2:00PM Water Cooler 10/12/2022 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

More in the Politics section; I got wrapped round the axle looking at Ellsworth Kelly pictures. –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Beautiful Nuthatch, Arunachal Pradesh, India

Politics

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

“Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“The logic of the insult and the logic of scientific classification represent the two extreme poles of what a classification may be in the social world.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Biden Administration

“National Security Strategy” (PDF) [WhiteHouse.gov].

The range of nations that supports our vision of a free, open, prosperous, and secure world is broad and powerful. It includes our democratic allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific as well as key democratic partners around the world that share much of our vision for regional and international order even if they do not agree with us on all issues, and countries that do not embrace democratic institutions but nevertheless depend upon and support a rules-based international system.

Americans will support universal human rights and stand in solidarity with those beyond our shores who seek freedom and dignity, just as we continue the critical work of ensuring equity and equal treatment under law at home. We will work to strengthen democracy around the world because democratic governance consistently outperforms authoritarianism in protecting human dignity, leads to more prosperous and resilient societies, creates stronger and more reliable economic and security partners for the United States, and encourages a peaceful world order. In particular, we will take steps to show that democracies deliver—not only by ensuring the United States and its democratic partners lead on the hardest challenges of our time, but by working with other democratic governments and the private sector to help emerging democracies show tangible benefits to their own populations. We do not, however, believe that governments and societies everywhere must be remade in America’s image for us to be secure.

I’d say it was piffle, until I got to the last sentence, which is a recipe for a new Cold War. It will be interesting to see how “revisionist” filters out via the Blobs various noodly appendages. Make no mistake: Multipolarity is revisionist.

2022

* * *

“Why Jan. 6 is mostly absent from the midterms” [Politico]. The deck: “Most House Republicans voted for Trump-backed election challenges after a violent riot. Less than 2 percent of broadcast TV spending this cycle has focused on it.” Note that even Politico says “riot,” not “insurrection.” More: “‘If you thought it really moved the needle, don’t you think you would see it in a six-point race or a five-point race somewhere? I mean, you have plenty of target-rich environments,’ said Armstrong, who was among the minority of House Republicans to oppose GOP election challenges.” • So on the one hand, you’ve got Biden’s claim that at least MAGA Republicans are “semi-fascist.” On the other hand, if you believe that, you probably also believe that the Capitol riot was the purest expression of that fascism. But that’s not an election issue. My head… My head is spinning!

GA: “Georgia Senate race unchanged after Walker abortion report: poll” [The Hill]. • Priced in, probably.

PA: “Fetterman’s use of captions is common in stroke recovery, experts say” [WaPo]. “During his first on-camera interview since having a stroke, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman stumbled over words and used closed captioning to read interview questions, prompting Republicans to raise new questions about his health. Disability advocates, however, say that response shows a lack of understanding about accommodations that are often made after a major health event such as a stroke. ‘I sometimes will hear things in a way that’s not perfectly clear,’ Fetterman told NBC News, in an interview Friday, which was aired Tuesday. ‘So I use captioning, so I’m able to see what you’re saying on the captioning.’ While neurological experts said they could not offer a specific diagnosis about Fetterman’s health, they noted that closed captions are a common tool for people with auditory processing or hearing issues, conditions which have nothing to do with overall intelligence. ‘This is not an issue of intelligence, it’s not an issue of cognition, but unfortunately how we get information in and out tends to impact how people perceive that,’ said Brooke Hatfield, an associate director for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.”

VA: Mothership Strategies is still at it:

Since the mail was already heavily highlighted in yellow, I put red boxes around the kneejerk appeals. I guess the targeting is very precise: A Democrat who (1) knows who Nate Silver is, and (2) has a yen for nuclear engineers. (The “DIRECTLY” is nod to the fact that people are tired of giving these bloodsuckers a cut, and so prefer to donate directly to campaigns. I didn’t click through, so I don’t know if the mail is lying.)

2024

“Trump Threatened to Out Confidential Sources From Russia Investigation” [Rolling Stone]. “In the days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot [note again: not “insurrection”], the then-president, sometimes while brandishing pieces of paper, would loudly complain that none of the identifying facts in the highly sensitive Russia documents should be blacked-out. Trump would insist, the source says, that it should “all be out there” so that the American people could see the truth of who “did it” to the president. Ultimately, top intelligence officials and other Trump lieutenants talked him out of publicizing the sources’ identities before he left the White House, the sources say. Instead, Trump’s team bargained him down to vetting a series of heavily redacted reports that they argued would help safeguard the work and safety of Russia-related informants. But a third source familiar with the situation says that this obsession with outing the confidential sources is ongoing. The former president, the source says, still sporadically talks about the need to get “the names” out into the public record. A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.” • I’ve got a theory about those “Russian sources”….

Democrats en Déshabillé

Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert

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.

* * *

“AOC Gets WRECKED By Her Own Constituents Over Ukraine War Funding” [YouTube (ZagoNostra)]. • Not sure how much the crowd supports this, but:

Readers may have noticed that I’ve managed to curb my enthusiasm about the midterms, that great pageant of all that is human. I think the best outcome would be for the Republicans to win both houses, since the possibility exists that the Democrat leadership would be purged as a result. That the only opposition to Biden’s excellent Ukraine adventure comes from Republicans is a stain on the already deeply besmirched and self-bespattered Democrats. However, the appropriate heuristic is to seek the stupidest outcome, since this is the stupidest timeline. Hence, I think the Democrats will retain the Senate. In the House, the best we can hope for is, I think, Steny Hoyer. So it goes. (Meanwhile, none of the major issues of “our democracy” — the Covid pandemic, war with a nuclear power, rising unions, and, if you’re a liberal Democrat, fascism — are part of the “national conversation” at all. So what is all the fuss about?)

Realignment and Legitimacy

“College-Educated Voters Are Ruining American Politics” [The Atlantic]. The kind of people who hang on Nate Silver’s every percentage point. “Unlike organizers such as Matias, the political hobbyists are disproportionately college-educated white men. They learn about and talk about big important things. Their style of politics is a parlor game in which they debate the issues on their abstract merits. Media commentators and good-government reform groups have generally regarded this as a cleaner, more evolved, less self-interested version of politics compared with the kind of politics that Matias practices.”

“Targeting two Americas” [Axios]. “In paid posts on the world’s largest social media platform, the country’s two political parties are speaking to two separate and distinct Americas. Detailed targeting data from social media giant Meta offer a glimpse into America’s deep political divide — and how political operatives are working to exploit and adapt to. Axios analyzed more than 93,000 Facebook and Instagram ad targeting inputs from 25 campaigns, party committees and independent political spenders that have run paid posts on the platforms since July… Republican advertisers know which grocery shoppers they don’t want to reach: dozens of their ads filtered out people interested in Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods Market. Instead, they targeted people who eat at Chick-fil-A and Cracker Barrel and shop at outdoors stores like Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops. Democrats excluded Bass Pro Shops fans from hundreds of ads, and instead targeted people who shop at Nordstrom, Lululemon and Zara, and get groceries delivered by HelloFresh and Blue Apron. Both parties also targeted people — and, among the sample Axios examined, neither excluded people — interested in Walmart.”

#COVID19

• A conversation with a Corsi-Rosenthal box skeptic:

Patience! (It’s interesting that nobody’s commerialized at least CR box kits….)

• ”An Evaluation of DIY Air Filtration” (PDF) [Underwriters Laboratories]. “Household use of portable air cleaners has increased in the face of recent wildland fire activity and in response to COVID-19. Some local agencies have begun recommending Do-It-Yourself (DIY) air cleaners (i.e., furnace air filter attached to electric box fans) during smoke events as DIYs offer an affordable and accessible alternative to commercially available air cleaners, which frequently sell out during smoke events. However, there are concerns regarding the safety of DIY air cleaners as these consumer fans are not being used as intended by the manufacturers and have not been evaluated by safety certification processes.” Bottom line is that the CR boxes were nowhere near catching on fire, or having electrical problems: “Temperatures at the guard, switch, and output air were near or lower than ambient room air temperature for all test scenario except for the two-sided obstruction tests where temperatures increased at all three locations. Even with the temperature increase,

the parts remained below temperature thresholds that may pose a burn hazard.” See Section 1.4, “Key Observations.” • Something for your handout to the School Board.

• ”How one higher education conference prioritized pandemic safety” [Higher Ed Dive]. Not to prejudice you, but:

From the article:

At this year’s North American Victorian Studies Association conference, participants were just as likely to pass portable air purifiers and N95 mask giveaways as they were to bump into Brontë and Dickens scholars.

The NAVSA conference, hosted earlier this month by Lehigh University, heavily emphasized COVID-19 mitigation efforts for the group’s first in-person conference since 2019, according to organizers.

On site, organizers calculated the ventilation capacity of each venue and measured carbon dioxide and relative humidity levels, according to Servitje. Each room had handmade portable air purifiers, known as Corsi-Rosenthal boxes.

And:

[Lorenzo Servitje, co-organizer of the conference and a literature and medicine professor at Lehigh} requested additional event funding for COVID relief efforts from Lehigh’s Arts and Sciences College, which allocated $3,000 to the cause. In addition to masks and tests, the conference set aside money for refunds to people who had to cancel due to illness, as well as for attendees who got sick during the conference and had to extend their hotel stays.

$3,000 is probably a lot of money for a humanities major. This is a really good idea (and note the interdisciplinary co-operation):

One undergraduate engineering student who helped build the Corsi-Rosenthal boxes had the idea to add a QR code to the top of each one, Servitje said. The code, captioned “What Am I Doing Here?,” connected attendees to a website explaining the boxes’ purpose and how they worked.

I found Servitje’s CV; nothing on Engels (see below). Too bad!

• “Nearly Half of Covid Patients Haven’t Fully Recovered Months Later, Study Finds” [New York Times]. “A study of tens of thousands of people in Scotland found that one in 20 people who had been sick with Covid reported not recovering at all, and another four in 10 said they had not fully recovered from their infections many months later. The authors of the study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications, tried to home in on the long-term risks of Covid by comparing the frequency of symptoms in people with and without previous Covid diagnoses. People with previous symptomatic Covid infections reported certain persistent symptoms, such as breathlessness, palpitations and confusion or difficulty concentrating, at a rate roughly three times as high as uninfected people in surveys from six to 18 months later, the study found. Those patients also experienced elevated risks of more than 20 other symptoms relating to the heart, respiratory health, muscle aches, mental health and the sensory system. The findings strengthened calls from scientists for more expansive care options for long Covid patients in the United States and elsewhere, while also offering some good news The study did not identify greater risks of long-term problems in people with asymptomatic coronavirus infections. It also found, in a much more limited subset of participants who had been given at least one dose of Covid vaccine before their infections, that vaccination appeared to help reduce if not eliminate the risk of some long Covid symptoms.”

• ”How COVID-19 headaches are different from others—and how to manage them” [National Geographic], “In a recent review of the research, approximately half of all people with an acute COVID infection developed a headache, and it was the first symptom in about a quarter of people. Despite COVID’s classification as a respiratory disease, about one in five patients with moderate to severe COVID report that it was the neurological symptoms—including headache, brain fog, and loss of taste and smell—that bothered them the most. Those percentages are likely an underestimate. ‘The reporting of headache varies depending on whether it’s assessed inpatient or outpatient,’ says Mia Tova Minen, chief of headache research and a neurologist at New York University Langone Health. ‘It’s likely underreported by hospitalized patients in part because there’s so many other symptoms that might be the focus of those patients.’” And treatment: “Acetaminophen is one of the most common treatments doctors offer, as well as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, metamizole, triptans, or a combination of these, but only a quarter of people report complete relief; only half reported getting any relief from these medications. Minen says headache specialists will often treat tension-type headaches or persistent daily headaches with gabapentin, a medication that’s also used to treat seizures and nerve pain…. Those with post-COVID headaches tend to respond well to the migraine medications amitriptyline and nortriptyline, [Jennifer Frontera, a neurologist at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine] says.”

Transmission

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.)

Lambert here: I have to say, I’m seeing more yellow and more blue, which continues to please. But is the pandemic “over”? Well….

Positivity

From the Walgreen’s test positivity tracker, October 8:

-0.9%.

Readers, please click through on this, if you have a minute. Since Walgreens did the right thing, let’s give this project some stats.

Wastewater

NOT UPDATED Wastewater data (CDC), September 24:

Lambert here: Note the dates, which moved backward from October 4 to September 24. Some sort of backward revision? In any case, we are now 18 19 days behind on wastewater data. Good job with the leading indicator, CDC. Adding: Looks like we’ve moved to once a week, here? If so, then this wording in the page header needs to be corrected: “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates Mon-Fri by 8pm ET†.” And the note: “†Data will update Monday through Friday as soon as they are reviewed and verified, oftentimes before 8 pm ET. Updates will occur the following day when reporting coincides with a federal holiday. Note: Daily updates (Mon-Fri) might be delayed due to delays in reporting.” Oh.

October 4:

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].

Variant data, national (Walgreens), September 24:

First appearance of BA.2.75 at Walgreens, confirming CDC data below.

Variant data, national (CDC), September 17 (Nowcast off):

• “Omicron Covid-19: First case of new subvariant BQ.1.1 in New Zealand confirmed” [New Zealand Herald]. “New Zealand has recorded its first case of a new Covid-19 subvariant, the Ministry of Health has confirmed. ESR confirmed it has sequenced the country’s first case of the Omicron subvariant BQ.1.1 in a person who tested positive for Covid. BQ1.1 was also detected in Te Waipounamu (South Island) wastewater samples. The ministry said the list of new subvariants appearing within New Zealand is ‘lengthy and growing’. ‘Many of these new subvariants are identified by their mutations, many of which are shared across several subvariants, but it can take weeks or months to determine whether these mutations will allow a subvariant to out-compete others circulating in the community.’ ‘At the early stage of a new variant being identified in New Zealand, it is difficult to predict whether and when it will become established in the community.’ So far, most Omicron variants had not demonstrated a change in the severity of the disease.” • I don’t want to go scariant chasing, but since I mentioned BQ.1.1 yesterday….

Deaths

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 1,089,385 – 1,088,471 – 1,087,976 = 914 (914 * 365 = 333,610, which is today’s LivingWith™* number (quite a bit higher than the minimizers would like, though they can talk themselves into anything. Fluctuates quite a bit, but even the low numbers are bad). I have added an anti-triumphalist black Fauci Line. NOTE I may need to configure this as well.

It’s nice that for deaths I have a 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

“United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose by 9,000 to a six-week high of 228,000 in the week ending October 8th, extending the jump from the five-month low hit two weeks prior and surpassing expectations of 225,000, suggesting some loosening in labor market conditions.”

Inflation: “United States Consumer Price Index (CPI)” [Trading Economics]. “The consumer price inflation in the US eased for a third straight month to 8.2 percent year-on-year in September 2022, the lowest since February but above market expectations of 8.1 percent. Also, the annual rate remained well above the US Federal Reserve’s target of 2%, suggesting policymakers will maintain their hawkish rhetoric and keep raising interest rates at a quick pace.”

The Bezzle: “OnlyFans lawyers accidentally reveal which Meta execs allegedly took bribes” [Ars Technica]. “When adult entertainers initially filed a lawsuit alleging that OnlyFans bribed Meta to block competitors on Instagram by flagging their content as terrorism, it was not clear who at Meta was being accused of accepting bribes. That changed this week when lawyers for OnlyFans’ owner Fenix International Limited accidentally filed a court document that mistakenly failed to redact the names of Meta employees allegedly connected to the global conspiracy. Because of the misstep, it has been revealed that adult entertainers have specifically accused two Meta executives of taking bribes. The employees are Nick Clegg (Meta’s vice president of global policy), Nicola Mendelsohn (vice president of the global business team), and Cristian Perrella (whom Yahoo Finance reported is Meta’s European safety director).” • Nick Clegg? Surely not. Why, he’s a (UK) Liberal Democrat!

Tech: “TikTok profits from livestreams of families begging” [BBC]. “Displaced families in Syrian camps are begging for donations on TikTok while the company takes up to 70% of the proceeds, a BBC investigation found. Children are livestreaming on the social media app for hours, pleading for digital gifts with a cash value. The BBC saw streams earning up to $1,000 (£900) an hour, but found the people in the camps received only a tiny fraction of that. TikTok said it would take prompt action against ‘exploitative begging.’ The company said this type of content was not allowed on its platform, and it said its commission from digital gifts was significantly less than 70%. But it declined to confirm the exact amount. Earlier this year, TikTok users saw their feeds fill with livestreams of families in Syrian camps, drawing support from some viewers and concerns about scams from others.” • Odd that the Ukrainians haven’t tried this. Or maybe they have?

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 23 Extreme Fear (previous close: 18 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 28 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 13 at 1:39 PM EDT.

The Gallery

Trying to order these:

I think the blue (sky) is in the back, the yellow (wall) is in the front, and the red (door) is in the middle. What do readers think?

The Screening Room

More Angela Lansbury:

“Angela Lansbury Was a Brilliant Actor and a Comrade” [Jacobin]. “[Lansbury] was a comrade via her illustrious lineage: her father was Edgar Lansbury, the British socialist politician, and her grandfather was George Lansbury, the pacifist, socialist, and leader of the British Labour Party from 1932 to 1935. Her mother was Irish actor Moyna Macgill, and they were fleeing the Nazi bombings of England during the London Blitz when they arrived in New York City in 1940 seeking access to the entertainment industry. They gradually wound their way to Hollywood in 1942, where teenage Angela Lansbury’s astonishing career really began.” • Interestingly, the article makes no connection whatever between Lansbury’s background, her socialist commitments, and her work as an artist.

Class Warfare

“Social Determinants of Health (Unlocked)” (podcast) [Death Panel]. Oooh, there’s a transcript:

[T]he social determinants framework really grows out of a much older framework that is more commonly referred to as “social medicine.” This is the history of social medicine is the thing that gets kind of cyclically, you know, forgotten and rediscovered, with each successive generation of, you know, grad students in public health and whoever else. Social medicine really has its origins in industrial revolution Europe. Engels is one of the first, which I mean is interesting, because I don’t think Engels focused too much on health specifically, throughout his career, but Engels really wrote kind of the foundational text in social medicine with “On the Condition of the Working Classes in England.” He was one of the first, maybe the first person to I mean, we could do a whole podcast episode just about black lung, but he was one of the first people to identify black lung as an occupational disease among coal miners.

Also lots of interesting material on the role of the World Bank in creating what today we know as “personal risk assessment” (decades ago; I found it too hard to excerpt, so you’ll just have to listen :-).

“Who Pays for Inflation?” (interview) [J. W. Mason, Phenomenal World]. “It’s a bit puzzling when you listen to Larry Summers, Jason Furman, and others on that side of the debate. They talk as if the only thing that has happened over the past three years is that the federal government suddenly started spending more money. And that’s true, it did. But something else happened too. It was called the global pandemic, and it was kind of important. Auto prices, to take one example, have increased dramatically not because people are buying more cars than they were a few years ago—they are not—but because at the onset of the pandemic manufacturers didn’t think they’d be able to sell any cars and stopped ordering semiconductors. Once you’ve halted demand for these specialized electronics it’s difficult to turn them back up again. So auto production collapsed and imported cars from the rest of the world could not fill the gap. Which is why, when people turned out to want to buy cars after all, prices went up. You can tell similar stories with other goods, it’s not so mysterious….. That said, we shouldn’t deny that, given the pandemic, if we had had less spending in the economy, we probably would have had less inflation. But that doesn’t mean it would have been a better outcome. If we think back to the sense of economic doom that characterized the early part of 2020, we should also be grateful that we seem to have avoided the predicted economic catastrophe, even if it was at the cost of somewhat higher inflation.”

News of the Wired

“Kodak is Hiring Film Technicians: ‘We Cannot Keep Up with Demand’” [PetaPixel]. “Eastman Kodak is hiring and the company says its tactic of being the “last color film manufacturer standing” has paid off as interest in analog photography continues to surge…. ‘Our retailers are constantly telling us they can’t keep these films on the shelves and they want more.’” • There’s no way I would be photographing today with film; I can maintain a computer, but I can’t maintain a dark room for black and white, let alone color, which I would want (and the process of sending the film out to be developed does not appeal). Nevertheless, I think this is a great thing, because the “feel” of analog is different. I miss, for example, grain. Pixels are not the same!

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