resources at work, but nothing on OTC preventatives.
> There was a past comment requesting a roundup of nasal sprays. Did that happen?
Let’s not assign work. I’ve done several in the past, but in the press of election posting, there was no time to update. Perhaps soon.
Oh! I meant linking to something! Not a creation.
Povodone Iodine is an excellent cleanser and refresher and can be used as desired. A trusted scientist friend has recommended Xlear and CoVixyl for antivirus protection before and after potential exposures. I use both.
I also recommend a daily nasal rinse. Neil Med is IMO the easiest and most convenient to use.
None of these are “nasal vaccines” however.
Further caveat: I’m not a doctor, nurse, or otherwise, just someone who uses these products, and I’m not “endorsing” them, nor am I saying they’d be right for everyone. YMMV.
I’ve been pretty skeptical of nasal sprays as a protective. None of the data is that great; Only Envoid had a decent study that showed participants recovered faster after testing positive.
I haven’t heard of any studies demonstrating efficacy as a protectant.
A P100 mask is the only way to be 99.99% sure.
OkDoomer did a round up on nasal sprays about a year ago: https://www.okdoomer.io/nose-sprays-offer-a-last-line-of-defense/
Thanks.
Previous NC roundup of nasal sprays:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/01/latest-anti-covid-nasal-spray-vaccine-science.html
Found on youtube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Dka1VC2PE
Biosafety Level 3 Lab Entry
Except it looks like she didnt pull the blue hood over her head and tighten it below her chin and add a mask before draping the white hood. That protects in case one thoughtlessly reaches up to scratch. We also have continuous UV lamps not (just) showers.
Northern Mockingbird, Sharpsburg., Washington, Maryland, United States. Adult Northern Mockingbird imitating the flight song of Willow Flycatcher.” “Sharpsburg” makes me think perhaps I should do a tour of Civil War battlefields; I saw “Antietam” in passsing today also.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Humordor tried to kill us with stifling humidity when we were last there, so after doing the Smithsonian et al, we hightailed it for a tour of Civil War battlefields, and Antietam was smack dab in the middle of nowhere and still is. One of the bloodiest battles of the war, now imagine if they had AR-15’s, hmmm?
There are boucoup scrap metal possibilities in and around the Gettysburg battlefield, i’ve never seen so many statues and memorials in one place.
The Wilderness battlefield was another, why here of all places? venue. 30,000 casualties later it was pretty much a draw.
Notice that defense spending for 2024 has now reached $1,091.9 billion or $1.0919 trillion.
https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/?reqid=19&step=2&isuri=1&categories=survey#eyJhcHBpZCI6MTksInN0ZXBzIjpbMSwyLDNdLCJkYXRhIjpbWyJjYXRlZ29yaWVzIiwiU3VydmV5Il0sWyJOSVBBX1RhYmxlX0xpc3QiLCI1Il1dfQ==
October 30, 2024
Defense spending was 57.7% of federal government consumption and investment in July through September 2024. *
$1,091.9 / $1,893.8 = 57.7%
Defense spending was 21.7% of all government consumption and investment in July through September 2024.
$1,091.9 / $5,035.1 = 21.7%
Defense spending was 3.7% of GDP in July through September 2024.
$1,091.9 / $29,349.9 = 3.7%
* Billions of dollars
Don’t post duplicate comments. You will train Skynet to think you’re a spammer and your comments will vanish.
Don’t post duplicate comments…
Thank you so much for explaining. The other post was actually different, showing defense spending and spending on the federal debt which just was released today. Spending on the debt has now passed spending on defense.
I did a poor job of distinguishing the posts. Getting the data clear takes more work, and I have to be very careful.
Thank you, again.
> I did a poor job of distinguishing the posts.
I’m sorry. We work at a very fast pace here!
UPDATE Adding, I found it and restored it. One way to distinguished separate comments that are really a connected thread, would be do think like twitter and add 1/2, 2/2 and so on. (I thought about indenting them as replies, but that would nest too deeply very fast.)
I very much appreciate your posts. But, sometimes it even takes a moment to distinguish between 2 links in 1 post! Maybe it would help, if you highlight the 2 variables in the link title?
e.g.
Defense spending was 3.7% of GDP in July through September 2024
Federal Government Defense Spending as a share of Gross Domestic Product, 2000-2024
OK, while typing this, I cannot see how it looks like, so we will see after posting this, if its a stupifd suggestion (:
Notice that defense spending and interest payments on federal debt are now 7.5% of GDP.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1cbjc
October 30, 2024
Federal Government Defense Spending as a share of Gross Domestic Product, 2000-2024
$1,091.9 * / $29,349.9 = 3.7%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1cecG
Federal Government Interest Payments as a share of Gross Domestic Product, 2000-2024
$1,117.0 / $29,349.9 = 3.8%
* Billions of dollars
Re: The Mushroom Atlas – a short review
Since moving the Pacific Northwest, my partner has become fascinated with mushrooms. She’s an artist who likes incorporating natural materials into her work. A couple months ago I discovered the Mushroom Atlas (maybe from NC? or a link off an NC link?) and I knew it was something she’d like to have so I purchased a copy.
