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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The Commentariat -- January 2, 2016

Patricia Cohen of the New York Times: "A new study on long-term unemployment from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that the prospects for women over 50 darkened after the Great Recession. In 2006-7, before the downturn hit, less than a quarter of the unemployed in this group had been out of work for more than six months. By 2012-13, older jobless women accounted for half of the long-term unemployed."

** Robin Lindley of the History News Network interviews historian Christian Appy on how American exceptionalism drives foreign policy, and not in a good way. republished in Salon.

Michael Massing, in the New York Review of Books, on how the press should cover so-called philanthropy. "The tax write-offs for such contributions, however, mean that this giving is subsidized by US taxpayers. Every year, an estimated $40 billion is diverted from the public treasury through charitable donations. That makes accountability for them all the more pressing. So does the fact that many of today’s philanthropists are more activist than those in the past.... Rather than simply write checks for existing institutions, these “philanthrocapitalists,” as they are often called, aggressively seek to shape their operations." ...

... AND Bill Gates has a book blog. "As publishers have become more aware of Mr. Gates’s reviews ... they have tried to figure out how to get their new books in front of him." CW: So while Bill is spending your money messing with education or whatever, you might want to read a few of the books he recommeds.

Presidential Race

Gail Collins' New Year's quiz focusses on the presidential race.

Anne Gearan of the Washington Post: "Hillary Clinton's campaign announced Friday that it raised $55 million in the final fund-raising period of 2015, and $112 million for the year. Clinton brought in $37 million in money specifically for use in the primary, the most for any non-incumbent in a non-election year, the campaign said, and $18 million for the general election." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Making Al Qaeda Great Again. Tom Liddy of ABC News: "The militant group Al-Shabaab -- Al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia -- has released a recruitment video featuring ... Donald Trump. The more-than 51-minute propaganda video comes on the heels of a war of words between Trump and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton over her suggestion that the real estate mogul's controversial remarks about Muslims would be used to recruit jihadis. The video includes a clip of Trump calling for a 'shutdown' of Muslims entering the United States." ...

... Jessica Glenza of the Guardian: "... towards the end of the Rose Parade [in Pasadena, California,] ... skywriters captured public attention with messages reading 'America is great. Trump is disgusting' and 'Iowans dump Trump', dotted through a cloudless sky.”

If we awaken and energize the body of Christ -- if Christians and people of faith come out and vote our values -- we will win and we will turn the country around. -- Ted Cruz, to volunteers on a conference call Tuesday

... Steve M.: "... back in the fall, [Ben] Carson seemed to be the evangelical favorite.... But Ted Cruz and his preacher father, Rafael, out-Carsoned Carson.... Carson is fading now because he's no match for Cruz. Cruz, with his father's help, has done the best job this year of weaponizing Christianity." ...

... CW: This "body of Christ" stuff is just creepy & totally inappropriate for a political candidate to utter. A public official is supposed to serve all of the people, & that is not possible for a candidate who invokes Christianist messages as part of his campaign. When Ted uses Jesus an an instrument to "turn this country around," he means to turn it around to a Christianist nation. It's sickening. 

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "... aides to [Jeb] Bush and important allies described a long-shot plan to pull off what seems all but impossible: winning the Republican nomination for president. The plan has six elements."

Beyond the Beltway

Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times: "Porter Ranch[, Calofornia,] lies closer to the gas field with the nearest homes about a mile from a well that began leaking Oct. 23. Fumes are pouring into the community, and thousands of residents have been relocated to temporary housing. Emergency crews have returned, but the work is slow. Southern California Gas Co. estimates that crews won't plug the leak at the Aliso Canyon Underground Storage Facility until at least late February, possibly until late March.... Neither the cause nor the exact location of the leak has been identified.... "

David Montgomery of the New York Times: "On a chilly, overcast day, more than 100 Texans gathered [on the south steps of the Texas state capitol building] carrying an array of holstered weaponry — Glocks, Smith & Wessons and more — to mark a change in the law that lets them openly display the fact that they are armed. The practice had been banned in Texas since 1871. Similar demonstrations were held in several other Texas cities."

Responsible Gun Ownership, Ctd. AP: "A man shot and killed his wife and two others in his home in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve before his son wrestled the gun away and fatally shot him in a chain of events apparently set off by a dispute over a washing machine." ...

Responsible Gun Ownership, Ctd. Eric Dolan of the Raw Story: "A 20-year-old University of North Texas student crashed into an electrical pole in Denton early Friday morning after being shot in the head in an apparent road rage incident."

AP: "The death of a man whose plane clipped one building before smashing into another in the heart of downtown Anchorage was a suicide, a spokeswoman for his family said on Friday." The pilot, who was a member of the Civil Air Patrol, flew a CAP plane in the unauthorized flight.

Way Beyond

Carlotta Gall of the New York Times: "Many of the extremist groups [in North Africa] are affiliates of Al Qaeda, which has had roots in North Africa since the 1990s. With the recent introduction of Islamic State franchises, the jihadist push has been marked by increasing, sometimes heated, competition. But, analysts and military officials say, there is also deepening collaboration among groups using modern communications and a sophisticated system of roving trainers to share military tactics, media strategies and ways of transferring money." CW: And now we know these horrible people have a new recruiter -- Donald Trump.

Ben Hubbard of the New York Times: "Saudi Arabia executed 47 people convicted of terrorism-related offenses on Saturday, including suspected members of Al Qaeda and a prominent cleric and government critic from the country’s Shiite minority. The executions ... followed a year in which at least 157 people were put to death, the most in two decades in the conservative Muslim kingdom."

Simon Denyer of the Washington Post: "Chinese President Xi Jinping has carried out the most far-reaching anti-corruption campaign in Communist Party history — and, at the same time, the harshest crackdown on free speech in decades. Now he is tightening the screws further, outlawing internal dissent within the party through new disciplinary rules that have led to the firings of an academic, a newspaper editor and a senior police officer for 'improper discussion' of government policy.... To his critics, the move carries disturbing echoes of the dark days of Mao Zedong. Xi, they say, has surrounded himself with sycophants who can deliver only good news. He is undermining the ideas of collective leadership and 'intraparty democracy' that the Communist Party had adopted — and trumpeted — after Mao’s death, and replacing them with a return to one-man rule."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (7)

Sky-Writing Above Rose Parade = "Trump Is Disgusting"

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/trump-disgusting-rose-parade-217282

January 2, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterOphelia M.

@Ophelia M.: This might interest you.

Marie

January 2, 2016 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

The guys went to a movie yesterday, so I was left to do some binge surfing. A few days late but the Comediennes in Cars....with Seinfeld and Obama was priceless. It was so worth it to hear Obama reply to a question from Seinfeld about being tired of some of his counterparts. Obama said yeah, sometimes after they leave, he just has to say that was really dumb and annoying. The President, per usual has a great sense of humor and is thoroughly self deprecating. (The series is pretty funny.)

I also looked through the year in photos from the WH. Pretty clear that Obama really likes kids. No fake plastered on smile for the baby shots. He gets right on the floor with them.

January 2, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterDiane

OMGoodness!

Thank you (understatement), Marie.
Have only time to speedily skim before heading out . . .
But I will deeply *inhale* the content - lovely photo of Brodsky & Baryshnikov - once I've returned & can give this gem its proper due.

This was/is so very thoughtful of you.
Ophelia

January 2, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterOphelia M.

Dexter Filkins does a superb piece of journalism in his New Yorker piece on Jeb and the Everglade problem in Florida. We not only get into the weeds of the environmental protection angle, but we learn something about how Jeb is seen by others who have worked with him.

"Nathaniel Reed, an Assistant Secretary of the Interior in the Nixon Administration, a friend of President George H.W. Bush, and a prominent Florida environmental activist, told me, "Jeb wouldn't listen to anyone. He's the most thin- skinned son of a bitch I've seen. If you criticize him, he never forgets it."

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/swamped-the-political-scene-dexter-filkins

January 2, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

Ran across this year's-end gold mine.

January 2, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterWhyte Owen

http://news.yahoo.com/scalia-dismisses-concept-religious-neutrality-speech-202953789.html. Scalia: providing impetuous to rebut religious blather for 30 years and counting. He's a typification that old men are the root cause of the world's problems and that the term "homo sapiens" is a misnomer.

January 2, 2016 | Unregistered CommenterCitizen625
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