2:00PM Water Cooler 11/21/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Richard W. DeKorte Park, Bergen, New Jersey, United States. “I love how it’s ‘song’ includes sirens. The reason why became obvious as I listened to sirens coming from the Turnpike.”

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Gaetz: Exit, stage right.
2. Ortberg: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
3. How the Democrats abandoned the working class.

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

Trump Transition

“Gaetz withdraws as Trump’s pick for attorney general, averting confirmation battle in the Senate” [Associated Press]. “The Florida Republican’s announcement came one day after meeting with senators in an effort to win their support for his confirmation to lead the Justice Department. ‘While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,’ Gaetz said in a statement announcing his decision. ‘There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1.’ Trump, in a social media post, said: ‘I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!’” • Gracefully done — probably those Venmo transactions* did it — but I hate this play in the Democrat Playbook so much because it’s one more way for the Democrat Party — which has a (white) (male) workplace abuser as an honored and much-loved party elder — to avoid talking about policy (i.e. universal concrete material benefits (i.e. the working class)). And of course the moral preening is offensive. On the bright side, it looks like we won’t have a populist anti-truster at Justice (unless Trump does the unexpected). NOTE * One of the many advantages of our cash-free future!

“Republicans Must Defend Matt Gaetz To End The Use Of Salacious Lies As A Political Weapon” [The Federalist]. “The claims against Gaetz are but another information operation, however, mirroring the ones that previously targeted Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. And this pattern will continue unabated unless Americans unflinchingly condemn the tactic — no matter the target. We should have learned this lesson from Donald Trump’s first presidential run and time in office. From Crossfire Hurricane, to the pee-tape dossier, to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, unsupported and unbelievable accusations leaked to the public hampered Trump’s ability to advance his agenda. Time and again the charges proved unfounded, and yet in advance of the 2024 election, the lawfare continued. The country, however, had wised up by then and recognized the various criminal and civil charges leveled against Trump for what they were: an effort to interfere in the election. Why then is anyone giving credence to the accusations against Gaetz, especially given the FBI — after thoroughly investigating the matter for two years — decided not to charge Gaetz?” • Strange bedfellows, Lambert and The Federalist, though here we are. (My position, however, is that even salacious truths should be deweaponized (adult to adult, consensual being the standard. I’m sure Roger Stone would agree with me….).

“4 Trump administration picks have sexual misconduct allegations in their past” [CBS]. “Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Elon Musk are all in line to serve as top government leaders. All have faced varying degrees of sexual misconduct allegations. The president’s picks to carry out his agenda reflect an incoming administration hostile to the norms of the ‘Me Too’ movement.” Ah yes. #MeToo. Remember Time’s Up? Good times. Anyhow: “Behavior that might have gotten a person fired or canceled (or not nominated to a cabinet position) over the last several years, appears to be less problematic in the Trump 2.0 era. Machismo was often a centerpiece of Trump’s appeal to voters during the 2024 campaign. He regularly spoke about toughness — whether that trait applied to his immigration policy, combating illicit drug trade or surviving two assassination attempts. Wrestler Hulk Hogan delivered a primetime speech at the Republican National Convention, ripping off his shirt while lavishing praise on the nominee. And Trump also spent time on right-leaning podcasts with largely male audiences. His entreaties to male culture paid off in November.” • “Male culture.” Huh? Is that a thing now?

“Donald Trump gets a brutal reality check” [Politico]. “Donald Trump is not a monarch. That’s the unmistakable lesson of the ill-fated nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Rather than showcasing Trump’s absolute power over his GOP allies, it revealed his limits. The doomed nomination lasted just eight days — and its failure is an unwelcome lesson for the president-elect, who has been projecting invincibility and claiming a historic mandate despite his reed-thin popular vote victory. Though Republicans will control both chambers of Congress, the resistance from Senate Republicans to Gaetz’s nomination proved that there are still some checks on Trump — no matter how limited — that can hold, despite fear on the left that he will squeeze Congress into submission, get carte blanche from the conservative-dominated Supreme Court and enact his agenda at will. ‘I think it shows that Donald Trump cannot get anything [that is, everything] he wants,’ said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law. But Chemerinsky and others cautioned against extrapolating too much from the Gaetz debacle — he was so uniquely despised and compromised by legal and political scandal. ‘But the facts here are so egregious, and Gaetz so unqualified, that I would be cautious in generalizing too much from it.’” • By “unqualified” we mean “populist,” of course…

