2:00PM Water Cooler 6/27/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Readers, there will be a Live Blog for The Debate. Doors open at 8:30PM EDT (and the link won’t work before then). Bring your bingo cards and appropriate libations! –lambert

And readers, patient readers, I had a bit of a technical debacle, where an intermittent fault in posting caused me to lose some precious time. And now I must hustle! –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Eastern Meadowlark (Eastern), E OF DRYDEN; VIRGIL RD.; DANIEL CORY FARM, Tompkins, New York, United States. This is fantastic. Not only is it over five minutes long (with a “recorded announcement,” I grant) it’s older than I am. What a great resource.

In Case You Might Miss…

(1) The Debates, pre-game analysis.

(2) Murthy v. Missouri.

(3) Digital ID exposure debacle.

(4) CDK auto dealer outage and consumer spending.

Look for the Helpers

“Fossil of child with Down syndrome hints at Neanderthal compassion” [Reuters (NL)]. “Living among a small band of Neanderthals in what is now eastern Spain was a child, perhaps 6 years old, with Down syndrome, as shown in a remarkable fossil preserving traits in the inner ear anatomy indicative of this serious genetic condition.

This fossil, unearthed at the Cova Negra archeological site in the province of Valencia near the city of Xàtiva, not only represents the earliest-known evidence of Down syndrome but, according to scientists, hints at compassionate caregiving in these extinct archaic humans – close cousins to our own species…. “The pathology which this individual [‘Tina’] suffered resulted in highly disabling symptoms, including, at the very least, complete deafness, severe vertigo attacks and an inability to maintain balance,’ said paleoanthropologist Mercedes Conde-Valverde of the University of Alcalá in Spain, lead author of the study published in the journal Science Advances, opens new tab. ‘Given these symptoms, ,’ Conde-Valverde added. Among other pathologies, there were abnormalities in the semicircular canals – three small tubes that govern balance and sense head position – and a reduction in the size of the cochlea, the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. The fossil’s precise age has not been determined, but Conde-Valverde noted that the presence of Neanderthals at the Cova Negra site has been dated to between 273,000 and 146,000 years ago.” • Compassion, then, is adaptive (which doesn’t say much for neoliberalism, or its Rule #2).

My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).

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

The Supremes

“Get ready for the Supreme Court to drop some bombshell decisions” [Politico]. “The court is scheduled to issue opinions Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. By far the biggest pending decision is Donald Trump’s bid to be declared immune from federal criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.” • Friday, then (meaning also that the Supreme Court denied the voters the opportunity to see the candidates duke it out on executive power, a case “for the ages,” good job).

“Supreme Court Rules Anyone Who Had Abortion Under Roe Must Be Re-Impregnated” [The Onion]. From 2023, still germane. “In a controversial 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that any American who underwent a legal abortion under Roe v. Wade must now be re-impregnated. ‘Any U.S. citizen who terminated a pregnancy during the nearly 50 years that it was nationally legal must immediately report to a governmental agency or Catholic hospital to be re-impregnated,’ read the conservative-led decision penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, which went on to explain that now that the highest court in the land has negated bodily autonomy as a constitutional right and made it vastly difficult to find reproductive care, they finally have time to work backwards in punishing anyone who was able to benefit in the past. ‘Frankly, after working tirelessly with local and state governments to all but sever the ability of an American woman of child-bearing age to retain authority over her own uterus, it brings me great pleasure to right this wrong once and for all by undoing the long-completed lawful abortions of the Roe era.’”

“US Supreme Court allows emergency abortions in Idaho for now” [Reuters]. • Vote for Trump, suburban women!

Vote for Trump, oxycontin victims!

It’s insane that Kagan and Sotomayor dissented on this one. https://t.co/FpG8TklkGU

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 27, 2024

2024

Less than a half a year to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

At this point, we should entertain the hypothesis that the Bragg verdict is a damp squib, unless Biden can somehow leverage it in the debate. Swing States (more here) still Brownian-motioning around. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. If will be interesting to see whether the verdict in Judge Merchan’s court affects the polling, and if so, how. NOTE Sorry for the excess red dots; I can’t seem to make them go away!

