2:00PM Water Cooler 11/15/2024 | bare capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Chook Track of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Edith G. Learn Wildlife Sanctuary, Westchester, New York, United States. “Wonderful repertoire of different species’ songs woven into this music.”

In Case You Would possibly Miss…

1. New Covid charts: No dangerous information.
2. Adolph Reed makes one other name.
3. Blame Cannons: The Democrat’s “leftward” flip.
4. Boeing places a finance man on the board, layoffs.

Politics

“So most of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in actual fact a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Trump Transition

“Trump’s ‘Epic’ Deregulation Should Protect Monetary Stability” [Editorial Board, Bloomberg]. The deck: “The president-elect and Elon Musk need to blow up the federal rule guide. Good luck, however please train some warning.” Extra: “An enormous discount in regulation would certainly be welcome. Sadly, it’s a sophisticated job that requires prudence, diligence and sustained consideration to element, virtues that weren’t in proof throughout Trump’s earlier stint in workplace. The place the monetary system is anxious, deregulation could also be particularly fraught. Final time round, Trump scaled again a number of main guidelines adopted after the worldwide monetary disaster, an effort that will have contributed to final 12 months’s spate of financial institution failures. Weakening necessities additional, with out due discretion, may create unnecessary threat. Whoever finally ends up main this mission, they need to preserve 4 ideas in thoughts. First, banks have to be sturdy sufficient to climate turmoil…. Subsequent, give attention to transparency and accountability. Disclosures needs to be clear and fraud needs to be punished. … Third, dimension shouldn’t be in itself the enemy. Permitting mergers between monetary corporations doesn’t robotically scale back competitors and might in actual fact enhance it.” lol. Extra: “Lastly, regulation that defies widespread sense breeds cynicism. As one instance amongst many, the Securities and Alternate Fee routinely extracts fines from monetary corporations for permitting their staff to converse on nonofficial channels, a follow that’s all however unavoidable within the cellular communications period.” • Sure, what may presumably fallacious with monetary professionals conversing on secret channels…. However, a warning shot for Trump

“Trump says Dimon gained’t be a part of administration” [The Hill]. • Dang. Although I suppose it may at all times be worse!

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“Girl testified to Home Ethics Committee that Gaetz had intercourse together with her when she was 17: Sources” [ABC]. “The lady who was on the middle of a yearslong Justice Division investigation into intercourse trafficking allegations surrounding Rep. Matt Gaetz testified to the Home Ethics Committee that the now-former Florida congressman had intercourse together with her when she was 17 years previous, sources accustomed to the investigation advised ABC Information….. ‘Your correspondence of September 4 asks whether or not I’ve engaged in sexual exercise with any particular person beneath 18. The reply to this query is unequivocally NO. You’ll be able to apply this response to each model of this query, in each discussion board,’ Gaetz mentioned in a press release posted to his social media account. ‘The Committee’s star witness, Joel Greenberg, is a felonious liar who entails others in his lies … Greenberg was initially indicted for trying to falsely smear a trainer at a neighborhood highschool as a pedophile,’ Gaetz added relating to former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, who pleaded responsible to falsely accusing a trainer, who was working for workplace in opposition to him, of a intercourse crime. The lady’s allegation relating to Gaetz grew to become a part of the investigation following claims by Greenberg, a former good friend of Gaetz…” • Poor selection of associates. That mentioned, I’m so, so uninterested in Democrats ginning up intercourse scandals after they haven’t any ethical standing to take action. Revered and witty Democrat Barney Frank’s boyfriend ran a brothel out of the Home they shared on Capitol Hill. Revered Democrat elder Invoice Clinton was, on the very least, responsible of office abuse (and by no means apologized to her personally). Biden has a “skeevy” penchant for sniffing ladies’s hair, and saved swimming nude in entrance of feminine Secret Service brokers after they protested. Then there’s Democrat First Gentleman Doug Emhoff. The Democrats are the get together of grundyism, if Mrs. Grundy have been, herself, a madame. Can’t we give it a relaxation?

“Trump’s Protection Secretary Choose Pete Hegseth Stated to Face Earlier Sexual Misconduct Allegation” [Vanity Fair]. “Donald Trump’s transition group scrambled Thursday after Trump’s incoming chief of workers Susie Wiles was introduced with an allegation that former Fox & Associates cohost Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be Protection Secretary, had engaged in sexual misconduct. In line with two sources, Wiles was briefed Wednesday night time about an allegation that Hegseth had acted inappropriately with a girl. One of many sources mentioned the alleged incident passed off in Monterey, California in 2017. In line with the transition supply, the allegation is severe sufficient that Wiles and Trump’s legal professionals spoke to Hegseth about it on Thursday. A supply with information of the assembly mentioned that Hegseth mentioned the allegation stemmed from a consensual encounter and characterised the episode as he-said, she-said. On Thursday night, Hegseth’s lawyer Timothy Parlatore mentioned: “This allegation was already investigated by the Monterey police division they usually discovered no proof for it.” • Genocide, no problemo. Pandemic? What pandemic? However “allegations” of “sexual misconduct”? Oh my goodness!