* * *

“Trump taps Russ Vought, one of the authors of Project 2025, to lead budget office again” [CBS]. “President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Russ Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, according to two sources close to the transition. If confirmed, this will be Vought’s second time in the role. He served as OMB director during Trump’s first term, too. Earlier in the Trump administration, Vought was deputy OMB director and acting director. Before he joined the first Trump White House Vought was vice president of Heritage Action for America, which leads a grassroots effort to implement conservative policies across the U.S. It produces a conservative scorecard that grades members of Congress on their votes on conservative bills. Vought wrote a chapter of The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint — his chapter covers the ‘Executive Office of the President.’ The OMB director’s office develops the president’s proposed budget, and it’s responsible for executing the president’s agenda across the federal government.”

“Dr. Oz” [Daring Fireball]. “I met Dr. Oz ten years ago. It was after the Apple event on Tuesday, 9 September 2014, at the Flint Center in Cupertino…. I had a one-on-one off-the-record briefing with Jony Ive…. While I was waiting for my briefing with Ive, the only other person from the media waiting with me was Oz. It’s a weird thing to be alone, effectively, with someone of Oz’s celebrity. It’s like being in a room with a million dollars in $100 bills stacked in a perfectly-arranged pyramid. No matter how you to try to direct your attention, your mind keeps popping back to Holy shit, there’s a million dollars in cash right there. His hair was perfect…. We spent an unceasingly awkward 10 minutes…. He never shut up. He chattered, nonstop, with inane observations, like ‘Hey, look at that one, it’s orange! What’s that one, leather?” He was not talking to me, nor was he, really, talking to himself. It was like he was talking to a TV camera, as though we were being filmed for B-roll footage for his show — but there was no camera. It was just me and him, standing around that table exhibiting dozens of Apple Watch prototypes that we were unable to touch…. I came away with the impression that Mehmet Oz was, despite his well-deserved medical renown, preternaturally vapid and preening, and, thus, to me, an incongruous figure. Simultaneously a brilliant mind in the field of thoracic surgery, and yet dumb as a rock in everyday human interaction. I spent the first few minutes with him wondering if I should introduce myself. I spent the last few glad I hadn’t, because he was so obviously a staggeringly uninteresting and uninterested man.” • Not the only one….

* * *

“Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government” [Wall Street Journal]. “Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections. This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem.” Highlights from MSN: “According to Musk and Ramaswamy, . ‘We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws,’ they wrote, describing the US Constitution as their ‘North Star.’” Hilariously, they steal a liberal Democrat trope (which I’ve always hated because it doesn’t mean anything). More: “One of their first initiatives involves identifying regulations that Trump could nullify immediately through executive action. These, they argued, would free businesses and individuals from the constraints of ‘illicit regulations’ and stimulate the economy. ‘When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat,’ they noted. Acknowledging the likelihood of political and legal pushback, Musk and Ramaswamy expressed confidence in their mandate. ‘With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government,’ they declared. The authors set an ambitious deadline of July 4, 2026, to finalise their reforms, framing their mission as a transformative effort to restore governance to its constitutional roots. ‘We expect to prevail,’ they concluded, signalling their readiness to confront entrenched interests in Washington.” • I’d like it if DOGE would unleash Lina Khan and the NLRB, and stop protecting the crypto bros, but none of that seems likely to happen.

“Could Trump actually get rid of the Department of Education?” [Vox]. “Even without literally shutting the doors to the federal agency, there could be ways a Trump administration could hollow the DOE and do significant damage, Valant and Kettl said. The administration could require the agency to cut the roles of agency employees, particularly those who ideologically disagree with the administration. It could also appoint officials with limited (or no) education expertise, hampering the department’s day-to-day work. Trump officials could also attempt changes to the department’s higher education practices. The department is one of several state and nongovernmental institutions involved in college accreditation, for example — and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) has threatened to weaponize the accreditation process against universities he believes to be too ‘woke.’ Finally, Trump could use the department’s leadership role to affect policy indirectly: ‘There’s power that comes from just communicating to states what you would like to see’ being taught in schools, Valant said. ‘And there are a lot of state leaders around the country who seem ready to follow that lead.’ Trump’s plans for the department will likely become clearer during [Linda] McMahon’s confirmation hearings. She has been an advocate for the school choice movement, and posted praise for the hands-on education gained through apprenticeships shortly before her nomination was made public.”

2024 Post Mortem

Deploy the Blame Cannons!

“The Time-Honored Tradition of Blaming the Left for Democratic Defeats” [Kate Aronoff, The New Republic]. “In the lead-up to this election, Harris and other leading Democrats decried Trump and MAGA Republicans as an existential threat to American democracy; now, newly elected House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has pledged to find “common ground” with them. That waffling and incoherence is less of a comms issue than a structural one. . Even if Democrats did have more institutional integrity, they would still find it challenging to simultaneously be a party of big business and organized labor, as they’ve long aspired to be. They would still struggle to turn out Arab voters in key swing states while sending Israel weapons to bomb their families in the Middle East. More often than not, these constituencies’ interests are fundamentally opposed to one another; no amount of smart messaging, or berating voters, can fully solve that. On some level, then, Jentleson is right to point to coalition management as a problem for the Democrats. But the solution isn’t to box out left-leaning constituency groups and leave politics up to supposedly more sober-minded pollsters and consultants, who have an obvious material interest in this argument. Debates over Democratic Party messaging obscure a thornier, more substantive one over who it is that party ought to represent.” The PMC, as it does now. Next question: “Campaigning on economic populism to appeal to the voters feeling the pain of high rents and insurance rates would piss off big donors in the finance and real estate sectors; actually enacting that agenda would require electoral majorities big enough to withstand the wrath of the country’s most powerful industries, which might be difficult to attain without those big donors. There’s no easy way out of this bind.” • Commentary:

At a post-election DSCC briefing with winning Dem candidates.

Elissa Slotkin: “I personally think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo.” Dems should take language “not from the faculty lounge, but the assembly line.”

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) November 19, 2024

Slotkin is a CIA Democrat, and this is in fact how a spook would think. You want to win the moustache vote? Put on a fake moustache (and take it off when your tour of duty is done).

“On the Democratic Party’s Cult of Powerlessness” [Matt Stoller, BIG]. “Anti-monopoly policy is immensely popular, and there hasn’t been an administration as aggressive on antitrust in our lifetimes as there was under Joe Biden. Yet, voters soundly rejected his successor, Kamala Harris, and thrashed the party in power. And while anti-monopoly politics sits uneasily in the Democratic Party, that is where it sits. Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra and Jonathan Kanter will be out of power soon. So what happened? And why did Democrats lose so badly? I don’t think the answer is simple, nor is it right to characterize the problem as solely one involving the Democratic Party. In 2006, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024, voters have voted against the incumbent party. If you look at the recriminations among Democrats, they reveal, unwittingly, a broad theme that I’ve noticed with roots that go back to the middle of the 20th century. And while these observations are focused on Democrats, people on the right will recognize in their institutions a similar set of challenges…. [A]s I watch the angry back and forth, and more broadly the institutional actors who were rejected by voters, I find a curious dynamic that explains far more than any tactical mistake. .” I would argue that’s because the PMC, as a class, functions and has the strength to govern, but not to rule. And with respect to the ruling class, the governing class is helpless, especially with the Gini co-efficient where it is. More: “the Democratic Party in 2024, with its associated law firms, think tanks, elected officials, donors, and media outlets, was rejected by voters precisely because the core value on the left, center, and right is about embracing powerlessness. This pervasive belief has an intellectual and political origin, and it conflicts directly with the anti-monopoly framework.” • “To govern is to choose” (apparently Pierre Mendès France said this). I’m not sure I agree that the choice to do nothing is the same as “powerlessness,” as Stoller would have it. That said, it is true that I among others need to give an account of why the Biden Administration allowed Khan to, in Stoller’s framing, reject powerlessness as she did. (My theory was that all the big cases had a long way to run, and when settlement time came, Biden would step in, cut a deal, and cash in. Looks like that’s not happening with the Google case, though.)

“Harris is Democrats’ preferred choice for 2028: Poll” [The Hill]. • That’s only because the leadership hasn’t told them yet who their “preferred choice” should be.

The #Resistance

“Trump’s Cabinet Blitz Is Straight From Orban’s Playbook” (interview) [Kim Lane Scheppele, Bloomberg (VerifyFirst)]. Scheppele bio. On resistance:

If you’re civil society in the US, or the Democratic Party, how do you put the brakes on this rush to authoritarianism?

[SCHEPPELE:] The first thing you have to do is call it out. You can’t accept any of it as normal. You have to object every single time. It’s tedious and it’s time-consuming and it’s nerve-wracking. But you have to call it out. The second thing is to realize that just because something is legal doesn’t make it right. And you have to start thinking that way. I’m a long-time legalist who always thought that you follow the law because it’s the law and because it is the right thing to do. But if the law is written by people who are trying to conquer you, who are trying to take away your freedom, then are you really as obligated to follow that law? I’m certainly not advocating violence, but you need a different attitude toward this kind of instrumental legality that they use to lock themselves in power. At the very least you resist. And then you try to use whatever democratic means you have left to change it.

Are there extra-legal ways to address it?

[SCHEPPELE:] We still have federalism. I’ve been reading about blue-state attorneys general getting together, the way the red-state attorneys general have already done, to think about how to resist these attacks, to beef up state governments to provide a face of resistance, to shore up the civil sector with private donations or whatever. It’s going to require a lot of mobilization.

You can’t just mobilize for an election cycle and then demobilize. In Poland, once the autocratic takeover occurred, masses of people went to the streets every time there was a new law. And they were much more successful than the Hungarians. Here in the US, all the groups that worked together in the last election can’t stand down. They need to stand up for the mass pushback that’s required to prevent autocracy from being imposed in the United States.

Let me pause here to quote Scheppele on Maidan: “So fast forward to 2014, there’s a kind of revolution. Many people may remember the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians that showed up in Maidan Square in Kiev, and basically toppled the corrupt Russian-backed government.” Naive at best (though to be fair to Scheppele, a reasonable search turned up a lot of academic connections, but nothing explicitly spook-related, like an Atlantic Council fellowship or something). In any case, all this sounds very color-revolution-ish (a state capacity I speculated on here). And from the same interview, here is Scheppele on NGOs, since NGOs have played, and are playing, such a large role in Color Revolutions worldwide:

The phrase “Defund the Left” has been around for quite some time in right-wing US circles. As the GOP grows overtly authoritarian, there are lots of institutions whose funding they can attack.

[SCHEPPELE:] That’s right. And that’s probably how it would happen if they’re copying Orban. The way Orban did it, there were lots of things that were state-funded, and he defunded everything that wasn’t supportive of him. There are a lot of places where that’s going to be true in the US. I’m sitting here in a university, and universities, even private universities, get huge amounts of funding from the federal government — through research grants, Pell Grants for students. Imagine if the Trump administration says, ‘If we catch you caving in to ‘woke gender’ anything, you will lose all your federal funding.’

I was thinking of foundations also because they’re a conduit of funds to various types of NGOs, including those doing pro-democracy work in the US.

[SCHEPPELE:] There are so many ways in which the tax code, complex as it is, creates incentives and disincentives for different kinds of activities…. . Suppose that they just pass a law that says if you are a 501c-3, you may not have a 501c-4. They can make technical changes to the tax code and suddenly make certain kinds of activities non-viable.

FWIW, I think defunding “woke” academics would be good clean fun and a vote-getter, but if you want to go for political power, you uncover the publicly funded NGOs that the Biden Administration has been using to “place” migrants in places like Springfield, OH, given that this entirely sub rosa effort has the potential to affect the composition of the electorate for years to come (presumbly still implementing Tiexiera’s “coalition of the ascendant,” even though Tiexiera himself was repudiated his own theory). All this said, I insist that the same class of people who are paid to think about and incite color revolutions abroad are thinking about the same topics here at home; you can’t put Trump and Orban in the same box and not think that way.

