2:00PM Water Cooler 10/21/2022 | bare capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Hen Track of the Day

Darkish-eyed Junco (Pink-backed), Otero, New Mexico, United States. “Track at dawn of a Pink-backed Junco singing from the highest of a useless conifer with its trunk reduce off ca. 30′ up. Background contains: Warbling Vireo, Mountain Chickadee.”

Politics

“However what’s authorities itself, however the biggest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“Right here’s meals for thought, had Ahab time to suppose; however Ahab by no means thinks; he solely feels, feels, feels” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“The logic of the insult and the logic of scientific classification symbolize the 2 excessive poles of what a classification could also be within the social world.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Biden Administration

Debt ceiling trainwreck on the way in which:

To summarize:

1. If the GOP wins the Home it may use the debt ceiling to power Dems to decide on between an financial crash and big program cuts

2. The GOP already did this in 2011, so we all know they’ll

3. Democrats can unilaterally cease them, however are afraid of assault adverts pic.twitter.com/YneSCmstBG

— Will Stancil (@whstancil) October 21, 2022

Why not kill off the debt ceiling within the lame duck session? Extra necessary than shoveling more cash to Ukrainian black market arms sellers, absolutely.

Biden is right:

BREAKING: President Biden SLAMS Kevin McCarthy for pledging to chop all assist to Ukraine- “These guys do not get it; it is rather a lot larger than Ukraine. It is Jap Europe. It is NATO. It is actual critical, critical consequential outcomes. They don’t have any sense of American international coverage.”

— Republicans in opposition to Trumpism (@RpsAgainstTrump) October 21, 2022

The consequential consequence is victory or defeat for The Blob (in my opinion, the true enemy). Now, how The Blob would react to defeat is an open query — presumably the defeat would must be of “helicopters on the Embassy roof”-scale to keep away from denial — but it surely’s a query that must be posed.

2022

* * *

“Peter Thiel’s enterprise capital-style political technique yields low returns” [Financial Times]. “Thiel and his candidates — Blake Masters in Arizona and JD Vance in Ohio — have largely didn’t muster assist with the Republican institution, elevating questions concerning the Silicon Valley billionaire’s long-term relationship with the celebration’s gatekeepers, resembling Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s high Republican. In interviews, Republican political strategists and longtime associates of the PayPal co-founder and early Fb investor say his unconventional political giving is closely influenced by his background as a enterprise capitalist. His technique intently mirrors the trade from which he hails: make a couple of massive, early and focused bets on a few campaigns. But a few of these individuals mentioned they struggled to see the knowledge of this components, particularly in high-profile Senate races which might be prone to decide which celebration successfully controls Washington for the following two years. ‘These [tech] guys make some huge cash and suppose they’re sensible — as a result of they’re . . . However that doesn’t switch to politics as seamlessly I feel as they hope,’ mentioned a Republican marketing campaign marketing consultant who, like different individuals who know Thiel, requested to not be named in an effort to converse concerning the billionaire extra freely. A profitable marketing campaign was like a three-legged stool, the marketing consultant mentioned, with one leg being candidate; one other being exterior cash; and the third being celebration assist. ‘The sort of ‘donor-owner’ mannequin actually anticipates one [leg], which is their cash,’ the marketing consultant mentioned. ‘They don’t take into consideration candidate high quality as a result of they know them they usually suppose they’re nice guys and could be nice senators, and that’s the one consideration.’”

“Thiel-Backed Candidates Battle to Join With Donors Not Named Peter Thiel” [Bloomberg]. “On the floor, Blake Masters and JD Vance would appear to have an necessary benefit as they head into the ultimate weeks of their Senate races. Each have deep ties to Silicon Valley’s richest and wealthiest traders and years of expertise elevating enormous sums of cash to fund know-how firms. Masters spent almost a decade working intently with the enterprise capitalist Peter Thiel and co-wrote Thiel’s Zero to One, regarded by a era of Silicon Valley billionaires because the definitive startup guide. Vance additionally labored for Thiel, after which later alongside AOL co-founder Steve Case, and Thiel was among the many key backers of his enterprise capital fund, alongside former Google Chief Govt Officer Eric Schmidt and Marc Andreessen, who co-founded one of many Valley’s largest enterprise capital funds. However whereas the connections to Thiel paid off for each Vance and Masters within the primaries—every was buoyed by a $15 million tremendous PAC contribution from their former boss—they haven’t been capable of flip Thiel’s seed capital into sustained fundraising success.”