She was overjoyed and has already made a couple of mushroom-based inks from the recipes included. The only reference guide you’d ever really need on the topic. Of course, unless you plan on making your own mushroom-based colors, you’re just buying a coffee table book. It is, however, a gorgeous piece of book art. The pages are large and well laid-out to make finding specific species/colors easy. The book lets the color swatches and the artwork of various species handle the aesthetics and the result is beautiful without being cluttered or detracting from the information being conveyed. It’s attractive, but it’s also built to be convenient to use. The hardback comes with 3 built-in bookmarks so you can link/find related information across the whole thing. Obviously a narrow target audience, but still a really great book in terms of form and function.
Sam Kriss is, as usual, seriously annoying but not entirely wrong. “One of my most foundational political beliefs is that while the winner in an election doesn’t usually deserve to win, the loser always deserves to lose.” Yes, I said much the same yesterday in Links comments but I think that while Harris lost, the Democratic Party really, really lost. Kriss’ article is all about Harris, a good subject for his seething style, but the Biden admin, and the party that gave it is, and their behavior in Congress and of their proxies in the media and their proposals for what they want for what they want to do when reelected all very much deserved to lose.
“A Symphony of Terror” (press release) [NewsWise]. “The screech of a dissonant violin, a ghostly whisper, a cry in the night, a sinister laugh, a distant rumble, a howling wind. These unsettling sounds are the stuff of horror films and haunted houses.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What if life came with a soundtrack, like in the movies?
It fills in dead screen time in a jiffy!
But would that be a really good idea at all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmWWePoYHYk (2:49 mins)
I think Sam Kriss is ignoring the real reason Harris did as “well” as she did – she was running against Trump.
If the Dems had run any competent politician, they would have won. I also think any competent GOP choice would have easily beat Harris. This doesn’t undercut the mood of the voters that led to 2024 going the way it did. But his analysis ignores the fact that both candidates were amazingly awful.
> both candidates were amazingly awful
I disagree. You might think Trump’s methods are unsound, but in 2016, on his first run for office, he stomped through the Republican primaries like Godzilla, crushing all opposition. He then went on to beat Hillary Clinton who, despite all her faults, which are many, was an experienced candidate, as he was not. I think Trump only lost in 2020 because of Covid. In any case, between 2016 and 2020, Trump, aided by his vociferous base, completely remade the Republican Party (such that many Never Trumpers became Democrats). In 2024, he first forced Biden out of the race, and then went on to demolish Kamala.
I don’t love Trump, but that’s quite a track record. In fact, I am hard-pressed to find a Presidential candidate/party leader with a better one, certainly in recent memory (Obama, for example, didn’t rebuild his party).
If you look at the record, thinking as a technician, Trump nets out positive as a candidate, despite his many flaws (primary among them lack of discipline).
Forcing Biden out of the race was not a positive. I think it was Trump’s biggest blunder. He never should have agreed to a debate.
He would’ve beat Biden certainly, massive landslide. It was a mistake to give the Democrats the opportunity, the opening to pick someone who did have a chance to beat him (not to say that was Kamala–no one knew for sure at the time who it’d be–but imagine if Obama had got his way and the nominee was a Pritzker).
Well, wasn’t it rather predictable that the DNC inner party would not have picked somebody truly competent to win? They threw Saint Bernard under the bus twice.
They insist on an empty suit who they “think” will tick all the idPol boxes. Kamala was really their perfect candidate.
I’d say Trump made no mistake agreeing to the debate with Biden.
“think*”
Tuesday *was* a massive landslide.
Using St Obama’s deliberate destruction of Howard Deans Fifty State Strategy, it is abundantly clear that the resultant consolidation of power did much to actively destroy the party.
Quite right. I should have said that.
I don’t understand what .human wrote. Would someone kindly explain?
Dean rebuilt party function in every state, every county, contesting all elections and rejecting the Democrats’ lazy acceptance that they were a party of cities. The strategy worked. For Obama. He defunded it once in office, and the Red Belts were abandoned again. So Obama built a profitable personality cult for himself, with a weakened regional party behind him.
For all the proof you need take a look at the county map of the election. Blue spots and splotches in a sea of red.
‘He defunded it once in office’
And if I recall correctly, the party was broke by 2015 which is how Hillary went in and bought it up so that it could be used for her own exclusive use. Money had to flow from the States to her HQ but only a trickle went back. The result in 2016 was that areas that she could have won were lost because her campaign refused to send them any funds as the money was going to her consultants instead. So this was all on Obama. Same way how when he was first elected, he had Obama’s Army behind him but he sold them out and had them subsumed by the Democrat party machinery as soon as he was in office where they died on the vine.
You recall correctly, Rev. And thank you, Lois Lane.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/01/how-hillary-clinton-bought-the-loyalty-of-33-state-democratic-parties/
Thank you, barefoot charley.
The 50-state strategy was an effort to build ground-up Dem party infrastructure everywhere. Dean, DNC Chair in 2005, thought it would be relatively inexpensive and might provide a way to create a huge group of people with party-building skills which could be leveraged in a number of ways. Good talent might be found in districts that aren’t competitive for Dems and that talent might prove useful on a national level. However, being a “ground-up” strategy that permitted substantial local deviation from party dogma, it wasn’t popular with autocrats who wanted top-down party control.
