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Friday, October 4, 2024

CNBC: “The U.S. economy added far more jobs than expected in September, pointing to a vital employment picture as the unemployment rate edged lower, the Labor Department reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls surged by 254,000 for the month, up from a revised 159,000 in August and better than the 150,000 Dow Jones consensus forecast. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, down 0.1 percentage point.”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

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. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

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.”

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The Commentariat -- Feb. 10, 2013

My column in the New York Times eXaminer incorporates some Reality Chex contributors' comments on the Citadel, a planned survivalist community.

John Bresnahan of Politico: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says the tens of billions of dollars of spending cuts under sequestration that kicks in on March 1 can be avoided through eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies. 'The fact is we've had plenty of spending cuts, $1.6 trillion in the Budget Control Act. What we need is growth,' Pelosi said in an interview on 'Fox News Sunday.' Slashing spending indiscriminately, she said, would hurt growth prospects for the U.S. economy. 'It is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem,' [she] asserted."

Aveva Shen of Think Progress: "On ABC's This Week Sunday morning, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) called out Tom Cole (R-OK) for his claim that President Obama is responsible for the automatic budget cuts set to go into effect if Congress cannot reach a budget deal by March. The so-called 'sequester' includes steep defense cuts intended to motivate Republicans who refused to agree to any deal that included a tax increase in 2011":

ABC News: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) "is threatening to hold up Senate confirmation of President Barack Obama's nominees to lead the Defense Department and the CIA until the White House provides more answers about the deadly Sept. 11 attack against a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya."

John Bresnahan: "Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said on Sunday embattled Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) should keep his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee despite an investigation into his dealings with a top donor."

Michael Shear & Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "President Obama on Tuesday will seek to move beyond the politics of the moment to define a second-term agenda built around restoring economic prosperity to the middle class, using his State of the Union address to unveil initiatives in education, infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing."

The Disappeareds, American-Style. David Cole of the Nation, in a Washington Post op-ed: "... when it comes to the particular legal issue raised in a recently leaked 'white paper' from the Justice Department -- namely, whether it is legal to kill Americans with drones -- one problem looms largest: The policy permits the government to kill its citizens in secret while refusing to acknowledge, even after the fact, that it has done so." ...

... Dana Milbank: "... the only drones in evidence Thursday afternoon at [John] Brennan's confirmation hearing were the lawmakers on the dais.... The senators, with few exceptions, exempted Brennan from tough questioning about the drone program...." ...

... Last week Bill Moyers discussed the U.S. drone program with Vicki Divoll & Vincent Warren:

... Paul Harris of the Guardian: "President Barack Obama is facing a liberal backlash over his hardline national security policy, which critics say is more extreme and conservative than that pursued by George W Bush."

Anna Bernasek of the New York Times: "... what is being taxed [under the current U.S. tax code] is often just a small portion of the income and wealth of the very richest Americans; unearned income, including unrealized gains and gains on investments, is either not taxed or taxed at a fraction of the top rate on wages. Taxing wealth in addition to income is one way to make sure that the rich contribute more to government coffers. That would essentially be a tax on household assets like property, stocks, bonds, unincorporated businesses, trusts, art and yachts." ...

... Peter Applebome of the New York Times: "Even if a state recognizes same-sex marriage, federal law doesn't -- resulting in a maddening array of tax complications for gay couples.

David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "The stronger argument for a major government response to climate change is the ... obvious argument: climate change. The continental United States endured its hottest year on record in 2012, and the planet's 13 hottest years have all occurred since 1998. Major storms and wildfires are increasing.... The seas are rising faster than forecast only a few years ago, and the costs of extreme weather are rising, too. In Washington, the economic case for responding to climate change has made little progress, with Democrats failing to pass a sweeping bill when they controlled Congress and Republicans remaining strongly opposed. And President Obama has subtly shifted his approach, talking less about green jobs and more about extreme weather."

Tim Egan gives a thumbs-up to Sally Jewell, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of the Interior. "For all the ranchers and wildcatters, the loggers and right-wing county commissioners who clamor for control of the nation's public lands, the dominant user is an urbanite, who bikes, skis, rafts, climbs, hunts, fishes, watches birds, waits for sunsets with a camera or finds an antidote for 'nature deficit disorder' in a weekend on a high plateau. Yet this silent majority is taken for granted." ...

... Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times: "Only about a third of the 640 million acres of public land -- national parks, permanently protected wilderness..., national wildlife refuges -- enjoy complete or high levels of protection against commercial development. Nearly all the rest is multiuse land, for logging, grazing, hard-rock mining, oil and gas development. Especially vulnerable are the 248 million acres overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. It is to this threat that President Obama must pay more attention than he has.... In a speech last week, President Clinton's interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, presented a telling chart that showed how much land has been protected -- by Congress and by the president -- from the Reagan to the Obama presidency. So far, the current administration is dead last, and by several lengths." ...

