2:00PM Water Cooler 11/5/2024 | naked capitalism

2:00PM Water Cooler 11/5/2024 | naked capitalism

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Patient readers, brunch was quite something today, so please forgive any solecisms or infelicities. –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, The Celery Fields, Sarasota, Florida, United States.

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In Case You Might Miss…

  1. Election 2024 roundup.
  2. Gram Parsons’ birthday.
  3. Welding.

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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

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2024

Results: D5H" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Handy map:

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Certainly Trump’s solid win in the popular vote is legitimizing, and makes the kind of spook manipulations I was concerned about far less likely, though the nature and role of the Intelligence Community as an extra-constitutional entity remains a question. (Sadly, CIA Democrat Elissa Slotkin may yet pull out a win.)

Trump’s popular vote win was also unexpected:

“Harris to concede Wednesday afternoon” [Associated Press]. “Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver a concession speech Wednesday at 4 p.m., her office announced. Harris will speak at Howard University, her alma mater in Washington, where her supporters watched returns Tuesday night before being sent home after midnight as President-elect Donald Trump pulled ahead in battleground state results.” • In the election Live Blog, I published a schedule of returns from the Harris campaign: “Thursday, 11/07 & Beyond: If results are very close in any state, the race still may not be called.” But events moved much, much faster!

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A compendium of reactions. –lambert

Class: Harris always did well in the Hamptons:

Shoutout to Ferguson and Storm:

Trump being an expert in sniffing out weakness. Turns out the Democrat weakness was class, as one would expect from a party whose base is the PMC.

Universal concrete material benefits:

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Missouri:

Counties: “Early Results Show a Red Shift Across the U.S.” [New York Times]: “Of the counties with nearly complete results, more than 90 percent shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election.”

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Kamala’s underperformance:

Data point (1):

Data point (2):

The Blob: I wonder how the “thirty five year national security expert” is feeling?

Our Democracy: Misery:

One party’s candidate was chosen in primaries; the other’s was selected by a small cabal. One party’s base hated its leadership, and used the primary mechanism to get rid of it. The other party did not. Which party is more democratic?

Democrat Leadership: The entire Democrat leadership ought to be purged, for starters:

Of course, that won’t happen, and the entire party has been made over in the image of the failed leaders (Exhibit A: AOC), so even if it did happen, it would make no differenece.

Identity Politics: “A historic realignment” –Trump

Abortion: “Reproductive Freedom” outran Kamala:

This suggests, perhaps counter-intuitively, that the Supreme Court in Dobbs, which left abortion up to the states will in fact maximize poltically feasible codification (assuming Trump keeps his promise not to push for a national ban. No doubt the Christianists will push for a national ban when Congress reconvenes, so we’ll see what happens. Personally, I think Trump would like the whole issue, and its zealots, to go away.

Our Famously Free Press:

The “dark” meme reappears:

Liberal Inability to Self-Reflect: “Would it not in that case be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?” — Bertolt Brecht

The sad thing is that even though Kolbert is at The New Yorker, I’ve enjoyed her writing on climate.

Schadendfreude: The Bidens (1): Ouch!

The Bidens (2): Biden’s counter-programming, whatever the cause, cannot have been helpful:

(“I want her to know it was me” is a Game of Thrones reference.)

Get the word “Lincoln” out of your mouths:

The fall of House Cheney:

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

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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!

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Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 57 Greed (previous close: 43 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 57 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 6 at 2:00:00 PM ET.

Musical Interlude

Gram Parsons’ birthday was the other day:

Book Nook

“Report finds ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children reading for pleasure” [nTk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Guardian]. In the UK: “Children’s reading enjoyment has fallen to its lowest level in almost two decades, with just one in three young people saying that they enjoy reading in their free time, according to a new survey. Only 34.6% of eight- to 18-year-olds surveyed by the National Literacy Trust (NLT) said that they enjoy reading in their spare time. This is the lowest level recorded by the charity since it began surveying children about their reading habits 19 years ago, representing an 8.8 percentage point drop since last year. It is also part of a broader downward trend since 2016, when almost two in three children said that they enjoyed reading.” • That’s a steep drop-off!

Gallery

What color!

Zeitgeist Watch

Finally!

News of the Wired

“Only 5.3% of welders in the US are women. After years as a writing professor, I became one − here’s what I learned” [zSV" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">The Conversation]. “Recognizing the good pay and job security, U.S. women have moved in greater numbers into skilled trades such as welding and fabrication within the past 10 years. From 2017 to 2022, the number of women in trades rose from about 241,000 to nearly 354,000. That’s an increase of about 47%. Even so, women still constitute just 5.3% of welders in the United States.” • Worth a read, particularly if you’re a woman thinking of entering the field.

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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 Milton:

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Milton writes: “Fall Colors around of Big Pine along Hwy 395 in the Eastern Sierra. This was taken as I took the turn off to the Bristlecone Pine forests.”

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