2:00PM Water Cooler 7/1/2022 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Common Nightingale, Taliouline, Morocco. Quite a concert. 28 minutes!

Politics

Politics

Lambert here: One reader suggested changing these quotes; I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but I need to think about it. I don’t want to be too doomy — we are not short of inventory in that department — but I don’t want to go all chipped and Pollyanna-esque, either.

“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

Capitol Seizure

“Why was there no organized resistance to Trump’s January 6 coup?” [WSWS]. “It is clearer than ever that neither before nor during the coup was there any attempt to forestall or obstruct it in any way. Now, the contrast between the scale of the crimes revealed and the meagerness of the reaction is staggering….. Its preparation was no secret; it was organized in plain sight to a large degree. Trump spelled out his plans again and again in the weeks and months leading up to the 2020 election…. No faction or individual in the political establishment attempted to prevent Trump’s criminal operation ahead of time…. On January 6 itself, there was no effort to put down the coup d’état while it was in progress…. The January 6 coup and the response of the entire political establishment to it demonstrates that opposition to dictatorship can only come from a movement that is based on the working class and fights for the overthrow of capitalism.”

“Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection. Stop calling it what it isn’t.” [Derek Snyder, MSN]. “Historically, Shays’ Rebellion (1786-1787), the Whiskey Rebellion (1790), and Fries Rebellion (1799) were actual acts of insurrection. Post-Civil War, the Wilmington Insurrection (1898) is by far worse than Jan. 6. Another one, the Battle of Athens, TN (1946), involved local armed WWII GIs taking over the town, forcing the corrupt sheriff to hide in the jail clinging to the election ballot boxes, until he finally surrendered and the GIs’ candidate won the election. There were the L.A. riots of 1992. And the BLM riots during the summer of 2020 caused 18 deaths, over $1 billion dollars in damage, including federal and state buildings, and in some cities sovereign nations were declared. Jan. 6. caused $1.5 million in damage and, despite what was often reported, one person was killed. An unarmed woman, Ashley Babbitt, was shot by a Capitol police officer. The officer’s interview on NBC resulted in more questions than answers about why he fired his weapon and killed Babbitt. The word insurrection is a legal term. Under federal law it’s a crime to incite or engage in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the U.S. or its laws. Black’s Law Dictionary defines insurrection as “a violent revolt against oppressive authority.” It is to be distinguished from a mob or riot based on organization of an armed uprising. Mobs and riots can involve unlawful and violent acts, but they aren’t necessarily insurrections. A revolt is an act to overthrow the government. Insurrection, therefore, requires an organized group that plans an attack to overthrow the government. To date, a small percentage of the approximately 725 charged have been accused of violent crimes, and no charges of rebellion or insurrection have been filed.” • My heart is with the WSWS (see that last sentence). My head — at least on this issue — is, sadly, with Snyder.

“Jan. 6 committee rallies around Hutchinson amid Trump World onslaught” [Politico]. “The Jan. 6 select committee is raising sharp doubts about the credibility of Tony Ornato, a former Trump White House aide who played a featured role in this week’s explosive testimony by onetime colleague Cassidy Hutchinson.” And: “Ornato, a veteran Secret Service agent of more than two decades with stints in the presidential protection division under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was detailed to the White House by Trump in late 2019 and appointed deputy chief of staff, an unusual arrangement for a law enforcement official.” • I’ll say it’s unusual.

Abortion

“Laws targeting free speech about abortion would put journalists in the line of fire” [Prism]. “New anti-abortion model legislation released last week by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) would force anyone who publishes work online to grapple with that question, putting journalists who cover abortion squarely into legal crosshairs. The model legislation—which NRLC hopes will be adopted by state legislatures around the country—would subject people to criminal and civil penalties for ‘aiding or abetting’ an abortion, including ‘hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion.’ Unsurprisingly, the text offers no guidance on how broadly or narrowly the provision might be interpreted: Does it cover an article on how medication abortion is accessible by mail or reporting on the medical consensus that it’s safe? What about a story on the opening of a new abortion clinic, or one covering the work of abortion care clinicians, advocates, and doulas?… [AT]he First Amendment may not offer much refuge. The legislation prohibits “encourag[ing] abortion access,” which might mean virtually anything—and that’s by design. With laws like these, both the cruelty and the vagueness are the point. Conservatives have used precisely the same playbook with “Don’t Say Gay” laws and so-called “anti-CRT” legislation—the ill-defined and vaguely-worded laws leave so much uncertainty about what’s prohibited that people start policing their own speech out of sheer caution. The result is that a vast amount of speech is chilled without the state ever having to lift a finger for enforcement. While one might expect such clauses to be struck down as First Amendment violations, given the vagueness and overbreadth, it’s no longer a given that the U.S. Supreme Court or the lower federal courts would adhere to longstanding precedent to do so. Overwhelmingly Republican-controlled state supreme courts probably would not stand in the way either. Thus, if the model legislation is adopted and allowed to stand, deep-pocketed anti-abortion activists could use it to tie up news outlets in costly litigation, wasting both time and money crucial to our continued operation.”

Biden Administration

“How unpopular is Joe Biden?” [FiveThirtyEight]. Handy chart:

“US Supreme Court’s blockbuster term reverberates through America” [Financial Times]. “The Supreme Court is set to weigh more divisive issues in its next term, which starts in October. It has agreed to hear a case over affirmative action based on race in university admissions, and will take up a free-speech case involving a website designer who has refused to create pages for same-sex weddings. Environmental regulation will once again be before it in a case involving a couple seeking to build on land the EPA has deemed protected wetlands. And justices on Thursday accepted a case involving North Carolina that could give states free rein to regulate federal elections.”

2022

* * *

“The (new) GOP plan to defeat Raphael Warnock and Mark Kelly” [Axios]. “In a broadly unfavorable national environment for Democrats, control of the Senate may rest on a pair of incumbents with two of the most compelling backstories in politics — Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Mark Kelly of Arizona. Warnock is the pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. Kelly is a former astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, a gun control activist who survived an assassination attempt in 2011…. Republican strategists have discovered a problem: Personal attacks on two of the most vulnerable Democratic senators are falling flat because of their likability.” So the Republicans are trying to tie both to Biden. But: “Senate races tend to be candidate-versus-candidate contests. And both Sen. Kelly and Sen. Warnock have a strong identity, a strong record of service to their states, and they are backed by a unique and deep coalition that is drawn to them, not any one individual party,” [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee communications director David Bergstein] told Axios.”

RI: “Notes on the State of the Primaries: June 29, 2022” [Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball]. “The latest positive indicator for Republicans was an independent poll of Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, which covers the western half of the state. A Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll found that former Cranston Mayor Allan Fung (R), who was also the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2014 and 2018, was leading the likeliest Democratic nominee, state Treasurer Seth Magaziner, by a 45%-39% spread. This comes in a district that Joe Biden carried 56%-42%; Rep. Jim Langevin (D, RI-2) is retiring. The poll was completed a few days before the Dobbs ruling. We flagged this race as a potential sleeper when we initially rated the Rhode Island districts back in February, and we considered rating it just Leans Democratic at the time, but we stuck with Likely given the fact that Republicans have not won a House race in the Ocean State in nearly 3 decades and that the district, at the end of the day, may just be too Democratic to elect a Republican these days. But independent polls of congressional districts are hard to come by, and Suffolk generally does a decent job.” • Hmm.

WI: “The Democratic primary that could determine the future of abortion rights” [Politico]. “Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) are backing Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin’s 35-year-old lieutenant governor who’s led the polls for months. However, 34-year-old Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry is catching up down the stretch after spending millions of his own dollars. That’s not all: Sarah Godlewski, the 40-year-old state treasurer, and Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, 46, fill out the top tier of candidates in a state with a history of surprising Democratic primaries. All four candidates offer a generational contrast from the tempestuous Johnson, who at 67 is running for his third term after twice beating former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). Each Democratic candidate wants to eliminate the filibuster to preserve Roe, and none believe in any abortion restrictions. The biggest difference among them is on adding seats to the Supreme Court, a liberal goal that Nelson supports, Barnes is open to and Godlewski and Lasry oppose.”

WI: “The rot runs deeper” [Don Moynihan, Can We Still Govern?]. “Republicans in the state legislature do not believe that the Democratic Governor, Tony Evers, should have the power to appoint officials, a power that all of his predecessors held. They have operated on this belief by refusing to schedule hearings, or holding hearings when they determined that they wanted to fire the acting Cabinet officials. For example, after a mainstream nominee for the Secretary of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection criticized the legislature for not providing enough funding to address farm suicides, the Senate convened a hearing, and voted him down. The message was clear: regardless of the fact that their gubernatorial candidate lost, the Republican legislature had decided their party would continue to run the executive branch. This extremism was surprising in its novelty, if not its intent. As soon as Republican Scott Walker lost the 2018 election, the legislature used a lame-duck session to remove from the new Democratic Governor and Attorney General many of their traditional powers. For example, Evers was restricted from determining how Medicaid could be implemented, even though Medicaid expansion was a signature campaign issue that helped get him elected. Walker signed these laws, and the conservative-leaning supreme court blessed them. All of this occurred in the aftermath of an election where gerrymandering meant that Democratic candidates had won considerably more votes than Republicans for the state legislature, but gerrymandering allowed Republicans to control 63 of 99 state Assembly seats.” • Yikes!

2024

“GOP megadonors turn on Trump after Jan. 6 hearings, set sights on DeSantis, Pence and other 2024 hopefuls” [CNBC]. “Support from some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors for a 2024 White House run by former President Donald Trump is dwindling, especially after damaging new details of his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, were revealed at a hearing Tuesday by the House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Republican financiers and their advisors have been privately meeting since the committee started to release the initial findings of its probe in a series of public hearings earlier this month, according to interviews with top GOP fundraisers who have helped the party raise millions of dollars. Most of the people asked not to be named because they didn’t want to provoke retribution from Trump or his allies. “Donors are very concerned that Trump is the one Republican who can lose in 2024,” Eric Levine, an attorney and longtime GOP fundraiser, said after the hearing Tuesday featuring testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. ‘I think donors were already moving away from Trump,’ he noted. Levine is co-hosting a fundraising event for the Trump-endorsed former TV host and current Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz in New York in September, according to an invitation reviewed by CNBC.” • Oh, Mehmet Oz.

“DeSantis backers plot early 2024 boost” [Axios]. “A new political group led by veteran Republican strategist Ed Rollins is looking to jump-start a potential Ron DeSantis presidential bid with a legally extraordinary attempt to beef up his donor contact list, Axios has learned. The group, Ready for Ron, says it plans to gather the names and contact information of more than 1 million DeSantis supporters nationwide by the end of the year — then provide that potent political asset, free of charge, to the DeSantis camp. Campaign finance experts say its proposed tactics are legally questionable, and, if accepted by federal regulators, would remake how candidates ‘test the waters’ before runs at public office.” • Ingenious, though!

“The Clinton Moment” [John Ellis, News Items] (Ellis). “Now is her moment. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade creates the opening for Hillary Clinton to get out of stealth mode and start down the path toward declaring her candidacy for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.” Biden is too old. There is no bench. ‘If anything, veteran Democrats are even more pessimistic about Kamala Harris as a potential presidential nominee. As for the others, former Vice President Al Gore is probably the party’s best bet. He has indicated zero interest in running. That leaves former Secretary of State John Kerry, Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, California Governor Gavin Newsom and….maybe….possibly….an outsider like Sheryl Sandberg (ex-Facebook COO) or Bob Iger (ex-Disney CEO). That’s the field. When describing it, the word “formidable” does not spring to mind. Nor do the words “up to it.’” • Make it stop.

Republican Funhouse

“Election deniers have taken their fraud theories on tour — to nearly every state” [NPR]. “An NPR investigation found that since Jan. 6, 2021, the election denial movement has moved from Donald Trump’s tweets to hundreds of community events like these — in restaurants, car dealerships and churches — led by a core group of election conspiracy influencers like Keshel and Clements.” • Handy map:

Oh, here’s a caption:

David Clements talks to audience members after speaking to the Surry County board of commissioners during a presentation by several individuals that aimed to cast doubt on election integrity, in Dobson, N.C., on May 16.

So, if election denial brings us hand-marked paper ballots, hand-counted in public, o felix culpa! (Meanwhile, I’m always a little take aback by liberal aghastitude at similar efforts: They’re going on speaking tours! They’re running for office!! First, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in a democracy? Second, isn’t is possible — hear me out — for the Democrat party apparatus to counter the moves?

“State education board members push back on proposal to use ‘involuntary relocation’ to describe slavery” [Texas Tribune]. “A group of Texas educators have proposed to the Texas State Board of Education that slavery should be taught as ‘involuntary relocation’ during second grade social studies instruction, but board members have asked them to reconsider the phrasing, according to the state board’s chair. ‘The board — with unanimous consent — directed the work group to revisit that specific language,’ Keven Ellis, chair of the Texas State Board of Education said in a statement issued late Thursday.” That’s a mercy. Here is the real story: “The working group of nine educators, including a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, is one of many such groups advising the state education board to make curriculum changes. This summer, . The board will have a final vote on the curriculum in November.” • Education ought only to be comfortable? Really? (Note that when urban liberals ask “Why don’t they just move?” that’s…. forced relocation, albeit forced by “the market,” not an overseer.)

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.

* * *

As in South Korea, so in the United States:

Liberal politicians need to re-learn this idea: a sense of political efficacy. “The feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact upon the political process, i.e. that it is worth while to perform one’s civic duties.”https://t.co/s9kvuryUHR

— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) July 1, 2022

This seems famliar:

The Democratic Party of South Korea had the presidency and once-a-generation supermajority. They were riding on a massive popularity wave because the Moon admin handled COVID exceptionally well. And they pissed away that moment.

— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) July 1, 2022

“Multiple Indicators in Survey Research: The Concept “Sense of Political Efficacy” [George I. Balch, Political Methodology]. From the introductory paragraphs:

I wonder if there is a partisan breakdown on “political efficacy.” After all, conservatives just won a fifty-years-long political battle on abortion, a project on a scale which liberal Democrats can’t even conceive of. The dichotomy:

pic.twitter.com/JPZiXvlUkr

— Bill So Hard (@PimpBillClinton) July 1, 2022

AOC (1): 15% seems high, in fact loan shark-high:

Hi there 👋🏽 it’s your local “radical extremist” here regularly introducing legislation that’s popular with voters from both parties yet challenges the class interests controlling both so instead they convince you it’s “naïve, ineffective, and unreasonable,” how do you do? 🤠 https://t.co/RjQcUj17OM

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 1, 2022

AOC (2):

AOC vs MTG on Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/4Bw80QU0Dl

— Turncoat Don (@TurncoatD) June 30, 2022

It will be interesting to see if MTG’s views carry weight if and when the Republicans carry the House. Or will the Republican leadership back off, beholden to The Blob?

“Supreme Court to hear Syracuse COR developers’ appeal in ‘Buffalo Billion’ case” [Syracuse.com]. “The Buffalo News reports the Supreme Court, which includes newly sworn-in Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, will hear development executive Louis Ciminelli’s appeal of his July 2018 conviction for federal wire fraud and conspiracy in the Cuomo-era program. Ciminelli, former SUNY Polytechnic Institute President Alain Kaloyeros, and former Syracuse COR developers Steven Aiello and Joe Gerardi filed a joint appeal arguing that the “right to control” theory of the federal government’s case was constitutionally flawed…. According to the Times Union, the “right to control” theory argues that anyone who denies necessary fiscal information to an entity is criminally culpable for denying it the right to control its economic decisions. In their appeal, lawyers for Aiello and Gerardi said their actions do not constitute a crime, as the state suffered no loss of money or property by picking COR as a developer because the projects were completed as promised.” • Bob comments: “They finally put that fack f*cker Aiello in jail a few months ago, and now the Supremes are going to weigh in. I wouldn’t be surprised to have them find for the payers of the bribes. These sorts of cases are very dangerous to the people that own everything, including the politicians. And they never even tried to go after Cuomo, who everyone agrees was the ultimate beneficiary of this giant, steaming pile of sh*t.”