As a practical matter, the Bernie campaigns would have likely been far more successful had there been a 50-state bottom-up party infrastructure in place. Without it, Bernie struggled to staff local offices in the Red states where he’d have done better than candidates with national party support. The state-level Dem party officials assigned to Bernie’s campaign were often Hillary/Biden people actively sabotaging Bernie’s efforts and those of the local offices.
Had a 50-state infrastructure been in place, Bernie could have easily staffed with people loyal to his campaign rather than relying on out-of-state Hillary/Biden DNC folks to run operations and plan key events in Red states.
Thank you, Greg.
So iiuc Obama benefited from the 50-state apparatus in 2008 and later took it apart.
Fair enough about Trump and the GOP primary, but to me that just demonstrates how easily the Dems could have won. The real issue for the Dems – and this is not my theory, I think it was raised by Due Dissidence or Hard Lense Media, is the past three presidential elections were determined by the DNC elites. Absolutely no attempt was made to engage actual party members. The GOP didn’t do this and let things go where they did. Which led to Trump.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again – Trump is an average politician. If he had run against a competent Dem opponent in 2016, he would have been one and done. His most amazing quality, and it’s one you can’t learn or develop, is luck. I disagree that his track record is due to his skill. The 2024 election was like the Washinton Generals playing…the Washington Generals. Each side seemed bound and determined to make the worst mistakes possible. And while historically it is an amazing feat, it’s one without context. It’s akin to the current buzz going around that this is the first GOP president that has won the EC and the popular vote sine 2004. Problem is, we have had one GOP president since then, Trump in 2016. So, while it sounds impressive, it misses the overall context. Same with Trump. Honestly, I think if Covid-19 didn’t happen, he would have won in 2020 because Biden was also a horrible choice.
I don’t think the legacy he leaves will be anything like what Reagan or Obama as far as impact, except in name only. Vance may admire him, but his style is radically different IMHO, and I think when he runs in 2028 it will be a very different campaign and will attempt to re-shape the party again.
If anything, I think Trump came on the scene at a time when the Democrats were flying high with Obama and felt the end of history was near (maybe even overdue). They pushed out a candidate the elites wanted and ignored the primary voters. And they have doing so ever since.
“Trump is an average politician” – as somebody privilieged to observe American politics from across the Pond rather than in it :-) I disagree. He may be average but the rest are dwarves. Harris? Newsom? Buttigidget? Pence, Bolton, all those *weird* ancien regime Republican governors and senators?
Trump has charisma, like Reagan and Clinton. You may disapprove of what he does with it, he may be crass, he may be a short-fingered vulgarian but he clearly wants what most people want, to have a good time and to come out a winner in ordinary, relatable endeavours (work, arguing his corner, playing golf). He’s probably got a mean streak if crossed but he doesn’t come across as malevolent or sociopathic and voters, like dogs, can tell. Whereas the rest of uniparty smell of basement sacrifice to the Elder Gods in pursuit of K-Street inside baseball. You would never want to have dinner with Nancy Pelosi, not for all the ice-cream in the world.
It’s very easy to win an election by a landslide. You only need to plausibly offer what voters want. There are any number of policies with well over 60% approval to build the platform from. The problem is the two parties don’t allow those policies, i.e. they are both incumbent to the donors who want none of them. Hence this business of adjudicating how well or not Trump played the party/donor game is rather like commentary on the legal technicalities in the Chevron-Donziger affair. The details don’t interest me. The game itself expresses a corruption so enormous I feel calling the balls and strikes legitimizes it.
Trump too was motivated. He knew that he either ran again and became President or else the Democrats would see him in prison on one charge or another, no matter how bogus. There was no third choice.
Imo he didn’t have to run at all, he coulda just played golf. Imo it was because he was, and then did, run again that the panicking dems resorted to all that law fare.
Don’t forget the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression!
Breaking Sports News:
After receiving numerous offers and calls about trading them before the NFL trade deadline, the Kansas City Chiefs did not trade the refs, just as expected.
Per Adam Shanker, EPSN
This is the best headline… Hilariously awesome.
There are now all kinds of articles and stories online about the Harris campaign being 20 million bucks in the hole. David Plouffe stands famously accused of turning off his twitter account over this. All kinds of stories about the millions paid to Beyonce and Taylor Swift…..renting out stadiums and putting on concerts is indeed expensive – but sometimes the “talent” never actually performed.
What was the stated final amount of cash she raised – 1.2 billion? Something like that.
That is an awful lot of burn
OR
As we often note on here, did she actually raise that much to begin with? Was it all a mirage?
So, $20M is basically pocket lint, but, THIS is the D party. A bunch of grifters looking to take a share of the pie.
I could imagine that….in addition to the usual oligarchs, a silent army of over-40 women kept stepping up whenever a blast email solicitation happened.
TikTok, Facebook, Twitter are the great campaign-cash-equalizer when it comes to election spending if your last name is Trump. Trump won in spite of his political campaign team, not because of them. Trump’s organic, unofficial TikTok army was more valuable than an army of DC campaign consultants.
I’m curious if social media accusations will be proven true that Harris campaign paid for a very large cadre of “roadies” to attend every large Harris rally. assuming that those payments would show up in the FEC filings.