* * *

The Debates: “Biden-Trump Debate Takes Shape as Clash With ‘No Love Lost’” [Wall Street Journal]. “Biden held several days of debate practice at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. Most of the mock sessions were held in a movie theater on the property and some of the debate preparation went late into the evening, according to a person familiar with the matter. Trump took a different approach, eschewing mock debates and multiday briefings in favor of policy refreshers with aides and allies, including some senators on his vice-presidential shortlist. Both candidates were to fly to Atlanta on Thursday before the debate.” • If Trump thinks he can wing it, that’s a problem. Can he really work to a two-minute timer? If not, will he try to dominate the moderators? With his mike cut off?* Not a good look. NOTE * Maybe Trump could bring a cellphone and broadcast his post-cut-off remarks out to Truth Social (or possibly Rumble). That would be amusing; presumably the entire venue is not in a Faraday cage.

The Debates: “Debate expectations are low. But it could still upend the 2024 race” [Politico]. “This year’s contest features the highest share of adults in at least three decades expressing negative views of both candidates, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey — higher than even four years ago, when the candidates first matched up. For these hate-watchers — independents and voters who do not have favorable opinions of either candidate — expectations may be low. But it’s where the battle may be won or lost, in an election likely to be decided at the margins. The stakes are only low ‘if you’re judging it as a kind of theater,’ said David Axelrod, the former top Barack Obama strategist. ‘It may be one of the more consequential in American history.’ As in 2016 and 2020, voters who hold an unfavorable view of both the Democratic and Republican candidates tilt slightly toward Trump now. But polling suggests that they are more persuadable. Polling commissioned by the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter showed voters who view both Trump and Biden trust Trump more on most issues but are more worried about Trump’s temperament than Biden’s age — the two most important measuring sticks for each candidate in Thursday’s debate.” • But given sufficient volatility, the measuring stick carefully devised by opinion-havers might turn out not to be relevant at all.

The Debates: “3 answers to the most challenging debate questions for Joe Biden” [Salon]. • No reason to quote this, but it might be interesting to check back later and see if word got through to Biden’s staff. It’s not bad!

The Debates: “Biden seizes debate limelight for “Project 2025″ push” [Axios]. “The Biden campaign is using Thursday’s debate to launch a new offensive against Trump allies’ radical plans to transform the U.S. government, known as ‘Project 2025.’ The Biden campaign wants to convince jaded voters that a second Trump presidency poses grave risks to the country. Biden officials see Project 2025 — which calls for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power — as a useful blueprint for what Trump’s return would bring. The controversial transition agenda was compiled by the Heritage Foundation with input from close Trump allies and former aides — some of whom are likely to take top jobs if he wins — but Project 2025 is not an official campaign platform. The Trump campaign points instead to the Agenda47 website for policies explicitly endorsed by former President Trump…. Google search interest in “Project 2025” surged earlier this month, and a John Oliver segment on Trump’s plans for a second term racked up nearly 5 million views on YouTube in under a week. The Biden campaign, whose messaging around Project 2025 accelerated after March’s State of the Union address, is trying to capitalize on the viral momentum.” • Google searches and John Oliver? I wouldn’t call it “viral momentum”; I’d call it “preaching to the choir.” It’s also a little late for Biden to try to define Trump before Trump defines himself (TRUMP: “After the 2016 transition, when the first thing Jim Clapper did was leave a horse’s head in my bed, I felt the next transtion — sorry, Joe, hey, wake up! — needed a little attention from our team.” Well, not really, but you see what I mean.)

