By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Blue Mockingbird, Yecora, Km 261, Sonora, Mexico. I thought I would try another species of mockingbird.

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

(1) Kamala’s VP search (Walz; Raimondo a dark horse).

(2) Kamala on crypto.

(3) Trump on crypto (and NFTs).

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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

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2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

First poll with Harris at the top of the Democrat ticket; Trump’s position deteriorates (and any advantage he gained from the assassination attempt has been wiped away. Nevertheless, he still leads, albeit within the margin of error. NOTE RCP used to have two pages of swing states; I always used the first one. Now there is only one, which I take as an indicator that Harris v. Trump polling is not all that widespread.

Vibe shift:


* * *

Biden Defenestration:

“Leaving Las Vegas” (excerpt) [Seymour Hersh]. “It’s not surprising that the long overdue unraveling of President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign happened when it became impossible to keep his increasing impairment covered up. It was the big-time money backers of the Democratic Party who called off the game of see no evil, hear no evil, after Biden’s shocking performance in his June debate with Donald Trump. They balked at continuing to give millions of dollars to the party now that there was evidence that the president is not always there.” • At which point the excerpt ends, having said nothing especially incisive or new, disappointingly. Or sourced, for that matter. Here an excerpt from a Tweet:

We speculated last week that the TwentyFifth Amendment was Pelosi’s “hard way”; what Hersh, or rather his official(s?) add is that Obama held the dagger, not Pelosi, and that the (presumed) medical event described in this Daily Mail piece (“Biden was deathly pale“) was the final straw for the Inner Party. More here–

“Seymour Hersh: Obama and Kamala threatened to invoke the 25th Amendment on Biden before he dropped out” [Post Millennial]. Hate to use this source, but here we are: “‘It was clear at this point,’ , per Hersch [sic,] ‘that she would get the nod’—that is, the support to run for the presidency in the November election. ‘But Obama also made it clear,’ the official said, ‘that he was not going to immediately endorse her. But the group [the Big Three: Pelosi, Schumer, Obama] had decided that her work as a prosecutor would help her deal with Trump in a debate.’” We’ll see how that goes. “The official, who has decades of experience in fundraising, told me that Obama emerged as the strongman throughout the negotiations. ‘He had an agenda and he wanted to seek it [sic] through to the end, and he wanted to have control over who would be elected.’” Note that so far we are single-sourced, though I haven’t read the whole piece. It would be interesting to know what agenda Obama actually had, and what his purpose for delaying his and Michelle’s endorsement was.

* * *

“Last Tango in Washington: how sad, sidelined Joe Biden may yet have the last laugh” [Simon Tisdale, Guardian]. “In November 1992, after losing to Bill Clinton, George HW Bush found himself in a similar position, although he had only two months left in office. Like Biden, Bush was a foreign policy nerd, and the president, not Congress, directs foreign policy. So, because he thought it was the right thing to do – but basically because he could – Bush, to widespread amazement, invaded Somalia.” • Well, that’s reassuring.

* * *

The Campaign Trail:

The VP search:

Kamala (D): “Could Josh Shapiro win Kamala Harris the Electoral College?” [Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin]. About his model: “[W]e’ve found out three things, all of which cut against the hypothesis that a veep choice makes all that much difference: Home-state effects are only about one-quarter as large for the VP pick than for the presidential nominee. Home-state effects are roughly inversely proportional to the number of electoral votes in a state. In other words, a VP choice can make a small difference in a large state or a relatively large difference in a small state (say, Sarah Palin in Alaska or Biden in Delaware). I think this makes sense intuitively; in a smaller state, a politician is more likely to feel as though he’s from your proverbial backyard. And home-state effects have probably diminished over time as partisanship dominates all other considerations.” • So, probably not.

Kamala (D): “Why Kamala Harris should pick Tim Walz as her running mate” [Guardian]. “I’ll be honest: last month, I would have struggled to pick Walz out of a lineup. This month? I’m Walz-pilled. I have watched dozens of his interviews and clips. And I’m far from alone. He has an army of new fans across the liberal-left: from former Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign co-chair Nina Turner, to one-time Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke, to gun-control activist David Hogg. ‘In less than 6 days, I went from not knowing who Tim Walz is,’ joked writer Travis Helwig on X, ‘to deep down believing that if he doesn’t get the VP nod I will storm the capitol.’ According to Bloomberg, the Harris campaign has narrowed down its “top tier” of potential running mates to three “white guy” candidates: Walz (hurrah!), plus the Arizona senator Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Both Kelly and Shapiro have their strengths – and both represent must-win states for the Dems. Allow me, however, to make the clear case for Walz.” • Or just watch this video:

Report from the field:

The coveted Derek Guy endorsment:

Minnesota readers will of course clarify his track record and correct any sunny optimism:

Why the heck isn’t this guy at the topic of the ticket? One reason the Democrats never held anything resembling an open primary, I suppose….

Then again, there’s two-and-twenty Gina:

Still, the liberalgasm if there were two women on the ticket would be a sight to behold…

* * *

Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris campaign seeks ‘reset’ with crypto companies” [Financial Times]. “Kamala Harris’s advisers have approached top crypto companies to “reset” relations between her Democratic party and a sector that has come out as an important backer of Donald Trump, her rival for the US presidency.” And: “People advising the Harris campaign on business matters said the decision to reconnect with the crypto industry had little to do with attracting new electoral contributions. They said the objective was instead to build a constructive relationship that would ultimately set a smart regulatory framework that would help the growth of the entire asset class.” BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Totes, a party needs to retain its self-respect. More: “One person said her campaign was using the change of leadership on the Democratic ticket as an opportunity to reset relations with the tech industry, which had felt targeted by the Biden administration, particularly on antitrust matters.” So, measuring Lina Khan for the drop? More: “The underlying message Harris wants to strike is that the Democrats are ‘pro-business, responsible business’, said one person close to her campaign. Harris is aiming to win back those in the tech community, many of them in her home state of California, who have turned away from the party in protest at the threat of new taxes or regulation of their industry.” • So backing crypto billionaires is the way to signal “responsible business.” If Kamala does pick Raimondo, that will be wonderfully clarifying.

Kamala (D): “Harris scrambles Trump’s crypto play” [Politico]. “Ron Conway, a venture capitalist and top Democratic donor whose firm has invested in crypto companies, posted on X this week that he has ‘known Kamala for decades, and she’s been a fighter, a leader, and an advocate for the tech ecosystem since the day we met.’ Harris is broadly expected to run on the Biden administration’s record, and speculation about her position on crypto could be a projection. But before Biden dropped out of the race, his camp appeared to be taking a more open-minded approach to crypto concerns, with senior adviser Anita Dunn meeting with industry leaders in Washington.” • “Broadly” is doing a lot of work,there.

* * *

Trump (R): “Trump proposes strategic national crypto stockpile: ‘Never sell your bitcoin’” [CNBC]. “Donald Trump headlined the biggest bitcoin conference of the year in Nashville on Saturday afternoon. It’s quite the 180-turn after he very publicly dismissed bitcoin when he was in the White House. The Republican presidential nominee also held an accompanying fundraiser in Nashville, with tickets topping out at $844,600. Bitcoin 2024 conference organizers say they were briefly in talks to have Vice President Kamala Harris appear at the conference, though she ultimately declined.” • No.

Trump (R): “Trump Became Crypto Believer After Falling in Love With NFTs of Himself” [Bloomberg]. “”I pledge to the Bitcoin community that the day I take the oath of office, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris’s anti-crypto crusade, it will end,” Trump told the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on Saturday, comparing crypto to the steel industry a century ago. “If Bitcoin is going to the moon,” he added, ‘I want America to be the nation that leads the way.’…. Conventional wisdom has it that this gambit is simply a classic Trumpian transactional relationship. He needs votes and money in a presidential horse race that now looks like it’ll be a photo finish, and he’s exploiting an opening created when President Joe Biden’s administration alienated the crypto crowd by pursuing a crackdown on the industry. If so, it’s working. Crypto is an ecosystem whose public face is dominated by online warriors with a lot of money to throw around, fertile ground for Trump to reap tens of millions of dollars in campaign funds — and a burgeoning army of vocal fans. His newfound role as cheerleader for the industry helped land him support from the likes of Dogecoin aficionado Elon Musk and billionaire twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss as well as venture-capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz…. Yet despite all the newfound support he is enjoying, there is something else that played an important role in Trump’s conversion to crypto believer: flattering images of himself. Simply put, he fell in love with Trump-themed nonfungible-tokens — and the supporters who bought them — and that passion has turned into a broader appreciation for the industry, according to insiders who have watched Trump’s crypto evolution. Trump’s lingering questions about valuations of digital assets haven’t slowed his NFT sales pitch, which was clear in May as he riffed off-script to a Mar-a-Lago gathering of supporters who had purchased at least 47 of the digital trading cards — pop-art renderings of the former president, including images of him dressed up like a cowboy, a superhero and other figures of fantasy. ” • Whatever crypto is, it’s not like the steel industry. I see a lot of Carnegie libraries. I don’t see any Winkelvoss libraries.

Trump (R): “The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” [Eschatonblog]. “There is something almost too perfect about the demand from The Bitcoin Community for the federal government to buy up hundreds of billions of their libertarian fake money. every time.” • “Gimmetarianism” is an excellent example of snark. I bow before the master.

* * *

“Report shows 73% of crypto owners’ vote for US president to be affected by candidate’s stance” [Anadolu Agency]. “Almost three in four cryptocurrency owners say their vote for US president in November will be affected by a candidate’s crypto stance, according to a report that was released Friday. ‘For the first time in United States history, crypto has become a significant campaign issue in a presidential election,’ US-based crypto exchange and custodian bank firm Gemini said in its 2024 State of Crypto survey. It showed that more than one in five Americans, or 21%, currently own cryptocurrency, and among those who own, the vast majority, or 73%, plan to consider a candidate’s stance on cryptocurrencies when they vote for the next president. More than one-third, or 37%, said a candidate’s position on cryptocurrencies would have ‘a significant impact’ on their vote for president.” • Unless Gemini is talking its book, of course.

Fraud all the way down:

Democrats en Déshabillé

Centrist freaks:

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 (dashboard); 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, 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!

Maskstravaganza

This one neat trick shuts down anti-maskers:

“Recyclable Adult 3D Face Masks with KN95 Protection KF94 Style” [Vida (Carla)]. • Colors, including black, but also

Elite Maleficence

“Why Covid Keeps Winning” [Gregg Gonsalves and Walker Bragman, The Nation]. Pleased to see these two authors together. The deck: “We didn’t learn a thing.” Nope. More: “But Covid revisionism is not just a right-wing phenomenon. It’s gone mainstream. The embrace of this bad hindsight has been fast and furious by some of the most respected legacy media outlets in the country. These publications have churned out piece after piece suggesting we did well in our response to the virus; we overreacted to the virus at the expense of children’s futures; we need a reckoning with lockdowns; we ought to embrace the ‘lab leak‘ origin of SARS-CoV-2 despite the preponderance of evidence supporting a zoonotic origin of the virus. They have even gotten on the Fauci-bashing bandwagon of the far right, blaming him for the collapse in trust in public health.” Fauci certainly helped. More: “All of this is ridiculous. As President Biden’s recent bout with Covid demonstrates, we are nowhere near being out of the woods with the pandemic—and that is precisely because we did not overreact to it. Quite the opposite, in fact. Compared to our G7 peers, the United States did terribly. The federal response was extremely limited, and people died and are still dying because of it. This year alone, according to the CDC, nearly 26,000 Americans have died from the virus. Our country never made the requisite investments in clean air upgrades for buildings. Despite botching our vaccination campaigns, we have refused to impose universal Covid safety rules for workplaces. Although one of the earliest recommendations from the World Health Organization was to remove financial barriers to care, our country still doesn’t have a universal healthcare system. We have even watched millions of Americans get stripped from the Medicaid rolls, while 10 states still refuse to expand Medicaid eligibility. Meanwhile less than half of states have guaranteed paid medical leave. These are important stories to tell over and over. They represent significant failures of leadership across the aisle. We cannot humanely move on from the pandemic without making basic changes to adapt to life with Covid. That we are expected to is an abdication of responsibility by elected officials, who are seemingly willing to write off the health and safety of our society’s most vulnerable as a cost of doing business.” • “Seemingly”?

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

LEGEND

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

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

NOTES

[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular.

[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveling off. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) An optimist would see a peak.

[8] (Cleveland) Slowing

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time rasnge. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) Same deal. Those sh*theads.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Manufacturing: “United States Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ general business activity index for manufacturing in Texas fell to -17.5 in July of 2024 from -15.1 in the previous month. It extended the negative momentum in Southern manufacturing with over two consecutive years of contractionary monthly readings.”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 47 Neutral (previous close: 45 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 56 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 29 at 1:45:57 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes down one on Earthquakes. “The lack of activity has downgraded this category” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Where are there people getting their news?!

Sports Desk

“You probably know the start of this Olympic story, but do you know how it finished?” [Aaron Smith, ThreadReader]. “This photo is of Eric Moussambani, aka ‘Eric the Eel’ from Equatorial Guinea, competing in the 100m Freestyle event at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, alone. Why? Eric’s heat started with 2 other competitors; one from Niger and the other from Tajikistan. Eric’s competitors however both broke, and were disqualified, leaving him to swim this event alone. Eric hadn’t completed a full length of a 50m pool before, but he dived in anyway. It seemed like he wasn’t going to make the distance. Touching a lane rope would’ve been automatic disqualification. He completed in 1:52.72, the slowest time in Olympic History, and for comparison, 47 seconds slower than I did recently, in my late 40s. Remember these times. Why was Eric there? The IOC’s wild card strategy aimed to boost sports in developing nations like Equatorial Guinea. Eric heard the call for swimmers on the radio, and since he was the only one to show up, he made the team! The only issue was, Eric couldn’t swim. So a few months out from the games, Eric started his training, partly with the assistance of fisherman in a lake. He was also given access to a 12M long hotel pool for up to 1hr, three times a week. Equatorial Guinea had no 50m pools. When Eric turned up to Sydney, and swam in a 50M pool for the first time, he couldn’t have been less prepared. The blue speedos he raced in were given to him by the South African swimming coach just prior to his race, who noticed Eric training in shorts. What happened next?” • Read the whole thing, it’s great. Be like Eric the Eel!

The Gallery

Fashion week?

=”en” dir=”ltr”>Ready-to-Wear https://t.co/QGdLfq9cg2

— Stuart Davis (@StuartDavisArt) July 16, 2024

Zeitgeist Watch

“Beyond authenticity” [Aeon]. The deck: “In her final unfinished work, Hannah Arendt mounted an incisive critique of the idea that we are in search of our true selves.” “If the inauthentic self is the everyday self, the one among the many, the authentic self is the self that has broken away from the herd; it is the self that exists for the self alone. To step out of the flow of everyday life is an exceptional occurrence. Common wisdom stipulates that ‘We are what we do’ or ‘We are the sum total of our actions.’ Each choice shapes the future path we find ourselves on, and occasionally we step back and can see the whole picture of ourselves, how we got to where we are. But for [Nazi philosopher Martin] Heidegger we are most fully ourselves only in those moments of exception, in that clearing of Being when we’ve left the well-worn path carved out by everyday routine altogether. The German word he uses for authenticity is Eigentlichkeit, which is defined as ‘really’ or ‘truly’. Eigen means ‘peculiar’, and ‘own’ or ‘of one’s own’. Literally, it might be translated as possessing the quality of being truly for oneself. … By arguing that thinking was a function of Being, Heidegger had tried to divorce thinking from the will in order to argue that it was one’s true inner Being that determined ultimately who they became in the world. But for Arendt, this was an abdication of personal responsibility and choice. It was a way of handing over one’s decision-making power… [F]or Arendt, the will was the means to our freedom, it was the promise that we can always be other than we are, and so to the world. The will is a space of tension inside the self where one actively feels the difference between where they are and where they would like to be. The will is the only intervention we have against the conditioning of worldly existence. Willing is the mental activity that goes on between thinking and judgment. It has the power to shape us by drawing us into conflict with ourselves. Without inner conflict, there is no forward movement. These are the basic principles of willing.” • Hmm. Not sure I excerpted this properly at all.

“Staying human” [When we are Real]. “[W]hat started as an adult male sexual fetish morphed into the construction of synthetic sex identities from manipulated body parts, and is leading to a transhumanist dystopia where reproduction is artificial, life is extended, and humans become melded with machines. This, [Bilek] shows, is not an organic development, but the deliberate outcome of an industry that requires acceptance of dissociation from our bodies as normal. ”

News of the Wired

On “intelligent design”:


* * *

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 DG:

DG writes: “Weeds and an old stump encroaching on the ruins of an old DC aqueduct.” As readers know, I am a fan of stumps, particularly rotted ones.

* * *

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