“Trump’s group skips FBI background checks for some Cupboard picks” [CNN]. “President-elect Donald Trump’s transition group is bypassing conventional FBI background checks for not less than a few of his Cupboard picks whereas utilizing non-public corporations to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, individuals near the transition planning say. Trump and his allies imagine the FBI system is gradual and plagued with points that might stymie the president-elect’s plan to shortly start the work of implementing his agenda, individuals briefed on the plans mentioned. Critics say the intrusive background checks typically flip up embarrassing info used to inflict political harm. The discussions come as Trump has floated a number of controversial selections for high-level positions within the US authorities – together with Matt Gaetz for legal professional basic and Tulsi Gabbard for director of nationwide intelligence. Finally, the president has the ultimate authority on who he nominates and decides to share intelligence with, whatever the established protocol set within the wake of World Battle II to ensure these choices don’t have unknown overseas ties or different points that might increase nationwide safety issues. However circumventing background checks can be bucking a long-established norm in Washington. It additionally displays Trump’s deep distrust of the nationwide safety institution, which he derides because the Deep State. Sources say he has privately questioned the necessity for regulation enforcement background checks.” • I don’t perceive this. Certainly the organs of state safety are fully apolitical?

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“The Left ought to welcome Matt Gaetz as legal professional basic” [Unherd]. “His document speaks for itself. From his perch on the Home Judiciary Committee, Gaetz has promoted a surprisingly consumer-friendly agenda, routinely breaking together with his GOP colleagues on essential votes. He beforehand supported legislative measures to interrupt up Silicon Valley monopolies, sharply regulate the net knowledge dealer trade, ban noncompete employment contracts, and an finish to the follow of compelled arbitration, amongst different company accountability votes. He has additionally taken maverick positions on lowering FBI surveillance powers, reducing sure arms provides to Saudi Arabia and legalising marijuana. As well as, Gaetz has staked a place at instances to the Left of some institution Democrats. Within the combat over the Ending Platform Monopolies Act — a invoice designed to curb anticompetitive practices by Amazon and Google — Gaetz ended up supporting the laws, whereas California Democrats near the tech trade, comparable to Zoe Lofgren and Eric Swalwell, voted in opposition to it. In an period of extreme political polarisation, the Florida consultant has discovered alternatives to assist actions of the Biden administration. In August, Gaetz wrote a letter to Alphabet chief govt Sundar Pichai, urging him to “adhere absolutely” to the antitrust ruling in opposition to the corporate secured by the present Division of Justice.” • I imagine the meme “Khanservatives” originated with Gaetz.

“Matt Gaetz, Trump’s uniquely unqualified choose for legal professional basic, defined” [Vox]. “As New York Instances columnist Ezra Klein writes, Trump’s resolution to appoint Gaetz needs to be learn as an effort to gauge whether or not Republican senators will allow him to take absurd and harmful actions. “These aren’t simply appointments,” Klein writes of Gaetz and Protection Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, ‘They’re loyalty assessments. The absurdity is the purpose.’” • However see above on anti-trust, which works unmentioned at Vox, the avatar of “clear-eyed journalism,” as they are saying themselves.

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“Trump Is About to Face the Selection That Dooms Many Presidencies” [Oren Cass, New York Times]. “[Trump] is an iconoclastic chief with a uniquely unfiltered relationship to the American individuals and a disdain for the chattering class of consultants. He’s additionally the primary president since Grover Cleveland to get a second shot at a primary time period…. Within the early hours of Wednesday morning, he made a promise to “each citizen” that he would “combat for you, for your loved ones and your future” and that “this can actually be the golden age of America.” Attaining that may require specializing in the challenges and respecting the values broadly shared by not solely his voters, but in addition many others who would possibly come to assist him…. Deal with making it simpler to take a position in cryptocurrency or on offering non-college pathways to constructing a good life? Deal with no matter harebrained scheme Robert Kennedy Jr. or Vivek Ramaswamy would possibly point out over lunch or on making a extra beneficiant profit for working households elevating children, as JD Vance and others have proposed? Any president finds himself surrounded by advisers pushing their private and ideological agendas. There’s a purpose most lose sight of what issues to the individuals outdoors that bubble. However Mr. Trump has constructed his political profession on taking the highway much less traveled. Returning to workplace, he has a final finest first probability to get it proper.”

2024 Submit Mortem

Deploy the Blame Cannons!

