NYT front page uses the words "unarmed" and "armed" to describe the man the police shot dead in Milwaukee last night.

Here's the screen grab from the front page of the NYT right now:



I think the correct description is the one in the small print, armed.

Here's the linked article:

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin activated the Wisconsin National Guard on Sunday to assist local law enforcement following a night of violence in Milwaukee that began hours after a police officer fatally shot a fleeing armed man there.

Boldface added.

I guess "unarmed" is the narrative.

UPDATED: The front page has this now:



I'm not saying I get results. I think the update happened because Governor Walker's action changed the most important news for this story.

"In your guts you know he's nuts."

From LBJ Library (photos taken at a visit in 2007) — a reminder of what presidential politics were like in the 60s. Goldwater (1964) was crazy:



And the Democrats (in 1968) presented themselves from the female perspective:

"The French Riviera city of Cannes has banned beachgoers from wearing a swimsuit designed for Muslim women, called a burkini, citing the recent Islamist violence."

"Going into effect late last month, a city ordinance bans the burkini as well as any swimwear that 'ostentatiously displays religious affiliation, when France ... [is] the target of terrorist attacks.'"

The covering up of the body counts as an ostentatious display. It's not an ostentatious display of the body — go right ahead and do that — it's an ostentatious display of your mind.

What's the ugliest part of your body? I think it's your mind.

"A pet owner was forced to rifle through 1,000 bags of rubbish when her 90-year-old tortoise hitched a lift in a bin lorry and ended up at the local tip."

So says the UK Telegraph — could you tell it was British? — but the lady did not singlehandedly search the rubbish from the bin lorry before it ended up in the local tip.

Using satellite tracking, the council tracked down the refuse lorry to a waste treatment facility.... After dressing in protective clothing, Mrs Joiner and staff used a thermal imaging camera to hunt for the lost tortoise amid 1,000 bags of rubbish. 

How much tax money was spent looking for a turtle that a lady let get into her garbage? But we're expected to feel heart-warmed. It's not even my tax money, but this irks me. The tortoise was 90 years old. I'd say it lived a long, good life. Let the government conserve its funds for spending that benefits young turtles.

He was eventually found amid a pile of lettuce leaves and plucked to safety.

They're always after the lettuce, these turtles. How about the lettuce that is money? Don't spend it on elderly turtles!

Hillary's hedge on TPP is right there in plain sight: if it "kills jobs or holds down wages."

I'm slogging through NPR's fact check of Hillary Clinton's speech on economics. For example, Hillary said:

So my message to every worker in Michigan and across America is this: I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as president.

NPR's Tamara Keith says:

This is Clinton's strongest language yet about the trade deal she called a "gold standard" when she was secretary of state in the Obama administration. At the time, the trade pact was in the early stages of negotiations. For the first several months of her campaign, Clinton resisted taking a position on TPP, saying the deal was still being negotiated. She finally weighed in last October, a week before the first Democratic debate, saying she couldn't support it in its current form. Many progressives are suspicious that, like President Obama did, she would soften her opposition to the trade deal if she is elected. Donald Trump has also charged that Clinton fully intends to sign off on TPP if she is president. Clinton has held firm in her opposition, but in an interview a close political ally of hers seemed to confirm the suspicions, saying she would likely implement it as president. The campaign moved immediately to tamp that down and Clinton in this speech was unequivocal — perhaps because she had to be.

She didn't say she'd stop TPP. She said she has a pre-condition. All she needs to do, once elected, is assert that it doesn't kill jobs or hold down wages. Trade deals, when accepted, are always portrayed as good for us. The condition will always be said to have been met if you ask someone who is accepting the deal, so it's meaningless to announce that you have that condition. But to NPR, it's "Clinton's strongest language yet." That may be literally true, but it's still meaningless. 

Am I the only one noticing how bad the lighting is for the Olympics broadcast?

Do you see the 4 shadows forming an X at the feet of each Beach Volleyball player? That's so annoying! It made me think for the first time about how good the lighting is at nighttime baseball and football games. You never notice shadows — certainly not a stark pattern of shadow from each player. Those shadows give the outdoor night games a dreary, indoorsy look.

The varied angles on the gymnasts frequently include glaring banks of light fixtures up at the ceiling. These should be off camera. Gymnastics should look great. It's all about how it looks, and it's hard to see. When the lights are visible on camera, they are the brightest thing in the frame. The gymnast should be lit up!

CBS "Travel Detective" says if your plane didn't hit a mountain or, on landing, "cartwheel and explode into flames," you did not have a terrible trip.

"You didn't have a terrible trip, you had the best trip ever, because you're alive. Why do we really go to travel anyway? To go from point A to point B and not die. I mean, I'm always reminded — and I travel over 400,000 miles a year, those are real miles. I'm reminded every time I get in this aluminum cylinder how amazing this experience is."

Key question buried in there: "Why do we really go to travel anyway?" I agree it's amazing that planes consistently get people from point A to point B without killing them, but it's not like I'm going to die if I don't get from point A to point B, so not killing me can't be the standard.

What Peter Greenberg is talking about is how the airlines have succeeded as a business by keeping the prices super low and sacrificing just about everything else but safe transportation. He specializes in helping people understand the airlines schemes so we can take the best advantage of them.

But many people — not just me, look at the comments at the link — conclude that it's best not to fly at all. And, really, what's the problem? The planes are full. The airlines are making record profits. People who choose to fly get low fares (and can pay more and get into the higher class section).