Sorry for the inappropriate comparison, but German NSDAP almost went broke after their Nov. 1932 election slump because they had ca. 3,4 milion SA street fighters to pay. Since NSDAP needed brutal street violence to succeed politically (which is forgotten today) they had to pay for that informal army.
i.e. no beating up people, no Hitler chancellory…
The source of the online material is Politico’s California bureau chief:
From Newsweek:
Single-sourced Breitbart less than ideal, though Politico, on the debt, had two. (My impression is that most campaigns rent their lists. Why would they not?)
More from Newsweek:
Once again, a Trump dollar goes farther. Money may be the mother’s milk of politics, but some milk, apparently, is more wholesome than other milk.
But who owns the dairy farms (who sell the not so wholesome milk)? The $1 bn has ended up in someone´s pocket…
Did they put it all in Polymarket?
Don’t ask Beyoncé?
Did she only speak because the singing check bounced?
Or does she want an audit for not contributing when requested? Surely KH has a few friends in the IRS.
There is a country song in there somewhere, in keeping with her stylistic direction. /s
my tinfoil thought at the time was b didn’t perform at the dnc because the campaign wanted rights and her agent said ain’t no mountain high enough to make me give that to you now…
Thank you so much!! I have been floating on a bubble of delight the last few days over the Dem Genociders LOSING, & losing big. (Though no fan of Trump.) This adds to my schadenfreude & I just levitated a bit above the floor! Any chance these clowns will be responsible for the debt? Or will the party just have to eat it? Either is fine by me, just wondering.
Did you change your FB profile to hearts and rainbows?
‘We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president,’
Should be ‘We ran the best campaign we could, considering Kamala Harris was vice president,’
Alex Christoforou reckons that it would have been far better for the Democrats to have dumped Biden as President and made Harris the actual President a few months ago. She would have then had a few months to chart her own course and campaign on being the first woman President as the actual encumbent. Instead she had nothing to run on as old Joe was not only President but who was actually sabotaging her campaign whenever he could out of spite.
What would she have changed? She already said that existing policies would remain as they are. At least, as a VP she was able to play things both ways, she could lay claim to good policies and maintain a credible “distance” from bad ones while making some word salad that incorporates “change”.
‘
We ran the best campaign we could, consideringJoe Bidenwasis president,’Fixed it for ya!
May I suggest that we re-consider “Lame Duck” and start thinking about “Lame Brained and Unconstrained”. I think he’s pretty pissed at the DC Dem elites that pushed him out and still ready to leave a legacy.
Have your popcorn ready…
A strong video from RFK, even if the “golden handshakes” and “big money hugs” to BigAg and BigPharma seem to come from anyone with a congressional name plate.
https://x.com/DisrespectedThe/status/1854525130866594271
Plenty of recriminations to go around, and a lot of them are kind of dancing around the central Democrat problem without getting right at it explicitly, to wit, handpicking the nominee instead of selecting them through a primary process. This has been true for at least the last 3 presidential elections. And the hands doing the picking are evidently not the best ones to be doing it. This is what opened the door for Trump more than anything. He would have been very beatable by better candidates. The primary process exists for the reason that it tends to pick better candidates than those chosen in back rooms. It exposes the flaws that the backroom pickers often overlook. Harris never would have won through a primary process, as we plainly saw, and it’s questionable if Biden and Clinton would have either without heavy fingers on the scales.
The 2020 Dem primary was one of the biggest abominations I can remember. Biden was slated to win long before he even entered the race, and all the other candidates were considered more or less a threat to him. I remember Biden being listed in the candidate polls for months before he even announced his candidacy. He was being actively sold to the population.
Of course the ultimate threat to Biden was Bernie Sanders, who was coming on strong in the weeks prior to Super Tuesday and probably would have emerged as the winner had Obama not called the other candidates and convinced them to suddenly drop out and endorse Biden. A case of election tampering far worse than what the Russians were accused of later.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were the product of competitive primaries neither were favored to win in the beginning. As was Donald Trump. Democrats who want to win should take note.
Of course Warren didn’t drop out right away, or get the memo, only after Sanders was clearly finished!
I have added orts and scraps.
The Democrats have deployed the blame cannons, and there is much more of that to come. In fact, they’ve hardly begun. I am waiting with great anticipation for the entire Democrat party leadership to resign MR SUBLIMINAL KIDDING!!!!!
Steven A. Smith’s analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsqJP23sInA
(He’s an ESPN personality but I find him to be very insightful, here.)
Love the Emptyset bit. For fans of the genre, here is the original, Morton Subotnick, with Sidewinder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXWj5bV6U1Q
> Love the Emptyset bit
Good. I like the site, but I wasn’t sure about the music. But wait. This version is a cover??
“What’s Le Monde been smoking?”
I’d love to write a post here about the zeitgeist in France and maybe I will if I can figure out something compelling and pithy. This is part of it – after the shock of the first Trump administration, there was a sort of longing for the “retour à la normale” America that the mainly Parisian PMC French love to admire at a distance or on a trip to NYC or LA, speaking but not really getting American English. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all about the money. They admire how much there is, and how it seems to magically appear for the privileged. “Your monnaie is so cerebral”, as Mark E Smith put it.
