REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- July 18, 2013

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.

The Wires

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.'”

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Jul182013

The Commentariat -- July 18, 2013

James Risen of the New York Times: "The Obama administration faced a growing Congressional backlash against the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance operations on Wednesday, as lawmakers from both parties called for the vast collection of private data on millions of Americans to be scaled back. During a sometimes contentious hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans and Democrats told administration officials that they believed the government had exceeded the surveillance authorities granted by Congress, and warned that they were unlikely to be reauthorized in the future." ...

... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The National Security Agency revealed to an angry congressional panel on Wednesday that its analysis of phone records and online behavior goes exponentially beyond what it had previously disclosed. John C Inglis, the deputy director of the surveillance agency, told a member of the House judiciary committee that NSA analysts can perform 'a second or third hop query' through its collections of telephone data and internet records in order to find connections to terrorist organizations. 'Hops' refers to a technical term indicating connections between people. A three-hop query means that the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but from everyone that suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people communicated with." ...

... Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "Millions of Americans are having their movements tracked through automated scanning of their car license plates, with the records held often indefinitely in vast government and private databases. A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union has found an alarming proliferation of databases across the US storing details of Americans' locations. The technology is not confined to government agencies -- private companies are also getting in on the act, with one firm National Vehicle Location Service holding more than 800m records of scanned license plates."

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), will be just one of several witnesses at a Thursday hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, but he will likely command the spotlight. That's because over the past few weeks, George has come under increased scrutiny for his report on the IRS' screening of groups applying for tax-exempt status."

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post: "The 112th Congress got less done than any Congress in more than six decades."

Laura Kellman of the AP: "The House Republican sponsor of the Voting Rights Act updates said Wednesday that Congress must pass a new anti-discrimination law before the 2014 elections that restores the federal supervision the Supreme Court struck down in June. 'The Supreme Court said it's an obligation of Congress to do this. That's a command of a separate but co-equal branch of government to do that,' Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told reporters Wednesday after urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to get moving on the issue." CW: I don't foresee any problems with getting it done. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? ...

... Adam Serwer of NBC News: "Shortly after the Supreme Court gutted a key part of the Voting Rights Act, Republican Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona told Politico that the best way to handle the ruling was to keep a low profile.... But keeping a low profile may be difficult for Franks, who chairs the subcommittee tasked with crafting the new voting legislation. In a 2010 interview, Franks claimed that African-Americans were better off under slavery than today because more black children are aborted now than in that era.... Franks also has a history of opposition to the Voting Rights Act, in 2006 he was one of 33 Republicans who voted against reauthorization the act -- which passed Congress overwhelmingly and was signed by President George W. Bush."

Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are readying a flurry of bills in response to George Zimmerman's acquittal on charges in last year's fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. The lawmakers are drafting proposals intended to rein in racial profiling; scrap state stand-your-ground laws; and promote better training for the nation's neighborhood watch volunteers, among other anti-violence measures."

In the courtroom, it's called profiling. In the real world, it's called common sense. -- Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Kathleen Parker ...

... Hamilton Nolan of Gawker: "One might imagine that after everyone in America who is not a white supremacist slammed Richard Cohen's blatantly bigoted racial profiling apologia yesterday, the WaPo's op-ed editors might think twice before publishing yet another inane and bigoted racial profiling apologia by a clueless white columnist today. Not so! Today, blonde upper middle class white woman Kathleen Parker steps up to once again justify the shooting of an innocent black teenager -- while couching this justification, of course, in the language of sympathy and realism." ...

... CW: in the minds of Kathleen Parker & George Zimmerman, black = suspicious. AND Parker, Pulitzer Prize-winner & all, gives you permission -- nay, urges you to use your common sense & -- to regard every black teenager as suspicious. The Washington Post, which does business in a majority-black city, thinks it's fine to publish this crap, day after day.

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Defying a veto threat from President Obama, the House on Wednesday passed bills delaying two crucial parts of his health care overhaul that require most Americans to have insurance and many employers to offer it." ...

... Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post explains why health insurance rates for individuals living in New York state will likely plummet under ObamaCare. ...

... Paul Krugman: "... unless the GOP finds even more ways to sabotage [ObamaCare], this thing is going to work, it's going to be extremely popular, and it's going to wreak havoc with conservative ideology."

Tom Edsall of the New York Times: even Republicans realize the Republican party is no longer a mainstream party.

Congressional Race

Gail Collins: "'Over the last several years, citizens across our great state have urged me to consider running for the Senate,' Liz Cheney said.... But a couple of problems with that statement. One is that Cheney only moved to Wyoming last fall, so people were apparently begging her to represent them while she was there on vacation."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The military judge in the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning is expected to decide Thursday whether to drop a charge accusing Private Manning of 'aiding the enemy' that could put him in prison for life. Civil liberties advocates said the judge's decision could set a precedent for whistle-blowers who leak information that gets posted on the Internet."

Washington Post: "A judge in the city of Kirov Thursday found Russia's most effective anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader guilty of stealing about half a million dollars from a timber company, and then sent shock waves throughout the country by sentencing him to five years in prison. Alexei Navalny, a 37-year-old with a penchant for exposes and cutting jibes, has said since before his trial began in April that he expected to be convicted on what he and his legions of supporters contend are trumped-up charges."

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That three-hop query sounds a lot like six degrees of Kevin Bacon to me.

July 18, 2013 |

James Singer

The Congressional Black Caucus may try to roll back the insidious effects of "stand your ground" laws but they'll be going up against the NRA money machine and its slavish legislative aides (any elected official who takes their money).

Why?

Because the NRA isn't simply content that everyone in America own deadly weapons, they want to ensure that those weapons get used. And if they're used to shoot undesirables who may not support them, or who don't fit the conservative idea of who is an American, all the better.

July 18, 2013 |

Akhilleus

Does anyone else find it hilarious that famous paranoid reactionary and notable trampler of civil rights (as in the guy most responsible for the execrable Patriot Act), James Sensenbrenner, (R-WI), is shocked, shocked! at the activities of the NSA?

I don't seem to recall the same outrage when a Republican president was spying on Americans. And before anyone jumps up and down about it, I also realize that he would say that his version of spying on Americans was to detect potential terrorist plots.

But this brings us to the "didn't think it all the way through" chapter. If you posit that there is a need to spy on people to detect terrorism, isn't the next logical step (or at least one logical step) to spy on everyone? Because how do you know when and where someone will decide to blow up the finish line at a marathon or detonate a federal office building? Once you open the door on that type of surveillance there will always be those who want to take it to the next level, then the next, and so forth.

So Senator, thanks for all that. Whine all you want but you one of the prime movers in the NSA surveillance you're crying about.

July 18, 2013 |

Akhilleus

@Akhilleus: As in the Eagles' song: "Take it to the limit one more time."

Re: Varus: Augustus allegedly banged his head agaist the wall and shouted "Quintili Vare, legiones redde!“ ('Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!')
Not much chance since Varus was dead.

July 18, 2013 |

Barbarossa

Barbarossa,

Tacitus writes about the battle, briefly, in his Annals (for anyone contemplating picking up Latin, reading Tacitus will be one of the greater pleasures). Interestingly he makes a point of describing Varus' loss of his eagle and standards (symbols of the power of Rome) as one of the more egregious moments in the battle. In contrast to striking his colors, which would indicate that he had control of things until deciding to surrender (not something any Roman commander would consider, in any event), Varus simply lost his eagle and was overrun.

Of course Tacitus also talks about heads being nailed to trees, if I recall correctly, but what's a good war story without a little gore?

And I'm not unhappy about Augustus banging his head against something hard. Despite all the hagiography surrounding him he was a son of a bitch.

July 18, 2013 |

Akhilleus

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