2:00PM Water Cooler 7/8/2022 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Patient readers, I had a household debacle. More shortly. Also, the rogue tweets were found and dealt with summarily. Safari users rejoice! –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Falcated Wren-Babbler, Palawan, Philippines.

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

“The Right’s Big Score” [John Ganz]. “Trump never represented any kind of coherent set of policy preferences, but was rather leading a reactionary mass movement directed against a conservative elite that had lost legitimacy with their constituency because of what were seen as say-measures and betrayals. The goal was bringing the ‘strong’ leader to power over the ‘cucked’ old G.O.P. leadership. He represented a mythical return to a previous America and a wholesale attack on immigrants and ungrateful minorities that had been lurking in the wings of Republican performances but had not yet fully asserted itself. From the start, he attracted and unified all the splintered groups of the extreme right. Finally, here was their man. He was an interloper and, at least initially, a vehicle for plebiscitary rage against the Republicans and the whole establishment. All of this this is why I thought it was fair to bring historical fascism into the analysis of the Trump phenomenon, a view I think has been somewhat vindicated with the revelations about January 6 as some kind of shambolic version of the March on Rome.”

“Will No One Defend the American Republic?” [Ryan Cooper]. “Any student of history considering the abstract chances of an opposition party attempting a coup d’etat against a sitting president without first obtaining firm control of the military would surely rate them low. But the awesome feebleness of Democrats raises doubts. Surely one reason it would be unwise to attempt to seize power against an established incumbent would be the high probability of getting arrested or shot. But not only are Democrats not locking up the insurrectionist criminals, this same party had the presidency stolen from them by a popular vote loser in 2000 (admittedly in a much less blatant fashion, but still at bottom the same behavior) and back then they just rolled over and took it as well….” • How well I remember Al Gore, as President of the Senate, in Fahrenheit 911, gaveling the Black Caucus into silence when they sought to get their claims of election theft heard. No wonder they turned corrupt so badly; corruption is a politician’s nihilism.

Abortion

“Impassioned Biden signs order on abortion access” [Associated Press]. “President Joe Biden delivered impassioned remarks Friday condemning the “extreme” Supreme Court majority that ended a constitutional right to abortion and pleading with Americans upset by the decision to “vote, vote, vote vote” in November. He signed an executive order to try to protect access to the procedure under mounting pressure from fellow Democrats to be more forceful in response to the ruling. The actions Biden outlined are intended to mitigate some potential penalties that women seeking abortion may face after the ruling, but his order cannot restore access to abortion in the more than a dozen states where strict limits or total bans have gone into effect. About a dozen more states are set to impose additional restrictions. Biden acknowledged the limitations facing his office, saying it would require an act of Congress to restore nationwide access to the way it was before the June 24 decision. ‘The fastest way to restore Roe is to pass a national law,’ Biden said. ‘The challenge is go out and vote. For God’s sake there is an election in November!’” • Vote, vote, vote, because I’m helpless against President Manchin and his Girl Sidekick, Sinema!

“Biden’s planned anti-abortion judicial nominee ‘strong’ conservative, ex-boss wrote” [Reuters]. “A Republican lawyer considered by President Joe Biden for a Kentucky federal judgeship despite his opposition to abortion would be a “strong and dependable conservative” voice on the bench for decades, his ex-boss said in a letter released Thursday…. The office of [Republican Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin’s] Democratic successor, Andy Beshear, released the letter from M. Stephen Pitt in response to a public records request a day after releasing emails showing Biden had planned to nominate Meredith to the federal bench.” Oops. And: “Beshear during a press conference Thursday said he has received no further update from the White House on whether Biden still plans to nominate Meredith. It’s been plenty of time, and by now they should be telling us that it’s been rescinded,’ he said. The White House has declined to say whether Biden will still nominate Meredith.” •¨See blow on White House trade-offs with McConnnell. I remember when Amy McGrath — remember her? — was running against “Moscow Mitch,” the Trillbillies scoffed and remarked that McConnnell has “a rock-hard d*ck.” They are correct.

Biden Administration

“Dems weigh jamming McConnell on China bill” [Axios]. ” McConnell is trying to force Democrats to choose between bipartisan legislation on the stalled China competition bill and a Democrat-only reconciliation package they might reach with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)…. After issuing his ultimatum last week, McConnell has followed up with a clear “pencils down” directive to Senate Republican negotiators, freezing the talks between the House and Senate on ironing out differences between their two bills…. Those formal negotiations were making slow — but tangible — progress, until McConnell decided to take the China competition bill hostage by vowing to kill it if Democrats kept chasing a climate, energy and prescription drug reform bill with Manchin.”