I think this is the first time Lambert has embedded a Bandcamp track and it’s Emptyset! Love it. They’re very much like Autechre, deep electronic. Bandcamp pays artists the best of all the streaming services and is willing to put edgy stuff out that others wouldn’t. It’s one of the only places that I’ll buy music except for Discogs and record stores. Thanks!
More bandcamp, please, Lambert!
(May I suggest Kneecap? At the moment, everything they touch turns to gold. When a band is on the up like this, like 1970’s Elton John, there is nothing better. They just sold out five nights straight in Dublin and turned up with great dash in 1916 IRA uniforms! Every track is filmic and they have great sound and visuals and politics and heart. https://www.instagram.com/moglaibap/
If you’re almost persuaded, try either H.O.O.D. a satire on dinosaur Republican identity, or Way too Much, an affirmatory end of the night track about finding your joie de vivre in agape and self-respect via self-medication).
Yeah, every time I look at Le Monde I feel the editors have just lost their way and are living in a tiny left-bank PMC bubble. Their splashy new QG in the XIIIth somehow conveys this as well.
I was also pleased to find the Bandcamp player in today’s WC. I think several of us readers plugged them before. I gather BC is in a bit of trouble now, but they have quite a bit of excellent music and it’s pretty great that they’ll give you FLAC files of whatever you buy.
Evidently the “problem” with Bandcamp is that they were bought out by a big investment concern.
First it was Epic Games that bought BC, then Songtradr, and then half of the BC employees were sacked.
Per the LA Times:
…which sounds rather like usual management boilerplate for “we’re not rich enough.”
I hope BC survives, somehow. Digging is required (as always), but I’ve found a lot of music and unknown bands through BC. On the flip side, I have a friend who owns a small label that specializes in vinyl and he hates BC (and PayPal) with a passion, as their fees are quite high.
“Leftists and socialists are privileged white labor aristocrats”
Then you look and see “Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York.”
lol of course
> ‘This is looking like Robby Mook 2.0,’ the person said.”
Haahahahahahaha!
Chef’s. Freaking. Kiss.
Throw another log on the “they just re-ran Clinton’s 2016 campaign” fire … LOL
Same symptoms: party apparatchiks centralized in a distant Acela-corridor-friendly enclave, crunching bad data over café Americanos, all while ignoring pleas from experienced boots-on-the-ground people in the field.
#2028 #NotTooSoon
Folks … we have our first Lina Khan 2028 sighting in the wild … and yes, count me in.
Oh crap … she wasn’t born here … 🫤
#ScratchThat
Despair not. If Barak freakin Hussein Obama can do it, so can Lina “The Wrath of” Khan.
Wow … Dems got their teeth kicked in so bad, apparently it’s caused this David Brooks epiphany (via X/Twitter)
cf – Voters to Elites: Do You See Us Now? (via NYT)
Holy crap. I didn’t expect to read any of that from David Brooks. Interesting times indeed!
“That great sucking sound you heard was the redistribution of respect.” Hear hear comrade Brooks!
It is unfortunate that I cannot read the readers’ comments to David Brooks’ column, but it is nice to have him write this, even if it is forty years late.
Unfortunately, neither parent was American … 🫤
Oooops! Meant for ambrit above, re: Lina Khan!
#Turnout2024
Data: From hk’s bud at UofFL … ;-)
People from Harris complaining that Joe bowed out too late? If anything I would say they kicked him out too soon. Maybe being forced to ride the wave of joy for one additional month was what did her.
Also Democrats and finger pointing, what about Republicans? There were articles about them having non-existent ground game, Musk outsourcing it to some questionable entity if memory serves me right. I guess winning campaigns don’t do postmortems and there is no one willing to spill the beans, so we will never know.
I just received this text. Surreal.
I’m begging. Sign the petition to pass Chuck Schumer’s “No Kings Act” and strip Trump of his immunity: go.stoptrump.io/1107a8
I got that one, too, as well as a follow-up before I’d even responded to the first one. Blocking them is like playing whack-a-mole. As soon as you send a “stop” message to one number, they come at you from another one.
I was hoping the election would signal a reprieve from being harassed by those people. I was clearly naive.
Don’t send STOP. That just proves it’s a real number with a real person which is why you get hit again so fast. I block /report as spam and they seem to peter out.
cool!
And, are you gonna sign?
🤣
p.s. reminds me of that romcom with Jim Carrey&Zooey Deschanel “Yes Man” (2008) where he decides to change his life by saying to every question he receives, to every online request “yes”. And bears the consequences.
I don’t know if it’s true, but rumor has it that Trump is going to take the oath of office on Inauguration Day wearing a serape and sombrero.
In a post-election video call with a TDS buddy, I only ventured as far as to say that, abominable in so many ways though he is, you have to admit that “Trump is f***ing funny–the McDonalds thing, the garbage truck thing….” My friend wouldn’t even grant that.
Your comment added to the fun. It’s almost believable with that guy.
I heard it’ll be in a Mariachi suit.
Go all in and let’s make it a matador’s “Suit of Lights.” Then he can descend into the DofC maze underneath the Senate building and try to slay the MIC Minotaur.
