The Ledes

Friday, September 6, 2024

CNBC: “The U.S. economy created slightly fewer jobs than expected in August, reflecting a slowing labor market while also clearing the way for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates later this month. Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 142,000 during the month, down from 89,000 in July and below the 161,000 consensus forecast from Dow Jones, according to a report Friday from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

New York Times: “Colin Gray, the father of the 14-year-old accused of killing two teachers and two students at his Georgia high school, was arrested and charged on Thursday with second-degree murder in connection with the state’s deadliest school shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. In addition to two counts of second-degree murder, Mr. Gray, 54, was also charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, according to a statement. At a news conference on Thursday night, Chris Hosey, the G.B.I. director, said the charges were 'directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon.'” At 5:30 am ET, this is the pinned item in a liveblog. ~~~

     ~~~ CNN's report is here.

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The Ledes

Thursday, September 5, 2024

CNBC: “Private sector payrolls grew at the weakest pace in more than 3½ years in August, providing yet another sign of a deteriorating labor market, according to ADP. Companies hired just 99,000 workers for the month, less than the downwardly revised 111,000 in July and below the Dow Jones consensus forecast for 140,000. August was the weakest month for job growth since January 2021, according to data from the payrolls processing firm. 'The job market’s downward drift brought us to slower-than-normal hiring after two years of outsized growth,' ADP’s chief economist, Nela Richardson, said. The report corroborates multiple data points recently that show hiring has slowed considerably from its blistering pace following the Covid outbreak in early 2020.”

The New York Times' live updates of developments in the Georgia school massacre are here, a horrifying ritual which we experience here in the U.S. to kick off each new School Shooting Year. “A 14-year-old student opened fire at his Georgia high school on Wednesday, killing two students and two teachers before surrendering to school resource officers, according to the authorities, who said the suspect would be charged with murder.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I heard Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) speak during a press conference. Kemp is often glorified as one of the most moderate, reasonable GOP elected public officials. When asked a question I did not hear, Kemp responded, "Now is not the time to talk about politics." As you know, this is a statement that is part of the mass shooting ritual. It translates, "Our guns-for-all policy is so untenable that I dare not express it lest I be tarred and feathered -- or worse -- by grieving families." ~~~

~~~ Washington Post: “Police identified the suspect as Colt Gray, a student who attracted the attention of federal investigators more than a year ago, when they began receiving anonymous tips about someone threatening a school shooting. The FBI referred the reports to local authorities, whose investigations led them to interview Gray and his father. The father told police that he had hunting guns in the house, but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them. Gray denied making the online threats, the FBI said, but officials still alerted area schools about him.” ~~~ 

     ~~~ Marie: I heard on CNN that the reason authorities lost track of Colt was that his family moved counties, and the local authorities who first learned of the threats apparently did not share the information with law enforcement officials in Barrow County, where Wednesday's mass school shooting occurred. If you were a parent of a child who has so alarmed law enforcement that they came around to your house to question you and the child about his plans to massacre people, wouldn't you do something?: talk to him, get the kid professional counseling, remove guns and other lethal weapons from the house, etc.

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New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass.

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Friday
Sep102010

Constitution v. Common Sense

Charles Blow of the New York Times is concerned that "Too much of the debate [over Islam in America] seems to be centered around the sensitivities of terrorists a world away.... But...," he writes, "we are a country in which the construction of a building and the destruction of a book are rights extended to all, even if opposed by most."

Over & above the false equivalency Blow tries to establish between building a cultural center & destroying a holy text, the Constant Weader thinks he misses the underlying point of the discussion:

So what you're saying, I guess, is that the "debate" over the Rev. Cap'n. Crunch and his Koran-torching plans is all about the Constitution.

No, it isn't. Nobody is saying the Koran burning is unconstitutional. It is a common-sense issue. Over in Afghanistan, we're busy bombing innocent Muslims & pretending it's all just an accident & besides, we're doing it for their own goods. Burning their holy book is not just blowing them to bits; it's blowing their fundamental(ist) principles to bits. It's worse than saying, "Kaboom! Whoops, sorry, you're just collateral damage." It means, "Everything about you is abhorrent." The latter is, of course, what many Americans, including the Rev. Cap'n. Crunch, believe.

We all thought it was laughable when George W. Bush, after shooting & bombing his way across two countries, said, "They hate us for our freedom." But, as with many stupid remarks, there is a grain of truth in that one. (a) They hate us because while we exercise our own freedoms, we impinge upon their's. Big-time. (b) They don't "get" our freedoms. The majority of Muslims live in countries where there's no such thing as a bill of rights or freedom of expression. If you want to do something stupid, the government says you can't. If you think of doing something stupid & know the government will lock you up or kill you for it, you don't do it. So the idea that the U.S. government can stand by & allow an American to do something stupid means to most Muslims that the government is cool with the stupid thing. Otherwise, they'd stop it.

Add to that -- few fundamentalists are smart. Some, like the Osama bin Laden gang, are shrewd. But, like the Ever-so-Rev. Jones, they are not good at nuance & they don't get irony. If you think you can explain the concepts underlying the bill of rights to the Taliban, just try it out on a few American high-school dropouts first. See how far you get.

Now, it's true that most American Christians would not put a target on your head if you burned a Bible in front of their church. But some would. They would especially do so if you were a Muslim or a Jew.

Similarly, most Muslims would not put a target on your head if you burned a copy of the Koran. They might despise you, they might feel sorry for you because you were so stupid, but they would let it go. The Muslims who stand up & take notice of stunts like those of Terry Jones are (a) folks who aren't very smart, & (b) folks who are whipped into frenzies by men with political agendas. Consider them the Muslim world's version of the tea party, if you will. It is completely unfair to paint Muslims with a broad brushstroke. Saying, "Muslims believe..." is as unfair as saying, "Americans torched the Koran." No, a couple of nuts did (or planned to do) that.

As for our own vaunted tolerance of bookburning, it was not so long ago that Poppy Bush came out in favor of a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the burning of the American flag. Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who is no dope, has said he thought the Constitution already allowed a law against flag-burning. George Stephanopoulos questioned Barack Obama's patriotism because Obama didn't include a flag pin in his campaign uniform. (Why is it all right, I wonder, to burn a cross but not the flag?) We are not a tolerant nation. We take inanimate symbols way too seriously & read way too much into them. So if uneducated Muslims do the same, this Biblical rejoinder should suffice: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

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