The Debates: “In This Debate, CNN Is the Decider” [New York Times]. “For the first time in decades, a single television network will have sole discretion over the look, feel and cadence of a general-election presidential debate. Unlike in past years, when an independent, nonprofit commission oversaw the contests, CNN has picked the moderators, designed the set and will choose the camera angles that viewers see. Lest any voters forget who’s in charge, the red CNN logo will be ubiquitous: Rival channels seeking to simulcast the event had to agree to leave the network’s on-air watermark untouched.” More: “Within the cutthroat TV news industry, the debate is seen as an enormous marketing coup for CNN, which even at a time of austerity for cable television has stood out for ignominious reasons. The channel is currently on track for its lowest-rated month in prime time since 1991, with fewer than 100,000 average viewers a night among adults 25 to 54, according to Nielsen.” And: “[T]he last time CNN hosted a major televised political event, at a New Hampshire town hall last May, it was widely perceived as a debacle…. The CNN leader behind that evening, Chris Licht, was fired a month later. Thursday’s debate is a significant test for his successor, Mr. Thompson, a former chief executive of The New York Times and director general of the BBC.” Finally: “On Thursday, much focus will be on the moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, and their ability to keep proceedings on track. Neither anchor has moderated a general-election debate, but they both have experience at various Republican and Democratic primary debates sponsored by CNN, including an audience-free bout between Mr. Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders in March 2020.”

The Debates: “The Guy Playing Trump in Biden’s Debate Prep Has Some Thoughts” [Politico]. “Bob Bauer is Biden’s personal attorney and has had a long career as one of the Democratic Party’s top campaign lawyers. But these days, he may be best known for playing Trump during Biden’s mock debate sessions.” Bauer on the format: “[L]et’s start with it being a Kennedy-Nixon format without an audience. Let’s take down the, if you will, the politics of audience. That is to say the hooting and the endless effort on the part of moderators to warn the audience that they really need to be quiet and not create any kind of commotion. This is a serious format. It’s a format in which the candidates can be heard, but they’re the only ones who are heard and they’re performing for the country, not performing for a select audience, some of whom were fortunate enough to receive tickets to the event. So I think that is a very strong point in its favor.”

* * *

Trump (R): I guess we’lll see how Trump does with only two minutes per answer to work with:

Be as objective as you can. Policy differences aside, watch the first 20-30 minutes of Trump’s interview with @theallinpod — where, unscripted, he’s pressed on complex policy questions — and then try to argue his supposed “cognitive decline” is in the same universe as Biden’s: https://t.co/cm8TjYvtKZ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 22, 2024

Trump (R): Pretty soon the Democrats are going to have to pivot away from racism:

Yet another poll shows Trump making huge gains with Black and Latino voters, while stable or slightly losing ground with White voters

2020 Trump vote:

White: 58%
Black: 12%
Latino: 32%

2024 Trump vote (per YouGov poll):

White: 57%
Black: 24%
Latino: 44% pic.twitter.com/x8MET1XwYX

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 23, 2024

* * *

The Wizard of Kalorama™

“Michelle Obama’s voting initiative teams with Headspace to help voters manage mental health” [The Hill]. “When We All Vote, the voter registration and engagement organization launched by Michelle Obama, and the mental health platform Headspace are teaming up ‘to help voters manage their mental health throughout the 2024 election season.’ See next snippet. And: ‘People need mental health support during this time of uncertainty now more than ever,’ When We All Vote said in a statement announcing the partnership on Thursday, citing a poll released in May by the American Psychiatric Association that found 73 percent of Americans are ‘particularly anxious’ about the election. The alliance between Obama’s [***cough***] nonpartisan [***cough***] effort — which the former first lady launched in 2018 — and Headspace will include a voter registration portal, an ‘election season survival guide’ that features free audio and video mindfulness exercises and an election stress assessment. Headspace will also debut a section in its app dubbed ‘Politics Without Panic’ that will include meditations ‘intended to help voters leverage stress-relieving tools needed to stay calm and focused.’ Obama said in an interview earlier this year that fears about the 2024 White House race were keeping her up at night. ‘I am terrified about what could possibly happen,” Obama said in January.” • That’s another way of saying 2024 is existential for Democrats; see below at Realignment and Legitimacy. And who, you may ask, runs Headspace?