Mariachi like in…
3 Amigos?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9OAjqs6dOo
“Do you have anything besides Mexican food?”
That could have actually been a real Trump phrase on his campaign trail visiting the WALL…causing major outrage.
Here’s a video from Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada from Grayzone’s election livestream. It’s about as forceful refutation of the “lesser of two evils” argument as I’ve come across, and I think it’s worth a watch even if you don’t need convincing.
Why “Holocaust Harris” Deserved to Lose
Bernie states the obvious, and then everyone jumps all over him and says “nah, we need tack right.”
Future democratic party lines:
Deporting undocumented immigrants: “There has a to be a fair and transparent process, and we will fight for keeping families together.’
Abortion:
“We will continue to support a women’s right to choose via a state referendum if they want abortion to be legal.”
Since you bring up Bernie, here’s a relevant essay published yesterday, from Krystal Ball, “Bernie Would Have Won”: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/bernie-would-have-won
Quote:
Lambert was first to say “Bernie would’ve won” I think!
My recollection is that when Bernie was threatening to win the nom, the head of Goldman said he’d have to vote trump. So long as dems suck up to the donors there will be no fundamental change. And non suck up dems won’t be allowed to run for office. Dems don’t have to win, they just have to keep progressives off the ballot.
Going out on a limb here: might the deafening absence of “Russia! Russia! Russia! Putin! Putin! Putin!” cries in the wake of the rout signal the sunsetting of the Russiagate guff?
Lemme get back to you after peeping in on #MaddCow tonight …
My early guess is “No”, though.
I liked that Putin meme going around, where his character says If we really were hacking campaigns, do you think you would’ve had 8 years of Obama?
This is my new favourite Putin meme image … LOL (via X/Twitter)
That tweet went so hard, the one it quoted got deleted! Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m letting them in … :)
And as always, all you need to know about the Western obsession with painting Putin as a megalomaniac, is that Putin’s opponents in Russia pleaded with Western press to stop doing it years ago (via The New York Times)
I’m a little surprised they didn’t bring 3 glasses : – )
:) … well if they’re bringing the booze, I guess the host is on the hook for the glasses.
Good point, as the song says:
Ha! Nice one! ::musical interlude:: (via YouTube)
“They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing”
Devastated Democrats Play the Blame Game, and Stare at a Dark Future NYT
“In more than two dozen interviews, lawmakers, strategists and officials offered a litany of explanations for Vice President Kamala Harris’s failure — and just about all of them fit neatly into their preconceived notions of how to win in politics.”
Solution: Go the way of the Whigs!
Two possible post-election surprises from the “He who laughs last” department:
Kamala’s political career is over. There is nowhere to go but down, and it appears there is increasingly bad blood between her and the Bidens. But she is still the Vice-President, for a little over to months. She could initiate the 25th Amendment section 4 proceedings, by signing and delivering to the Senate President pro tempore and the Speaker of the House written notification that Biden is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Now this only goes into effect if it is also signed by a majority of the Cabinet. But it potentially puts the entire Cabinet on the spot of having to go on record and affirm or reject the allegations that Biden is unfit to hold the office. Non-answers such as “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer” probably won’t go over particularly well. The downside for Harris is that it fails, while it simultaneously taints the entire Cabinet and impacts their political careers going forward (yeah, I have already totally made up my mind as to Biden’s fitness). But she is done in this town, her husband is a millionaire, and they have two homes in California. The upside is she could be President after all! For a couple of weeks, at least. And stick it to the Bidens either way!
Meanwhile, Former President and President-Elect Trump, who shows significant skill and cunning in turning weaknesses into strengths, announces that there will be a MAGA rally scheduled for January 6th 2025 on the Capitol Mall. Because of his overwhelming victory at the polls, this can not be seen as an intimidation of or interference with the electoral certification process which takes place on that very day. His opponents have made January 6th a liability, an accusation, a repudiation; now Trump can make it an important celebration in his victory campaign.
Awaiting memes of Jill Biden at the voting polls in the Trump-red pantsuit with Joker make-up on her face, with the voting station in flames behind her.
>Kamala’s political career is over. There is nowhere to go but down, and it appears there is increasingly bad blood between her and the Bidens.
As far as going down,
if she can find another Willie Brown
She may find herself back for another round
Past burdens unbound
she’s 60 and her and doug can open a bespoke wine cave in napa. She’ll be fine.
…and he can have an occasional nanny on the side. :) They’ll do just fine.
The politically biased CDC will be neutered and as such it will need a new chief, and I nominate …. Kamala Harris!!! Or maybe she could be the new director of the NIH. Trump could then make a claim of using the best available “talent” regardless of political affiliation.
Trump could also repeal Juneteenth and make January 6th a new national holiday celebrating MAGA just to stick it to the liberals. The sky’s the limit when it comes to the Trump presidency..
They can call it guy dunks day
I think one of the missed opportunities on the Democrat side was never questioning the Make America Great Again slogan. They should have asked Make America Great Again, like when?
Like when Eisenhower was President and tax rates on the rich were 90% and over a third of workers belonged to unions? Like when Roosevelt was President and we successfully fought a two-front world war against fascism?
