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2:00PM Water Cooler 12/19/2024

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Quitman Farm, Brooks, Georgia, United States.

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. Continuing Resolution founders, DOGE extra-constiutional, Trump opposes debt ceiling
  2. Mangione extradited to New York, lawyer claims overcharging.
  3. Boeing sells some planes.

* * *

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

* * *

Biden Administration

“A Weary Biden Heads for the Exit” [New York Times]. “The biggest box left is a cease-fire in Gaza and if he manages that, it would be a validating triumph for a departing president.” • Gag me with a spoon.

Trump Transition

“Republicans scrap spending bill, under pressure from Trump and Musk” [WaPo]. “Republicans scrapped House Speaker Mike Johnson’s bipartisan plan to avert a government shutdown, as President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk joined a broad swath of the House GOP on Wednesday to condemn a compromise bill that included Democratic policy priorities. The rebuke, which built steadily through the day and culminated with a long written statement from Trump in the late afternoon, has forced Johnson back to the drawing board on a plan to prevent a Christmastime shutdown — and maintain the support of his chaotic conference to be reelected as speaker early next year.” • Musk comments:

Are we little children of six? This is a dogpile orchestrated on X by the owner of X, in service of the extra-constitutional entity DOGE:

So, no problem there! I inveighed against extra-constitutional entities here, when Biden was losing his mind, and it wasn’t clear who, exactly, was running the country. And the same situation obtains today (“Heather Has Two Presidents”). Axelrove is right to ask:

“Rand Paul floats Elon Musk for Speaker” [The Hill]. “Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) suggested Elon Musk serve as Speaker in a Thursday morning post on X following contentious debates over the continuing resolution (CR). ‘The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,’ Paul wrote. ‘Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it . . . nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).’ Later Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she would be open to supporting Musk to replace Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a post quoting Paul. ‘I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House. DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency,” Greene wrote on X.” • Oh, so that’s what libertarianism is all about. “A libertarian and an oligarch walk into a bar, and the bartender says: ‘Sir, what’ll it be?'” • The debt ceiling was “a bad idea whose time has come” when introduced in the 1980s. Now it’s a bad idea whose time has gone…..

Meanwhile, Trump actually gets the right of it–

“Trump wants to kill the debt ceiling” [Axios]. “President-elect Trump told NBC News he supports abolishing the debt ceiling and is prepared to ‘lead the charge’ to make it happen. Republicans, including some of Trump’s strongest supporters in Congress, have historically opposed raising the debt ceiling, at least when a Democrat is in office. Now Trump says he’ll push them to scrap it entirely. That pronouncement comes a day after Trump came out against a spending deal, negotiated by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), to keep the government running through March His opposition effectively killed the bill and could lead to a government shutdown at midnight on Saturday. Raising the debt ceiling and funding the government are two separate cliffs Congress repeatedly bumps up against, and Trump is now linking them together. The debt ceiling is a particularly sticky issue for Republicans, as many campaign against running up debts. Conservative members tend to push back on raising the ceiling, particularly when a Democrat is in the White House. Thus, Republicans would likely oppose abolishing the debt ceiling in principle — but few want to pick a public fight with Trump. The president-elect also floated the idea of scrapping the debt ceiling when he was last in office, but nothing came of it. Trump pointed out Thursday that some Democrats have already backed abolishing the ceiling. ‘If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,’ he told NBC.”

Lawfare

“Fani Willis disqualified as prosecutor on Trump Georgia election case” [The Hill]. “A Georgia appeals court booted Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) office from the 2020 election interference case against President-elect Trump on Thursday due to her relationship with a top prosecutor on the case. The panel described Willis’s relationship with ex-special prosecutor Nathan Wade as a ‘significant appearance of impropriety.’ The court declined to outright dismiss Trump’s indictment, but disqualifying Willis’s office throws the future of the case — already complicated by Trump’s impending return to the White House — further into doubt. ‘After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,’ Judge E. Trenton Brown III wrote in the court’s ruling. ‘The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring,’ it continued. The decision leaves open a theoretical possibility another prosecutor could take over the case, but the path forward remains precarious.” • Too funny. I’d speculate that the Georgia Dems thought Fani Willis was gonna be their next Stacey Abrams. And so she was, except she flamed out faster and worse.