“Crypto Punk’d” [Slate]. “When Sam Bankman-Fried was requested throughout a podcast earlier this yr how a lot cash he may give to political candidates over upcoming election cycles, he provided an eye-popping ballpark quantity. The 30-year-old crypto titan guessed that, at a minimal, he would put down ‘north of $100 million,’ sufficient money to make him one of many nation’s most necessary donors. Pressed by the host on whether or not he may even spend as much as $1 billion, he answered, ‘Yeah, I feel that’s an honest factor to take a look at,’ including that the quantity was ‘a kind of tender ceiling’ on his potential largesse. Even when that $1 billion determine sounded outlandishly unrealistic, the feedback nonetheless appeared to vow an enormous tailwind for largely Democratic candidates. In any case, Bankman-Fried, who based the worldwide crypto trade FTX and is at present price about $15 billion in response to Bloomberg, was considered one of Joe Biden’s high monetary backers in 2020…. However now, as the overall election nears, Democrats are beginning to appear to be the victims of a political rug pull. With the celebration desperately low on money in a lot of Home races, Politico reported final week that Bankman-Fried had ‘turned off the spigot’ and was strolling again his guarantees to spend massive sooner or later. ‘That was a dumb quote on my half,’ Bankman-Fried informed the publication, relating to his suggestion that he may donate $1 billion. Elsewhere within the interview, he added that at ‘some level, if you’ve given your message to voters, there’s simply not an entire lot extra you are able to do.’ For Democratic teams going through a lot of tightly contested races that would go both means, it will need to have felt like a twist of the knife.” • Whoops.

* * *

“‘A Class 2 or 3 Hurricane Headed Democrats’ Approach’” (interview) [Dave Wasserman, New York Magazine]. “I feel that is most likely a Class 2 or 3 hurricane headed Democrats’ means, simply not a Class 4 or 5…. We’re nonetheless in an identical place, the place Republicans solely have to win about one in each 5 tossups to win the bulk, and Democrats would want to win greater than 4 out of 5. That’s a very tall order. It’s true that in most years, tossups break closely in a single path or one other. However I might additionally level out we’ve a bunch of races — 17 to be actual — in our Lean Democratic column, which suggests there are loads of races teetering proper on the sting, and we wouldn’t be shocked to see a few of them fall to Republicans…. a few of Democrats’ largest struggles this yr are in blue states the place the risk to abortion entry will not be as potent a November voting situation as it’s in midwestern battlegrounds, the place there have been ferocious fights between Democratic governors and Republican legislatures over the difficulty.” • Nicely price a learn; Wasserman is a refreshingly sober analyst.

Helpful chart:

I am sorry everybody pic.twitter.com/WoICzo0oIK

— Kristen Soltis Anderson (@KSoltisAnderson) October 20, 2022

* * *

PA: “Dr. Oz made popularity as a surgeon, a fortune as a salesman” [Associated Press]. “Dr. Mehmet Oz rolled onstage within an inflatable orb, placed on a hydrating face masks and proceeded to pitch a brand new line of skincare merchandise to a conference of complement distributors at Salt Lake Metropolis’s Vivint Enviornment in 2018. The group roared in applause. The celeb surgeon’s look appeared like an extension of ‘The Dr. Oz Present’ on daytime TV. However his attendance was in service of the conference’s host, Usana Well being Sciences, a Utah-based complement producer that has been investigated by federal authorities, sued by its personal shareholders and accused of working like a pyramid scheme. The corporate was additionally a high advertiser on Oz’s present, paying at the very least $50 million to be a ‘trusted associate and sponsor’ featured in common segments that always blurred the road between medical recommendation and promoting, whereas additionally donating tens of millions of {dollars} extra to Oz’s charity, in response to information reviewed by The Related Press. Oz might have made his popularity as a surgeon. However he made a fortune as a salesman.” • To be honest, Usana, structured as a multilevel advertising and marketing agency, hasn’t been convicted of something. However there’s a robust aroma of regulatory motion, fines, lawsuits, non-disclosure agreements, and so forth. I assume Fetterman’s oppo persons are going over this fastidiously.

Democrats en Déshabillé

Affected person readers, plainly persons are really studying the back-dated put up! However I’ve not up to date it, and there are lots of updates. So I should do this. –lambert

I’ve moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Social gathering (“the Democrat Social gathering is a rotting corpse that may’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated put up, to which I’ll periodically add materials, summarizing the addition right here in a “reside” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It seems that defining the Democrat Social gathering is, in truth, a tough downside. I do suppose the paragraph that follows is on level all the way in which again to 2016, if not earlier than:

The Democrat Social gathering is the political expression of the category energy of PMC, their base (lucidly defined by Thomas Frank in Hear, Liberal!). ; if the Democrat Social gathering didn’t exist, the PMC must invent it. . (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” in fact.) Second, all of the working elements of the Social gathering reinforce one another. Go away apart characterizing the relationships between parts of the Social gathering (ka-ching, however not completely) these parts comprise a community — a Flex Web? An iron octagon? — of funders, distributors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with property within the press and the intelligence neighborhood.