So what if a lot of people, like me, say no to flying whenever we can? That's a good thing, right? We're reducing our carbon footprint. Isn't that still something we're supposed to be trying to do? I don't know, because I haven't heard much about that at all lately. Not during the election season anyway.

"If you love your son, if you love your daughter, text them, call them, pull them by their ears, get them home."

Said Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, as rioting breaks out after police shoot and kill a fleeing armed man.

Aldermen Khalif Rainey said that the section of Milwaukee he represents has become "a powder keg" and:

"This entire community has sat back and witnessed how Milwaukee, Wis., has become the worst place to live for African-Americans in the entire country. Now this is a warning cry. Where do we go from here? Where do we go as a community from here? Do we continue – continue with the inequities, the injustice, the unemployment, the under-education, that creates these byproducts that we see this evening? … The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their existence. This is their life. This is the life of their children. Now what has happened tonight may have not been right; I’m not justifying that. But no one can deny the fact that there’s problems, racial problems, here in Milwaukee, Wis., that have to be closely, not examined, but rectified. Rectify this immediately. Because if you don’t, this vision of downtown, all of that, you’re one day away. You’re one day away."

I'm sorry to be so crass as to connect this to the presidential election, but Wisconsin is a swing state, and Hillary Clinton is counting on the people of Milwaukee to feel motivated to come out and vote for the Democratic Party candidate, because what else is there but the Democratic Party?

How is that going to happen? Are you going to "pull them by their ears"?!

Tom Barrett is, of course, a Democrat, and he's been mayor of Milwaukee for 12 years.

ADDED: "But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." — Thomas Jefferson.

"The Mashco had a ritual greeting: they hugged visitors, put their heads on their shoulders, and then felt inside their clothing, as if to ascertain their sex."

"For perhaps forty minutes, the two groups mingled: the Mashco touching and probing, and the Nomole team acquiescing, mostly in good humor. The Mashco women approached Flores and, as she giggled, touched her breasts and stomach... When I asked Flores about the women, she put a hand to her mouth in embarrassment. 'They felt my breasts and stomach and said to me, 'You’re pregnant, aren’t you?' When I said, ‘No, I’m not,’ they said, ‘Tell us the truth! Don’t you have milk?’ When I said no, Knoygonro squirted her milk in my face, to say, ‘I do.’ ”

From "AN ISOLATED TRIBE EMERGES FROM THE RAIN FOREST/In Peru, an unsolved killing has brought the Mashco Piro into contact with the outside world," by Jon Lee Anderson in The New Yorker.

Point: "I'm getting a little tired of people explaining how the stupid shit Trump says is somehow genius if you think about it."

Counterpoint: "Actually, making you tired of it is part of the genius. Keep complaining: It racks up more support for Trump in his brilliant jujitsu."

Obscure Olympic moment of the day.

Something I photographed today from the TV, after a track bike event. The Chinese athletes — unlike everyone else — have faces painted on the tops of their helmet, and I caught a moment of repose after a race, a rider with her coach (I assume it's the coach).

Here's an article in Weibo about the helmets:

Besides serving as safety gear, the helmets promoted China by portraying typically Chinese Peking Opera masks that, according to state media, conveyed China’s “national essence” and, in this way, could “show the world” this image of China – as China Daily wrote. The female cycling helmets portrayed the Peking Opera facial masks of Hua Mulan (花木兰) and Mu Guiying (穆桂英), two legendary Chinese war heroines....

3 views of Lake Mendota,11:48 to 11:49, this morning.

"She’s 71 years old, still punk af and hanging out with Grandmaster Flash in her pedal-pushers and pink patent Candie stilettos."

"No biggie. Style? She makes her own, bitches."

"New Study Reveals That the Washington Post Is Eager to Dismiss Economic Explanations for Trump’s Rise."

Headline for a New York Magazine piece by Eric Levitz, who begins:

Donald Trump’s supporters tend to live in economically depressed areas where white residents experience exceptionally high rates of mortality — and exceptionally low rates of social mobility — according to a new study from Gallup.

Some might view these findings as evidence that “economic anxiety” among the white working-class has contributed to Donald Trump’s rise. The Washington Post, however, sees them as evidence of the opposite. Or, more precisely, one of their headline writers does.

The paper titled its write-up of Gallup’s analysis thusly: A massive new study debunks a widespread theory for Donald Trump’s success. The article defines that theory as the idea that “economic distress and anxiety across working-class white America” is a valid explanation for Trump’s political appeal. But, as the actual copy of the piece makes clear, Gallup’s analysis does not “debunk” that idea; the study merely complicates it...

At the 11-Years-Ago Café...

... you can talk about anything you like. Have a good Saturday! I'm posting an old photo that I noticed because somebody at Flickr just "liked" it and I can't seem to get Flickr to accept something else that I'm trying to upload. It's that kind of day, perhaps. It's overcast and cool, in a pre-rain sort of way, but the forecast says no rain.

"An army of lawyers working under Mr. Obama’s authority.... has imposed billions of dollars in new costs on businesses and consumers."

"Many of the new rules are little known, even as they affect the way Americans eat, love and die. People can dine on genetically engineered salmon. Women can buy emergency contraceptive pills without prescriptions. Military veterans can design their own headstones."

From "Once Skeptical of Executive Power, Obama Has Come to Embrace It/Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history" (in the NYT).