2024 Post Mortem

“The Difference That Matters Most Isn’t Between Left and Right” [Jeet Heer, The Nation]. “But left-right isn’t the only relevant taxonomy in politics. Ben Kawaller of The Free Press interviewed AOC-Trump voters for an illuminating TikTok video in which some expressed anger at inflation while others complained about Kamala Harris’s record as a hard-nosed prosecutor. One African American woman said, ‘Kamala Harris is a puppet.’ When Kawaller asked, ‘A puppet of who?,’ the woman responded, ‘A puppet for the system.’ In that succinct phrase, ‘a puppet for the system,’ we get to the heart of why Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2024—both times running as an anti-system politician channeling the anger of voters who are deeply frustrated by the status quo…. Not just in America but in other advanced democracies around the world, the most salient cleavage right now is not left versus right but system versus anti-system.” • Change vs. more of the same…

Democrats en déshabillé

Gonna need a bigger tent:

Republican Funhouse

“Musk and Trump are viewed roughly the same by Americans, an AP-NORC poll finds” [Associated Press]. “About 4 in 10 Americans have a somewhat or very favorable view of the world’s richest person, very similar to the percentage who view Trump positively. Likewise, about half of adults have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Musk — again, similar to Trump…. The relationship between the two men has no parallel in U.S. history, said David Nasaw, biographer of American business tycoons Andrew Carnegie and William Randolph Hearst. He noted that Musk, to a level unlike other tycoons, has relied on subsidies and favorable government decisions for his success from Tesla to SpaceX.” • So, utterly conflicted. As one would expect an oligarch in government to be, by the mere fact of ownership at scale.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“UnitedHealthcare CEO suspect faces federal murder, stalking charges after returning to NYC” [CBS]. “UnitedHealthcare CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione is back in New York Thursday after waiving extradition in Pennsylvania. He was ushered from the courtroom to a waiting plane by NYPD detectives after waiving extradition. Mangione could appear in front of a judge in New York City for arraignment in just a matter of hours…. He is then expected to be held at Rikers Island, where he will be in isolation and protective custody because of his high-profile status, sources said.” On the “overcharging” (hat tip, alert reader dommage): “‘The federal government’s reported decision to pile on top of an already overcharged first-degree murder and state terror case is highly unusual and raises serious constitutional and statutory double jeopardy concerns. We are ready to fight these charges in whatever court they are brought,’ Manhattan prosecutor-turned-defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said in a statement Thursday morning.”

“How New York prosecutors used a terrorism law in the charges against Luigi Mangione” [Associated Press]. “If a defendant is convicted, the “crime of terrorism” designation boosts the underlying offense into a more serious sentencing category. For example, an assault normally punishable by up to 25 years in prison would carry a potential life sentence.” Exactly as Bragg did with Trump, converting misdemeanors into felonies. More: “There’s no comprehensive count of cases where the anti-terrorism statute was used, because it can be layered onto many different types of charges, from weapons possession to murder…. In New York City alone, over a half-dozen cases of various sorts have used the terror law, starting with the 2004 indictment of a Bronx gang member. He was accused of killing a 10-year-old girl and paralyzing a man at a christening party…. Courts haven’t set out overarching rules for when a case qualifies. However, the state’s top court said the Bronx gang member’s case did not. The high court overturned his conviction. Justices were skeptical that the shooting — allegedly targeting a rival gang member — was meant to intimidate the broader community. They also worried that the meaning of terrorism could be trivialized if ‘applied loosely in situations that do not match our collective understanding of what constitutes a terrorist act.'”

“EXCLUSIVE: Investigators are convinced ‘CEO assassin’ Luigi Mangione did NOT act alone…and there are three key clues” [Daily Mail]. For Mangione stans, worth reading in full; too much detail to excerpt. “But two leaders in the investigative field who have analyzed the case have now told DailyMail.com that some key details are being ignored – and that those clues point to at least one accomplice to the alleged murderer.” Key point: “The shooter appears to be on the phone in the [CCTV] video, raising the prospect that an accomplice monitoring Thompson’s movements called him to say that the CEO would shortly be leaving his hotel, the five-star Marriott across the street from the Hilton. ‘If it were me doing surveillance of this sort, I’d be paying off a door guard or concierge. Like, ‘Hey man, I’m really trying to see what’s going on with this guy. Can you help me out?’ said [one investigator]. ‘It just seems like a team that was doing good surveillance and reporting to their client.'” • Also plenty of issues with the timeline. NOTE Given that “A second industry leader in private intelligence for celebrities and CEOs spoke to DailyMail.com on condition of anonymity due to being close to the case,” I wonder if this story was planted by the defense?