Or like what Peter Schiff calls for in an article quoted on Zero Hedge: 1913, when there was no income tax and unions were suppressed by violence and women couldn’t vote? Schiff also says we need to get rid of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, because those are all the result of having income taxes. Is that what the MAGA people consider the time when America was great? Because a lot of other Wall Street types in the back room definitely look at it that way.
Even if you said when Reagan was President, we hadn’t repealed Glass-Steagall or passed NAFTA then, and we were actually negotiating with the USSR rather than refusing to talk with them. (Sadly, this example would reveal the complicity of the Democrats in how that particular “great” timeline unraveled.) Just attacking MAGA as racist-misogynist-transphobic-homophobic-fascist ignores the fact that America was in better shape than it is now in several different past eras. And worse in others. Pinning the MAGA proponents down on when they think the Good Olde Days were would have made the choice of what we were voting for much clearer. But I guess you’d need a real opposition party for that.
1798?
1786? Shays’s rebellion.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays's_Rebellion
>>>They should have asked Make America Great Again, like when?
Isn’t this a red herring?
Look up the history of the American System, which had its ultimate beginnings during the American Revolution, even if Henry Clay is credited as the architect.
The United States, as a country and led by its often very wealthy elites, spent nearly two centuries and starting before the American Civil War, building up its industries including manufacturing and farming, its institutions including the religious, educational, charitable, and governmental, to the pinnacle of general prosperity it reached around 1972. Damn near two centuries at the end of which my working class parents could rent a house on poverty wages, go to a high quality college essentially for free, and I got to see the Eagle’s landing on the Moon. You could look at any year of those two centuries and see a gradual improvement in both society and government despite the often brutal conditions. Yes, often, it was a question of whether the country would become a hopelessly corrupt oligarchy, but things were always improving in someway.
Today, fifty-five years later, I am fighting to not become homeless in part because of my health. I do not see my nieces getting to own a home or raise a family if the economics of our lives don’t drastically change. Certainly, I never will have family. I can’t afford myself and the person I wanted to do so with, was destroyed in part by our abattoir of an economy. We are reverting to the third world, nonindustrial country of two centuries ago, only without the hope of a better future that we once had as a nation.
So, do not ask the destination to be reached, ask about the path to be taken.
The Dems lost because for the last three months they sent out emails that essentially said: “Orange Man Bad. Please send us a twenty.” At no time on no date did I get an email stating positions on anything. And I am a Democrat!
The Democrat Party and its media enablers, not to mention the national security state, which must have known given daily briefings and the like, kept Biden’s obvious cognitive decline under wraps. The blame lies with the Democrat Party itself. Not Biden, odious though he be.
I remember one politically connected NC commenter, years ago, stating that Biden is “a bully, a liar, and a dolt”.
Maybe his decline was less obvious, given his baseline behavior in the past.
It is not that he had a sterling track record of past thoughtful accomplishments
This. It just seems impossible the Inner Party didn’t know Biden’s condition.
My take is that Biden was being hidden from public scrutiny through the spring of 2024, so that the primaries could be blown off and Harris installed as the candidate. The Inner Party wanted her, and it was just a question of how to pull it off.
East Palestine may as well have been Krypton for Biden and company:
1. They would not risk further exposure and publicity of a bad event occurring on their watch.
2. Those BS Studies interns told them that the focus groups were negative on the visit.
3. Voters, shmoters. What was their turnout when we needed them?
4. Mayo Pete was too busy doing big things with power top men.
5. Too similar to Scranton so risk of diminishing the luster on the lunch box.
6. Palestine too much in the news, bury it and move on.
It is worth reflecting that, once again, without Obama, there is no Trump, or Biden. Both Obama and later Biden made Trump possible. Obama promised a change election, then threw the working class under the bus, cracked down on Occupy with paramilitary force, bailed out the bankers for thoroughly documented outright fraud and criminality, signed the odious budget sequestration nonsense, and presided over the gulf oil spill debacle, just to name a very very short list. (The weakest recession recovery for jobs, torching Medicare For all, ect ect ect.)
Doesn’t Clinton get at least a little bit of credit too?
Jason, it is true that Obama set the stage for Trump by making it clear that the Democrat Establishment know what the electorate wants, and are dedicated to making sure that they will never get it. He then handed the tools to HRC by declining to use his ample warchest surplus to retire the party debts after the election, as was traditional, sinking them in the OfA vanity project instead.
HRC was thus able to basically buy the nomination in 2015, when she struck a deal to pay off the outstanding debts in return for placing her people in key positions like the rules committee. That is why she was able in the fall of 2015 to state flatly, “I’m going to be the nominee” months before a single primary vote was cast.
The proximate cause of the Trump rise belongs with HRC, Robbie Mook, and John Podesta. They knew she was not beloved by the unwashed masses, and probably couldn’t defeat Jeb “The Smart One” Bush, who was expected to be the Republican candidate. She was also basically a lazy campaigner and didn’t want to work to improve her image, so they hatched the “Pied Piper” strategy: make sure her opponent was so ridiculous, so odious, that she could waltz in and claim her rightful place in the Oval Office. They considered Herman Cain, but decided on Trump.