UPDATE “Biden’s White House fears canceling student debt will drive inflation even higher — and that restarting loan payments might help avoid that” [Yahoo News]. “On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden pledged to voters with federal student debt that they would see a $10,000 reduction of their balances — but it’s been over two years, and millions of borrowers are still waiting for that relief.” That’s $10,600. More: “But with the US facing 40-year-high inflation, that burst of new spending power from consumers who’d instantly see their net worths jump by thousands of dollars could send the cost of common goods and services even higher. Prices soared 8.6% in the year through May, powered by an abundance of consumer demand and woefully insufficient supply.” • Heaven forfend that we should see an increase in “consumer” net worth. If not now, when?

2022

* * *

2024

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.

* * *

“A New Conservative Majority on New York’s Top Court is Upending State Law” [New York Focus]. “The Court of Appeals ruled on 98 cases in its most recent term, which ended last month. DiFiore, Cannataro, Garcia and Singas voted in tandem in 96 of those cases. On the seven-member court, a bloc of four that sticks together can dictate the outcome of every case. In the past year, these four judges have used their power to prevent criminal defendants from presenting expert testimony supporting their innocence, bar workers from suing employers for workplace injuries, and make it harder for victims of police misconduct to sue for damages, among other rulings. All of them were nominated by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and confirmed by the state Senate. Echoing recent rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court’s new conservative supermajority, Chief Judge DiFiore and her new bloc of associates are making New York law more friendly to law enforcement and powerful economic actors.” • I was going to file this under “Republican Funhouse,” but given that Democrats nominated these judges and voted them in, I’m filing this here. Exactly as on the Supreme Court.

UPDATE “The city family is a Machiavellian tragedy” [Marina Times (NorthBeacher)]. From 2020, still germane: “Willie Brown has aided in the ascension of many politicians, including every mayor since him. Take for example current California governor Gavin Newsom. A handsome businessman and friend of the powerful Getty family, Brown plucked Newsom from obscurity, appointing him to San Francisco’s Parking and Traffic Commission and later to District 2 supervisor. It was all part of Brown’s master plan to sculpt a compliant mayoral successor (more on that later)…. As the FBI picks off the city family one by one, the silence from Mayor London Breed — another Brown protégé — is deafening…. As for city family patriarch Willie Brown, he has the Chronicle to set the record straight on everything from escaping prosecution despite years of corruption allegations to his relationship with now-Senator Kamala Harris. When Harris was briefly the frontrunner in the race to become the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Brown wrote a Chronicle op-ed declaring for the record that he and Harris had dated 20 years ago, and he was pretty much responsible for every job she’s had since. There’s nothing honorable about a man who demeans a strong woman by publicizing their history in the bedroom and taking credit for her successes, whether it’s true or not.” • Who said Harris was a “strong woman”? And if Harris had been weak, would Brown’s op-ed have been ok? Sheesh! This is a fascinating article — the word for it, and Brown, is, I think, ‘redolent” — that’s dense with detail, including Democrat election theft, shocked shocked.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The Right’s Big Score” [John Ganz]. Yes, I split this in two: “[T]he conservative elite made essentially the same bet as those did in Europe when faced with Hitler and Mussolini, except for our conservatives its paying off. This is in so small part because Trump was not Hitler or Mussolini: he lacked the tightly-organized party structure that was ready to step in and replace key sections of the state, organs of effective propaganda, and direct control over paramilitaries to constantly terrorize their opponents, etc. All in all, he was a pretty weak and ineffective fascist, more akin to the failed fascisms that dotted Europe in the interwar period, and were smothered by more conventional authoritarian conservatives, episodes we been forgotten at our peril. The conservatives were able to use this premature and disorganized version of fascism as a battering ram—they got their Court, their most coveted goal—and now may be in the process of deftly leaving it to the side. They prefer to stifle democracy the old fashioned way: not through dramatic coups, but in the courts and on the state level. .” • 

