• September 12, 2024


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* * *

Patient readers, plenty more on the debate shortly. –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Gray Catbird, Sapsucker Woods, Tompkins, New York, United States.

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. Kamala’s earrings.
  2. About those cats… .
  3. Do Covid tests work for the latest variants? Not immediately.
  4. Boeing should be kicked out of the Dow.

* * *

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

* * *

2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

I would say the bloom is off the rose for Harris, except for an upward blip in Georgia. Looks like the enormous liberalgasm afte the Convention was confined to party loyalists. The Kamala campaign must be sore as boils Trump is within striking distance, let alone tied with them. What could account for it? Perhaps that’s why the pivot to RussiaGate. Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads, top to bottom — are within the margin of error.

* * *

The Debate

Lambert here: Thanks to the Naked Capitalism commentariat for their remarkably level-headed reactions during the debate live blog yesterday. –lambert

“Some undecided voters not convinced by Harris after debate with Trump” [Reuters]. “Reuters interviewed 10 people who were still unsure how they were going to vote in the Nov. 5 election before they watched the debate. Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote. Harris and Trump are in a tight race and the election will likely be decided by just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, many of whom are swing voters like the undecided voters who spoke to Reuters.

Although the sample size was small, the responses suggested Harris might need to provide more detailed policy proposals to win over voters who have yet to make up their minds. Five said they found Harris vague during the more than 90-minute debate on how she would improve the U.S. economy and deal with the high cost of living, a top concern for voters.” • Recall yesterday that debate viewers felt that Trump did better on the economy. I’m betting that outweighs Kamala doing better on abortion.

OG Frank Luntz has some interesting things to say:

And:

Kamala’s on-screen reactions were smug, smirking, and contemptuous throughout. Reporter Jane O’Reilly once remarked that “George Bush reminds every woman of her first husband.” Perhaps Kamala Harris reminds every man of his first wife?

* * *

Kamala (D): “Did Kamala Harris wear earpiece during debate with Donald Trump? What we know” [India Today]. “Many social media users claimed that the pearl earrings Kamal Harris wore were actually an audio earpiece, and she was being fed answers during the debate [,] a set of Nova H1 Audio Earrings, created by German startup NOVA Products…. However, some users highlighted that Kamala Harris was wearing a pair of Double Pearl Hinged Earrings from Tiffany & Co, which she has worn frequently…. After the 2020 presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a similar claim circulated on social media, alleging that Biden wore a hidden earpiece.” • I’m so old I remember the same claim being made online about George W. Bush, who was said to be wearing a receiving device + antenna under his jacket (based on photos of lumps under his jacket). Big if true, but also a hardy perennial.

Kamala (D): “Trump’s Improv Stood No Chance Against Harris’ Coached Attacks” [Politico]. “ice President Kamala Harris did exactly what the political professionals said she should do. In some cases, that was what operatives would tell any candidate to do in any election at any time: Don’t worry about the specific question you are asked, just use it as another opportunity to recite the lines we practiced.” Highlighted in blue, below. More: “She plainly used her long days of debate prep in a Pittsburgh hotel to compile a rich anthology of taunts, putdowns and derisive one-liners against former President Donald Trump. The rehearsal was enough to commit dozens of them to memory — not enough to avoid sometimes sounding a bit stagy in delivery. At times, one could almost see the candidate flipping through a stack of neatly organized 3-by-5 index cards in her mind.” • Such an improvemnt over Biden!

Kamala (D): “How Harris Roped a Dope” [David Frum, The Atlantic]. We don’t actually know the result of the bout until we have polling, and perhaps not even then (the polls not being granular enough). More: “Harris’s debate prep seemed to have concentrated on psychology as much as on policy. She drove Trump and trapped him and baited him—and it worked every time.” • As do all Democrats, it would seem, reading the rest of the piece. Honestly, it’s like high school.

* * *

Trump (R): “READ: Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript” [ABC]. Quite different from viewing. I wanted to see how often former prosecutor Kamala used the word “felon,” but only “felony” comes up. I’ve helpfully added color coding: Yellow in usual sense of highlighting, Blue for canned phrases strung together, Green for oddities:

In my view, Kamala doesn’t go into word salad mode, and Trump doesn’t riff jazzily; this is probably as sharp an exchange as there was. Notes:

[1] Huh?

[2] Trump educates his audience by defining and using “weaponization.”

[3] Lawfare, at least in this debate, seems to have yielded remarkably little campaign fodder; Harris is not using “felon” at every turn. Perhaps the real advantages of lawfare were indeed political: Sucking up the campaign’s resources, including the most important resource of all, the candidate’s time.

[4] Kamala educates her voters by mistating the decision (and I don’t say is a good decision, but let’s at least get it right). Trivially, Trump vs. United States applies to all Presidents, not just Trump “if he enters the White House again.” Second, the decision does not make a President “essentially … immunue from any misconduct” (rather, charges of any misconduct), unless “essentially” is doing far more work than a mere adverb should ever be called upon to do; see SCOTUSblog, “Justices rule Trump has some immunity from prosecution” (emphasis mine). Third, the case would never have reached the Court had it not been for the Democrats lawfare strategy, which forced the issue. FAFO.

[5] I haven’t had time to run down that “quote,” “terminate.” Very often, Trump is misquoted by his opponents, so a hermenetic of suspicion applies.

[6] “That he would” exhibits a strategy Democrats often use: Something that might happen in the future is given equal weight to something that has already happened in the past.

[7] “Probably took a bullet to the head” will no doubt be regarded by Trump voters as a zinger (and to my mind, Trump has been remarkably restrained in deploying it). Neither Kamala nor the moderators respond, interestingly.

[8] Trump is, in fact, correct here. Had RussiaGate been anything like real, he surely would have been prosecuted for it, given the Democrat lawfare strategy.

Trump (R): “Trump pushes baseless claim about immigrants ‘eating the pets’” [NBC]. “David Muir, the ABC News anchor co-moderating the debate, immediately fact-checked Trump’s claims, saying that the city manager in Springfield, Ohio, told the network there had been no credible reports of pets being harmed, injured or abused by people in the city’s immigrant community Baseless rumors have spread on social media for days claiming that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets. Most of the rumors involve Springfield, which has a large number of Haitian immigrants, but police there released a statement Monday knocking down the stories and saying they hadn’t seen any documented examples. ‘There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,’ the police said in a statement.” • Well… I’ve questioned what the local police had to say in Charleston, SC when they claimed a Boeing whistleblower committed suicide. So I’m not sure that NBC’s “we called the cops, and they said nah” is dispositive here. I also note that “no credible reports” means there have, in fact, been reports. Worth noting that Springfield-adjacent locals believe the stories (some of them because of missionary work in Haiti). For example:

Note that I regard claims from pastors and missionaries as being exactly as credible as claims from cops. Just because this looks like an overheated claim from the right-wing fever swamp doesn’t mean it actually is. What is needed is reporting on the ground; perhaps there will be some in the coming days.

“No Evidence Haitian Immigrants Are Eating Ducks, Geese or Pets in Springfield, Ohio” [Snopes]. The conclusion: “There is no evidence, outside of second- and third-hand social media gossip, to support the notion that Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pet cats or their parks’ waterfowl. The only alleged evidence in support of the former actually depicts an American in a different city. The alleged evidence of the latter stems from a single picture apparently taken in a different city. For these reasons, and because Springfield officials deny the validity of such reports, the claim is ‘Unfounded.’” More interestingly: “Since 2020, Springfield, Ohio, has seen a dramatic rise in immigrants from Haiti. City officials estimate, according to The New York Times, that as many as 20,000 Haitians had arrived in the small town in 2024 since the onset of the pandemic. Thanks to the availability of jobs, Springfield became a hot spot for Haitian immigrants around that time, according to reporting in NPR. According to The New York Times, the arrival of several manufacturing plants or corporations between 2017 and 2020 created a surplus of jobs. A lack of local labor created a deficit of workers, and word spread among the Haitian community that work could be found in the town, per the Times…. Many young, working-age people [from Springfield] had descended into addiction.” As if “deaths of despair” were some sort of natural force. More: “Others shunned entry-level, rote work altogether, employers said. Haitians who heard that the Springfield area boasted well-paying, blue-collar jobs and a low cost of living poured in, and employers were eager to hire and train the new work force.” • I’ll bet they were! The Snopes story doesn’t mention Springfield’s population: Wikipedia says 58,662, and that “A 27% decrease in median income between 1999 and 2014 was the largest of any metropolitan area in the country.” A sudden influx of 20,000 people would be a lot under any circumstances, and it looks like Springfield isn’t getting any help at all dealing with the resulting friction. If I were a long-time Springfield resident who saw (deplorable) family members taken down by the Sackler’s Oxycontin because there was no work and no future, and then when the future appeared, they were in no position (like six feet under) to take advantage of it, you can bet I’d be ticked off, and that’s without race even entering the picture. Meanwhile, the area employers are pleased as punch with their new, imported docile workforce — a very familiar story in America — so you can see why the cops would follow their cue. So, and very unsurprisingly, class enters, neither candidate mentions it, and “cat-eating immigrants” becomes the trope under whose aegis the entire situation is placed. Well done, all. Oh, and on the employers:

“I wish I had 30 more.”

Trump (R): World class trolling:

For those who came in late, the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle in 2020.

* * *

The Trail

Kamala (D): Taylor Swift Endorses Kamala Harris: ‘I’ve Done My Research, and I’ve Made My Choice’” [Hollywood Reporter]. The deck: “The superspreading songwriting billionaire superstar took to Instagram following Tuesday night’s debate to give Vice President Kamala Harris her highly influential endorsement, signing off her lengthy post, ‘With love and hope, Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.’”

Democrats en Déshabillé

“Texas Candidate Smokes Bong In Campaign Ad” [International Business Times]. • Good for her!

Realignment and Legitimacy

Double-think, but exponential:

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!

* * *

Airborne Transmission

Vaccines: Covid

Having fought its way through the FDA, non-mRNA Novavax now has to fight the PBMs?

Testing and Tracking: Covid

“Do Covid Tests Work for Latest Variants? Yes, With Some Big Caveats” [Bloomberg]. ” I started to wonder: Are home Covid tests bad at detecting the latest variants? The short answer is no, the doctors I spoke with told me. But that answer comes with a big caveat. It turns out the way the immune system interacts with the virus these days means home tests may not turn positive until several days after you get sick. ‘That first negative test doesn’t mean you don’t have Covid,’ says Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious diseases at Southern California Permanente Medical Group. ‘We really noticed it earlier this year.’ Now, it can take several days for people with symptoms like mine to get a positive result from a home test, she says.

Here’s why: While gold-standard PCR assays detect minute quantities of virus, home antigen tests require a larger amount to turn positive. Early in the pandemic, viral levels peaked when symptoms appeared, says Nira Pollock, co-director of the Infectious Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital. But now that most people have at least some immunity, viral load peaks later…. In a study of 348 people with Covid that Pollock and her colleagues published last year, median viral load didn’t crest until around the fourth day of symptoms. The study estimated that home antigen tests would only detect around 30% to 60% of cases on the first day of symptoms, rising to 80% to 93% of cases on day four. In other words, there are lots of false negative tests early in the illness.” • So by all means keep going to work or school at the first sign of symptoms!

