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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Monday
Dec262011

The Commentariat -- December 27

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer: "If it’s Tuesday, it must be time for David Brooks to tell us that government doesn’t work and Americans are immoral." The NYTX front page is here. ...

... Dean Baker in the New York Times eXaminer on Brooks' complaint that our economy is no longer nearly as "vibrant" as it was a 100 years ago: "The fact that factories can produce large amounts of output with 100 workers is in fact evidence of economic vibrancy, not the opposite. This is called 'productivity growth.' It is the main measure of the economy’s ability to raise living standards through time. The fact that 100 people in a factory can produce the same output as 1000 people did 30 years ago means that we are potentially much richer than we were 30 years ago. We can have the other 900 people doing other productive work. Alternatively, we can all work many fewer hours."

Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "Largely insulated from the country’s economic downturn since 2008, members of Congress — many of them among the '1 percenters' denounced by Occupy Wall Street protesters — have gotten much richer even as most of the country has become much poorer in the last six years.... Congress ... has long been populated with the rich.... But rarely has the divide appeared so wide, or the public contrast so stark, between lawmakers and those they represent.... Members of Congress are getting richer compared not only with the average American worker, but also with other very rich Americans."

Ethan Bronner of the New York Times: "An Israeli television station reported last spring on numerous trips Benjamin Netanyahu had taken as an elected official to Paris, London and New York before becoming prime minister in 2009. Accompanied by his wife, he flew first class and stayed in baronial hotel suites.... The bills, displayed on screen, were paid for by wealthy friends.... But instead of accolades for its journalism, Channel 10 is now fighting for its life, and Mr. Netanyahu’s hostility toward it is being cast as part of a broader cultural and political war in Israel between the left and the right involving efforts to control the judiciary, the reporting of news and public discourse."

Right Wing World

Barbara Morrill of Daily Kos: "Last week, [Ron] Paul walked out during an interview with CNN's Gloria Borger after being asked about the newsletters, saying'"I didn’t write them, I disavow them, That’s it.' Uh huh." This week, the Huff Post found 1996 newspaper items like this: "He [Paul] said he has written 'thousands of items' during the past 20 years and that releasing these materials would be impractical." As Morrill writes, "Busted." ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: according to former Ron Paul staffer Eric Dondero, Paul loves teh gays; Dr. Paul is just petrified to use "gay toilets." He's a doctor! A medical doctor! ...

... Here's Dondero's full statement, which he released to Right Wing News. ...

... John Cole of Balloon Juice comments. ...

... Former Bush II speechwriter David Frum, in a long post for CNN: "The daffy old coot side of Ron Paul's personality is genuine enough. The crank side is certainly genuine, as are at least some of the racial views. Even after Paul abandoned the crude race-baiting of his 1990s newsletters, he continued to engage in elaborate apologetics for the Confederate side of the Civil War. Also genuine, however, is the huckster aspect of the Ron Paul persona." CW: the long knives are out. ...

... CW: Andrew Sullivan, who is wrong about almost everything except gay rights, un-endorses Ron Paul, but not strongly enough, IMHO.

Speaking of Liars. Alan Cole of CNN: "Newt Gingrich claims that it was his first wife, not Gingrich himself, who wanted their divorce in 1980, but court documents obtained by CNN appear to show otherwise.... 'It was (Jackie Gingrich) that requested the divorce, not Newt,' the [Gingrich] campaign website said.... After initially being told that the divorce documents were sealed, CNN on Thursday obtained the folder containing the filings in the divorce.... Newt Gingrich filed a divorce complaint on July 14, 1980, in Carroll County, [Georgia].... 'Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time,' her petition said." ...

NEW. Jonathan Karl of ABC News: Newt RomneyCare.

News Ledes

New York Times: "A senior Iranian official on Tuesday delivered a sharp threat in response to economic sanctions being readied by the United States, saying his country would retaliate against any crackdown by blocking all oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for transporting about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply."

Washington Post: "Sen. Ben Nelson, the Nebraska Democrat who built an image as a moderating influence on his party, announced Tuesday that he will not seek reelection in 2012, improving Republican chances of winning the seat and taking control of the Senate in 2013."

New York Times: "The Kremlin on Tuesday announced the reassignment of Vladislav Y. Surkov, the architect of the highly centralized political system that has come under waves of protest from middle-class Muscovites over the last month. Mr. Surkov, a former advertising prodigy, coined the term 'sovereign democracy' to describe his system, which preserved the electoral process but hollowed out institutions capable of challenging the Kremlin’s power."

Al Jazeera: "Israel has launched multiple airstrikes in the Gaza strip, killing a former fighter and wounding at least 10 others, according to Palestinian officials. The Israeli rocket hit a car parked next to a motorcycle belonging to the man. Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group, says he was a former member. Another airstrike hit a Hamas police vehicle and injured an officer and four others." ...

     ... Haaretz: "The Israel Air Force conducted a second strike of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, just hours after the Israeli army confirmed it targeted a terror operative in the coastal strip. A statement by the IDF Spokesman's Office said that the second strike targeted a global Jihad terror cell in the northern Strip that was planning to attack the western part of Israel's border with Egypt."

New York Times: "President Obama said Tuesday that he would nominate Jeremy C. Stein, a Harvard economist, and Jerome H. Powell, a former private equity executive, to fill the two vacant seats on the Federal Reserve’s board. The pairing of Professor Stein, a Democrat, and Mr. Powell, a Republican, is a carefully weighted gesture, a pragmatic attempt to satisfy Senate Republicans who have repeatedly refused to allow votes on nominees for regulatory positions."

New York Times: "The Syrian government pulled tanks from the streets of Homs on Tuesday as Arab League observers arrived in the besieged city to monitor pledges by the government to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from residential areas." Al Jazeera story here. ...

     ... Al Jazeera Update: "Syrian government forces have reportedly fired tear gas and live rounds at thousands of protesters in Homs, as Arab League monitors finished their first day of observation in the city that has been the centre of the anti-government protest movement." With video.

Reuters: "Retailer Sears Holdings Corp said it plans to close 100-120 Kmart and Sears Full-line stores and expects its adjusted fourth-quarter EBITDA to more than halve from a year ago. The company reported $933 million in adjusted fourth-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization last year." AP story (via NYT) here.

AP: "Britain's Prince Philip returned to the royal family's country estate Tuesday, after a spell in the hospital undergoing treatment for a blocked coronary artery." Guardian story here.

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