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.

Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, but Akhilleus found this new one that he says is easy to use.

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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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
Jun012012

The Commentariat -- June 2, 2012

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here. Guardian story here.

Digby has a terrific post in Mother Jones on the modern history of Jim Crow-type voter suppression and how the Democrats have been letting Republicans get away with it, even after the 2000 election travesty in which the Florida tally was a direct result of Jeb Bush's suppression of eligible Florida voters. ...

... Charles Blow covers the most of the same material, but it bears repeating. See also yesterday's News Ledes.

Daniel Gross of Yahoo! News found quite a bit of good and not-so-bad news in yesterday's economic numbers. ...

... Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The odds surely increased Friday that the Federal Reserve will ride again to the rescue of the faltering economic recovery, making borrowing a little cheaper for a little longer, as it has done repeatedly over the last four years."

** Fire Eric Holder. Joe Nocera: "... the Justice Department has ... taken after the smallest of small fry [in the national mortgage fraud debacle] -- and then trumpeted those prosecutions as proof of how tough it is on mortgage fraud. It is a shameful way for the government to act." The DOJ was willing to spends tens of millions prosecuting John Edwards for hiding his mistress, "Yet this same Justice Department isn't willing to use similar resources ... to go after the pervasive corporate wrongdoing that gave us the financial crisis and the Great Recession.... George W. Bush has turned out to be tougher on corporate crooks than Barack Obama." ...

... Sari Horwitz & Manuel Roig-Franzia of the Washington Post report on how the Obama Justice Department got on board the John Edwards case, an effort begun by George Holding, a Bush holdover prosecutor who is now running for Congress as a Republican. Includes video of three jurors speaking to Matt Lauer on yesterday's "Today Show."

Riding in Cars with Candidates. Gail Collins: "... somehow, the public realized that [John Edwards] who looked so good and sounded so glib was really a fraud. Even without knowing about the secret love child or the sleazy right-hand man, or the impressive ability to stare right into a TV camera and lie like a rug, they got his number and picked other people to run for president. Voters' gut instincts are generally pretty good. They certainly were with John Edwards. Which is, in a way, a happy ending to an awful story."

Dan Amira of New York magazine: "Good news. People eat other people on a pretty regular basis." See also today's News Ledes.

Presidential Race

The MSM are beginning to fact-check Willard:

     ... Jake Tapper of ABC News: "Yesterday in California, Mitt Romney stood in front of the failed Solyndra factory and said 'an independent inspector general looked at this investment and concluded that the administration had steered money to friends and family, to campaign contributors.' In a TV ad focused on Solyndra, the Romney campaign makes a similar claim, saying the 'Inspector General said that contracts were steered to friends and family.' This isn't true. [blah blah]... That isn't correct. [blah blah]... The charge is simply false." ...

     ... AP: "Mitt Romney ... didn't get the story completely straight when he accused the administration of favoring 'cronies.'" ...

... BUT. Media Matters: "Economic experts agree that spending cuts in a weak economy hurt the creation of jobs and economic growth. Though Republicans in Congress spent much of 2011 demanding spending cuts, the media are amplifying their attacks on President Obama's economic record."

... Ha Ha. Simon van Zuylen-Wood of The New Republic: even as Willard has been hammering Obama on Solyndra & green energy loans & promising to abolish the entire DOE loan program, "a surprising dissent can be found in Ohio Senator Rob Portman [R], often mentioned as a potential [Romney] running mate, who has sponsored a bill that would expand the program. And since he assumed office, in 2010, Portman has relentlessly badgered Energy Secretary Steven Chu to approve a guarantee four times larger than Solyndra's for a teetering Ohio nuclear facility. Can the GOP handle a potential veep who seems A-OK with such innovation-killing 'government overreach'?"

** Andrew Miga of the AP: "With a few strokes of his pen on a sleepy holiday six months after he became governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney quietly scuttled the state government's long-standing affirmative action policies.... When civil rights leaders, black lawmakers and other minority groups finally learned of Romney's move two months later, it sparked a public furor." CW: Read the whole story.