... Here's the story on Babbitt's speech by John Broder, and here's Babbitt's chart:

Bob Moen of the AP: "Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Saturday night that President Barack Obama has jeopardized U.S. national security by nominating substandard candidates for key cabinet posts and by degrading the U.S. military." CW: the speech, by a veep who makes Spiro Agnew look good, was not intended to be ironic.

Joel Greenberg & Babak Dehghanpisheh of the Washington Post: "Israel's recent airstrike in Syria, which according to Western officials targeted weapons destined for the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah, could mark the start of a more aggressive campaign by Israel to prevent arms transfers as conditions in Syria deteriorate, according to analysts in Israel and Lebanon. Israel's readiness to strike again if necessary heralds a new and more volatile phase in the regional repercussions of Syria's civil war, which has raised concerns in Israel about the possible transfer of advanced or nonconventional weapons to Islamist militant groups."

God Is a Flat-Taxer. Steve Benen: at this past week's annual National Prayer Breakfast [CW: which I ignored] "... the president was preceded by Dr. Benjamin Carson, a conservative physician, who used his time at the microphone to complain about 'fiscal irresponsibly' and the national debt, before insisting that God wants a 10 percent flat tax. Though conservatives were outraged that Obama tried to 'politicize' the prayer breakfast in 2012, the right quickly celebrated Carson's remarks this week. It's funny how that works out, isn't it?"

Irregardless of Gene Weingarten's opinionating, I do not mean to infer that the Web is preventative of really, really good English writing. His column, tho, is the best evah! IMHO.

Local News

Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: "This Monday begins the long-awaited trial of Jim Greer, 50, a flamboyant former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. Mr. Greer, who was chosen for the job by [then-Governor Charlie] Crist, was indicted in 2010 on charges of fraud, money laundering and theft. Prosecutors accuse him of steering $125,000 of party money to a personal account in 2009 through a shell fund-raising company, Victory Strategies, of which he was a secret co-owner.... The trial is expected to rummage through the messy -- some say unethical -- inner workings of the party from 2007 to 2010, back when Mr. Crist still called himself a Republican (he is a Democrat now) and when [Sen. Marco] Rubio was an underdog candidate."

News Ledes

Reuters: "Airports slowly cranked back to life on Sunday, rare travel bans in Connecticut and Massachusetts were lifted, but roads throughout the region remained treacherous, according to state transportation departments. As the region recovered, another large winter storm building across the Northern Plains was expected to leave a foot of snow and bring high winds from Colorado to central Minnesota into Monday...."

Reuters: "U.S. Marine General Joseph Dunford, expected to oversee the withdrawal of most foreign troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year, took control of the NATO-led mission on Sunday, in an elaborate ceremony which emphasised the country's sovereignty."

AP: "The hunt for a former Los Angeles police officer suspected in three killings entered a fourth day in snow-covered mountains Sunday, a day after the LAPD chief ordered a review of the disciplinary case that led to the fugitive's dismissal and new details emerge of the evidence he left behind." ...

... New York Times: "The Los Angeles Police Department will reopen its investigation into the 2007 episode that led to the firing of Christopher J. Dorner, the former police officer who is wanted in three killings, department officials said Saturday night." CW: they also might want to open an investigation into their hiring practices -- could they use some screening tools to detect homicidal tendencies?

AP: "Three foreign doctors have been killed in Nigeria, one of them beheaded, officials have said. Their nationality remains unclear, with differing reports claiming they were either South Korean or Chinese. The deaths on Saturday night of the physicians in Potiskum, a town in Yobe state, comes less than a week after gunmen killed at least nine women administering polio vaccines in Kano, the major city of Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north."

Al Jazeera: "The secular party of Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki has withdrawn its three ministers from the country's government, saying that its demands for changes in the cabinet have not been met. The decision on Sunday by Marzouki's Congress for the Republic Party deals a further blow to Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali's government, already reeling from last week's assassination of secular opposition leader Shokri Belaid."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (10)

Carlos needs to study the historyb of the Revolution more closely. The leaders of the Continental Army knw they couldn't depend on the militia for the long haul. That's why they deveoped the Continental Line, conventional regiments in the European model. French money, arms, troops, and ships helped a lot as well. The Battle of Yorktown wouldn't have been won withou the French Navy and French troops. Those cannons Marie mentioned made life miserable for the British, leading to their ultimate surrender at Yorktown. There were also many Americans who fought on the British side, an example being the Battle of King's Mountain. There was one British officer, Patrick Ferguson on the British side; the rest were Americans.

As I've said before, the American Revolution was far too complex to be reduced to a bumper sticker.

February 9, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa

Climate change:
The way our capitalistic society has evolved, how are we supposed to suddenly shift the entire paradigm? American-style capitalism has become increasingly individualistic where even a regard for our fellow neighbors is a lost afterthought. I go as far to say even the family fabric of solidarity is fraying at the seams.

How then can we except these money-making machines to have some compassion for their potential global impacts? We can't spare a penny for the homeless guy on the street but companies are going to self-impose financial burdens to reduce carbon emissions and adopt a more durable development model to save the people of Vanuata whose island is slowly disappearing...Yeah I think not.

The bottom line is the Golden Rule these days.
24/7 no-holds-barred economic action.
No mercy.
Death match.

But hey, look on the bright side. All the wealth destroyed in the impending natural disasters will be offset by the construction companies kicking into action to rebuild, thus ticking up the ol' GDP and making Wall Street traders flap their flippers like the trained seals they are. BUY! SELL! BUY! BUY!

Oh shit! SELLLLLLLLLLLL!

February 10, 2013 | Unregistered Commentersafari

Oh my, after reading Weingarten I hung my head in shame: Yesterday I used the "really, really" instead of coming up with a more appropriate and colorful adjective. Here is a list that a friend sent me a few days ago––am not sure what the message was, but...

Here's a list of words that have been under scrutiny in this approval process:
1. Administrate: A back-formation of administration and an unnecessary extension of administer
2. Commentate: A back-formation of commentator and an unnecessary extension of comment
3. Dimunition: Erroneous; the correct form is diminution (think of diminutive)
4. Exploitive: A younger, acceptable variant of exploitative
5. Firstly: As with secondly and thirdly, erroneous when enumerating points; use first and so on
6. Heighth: Rarely appears in print, but a frequent error in spoken discourse (Why isn't heightmodeled on the form of depth, length, and width? Because it doesn't shift in spelling and pronunciation from its associated term, tall, like the others, which are derived from deep, long, andwide, do. Neither do we say or write weighth.)
7. Irregardless: An unnecessary extension of regardless on the analogy of irrespective but ignoring that regardless, though it is not an antonym of regard, already has an antonymic affix
8. Miniscule: A common variant of minuscule, but widely considered erroneous
9. Orientate: A back-formation of orientation and an unnecessary extension of orient
10. Participator: Erroneous; the correct form is participant
11. Preventative: A common and acceptable variant of preventive
12. Societal: A variant of social with a distinct connotation (for example, "social occasion," but "societal trends")
13. Supposably: An erroneous variant of supposedly
14. 'Til: Also rendered til and till, an clipped form of until that is correct but informal English; use the full word except in colloquial usage
15. Mischevious: An erroneous variant of mischievous.

February 10, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

Pieces like Weingarten's always send me back to Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" (1946). Classic and great, and nobody since has said it better.

February 10, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterDoug Connah

And tho' I was one, I always had a problem with being a "certificated" teacher. Being simply certified was enough for me.

February 10, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

When I was a small child I had a cup with a picture of Orphan Annie holding a cup with a picture of Orphan Annie holding a cup...I remember being intrigued with this and playing with how far I could go. Last night I finally saw "Game Change" and one scene reminded me of my cup. Julianne Moore who plays Sarah Palin is watching the Saturday Night Live performance of Tiny Fey playing Sarah Palin: I was struck with how surreal this must have been for the real Sarah Palin to be watching someone else play her watching someone else playing her. I think I read that Palin had said she never watched the film––REALLY? (there's that word again) Why ever not? I don't believe that for a second. As for the film itself it certainly portrayed the major fuck-up of McCain's minions and McCain himself. And poor Sarah–-not ready for prime time then and now even for Fox. I almost feel sorry for her.

February 10, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

@PD Pepe: for me, Palin was the exclamation point on how irresponsible McCain was. To choose as a running mate someone who was almost entirely unvetted on the off-chance that a veep with sex appeal would win him the presidency was the height of irresponsibility. Fortunately, enough people got that, & Palin sunk the Son of the Admiral's ship.

One could argue that the Ryan pick was a desperate move, too, but -- however low an opinion one has of Romney's & Ryan's views & policies -- both are intellectually and temperamentally equipped to handle the presidency. McCain & Palin decidedly are not, and both continue to remind us of that every time they open their mouths. Really, really.

Marie

February 10, 2013 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

@PD Pepe: Thanks for your and Jaqueline's kind words. Yes I have read Tony Judt's experiences with ALS. At least I can say that I have something in common with Steven Hawking!

Your Orphan Annie cup reminded me of when we were kids, we would position two mirrors so that our reflections seemed to go to infinity. You're right, ALMOST feel sorry for Sarah.

@Marie: In 2008, whenever we saw the divine Sarah on the TeeVee, we would ask each other "What is this, some kind of joke?" Finally, it got so that Tina Fey became the real Sarah Palin, and Sarah Palin became the impostor. Fortunately, the majority of the voters weren't amused.

February 10, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa

Orientate has always been grating to my ear. In my minds eye I have imagined one who orientates as an orientater, Immediately a Chinese potato pops into my head. How do I know it's Chinese? By the shape of the eyes ,of course.

February 10, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterRoger Henry

Roger,

When you put it that way, I'm thinking that "orientate" could be considered a portmanteau referring to a supreme ruler of the orient, or an oriental potentate, as in "Genghis Khan, that famous orientate." And old Genghis may have been an opti-mizer, someone who was highly protective (miserly?)of his eyesight. And in meetings with his counselors did he wear an inceti-visor when effectuating his latest initiatives to keep the sun out of his priorit-ize?

Oh god, somebody stop me!

February 11, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus
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