Elite Maleficence

“Zero-covid advocacy during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study of views on Twitter/X” [Monash Bioethics Review]. From the Abstract: “The advocacy, , often appealed to emotions and values using anecdotes and strong criticism of authorities and other scientists.” The idea! Here is a brutal takedown of this paper, which will probably get a lot of traction because this is the stupidest timeline. Here is an entertainingly brutal takedown:

And more. Much more.

Social Norming

Propaganda works:

“Stupid”:

Sobriety vs. normalization and denial:

Perceptive. I am sympathetic to this view. However, in my view sobriety also demands restraining judgment over one’s fellows (“There but for the grace of God go I”) and this view comes perilously close to creating a two-tier society of the elect and the damned; something I tend to do myself! One of the great things about A.A. is that it created a method for sobriety that at least many have been able to travel; it’s a big ask, but the Covid Conscious community has not done that.

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC August 27 Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC August 31 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 31

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data September 10: National [6] CDC August 17:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens September 9: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 24:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC August 19: Variants[10] CDC August 19:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC August 31: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC August 31:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading. NOTE The date seems to be wrong, but the number of sites has changed so this is new.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XDV.1 flat.

[4] (ED) Down, but worth noting that Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely down.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) Big drop continues!

[8] (Cleveland) Dropping.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) What the heck is LB.1?

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Inflation: “United States Consumer Price Index (CPI)” [Trading Economics]. “Consumer Price Index CPI in the United States increased to 314.80 points in August from 314.54 points in July of 2024. Consumer Price Index CPI in the United States averaged 124.59 points from 1950 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 314.80 points in August of 2024 and a record low of 23.50 points in February of 1950.”

* * *

Tech: “Google will now link to The Internet Archive to add more context to Search results” [9to5 Google]. “Google has partnered with The Internet Archive, a non-profit research library that, in part, stores and preserves massive portions of the web to be easily referenced later. This is done through the ‘Wayback Machine’ which can show a website or specific page as it existed on a previous date. Through this new partnership, Google will link directly to The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine for pages that you find in Search.”

Tech: Innovation:

Manufacturing: “Boeing should be kicked out of the Dow” [CNN]. “It’s a legitimate question if the aircraft maker still belongs in the blue-chip index. And it’s a question with only one correct answer: No. ‘If you want bellwether, strong balance sheet companies, they don’t check those boxes any longer,’ said Ron Epstein, aerospace analyst for Bank of America. ‘I don’t think Boeing has to be there.’… There are many problems at Boeing that make its continued presence in the index perplexing…. It hasn’t reported an annual profit since 2018… the company has become the subject of numerous federal investigations, as more than a dozen whistleblowers have come forward to warn of a company culture that put a failed attempt at profitability ahead of the quality and safety of its planes…. Its credit rating has fallen to the lowest rung of what is considered “investment grade” debt, and indications are that sometime relatively soon it will fall into junk bond status… ‘If not an albatross, it’s at least an anchor,’ said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for CFRA Research.” • Ouch!

Manufacturing: “Starliner Suffers New Problems While Coming Back To Earth” [Futurism]. The deck: “We would not be surprised if Boeing were to divest the manned spaceflight business.” More: “On the one hand, according to NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich, it pulled off a ‘bullseye landing.’ On the other, the agency admitted that a new thruster had failed during its descent. The capsule also experienced a temporary blackout of Starliner’s guidance system during reentry. It’s an awkward situation for the space agency: would Starliner have been able to ferry NASA’s missing crew members in the end?”

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 40 Fear (previous close: 39 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 49 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Sep 11 at 1:51:10 PM ET.

Food

To me, food is for buying, not cooking, but this does look easy and fun:

Gallery

Key word being “effect”:

I believe I saw this painting years ago at the Boston MFA. Putting my eye up close to the paint, I saw no white; the effect of white was created by the juxtapostion of other colors.

News of the Wired

Who among us….


* * *

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 SR:

SR writes: “Blooming atop the gigantic cinder cone at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho: rabbit brush (a member of the aster family).”

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