Julie Davis of Bloomberg News: "Romney ... doesn't intend to offer targeted relief for the 11.5 million American homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, [Romney's policy adviser] said, suggesting that such actions are temporary fixes insufficient to stabilize the housing market. 'Governor Romney has indicated that there are some steps we ought to take to ensure that we're growing our economy.... I do think we have to resist the temptation for short-term approaches.'" CW: Remember when Romney said, "Don't try and stop the foreclosure process"? He meant it.

It's Friday, so time for another installment of Steve Benen's epic WIP, Mitt's Mendacity, which is now in Vol. XX, & lists Willard's 18 Whoppers of the Week.

AND Mitt is still rich. His financial disclosure statements are here.

With Friends Like These.... Frankly, the Romney people did the only thing they could. They used their strengths -- which were money and the super PAC and a willingness to go after me very aggressively -- to offset my strength, which was an ability to define a larger, better future. It's not bad to say [Romney] has proven he will do what it takes to beat Obama. It's the nature of our current political culture that cynicism trumps idealism. -- Newt Gingrich, newly-minted Romney surrogate

With Friends Like These.... Rodney Hawkins of CBS News: "Former President Bill Clinton, seeking to contain the political damage from his earlier praise of Mitt Romney's 'sterling' business background, said on Friday that his remarks shouldn't be construed as an endorsement." CW: Clinton's remarks about Romney are, for me, just another of many reminders of what a lousy, right-wing president Clinton was. ...

... Tim Mak of Politico: "Mitt Romney on Friday thanked former president Bill Clinton for complimenting his work at Bain Capital, saying he was 'happy to see President Clinton … called my record superb.'" ...

... Karoli of Crooks & Liars has a good take on Clinton's sterling remark: "Once again, a surrogate steps all over the campaign message in order to praise ... Bain Capital? And not just any surrogate, either. Bill Clinton, who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall into law, which is ultimately responsible for the 2008 meltdown on Wall Street. That very same Bill Clinton."

** Steve Benen nails Congressional Republicans for causing the near-zero jobs growth: "As panic sets in after [Friday]'s brutal jobs report, take a moment to consider a hypothetical: what would the economy look like today if Congress had followed Obama's lead, responded to public-opinion polls, and passed the American Jobs Act? In 2012, do you think the nation could use those 1.3 million jobs or not?." CW: Obama kinda sorta said this yesterday & has done a slightly better job of it in his weekly address. But he needs to really lay it out -- then present a full-fledged program of what Congress should do instead of campaigning on this nitpicking Congressional "honey-do" list.

... Bernie Becker of The Hill: At a committee hearing, "A top House Democrat slammed Jeb Bush on Friday for criticizing President Obama's economic policies while not condemning those of his brother, former President George W. Bush. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, noted that hundreds of thousands of Americans were losing their jobs in the months before former President Bush left office in 2009, and said Bush's policies tipped the scales toward the wealthy and Wall Street."

Devin Dwyer of ABC News: President Obama told a group of Minnesota donors that he thinks Republicans will get more reasonable after the election since he won't be running for re-election & they'll start being cooperative. CW: He said this in the state that brought us Michele Bachmann.

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The Fox News producer behind a provocative four-minute anti-Obama video that aired Wednesday and caused the network considerable embarrassment has found his career on ice. The producer, Chris White, had been offered a job by CNN before the video was broadcast. But on Thursday, a CNN spokeswoman said that the network would not be hiring him." ...

... BUT. Here's a surprise. Alex Alvarez of Mediaite: "Chris White ... will remain at Fox News." He did something terrible for which he was "not authorized," but we're keeping him on anyway. See links in the May 31 Commentariat. ...