Realignment and Legitimacy

“At least 90 lawmakers became foreign agents after exiting Congress since 2000, study finds” [Washington Times]. “Foreign interests in Turkey enlisted the most former lawmakers, 16, with governments and groups in South Korea, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and China not far behind. The Quincy Institute research identified some prominent former Democratic lawmakers performing ‘perfectly legal influence work’ at the behest of Turkish interests. They include former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri and former Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan…. It is not just Democrats cashing foreign interests’ checks. The Quincy Institute pointed to former Sen. David Vitter, Louisiana Republican, doing work for Hikvision, a Chinese state-owned video surveillance company. Former Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, went from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to representing the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, the report noted…. Of the 90 former lawmakers, 49 are Republicans and 41 are Democrats, the researchers said.”

“Boebert, court decisions ignite debate over church and state” [The Hill]. Boebert: “The reason we had so many overreaching regulations in our nation is because the church complied. The Church is supposed to direct the government, the government is not supposed to direct the church.”

“Q Is Back and It’s Tearing the QAnon World Apart” [Vice]. “[O]utside of this small circle of believers, the wider QAnon community is still celebrating the return of Q, oblivious to the fact that the new Q drops appear to be written not by a secret military intelligence insider, but by a 58-year-old pig farmer who’s obsessed with fountain pens.” • Various technical details imply that the current “Q”, the pig farmer, is not the previous, authentic Q.

#COVID19

• UPDATE “Monkeypox mutating 12 times faster than expected amid warning UK cases could hit ‘60,000 a day’” [Independent]. “Monkeypox is mutating up to 12 times faster than expected, a study says, amid warnings the UK could see as many as 60,000 new cases a day by the end of the year. As of Sunday 26 June, there were 1,076 cases across the UK, up by 166 on the previously Friday with health experts stating the outbreak is likely to spread further over the coming weeks. While a surge to tens of thousands of daily cases in six months might seem exteme, scientists have found the virus appears to be mutating at an unusual rate.” • Ph.

• UPDATE [bangs head on desk]:

The best part of this long and hilariously angry thread:

Quite a find. The study actually measured for airborne virus by waving a Q-Tip in the air. That’s science, published here by a gaggle of lab-coated wankers from employees of the CDC’s International Emerging Infections Program.

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.

Case count for the United States:

We now see a slight increase, but under the hood the BA.4/BA.5 are making up a greater and greater proportion of cases. There was a weird, plateau-like “fiddling and diddling” stage before the Omicron explosion, too. This conjuncture feels the same. 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 ~109,000. Today, it’s ~108,000, and 108,000 * 6 = a Biden line at 648,000. 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:

1.0%. (I’m leaving the corporate logo on as a slap to and check on the goons at CDC.)

Wastewater data, regional (Biobot Analytics), June 29:

NOT UPDATED Wastewater data (CDC), June 4 – June 18:

CDC’s wastewater chart is down again.

This chart works a bit like rapid riser counties: “This metric shows whether SARS-CoV-2 levels at a site are currently higher or lower than past historical levels at the same site. 0% means levels are the lowest they have been at the site; 100% means levels are the highest they have been at the site.” So, there’s a bunch of red dots on the West Coast. That’s 100%, so that means “levels are the highest they’ve ever been.” Not broken down by variant, CDC, good job.

NOT UPDATED 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 11:

Doubling behavior moving along quite briskly.

Lambert here: It’s beyond frustrating how slow the variant data is. I looked for more charts: California doesn’t to a BA.4/BA.5 breakdown. New York does (BA.4/BA.5 is 27.7% as of June 18) but it, too, is on a molasses-like two-week cycle. Does nobody in the public health establishment get a promotion for tracking variants? Are there no grants? Is there a single lab that does this work, and everybody gets the results from them? Additional sources from readers welcome [grinds teeth, bangs head on desk].

MORONIC CDC FAILS TO UPDATE “DAILY” REPORT From CDC Community Profile Reports (PDFs), “Rapid Riser” counties:

The West Coast is on fire again, as is Texas (but, oddly, not Florida). Illinois and West Virginia are heating up, too.

The previous release:

No matter what else the CDC butchered, they have published the Community Profile Report regular as clockwork since forever. It’s resumed after stopping for two days (and wastewater collection is still down). Just to be clear on the responsibilities:

Yes, the Community Profile Report commits to be “daily.” That the report didn’t come out for two days is a White House f*ck-up responsibility, but multiple agencies are also involved. All of them look bad.

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:

Status quo.

MORONIC CDC FAILS TO UPDATE “DAILY” REPORT Hospitalization (CDC Community Profile):

Very volatile, but a lot more yellow since the previous update several days ago.

Get ready.

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 1,042,678 1,042,291. I have added an anti-triumphalist Fauci Line.

Stats Watch

“United States ISM Purchasing Managers Index (PMI)” [Trading Economics]. “The ISM Manufacturing PMI fell to 53 in June of 2022 from 56.1 in May, pointing to the slowest growth in factory activity since June of 2020, and below market forecasts of 54.9. New orders contracted for the first time in two years (49.2 vs 55.1), in a sign rising interest rates are hurting demand. Also, employment declined further (47.3 vs 49.6) although companies improved their progress on addressing moderate-term labor shortages at all tiers of the supply chain. At the same time, supplier deliveries slowed (57.3 vs 65.7) while production (54.9 vs 54.2) and inventories (56 vs 55.9) increased slightly faster and price pressures eased (78.5 vs 82.2). Meanwhile, business sentiment remained optimistic regarding demand, but firms continue to note supply chain and pricing issues as their biggest concerns.”

Tech: “Cruise robotaxis blocked traffic for hours on this San Francisco street” [TechCrunch (dk)]. Yesterday’s story verified. And: “The issue calls into question the policy cities need to build around autonomous vehicles when they break the law, as well as Cruise’s own operational protocol for these types of incidents. In April, a Cruise car was pulled over by a police officer because its headlights had malfunctioned. An Instagram video of the event shows the car pulling over when signaled to do so, but when the cop tried to open the driver-side door, the vehicle drove off and then pulled over a little way down the road and activated its hazards. The cop then approached the vehicle again. No citation was issued.” • This is like one of those Philip K. Dick futures where nothing works.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 24 Extreme Fear (previous close: 22 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 27 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 1 at 12:53 PM EDT.

Groves of Academe

Zeitgeist Watch

Class Warfare

UPDATE “Trucker Nation” [John Paul Hampstead, The American Mind]. “Meanwhile, the truck driver remains a window into what’s left of the American soul: sick unto death, hated by the regime, under continuous surveillance, pulled to and fro by algorithms ultimately constructed by the Saudi and Chinese limited partners of venture capital firms, constantly reminded of his own obsolescence, waiting to be replaced.” • The author works for Freight Waves. Amazingly, this is published by the Claremont Institute.

News of the Wired

UPDATE “Harmonizing Prokaryotic Nomenclature: Fixing the Fuss over Phylum Name Flipping” [American Society of Microbiologists]. Strong stuff for the taxonomically inclined, so I won’t quote it, except for this one sentence: “Together, these changes will help researchers attain chaos-free uniform nomenclature.” • Let me know how that works out.

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: “Things are popping out all over. Western Spiderwort.”

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