Here is a thread picking away at inconsistences, worth reading in full:

* * *

“Copyright Abuse Is Getting Luigi Mangione Merch Removed From the Internet” [404 Media]. “An entity claiming to be United Healthcare is sending bogus copyright claims to internet platforms to get Luigi Mangione fan art taken off the internet, according to the print-on-demand merch retailer TeePublic. An independent journalist was hit with a copyright takedown demand over an image of Luigi Mangione and his family she posted on Bluesky, and other DMCA takedown requests posted to an open database and viewed by 404 Media show copyright claims trying to get “Deny, Defend, Depose” and Luigi Mangione-related merch taken off the internet, though it is unclear who is filing them…. There is no world in which the copyright of a watercolor painting of Luigi Mangione surveillance footage done by Kenaston is owned by United Health Group as it quite literally has nothing to do with anything that the company owns. It is illegal to file a DMCA unless you have a “good faith” belief that you are the rights holder (or are representing the rights holder) of the material in question…. United Healthcare did not respond to multiple requests for comment…. It is theoretically possible that another entity impersonated United Healthcare to request the removal because copyfraud in general is so common.”

“He Was Surgeon General — And He’s Got Thoughts About the Reaction to the United Healthcare Killing” (interview) [Jerome Adams, Politico]. “This erosion of trust hurts everyone, from the upstream public health policy maker to an ICU doctor who’s trying to provide recommended care for a patient who’s refusing it because they say they don’t believe that the health care system has their best interest at heart. This leads to worse health outcomes. It prolongs public health challenges. And what scares me the most is, without trust, the foundation of our health care system starts to crumble. It makes it difficult to address current and future health issues, and that’s going to impact the new administration. I have said that very publicly that [officials] have to be careful about acknowledging real faults in the prior Covid response, while balancing that against the erosion of trust. In about a month, it’s not going to be on the Biden administration to deal with H5N1 [bird flu]. It’s going to be on the Trump administration. It’s not going to be on the Biden administration to deal with measles outbreaks across the country. It’s going to be on the Trump administration. You can’t un-ring that bell after you’ve helped sow mistrust in many ways, and then expect people to suddenly believe in what you’re saying when you’re in charge.”

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, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Walgreen’s positivity hasn’t gone up, but it hasn’t gone down, either.

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC December 9 Last week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC December 7 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC December 7

Hospitalization
★New York[5] New York State, data December 17: National [6] CDC December 12:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens December 16: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic December 14:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC November 25: Variants[10] CDC November 25:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 20: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 20:

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) Seeing a little more red, but nothing new at major international hubs. Interestingly, Calculated Risk is watching wastewater too.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveled out.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “Initial jobless claims in the US fell by 22,000 from the previous week to 220,000 on the first week of December, much more than market expectations that they would fall to 230,000, easing concerns of weaker labor conditions following last week’s unexpected surge. The result was in line with the Federal Reserve’s recent projections that few interest rate cuts would be required next year, signaling the FOMC’s view that inflation poses a bigger threat to the economy than a softening labor market.”

Manufacturing: “United States Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index in the US plunged to -16.4 in December 2024, its lowest level since April 2023, from -5.5 in November and way below expectations of 3, signaling a further weakening in regional manufacturing activity.”

Manufacturing: “United States Kansas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Kansas City Fed’s Manufacturing Production Index fell by one point from the previous month to -5 in December of 2024, its second consecutive negative print, and consistent with other surveys flagging contractionary trends in the US manufacturing sector.”

Real Estate: “United States Existing Home Sales” [Trading Economics]. “Existing home sales in the US rose by 4.8% from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.15 million in November 2024, the highest in eight months, compared to 3.96 million in October and better than market expectations of 4.07 million.”

* * *

Manufacturing: “Boeing Wins $36 Billion Deal From Turkey, Trumping Airbus” [Bloomberg]. “Boeing Co. won an order valued at $36 billion from Pegasus Hava Tasimaciligi AS, in its biggest commitment so far this year that deals a blow to rival Airbus SE, previously the preferred choice for the Turkish low-cost airline. The carrier has firm orders for 100 of the as-yet uncertified 737 Max 10 model that it will begin receiving in 2028, with options for another 100, it said in a stock exchange filing. The total value of the agreement assumes that all options are converted, though customers typically negotiate steep discounts for large deals. The accord, the largest order in Pegasus’s history, is an important win for Boeing as it works to overcome the fallout from a prolonged strike and a near-catastrophic accident at the start of the year. For Pegasus, the deal marks a strategic reversal after the carrier said less than two years ago that it wanted to become an all-Airbus operator.” • Wow, Turkey’s really been in the news lately!

Manufacturing: “Taiwan’s China Airlines splits $12-billion jet deal between Boeing and Airbus” [Reuters]. • Wow, Taiwans’ really been in the news lately!