Trump already had a grudge from being the punchline for all the Obama birther jokes (see the White House Correspondents’ Dinner), and with a little encouragement from Big Dog Bill, he decided to run. He got invited on all the weekend MSM talk shows, gaining huge amounts of free airtime exposure, so that suddenly he was no longer a joke, but a serious threat to the 2016 Republican clown car.
Unfortunately, they didn’t factor in quite how bad a candidate the Most Experienced Candidate Evah could be, insulting half the electorate, hanging out at fundraisers in the Hamptons instead of stumping in Wisconsin. And her campaign was beset by embarrassing email leaks demonstrating their corruption and dishonesty, scandals such as the Awan techs compromising Wasserman-Shultz and a big chunk of the House, the Seth Rich murder… It was a *family blog*.
But their opponent was Donald Trump, so they were sure they could replace their purged left wing with disaffected Republicans, and all the rest really didn’t matter, because Trump. And so they laid on the fireworks for the victory party, breaking the glass ceiling. Hubris, nemesis, etc.
Actual history is always more weird and fascinating than “realistic” or plausible fiction ever is.
Where do we have more of such goodies?
I know this is 101 for NC readers – but since I am newbie in comparison – how did the Podesta – HRC scheme work exactly? How did they machinate that Trump was accepted by Reps to run in primaries?
After all it´s not their party. Even if it sounds that way. One assume´s DNC under Obama and Clintons ran the entire country by way of controlling both parties. But isn´t that too simple? Where were the other players from GOP?
Robby Mook via Wiki:
“Mook also served in the United States Senate Page program” which is a program for “high-school age teen(s) serving the United States Senate in Washington, D.C. Pages are nominated by senators.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robby_Mook
In older times Mook would have been golden source material for a comedy a la “Man on the Moon” (Jim Carrey = Andy Kaufman)…
wikispooks:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Robby_Mook
“”As described in Shattered, Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook — who centered the Clinton operation on data analytics (information about voters, given to him by number crunchers) as opposed to more old-fashioned methods of polling, knocking on doors and trying to persuade undecideds — made one strategic mistake after another, but was kept on by Clinton, despite her own misgivings.”
source:
NYT
“‘Shattered’ Charts Hillary Clinton’s Course Into the Iceberg”
By Michiko Kakutani
April 17, 2017
https://archive.is/Tau1c
FWIW, I think the bus of history is going to run over obama, then back up over him, then run over him again, then back up…and etc… and he effing deserves it more than anyone.
I mean, mansions on both oceans and running the party like a mafioso from a third mansion in DC???
Imagine just the utility bills on the ones he’s doesn’t occupy
Total scum to this life long democrat.(carter mondale dukakis clintonx2 gore kerry and the scumbag once…never since or in the future…)#killitwithfire
Genocide Morning Joe and the other Joe
https://jacobin.com/2024/11/morning-joe-biden-gaza-israel
It said Biden watched the show religiously.
an aside: there are just over 2 months for the income admin to line up its staff and appointments, and to flesh out its policies, etc.
But also, there are just over 2 months for the current admin’s DoJ and IRS and etc to do everything it can to hobble and tie the incoming admin and its people in various legal knots. Or ramp up the destruction in Europe or the Middle East. etc. Politics ain’t beanbag, as they say. / ;)
This good interview Hedges with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-world-according-to-trump-w-col
(includes transcript)
But please someone tell Hedges that here he seriously errs:
“Well, they should have read the history of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin would send out a million men who would either get captured or die, and then he’d just send out another million, kind of the Putin strategy.”
That is true for NATO NOT the Russians, goddamit.
He doesn´t have to turn into a Putin fan but he must understand certain facts. He cannot just go and put this out if it´s not true.
When this all started Hedges predicted Chechnya style destruction of Ukraine.
Which simply was not the case. As we know.
I am not sure he knows or cares.
DROPSITE´s Murtaza Hussain on Trump government taking shape:
Trump is Eyeing Iran Hawk Brian Hook as First Foreign Policy Pick
“The Iranian view is that Trump wants to make a deal, but it depends on whether he appoints the same neoconservatives as last time”
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/trump-iran-hawk-hook-pompeo-israel-netanyahu-russia
“Brian Hook, a hawkish fixture of the first Donald Trump administration who formerly served under George W. Bush, is reportedly getting the call to start staffing the State Department for a new Trump term. Hook, known as a major Iran hawk who helped lead the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations that characterized Trump’s approach to Tehran, has been appointed to help oversee the formation of a new foreign policy team, according to reports from Politico and CNN.”
I doubt anything I hear so far.
John Kiriakou on CNs panel yesterday said he would expect that in this term we will hear little of new VP Vance especially on matters of nat sec. It seemed to not bother him that Vance is a war veteran. Most likely he would sit, listen, learn. Which would be an argument for usual suspects put into DoD and as SoS et al. But he also expressed willingness to grant Trump a chance and just wait what´s going to happen and offer no unfair prejudiced judgement.
The CDC handling the pandemic tweet is gold, I actually laughed aloud multiple times. But geez, I hope they put the camera down and got that under control!
Yeah, pretty much nails it Lol
This is closer to Roni Size than Massive Attack. Bristol aside, it’s akin to Noisia, but less palatable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUtgCWWWHZg