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2:00PM Water Cooler 6/24/2022 | naked capitalism

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Booted Warbler, Ratchaburi, Thailand. Picked from among recordings from Scotland and India. Quite a range!

* * *

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” –Hunter Thompson

Roe v. Wade

“Supreme Court overturns constitutional right to abortion” [SCOTUSblog]. “The Supreme Court on Friday eliminated the constitutional right to obtain an abortion, casting aside 49 years of precedent that began with Roe v. Wade. The decision by Justice Samuel Alito will set off a seismic shift in reproductive rights across the United States. It will allow states to ban abortion, and experts expect about half the states to do so. In one of the most anticipated rulings in decades, the court overturned Roe, which first declared a constitutional right to abortion in 1973, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which re-affirmed that right in 1992. The decision followed the leak in early May of a draft opinion showing that a majority of the justices were privately poised to take that step. On Friday, they made it official. The vote to overturn Roe was 5-4. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito’s opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts did not join the opinion. He agreed with the majority that the Mississippi abortion restriction at issue in the case should be upheld, but in a separate opinion, he argued that the court should not have overturned Roe.” • Here is the opinion.

“Supreme Court’s Abortion Ruling Puts States in Spotlight” [Wall Street Journal]. “By eliminating a constitutional right to an abortion, the high court’s ruling returns the issue to the states, and about half of them, mostly led by Republicans, have been poised to ban many or most abortions if Roe was wiped away. Other Democrat-led states are moving to protect access to the procedure, in some cases preparing for visitors from states where abortion will be unavailable. And in politically diverse states with divided government, clashes over the path forward on abortion policy could continue for years. ‘This is going to put abortion toward the center of our politics for the foreseeable future,’ said Steven Greene, a political-science professor at North Carolina State University. Advocates on both sides of the issue said that the ruling would place additional focus on state and local elections, because governors, state lawmakers and attorneys general will hold new power to enact and enforce a broader array of abortion policies. That means those contests could see additional funding and support from national groups and donors.”

Thomas, in his concurring opinion, says the quiet part out loud. “Substantive due process” is next:

(Oddly, Loving v. Virginia is not on Thomas’s list; “a little personal privilege carve-out.“) Commentary:

Can a D&D player in the readership unpack this?

Flaccid Democrat reaction (1):

When counterpoising the rhetoric of moral claims, I think “abortion is murder” vs. “intensely personal” wins easily. As we see.

Flaccid Democrat reaction (2):

Flaccid Democrat reaction (3):

Too bad we don’t have a Democrat Lincoln to fire some generals ’til we get a Grant.

Flaccid Democrat reaction (4):

So why not nuke the filbuster, have both Democrat houses codify Roe v. Wade into law — and substantive due process while we’re at it — and put a bill on Biden’s desk for him to sign? How about it, President Manchin?

Failure has many parents. Here’s one:

(One of the happier by-products of this really ugly decision may be a final burial of bourgeios feminism (+ its Democrat faction (+ that portion of the NGO complex)), which simply didn’t deliver on protecting a medical procedure they rightly viewed as essential.)

“Abortion in America — the road to rolling back Roe vs Wade” [Lyz Lenz, Financial Times]. Growing up in the Christian right: “None of my siblings believe what we were taught. We’ve all grown up. Very few even go to church. Some of my sisters have been victims of abuse and assault. Some have had children, got divorced, faced poverty and loss. One sister, after a devastating car accident, had to declare bankruptcy at 18 in the face of overwhelming medical bills. Some are queer. Some are single mothers. Anti-abortion rhetoric only works if you are never poor, never a victim, never without health insurance, have never found yourself bleeding in a dorm room, unsure how to name what happened to you but afraid you’ll be pregnant and lose everything you’ve fought so hard for, that thing women so rarely get — freedom. Anti-abortion rhetoric only works if you don’t know that your sister has a medical condition that could mean death if she gets pregnant. Anti-abortion rhetoric only works if you’ve never seen your friend recover from a violent beating at the hands of her boyfriend. Never worked at a women’s shelter and seen the wives of pastors come in sobbing, secretly on birth control, because they cannot afford to have another child. So, how did I, the indoctrinated daughter of the American conservative right, grow up to champion the very cause I had been told was evil? Simple: I lived life as an American woman.” • Well worth a read.

Capitol Seizure

“The Jan. 6 Hearings Have Been So Much Better Than I Expected” [Michelle Goldberg, New York Times]. “With Trump, however, the question has never been whether he’s committed outrageous misdeeds, but whether those misdeeds can be made to matter. Over and over again, the answer to that question has been no. It might still be no. But the hearings are having more of an impact than I expected. The decision by the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to keep pro-Trump Republicans off the Jan. 6 committee has eliminated the back-and-forth bloviating that typically plague congressional inquiries, allowing investigators to present their findings with the narrative cohesion of a good true-crime series.” This is important: “For some, the hearings are doing more than that. Dustin Stockton helped organize the pro-Trump bus tour that culminated in the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse in front of the White House. Politico once called him and his fiancée, Jennifer Lawrence, the ‘Bonnie and Clyde of MAGA world.’ On Tuesday, after a hearing that included testimony by Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House, and the Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, Stockton tweeted, ‘This has been the most impactful of the January 6th Committee hearings. Embarrassed that I was fooled by the Fulton County ‘suitcases of ballots’ hoax.’”

“High drama as Jan. 6 hearing details Trump’s effort to corrupt Justice Department” [ABC]. “Thursday’s hearing of the Jan. 6 committee focused on the pressure then-President Donald Trump and his allies put on the Justice Department to help overturn the 2020 election.” • At the Constitutional level, I’m not aghast at this. There was an enormous scandal in 2006 when Bush the Younger fired a bunch of United States attorneys, but they’re political appointees ffs; they “serve at the pleasure of the President.” At the pragmatic level, the pattern is that Trump tries to get this or that person to do this or that. The person refuses. Trump drops it, and moves along. As a matter of law, I don’t know how to frame this. But an assault on the Winter Palace this is not. More: “Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., closed by previewing the focus of hearings to come in July, calling the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol Trump’s of stopping the transfer of power’ if he couldn’t get away with a ‘political coup.’” What the heck is a “political coup”? A norms violation? More: “‘We are going to show how Donald Trump tapped into the threat of violence, how he summoned a mob to Washington and how — after corruption and political pressure failed to keep Donald Trump in office — violence became the last option,’ he said.” • Well, I’m glad at last we have a theory of the case about the relation between the Capitol seizure and the rest of Trump’s efforts, because I’ve been asking for that for some time. But as of now, I’m not buying it. If the rioters managed to stop the count, the House moves the count elsewhere and holds it later. How does that not happen?

“Ron Johnson now says he helped coordinate effort to pass false elector slates to Pence, but his new explanation drew a quick rebuke” [USA Today]. “After initially claiming to be ‘basically unaware’ of an effort by his staff to get fake presidential elector documents to Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday he coordinated with a Wisconsin attorney to pass along such information and alleged a Pennsylvania congressman brought slates of fake electors to his office — a claim that was immediately disputed. Evidence presented this week by the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol showed Johnson’s chief of staff tried to deliver the two states’ lists of fake presidential electors for former President Donald Trump to Pence on the morning of the U.S. Capitol insurrection but was rebuffed by Pence’s aide. Johnson initially told reporters this week he did not know where the documents came from and that his staff sought to forward it to Pence. But he said in a Thursday interview on WIBA-AM that he had since discovered the documents came from Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, and acknowledged he coordinated with Dane County attorney Jim Troupis and his chief of staff by text message that morning to get to Pence a document Troupis described as regarding ‘Wisconsin electors.’ Kelly’s office immediately pushed back on Johnson’s claim, saying: “Senator Johnson’s statements about Representative Kelly are patently false.’ ‘Mr. Kelly has not spoken to Sen. Johnson for the better part of a decade, and he has no knowledge of the claims Mr. Johnson is making related to the 2020 election.’”

Biden Administration

“Harris meets Democratic attorneys general as White House gears up for abortion ruling” [Reuters]. “U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris met a group of seven Democratic attorneys general on Thursday to discuss the defense to a major ruling that could dramatically curtail abortion rights in the country…. ‘We will start preliminary discussions about how state attorneys general have power, may have the power at the very least to issue guidance to ensure that people of their state know their rights, that they have the power to assess and potentially challenge the constitutionality of laws that are being passed in their state,’ Harris said.” • Oh. Meanwhile:

Could it be — hear me out — that we’re not “all in this together”?

2022

* * *

PA: Oops:

PA:

Fetterman’s campaign is good on the Twitter. I don’t think anybody ever won a campaign there, though.

WY: “Cheney urging Wyoming Democrats to switch parties to vote for her in primary” [The Hill]. “Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is looking to recruit registered Democrats to switch their party affiliation in order to vote for her in Wyoming’s Aug. 16 primary. Her campaign website offers instructions for how voters can change their party affiliation in order to vote in the Republican primary and even directs them to a Wyoming voter registration change form. The New York Times also reported on Thursday that Cheney’s campaign has been sending out mailers to Wyoming Democratic voters with information about voting in the Republican primary. Wyoming allows voters to change their party affiliations by mail up to 14 days before the primary. Voters can also switch their party affiliation at the polls. Cheney is facing a hotly contested primary in August against Republican Harriet Hageman. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Hageman as part of his effort to oust Cheney for her vote last year to impeach him for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.” • Merger of liberal Democrats and Never Trump Republicans continues apace. One thinks of scorpions mating.

Democrats en Déshabillé

I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:

The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). ; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. . (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.

Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.

* * *

“The Gerontocracy of the Democratic Party Doesn’t Understand That We’re at the Brink” [Jamelle Bouie, New York Times]. “I’m reminded of the historian Jefferson Cowie’s argument about the New Deal’s relationship to the American political order. In ‘The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics,’ Cowie argues for an interpretation of the United States in the 20th century that treats the New Deal era, from the administration of Franklin Roosevelt to the 1970s, as a ‘sustained deviation from some of the main contours of American political practice, economic structure, and cultural outlook.’ The Great Depression and World War II may have ‘forced clear realignments of American politics and class relations,’ Cowie writes, ‘but those changes were less the linear triumph of the welfare state than the product of very specific, and short-lived, historical circumstances.’ If this is true — if the New Deal was the product of highly contingent circumstances unlikely to be repeated either now or in the future — then the challenge for those committed to the notion of a government that protects and expands the collective economic rights of the American people is to forge a new vision for what that might be. Cowie writes, I think you can apply a similar ‘great exception’ analysis to the decades of institutional stability and orderly partisan competition that shaped the current generation of Democratic leaders, including the president and many of his closest allies. They came into national politics in an age of bipartisan consensus and centrist policymaking, at a time when the parties and their coalitions were less ideological and more geographically varied. But this, too, was a historical aberration, the result of political and social dynamics — such as the broad prosperity of the industrial economic order at home — that were already well in decline by the time that Biden, Pelosi, Feinstein and others first took office. American politics since then has reverted to an earlier state of heightened division, partisanship and fierce electoral competition. Even the authoritarianism on display in the Republican Party has antecedents in the behavior of Southern political elites at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Millions of Democratic voters can see and feel that American politics has changed in profound ways since at least the 1990s, and they want their leaders to act, and react, accordingly.” • Well worth a read, amazingly for the Times Op-Ed section.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“How Elites Misread Public Opinion” [Politico]. “Most of our theories of politics in democracies emphasize this notion that there’s public opinion: Our political leaders are paying attention to public opinion, and they’re forming policy as a result. But one thing that these elite experiments are really good at showing is that oftentimes elites are actually misinformed about what the public wants — that elites are fundamentally misreading the room. So in the context of American politics, there are experiments where you go to state legislators, and you tell them more about what their constituents actually think about given issues, and you see if it affects their political behavior. Similarly, in a foreign policy context, there are researchers who have done lots of great studies where they correct misperceptions about what the public wants and see how that affects elite decision-making. There are a bunch of regularities that folks doing this kind of research have noticed. For example, the public is much more likely to believe that global warming exists, that climate change is real and that it is being caused by human beings than elites think the public believes. Similarly, elites tend to have this assumption that the public is much more isolationist in foreign policy than the public actually is.” • Reminds me of this morning’s link: Power causes brain damage.

#COVID19

I am but a humble tape-watcher, and I’m perplexed about the current state of play. Case data is showing the fiddling-and-diddling behavior characteristic of a peak. However, nothing I hear in anecdotal case data tells me there’s any relief. Hospitalization data (trailing) is easing (and so the hospital-centric public health establishment probably thinks Covid is done). Positivity data (leading) has been fiddling and diddling as it too does at peaks. Then again, waste-water data (leading) is slightly downThe wild card is variants BA.4/5 (and I thought we were supposed to be giving names to these things). All the variant sources I have say BA.4/5 are up, but they differ as to how much and where, and the data is two weeks behind (hat tip, CDC; who could have known we’d need to track variant data?). I am reminded of the “stairstep” (see the Case count chart below: I muttered about this at the time) that marked the Delta/Omicron transition, just before Omicron’s amazing take-off. Perhaps a BA.4/5 transition will exhibit the same behavior. OTOH, I could be projecting patterns into clouds.

* * *

• Maskstravaganza: Medical professionals who don’t mask up, a thread:

• Maskstravaganza: And that’s an order:


* * *

If you missed it, here’s a post on my queasiness with CDC numbers, especially case count, which I (still) consider most important, despite what Walensky’s psychos at CDC who invented “community levels” think. But these are the numbers we have.

* * *

I cannot find a case count chart that integrates regional and national subtotals, so we are that much stupider. I thought the New York Times had the nicest data presentationL

Case count for the United States:

The totals are or less level, but under the hood the BA.4/5 are making up a greater and greater proportion of cases. Remember that cases are undercounted, one source saying by a factor of six, Gottlieb thinking we only pick up one in seven or eight.) Hence, I take the case count and multiply it by six to approximate the real level of cases, and draw the DNC-blue “Biden Line” at that point. Yesterday, the count was ~ 97,000. Today, it’s 99,600, and 99,600 * 6 = a Biden line at 597,600. At least we have confirmation that the extraordinary mass of case anecdotes had a basis in reality. (Remember these data points are weekly averages, so daily fluctuations are smoothed out.) The black “Fauci Line” is a counter to triumphalism, since it compares current levels to past crises.

From the Walgreen’s test positivity tracker:

0.7%. (I’m leaving the corporate logo on as a slap to and check on the goons at CDC.)

Wastewater data, regional (Biobot Analytics), June 22:

Wastewater data (CDC), June 4 – June 18:

CDC’s wastewater chart is down again.

Variant data, regional (Biobot), June 8:

Out of date compared to Walgreens (below) but still showing doubling behavior.

NOT UPDATED Variant data, national (Walgreens), June 15:

In 18 days, BA.4/5 has gone from 18 days, 9.66 to 28.47 (and this is not according to some sorta model, like CDC’s NowCast, which gives 35%). Nice doubling behavior, implying BA.4/5 should be happily dominant just in time for the travel weekend of July 4, good job everyone.

NOT UPDATED Variant data, national (CDC), June 4:

Lambert here: It’s beyond frustrating how slow the variant data is.

From CDC Community Profile Reports (PDFs), “Rapid Riser” counties:

Everything better except for some new red flecks in the lower Mississippi.

The previous release:

NOTE I shall most certainly not be using the CDC’s new “Community Level” metric. Because CDC has combined a leading indicator (cases) with a lagging one (hospitalization) their new metric is a poor warning sign of a surge, and a poor way to assess personal risk. In addition, Covid is a disease you don’t want to get. Even if you are not hospitalized, you can suffer from Long Covid, vascular issues, and neurological issues. For these reasons, case counts — known to be underestimated, due to home test kits — deserve to stand alone as a number to be tracked, no matter how much the political operatives in CDC leadership would like to obfuscate it. That the “green map” (which Topol calls a “capitulation” and a “deception”) is still up and being taken seriously verges on the criminal. Use the community transmission immediately below.

Here is CDC’s interactive map by county set to community transmission. This is the map CDC wants only hospitals to look at, not you:

West Coast, and Midwest are all red. More and more orange (“substantial”) on the East Coast, with some yellow breaking out. Great Plains speckled with yellow and blue.

Hospitalization (CDC Community Profile):

Very volatile.

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 1,040,236 1,039,771. I have added an anti-triumphalist Fauci Line.

Stats Watch

Consumer Sentiment: “United States Michigan Consumer Sentiment” [Trading Economics]. “The University of Michigan consumer sentiment was downwardly revised to a record low of 50.0 in June of 2022, from a preliminary reading of 50.2. The current economic conditions subindex sank to an all-time low of 53.8 (vs. 63.3 in May), and the expectations gauge plunged to 47.5. About 79% of consumers expected bad times in the year ahead for business conditions, the highest since 2009. Inflation expectations for the year ahead stood at 5.4%, little changed from a preliminary reading or the preceding four months.”

* * *

The Bezzle: “$100 million worth of crypto has been stolen in another major hack” [CNBC]. “Hackers have stolen $100 million in cryptocurrency from Horizon, a so-called blockchain bridge, in the latest major heist in the world of decentralized finance…. Blockchain bridges play a big role in the DeFi space, offering users a way of transferring their assets from one blockchain to another. In Horizon’s case, users can send tokens from the Ethereum network to Binance Smart Chain. Harmony said the attack did not affect a separate bridge for bitcoin. Like other facets of DeFi, which aims to rebuild traditional financial services like loans and investments on the blockchain, bridges have become a prime target for hackers due to vulnerabilities in their underlying code. Bridges ‘maintain large stores of liquidity,’ making them a ‘tempting target for hackers,’ according to Jess Symington, research lead at blockchain analysis firm Elliptic. ‘In order for individuals to use bridges to move their funds, assets are locked on one blockchain and unlocked, or minted, on another,’ Symington said. ‘As a result, these services hold large volumes of cryptoassets.’ Harmony has not revealed exactly how the funds were stolen. However, one investor had raised concerns about the security of its Horizon bridge as far back as April.” • Hmm. Does make you wonder about collusion between the Founders of DeFi firms and the hackers. Maybe they split the take, and the marks are the only losers?

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 27 Fear (previous close: 22 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 14 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 24 at 1:21 PM EDT.

Department of Feline Felicity

Now do baths:

Groves of Academe

Wait. I thought this was a parody account:

Decline of the West Watch

Another historical aberration:

And:

Declining consumer experience has been going on for some time (Yves dubbed it “crapification”) but Covid is accelerating the process.

Class Warfare

“Synthetic Opioids Are an Everything Problem” [RAND]. “The Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking. The commission was created by Congress to examine the threat of synthetic opioids and devise a strategic approach to countering the illegal flow of these drugs into the United States…. The commission came up with 78 recommendations across five pillars for how to address the crisis from both sides of this supply-and-demand equation. These range from cracking down on money laundering by the criminal organizations that manufacture and smuggle synthetic opioids to exploring harm-reduction efforts that aim to mitigate the damage associated with substance use. The recommendations also include actions that could, if enacted, yield comprehensive and sustainable results, such as elevating the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy to a cabinet-level position and enhancing the research and analysis of ongoing drug market trends.” • As long as there is despair, there will be demand.

News of the Wired

The datasaurus:

Yikes:


* * *

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 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 RM:

RM writes: “Oxytropis Lambertii, Lambert’s Locoweed. Ha ha, I can’t resist sending your namesake. The spring rains after two deviating droughts have really stimulated this short grass prairie this year.”

* * *

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