2:00PM Water Cooler 9/23/2024 | naked capitalism

Bird Song of the Day

Back to Thrashers, which are mimics too, like mockingbirds and characters. So the first clip I tested is 35 minutes of thrasherdom…. Enjpy!

Sage Thrasher, Sublette, Wyoming, United States. “Gradually moves further and further away from the microphone in the first segment.”

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Latest on Trump assassinations; there’s now a price on Trump’s head.
2. Latest on MI, MT, NC, PA.
3. Spooks move toward authenticating election outcomes, albeit slowly.
4. Boeing $30 billion share issue to solve its $10 billion cash crunch?

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Trump Assassination Attempts (Plural)

“Man suspected of assassination attempt against Trump left a letter detailing his plans, prosecutors say” [CNN]. “The man who authorities say sat with a rifle in the trees where Donald Trump was golfing earlier this month in West Palm Beach, Florida, previously wrote a letter stating ‘this was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump,’ according to a new filing by federal prosecutors. A witness told investigators that Ryan Wesley Routh had dropped off a box at his home months before, which “contained ammunition, a metal pipe, miscellaneous building materials, tools, four phones, and various letters.” After learning of the apparent assassination attempt, the witness opened the box, according to the filing…. Prosecutors say Routh was in the area of Trump’s golf course and the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence across multiple days in the month before he was arrested and had a Google search of how to travel from Florida to Mexico in one of his phones.” • So Routh was a planner, not just a child-like goo goo, and had some amount of funding (making the role of at least the girlfriend more salient. Here is the letter:

So Merrick Garland’s Justice Department decides to release a letter putting a price on Trump’s head? Never mind that Routh (probably) can’t pay it; now the price is anchored — and affordable, too, at least for some –so perhaps others will make and claim the offer. What on earth were they thinking?

“Would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh stalked ex-president for a month, prosecutors say” [CNBC]. “[W]hen he was arrested after fleeing his hiding spot just outside the golf course, Routh had in his possession a ‘handwritten list of dates in August, September, and October 2024 and venues where the former President had appeared or was expected to be present’ the filing said.” • So Routh anticipated being able to finance further travel. How?

“The Roots of the Trump Assassination Attempts” [The American Conservative]. The deck: “It is only by luck that the former president is still alive.” Indeed. “In many Third-World countries, falling out of power means being declared an enemy of the people who needs to be done away. In some situations that means trumped-up charges and made-up evidence—lawfare—to mislabel the fallen leader as evil and justify the life sentence he receives. In other situations, jail is not secure enough, such as when the fallen leader still has many supporters. That means he must be killed…. Donald Trump is an enemy of democracy itself, says the left in writing and from the debate stage. It is then not surprising when people, often mentally ill enough to accept the base argument that someone who served four years as president, who defeated multiple impeachment attempts without resorting to tanks on the Capitol lawn, and who has run via the electoral system for president three times, is not a believer in democracy. Would-be killers have seen lawfare fail… With lawfare essentially failing off the table, it is time to demonize Trump to create a manifesto for the mentally ill American who will carry out the grim final round…. It’s OK, they seem to say, because Trump asked for it. “He’s worth killing” is the broader message… Unlike in the Third World, there will be no hand-picked assassin here. There is also no conspiracy per se to assassinate Trump. Instead, the left bets that if they send out enough signals, someone mentally ill enough in armed America will do what they want in their hearts. It is the patriotic thing to do, like time-travelers smiting baby Hitler. A jihad. The left is too coordinated in its words and actions not to know what it is doing. Trump knows it; during his debate with Harris he remarked that he took a bullet to the head for some of her remarks that he is anti-democratic. Trump’s would-be assassin knows it, claiming that ‘democracy is on the ballot.’” • Stochastic terrorism (but holy Lord, these are liberals, not “the left”).

Biden Administration

“Joe Biden’s foreign policy legacy goes through Ukraine” [Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer]. “Moscow and Beijing (along with Tehran and Pyongyang) are watching closely to see whether the president finally gives Kyiv the key weapons systems it needs to win — and a green light to use them wherever needed. That would include permission to use U.S.-made long-range ATACMS missiles to destroy military bases inside Russia from which planes fire glide bombs that have decimated Ukraine’s cities. If Biden gives Ukraine this critical help, it will hedge against a possible Trump victory, since the former president has pledged to cut off aid if Kyiv doesn’t bow to Vladimir Putin’s version of ‘peace talks.’ If Biden holds back, however, it will signal to Putin and Xi Jinping that Washington doesn’t have the will to stop territorial aggression and is intimidated by Putin’s nuclear bluster. It will also put Harris on a foreign policy backfoot if she takes over the White House.” • Yes, Kamala will have to prove she’s tough. Maybe the Democrats will find a whole new war for her!

2024

Less than fifty days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

If there was a debate bounce, it was very small. If I were the Trump campaign, I’d be very worried about Pennsylvania. Maybe a reader from Pennsylvania can clarify. Are we looking at something like a North Philly Democrat/Bucks County Never Trumper Alliance? Once again, the Democrats must be very puzzled to have virtual unanimity across the political spectrum that “Harris is the one” — no doubt there will be another liberalgasm after Oprah — and yet the election is a virtual tie. How can this be? Perhaps a few more Republicans, generals, or celebrities will turn the tide.

* * *

“Trump Shows Signs of Strength in Sun Belt Battlegrounds, Polls Find” [New York Times]. “Voters across the Sun Belt say that Donald J. Trump improved their lives when he was president — and worry that a Kamala Harris White House would not — setting the stage for an extraordinarily competitive contest in three key states, according to the latest polls from The New York Times and Siena College. The polls found that Mr. Trump has gained a lead in Arizona and remains ahead in Georgia, two states that he lost to President Biden in 2020. But in North Carolina, which has not voted for a Democrat since 2008, Ms. Harris trails Mr. Trump by just a narrow margin. The polls of these three states, taken from Sept. 17 to 21, presented further evidence that in a sharply divided nation, the presidential contest is shaping up to be one of the tightest in history.

* * *

Kamala (D): “DNC calls Trump ‘chicken’ for not accepting second debate in billboard campaign” [The HIll]. • The guy’s been targeted by assassins twice and he’s still out on the trail. And the Democrats thinking calling him a coward is a political winner [shaking my head].

* * *

Trump (R): “Republicans in swing states say they see scant signs of groups door-knocking for Trump” [Associated Press]. “Republican activists in swing states say they have seen little sign of the teams tasked with knocking on doors and turning out infrequent voters on behalf of Donald Trump, raising concerns about the party’s presidential nominee relying on outside groups for an important part of his campaign operations. Trump and the Republican National Committee he controls opted to share get-out-the-vote duties in key parts of the most competitive states this year with groups such as America PAC, the organization supported by billionaire Elon Musk. It is difficult to demonstrate that something is not happening. But with fewer than 50 days until the Nov. 5 election, dozens of Republican officials, activists and operatives in Michigan, North Carolina and other battleground states say they have rarely or never witnessed the group’s canvassers. In Arizona and Nevada, the Musk-backed political action committee replaced its door-knocking company just this past week. ‘I haven’t seen anybody,’ said Nate Wilkowski, field director for the Republican Party in vote-rich Oakland County, Michigan, which includes crucial Detroit suburbs. He was speaking specifically of America PAC. ‘Nobody’s given me a heads-up that they’re around in Oakland County areas.’” • Have any readers experienced Trump door-knocking?

Trump (R): Rally count down:

Here are the numbers for August and September:

August 2016: 26 rallies
August 2024: 7 rallies

September 2016: 21 rallies
September 2024: 6 rallies

It might not matter (unclear if campaign events really help) but I think it’s a notable change in his brand/campaign. https://t.co/UkaDjpLRi5

— Kraz Greinetz (@krazgreinetz) September 21, 2024

No offense to Susie Wiles, but I think Trump was a better candidate in 2016, when he was flying an airplane full of randos round the country and doing the A/B testing with crowds that led him to deliver and refine a populist message.

Trump (R): “The ‘scared majority’ could deliver a landslide victory for Trump” [Douglas MacKinnon, The Hill]. Rhetoric and anecdotes. Nevertheless: “I grew up in abject poverty as a child, and most of my contacts to this day are those in the working class or lower…. Those I speak with on a regular basis tell me they have never been so frightened about circumstances out of their control. Circumstances they believe were deliberately and politically exacerbated by the Democrats and most especially by the Biden-Harris administration. There is something going on. These times do not feel like the others for the working class. They feel much more foreboding. There are now so many ‘canaries in the coal mine’ on this issue that they need to take a number to chirp out the first warning. The first is that the Democratic Party used to be the party of the poor and disenfranchised. Now it is the party of uber-wealthy tech and big-pharma barons and power-hungry special interests… The next ‘canary in the coal mine’ is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters non-endorsement endorsement of Donald Trump. For the first time in over 20 years, the Teamsters did not endorse the Democratic candidate. Instead, their leadership chose to endorse no one. Why? Because that leadership was shocked to find that almost 60 percent of its rank-and-file membership — those would be fearful working-class Americans — have indicated they are going to vote for Trump over Harris. What is noteworthy here is that when Biden was still in the race, Trump was actually trailing him, 44 percent to 36 percent. As with the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the more Americans see of Harris, the less they like her or trust her…. Next, we come to the ‘canary’ reported by CBS News. Correspondent Adriana Diaz admitted that, while in swing-state Nevada, she could only find ‘one person’ in each restaurant she visited who planned to vote for Harris, while the rest were ‘really excited’ about Trump. This, she said, after ‘leaving no stone unturned’ to find any Harris supporters…. Fear is real. Fear does motivate. Working-class Americans do fear that elite-enabling liberal policies beyond their control are robbing them of their quality of life now and well into their futures.” • Hmm.

* * *

MI: “Muslim mayor of Hamtramck endorses Trump, wants Gaza cease-fire” [Detroit News]. “Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib has endorsed former President Donald Trump in the presidential race, a move the Republican nominee quickly touted on social media. Ghalib, who is Muslim and a Yemeni immigrant, announced his endorsement on social media Sunday evening and it came less than a week after the two met in Flint at a Trump campaign event. Ghalib said he and Trump met at the Dort Financial Center before Trump addressed the crowd and the former president asked for Ghalib’s endorsement. Among the things the two discussed was a cease-fire in the Middle East and on the domestic front, ways of ‘breaking the wall between the Republican Party and the minorities,’ Ghalib said in a video he posted on social media last week. The video is a separate post from the mayor’s endorsement that he posted Sunday on Facebook. ‘President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles,’ Ghalib said in the endorsement post. ‘Though it is looking good, he may or may not win the election and be the 47th president of the United States, but I believe he is the right choice for this critical time.’ Ghalib confirmed the endorsement on Monday to The Detroit News but didn’t comment further, referring to the video he posted last week. In that video, Ghalib shares what he and Trump discussed in Flint. ‘He assured that his goal is to end the chaos in the Middle East and elsewhere. ,’ Ghalib said in the video.” • There’s a reason for this:

Over 700 former national security leaders, including generals, admirals, ambassadors, CIA officials et al. endorse VP Harris. They describe Donald J Trump as a clear and present danger to our democracy. https://t.co/5ysGHkxShR pic.twitter.com/XhQ9qjE3zh

— Jim Boyle (@JimGBoyle) September 23, 2024

I don’t love Trump, and he’s no pacifist. That said, these people, all 700 of them, have their wars all lined up, and they know Kamala will back them.

MT: “Ballot error shuts down Montana online absentee voting system” [Daily Inter Lake]. “When Max Himsl opened his electronic ballot on Friday, he was dismayed to see a candidate missing from the list of options. Voting absentee electronically while living abroad, Himsl saw that under the options for president, only Republican Donald Trump and Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were listed. Missing was Democrat Kamala Harris. ‘I’m upset my democratic process was interrupted,’ he said. Election officials were notified of the error shortly after the Electronic Absentee System that allows certain voters to cast their ballot electronically went live on Friday at 8 a.m., according to the Montana Secretary of State’s Office which reported that the error was isolated to the online system. ‘Our team and the vendor quickly investigated and found that only a few voters may have been impacted,’ the Secretary of State’s Office said through email. ‘As a precaution, the Electronic Absentee System has been taken offline until troubleshooting is completed.’”

NC: “Nearly all of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign staff quits after CNN report” [WUNC]. “Days after a CNN report about racist and sexual comments posted on a pornography forum, all but a few of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign team quit their jobs on Sunday. A campaign news release said that four top staffers have left the campaign: Conrad Pogorzelski, general consultant and senior advisor who’s worked for Robinson since his initial 2020 lieutenant governor campaign; Chris Rodriguez, campaign manager; Heather Whillier, finance director; and Jason Rizk, deputy campaign manager. But WUNC has confirmed that other staffers have quit as well, leaving Robinson with just three people working on his campaign — two campaign spokesmen and a bodyguard. The list of departures also include longtime director of operations Patrick Riley and political directors John Kontoulas and Jackson Lohrer. Sunday’s news release says that new staff hires will be announced “in the coming days.” But hiring a new campaign team less than two months from Election Day will be tough for a campaign rocked by scandal.” • NC Democrats:

North Carolina Democratic Party chair, Anderson Clayton, is crushing it. At 25 years old, Clayton is the youngest political state party chair in the U.S. North Carolina is in play, y’all. 🙌🙏👏👊🌊🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/3JQr1Q5zWc

— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) September 22, 2024

Could Clayton have had the Robinson oppo all along? (And if she’s “fighting for” rural North Carolina, what does that mean? Readers?)

NC: “Democrats see path to N.C. victory following Robinson bombshell” [Axios]. “Team Trump is working to distance the former president from Robinson, whom Trump once described as ‘Martin Luther King on steroids,’ after CNN reported the gubernatorial candidate referred to himself as a ‘black NAZI!’ and a ‘perv’ on a porn site’s messaging board and expressed support for reinstating slavery.” • Roid rage indeed….

PA: “The Pittsburgh Paradox Could Hand Pennsylvania to Trump” [RealClearPennslvania]. “[H]ubris might just hand the Keystone State to the GOP in 2024. As Allegheny County limps toward another election cycle, Republicans are eyeing an opportunity born not of their own strength, but of Democratic complacency and voter disillusionment. The numbers paint a grim picture. Allegheny County hemorrhaged nearly 7,800 residents last year alone, placing it in the top 10 for population loss nationwide. Even more alarming, the county has shed 50,000 jobs in the past five years – five times more than any other Pennsylvania county. The county’s most impoverished suburbs, home to many recent immigrants and other non-white minorities, are facing another round of white flight.” And: “To understand where Allegheny County might be headed, one need only look south to Washington County. Once a union-labor stronghold for the Democrats, Washington County has rapidly become a petri dish for MAGA politics. In 2020, Trump won 61% of the vote there. But it’s not just about presidential politics. MAGA true believers have capitalized on low turnouts to seize control of local government, turning once-staid county commission meetings into wild shouting matches.” And yikes: “The Pennsylvania Department of State reports that Democrats now hold their slimmest voter registration advantage in decades. Republicans, meanwhile, have added nearly 40,000 voters since 2020. In Washington County, this wild shift has greatly increased the temperature and radicalized the tone of local politics. Allegheny County isn’t there yet, but the currents are detectable.” • Hmm. Philadelphia’s suburbs + North Philly might need to do a heavier lift than anticipated.

PA: “Tim Walz tests the limits of his working-class appeal in Pennsylvania’s ultimate swing county” [Politico]. “On Saturday, the campaign dispatched Walz to a campaign rally in their Northampton County stronghold of Bethlehem, a city of 80,000 in the Lehigh Valley, where voters are known for backing centrists. President Joe Biden won this county by less than one percentage point in 2020, after it went for Donald Trump once and Barack Obama twice. Democratic Rep. Susan Wild, who flipped the longtime GOP congressional seat blue in 2018, is one of the most endangered House Democrats this November. But while hundreds of Democrats and local residents waited in line to pack into the Freedom High School gym to hear Walz speak Saturday morning, the challenges facing the Democratic ticket in the region were clear around other parts of the county — notably, with younger working-class men.” But: “It’s likely Walz will have more luck turning out the base in the blue-trending suburbs here than trying to sway working-class men in the county that is a mix of historically Democratic cities and small towns, suburbs and deep red rural stretches. But Walz has another purpose as well — driving Democratic turnout in the adjacent, redder rural counties in the region.” • This last put Fetterman over the top: “Every country, every vote.” Walz is not Fetterman, for good or ill. But the strategy is valid.

* * *

“The Case For 2024 Indecision Is Feeble Trump-wary conservatives have run out of rational reasons to be undecided” [Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine]. • That stupid Sophie! Why won’t she make up her mind?

Realignment and Legitimacy

Spook and torture advocate Michael Hayden writes a letter to political candidates, thrown over the transom by an alert reader:

I’ve been muttering for some years that the so-called intelligence community would seek to make themselves the “the guarantors of ‘the institutional order of the Republic,’” as Pinochet’s post-coup Constitution phrased it. Here it is: ” That is why I [Hayden] have teamed with other major National Security leaders to endorse [i.e, define and, later, enforce] the Principles for Trusted Elections.” Here’s the website, with the principles, so-called. In particular:

Note the lack of operational detail. In particular, hand-marked paper ballots, hand-counted in public, meet all the principles. Electronic ballots do not and cannot (and the principles, so-called, are especially insidious in that they obscure this, by implying that the process of poll-watching is the same in all jurisdictions).

I have also muttered for some years that the essential characteristic, the distinctive competence, of the modern political party is control over the ballot. Here we see my thesis illustrated at a new and higher level, as the intelligence community — in my view an extra-constitutional entity allied with the Democrats at least since Obama gave them impunity for for torture in Iraq (“we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”) — slowly moves to authenticate (or not authenticate) election outcomes.

In any case, anything written by Michael Hayden should be treated with a hermenetic of suspicion, and certainly not signed. (Hayden was one of the 51 spooks who signed the infamous October 2020 letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop “ha[d] all the earmarks of a classic Russian information operation” (entirely “baseless,” as we say. Hayden, in other words, has form: He’s committed election interference before the votes were cast; it is, therefore, worth giving consideration to the idea that he could commit election interference after the votes are cast.)

* * *

Scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds:

Virtually all the AOCs in the US and West – those who laughably posture as left-liberal radicals but who are just vapid establishment hacks – believe the internet and speech generally should be censored: by the US/EU Security State or billionaire-funded “disinformation” groups. https://t.co/PG3ZZJFv6n

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 23, 2024

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!

Vaccines

“FDA Approves First Self-Administered Nasal Spray Flu Vaccine” [The American Journal of Managed Care]. • For flu, but not for Covid [bangs head on desk].

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Manufacturing: “How Long Do You Think The Boeing Strike Will Last?” [Simple Flying]. “Despite furloughing thousands of employees, Boeing faces an imminent cash crunch. The company needs $10 billion in cash to maintain operations, and, as of its Q2 report on June 30, it had $12 billion in cash. That doesn’t leave much room for a strike to stretch, though the company is reported to be planning a new share issue to help raise capital, possibly as much as $30 billion. Initial talks broke down last week with no resolution, and there’s no set date for more talks. Neither side seems willing to budge. ”

Manufacturing: “Boeing machinists on picket lines prepare for lengthy strike: ‘I can last as long as it takes” [NBC]. “The financial cost of the strike on Boeing depends on how long it lasts, though ratings agencies have warned that the company could face a downgrade if it drags on too long. That would add to the borrowing costs of the company, already $60 billion in debt. Boeing has burned through about $8 billion so far this year in the wake of a near-catastrophic door plug blowout from one of its 737 Max planes in January.”

Manufacturing: “Boeing’s shareholders: which do you prefer? Dilution or bankruptcy?” [Leeham News and Analysis]. ” Wells Fargo analyst calculated The Boeing Co. might have to issue 190 million shares of stock to get itself out of the financial mess it’s in. At the $155 range Boeing’s stock has been recently trading, which would be just shy of $30bn…. Wall Street types wring their hands over the dilution of a possible stock offering. This begs the question: would they prefer dilution or bankruptcy, which typically wipes out shareholders? Or would they prefer at least a decade of stagnation while Boeing tries to operationally repair its balance sheet? LNA welcomes the idea of a $30bn equity offering. Boeing won’t fully recover without drastic action. And a massive equity offering best fits this need.” And on September 12: “Internally, Boeing prepared for a 2-12 week strike.”

Manufacturing: “Boeing’s Defense Head Leaves. Starliner Wasn’t the Only Reason” [Barron’s]. “In addition to changes at Boeing Defense, [new CEO Kelly Ortberg] has bought a house in the Seattle region and is directly involved in union negotiations.” • Hmm.

Manufacturing: “State President, Party leader To Lam seeks Boeing investment in Vietnam component plant” [VN Express]. “Vietnam’s Party General Secretary and President To Lam has called on American aircraft company Boeing to build a component manufacturing factory and equipment and machinery maintenance center in Vietnam. At a meeting in New York, the U.S., on Sunday with Brendan Nelson, senior vice president of Boeing and chairman of Boeing Global, he said Vietnam is committed to enabling American investors, including Boeing, to invest in its market. Referring to Boeing’s commitment to helping Vietnam in develop its aviation and aerospace industries, he sought human resource training, technology transfer and research and development from the company and exhorted it to get Vietnamese partners more involved in its supply chain.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 64 Greed (previous close: 62 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 54 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). LLast updated Sep 23 at 3:25:11 PM ET.

Musical Interlude

John Coltrane’s birthday:

Gallery

Not Klee. Hilma af Klint, Buddha’s Standpoint in the Earthly Life, No. 3a, Series XI, 1920:

For some things, Twitter remains undefeated.

This, however, is Klee (and not Cezanne):

But this is not:

Class Warfare

“Public-Health Officials Should Have Been Talking About Their Sex Parties the Whole Time” [The Atlantic]. And not The Onion. “In conversations caught on hidden camera, New York City’s former COVID czar [Jay Varma] said that he’d organized a pair of sex parties in the second half of 2020, as New Yorkers coped with peak pandemic social isolation…. It’s not clear whether Varma personally violated any COVID rules. The sex parties involved, by the account he gave to the podcaster Steven Crowder in a companion video, ‘like, 10 people.’ At the time, New York’s guidelines—which Varma was promoting far and wide—limited gatherings to 10 people or fewer in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. Separate city guidance on ‘Safer Sex and COVID-19’ discouraged—but did not forbid—group sex. (‘Limit the size of your guest list. Keep it intimate,’ the guidance said.) Varma explained that he’d sex-partied responsibly, noting, ‘Everybody got tests and things like that.’… Perhaps it would have helped if he’d shared his own struggles with that tension at the time. Social-science research tells us that public-health messaging wins trust most effectively when it leads with empathy—when leaders show that they understand how people feel and what they want, rather than barraging them with rules and facts. Clearly Varma struggled in the way that many others did as he tried to navigate the crushing isolation of the pandemic.” Extroverts are gonna kill us all. More: ” In preparation for the holidays, his family was faced with tough, familiar choices, which resulted in his being separated from his loved ones. The end result may seem hypocritical, but it’s also relatable. ” • Putting this in the context of pantygate, Diddy, Epstein… Has anyone checked in on the elites lately? Are they OK? (Meanwhile, a sex party is surely the epitome of a “crowded, closed, close-contact” event, so one might wonder whether Varma masked, or whether at least masks were available to know. Also, Varma should really have been aware that “tests and things like that” do not necessarily reveal Covid in its early stages, another reason to mask.

News of the Wired

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 Watt4Bob:

Watt4Bob: “Was total mystery what this bloom would look like. Happy surprise!”

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