2:00PM Water Cooler 8/20/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Thrashers 4EVA!

California Thrasher, Placerita Canyon Nature Center, Los Angeles, California, United States. Additional species: Spotted Towhee, Pipilo maculatus, Bewick’s Wren.

The flight of the honey buzzard:

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Democrat National Convention vignettes.
2. Highest Covid wave in two years.
3. Stupid money and blood money.

Look for the Helpers

A thread of people chiming in about how this corn is fun to grow. The seeds can be purchased at Alliance of Native Seed Keepers.

My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza). –>

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

Democrats en Déshabillé

“Democrats: Capitalism isn’t the problem and we have no solution” [Carl Beijer]. “I hate to spoil the wishful thinking of leftists who desperately want Democrats to sign on to radical politics, but as much as this sounds like a critique of capitalism, it’s not. In fact it is precisely because this sounds so much like a critique of capitalism that it is so dangerous. Democrats voice all of the familiar concerns about consolidation, profiteering, monopoly, and exploitation — but only so that, at the very last moment, they can insist that this bundle of problems isn’t capitalism. Instead, we learn that something called “corporate greed” is keeping us from True Capitalism… But if Democrats want to insist that we can get to True Capitalism by ridding America of corporate greed, they should tell us their plan for doing so. Maybe Kamala Harris can hold a series of fireside chats with Americans and beg us to stop being so greedy. Then in a press conference the next day the White House can explain that what she actually meant to condemn was corporate greed, apologies if any greedy capitalists took offense.” • Indeed.

2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

There is no good news here for Trump. The deterioration in both Pennsylvania and Georgia is especially marked. Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads — are within the margin of error. So the “joy” is based on, well, vibes.

* * *

Democrat National Convention Vignettes:

Warnock also owes me six hundred bucks:

“The pandemic taught us how. A contagious airborne disease means that I have a personal stake in the health of my neighbor. If she’s sick, I may get sick also. Her healthcare is good for my health.”@ReverendWarnock at the DNC convention#DNCConvention2024 pic.twitter.com/dGLoV015X5

— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) August 20, 2024

Joy through Strength:

it’s a campaign about joy hAhAhA pic.twitter.com/DtNnT5Hfh2

— Gio DeBatta 🍸 (@GDebatta) August 19, 2024

On the bright side, it’s good to see Democrat commitment to defending their own borders from incursions.

Ironclad commitement (1):

The Democratic Party should be investigating which delegate just hit a veiled Muslim woman over the head with a pole. FFS. How is this okay??

The normalization of liberal Islamophobia: https://t.co/Rqnjy79CIG

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) August 20, 2024

Ironclad commitment (2):

Audience members at the DNC in Chicago unfurl banner that says “Stop arming Israel.”

After audience sees the banner, they begin chanting “We love Joe.”

Man tries to rip banner away.

Stadium lights over this spot then dimmed and banner was ripped away. pic.twitter.com/3RfK1aUSV4

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) August 20, 2024

The voice of a new generation (1):

NEWS

Stephanie Grisham, who served as Trump’s White House Press Secretary, Communications Director, and Chief of Staff to then First Lady Melania Trump, is set to speak at the Democratic National Convention this week.

“I never thought I’d be speaking at a Democratic… pic.twitter.com/LKkOfw0eGT

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 20, 2024

The voice of a new generation (2):

Keep the momentum going—join DSA:https://t.co/P6f3gxfJgO

— Tyler 🍉🥥🌴 (@JusticeDoer) August 20, 2024

I’ll start getting excited about Shawn Fain if a 2028 General Strike actually comes to fruition and wins workers some actual power, and isn’t used as a [family blogging] bargaining chip at the start of Kamala’s second term.

And speaking of fascism:

American left-liberals call everyone they disagree with a Nazi and fascist.

The one time they ever encountered real Nazis and fascists — those who form the battalions who dominate much of Ukraine — they demanded they be drowned in sophisticated arms and billions of dollars. https://t.co/UsAMPuvEbF

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 19, 2024

Surgical removal of the sense of shame:

“Bill decided he could get us in if we offered to pick up the litter that had accumulated in the courtyard” …during a maintenance worker strike
2 literal scabs are speaking at the DNC this week https://t.co/IbAvhet0nA pic.twitter.com/TJCYJWYKKD

— moe tkacik (@moetkacik) August 20, 2024

More Democrat National Convention:

“‘Now We Know We’re Going to Win’: Democratic Delegates Breathe With Relief” [Politico]. “Michelle McFall stood from her seat when Joe Biden took the stage. Down on the floor to the left of the lectern and a mere five rows from the front, as the president basked in the cheers on Monday on the first of the four nights of the Democratic National Convention, the Pennsylvania delegate had tears well in her eyes…. Beyond being a delegate, McFall, 55, from Murrysville, the political director for Malcolm Kenyatta’s campaign for auditor general and the chair of the Democratic Committee of Westmoreland County — a rural county in the western part of the state in which less than 40 percent of the registered voters are Democrats. ‘.” Good. It ought to be difficult being a Democrat, given the way they’ve stacked the bodies up. More: “‘We had one of my committee members in 2021 attacked by a Trump supporter,’ she said. But now? In the last few weeks? ‘It’s everything. It’s the way ,; she said. ‘We see it in counties like mine — where so many Democratic voters had sort of disengaged for a number of reasons. They’re not disengaged anymore.’” • Biden didn’t “pass the torch.” He was forced out by an Inner Party cabal (although, I suppose, institutionally it could be a good thing that the Democrats are as ruthless as the Tories). What I can’t figure out is if partisans like McFall are lying when they say these things, or whether they genuinely believe them. I’m inclining to the latter view, which is pretty frightening.

“4 Things Kamala Harris Needs to Pull Off at the DNC” [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. “It is difficult to overestimate the momentum change in Democratic prospects for 2024 that has accompanied Harris’s advent as presidential nominee. It’s evident in the top-line national polling numbers showing her leading Trump as much as Trump led Biden before the switcheroo. It’s also evident in the battleground state polling showing her with multiple paths to 270 electoral votes. And perhaps most of all, it’s evident in indices of Democratic enthusiasm that appears to be leading most Biden 2020 voters back into the corral with renewed interest in voting. These are the hard cold valuable facts beneath all the chatter about Harris’s memes and vibes. If Harris can keep this sense of momentum and optimism and enthusiasm alive beyond the convention, she will have a relatively short runway to November 5 (not to mention September and October, the start of early voting in most states) and an easy transition to get-out-the-vote efforts as opposed to the massive effort to turn around swing voters that Biden would have faced.”

“The Weirdness of Manufactured Joy” [Sasha Stone, Free Thinking]. From the right: “All that would matter would be chasing euphoria, pure joy, joy I hadn’t felt since 2008. That addiction to the rush of being a Good Liberal making the world a better place one manufactured victory at a time.” • A four-day liberalgasm…

“Barack and Michelle Obama look to add a flavor of 2008 to Harris’s bid” [WaPo]. “Former advisers say that, in his speech, Obama can try to re-create some of the mood and tenor of his 2008 campaign as well. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first White House chief of staff and currently U.S. ambassador to Japan, said, ‘He can speak to our better angels,’ offering a stark contrast with the current political environment. ‘This moment is not unlike the time when he was active in national politics,’ Axelrod said. ‘It was about the war and economy, but it was also about people who really wanted to turn the page on rancor and the grinding politics of Washington.’”

* * *

“Some protesters tear down security fence as thousands march outside Democratic National Convention” [Associated Press]. “Organizers had hoped at least 20,000 people would take part in Monday’s rally and march, but it appeared that only a few thousand were present, though city officials declined to give a crowd estimate.”

“Photos : Protests outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago” [USA Today]. • I can’t find an aerial photo to assess the size of the crowds. Are there no drones? Readers?

* * *

“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Prime-Time Speech Reflects Long March To Mainstream” [HuffPo]. “By handing her a prime-time speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday night, the Democratic Party has fully embraced New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a still-occasional insurgent against the party’s leadership who opened her career with the shocking ouster of an incumbent. It was not even Ocasio-Cortez’s idea to speak at the convention, according to a senior aide. The convention organizers contacted her about the opportunity and gave her a prime-time spot better than the slot given to New York’s governor. And she used it to deliver a stemwinder, generating some of the loudest cheers of the convention’s first night and leaving the crowd chanting “A-O-C” as she walked off the stage.” • What a waste of a great natural talent.

The Campaign Trail:

Kamala:

“Can Kamala Harris overcome her campaign’s biggest challenge?” [Vox]. “Since her campaign’s launch a month ago, Harris has sought to align herself with majority opinion in (at least) three distinct ways. First, she has moderated substantively, disavowing her most left-wing issue positions from 2020, while touting her support of a bipartisan border security bill and the toughness of her prosecutorial record. Second, she has made the case for liberal issue positions in philosophically conservative terms — framing her social policies as attempts to safeguard individual freedom from government overreach and her fiscal agenda as, among other things, a plan for helping strivers ‘build intergenerational wealth.’ Finally, Harris has painted herself as a tribune of the middle class and her opponent as a servant of the wealthy few. To claim the mantle of economic populism, Harris has not been afraid to tout ideas that are substantively left-wing yet broadly popular.” • “Helping strivers.” Well, maybe so.

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!

Transmission: Covid

“The US is experiencing its largest summer Covid wave in at least two years” [CNN]. “It may be time to dust off the face masks and air purifiers. The US is in the midst of a significant Covid-19 wave, with viral activity levels in wastewater the highest they’ve been for a summer surge since July 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s wastewater dashboard. The CDC’s measure of national Covid viral activity in wastewater rose to 8.82 on August 10 – falling shy of a peak of 9.56 in July 2022. The CDC says the most recent data is incomplete and may change. Before it started rising again in May, it was at 1.36. ‘Currently, the COVID-19 wastewater viral activity level is very high nationally, with the highest levels in the Western US region,’ Dr. Jonathan Yoder, deputy director of the CDC’s Wastewater Surveillance Program, said in an email. ‘This year’s COVID-19 wave is coming earlier than last year, which occurred in late August/early September.’” • I believe I started muttering about this oncoming wave a while ago….. Stay safe out there!

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

And:

“I expected….” Musical interlude.

Supply Chain: “Consumer goods maker Newell Brands isn’t waiting to see what the impact of new trade policies will be on its manufacturing plans” [Logistics Report, Wall Street Journal]. “The company has shifted production of its Sharpie retractable pens, Oster blenders and other goods from China to its own plants in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as Southeast Asia…. Newell is among a growing set of companies that are recognizing that protectionism underpinned by tariffs will be a feature of U.S. trade policy in coming years no matter who wins the White House this fall. President Biden has left a swath of Trump administration tariffs in place, triggering a broad resetting of corporate supply chains, and Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t signaled that she would veer away from the tactic.”

Supply Chain: “China-Mexico flights reopen amid manufacturers’ Latin American push” [Nikkei Asia]. “China’s airlines are reopening direct services linking the country to Mexico after a hiatus during the coronavirus pandemic, as a wave of Chinese manufacturers set up shop in the North American production hub.”

Manufacturing: “What went wrong with Boeing’s spaceship” [NBC]. “Here’s what went wrong with Boeing’s Starliner capsule. NASA and Boeing have been monitoring two separate issues with the Starliner: one with a set of thrusters and the other involving helium leaks in its propulsion system. Engineers with NASA and Boeing have been using a test engine at the space agency’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico to study the performance of the thrusters…. Preliminary results indicated that all but one of the 28 reaction control system thrusters performed well, but NASA said various tests have shown that a tiny Teflon seal seemed to swell under high temperatures, which could block the flow of propellant into the thrusters…. However, Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said this month that the team ‘can’t totally prove with certainty what we’re seeing on orbit is exactly what’s been replicated on the ground.’… Separately, teams have also been monitoring slow helium leaks in the spacecraft’s propulsion system. Mission managers knew about one helium leak before Starliner’s launch but said at the time that the slow leak was manageable and unlikely to affect the mission or compromise the astronauts’ safety.” • What went wrong with Boeing’s spaceship is Boeing. That new CEO may have some decisions to make, fast.

Labor Market: “Fed Confronts Up to a Million US Jobs Vanishing in Revision” [Bloomberg]. “US job growth in the year through March was likely far less robust than initially estimated, which risks fueling concerns that the Federal Reserve is falling further behind the curve to lower interest rates. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. economists expect the government’s preliminary benchmark revisions on Wednesday to show payrolls growth in the year through March was at least 600,000 weaker than currently estimated — about 50,000 a month. While JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasters see a decline of about 360,000, Goldman Sachs indicates it could be as large as a million…. Powell and his colleagues have recently said they’re focusing more on the labor side of their dual mandate, and he’ll take the benchmark revisions into account in his Friday speech at the Fed’s annual symposium.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Neutral (previous close: 41 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 35 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 20 at 1:00:43 PM ET.

Public Health

“The lice will always win” [WaPo]. The deck: “We’ve been losing the war against lice since the dawn of humanity. Should we change how we think about them?” • Let’s just hope they don’t become a vector.

Zeitgeist Watch

strong>Guillotine Watch

Stupid money:

“New York Times erases Garry Tan’s ‘die slow’ tweet explosion” [The Nerd Reich]. “The New York Times Magazine published a story that glowingly depicted Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan as a paragon of mental health success thanks to executive coaching. But the story left out a crucial detail: Tan is the CEO who made headlines for getting drunk and tweeting ‘die slow’ at seven members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in January. That’s one hell of a fact to leave out of a piece that positioned executive ‘coaching’ as an alternative to real therapy…. [Tan] the tech CEO spearheading a campaign to take over San Francisco City Hall in November.” • California dreaming….

Class Warfare

“Blood Money: Selling Plasma to Avoid High-Interest Loans” [The Review of Financial Studies]. ” We exploit dramatic growth in the U.S. blood plasma industry to shed light on the sellers of plasma. Sellers tend to be young and liquidity-constrained with low incomes and limited access to traditional credit. Plasma centers absorb demand for nontraditional credit. After a plasma center opens nearby, demand for payday loans falls by over 13% among young borrowers. Meanwhile, foot traffic increases by over 4% at nearby stores, suggesting that constrained households use plasma markets to smooth consumption without appealing to high-cost debt.” • It’s nice that our young people have options! Now do kidneys….

“Study Finds That Legalized Sports Betting Is Leading to More Bankruptcies, Lower Credit Scores” [Zaid Jilani, The American Saga]. “[A trio of California researchers found] an increase in auto loan delinquencies once sports gambling is legalized. For states with online access to gambling, they found a 28% increase in the likelihood of bankruptcy and an 8% increase in debt collection amounts. They also found a reduction in access to credit — shown through lower credit limits and a higher ratio of secured to unsecured loans.” • Caltrops wherever you look…

News of the Wired

“Uniqueness Bias: Why It Matters, How to Curb It” [arXiv]. The Abtract: “The paper explores ‘uniqueness bias,’ a behavioral bias defined as the tendency of planners and managers to see their decisions as singular. For the first time, uniqueness bias is correlated with forecasting accuracy and performance in real-world project investment decisions. We problematize the conventional framing of projects as unique and hypothesize that it leads to poor project performance. We test the thesis for a sample of 219 projects and find that perceived uniqueness is indeed highly statistically significantly associated with underperformance. Finally, we identify how decision makers can mitigate uniqueness bias in their projects through what Daniel Kahneman aptly called “decision hygiene,” specifically reference class forecasting, premortems, similarity-based forecasting, and noise audits.”

This strikes me as good advice:

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 Teton Time:

Plants in the Tetons.

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