“Will No One Defend the American Republic?” [Ryan Cooper]. Yes, I split this in two, also: “Lincoln always had an acute sense for the grubby realities of power, but this wasn’t mere political cynicism; it was part of an act of political will. His strained (though not wholly dishonest) arguments about the founders and the Constitution were part of an effort that hugely changed the actual character of the country. He seized on the parts of American institutions and history that were useful to his purpose of destroying slavery, and downplayed the parts that were not. Lincoln was thus able to convincingly claim political legitimacy (backed up by a massive national organization) as leader of the country and defender of freedom, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, and lead the country through a horrendously bloody war that actually did destroy slavery. It was, in a sense, a successful political prophecy. Then he used his unparalleled rhetorical gifts to cement the meaning of that sacrifice, and he and his party heavily revised the text of the Constitution and laws—with sweeping reforms to the currency, banking system, higher education, land, and more—to cement that new reality. The histories of all nations have many threads, and many of America’s are dark indeed. But it is simply inaccurate to say that there is nothing worth defending or being proud of in there. Eradicating slavery was a great achievement. Enfranchising four million former slaves was one of the most radical expansions of democracy in world history. The New Deal was, on balance, a massive improvement on the status quo, even for Black Americans. The Civil Rights Movement was a splendid achievement.” • Not untrue. And all a long, long time ago, even the Civil Rights Movement.

Recalling the playful distinction I made the other day:

Leaving aside the insanity of the proportion of administrators to physicians, actual care-givers — see also colleges and universities — both physicians and administrators are subclasses of PMC. I wonder, however, what the proportion of hegemonic (support current social relations) to exceptional (oppose them) is within each subclass. My guess is that the Hippocratic oath would tend to make for a larger exceptional subclass within physicians, but perhaps not. Of course, I bet that the material realities of being sent out to the pandemic front lines without proper weaponry would have its effect, as well. (This chart, tweeted here, was hard to run down; I think the original is paywalled. It is attested to here, by the Milken Institute, of all places.

#COVID19

“• Multimodal surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 at a university enables development of a robust outbreak response framework” (PDF) [medRxiv]. From the Abstract:

Universities are particularly vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks and are also ideal environments to study transmission dynamics and evaluate mitigation and surveillance measures when outbreaks occur. Here, we introduce a SARS-CoV-2 surveillance and response framework based on high-resolution, multimodal data collected during the 2020-2021 academic year at Colorado Mesa University. We analyzed epidemiological and sociobehavioral data (demographics, contact tracing, and wifi-based co-location data) alongside pathogen surveillance data (wastewater, random, and reflexive diagnostic testing; and viral genomic sequencing of wastewater and clinical specimens) to characterize outbreak dynamics and inform policy decisions. We quantified group attributes that increased disease risk, and highlighted parallels between traditional and wifi-based contact tracing. We additionally used clinical and environmental viral sequencing to identify cryptic transmission, cluster overdispersion, and novel lineages or mutations. Ultimately, we used distinct data types to identify information that may help shape institutional policy and to develop a model of pathogen surveillance suitable for the future of outbreak preparedness.

Results:

To assess the overall efficacy of CMU’s surveillance program, we compared CMU’s incidence rate to that of Mesa County, which had limited testing available at the time. CMU’s weekly incidence exceeded county incidence rates and predicted them with a lag time of 3 days (correlation = 0.73; Appendix Figure 1AB). This is consistent with reports that adequate university testing can foreshadow community outcomes12 130 and highlights the ability of well131 designed university testing programs to serve as bellwethers. As the pandemic’s impact on the surrounding community became clearer, the university sponsored testing for external community members, both as a public benefit and to limit spread of SARS-CoV-2 into the campus

The funders give me pause; they include MacKenzie Scott (née Bezos) and the Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative. I don’t quarrel with the results or the approach, both of which confirm my priors, but their involvment means they see what they call “opportunity,” which means rents and abuse for the rest of us.

• We wrote of Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre back in June; it seems to have become a sort of Mecca for ventilation/aerosol nerds:

Well worth reading in full. To the accounts great credit, a contrarian thread is included, from a second ventilation/aerosol geek:

Nevertheless, geeks going round gathering and publicizing CO2 levels (a proxy for “shared air”). It’s an excellent sign.

• Maskstravaganza: Hospitals forcing you to take off a functional mask and replace it with a surgical mask:

This is not the only such anecdote I have heard. Has the hospital infection control community lost its collective mind? Are they all still droplet goons? WTF?

• Maskstavaganza: This is a scorching hot take!

I really wish anti-maskers would stop lying. Masks don’t “cover the face.” They cover the mouth and nose to avoid infection through respiration. They do not cover the eyes, and last I checked, the eyes were not only part of the face, but an important one. The stupid! (“Face covering” is even worse.)

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.