Be aware, in fact, that the category energy of the PMC each expresses and is restricted by different lessons; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial mannequin’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to thoughts. Suck up, kick down.

* * *

Realignment and Legitimacy

“It’s been two years since 51 intelligence brokers interfered with an election — they nonetheless gained’t apologize” [New York Post]. “Precisely two years in the past, on October 19, 2020, one of many dirtiest methods in electoral historical past was performed on the American individuals by 51 former intelligence officers, who used the false alarm of ‘Russian interference’ to cease Donald Trump profitable a second time period as president. Utilizing the institutional weight of their former esteemed roles, they signed a dishonest letter to mislead voters 15 days earlier than the election, claiming that materials from Hunter Biden’s laptop computer printed by the New York Publish “has all of the traditional earmarks of a Russian data operation.’ Of their knowledgeable opinion, ‘the Russians are concerned within the Hunter Biden e mail situation.’ … It was all a lie…. You’d suppose since so many have been outed for his or her involvement within the (non-existent) weapons-of-mass-destruction intelligence catastrophe that justified the Iraq battle, to not point out secret prisons, torture, warrantless eavesdropping and the majority assortment of Individuals’ knowledge, they may have discovered some humility.” • lol no. Good to listen to a conservative publication say this. Now how a few Presidential candidate?

“International Funding and Public Belief within the Assume Tank Sector” [Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft]. “Assume tanks can function an important hyperlink between academia and the coverage neighborhood, providing critically necessary analysis and concepts to resolve the nation’s most urgent issues. However suppose tanks also can function de facto lobbyists and public relations mouthpieces for his or her funders, generally even doing work on the behest of international powers. As these conflicts of curiosity have change into extra obvious the general public has expressed low ranges of belief in suppose tanks, which has solely been amplified by current scandal — most notably the previous President of Brookings going through allegations of working as an unregistered international agent.”

“Main Occupation” [The Intercept]. “Two teams — Democratic Majority For Israel, or DMFI, and Mainstream Democrats PAC — started spending tens of millions pummeling Turner on the airwaves. The 2 had been successfully the identical group, working out of the identical workplace and using the identical consultants, although Mainstream Democrats claims a broader mission. Strategic and focusing on selections for each had been made by pollster Mark Mellman, in response to Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Democratic operative and Silicon Valley govt who serves because the political adviser to LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman, who funds the Mainstream Democrats PAC. DMFI has additionally funneled at the very least $500,000 to Mainstream Democrats PAC…. Whereas DMFI is ostensibly organized across the politics of Israel, in follow, it has change into a weapon wielded by the celebration’s centrist faction in opposition to its progressive wing. In actual fact, DMFI, Mainstream Democrats PAC, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee have spent a lot cash that the query of Israel-Palestine now dominates Democratic primaries. Throughout the nation, progressive candidates who a cycle earlier had been loudly vying for nationwide consideration with daring concepts to draw small donors had been as an alternative preserving their heads down, hoping to remain underneath the radar of DMFI and AIPAC.” • By no means may this be characterised as international interference, any greater than Jeremy Corbyn’s defenestration may very well be. And naturally, within the UK, the organs of state safety had been closely concerned, which couldn’t probably occur right here.

#COVID19

• Shot:

Chaser:

Qualifier:

That is just about the place I’m (together with having misplaced persistence with being good, most likely silly, tactically). I don’t need to moralize (cf. John 7:8-9). However I’m not a nihilist, both. In contrast to some:

I can perceive why Wachter would really feel this fashion. He’s, in spite of everything, the person who chivvied his spouse into attending a superspreading occasion, the place they each acquired Covid (and his spouse acquired Lengthy Covid, IIRC). That wasn’t a “unhealthy” selection. It was a unhealthy selection, an apparent candidate for steps 4-10, not just for his spouse, however for the general public at massive (and now, I suppose, I’m out right here taking Wachter’s stock. In my protection, he’s presenting the actions pushed by his technique as a mannequin for others to observe).

• ”Nominations for the Peste Journal Public Well being Disservice Awards, Hosted by Neoliberal John Snow” [Peste Magazine]. “We ask that you simply nominate people and teams who’ve, in public venues, sought to worsen public well being in 2022.” • Maybe readers have some concepts!

• There are various, many such loops, all the PMC is made to operate by a community of such loops:

It appears acquainted, like:

Paradoxically, Tammany was the very political machines the progressives of the day had been attacking. And right here we’re!

• Extra IDweek follies (“the joint annual assembly of the Infectious Illnesses Society of America (IDSA), Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the HIV Drugs Affiliation (HIVMA), the Pediatric Infectious Illnesses Society (PIDS), and the Society of Infectious Illnesses Pharmacists (SIDP)):

Masking up with a poorly performing masks, and modeling unmasked conduct for the cameras… It’s actually onerous to outdo this. What do these infectious illness “scientists” suppose a masks is, anyhow? Some kinda scarlet letter?

• Vacation ideas:

I feel it nonetheless does….

• ”COVID Virus Could Tunnel by Nanotubes from Nostril to Mind” [Scientific American (semper loquitur)]. “How, in truth, does the pandemic virus that has so modified the world cross over into the mind after getting into the respiratory system? A solution is necessary as a result of neurological complaints are a number of the most typical within the constellation of signs referred to as lengthy COVID. The thriller facilities round the truth that mind cells don’t show the receptors, or docking websites, that the virus makes use of to get into nasal and lung cells. SARS-CoV-2, although, might have give you an ingenious work-around. It could utterly dispose of the molecular maneuverings wanted to connect to and unlock a cell membrane. As a substitute it wields a blunt instrument within the type of nanotube “bridges”—cylinders constructed of the widespread protein actin which might be no various tens of nanometers in diameter. These tunneling nanotubes prolong throughout cell-to-cell gaps to penetrate a neighbor and provides viral particles a direct route into COVID-impervious tissue.” • A light glad dance from lambert, who wrote on 8/12/2020: “All about “lengthy Covid.” It’s these [family blogging] tentacles, I swear. When you get bindweed in your backyard….” Miild, as a result of the Monetary Instances article to which I linked (“Coronavirus produces ‘sinister’ tentacles in contaminated cells“) appears to explain a special mechanism. Nonetheless — as with a lot else — it’s the tentacles!

Transmission

Right here is CDC’s interactive map by county set to neighborhood transmission. (That is the map CDC wants only hospitals to look at, not you.)

Lambert right here: I’ve to say, I’m seeing an increasing number of yellow and extra blue, which continues to please. However is the pandemic “over”? Nicely….

Positivity

From the Walgreen’s check positivity tracker, October 18:

1.0%. This has been growing steadily for the previous couple of days.

Readers, please click on by on this, when you have a minute. Since Walgreens did the fitting factor, let’s give this undertaking some stats.

Wastewater

Wastewater knowledge (CDC), October 17:

October 16:

Variants

Lambert right here: It’s past irritating how gradual the variant knowledge is. Does no one within the public well being institution get a promotion for monitoring variants? Are there no grants? Is there a single lab that does this work, and all people will get the outcomes from them? Extra sources from readers welcome [grinds teeth, bangs head on desk].

NEW Variant knowledge, nationwide (Walgreens), October 7:

Lambert right here: BQ.1*, out of nowhere. So superior.

Variant knowledge, nationwide (CDC), October 1 (Nowcast off):

Deaths

Loss of life charge (Our World in Knowledge):

Complete: 1,092,409 – 1,092,031 = 378 (378 * 365 = 137,970, which is at the moment’s LivingWith™ quantity (fairly a bit increased than the minimizers would really like, although they will speak themselves into something. If the LivingWith™ metric retains chugging alongside like this, I may need to determine that is what the powers-that-be think about “mission completed” for this specific tranche of dying and illness.

It’s good that for deaths I’ve a easy, each day chart that simply retains chugging alongside, not like all the things else CDC and the White Home are screwing up or letting go darkish, good job.

Groves of Academe

That is unhappy:

Healthcare

I’m positive there are lots of such tales:

And plenty of such undergrounds, by analysis:

Zeitgeist Watch

No:

However that is not a brand new idea:

“Everybody Desires to Be a Scorching, Anxious Lady on Twitter” [The Atlantic]. From the @itspureluv account: “Right here’s a highly regarded tweet: ‘she’s a 10 but she cries on her birthday every year.’ … There’s an entire universe of huge accounts that put up content material like this—little snippets of language with mass attraction. They usually regurgitate the identical messages…. I began noticing this phenomenon final yr and adopted a few dozen of those accounts out of a curiosity that felt sort of sick—they gave me a chill! They had been so good at spitting out (or choosing and copying) sentences and fragments that lots of of 1000’s of individuals associated to, they usually had been doing it to no apparent finish. They had been shameless about retweeting themselves or tweeting a number of barely totally different variations of a thought to see which one would hit largest…. Different individuals on Twitter had observed them as properly and referred to them (normally with irritation) as “gradient accounts,” as a result of a lot of their profile footage will not be of human faces or anything, simply shade gradients…. The facelessness of the accounts is what provides them a wierd, bordering-on-sinister attract. Who’s posting all these items, and why?… ‘I need to set the file straight,’ Andrew Zaffina, the 25-year-old behind @itspureluv informed me once I messaged him on Twitter and requested him to name me. “I’m so sick of individuals pondering we’re bots. I’m actually only a actually relatable, chill, enjoyable web character…. Zaffina makes use of his Twitter to drive consideration to his different accounts and to his companies—he’s a non secular medium, teaches on-line lessons about spiritualism, and sells hoodies explaining totally different angel numbers. Relatable content material is simple for him to give you, he says, as a result of he appears to be like at Twitter all day, on daily basis, and his mind has began to function within the language of the positioning. And in 2022, the language of Twitter is the language of a scorching, anxious woman.” • Hmm. I keep in mind angels from a Jezebel article the opposite day. In any case, it’s kind of a reverse Turing check, isn’t it? Very odd. (I suppose, for instance, you could possibly characterize all of the Ukronazi tweets on the Twitter as emanating from a “scorching, anxious woman.” However I don’t suppose so. I do suppose the writer has stumbled onto a phenomenon that’s deeper than they know. (I personally have by no means encountered a “gradient account.” However Twitter is a big and unusual place.

Class Warfare

“The Federal Reserve Is Coming For Your Subsequent Increase” [HuffPo]. “The central financial institution has been elevating rates of interest, getting cash costlier to borrow, in a bid to decelerate the entire financial system so individuals don’t spend a lot. That means, companies will provide decrease costs. A part of the answer entails what Fed Chair Jerome Powell calls ‘softening of labor market situations.’ That softening, as Powell and his colleagues envision, will contain increased unemployment within the coming yr. However Fed officers converse in abstractions, discussing provide and demand or the significance of righting imbalances between the 2, whereas avoiding speak concerning the materials penalties for staff. ‘The language that’s used to speak about financial coverage is sort of designed to make it much less clear what really is at stake and what the true targets are,’ mentioned J.W. Mason, an affiliate professor of economics on the Metropolis College of New York’s John Jay School of Legal Justice. Powell has acknowledged that there will probably be some ‘ache’ within the Fed’s marketing campaign in opposition to inflation, possibly to the purpose of recession. However even staff who keep employed will really feel the impression of elevated rates of interest. ‘The one means wherein increased rates of interest scale back inflation is by elevating unemployment and thereby inducing staff to just accept decrease wages,’ Mason mentioned.”

“Main U.S. freight railroads are powering proper by labor considerations with earnings intact… However the railroad’s $114 million cost within the quarter related to tentative and ratified labor agreements is a reminder that the larger concern stays labor relations” [Wall Street Journal]. “Two of the most important unions began to ship ballots on their agreements to members this week.” • Neatly avoiding the midterms, a favor the Democrats won’t return.

“Starbucks Company Employees Doubt Firm Values in Inner Ballot” [Bloomberg]. “Starbucks Corp. white-collar workers’ religion within the espresso chain’s ethics and social impression dropped to a historic low this yr, in response to an inner survey, with company workers voicing concern concerning the firm’s response to the union marketing campaign spreading by its cafes. In a survey of office-based US workers, solely 52% mentioned they ‘utterly agree’ that Starbucks ‘behaves in an moral and accountable method,’ executives informed workers at an Oct. 13 assembly, a video of which was seen by Bloomberg Information. Barely fewer, 48%, mentioned they utterly agreed that they had been ‘happy with the function Starbucks has in making a social impression.’” • I feel these white collar staff want a union.

Information of the Wired

“The method” [Labor Intensive Art]. The deck: “Sharing the instruments, strategies, and tales of how I make my rugs.” And: “Because of this, I’ve all the time proven the again aspect of my work because the entrance. It’s confused loads of viewers through the years, so, simply to clear the air: I’m dishonest. I’m displaying you the again.” • That is actually neat! (Considering again to Amfortas the Hippie’s examples of artwork that I, a hoity toity positive arts man, wouldn’t think about “positive,” therefore not artwork.) Tons and plenty of suggestions!

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