Manufacturing: “Airline watchdog group demands answers from NTSB regarding Boeing crashes” [KOIN]. “The Foundation for Aviation Safety, led by former Boeing manager-turned-whistleblower Ed Pierson, is raising concerns about the NTSB’s response to issues with the 737 Boeing Airliners in connection to two deadly plane crashes: 2018’s Lion Air incident and 2019’s Ethiopian Air incident…. The watchdog group claims it uncovered evidence of issues with Boeing’s electrical manufacturing that may hold weight in each case. However, they allege the NTSB is not sharing this information with international agencies and investigators as they should…. Compared to the aftermath of the 2018-19 fatal crashes, the Foundation for Aviation Safety said the NTSB’s investigation into Boeing’s safety issues was much more robust for the non-fatal Alaska Airlines incident in which a door plug blew out a plane mid-air above Portland nearly one year ago.”

The Bezzle:

Yes, this happens to me:

But of course Elon would never manipulate clicks or bots for political purposes, not even for something really important, like DOGE, or Mars colonization….

The Bezzle:

And of course Elon would never manipulate the training sets or prompts…

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 27 Neutral (previous close: 33 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 50 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 19 at 12:53:31 PM ET. Quite a swing!

Gallery

I dunno. This doesn’t feel like New England to me. Am I wrong?

This, however, does:

I feel the ocean off to the right.

Zeitgeist Watch

“Advanced Civilizations Could be Indistinguishable from Nature” [Universe Today]. “One of the foundational questions of our day concerns the Fermi Paradox, the contradiction between what seems to be a high probability of extraterrestrial life and the total lack of evidence that it exists…. ‘As the authors state,’ [researcher Lukáš] Likavčan writes regarding Haqq-Misra and Baum’s sustainability solution, ‘the formulation of the Fermi paradox contains a biased presupposition based on the observation of only one planetary community of intelligent species (i.e. humans), which is in turn based on a warped understanding of human history, which assumes that history unfolds in a progressive series of civilizational, colonial expansions.’…. [But if] the planet is primary… any technosphere will have to be harmonious with planetary conditions. From that perspective, the only successful technosphere is one that folds back into the biosphere, making it very difficult, even impossible, to detect.” • Hmm.

“The EU must build on past successes” [Martin Wolf, Financial Times]. Filing here because of this passage: “Europe should not embrace a social model that risks delivering the US pathologies of premature death, mass murder and stratospheric rates of incarceration. Yet radical changes are essential.” • Ignore the haters, Uncle Sam!

Class Warfare

“Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season” [Reuters]. “Thousands of Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab workers will walk off the job on Thursday morning, in the crucial final days of the holiday season, after union officials said the retailer failed to come to the bargaining table to negotiate contracts. The strike is a challenge to Amazon’s operations as it races to fulfill orders during its busiest season of the year, although union-represented facilities represent only about 1% of Amazon’s hourly workforce. In the New York City area, for example, the company has multiple warehouses and smaller delivery depots. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said unionized workers at facilities in New York City; Skokie, Illinois; Atlanta, San Francisco and southern California will join the picket line to seek contracts guaranteeing better wages and work conditions. The Teamsters union has said it represents about 10,000 workers at 10 of the company’s U.S. facilities. Workers at seven of those facilities will walk out on Thursday, the Teamsters said.”

News of the Wired

“A Knife Forged in Fire” [Chicago Magazine]. “He put it back in the forge and this time heated it until it was in a yellow rage of photons. Again, he fitted the wrench to the glowing end. And then, using his entire body and the leverage of the long-handled wrench, he began twisting and twisting. The metal shed great gray flakes, and the yellow bar gradually turned orange, looking like a twist of taffy as Sam put all of his effort into the now-helical bar until it would turn no more. It was as if he were doing battle not so much with steel but with fire itself, placing the bright yellow bar in the press and then wringing the light right out of it, for that’s what it was, a blade of bright light that he strangled until it went black.” • Just a touch over-written, but what a neat process!

“ISO 8583: The language of credit cards” [Increase]. “When the standard was first defined in 1987, it included the overall structure of the message specification and the names and lengths of the core fields, such as the card number (“primary account number”) in field 2 and the transaction amount in field 4. The message began with a 4-digit Message Type Indicator code representing whether it was an authorization message, a reversal, or some other message type. This was followed by a bitmap that told the recipient which fields were present. It left room for a few fields that could be used by networks to include network-specific information, and as a result the various card network specifications quickly diverged through a series of nested fields that did not overlap at all. Later versions of the standard greatly increased the number of fields, reducing the need for network-specific behavior for new implementations. Specifications like Visa’s Base I have thousands of clients running on everything from mainframes to devices like ATMs, however, making sweeping backwards incompatible changes next to impossible. As a result, these specifications still largely follow the rules set forth by the original standard from 1987.” • Also a neat process.

* * *

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 JJD:

JJS writes: “Amanita caesarea emerging. One of them knocked out by a squirrel, sadly.” I hope the squirrel didn’t take a bite!

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

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

Subscribe to Post Comments
78 comments

  1. Glen

    A new Internet milestone for me. Got an ad for The Best Ad Blocker on YT which was then blocked by the ad blocker.

    When can we have a day or week where we all just don’t buy what is being advertised on our phones?

  3. Swamp Yankee

    Pretty sure it’s Truro or Provincetown MA in the first Hopper painting. I recognize the spot on Rt 6 or 6A today, I think.

      2. Swamp Yankee

        I’m probably a bad judge of this one, having been by that spot hundreds if not thousands of times (probably hundreds). And of course, as I know you know, Truro and Provincetown are on Cape Cod.

        But with all that said, I think the landscape of the Outer Cape feels very _sui_generis_; it certainly doesn’t feel like “mainland” New England, even here in Plymouth County on the other side of the bay.

        Whereas the second painting is more typical of standard New England architecture.

        The Outer Cape is Big Sky County for New England, too, further complicating the feeling of the painting (I have a sense that it is looking Southeast, in the “Toward Boston” railroad painting, towards the open Atlantic over the Truro Highlands).

        1. mrsyk

          The second painting shows a classic New England “saltwater farmhouse”, where the outbuildings are connected to the house, this to keep you out of the weather. We used to get snow.

    2. aletheia33

      yes, i had the same thought before i saw swamp yankee’s post. i’ve spent time in that landscape and tip of the cape was my guess.
      and yes, “you had to be there”–i’m so glad i was!
      OTOH the cape cod afternoon didn’t look familiar to me–probably b/c i’ve never spent time on that part of the cape.

    3. psv

      Thanks SY, that is interesting – my initial take was similar to Lambert’s, it seemed the ochre color tones and the lack of trees made it feel like it was from further away (even had it been autumn). While the single tree and the blues and greens in the second image felt immediately more like New England shore to me.

      I’ve never been that far out on the Cape, though.

    4. upstater

      Can you imagine how nice it must have been on the Cape with regular passenger trains and not choked with cars?

  4. ChrisFromGA

    Long term rates continue to blow out from yesterday’s Fed Policy error.

    Hope you weren’t counting on lower mortgage rates anytime soon.

      1. nyleta

        Huge USD liquidity swap by the ECB to get through Xmas today, much larger than needed by normal operations. Worried about something happening over Xmas ? Surely the Fed doesn’t shutdown these days ?

  5. FreeMarketApologist

    Re: “…the five-star Marriott across the street from the Hilton…“. Five stars?!? It’s a perfectly fine hotel, but it’s no five stars. Maybe his dial goes to 20?

  7. vao

    I hope the squirrel didn’t take a bite!

    Isn’t Amanita Caesarea actually one of the few edible amanitae?

      1. DJG, Reality Czar

        BillS:

        You beat me.

        Yes, ovoli are highly appreciated by the Italians. Italians like to eat them raw, which is why identification has to be flawless, as you note.

        I ordered a similar salad last fall against the advice of Greg Marley, whose book Chanterelle Dreams / Amanita Nightmares, is excellent. Marly says not to eat any mushrooms raw, even the ubiquitous white button mushroom.

        I was at my favorite piola. I asked the waitress Alè if raw mushrooms are poisonous. Her response:

        “I’ll come back in ten minutes to see if you’re dead.”

        Ahhh, the Torinesi…

        They didn’t have ovoli this fall. So it may have been a less plentiful year. This fall, it was porcini galore here in the Undisclosed Region.

        More on the mushroom, from Italian Wiki:
        https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_caesarea

    4. thump

      Here in SF Bay Area, CA, I know of only two common Amanitas that are deadly, A. phalloides (death cap) and A. ocreata (destroying angel). Death caps can be a little tricky since they can vary a bit in appearance, but once you recognize all their forms, your life should be safe. Supposedly, you can also eat A. muscaria and A. pantherina if you slice them up and pre-boil them to remove (non-lethal but unpleasant) toxins, but I have not eaten them in any form. I have collected and eaten A. calyptroderma (Coccora), A. velosa (springtime Amanita), and A. constricta (grisettes). All were yummy. I also once found a pretty clutch of white Amanitas that I collected but, after being unable to identify them, declined to eat. Reference for anyone interested.

  10. Jason Boxman

    So will President-elect Musk join the budget negotiations now?

    But in all seriousness, this was always happening behind closed doors, with donors putting their foot on the scales, as distasteful as that is. At least Musk is doing it out in the open, and people can see clearly that their government is actually run by a billionaire donor and supporter. The sooner Trump runs out of patience with Musk in the limelight, the better. But maybe that never happens?

    Gonna be a fun four years, particularly if H5N1 hits. It hasn’t yet in 30 years, maybe it won’t for the foreseeable future, but Biden and industry are doing whatever they can to speed up the timeline on this, having already nuked public health and social solidarity from orbit.

    1. Old Sarum

      This idea that Musk could be a de facto President-elect is just silly given his links to outposts of the former British Empire. In his position I’d be on track to become His Elonic Majesty, Emperor of the Yanks (no less).

      Pip-Pip!

      ps If “The Blob” has got a file on me does that amount to ‘stalking’.

      1. ambrit

        Yes, it does. Not only that, but deploying Hasbara to the site to provoke “non-compliant” comments is a form of “baiting a field.”

      1. Jason Boxman

        This is truly astonishing, and people should be going to jail. We had a senile president for four years. This ought to be earth shattering, it ought to call into question the legitimacy of our governing structures, to say nothing of a complete abdication of responsibility by the Democrat Party and the press and the entire political class itself.

        What a disgrace.

        It certainly puts the lie that we live in any kind of Democracy, when the executive branch is being run by whoever happens to be present, and not the duly elected president. No one voted Biden’s staff to be group president.

        America is not a serious country, but sadly it is a dangerous one with an arsenal enough to destroy the world, and enough say in the global financial system that it can starve and ruin many countries that don’t play ball with whatever the Washington Consensus might be. In that, it doesn’t matter whether Biden is cognitively deficient or not, since the Washington Consensus is shared by all.

        2. Acacia

          Adding: this also puts the lie to any claims the DNC “didn’t know” about Biden’s condition and that Harris was swapped in to replace him at the eleventh hour.

          The DNC knew. They just didn’t want voters to know, so that they could skip actual primaries and force Harris as “the only choice to save our Democracy.”

  14. The Rev Kev

    “Boeing Wins $36 Billion Deal From Turkey, Trumping Airbus”

    Maybe this was part of a deal between Turkiye and Blinken about Syria. The US gives something big to Turkiye and the Turks give the US the contract for Boeing. If true, the US must have given Erdogan something substantial for $36 Billion worth.

    2. spud

      if this does not show the brics that turkey cannot be trusted, and all investments must stop, then they get what they deserve.

      china may soon find a lot of extremists in the western border lands. and russia loses the caspian basin.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Maybe this was part of a deal between Turkiye and Blinken about Syria.

      What I attempted to subtly point out yesterday, noting that Taiwan got a deal on the very same day. Just the State Department doing the State Department thing!

  15. Jason Boxman

    Avian Flu Has Hit Dairies So Hard That They’re Calling It ‘Covid for Cows’

    Complete with mock-downs?

    A fast-growing outbreak of avian flu has upended California’s dairy industry, the nation’s largest producer of milk, infecting most of the state’s herds and putting thousands of farmworkers at risk for contracting the virus.
    In just about four months, cows in 645 dairies in California have tested positive for H5N1, even as many ranchers have taken strict precautions to stop the virus from spreading. Gov. Gavin Newsom was concerned enough Wednesday that he declared a state of emergency over the outbreak in California.

    Well, we don’t give PPE to the workers, and what “strict” precautions?

    Farmers took precautions by cutting off contact with other dairy farms, regularly testing their milk for the virus, disinfecting new equipment and preventing workers from other farms from visiting, said Dr. Payne, who studies biosecurity on farms. This fall, cattle ranchers in California also scrambled to isolate their herds because it has been believed that avian flu spreads through close contact between cows.

    Yet those measures haven’t always worked.

    (double emphasis for the stupid part)

    So, no PPE. And no possibility of airborne transmission, then?

    The actual number of infected farmworkers is likely higher than what has been reported because many tend to avoid testing so they don’t have to miss work, said Elizabeth Strater, a national vice president of the labor union United Farm Workers. Farmworkers who are undocumented may also be reluctant to report that they’re sick, she said, because they are worried about potentially having to provide their personal information to a government agency.

    So we’re still not really doing anything, then?

    Good times!

    1. steppenwolf fetchit

      The relevant authorities hope it will evolve to spread human-to-human and be virulent enough to advance the Jackpot Agenda by a few more million.

  17. steppenwolf fetchit

    Here’s two back-to-back referrences to articles about Trump, President Musk, and the rejection of the continuing budget bill.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1hhshnl/musk_kills_government_funding_deal_demands/
    and
    https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1hi1yli/trump_sure_seems_pissed_at_elon_musk_over_the/

    And yesterday I saw a referrence to Bernie Sanders speaking of “President Musk” and the bill shut-down.
    ( Let’s see if I can find it . . . ahh yes, here it is . . . )
    https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5047584-bernie-sanders-blasts-elon-musk-spending-deal/

    I thought that was mildly brilliant of Sanders, referring to President Musk like that. In the spirit of John Robb’s Global Guerillas, perhaps enough people can attack the “Schwerpunkt” of the TrumpAdmin, which is Trump’s own fragile tender pride, by referring to ” Trump” and “President Musk” whenever those names come up. All the elected Democrats should insist on meeting with “President Musk” before considering anything before the House or Senate. They might also start referring to ” Vice President Ramaswamy” as well.

    Start calling Trump . . . Fake President Trump the Fake President and start calling Vance . . . Fake Vice President Vance the Fake Vice President. And start referring to Musk and Ramaswamy as President Musk and Vice President Ramaswamy.

    If Biden is invited to The Inauguration, he should reply with . . . ” I’ll only come if President Musk is also attending.”

      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        So let him do it.

        Meanwhile, keep shooting back-back with referrences to President Musk. And as I said, the Dems should demand Musk’s presence in every meeting with Republicans. They should say that they will “accept no substitutes” and that includes Trump because ” Trump is a fake substitute”.

        This is about causing Trump to go Captain Queeg on Steroids to see what shakes out. Maybe it will make him disavow the DOGE, so the DOGE can then go Freelance and make it obvious Who Governs America.

        1. steppenwolf fetchit

          Or maybe start calling Trump the “technically” President and calling Musk the “really” President.

          Trump shouldn’t get to be the only troll around here. Troll Trump. Troll Trump. Troll Trump . . .

  18. amfortas the hippie

    the knife bit…maybe a bit overwrought…but not really if youve ever actually done a bit of blacksmithing.
    i have…only useful thing i made when i finally had all the parts and pieces of my shop, was a froe, for splitting pine knots.
    still use it.
    but then Tam got cancer and i dropped everything, and chickens, geese and sheep made the shop into a chaotic nightmare.
    but im fenced from sheep, now…and they were the real problem.
    but also mud daubers, who…it turns out…love filling electric motors with mud nests,lol.
    so i gotta take all that stuff apart before i can work on that sort of thing, again.
    this article/essay has me fired up, as it were, to at least begin the restoration.

  19. Doug

    Just wondering: Since the Speaker of the House is in the line of succession to the presidency, does that person have to meet the requirements for that office, e.g. being a naturally born citizen. Musk obviously isn’t. But how has the age requirement been dealt with? You only have to be 25 to be in the House, but the minimum age to be president is 35. Has the Speaker ever been younger than 35?

    1. albrt

      I don’t think it’s ever been tested in court since we never had to go beyond the vice president, but I believe they would simply skip over the ineligible person in the line of succession. Albright and Kissinger would have been ineligible to serve as president but were allowed to be secretary of state.

    2. Dommage

      Henry Clay, born April 12, 1777. Speaker in the 1st session of the 12th Congress that commenced November 1811. The succession law of 1792 (then in effect) did list the Speaker after Vice President and the president pro tempore of the Senate.

  20. flora

    re: Edward Hopper, “Toward Boston.”

    Toward Boston could have been somewhere out west, painted while traveling east to Boston. / ;)

    1. Glen

      I did notice those seem to be the standard building colors for Union Pacific from that time period (we had an abandon station with the exact same colors where I was raised in the Bay Area), but I think other railroads were using similar color schemes:

      Union Pacific Bridges and Buildings
      https://utahrails.net/up/up-bridges-buildings.php

      Ed Hopper, love the art. Here’s bit of Hopper – we’re gonna teach those young un’s some art if we gotta crap it up on TV!):

      That 70s Show – Phille’s/Nighthawks
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPiakblP0Ig

      And, this is out there if you own a TP-Link router:

      TP-Link Routers Could Be Banned In the Next Year, Affecting Nearly 65% of Internet Users in the US
      https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/tp-link-routers-could-be-banned-in-the-next-year-affecting-nearly-65-of-internet-users-in-the-us/

  21. steppenwolf fetchit

    Here’s another item about how Musk is/ will-be the real President and Trump is a fake President ( or will be as soon as he becomes inaugurated).
    The comments section offers some neat meme-ideas which if they got viralized and spread so far and wide over TwiXtter and Truth Social might actually upset Trump enough into declaring DOGE to be “persona non grata” at the White House, Mar a Lago, and all Trump’s Towers and Golf Resorts.

    That won’t be the end of DOGE, of course. If Trump did that, President Musk would become Shadow-President Musk and Vice President Ramaswamy would become Shadow Vice President Ramaswamy. They would take DOGE into the Politics Business all on its own. They would tell the Congress what to vote for and vote against and they might even try to become the Power behind the MAGA Throne, and dare Trump to object.

    Anyway, here is the link.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1hi61wz/president_musk_and_his_puppet/

  23. Matthew

    With all due sympathy it seems obvious to me that the UHC assassination does meet the classic definition of terrorism, that is to say public violence to coerce political aims.

    “How New York prosecutors used a terrorism law in the charges against Luigi Mangione”

    1. Pat

      Funnily enough I think that the bar for terrorism has to be much higher than one guy shooting another, regardless of the aims. I think it actually has to cause public terror. Sure you might be able to make the case that a bunch of overpaid psychopaths now are a little more worried than they were before the shooting despite their private security, but frankly I don’t think average Joe and Jane and whatever works for neuter has any more fear that they are a target from someone trying to point out how broken and corrupt the health insurance industry in America is then they did prior to the shooting.
      OTOH I do believe there is a case to be made that United Health, all its subsidiaries and every senior executive of those entities should be charged with terrorism as they terrorize their customers into fearing getting sick, fearing needing care and fearing the battle they will need to take on to get the rapacious, greedy crooks to actually pay for the healthcare that their premiums guarantee.
      I’m also pretty sure that most of the public would endorse my reading on what is terrorism far more than Bragg’s or yours.

    2. Acacia

      So you would agree that somebody shooting a cop in revenge for the police killing their pet dog — that person is now a terrorist?

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > With all due sympathy it seems obvious to me that the UHC assassination does meet the classic definition of terrorism, that is to say public violence to coerce political aims.

      I disagree. This definion permits terrorism that “kicks down,”* e.g. cops to some neighborhoods/races. In fact, with not too much effort, you could define wage labor as “terrorism.” It removes terrorism from history and all context.

      NOTE * I think terrorism “kicks up,” exactly like non-violence does.

    1. JBird4049

      Well, in the North, the police were created to control the poor while in the South, they arose organically from the slave patrols that not only dealt with slaves, they essentially treated poor whites the same way. Perhaps just a tad less brutally.

      And both also had the task of preventing any kind of organizing especially of unions and across racial lines.

      The NYPD is performing to spec.

      1. CA

        Thank you, I had no idea of this:

        Using Google AI:

        1) Police forces in the North were largely established to control burgeoning working-class populations, including immigrants and the poor.

        2) The origins of Southern policing are deeply rooted in the “slave patrols,” which were organized to enforce slave codes and recapture runaway slaves.

  25. eg

    Rev“The Difference That Matters Most Isn’t Between Left and Right” [Jeet Heer, The Nation].

    I am fairly certain that I have recommended several times already Johnathan Hopkin’s Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/italian-political-science-review-rivista-italiana-di-scienza-politica/article/abs/antisystem-politics-the-crisis-of-market-liberalism-in-rich-democracies-by-johnathan-hopkin-oxford-oxford-university-press-2020-272p-1899/1BACE3ABE5AADCE1CCAF87E28BC1317C

    Short version — this goes well beyond the US …

  27. griffen

    An entry for the Sports Desk, as the college football system embarks to a new era with this weekend scheduled slate of College Football Playoffs, to be held at iconic home stadiums in Austin ( Texas Longhorns ), in Columbus, in Happy Valley and at Notre Dame…an added revenue stream likely means some extra millions in revenue for local establishments near these large venues. College football may find themselves awash in even more revenue in another decade, if that’s even possible.

    It’s all about the money, I mean the academics ( ok, maybe not every instance of a C- student getting a grade changed is all bad…). The prognosticator team at CNBC has unveiled a new ranking system, which purports to list major collegiate sports departments in the same manner that professional league franchises are rated.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/19/college-sports-programs-valuations.html

  28. spud

    the almost complete child like embrace of the cartoonist beliefs that giving the police, the D.A.’s, town and city councils, county and state officials, corporations and share holders immunity from their crimes, as the deplorable are stolen from at all directions, beaten, and incarcerated for petty crimes like jaywalking, is going to build faith and trust in the system.

    ““This erosion of trust hurts everyone, from the upstream public health policy maker to an ICU doctor who’s trying to provide recommended care for a patient who’s refusing it because they say they don’t believe that the health care system has their best interest at heart. This leads to worse health outcomes. It prolongs public health challenges. And what scares me the most is, without trust, the foundation of our health care system starts to crumble. It makes it difficult to address current and future health issues”

    the U.S. is close to anarchy. immunity and limited liability must go. i can understand it at the federal government level like the house, senate, and president, but that’s it.

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