... John Hudson of the Atlantic, who must be dumb as a post, said the video below, produced by an outside entity and aired in February on Chris Matthews' show -- which is commentary, not news -- was just like Fox "News"'s "factual" hit job on President Obama. Anyway, the video is humorous:

... Meanwhile, a much smarter guy at the Atlantic -- Jim Fallows -- republishes John Sides' charts tracking positive & negative MSM coverage of Obama & Romney. "Main point: At no time in the past year has coverage of President Obama been as positive as that of Governor Romney. Indeed, at no time in the past year has it been on-balance positive at all."

Local News

President Clinton stumps for Barrett:

An outtake from Thursday's gubernatorial debate in Wisconsin. (I looked for video of the full debate yesterday and couldn't find it -- but the audio is here):

... Charles Pierce comments on the debate.

News Ledes

Boston Globe: "After building questions about the durability of her Senate candidacy, Elizabeth Warren displayed brute strength today by winning the endorsement of 96 percent of delegates to the state Democratic convention and blocking potential opponent Marisa DeFranco from the party's primary ballot. The win allows Warren to instead focus on Republican Senator Scott Brown in the general election."

Guardian: "The Queen has kicked off the first major event of her diamond jubilee weekend, driving on to Epsom racecourse before the Derby to be greeted by 130,000 enthusiastic racegoers. Fans in the stands gave the monarch and Duke of Edinburgh a huge cheer as they were driven down the course past the hospitality tents."

New York Times: "An Egyptian judge on Saturday sentenced former President Hosni Mubarak to life in prison for the killing of unarmed demonstrators during protests that ended his rule.... His interior minister, Habib el-Adly, was sentenced to life for the same reason, but the charges against other Interior Ministry officials were dismissed. The judge also dismissed the bribery charges against Mr. Mubarak and his sons, concluding that the statute of limitations had lapsed." ...

... Reuters: "Deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarakand other defendants standing trial with him must be retried with solid evidence, the Muslim Brotherhood said in a statement issued on Saturday by the campaign of its presidential candidate."

AP: "The U.N.'s top human rights official said Saturday that there should be no amnesty for serious crimes committed in Syria, even if the threat of prosecution might motivate members of the regime to cling to power at all costs."

AP: "Two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues were rescued in a pre-dawn raid Saturday after being held by militants for 11 days in a cave in northern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led military coalition said. The women -- Helen Johnston and Moragwe Oirere -- and the two Afghans were kidnapped on May 22 in Badakhshan province. The four work for Medair, a humanitarian non-governmental organization based near Lausanne, Switzerland."

AP: "The credibility of Trayvon Martin's shooter could be an issue at trial after a judge said that George Zimmerman and his wife lied to the court about their finances to obtain a bond, legal experts say. That's because the case hinges on jurors believing his account of what happened the night the 19-year-old was killed."

AP: "For more than 50 years, the New York Mets chased that elusive no-hitter. Johan Santana finally finished the job. Santana pitched the first no-hitter in team history, helped by an umpire's missed call and an outstanding catch in left field in an 8-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday night." New York Times story here. And a banner headline in the New York Daily News online edition, natch.

Weird "News." New York Daily News: "With fears of a possible 'Zombie Apocalypse' growing, the feds have been forced to deny that the undead are real. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made it clear in a statement that flesh-eating, undead creatures definitely don't exist. 'CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms),' CDC spokesman David Daigle wrote to the Huffington Post on Thursday."

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Reader Comments (2)

Here's something I learned about on the Maddow show last night: Montana has a 100 year old law called "The Corrupt Practices Act" that prohibits large campaign donations from corporations and there is a $17,000 limit on donations. When the Citizen United law came into effect Montana opted out and stuck to their own law. Now some right wing entity––can't remember their name––is suing Montana, claiming what they are doing is unconstitutional. Steve Bullock (D), the att. General who is running for governor, says that the Supremes might hear this case. He also said he thinks the court might be rethinking their Citizen U decision seeing what it has done to our system. Well, I say, wouldn't that be a kicker, but I ain't gonna bet my money on it. I also understand that 22 states are on Montana's side.

June 2, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

PD's post regarding the dissension of those curmudgeonly Montanans, when it comes to fealty to right-wing world rulings like Citizens (not so) United, opens many doors into the funhouse world of today's far, far, far, radical right-wing Supreme Court.

The Montana Supreme Court apparently has found an out for their state and their logic (for logic it is, as compared to the pablum stained majority opinion in Citizens United, an opinion that manipulator and dissembler in chief, John Roberts, joined but from which he maintained a bit of distance, the better to present a less pugnacious and disrespectful public face; disrespectful, of course, to the above mentioned logic and the concept of stare decisis) which turns a century of court precedence as well as common sense on their heads, and then takes a steel toed boot to both upended skulls.
I decided to go back and take a closer look at that opinion and here's something startling that jumped up and knocked my tea cup on the floor:

"No sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of...for-profit corporations".

In other words, it is the decided opinion of the conservative supremes that even if there is sufficient interest on the part of the government, even if there is a real and imminent danger to the public, even if a ruling like this creates a serious and possibly fatal threat to democracy in this country, it doesn't matter. Corporate "speech" trumps all other concerns.

This is the Supreme Court talking. The five little dwarfs on the court want us to seriously believe that corporations--even foreign corporations--must be allowed to sway elections and have their rights to do so protected even over the serious and SUFFICIENT concerns of governmental (and democratic) interest. So little Johnny Roberts ( I know Kennedy wrote this but this is clearly the work of little Johnny) is saying that it doesn't matter how good your reasons. You lose. Every time. Corporations win. Always.

But apparently Montana doesn't agree. Good for them. But here's where it gets interesting. Montana's logic for opting out is their very sensible belief that allowing corporations to get their slimy hands on the political process will destroy that process.

Their opinion indicates that they see the very serious problems here.

How does that logic not translate to the rest of the country?? Why does this only apply in Montana? When you think about the controlling theme of the court in Citizens, they stated (the five little dwarfs, that is) that they felt free to upend the FEC statutes because there was "...no compelling reason" to maintain them. Seriously? This is like saying that the coach on a Pop Warner football team which routinely plays other teams with 9 and 10 year old children is free to go out and recruit a couple of 6'8" 300 lb NFL linemen because, what the hell, there's no compelling reason not to allow it.

Montana clearly sees why this is not only not a good idea, but a dangerously stupid idea. I don't want to get all Linda Greenhouse or Jeffrey Toobin here, but it's already been pointed out by many observers that the dwarfs' solicitude concerning the inalienable free speech rights of corporations ignores that the many instances in which freedom of speech IS curtailed, and quite legally, so what is the urgent issue here?

Simple. Right-wing power. The desire to rule the kingdom. To supress all dissent from Right-wing ideology.

Finally, it's instructive to take note of how a real judge acts. The dissenting opinion among the Montana Supremes stated that he did not agree with the Citizens ruling. In fact, he found it dangerous and seriously misguided. BUT he did not feel there were good enough reasons--given the way the ruling was written by the five little dwarfs, for Montana to opt out. He felt that he, as a member of the judiciary simply had to act in a way that respected what he perceived as settled law.

No such judicial concerns trouble the dark dreams of the five little dwarfs and their corporate cronies.

Hopefully, former Justice Stevens, currently criss crossing the country laying into the dwarfs, will get people to realize that our democratic system can easily be controlled by foreign interests due to Roberts' pernicious plan. Sure, sure, there are "laws" dissallowing this but does anyone really doubt that, with enough money at stake, China or Iran or the Saudis or any other foreign entity could not get one or many US corporations with whom they do billions of dollars of business to do their bidding and do a Citizens United tango on the heads of candidates whose ideas don't sit well with their goals?
I'm sure we'll hear plenty from the usual suspects on the right screaming about Montana disobeying the dwarfs. This from the party that wants states to make all their own decisions in things like social issues, but when it comes to serious stuff, like money and real power, that's a whore of a different color.

June 2, 2012 | Unregistered Commenterakhilleus
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