2:00PM Water Cooler 11/8/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, 350 South Madison Avenue, Pasadena, Los Angeles, California, United States.

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Trump vs. “the Deep State.”
2. Boeing, post-strike.
3. Mushroom farms and ventilation.
4. Weeds becoming resistant to herbicides.

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

“We did it, Joe”:

Biden oversaw the single biggest removal of social benefits in American history, which resulted in the single biggest increase in poverty in American history. He called this “Bidenomics.”

Then Kamala said she’d do nothing differently while campaigning in a $62,000 gold necklace. pic.twitter.com/uhEzzH5SGG

— Holding Dems Accountable (From the Left!) (@PushBidenLeft) November 8, 2024

Trump Transition:

“Energy in the executive:”

I ran this in Links this morning, but want to make a few additional comments:

#10 “Push a constitutional amendment to oppose term limits on members of Congress.” I think “oppose” is a typo for “impose.” In any case, term limits are a terrible idea, because they mean that the Legislative Branch can end up with no institutional memory. When we were fighting the landfill in Maine, we discovered that the only people who could interpret the relevant legislation were the bent lawyers from Portland who wrote it, at the behest of the landfill operator.

#5 “Launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the fake news to deliberately we false narratives and to subvert our government and our democracy.” I wonder what Snowden or Assange would think about that. Or Ellsberg. I see the qualifiers “deliberately” and “false” but they don’t give me confidence. (In fact, if Trump supported whistleblowers, in general, whether for government or industry, he would be giving RFK a lot of help in his dealings with Big Pharma and Big Ag,

#6 – #9… Might as well give it a shot (though CDC seems to have made its very own cesspit in Atlanta, so I’m not sure how much good #8 would do.

#2 “Clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.” This would be wonderful to see (though does it applly to torturers?). When I wrote “Project 2025: 920 Pages of Irritable Mental Gestures, or a Blueprint for Fascism?“, I had a litmus test to see if Project 2025 recommendations for CIA, ODNI, and CISA would be taken seriously: Firings. Perhaps they will.

Amazing, in a good way, to see an elected (albeit not inaugurated) President propose such things. I wonder who put it together? (I really, really don’t like the doomy soundtrack to the video, though.)

2024 Post Mortem

Deploy the Blame Cannons!

“A Red-District Conqueror Wants Fellow Democrats to Look in the Mirror” [New York Times]. “I’ve had one interaction with Harris, at her Naval Observatory Christmas party.

I’m not super comfortable at that kind of thing. I’d had a couple of beers, and I noticed that almost all of the garlands were plastic. My district grows a hell of a lot of Christmas trees. I was strong-armed into taking a picture. I said, “Madam Vice President, we grow those where I live.” She just walked away from me. There was kind of an eye roll, maybe. My thinking was, it does matter to people where I live. It’s the respect, the cultural regard for farmers. I didn’t feel like she understood what I was trying to say.” • Harris was an objectively terrible candidate.

“‘They don’t understand my life’: what the Democrats misread about America” [Financial Times]. “‘The Democratic brand is pretty bad,’ said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think-tank. ‘The country has shifted pretty far to the right, and we were not aware of how deep the problem ran. The voters that we lost . . . looked at Democrats and said: ‘They don’t understand my life. I don’t want them representing me.’” Centrist dipshits like Third Way built the Democrat brand ffs. Stop with the “Who me?” already. But they’re still at it: “‘The only way to defeat rightwing populism is through the centre,’ Bennett said. Shrum agreed that having ‘a moderately liberal, centre-left Democratic party is the only way forward if progressives actually want to win.’” • [bangs head on desk].

“The Shattering of the Democratic Coalition” [Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot]. “Yet Democrats cannot decisively beat their opponents as this election has shown once again. The party is uncompetitive among white working-class voters and among voters in exurban, small town, and rural America. This puts them at a massive structural disadvantage given an American electoral system that gives disproportionate weight to these voters, especially in Senate and presidential elections. To add to the problem, Democrats are now hemorrhaging nonwhite working-class voters across the country. The facts must be faced. The Democratic coalition today is not fit for purpose.” Meme: Never was (though to be fair, if the purpose was gutting the genuine left, they did great). More: “Among all working-class voters, Trump dramatically widened his advantage, tripling his margin from 4 points in 2020 to 12 points in this election. That included moving from 25 to 29 points among white working-class voters and radically compressing his deficit among nonwhite working-class voters from 48 points in 2020 to 33 points this election. Compare that margin to what Obama had in 2012: according to Catalist, he carried the nonwhite working class by 67 points in that election. That indicates that Democrats have had their margin among this core constituency more than cut in half over the last 12 years. Ouch. So much for the ‘rising American electorate.’ And it’s time to face the fact that the GOP has become the party of America’s working class. Democrats hate to admit that and mutter that they represent the “interests” of the working class. But the numerical pattern is now too powerful to be denied. Instead of denying the obvious—or, worse, blaming the dumb workers for not knowing their own interests—Democrats would be well-advised to accept this new reality and seek to change it. Unless they’re content to be primarily the party of America’s well-off. Harris lost voters under $50,000 in household income as well as voters from $50,000 to $100,000 in income. But she did carry voters with over $100,000 in household by 8 points, one place where Harris did improve over Biden in 2020. This is not, as they say, your father’s Democratic Party. Not even close.”

* * *

“If only we had our own Joe Rogan!”

Undersold part of the bro exit from the Dem party is the way that his male supporters were aggressively smeared as toxic sexist Bernie bros. https://t.co/mQb5ZDP1Sq

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) November 7, 2024

“Why Democrats won’t build their own Joe Rogan” [Taylor Lorenz, User Mag]. “While the right has spent years fostering a symbiotic relationship with alternative media, the left has failed replicate anything like it. There are simply no progressive content creators with Rogan’s cultural impact and online following, and a quick look at the podcast charts or trending channels on YouTube shows the disparity between conservative vs progressive creators’ reach online. Without a network of culturally relevant influential content creators boosting and translating their messaging, the Democratic Party is rapidly losing credibility among younger, predominantly male audiences who have become ardent supporters of influencers that promote a distinctly conservative worldview.” They used to have one, back in the day: It was called the blogosphere. More: “Leftist channels do not receive widespread financial backing from billionaires or large institutional donors, primarily because leftist content creators support policies that are completely at odds with what billionaires want. Left leaning influencers argue for things like higher taxes on the rich, regulations on corporations, and policies that curb the power of elites. Wealthy mega donors aren’t going to start pouring money into a media ecosystem that directly contradicts their own financial interests. And so, progressive creators are left to rely on meager crowdfunding efforts to make a living. ”

“How Trump Won the First “Influencer Election”” [Taylor Lorenz, Hollywood Reporter]. “For the past two decades, the media landscape has been transforming. By nearly every metric, legacy media is in decline: average monthly unique visitors to websites for the country’s top 50 newspapers declined 20 percent to under 9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to Comscore data, and the amount of time people are spending consuming legacy media content is getting shorter. The content creator industry, meanwhile, is ascendent. The influencer economy is set to surpass half a trillion dollars by 2027, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report, and 30 percent of consumers trust content creators more than they did six months ago, according to a 2023 report by Sprout Social, an analytics firm.” And: “But while both campaigns worked overtime to court influencers, their strategies were divergent. The Harris campaign prioritized shortform clips, investing in quick videos and viral remixes on TikTok and Instagram. The Trump campaign went deep and long, investing heavily in longform YouTube podcasts and building partnerships with livestreamers. Ultimately, the latter proved wildly more successful. ” • Long form videos. Now that’s interesting.

* * *

“Iowa pollster makes bombshell claim about controversial poll that showed Kamala winning deep red state after Trump’s triumphant victory” [Daily Mail]. “‘Without fear or favor, we used the same method as the final poll this year to show a healthy Trump lead in both 2020 and 2016. Those turned out to capture the mood of the electorate reasonably well, though both took fire from Iowans who doubted the findings could be true.’ She continued an attempt to defend her methodology, which came as a complete shock to voters the weekend prior to the election. ‘The poll findings we produced for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom did not match what the Iowa electorate ultimately decided in the voting booth today,’ she said. ‘I’ll be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that happened, and I welcome what that process might teach me.’ Selzer’s poll for the Register and Mediacom days before the election predicted Harris would win by +3 percentage points. But Donald Trump went on to trounce the vice president by over +13 points in the Hawkeye State….. However, the state has not always been reliably red, and swung for Barack Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections by +9 percent and +6 percent, respectively. Selzer – who was mercilessly mocked after Iowa went to Trump – had accurately predicted each of these outcomes going back to 2008, giving her a Nostradamus-like reputation that drew eyeballs to her incorrect Harris poll last week.”

* * *

“Trump and Harris Make Nice After Brutal Campaign Battle” [RealClearPolitics]. • So was all that “Fascist!” and “Hitler!” stuff complete bullshit?

* * *

Campaign Finance

“How Elon Musk helped will Trump back to the White House” [Washington Examiner]. “Musk’s influence in 2024 shows two things, Ludwig said. One, money is not everything, considering Harris enjoyed far more of it this cycle thanks to ultra-wealthy backers on the Left. But two, wealthy Republicans such as Musk are in a position not only to support candidates financially, but also work in strategic and creative ways to motivate voters.” Hmm. More: “For now, Musk has landed a valuable spot in Trump’s inner circle. The two have discussed creating a government efficiency board that seeks to reduce federal spending with Musk at the helm. It’s a prospect that, according to some left-leaning watchdogs, could lead to conflicts of interest since Musk’s companies also receive large federal contracts.” • I’m gonna have to invent a new word for “left”; it’s irretrievably polluted, since everybody thinks it means liberal, which it doesn’t.

Republican Funhouse

“The Most Feared and Least Known Political Operative in America” [Politico]. From April. “[Susie] Wiles is not just one of Trump’s senior advisers. She’s his most important adviser. She’s his de facto campaign manager. She has been in essence his chief of staff for the last more than three years. She’s one of the reasons Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee and Ron DeSantis is not. She’s one of the reasons Trump’s current operation has been getting credit for being more professional than its fractious, seat-of-the-pants antecedents. And she’s a leading reason Trump has every chance to get elected again — even after his loss of 2020, the insurrection of 2021, his party’s defeats in the midterms of 2022, the criminal indictments of 2023 and the trial (or trials) of 2024. The former president is potentially a future president. And that’s because of him. But it’s also because of her. Trump, of course, is Trump — he can be irritable, he can be impulsive — and this campaign is facing unprecedented stressors and snags. It’s a long six-plus months till Election Day. For now, though, nobody around him is so influential, and nobody around him has been so influential for so long. ‘There is nobody, I think, that has the wealth of information that she does. Nobody in our orbit. Nobody,’ top Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio told me. ‘She touches everything.’ ‘Certainly,’ said former Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, ‘she’s one of the most consequential people in American politics right now.’ ‘And nobody,’ said veteran Florida lobbyist Ronnie Book, ‘even knows who she is.’” • I had thought Republicans hate women….

* * *

“I Study Guys Like Trump. There’s a Reason They Keep Winning” [New York Times]. “Yet now Mr. Trump has decisively won back the presidency. I would never claim to have all the answers about what went wrong, but I do worry that Democrats walked into the trap of defending the very institutions — the “establishment” — that most Americans distrust. As a party interested in competent technocracy, we lost touch with the anger people feel at government. As a party that prizes data, we seized on indicators of growth and job creation as proof that the economy was booming, even though people felt crushed by rising costs. As a party motivated by social justice, we let revulsion at white Christian nationalism bait us into identity politics on their terms — whether it was debates about transgender athletes, the busing of migrants to cities, or shaming racist MAGA personalities who can’t be shamed. As a party committed to American leadership of a “rules-based international order,” we defended a national security enterprise that has failed repeatedly in the 21st century, and made ourselves hypocrites through unconditional military support for Israel’s bombardment of civilians in Gaza.” And: ” Many voters have come to associate democracy with globalization, corruption, financial capitalism, migration, forever wars and elites (like me) who talk about it as an end in itself rather than a means to redressing inequality, reining in capitalist systems that are rigged, responding to global conflict and fostering a sense of shared national identity.” • As I’ve been saying, Democrats say “our democracy” for a reason. And if you look at how candidates are chosen, the Republican Party is far more democratic and the Democrat Party.

Why can’t we have a Democrat candidate who can express these ideas so clearly:

A fundamental problem in the Democratic Party is that it now has vanishingly few politicians who can articulate this kind of point as cogently as the Republican VP candidate did here. pic.twitter.com/V0NBrW581Z

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) November 8, 2024

(Perhaps all those long-form YouTubes have prepared the conservative voter for a cogent and connected series of arguments, instead of “brat summer” or whatever.

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Airborne Transmission: Covid

Parallel technologies:

Mushroom cultivation requires a lot of lab based work – you’re working in (supposedly) sterile conditions, eg when doing agar work. Laminar flow hoods are required when doing this, otherwise contaminants will kill your efforts (mould will outcompete the mycelium, basically)…

— Matt Tutt (@MattTutt1) November 8, 2024

Michael Pollan, in The Botany of Desire, urges that plants adapt us to their requirements for seed spread and growth by evolving tastes, nutriition, scents, and bright colors. Here we have mushrooms inducing us to breathe clean air, much to our benefit!

Anecdotal but interesting:

A year ago we installed Far UVC in the dining area of a nursing home.

Since then outbreaks have decreased by 85% and overall resident and staff well being has increased.

This nursing home chose to use all possible tools to ensure their occupants stay safe from viruses.… pic.twitter.com/pn5ZsuK2cG

— BioAbundance (@BioAbundancellc) November 7, 2024

Of course, I mistrust any firm with the word “abundance” in its name, especially [checks profile] a Californian one….

Transmission: Covid

“A Flexible Framework for Local-Level Estimation of the Effective Reproductive Number in Geographic Regions with Sparse Data” (preprint) [medRxiv]. From the Abstract: “Our research focuses on local level estimation of the effective reproductive number, which describes the transmissibility of an infectious disease and represents the average number of individuals one infectious person infects at a given time. The ability to accurately estimate the infectious disease reproductive number in geographically granular regions is critical for disaster planning and resource allocation. However, not all regions have sufficient infectious disease outcome data for estimation.” • Can’t make head or tail of the rest, but it might be useful to any epidemiologists in the readership.

Transmission: H5N1

“Serologic Evidence of Recent Infection with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5) Virus Among Dairy Workers — Michigan and Colorado, June–August 2024” [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, CDC]. “Health officials conducted surveys and serologic testing to identify recent HPAI A(H5) infections among dairy workers in two states. .” • Do the math:

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Manufacturing: “Quebec media outlet is reporting possible data falsification at plant where defective Vineyard Wind turbine blades were manufactured” [Bud’s Offshore Energy]. “See the translated excerpts below from a Radio Gaspesie report. This is a massive scandal if true. ‘Yesterday, the vice-president of global operations at GE Vernova reportedly addressed all employees at the Gaspé plant to provide an update on the situation. The investigation, led by GE Vernova’s lawyers, reportedly revealed that employees were asked by senior company executives to falsify quality control data. Data associated with a well-made blade was then associated with poorly made blades. Our sources indicate that this is a widespread practice in the industry. The senior management of the Gaspé plant also allegedly implemented a points system that encouraged employees to skip verification steps, thus prioritizing production quantity over quality. Our sources say the points system allegedly involved tight management oversight that bordered on intimidation of employees. The oversized 107m blades that were produced in Gaspé for the construction of marine parks are said to be affected. .” • Yikes!

Manufacturing: “Boeing to refund lost pay to employees furloughed during Machinists strike” [Seattle Times]. “In a goodwill gesture to Boeing employees who were furloughed during the Machinists’ strike, new CEO Kelly Ortberg on Thursday afternoon sent out a message saying the company will return the pay they lost… A longtime nonunion employee on the quality staff, who asked not to be named to protect his job, said the furloughs had seemed ‘an odd way of taking care of the people not on strike’ and that they destroyed productivity that month as affected employees like him scrambled to figure out the impact and what to do. ‘Obviously your time is not spent focusing on work, but on OK, how am I going to handle this? How do I pay my bills? How do I apply for unemployment?’ he said. The staffer said Thursday he’s ‘really happy’ at the course reversal. ‘There’s still a lot of mistrust,’ he said. ‘There’s still this sense of, ‘Wow, can I trust the company?” And yet, he continued, “this is a step in the right direction.’”

Manufacturing: “Boeing Is Exploring Possible $6 Billion Sale for Jeppesen Unit” [Bloomberg]. ” Boeing Co. is exploring a sale of its Jeppesen navigation unit as the planemaker draws up a list of assets it could shed to help lighten its $58 billion debt load, according to people familiar with the matter…. Suitors are already circling Jeppesen, which could attract sizable interest from private equity firms as well as other companies, said the people.”

Manufacturing: “Boeing 737 Production Grinds Forward” [Airline Geeks]. “With the approval of a new contract, Reuters reported that Boeing will now take weeks to continue producing 737s in the single digits per month range for some time, citing two unnamed sources briefed on the matter. The company was aiming to produce 38 of its best-selling jets per month prior to the strikes, down from 42 a month before January’s Alaska 1282 incident.”

Manufacturing: “United Boeing 777 APU Catches Fire at San Francisco Airport” [Aviation A2Z]. “According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing report, United aircraft during pushback from terminal 2, gate 6 experienced a fire in the APU. For those who are not aware of APU, it is actually a small jet engine located in the tail or empennage section of an aircraft. It is used to start main engines and also act as backup in case of engine failure.” • Oh dear. I have mentally classified the 777 as the last good Boeing airplane, and the only safe one.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 61 Greed (previous close: 59 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 44 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 8 at 1:51:07 PM ET

Permaculture

“The Weeds Are Winning” [MIT Technology Review]. “According to Ian Heap, a weed scientist who runs the International Herbicide-Resistant Weed Database, there have been well over 500 unique cases of [herbicide-resistance] in 273 weed species and counting. Weeds have evolved resistance to 168 different herbicides and 21 of the 31 known “modes of action,” which means the specific biochemical target or pathway a chemical is designed to disrupt. Some modes of action are shared by many herbicides.” Darwin Awards for the industry! More: “Fundamentally, the solution is to ‘not focus solely on herbicides for weed management,’ says Micheal Owen, a weed scientist and emeritus professor at Iowa State University. And that presents a “major, major issue for the farmer” and the current state of American farms, he adds. Farms have ballooned in size over the last couple of decades, as a result of rural flight, labor costs, and the advent of chemicals and genetically modified crops that allowed farmers to quickly apply herbicides over massive areas to control weeds capitalism. This has led to a kind of sinister simplification in terms of crop diversity, weed control practices, and the like. And the weeds have adjusted.” • Edit mine.

Book Nook

“Neal Stephenson Jumps From Speculative Fancy to Strange History” [Literary Hub]. • Hmm. “Interwar leftism”? Another damn book to read.

News of the Wired

“Mitochondria Are Alive” [Asimov Press]. “The cells within our body are the remnants of an ancient alliance…. Margulis argued that one-and-a-half billion years ago, a primitive eukaryotic cell engulfed an oxygen-utilizing bacterium. But rather than digesting this bacterium — or conversely, the bacterium destroying its newfound host — the two cells gradually entered into an endosymbiotic relationship; the host provided nutrients and protection to the bacterium, and the bacterium supplied energy to the host. Margulis argued that this endosymbiosis event was a seminal ‘innovation engine’ for biological systems, ultimately leading to the modern mitochondrion and chloroplast…. Most biologists today, however, also believe that mitochondria have ‘devolved’ into little more than membrane-bound organelles, similar to inanimate components like the endoplasmic reticulum or Golgi apparatus. But a swelling tide of scientific evidence about mitochondrial functions and dynamics suggests otherwise — mitochondria are not just organelles, but their own life forms…, Defining mitochondria as ‘nonliving’ isn’t just a classification mistake, nor a question of word choice. Rather, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and role of mitochondria. It inherently undermines our understanding of biological systems and deeply influences the tools we build to study them.”

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 IM:

IM writes: “Some photos from Ucluelet on the westiest West Coast.”

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