Lambert here: I stopped doing the Biobot site. We now have other wastewater sites, they don’t update very often, and I never liked their weird backwater revisions. I’m also eliminating the CDC excess deaths chart. The legend has enormous typos which have gone unfixed forever. I don’t think anybody at CDC checks it or cares about it.

Case Count

Case count for the United States:

More or less flat. There was a weird, plateau-like “fiddling and diddling” stage before the Omicron explosion, too. This conjuncture feels the same. Under the hood the BA.4/BA.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. The previous count was ~110,400. Today, it’s ~102,300, and 110,400 * 6 = a Biden line at 613,800. 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.

Regional case count for four weeks:

The South:

Positivity

From the Walgreen’s test positivity tracker:

4.5%. Oof. (I’m leaving the corporate logo on as a slap to and check on the psychos at CDC.)

Wastewater

Wastewater data (CDC), Jun 19, 2022 – Jul 03, 2022:

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.

Variants

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 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].

NOT UPDATED Variant data, national (Walgreens), June 18:

NOT UPDATED Variant data, national (CDC), June 18:

CDC has restored the button that lets me turn their NowCast button off. Doubling behavior moving along quite briskly, but I would rather calculate slash intuit the rise myself, and compare that to Walgreens, than use CDC’s model, which is probably broken anyhow.

Transmission

Lambert here: 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. For June 30 – July 6:

Status quo.

Lambert here: Thanks to alert reader CR, who found where CDC had interred the “Community Profile Report.” NOTE: The file name is “Community Profile Report 20220707 (1).pdf.” That’s how a filename looks when it’s uploaded twice, the second time generally by accident, so it does indeed look like there was a kerfuffle of some kind yesterday when I went to my usual CDC link and discovered an abomination. (I’m not taking back “sociopathic, democidal shitheads,” though. Too much else speaks in its favor.)

Rapid Riser data, by county (CDC), July 7:

Note Texas and Florida.

Hospitalization data, by state (CDC), July 7:

Very volatile.

Deaths

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 1,044,557 1,043,879. I have added an anti-triumphalist Fauci Line. It’s nice that for deaths I have a nice, simple, daily chart that just keeps chugging along, unlike everything else CDC and the White House are screwing up or letting go dark, good job.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Unemployment Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The US unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.6 percent in June of 2022, the same as in the previous three months, remaining the lowest since February 2020 and in line with market expectations. The number of unemployed people decreased by 38 thousand to 5.912 million, while employment levels fell by 315 thousand to 158.111 million. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate edged down to 62.2 percent in June fom 62.3 percent in May.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 28 Fear (previous close: 24 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 22 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 7 at 12:45 PM EDT.

Police State Watch

“Timothy Loehmann withdraws application for Tioga, PA police officer” [ABC Cleveland (Scylla)]. “Former Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann has withdrawn his application as the sole officer of Tioga, a small borough in Pennsylvania, after being sworn in earlier this week. Loehmann is the officer who fatally shot Tamir Rice in 2014…. Council unanimously approved Loehmann’s hiring at $18 per hour. He was hired on a 90-day probationary period, and according to the mayor, the intention was to promote him to chief after a successful period. The hiring prompted dozens of protesters to express their displeasure with council’s decision…. This isn’t the first time Loehmann was hired as a police officer and then resigned following his departure from Cleveland.” • Not much sympathy for Loehmann, who seems to enjoy his trade. Tioga County is interesting. In 2020, they voted for Trump over Biden five to one. Then, in 2021, they declined to get involved in an Arizona-style “forensic investigation.” Fetterman was there in May:

News of the Wired

Programmers may find this fun:

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 AG:

AG writes:

Here near Grass Valley, CA, elevation 2700 feet, our native lilies have started blooming.

This is a single bloom of the rather rare Pitkin’s Marsh Lily, about three inches across. We have twenty–seven open blooms at this moment, from eleven plants, set out in very small areas that get extra water here and there in our garden, and at least another ten buds to come. Aren’t they spectacular?

Before these Marsh lilies are past their prime, the native dryland Humboldt’s lilies will be opening; the buds are turning from green to bright orange right now.

We are hoping for more pollinators, this has been a terrible year for native bees and butterflies. Maybe ten percent of usual, all at least a month late, and some species entirely missing. The only exceptions were the early Dusky Wing butterflies, which came and went before the late snow. However, we have seen one Monarch flitting by, the first in five years, and a neighbor has seen two. We have tons of our local four species of Milkweeds, ready and waiting!

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