Spook Country

“The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone” [The New Yorker]. “In September, the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) signed a two-million-dollar contract with Paragon, an Israeli firm whose spyware product Graphite focusses on breaching encrypted-messaging applications such as Telegram and Signal. Wired first reported that the technology was acquired by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—an agency within D.H.S. that will soon be involved in executing the Trump Administration’s promises of mass deportations and crackdowns on border crossings. A source at Paragon told me that the deal followed a vetting process, during which the company was able to demonstrate that it had robust tools to prevent other countries that purchase its spyware from hacking Americans—but that wouldn’t limit the U.S. government’s ability to target its own citizens.” And the Israelis would never lie to us! More: “The technology is part of a booming multibillion-dollar market for intrusive phone-hacking software that is making government surveillance increasingly cheap and accessible. In recent years, a number of Western democracies have been roiled by controversies in which spyware has been used, apparently by defense and intelligence agencies, to target opposition politicians, journalists, and apolitical civilians caught up in Orwellian surveillance dragnets. Now Donald Trump and incoming members of his Administration will decide whether to curtail or expand the U.S. government’s use of this kind of technology.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The Democrats’ Long Goodbye to the Working Class” [Michael Baharaeen, The Liberal Patriot]. Worth reading in full, but here are some highlights: “[B]y the 1990s, the country was growing more diverse and better educated. Bill Clinton was a beneficiary of this new reality, as he made sweeping gains with women, young people, voters of color (especially Hispanics), and college-educated voters. Importantly, he also retained significant support from white Americans and lower-educated voters, who made up the vast majority of the electorate. As Clinton rode this coalition to victory twice—marking the first time since FDR that a Democrat had won two full terms as president—some political observers, including my colleague, Ruy Teixeira, saw the emergence of a new majority, one that could consistently win elections using the formula Clinton had used…. Obama’s two wins confirmed for many Democrats and Republicans the validity of the ’emerging Democratic majority’ thesis. Gone were the days when Democrats needed to win a majority of white voters, a feat they had found nearly impossible to achieve since the 1960s. Now, the party that represented America’s demographic future stood to lead it as well.” But: “The Obama coalition is not a coalition, but rather a moment,” Is “The Obama Coalition” Even a Thing? Was It Ever? (2016). And indeed: “But no sooner had that consensus come into focus than Donald Trump arrived on the scene. Trump disrupted the Democrats’ plans for building a dominant coalition and, in the process, helped precipitate a dramatic realignment between the two parties—one rooted in economic and social class. This change has tipped the demographic advantage in favor of Republicans and left Democrats at very real risk of losing many of the voters who not long ago were expected to deliver them an enduring majority.” And here we are: “. Harris retained higher levels of support among college-educated voters, winning them by 14 points. But perhaps just as telling: she carried high-income earners (those earning at least $100,000) by seven points—by far the largest margin for a Democratic nominee in the modern era. On the other side, Trump became the first Republican nominee on record to win low-income voters, narrowly carrying them by three points. He also continued growing his advantage with non-college voters, winning them by 13 points—the largest margin for the GOP since at least 1988. And his 44 percent support from union households marked the greatest share for a Republican since Ronald Reagan. Looking at this picture, it’s hard not to see that the Democrats are becoming the very thing they have long fought against: the party of the elites. This stands in sharp contrast to their longtime image as the champions of the working class.” • Not “are becoming,” “have become,” especially if you substitute “PMC” for “elites,” which, after all, could include billionaires. And the Democrats certainly didn’t “fight” very hard! In fact, you could argue that the transformation was fully in place by 2008, given Obama’s disparate response in the financial crisis to the banksters and the working class, even if the PMC only achieved class consciousness in 2016-2020.

“Trump’s dictatorship is a fait accompli” [John Q, Crooked Timber]. Handy flowchart:

With Gaetz flaming out, I’d say we’re on the way to “Governs Constitutionally” (granted, for some definition of “Constitutionally”).

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 (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, 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!

Elite Maleficence

“Grief can be ‘really overwhelming’ for teenagers and young people” [BBC]. • As of April 2024, there were 230,000 deaths from Covid in the UK. I was 100% certain Covid wouldn’t be mentioned in this article, and sure enough, it wasn’t.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

LEGEND

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

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

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Good news!

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* still popular. XEC has entered the chat. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) Down.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Actually improved; it’s now one of the few charts to show the entire course of the pandemic to the present day.

[7] (Walgreens) Down.

[8] (Cleveland) Down.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Now XEC.

[11] Deaths low, positivity down.

[12] Deaths low, ED down.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

Manufacturing: “Boeing CEO to Employees: We Can’t Afford Another Mistake” [Wall Street Journal]. “The company, Ortberg said, is burning through billions of dollars and can’t tap investors for another rescue. The company recently sold $24 billion worth of new shares to bolster its cash reserves. Some research and development spending could be delayed, the CEO said. He said Boeing won’t turn cash-flow positive until it ramps up 737 production to the 38-per-month target it initially aimed to hit by the end of 2023. And he said the company simply lacks the money to launch a new plane program but it doesn’t imminently need one.” No, but it needs development to start imminently. More: “Ortberg also told employees that he spoke with President-elect Donald Trump recently and that the two discussed the impact of potential tariffs on Boeing, one of the country’s biggest exporters. The Boeing chief warned employees that any trade war with China would weigh on the company, given that Boeing sells jets to Chinese airlines while the U.S. doesn’t import any aircraft from the country.” And: “‘,’ he said. ‘Let’s focus on the task at hand.’” • The beatings will continue until morale improves. Also, doesn’t one stand around a water cooler, not “sit at” one? Anyhow, if I were a Boeing machinist, I don’t know if I’d “bitch” about “people.” I might share my considered views about Boeing management and union management combining their efforts to eliminate defined benefit pensions forever.