“Trump broke the Democrats’ thermostat” [John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times]. “[T]he knowledge reveals Democrats taking a pointy flip leftward on social points over the previous decade. This has distanced them from the median voter, simply as Wright’s cartoon depicted. We see this not solely in Democratic voters’ self-reported ideology, however of their views on points together with immigration and whether or not or not minorities want further assist to reach society. Notably, .” I believe the chart reveals the change started in 2008, and accelerated in 2015. Extra: “This implies that Trump’s election radicalised the left, not the correct. Some counter that that is merely what progressive politics is, however the proof suggests in any other case. America’s decades-long progress in the direction of racial and sexual tolerance and equality has been a gradual shift, led by progressives with the centre and proper shortly following. The pivots of the previous decade, against this, have been abrupt and are leaving the bulk behind. They’re higher characterised not as strikes in the direction of larger tolerance and equality however as shifts in rhetoric or proposed options for addressing disparities, the place there’s loads of room for disagreement with out bigotry. Many of those pivots originated with the activists and non-profit staffers that encompass the Democratic get together. In a useful piece of analysis carried out in 2021, political scientists Alexander Furnas and Timothy LaPira on the think-tank Knowledge for Progress discovered that these “political elites” or tastemakers maintain views typically properly to the left of the common voter — and even the common Democratic voter — on cultural points.” • Helpful chart:

One purpose the 2020 Sanders marketing campaign messaging modified to idpol. (In fact, “leftward,” as is common in mainstream discourse, is a misnomer:; identification politics is simply one other taste of liberalism. Leftism means placing the working class first; no severe Democrat believes in that, although after all lip service is sometimes paid.

“A Triumph for Trump’s Republicans” [Peggy Noonan]. “It’s price being moved that in our large, restive, cynical and craving nation we peacefully, and with full public acceptance of the end result, made a dramatic nationwide judgment this week. Nearly each grownup citizen took half and took it severely. All collectively they produced one thing we would have liked: a transparent final result, one delivered with out fees of large-scale chicanery and even small-scale as far as we all know. There shall be a peaceable switch of energy. Lots of people needed to do a number of issues proper to make this occur.” Enable me to notice that I (paraphrasing) at all times certified “the Democrats can’t enable Trump to take workplace” with “in the event that they imagine what they are saying” (about “fascism”, “our democracy”, and so on. As occurs so typically, irrespective of how laborious I attempt, I’m by no means cynical sufficient; that Kamala’s 2024 Democrats can be as cynical about deploying “fascism” as Obama’s 2008 “Democrats”… .Properly, doggone it. Again to Nooners, who concludes: “I like what Liz Cheney tweeted Wednesday: ‘Our nation’s democratic system functioned final night time and we’ve a brand new President-elect. All People are certain, whether or not we like the end result or not, to just accept the outcomes.’ We even have a duty as members of ‘the best nation on earth’ to ‘assist and defend our Structure, protect the rule of regulation, and be sure that our establishments maintain over these coming 4 years.’ She singled out the courts, the press, ‘and people serving in our federal, state and native governments’ to be ‘the guardrails of democracy.’” • That “guardrails” metaphor reveals lazy considering and lazy writing (the metaphor presumes we’re on the correct highway, there’s gasoline within the tank, there’s gasoline on the subsequent gasoline station, versus feral mobs with torches, and so on.). I’m stunned to seek out it in Nooners’ peroration. Yet one more signal of civilizational collapse; Nooners creates clichés for different individuals; she doesn’t retail them.

“Going Ahead from the Fringe of the Abyss” [Adolph Reed, Nonsite]. Should-read. “Trump has no new coalition; he can’t as a result of these “teams” aren’t actual as teams, and other people determine with them largely round skinny identities extra like shopper style “communities” or partisan followers of sports activities groups. (Recall that some individuals received cues for what they need to imagine or the right way to line up on present concern positions from watching Archie Bunker.) That’s why a lot of this politics reduces to “you say potAYto; I say potAHto.” This isn’t to say that the reified classes couldn’t turn into constituencies on the identical precept because the Heisenberg impact; a part of the fantastic thing about interest-group politics is that tossing some sources round will produce constituencies—or not less than individuals who declare to talk for them. And it’s not simply the correct; that’s additionally how the Democrats have been reinventing each 4 years beneath differing labels that magical constituency of “cheap” upper-status, suburban, reasonable Republican (white) ladies, which hasn’t materialized in thirty years or extra, or their happy-face model of Passing of the Nice Race within the simple-minded competition that altering racial demographics would offer one more approach to win with out confronting capitalism’s contradictions. Certainly, setting up these taxonomies of identification configurations and reifying them into our bodies of shared political pursuits is, sarcastically inside a so self-consciously and performatively antiracist ‘left,’ quintessentially racist. In fact, these gained’t be the takeaways.” No, they gained’t. Crucially: “We’ve to withstand the actual fact—lastly—that each one we are able to anticipate from Dem success is kicking the can of confrontation with fascism down the highway for 4 years. However for that method to make sense somebody, and solely the labor-left can lead it or possibly even do it, has to spend one other 4 years between elections organizing an actual constituency for a special approach of speaking and desirous about and doing politics. To place it bluntly, we gained’t be capable of withstand the fascist juggernaut with out working to construct an precise widespread constituency for a special, brazenly working-class-based politics. I’m not alone in noting that Trump/ism shouldn’t be an anomaly; it’s now the purpose of the lance of what’s clearly a fascist worldwide…. [W]e could also be dealing with the equal of a T-intersection at which there are solely two doable, completely reverse instructions to take.” • If Reed is prepared to make the decision… Properly, I’m gonna have to look at my priors by returning to Paxton; as readers know, Reed has a wonderful observe document, having known as his shot on Obama in 1996. It could be so just like the Democrats to so pollute the discourse on fascism that no one may take it severely (and positively I veer in that path, as a result of I course of a lot of their output). My speedy response is that folks needs to be considering of that basic strike on Might Day, 2028, and never the following Presidential cycle, not to mention the midterms…..

“Ought to the Democratic Occasion be listening to John Fetterman? [Politico]. “What did you make of Harris’ resolution to name Trump a fascist? [FETTERMAN:] II love individuals which are completely going to vote for Trump. They’re not fascists. They’re not these issues. I believe if you happen to go to , use these sorts of phrases, then it’s sort of laborious to stroll again on these issues. That’s sort of a phrase that basically isn’t a part of the vernacular for voters. Scolding tougher or clutching the pearls tougher, that’s by no means going to work for Democrats.” • It’s like the whole lot with Democrats is “the tickle change”….

“The Democrats’ problematic angle towards voters of coloration hits a wall” [MSNBC], “Trump’s victory is shattering a standard slogan and guideline in Democratic circles that ‘demographics is future.’ There has lengthy been a perception within the get together that Democrats have been destined to carry a long-term majority within the nation because the nation grew to become extra numerous. That perception was predicated on the concept that the get together gained ethnic minorities as a result of it introduced itself because the multicultural and socially inclusive get together, and since it handled minorities as curiosity teams to cater to based mostly on priorities particular to their ethnicity. That perception has at all times been problematic, and now it’s collapsing. Trump’s playbook has thrown a grenade into the Democratic worldview, and the fallout among the many left hasn’t been fairly.” dAs I preserve saying, “demographics is future” has nothing to do with “the left” (besides insofar because it was designed to destroy it). And: ‘However many liberals neglect that these teams are by no means a monolith, and their members additionally produce other identities that form how they view the world, together with class [dread word], gender, age and the numerous subcultures they select to affiliate with. ” • It’s not likely helpful to consider class as an idenity, or not less than not an identification first. One doesn’t, in any case, “determine as” a wage employee. One is a wage employee.

Manufacturing: “Boeing appoints former Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley as new board member” [Reuters]. “Boeing board has elected former Vanguard Group CEO Tim Buckley as its latest member, efficient Jan. 1, the U.S. planemaker mentioned on Friday. Buckley, 55, shall be Boeing’s tenth director since 2019, the corporate mentioned, including that he’ll serve on the board’s Finance and Governance & Public Coverage committees. Previous to changing into Vanguard’s CEO, Buckley held a number of roles throughout his over three-decade profession on the high U.S. asset supervisor, together with chief funding officer and chief info officer.” • A finance man? Actually?

Information of the Wired

“Virality in cartography: What makes a map go viral?” [GeoAwecome]. “Whereas researching viral cartography, Penn State geographer Anthony Robinson discovered that the above map had spawned a sequence of copycat maps, a lot of which additionally went viral. These included each the intense (what ‘if solely individuals of coloration voted’) and the foolish (‘If solely goats voted’). Robinson discovered greater than 500 such distinctive maps on the web. And within the context of our battle with faux information, it is a very harmful factor. When a map conveys extra validity than it deserves, it turns into very straightforward to manufacture the reality; everyone knows how convincing auto-generated movies known as ‘deep fakes’ appear. As Robinson says, ‘It’s cool that anyone could make a map now. They will take election knowledge and do one thing artistic with it, and it may be very useful. Nevertheless it’s additionally straightforward to make one thing that appears prefer it’s authoritative and use it as a weapon.’” • Some would urge that maps are at all times used as weapons; the unique Crimson/Blue distinction was amplified by a map (I don’t assume we had an idea of virality again then). Anyhow, right here is the “above” map: