2:00PM Water Cooler 10/29/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Patient readers, I’m in the midst of an enormous thunderstorm. Let’s hope the power doesm’t go all Third World on me! –lamnbert

Bird Song of the Day

Common Nightingalem, Tavira, Faro, Portugal. Another duet!

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Kamala campaign begins closing argments.
2. The Fascist question.
3. Memories of Richard Scarry

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

“How Indigenous voters swung the 2020 election” [High Country News]. • So Biden did Kamala a solid, albeit a minimalist one from the Native American perspective.

2024

Countdown!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

Lambert here: Tiny margins, but all red. If I were running the Kamala campaign, I’d want to see some blue. Of course, we on the outside might as well be examining the entrails of birds when we try to predict what will happen to the subset of voters (undecided; irregular) in a subset of states (swing), and the irregulars, especially, who will determine the outcome of the election but might as well be quantum foam, but presumably the campaign professionals have better data, and have the situation as under control as it can be _{MR SUBLIMINAL Fooled ya. Kidding!}.

* * *

Kamala (D): “Harris reaches for a big moment in her closing argument for ‘turning the page’ on Trump” [Associated Press]. ” Vice President Kamala Harris will make the “closing argument” for her presidential campaign Tuesday from the same site where Donald Trumpfomented the Capitol insurrection, hoping it offers a stark visualization of the alternate futures that voters face if she or Trump takes over the Oval Office.” “Trumpfomented” is a rare copy editing error by AP, unless they intend it to be a new verb. More: “One week out from Election Day, Harris was to use her 7:30 p.m. ET address from the grassy Ellipse near the White House to pledge to Americans that she will work to improve their lives while arguing that her Republican opponent is only in it for himself.” • The Ellipse was Trump gave a speech to a crowd, pre-riot; the riot itself took place, as is well known, at the Grant Memorial and the Capitol itself, two miles away. (If the famous gallows comes up at a talking point during Kamala’s speech, nobody knows who put it up, why the Park Service didn’t take it down, or even whether it was functional.)

Kamala (D): “Harris, entering final stretch, stresses unity and paints Trump as a divider” [WaPo]. “”We are all here because we are fighting for a democracy and for the right of people to be heard and seen,” Harris said. “We are not about the ‘enemy within.’ We are all in this together, and that is what we are fighting for.’” • How are the “deplorables” not an “enemy within”? Commentary:

Hard to imagine a victorious D party simply letting all these tens of millions of “Nazis” it has identified and demonized simply melt back into the general population and go about their lives

— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) October 29, 2024

Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris hitting every battleground state in final days, hoping to drive turnout” [CBS]. “Vice President Kamala Harris will visit every battleground state in the final week before Election Day, with a focus on female voters who she hopes will propel her to the White House. The campaign has directed several messages to female voters in recent days, reminding them that what happens in the voting booth is a secret. A Democratic ad released Monday delivers the message: “You can vote any way you want and no one will ever know.’” • Who on earth concocted a “lie to your husbands”? Commentary:

I can’t imagine not knowing my wife well enough to know exactly how she’d vote.

I can’t imagine my wife not talking to me about any of these controversial topics.

I can’t believe there’s a campaign that encourages women to lie and deceive their husbands. pic.twitter.com/Ibevl098Nu

— Jared Bell (@jaredadairbell) October 28, 2024

You don’t have to be a religious conservative to find this questionable.

Kamala (D): “Democrats launch ads in nail salons, malls in final swing-state sprint” [CNBC]. “One week before Election Day, Democrats are spending big to target swing-state voters in nail salons, lifestyle magazines and shopping malls — all places where they might normally seek to escape the news.” • Nail salons is smart; working class milieu, even the clientele at many venues. Perhaos the ads will have a reproductive freedom subtext (“Does she… or doesn’t she?” “Only her hairdresser knows for sure.”)

* * *

Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris’ VP choice Tim Walz had secret fling with daughter of top Chinese Communist official during teaching stint in China” [Daily Mail]. “Jenna Wang, 59, claims the VP hopeful showered her with gifts and seduced her at his poky staff accommodation at No. 1 High School in Foshan, Guangdong Province. ‘Tim was very passionate and very romantic. I can still remember dancing with him to our favorite song, Careless Whisper,’ . ‘The fact we couldn’t touch or kiss in public just made it all the more exciting and intense when we were finally alone. We were deeply in love and I wanted to marry him and start a family. When it didn’t happen, I felt very unhappy and sad. Tim’s behavior was very selfish.’” And: “Walz never again crossed paths with Wang, who emigrated to Europe several years later where she now works as teacher, translator and cultural mediator. She says the pair last exchanged a handful of friendly messages over Facebook in 2009 and talked about how their lives had panned out.” • And the Mail can’t even print the the Facebook messages? (The Mail does print a photo Wang supplied, of herself in a bathing suit at the beach, very much alone.)

* * *

Kamala (D): “Harris mum on her past pledge for ‘Dreamers’” [Axios]. From September. “Vice President Kamala Harris is backing away from her past promise to use presidential power to unilaterally give a path to citizenship to 2 million “Dreamers” — undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. It’s part of a pattern in which Harris and her team have changed her positions or declined to say whether she still supports some of the progressive policies she ran on during her presidential campaign in 2019.” • I wonder if Latino voters noticed.

Kamala (D): “Rogan says he rejected Harris campaign’s interview conditions” [Politico]. “Podcast host Joe Rogan declined the Harris campaign’s offer to record an interview with Kamala Harris on Tuesday because he “would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour.’” • I’d bet Kamala knew she couldn’t do three hours, and so imposed unacceptable conditions.

* * *

Trump (R): “Hmm: Donald Trump and Mike Johnson Have a “Little Secret” Election Plan” [Vanity Fair]. “Some journalists and politicians have interpreted Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks, delivered as he thanked House Speaker Mike Johnson for appearing at the MSG event, as a possible signal that Johnson is prepared to override the electoral college… Under the 12th Amendment, the House of Representatives selects the president if no candidate reaches 270 votes in the electoral college. Each state delegation gets one vote; Republicans currently control the majority of them.” • That’s not an “over-ride.” Again, those are the rules; that’s how a tie is settled. Now, you can argue that this is an illegitimate outcome — cue the Color Revolution — but you cannot argue it’s not a Constitutional one (though wait for some lawfare dude to come up with something).

* * *

WA: “Arson destroys hundreds of ballots inside a Washington state drop box” [Washington State Standard]. In Vancouver. “Vancouver is located in the 3rd Congressional District, where Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is running for reelection against Republican Joe Kent. The race is one of a handful nationwide expected to determine partisan control of the U.S. House. In 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent by 2,629 votes.” • Of course the answer is more surveillance.

* * *

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Panic Politics: The Press and Pundits Face Devastating Polls on the Threat to Democracy” [Jonathan Turley]. “The Post has been doggedly portraying the election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris as a choice between tyranny (Trump) and democracy (Harris). Yet when it commissioned a poll on threats to democracy shortly before the election, it did not quite work out. Voters in swing states believe that Trump is more likely to protect democracy than Kamala Harris, who is running on a ‘save democracy’ platform. The [Post-Schrar] poll sampled 5,016 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. When asked whether Trump or Harris ‘would do a better job’ of ‘defending against threats to democracy,’ 43% picked Trump while 40% picked Harris. Notably, this was the same result when President Biden was the nominee. While over half said that threats to democracy were important to them, the voters trusted Trump (44%) more than Biden (33%) in protecting democracy. Even with the slight improvement for Harris, the result was crushing for not just many in the Harris campaign but the press and pundits who have been unrelenting in announcing the end of democracy if Harris is not elected.” • Oopsie.

“New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism” [A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry]. An analysis of Trump’s rhetoric that takes it seriously, and literally. “The American system is a fair bit more resilient to this sort of takeover than the Weimar Republic or the Kingdom of Italy, but resilient is not immune – such an effort could succeed and even if it failed could do tremendous damage. Fascists, after all, rarely leave power without violence – this one didn’t leave office non-violently last time, you will recall. And please believe me when I say I do not want this to come to violence, by anyone, at any point. As I’ve said before, attempting to ‘win the stasis‘ – the Greek word for political violence – by out-violence-ing the opposition is a losing game that just tears apart the social fabric. But it is not yet 1933. It is still 1932: the train has not left the station yet.” • This is perhaps the most reasoned case for the prosecution I have been. But I’m scanning down Eco’s checklist, and when I think of Democrats I check off #3 (“The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake” [Ukraine and Israel policy]), #4 (“Disagreement is Treason” [Censorship Industrial Complex, the organs of state security generally]), #5 (“Fear of Difference” [“deplorables”]), #6 (“Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class” [PMC careerism]), #7 (“The Obsession with a Plot” [RussiaGate]), even #8 (“The Deceptively Strong/Weak Eternal Opponent” [“President of all the People” vs. half the people are deplorables]), #10 (“Contempt for the Weak” [eugenicist Covid policy, genocide]), and #13 “Selective Populism”, and #14 “Newspeak” (identity politics jargon). The Democrats aren’t animated by #1 (“The Cult of Tradition”), #2 (“The Rejection of Modernism”), #9 (“Life is Permanent Warfare”), or, fortunately, #11 (“The Cult of Heroism”) or #12 “Machismo”), but I think you will agree with me when I say that the fascist smorgasbord serves up a hearty feed for both parties. I agree with Paxton on method: “What you ought to be studying is the milieu out of which they grew,” which this post does not do. So, granting the post’s premise, 9/14 vs. 14/14? A Sophie’s Choice indeed! (None that on #10, genocide and eugenicist policiy, we are looking at what has already been done, as opposed to what might be done, in the future. a bog-standard Democrat trope.

“Turning Pointe” [Harpers Bazaar]. “With her mane of long brown hair and ramrod-straight posture, [Mary Helen] Bowers oozed ballerina: graceful, girlish, disciplined, slightly prim—always smiling sweetly, even through her grueling workouts. ‘I mean, really, she’s kind of flawless,’ says writer and brand consultant Ray Siegel. ‘I would have a hard time coming up with a single negative thing to say about her.’ Bowers’s Instagram feed is crowded with Sugar Plum Fairy images of toe shoes, tutus, and her own four young children (including a photo of herself in graceful arabesque while at the hospital in labor with one of them). But two things Bowers rarely posts about are her husband of 17 years, Paul Dans, and politics. One would have to have been paying very close attention to notice when Dans was appointed to various posts within the Trump administration. Or when, in 2020, Trump named Bowers to the board of trustees at the Kennedy Center. And in recent years, even those who did notice didn’t make waves about it—not publicly, at least. But this summer, Ballet Beautiful clients, particularly those with left-leaning views, got quite a shock when Dans emerged as something of a celebrity in his own right as the director of conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation’s Presidential Transition Project, better known as Project 2025.” And: “Not everyone has a workout instructor whose husband is one of the architects of one of the most damaging right-wing-ideological social plans on speed dial, but lots of us have a QAnon sister-in-law or an antivax hairstylist. With a historically divisive election upon us, plenty of Americans will have to decide: When the people in your life—or even the people in their lives—have drastically different values from your own, do you turn a blind eye? Or do you turn your back?” • If the Democrat base truly believes this, it’s hard to see Kamala’s message of “unity” having much effect. Perhaos that alien landing needs to happen after all. That’ll unify us!

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!

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Job Openings” [Trading Economics]. “The number of job openings fell by 418,000 to 7.443 million in September 2024 from a downwardly revised 7.861 million in August and below market expectations of 7.99 million. It is the lowest level since January 2021, indicating the labor market is cooling.”

“Boeing Stock Drops as Share Sale Raises $21 Billion” [Barron’s]. “Boeing is getting the cash, but it paid a lot to make it happen. The plane maker said Tuesday its underwritten offering of 112.5 million shares of common stock was priced at $143 a share, a 5.1% discount to its closing price Monday. It’s also a larger offering than the 90 million shares Boeing previously announced on Monday. It’s a steep discount, but it isn’t easy to place the equivalent of almost 20% of the existing shares outstanding. Before the offering, Boeing had roughly 620 million shares outstanding, according to FactSet. The discount comes on top of recent stock weakness…. The cash raised will help reduce Boeing’s significant debt load.”

Manufacturing: “2 major airline CEOs have issued a clear message to Boeing in the past week: Do better” [Business Insider]. Southwest CEO Bob Jordan: “”The heart of an airline is the flight schedule, and the flight schedule depends on getting your aircraft on time.” American Airlines chief Robert Isom: “For Boeing — it’s just, I look forward to the day when they’re not just a distraction.” • Ouch!

Manufacturing: “Boeing overcharged Air Force nearly 8,000% for soap dispensers, watchdog alleges” [Reuters]. “The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General said on Tuesday the Air Force overpaid nearly $1 million for a dozen spare parts, including $149,072 for an undisclosed number of lavatory soap dispensers from the U.S. planemaker and defense contractor…. Boeing said on Tuesday it was reviewing the report, adding that it “appears to be based on an inapt comparison of the prices paid for parts that meet military specifications and designs versus basic commercial items that would not be qualified or approved for use on the C-17.” • A million? Did anybody check under the couch cushions? Maybe it’s there.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 62 Greed (previous close: 63 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 74 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 25 at 1:00:32 PM ET.

Permaculture

This is the UK. What would be an equivalent candidate for restoration in the United States?

Gallery

One more damn book to read (I wish!):

Book Nook

“Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature” [The Yale Review]. “In my grandparents’ second-floor guest room, formerly my mother’s childhood room, one bookcase had a row of children’s books slumped to the side, offering a chronological core sample of my grandmother’s attempts to busy not only her own kids, but all the grandkids who’d stayed there before me. There were the original Oz books, a copy of Ferdinand the Bull, Monro Leaf’s inexplicably compelling yet mildly fascistic Manners Can Be Fun, some 1950s and 1960s Little Golden Books purchased at the Hinky Dinky supermarket down the street, and, among many others I’ve now long forgotten, the big blue, green, and red shiny square of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever. The largish (even just plain large if you were smallish when holding it) book offered a visual index of the everyday puzzle pieces of life in humble, colored-in line drawings. Each page was a fresh, funny composition of some new angle on the world, making the book a sort of quotidian picture-map containing everything imaginable and unimaginable a kid might be curious about: where and how people lived, slept, ate, played, and worked. The thing is, “people” weren’t anywhere to be seen in Best Word Book Ever. Instead, the whole world was populated by animals: rabbits, bears, pigs, cats, foxes, dogs, raccoons, lions, mice, and more. Somehow, though, that made the book’s view of life feel more real and more welcoming.” • The original cover sketch for Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, which was first published in 1974:

Zeitgeist Watch

“PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident” [BBC]. “They uncovered the hidden complex – which they have called Valeriana – using Lidar, a type of laser survey that maps structures buried under vegetation.” • “The green and twisted vines stretch far away.”

Class Warfare

“9-year-old boy among those accusing ‘Diddy’ of sexual abuse, Houston attorney Tony Buzbee confirms” [Houston Chronicle]. • Horrible, but I’m waiting for just one mover-and-shaker to get named, and I don’t mean from the entertainment industry, either.

News of the Wired

“The Secret Electrostatic World of Insects” [Wired]. “Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a honeybee. In many ways, your world is small. Your four delicate wings, each less than a centimeter long, transport your half-gram body through looming landscapes full of giant animals and plants. In other ways, your world is expansive, even grand. Your five eyes see colors and patterns that humans can’t, and your multisensory antennae detect odors from distant flowers. For years, biologists have wondered whether bees have another grand sense that we lack. The static electricity they accumulate by flying—similar to the charge generated when you shuffle across carpet in thick socks—could be potent enough for them to sense and influence surrounding objects through the air. Aquatic animals such as eels, sharks, and dolphins are known to sense electricity in water, which is an excellent conductor of charge. By contrast, air is a poor conductor. But it may relay enough to influence living things and their evolution. In 2013, Daniel Robert, a sensory ecologist at the University of Bristol in England, broke ground in this discipline when his lab discovered that bees can detect and discriminate among electric fields radiating from flowers. Since then, more experiments have documented that spiders, ticks, and other bugs can perform a similar trick.” • What a premise for a science fiction novel!

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: Wukchumni:

Wukchumni writes: “Fall colors on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.”

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