Manufacturing: “Boeing CEO Calls on Employees to Take Ownership of Turnaround” [Bloomberg]. “Ortberg bluntly told employees during a companywide address on Wednesday that they control the company’s destiny, according to people familiar with the matter. The CEO, who took the helm a little more than 100 days ago, said it’s up to all workers to turn the company around, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The comments mark Ortberg’s most impassioned plea yet to rally workers behind his turnaround plan since he took over as CEO in August.” • “Take ownership” seems to be a fanciful invention by a Bloomberg editor, since Ortberg is not quoted to that effect in the text. Anyhow, if workers “taking ownership” of Boeing was the goal, they would at least have a seat on the Board, no?

Manufacturing: “Boeing’s CEO tells staff to stop ‘bitching by the water cooler’ and focus on beating Airbus” [Fortune]. “In an all-hands meeting this week, Ortberg gave his staff some brutal feedback, telling them to cut back on complaining and focus on beating competitor Airbus. ‘Don’t sit at the water cooler and bitch about people,’ Ortberg told his colleagues, according to a meeting recording obtained by the Wall Street Journal. ‘Let’s focus on the task at hand.’ ‘We spend more time arguing amongst ourselves than thinking about how we’re going to beat Airbus. Everybody is tired of the drumbeat of what’s wrong with Boeing. ,’ he said.” • It may be this was all well-received on the shop floor; presumably there will be reporting to come on that (oddly, as of this writing, there’s nothing from Dominic Gates at the Seattle Times on this story). But to me… Ortberg? A snowflake? Suck it up, buttercup!

Manufacturing: “FAA administrator plans to meet with Boeing CEO in Seattle” [Reuters]. “AA Administrator Michael Whitaker said on Thursday he plans to soon visit Boeing’s (BA.N), opens new tab Seattle offices to meet with CEO Kelly Ortberg as the planemaker resumes 737 MAX production. Earlier this month, the Federal Aviation Administration said it would boost its oversight of Boeing as the planemaker prepares to resume production of its 737 MAX jets following a 53-day strike that ended two weeks ago. ‘We are working closely with Boeing to make sure the safety management system is driving their actions during’ the restart of production, Whitaker said, who spoke to Ortberg earlier this month on the production plan. Boeing did not immediately comment. The FAA noted that it maintained its enhanced on-site presence at Boeing factories throughout the strike ‘and will further strengthen and target our oversight as the company begins its return-to-work plan.’” • While Boeing’s cash flow depends on ramping up production…

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 58 Greed (previous close: 50 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 58 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 21 at 1:21:24 PM ET.

Gallery

“The color purple is unlike all others, in a physical sense” [ZME Science]. “But there is one color we can see that isn’t quite like the rest. This color, purple, is known as a non-spectral color. Unlike all its peers it doesn’t correspond to a single type of electromagnetic radiation, and must always be born out of a mix of two others… If you look at orange, which is a combination of yellow and red, you can see that its wavelength is roughly the average of those of its constituent colors. It works with pretty much every color combination, such as blue-yellow (for green) or red-green (for more orange). Now, the real kicker with purple, which we know we can get by mixing in red with blue, is that by averaging the wavelengths of its two parent colors, you’d get something in the green-yellow transition area. Which is a decidedly not-purple color. That’s all nice and good, but why are we able to perceive purple, then? Well, the short of it is “because brain”. Although purple isn’t a spectral color in the makeup of light, it is a color that can exist naturally and in the visible spectrum, so our brains evolved the ability to perceive it; that’s the ‘why’.” • Other non-spectral colors? Black, white, grey. And metallic colors!

News of the Wired

Globalization and typography:

“Archaeologists discover 12,000-year-old pebbles that could provide new insights about the wheel” [FOX]. “12,000-year-old perforated stones found over years of excavations in Israel may “represent early evidence for the adoption of spinning with the ‘spindle and whorl’ device,” according to newly published research in PLOS ONE…. ‘In a cumulative evolutionary trend, they manifest early phases of the development of rotational technologies by laying the mechanical principle of the wheel and axle,’ the researcher wrote in their study. “All in all, it reflects on the technological innovations that played an important part in the Neolithization processes of the Southern Levant.’” • It would indeed be interesting if the chariot wheel began as the spindle….

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 converger:

Converger writes: “This afternoon in the South African section of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum.”

Kind readers, the stock of plant pictures is still not quite there… .

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