“The Election Bias” [Russell Glass, LinkedIn]. From 2016. Russell Glass is CEO of Headspace (also involved with Rock the Vote, so the connection makes a sort of sense). “To bring us back to the real world, with real names, if Hillary and Donald were the two people above, I would vote for Hillary…. Our choice is not between two qualified and equally capable candidates for President. It is between Donald Trump – who is arguably the least qualified candidate for President in history if judged by zero public service experience and a spotty business record, and Hillary – who is arguably the most qualified presidential candidate in history if judged by holding office at almost every level of the federal government (including being fourth in line for the President already as Secretary of State).” • So it’s absurd to pretent that HeadSpace’s “survival guide,” or “stress assessment,” or “meditations” will be anything other than partisan tools. And it’s especially shameful to use mental health apps as a recruiting tool; the masquerade and the bait and switch reminds me of the conservative “pregnancy center” scam.

“Exclusive: Michelle Obama’s private frustration with the Bidens” [Axios]. “Former First Lady Michelle Obama privately has expressed frustration over how the Biden family largely exiled her close friend Kathleen Buhle after Buhle’s messy divorce from Hunter Biden, two people familiar with the relationship told Axios. The family tensions — and the former first lady’s disdain for partisan politics — are partly why one of the Democrats’ most popular voices hasn’t campaigned for President Biden’s re-election, the sources said, even as former President Obama has been a willing surrogate…. When Buhle published her own memoir in 2022 she used Michelle Obama’s publisher, and several of Michelle’s former communications aides were hired to coordinate the book’s rollout. The famously insular Bidens disapproved of Buhle writing the book with some unflattering details about the family, but Buhle’s defenders noted that she wrote it only after Hunter’s own book had included intimate details about their marriage and his addictions.” • Which would be why Michelle Obama prefers indirection, as described above. She is, after all, still the Chicago Alderman’s child.

Republican Funhouse

“Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision” [Associated Press]. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” –Mike Tyson. Meaning, as I urge here, that planning is one thing, and the ability to execute is another. More: “With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own. Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s return — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024. With a nearly 1,000-page ‘Project 2025’ handbook and an ‘army’ of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the ‘deep state’ bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.” • To be fair, I need to dig into the Heritage Foundation’s plan for the civil service, assault on the civil service, and so forth (out of scope for this post). Offhand, though, I don’t think boot camps for conservatives are going to do the job (or, rather, they will do about as well as Liberty University Law School did in producing putatively Christian lawyers for the Bush Administration). Governing really is a skill. It’s not like running a business or, for pity’s sake, a start-up.

“House Dems angle to head off Project 2025, second Trump term” [Courthouse News Service]. Reading all the way to the end: “The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year approved a subpoena for the Federalist Society founder, demanding he turn over the financial details of his relationship with Supreme Court justices. Leo, however, has refused to comply with the summons and Democrats have been largely silent about whether they will step up enforcement action against him.” • I would certainly be shocked and horrified if all the Democrat pearl-clutching about Project 2025 was nothing but a fundraising gimmick (and a talking point for Joe Biden, master debater).

* * *

GA: “In Georgia, post-conviction relief for Trump” [Washington Examiner]. “In Georgia, a new poll shows Trump as strong as he ever was. In the survey, done by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the University of Georgia, Trump leads Biden by 5 points, 43% to 38% — just outside the poll’s margin of error. Together with the two other polls that have have been done since Trump’s May 30 conviction, the survey shows Trump’s support holding steady despite momentous events.”

NV: “Why Nevada Is the Most Unpredictable Swing State in the 2024 Election” [Bloomberg]. “Of all the battleground states in the US presidential election, none is a greater puzzle for Joe Biden and Donald Trump than Nevada. That’s because the state – with its relatively sparse population and high proportion of Spanish-speaking residents – is unusually difficult to poll. In one example of its inscrutability, two surveys conducted on overlapping days in May had sharply different results: A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found Biden and Trump tied in Nevada, while a New York Times/Siena College poll found the Republican ahead by 12 points. No other battleground state has produced such a wide range of recent polling results, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Add to that some of the most rapid demographic change anywhere in the US, and the state whose major population center is Las Vegas is shaping up to be the race’s biggest crapshoot.” • Worth reading in full. It’s complicated out there on the ground!

NY: “Jamaal Bowman’s Loss Is the Start of a New Era” [Ross Barkan, New York Magazine]. “George Latimer ousted Representative Jamaal Bowman, a two-term leftist and critic of Israel, in what’s believed to be the most expensive congressional primary ever fought. For moderates hoping to check the power of the Squad in Congress, it was a joyous night; for the many progressives who hoped to save one of their most prominent politicians, it was a deeply dispiriting — if no longer shocking — turn of events. Latimer was technically an insurgent but didn’t campaign like one. Recruited by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Westchester County executive targeted Bowman for failing, in his view, to adequately support Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks. AIPAC spent at least $14 million on behalf of Latimer, an extraordinary sum, drowning television and radio stations with advertisements lacerating Bowman and propping up the more conservative Latimer. Notably, the AIPAC-funded ads said nothing about Israel, instead focusing on Bowman’s alleged lack of loyalty to Joe Biden, who is liked enough by many Democrats. Bowman’s embrace of the Democratic Socialists of America, who are explicitly anti-Zionist, may have alienated moderate Jewish voters even more.” • Well… Bowman was not the strongest candidate. Remember the ridiculous fire alarm incident? And Bowman had been, in any case, marked for death by the New York Democrats:

gerrymandering is a hell of a drug pic.twitter.com/CoLW272piS

— Samit Sarkar (@SamitSarkar) June 26, 2024

So the lesson is not that AIPAC is all-powerful; the lesson is that AIPAC had to spend a boatload of money to take down a weak candidate in a newly gerrymandered district — I mean, the Bronx and Westchester? Really? — with a strong candidate of their own (and Latimer was a strong candidate; well known, well-liked). I’m not saying that AIPAC isn’t powerful; but they’re not all powerful.

* * *

“The Day My Old Church Canceled Me Was a Very Sad Day” [David French, New York Times]. “When we moved to Tennessee in 2006, we selected our house in part because it was close to a [Presbyterian Church in America] church, and that church became the center of our lives. On Sundays we attended services, and Monday through Friday our kids attended the school our church founded and supported. We loved the people in that church, and they loved us.” But: “I was a senior writer for National Review at the time, and when I wrote pieces critical of Trump, members of the alt-right pounced, and they attacked us through our daughter. They pulled pictures of her from social media and photoshopped her into gas chambers and lynchings. Trolls found my wife’s blog on a religious website called Patheos and filled the comments section with gruesome pictures of dead and dying Black victims of crime and war. We also received direct threats. The experience was shocking. At times, it was terrifying. And so we did what we always did in times of trouble: We turned to our church for support and comfort. Our pastors and close friends came to our aid, but support was hardly universal. The church as a whole did not respond the way it did when I deployed. Instead, we began encountering racism and hatred up close, from people in our church and in our church school. The racism was grotesque. One church member asked my wife why we couldn’t adopt from Norway rather than Ethiopia.” • An experience not unique on the right, I might add. Nevertheless.

“Tampa dentist arrested after making more than 100 online threats, FBI says” [Tampa Bay]. “In one text message, Kantwill made death threats to a person he identified as a ‘fake Reverend.’ ‘Being the anti-Christ piece of s–t that you are, we are going to kill you. Torture first, then death,’ the text from Kantwill reads. The victim installed nearly $4,500 worth of surveillance cameras ‘due to his genuine fear of Kantwill,’ according to court records. A private message sent by Kantwill through Instagram to another person reads, ‘Cannot wait to shoot your ghetto ass in the street,’ followed by a racial slur. In September 2019, he wrote to one victim: ‘God bless the Great President Trump and his family. F–k you and yours. Hire extra security … you’re gonna need it.’ The next month, the FBI interviewed Kantwill and told him to stop sending the messages. ‘Despite the FBI’s warning, Kantwill spent the next 10 months sending threats to over 40 victims via social media and email,’ the motion states.” • Again, not unique to any political party or faction, though operating differently in different cases (for example, the Canadian government closing the bank accounts of protesting truck drivers, pretty violent if you’ve got to make rent). However, I translate this to harassment of election officials, where every case I know about came from Trump supporters post-2020. I think that’s a bad thing, partly because election officials tend to be volunteers, and also because those in my small town are church-going older ladies.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Sharing”:

Today’s SCOTUS decision in Murthy v. Missouri is a win for fighting election disinformation. It overturns the 5th Circuit’s extreme ruling, and allows government agencies to resume sharing their expertise/information on foreign interference, voting disinfo, and election threats.

— Brennan Center (@BrennanCenter) June 26, 2024

As I have been saying for some time, the spooks are intelligence community is seeking the power to determine whether elections are legitimate or not; that is what the Brennan Center’s tweet amounts to operationally. What happens on Wednesday, November 6, when stories on “foreign interference” and “election disinformation,” sourced to anonymous government officials, appear on the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post? (Remember, again, that for Democrats, election 2024 is existential.)

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, 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!

Transmission: Covid

“COVID Cases Are Rising Again. Here’s How to Stop It From Ruining Your Summer” [Self] (20 million readers, they say). When I see an article like this in a mainstream venue like Self, I feel like the tide is slowly turning in favor of sanity. The deck: “Two new variants are fueling an uptick in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.” “Uptick”? Minimizing, not so good. But where conventional public health _{MR SUBLIMINAL [groan]} practice is to treat only deaths and hospitalizations as the important metric, this article mentions infection (a critical metric in every previous pandemic). And the lead: “Four years into the pandemic—which, yes, is still very much a thing” (!!!). And: “Research suggests that repeat infections increase your chances of getting long COVID and could magnify the severity of your symptoms if you already have it.” And: “How you choose to stay safe during this mini-surge in coronavirus activity is generally a personal decision, given that the government scrapped all preventive measures and basically left public health up to the honor system” [ouch]. • Anyhow, I read the rest of the article, and I don’t think anybody could go very wrong with it. Ritual handwashing mention, but N95 mentioned (“in public places where you might encounter elderly people or more folks who have health conditions that weaken their immune system,” which means everywhere, right?).

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US fell by 6,000 from the prior week to 233,000 on the period ending June 22nd, below market expectations of 236,000. The claim count fell for a second consecutive week since hitting the 10-month high of 243,000, but remained well above the average from this year to underscore that while the US labor market remains at historically tight levels, it has softened from its post-pandemic [sic] resilience.”

Manufacturing: “United States Durable Goods Orders” [Trading Economics]. “New orders for manufactured durable goods in the United States rose by 0.1% month-over-month in May 2024, following a downwardly revised 0.2% increase in April and better than market forecasts of a 0.1% fall. It marked the fourth consecutive monthly advance in durable goods orders, albeit slowly.”

Manufacturing: “United States Kansas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Kansas City Fed’s Manufacturing Production index fell to -11 in June 2024 from -1 in the previous month, pointing to the fourth monthly contraction. The decline was primarily driven by paper, plastics, machinery, and transportation equipment manufacturing. All month-over-month indexes were negative and fell from last month, except supplier delivery time and the price indexes.”

GDP: “United States GDP Growth Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The US economy expanded an annualized 1.4% in Q1 2024, slightly higher than 1.3% in the second estimate, but continuing to point to the lowest growth since the contractions in the first half of 2022.”

Tech: “ID Verification Service for TikTok, Uber, X Exposed Driver Licenses” [404 Media]. “A company that verifies the identities of TikTok, Uber, and X users, sometimes by processing photographs of their faces and pictures of their drivers’ licenses, exposed a set of administrative credentials online for more than a year potentially allowing hackers to access that sensitive data, according to screenshots and data obtained by 404 Media. The company, called AU10TIX, offers what it describes on its website as ‘full-service identity verification solutions.’ This includes verifying peoples’ identity documents, conducting ‘liveness detection’ in a real-time video stream with the user, and performing age verification, where a service will predict how old someone is based on their uploaded photo. AU10TIX also includes the logos of other companies on its site, such as Fiverr, PayPal, Coinbase, LinkedIn, and Upwork, some of which confirmed to 404 Media they are active or former AU10TIX clients.” • But no retina or fingerprint data, so everything is good!

Tech: “Think the CDK outage is just about cars and dealerships? Think again” [CNN]. “If you aren’t in the market for a car or your family’s income isn’t tied to a car dealership, you might not be aware of crippling cyber attacks that have left nearly 15,000 dealerships across North America struggling to provide services to customers. Or if you are aware of it, you might think, ‘Well that sucks, but good thing I won’t be hurt by it.’ Not so fast…. Just like the strikes that upended many parts of the economy last summer, the longer the CDK outage goes on, the greater the impact it will have on the US economy. Yes, you read that right. The CDK incident isn’t an isolated event implicating only dealers and buyers. Last month there were $122 billion of transactions at car dealerships, according to Commerce Department estimates. That accounts for 17% of all retail sales in May. An outage lasting through June 30 would mean 10 days without dealership access to CDK. If sales slide even just 10% at the average dealership as a result, total auto retail sales could dip by around $4 billion for the month, according to estimates by Russell Price, chief economist at Ameriprise Financial, based on last month’s retail sales report. But in his view, the average dealership will probably experience a more drastic drop, closer to 40% for each day the outage drags on. If it ends up lasting 10 days, he estimates they’ll lose $16 billion in sales. That, he estimates, would depress total retail sales by 2.3%. Now here’s where it gets even more glaring: Retail sales aren’t just some minor part of the economy. They account for about a third of all consumer spending.”

Tech: “The Revenue Agency puts Google in its sights: alleged 1 billion tax evasion” [First Online]. Italian (and their own translation): “After the agreement signed in 2016, the Italian tax authorities once again put the spotlight on Google, challenging the Mountain View giant for alleged tax evasion worth one billion. The Revenue Agency puts it in the sights again Google. And this time the bill could be billions. She reveals it The Sun 24 hours, according to which the Italian tax authorities are challenging the Mountain View giant alleged tax evasion amounting to approximately 1 billion of Euro. The Milan Prosecutor’s Office is also investigating the matter.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 46 Neutral (previous close: 41 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 40 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 26 at 1:24:11 PM ET.

Class Warfare

What kind of party is “split” on working class issues?

News of the Wired

“A Spud Gunners’ Guide” [SpudGuns.org]. The deck: “The definitive potato cannon guide,” More: “Well it’s been a long time in coming however I’ve finally ported a great design for spudguns.org that I’ve had sitting on the back burner for a number of years. Took a bit of doing to code the design by hand in Notepad with all the nested tables originally, however with Dreamweaver it’s only taken a few hours, not weeks. My goal on this site is to be a on[e] stop shop to reference existing designs, math, ideas, everything related to potato guns.” • I have a vague memory I was thinking of building one of these things to fire at the woodchucks, but readers talked me out of it. So maybe not news you can use.

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 griffen:

Griffen writes: “Recent May hike excursion in North Carolina’s Dupont Forest. Pretty decent rainfall prior to going there.”

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals: