The Times also starts to try to explain!

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2024

Also, Hannah Dreier's Pulitzer Prize: Yesterday, to its credit if somewhat belatedly, the Washington Post finally began to try to explain.

In yesterday afternoon's report, we linked you to David Nakamura's report. Yesterday morning, his report had appeared online under this dual headline:

This obscure N.Y. election law is at the heart of Trump’s hush money trial
Prosecutors say a misdemeanor state conspiracy statute spells out the underlying crime Trump aimed to conceal when he made hush money payments in 2016. 

Nakamura was trying to explain the nature of the felony—actually, the nature of the 34 felonies—with which Trump stands charged. Perhaps because the Post had finally made this effort, the New York Times followed suit yesterday afternoon:

Why Does Trump Face Felony Charges? Prosecutors Say He Was Hiding Other Crimes.
Donald J. Trump faces 34 felony counts in his Manhattan trial, but none involve the other misconduct that prosecutors say he engaged in.

Now the Times has started to try to explain! It seems to us that these "explainer" attempts have arrived rather late in the game.

That said, better somewhat late than never! At any rate, it seems that almost everyone agrees with some version of the following:

The New York election law is obscure, or at least is conceptually complicated. Also, Trump is faced with 34 counts—but for some reason, none involve "the other misconduct that prosecutors say he engaged in."

Do you understand that small fandango? At this site, we'll request another day or two to work our way through these reports.

For today, we turn to yesterday's announcement of this year's Pulitzer Prizes. We especially direct your attention to one of the three million topics those of us in Blue America don't seem to give a flying felafel about.

We refer to the reports in the New York Times for which Hannah Dreier won this year's Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting. Headline included, this morning's report in the Times tells us this:

The New York Times and The Washington Post Win 3 Pulitzers Each

[...]

The prize for investigations went to Hannah Dreier of The Times, for an exposé of migrant child labor in the modern United States, and the governmental blunders and disregard that have allowed the illegal practice to persist. This was the second Pulitzer awarded to Ms. Dreier, who won the 2019 feature writing prize for her coverage of the criminal gang MS-13 for ProPublica.

That was the thumbnail in the Times.  In its official list of winners, the Pulitzer organization describes Dreier's work as shown:

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
Hannah Dreier of The New York Times

For a deeply reported series of stories revealing the stunning reach of migrant child labor across the United States—and the corporate and governmental failures that perpetuate it.

"Deeply reported?" You can say that again! Also, widely ignored—but then, what else is new?

Dreier's first report about this topic appeared on the front page of the Times on Sunday, February 26, 2023. 

We wrote about it the next day. To review that report, just click here.

As the year proceeded, Dreier followed with several other reports on this topic. You've never heard about those reports because nobody actually cares.

Nobody cares in Red America; nobody cares in Blue. In Blue America, we spend the hours of our days talking, in endless, thoroughly useless detail, about the chances of getting Donald J. Trump frog-marched off to jail.

Nicolle doesn't seem to care about exploited kids, including those 12-year-old roofers. Judging from appearances, neither do her favorite reporters and friends.

To borrow from sacred Thoreau, we denizens of Blue America "labor under a mistake." Over the years, we've managed to persuade ourselves that we're very, very smart and that we deeply care.

Neither proposition is especially true. Our thought leaders spend their days talking to themselves and to their various friends and to no one else.  They talk about the tiny handful of topics which please them, and they talk about no one and nothing else.

Might we denizens of Blue America learn to see ourselves more clearly?  The chances of that are very poor. 

That said, Dreier's work was deeply impressive. Also, no one gives a flying farthing about her prize-winning front-page reports, and no one ever will.

Donald J. Trump may have had consensual sex, on one occasion, in 2006! As with the Argives, so too here:

We care about that with all our hearts, and we care about little else.

ACHAEANS: Although he never won an election...

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2024

...Agamemnon was the elect: Agamemnon, lord of men, never won an election. As far as we know, there were no elections, as we know them, during the late Bronze Age. 

 Agamemnon, lord of men, never won an election. Clearly, though, Agamemnon was the elect.

In the following passage, the leading authority on the fictional figure explains the source of his status:

Sceptre

A sceptre (or scepter in American English) is a staff or wand held in the hand by a ruling monarch as an item of royal or imperial insignia, signifying sovereign authority.

[...]

Among the early Greeks, the sceptre was a long staff, such as Agamemnon wielded (Iliad, i) or was used by respected elders, and came to be used by judges, military leaders, priests, and others in authority. It is represented on painted vases as a long staff tipped with a metal ornament. When the sceptre is borne by Zeus or Hades, it is headed by a bird. 

It was this symbol of Zeus, the king of the gods and ruler of Olympus, that gave their inviolable status to the kerykes, the heralds, who were thus protected by the precursor of modern diplomatic immunity. When, in the Iliad, Agamemnon sends Odysseus to parley with the leaders of the Achaeans, he lends him his sceptre.

We're puzzled by several parts of that account. That includes its description of Agamemnon wielding a scepter in Book One of the Iliad. 

In Book One, it's actually the enraged Achilles who "swears a mighty oath" upon a "scepter studded bright with golden nails." After swearing his mighty oath, he then "dashes it to the ground." 

Within the Robert Fagles translation, Agamemnon isn't shown wielding a scepter until we reach Book Two. In Book One, it's Achilles who is wielding a scepter during a furious meeting of Argive chieftains. 

Argive chieftains weren't reluctant to state their views during these nighttime councils. In an end note regarding that passage in question, Fagles distinguishes between two different types of scepter:

1.273 This scepter. The scepter [held by Achilles] is passed by the heralds to anyone in the assembly who wishes to speak—while he holds it, he has the floor. It is a symbol of royal and divine authority, and also stands for the rule of law and due process in the community. 

It is not the same as Agamemnon's own royal scepter (2.118-26), which has come down to him from Zeus through several generations of Argive kings.

According to Professor Fagles, Achilles was wielding the type of scepter which allowed a chieftain to speak during an Argive assembly. 

As noted, Achilles is savaging Agamemnon, lord of men, during this part of the meeting. By the norms of the day, Agamemnon's exalted status doesn't exempt him from the most remarkable types of criticism, even within the tribe.

As for Agamemnon, he wielded a different type of scepter; he wielded a royal scepter. Agememnon's scepter has come down to him through several generations of kings, but it originated with Zeus himself.

In this way, Agamemnon was seen to stand in a line of authority stretching directly back to the most powerful of the Olympian gods. Early in Book Two, the poem describes Agamemnon (AKA "Atrides") rousing himself from a dream, then striding forward to exercise his authority:

But rousing himself from sleep, the divine voice
swirling round him, Atrides sat up, bolt awake,
pulled on a soft tunic, linen never worn,
and over it threw his flaring battle-cape,
under his smooth feet he fastened supple sandals,
across his shoulder slung his silver-studded sword.
Then he seized the royal scepter of his fathers—
its power can never die—and grasping it tightly
off he strode to the ships of Argives armed in bronze.

The power of Agamemnon's royal scepter could never die. Later in Book Two, the line of descent of the royal scepter is explicitly described:

King Agamemnon
rose to his feet, raising high in hand the scepter
Hephaestus made with all his strength and skill.
Hephaestus gave it to Cronus' son, Father Zeus
and Zeus gave it to Hermes, the giant-killing Guide
and Hermes gave it to Pelops. that fine charioteer,
Pelops gave it to Atreus, marshal of fighting men,
who died and passed it on to Thyestes rich in flocks
and he in turn bestowed it on Agamemnon, to bear on high
as he ruled his many islands and lorded mainland Argos.
Now, leaning his weight upon that kingly scepter
Atrides declared his will to all Achaea's armies...

The scepter had been fashioned by Hephaestus, one of the Olympian gods. Hephaestus had given it to Zeus. Eventually, the scepter had been handed down to Agamemnon himself.

As Agamemnon declares his will in this instance, he is having one of his various breakdowns. Later, in Book Nine, as Agamemnon melts down again, a trusted elder reassures the lord of men about his state of election:

Nestor was first to speak—from the early days
his plans and tactics always seemed the best.
With good will to the chiefs he rose and spoke,
"Great marshal Atrides, lord of men Agamemnon—
with you I will end, my King, with you I will begin,
since you hold sway over many warriors, vast armies,
and Zeus has placed in your hands the royal scepter
and time-honored laws, so you will advise them well."

As we've noted in the past, madness was constantly gripping Agamemnon. Nestor, offering sound advice, reminds him of the role assigned to him by Zeus. 

In essence, this is the divine right of kings, built upon the deference shown to those whose authority came to them from the gods. 

In theory, we regard such thinking as silly today. That said, dating back to the dawn of the west, it has been the norm for us the humans to bow to the divine right of kings. 

This kind of deference is bred in the born. It adopts various forms.

In our modern political context, we citizens of Bue America are inclined to ridicule members of Red America for building a cult around Candidate Trump—for deferring to him as if he carried divine authority. 

In fairness, this pattern is deeply bred in the bone—and obvious elements of this impulse are observable within our own Blue America, though elements of our own behavior may be invisible to us. 

In our current two Americas, we Blues tend to mock voters in Red America for deferring to the divine right of Trump. But we Blues segregate ourselves within our own tribal circles, and the Achaeans were ready to challenge Agamemnon n a way which never occurs when "our favorite reporters and friends" gather on our corporate "cable news" channel to tell us the stories we like to hear and to mock the cult which we can see—the cult which is operating Over There, among the Others.

At present, leadership cadres of Red America are routinely an undisguised, astonishing mess. That said, those of us in Blue America tend to fall in line behind our own leadership cadres in ways which make the Argive leaders seem like free-thinking iconoclasts.

We repeat the embellished claims our leadership cadres invent. We talk about locking the other guy up—and as we'll note this afternoon, we often seem to care about little or nothing else.

The leadership cadres of Red America are routinely (not always) an undisguised mess. But those of us in Blue America may not always see ourselves as we actually are. Is it possible that we can learn to see ourselves more clearly through a trip back in time to the western world's first poem of war?

Consider our current embarrassing state:

We want to send the other guy to jail because he allegedly hid the fact that he allegedly had (fully consensual) sex on one occasion with a woman who wasn't his wife! And yet we love our own Dear Jack—we continue to love him so dearly!

When a population loses its way that badly, it might be time to journey back to the dawn of the west and make an effort to figure out how we reached this embarrassing point.

Will a look at the Iliad help us see ourselves more clearly? The odds of that are very slight. But what else is left to try?

Agamemnon never won an election! It seems to us that we should be embarrassed, chastened in a good-natured way, by the way we the Blues are now approaching ours.

Tomorrow: Then and now, sources of rage

This afternoon: Hannah Dreier's Pulitzer prize

The Post begins to try to explain!

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2024

Also, Welker's repeated question: Kudos to the Washington Post for what it has started to try to do.

In a lengthy report by David Nakamura, the paper has now started to try to explain the legal basis on which Donald J. Trump has been charged with a felony—actually, with 34 felonies—in the ongoing "hush money" trial.

The report appeared online this very morning at 5 o'clock Eastern. Online, a pair of headlines say this:

This obscure N.Y. election law is at the heart of Trump’s hush money trial
Prosecutors say a misdemeanor state conspiracy statute spells out the underlying crime Trump aimed to conceal when he made hush money payments in 2016.

The N.Y. election law is obscure, and the legal theory involved in the matter seems to be complex. We want to take another day to work through what Nakamura has written, but this type of report is long overdue, and the Post deserves our somewhat belated applause.

We feel differently about Kristen Welker's repeated question for Tim Scott. On yesterday's Meet the Press, she asked the question again and again, and then again and again.

 She asked the question at least six times. The effort started like this:

WELKER (5/5/24): Well, senator, will you commit to accepting the election results of 2024, bottom line?

SCOTT: At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump, and I'm excited to get back to low inflation, low unemployment—

WELKER: Wait— Wait, senator, yes or no? Yes or no? Will you accept the election results of 2024 no matter who wins?

SCOTT: That is my statement.

The effort continued from there. To peruse the full back-and-forth, you can just click here.

For the record, Welker didn't just ask the question six times. She kept asking for a "yes or no answer," a highly unhelpful type of journalistic practice.

Question:

How can you ask a pol to declare that he'll accept the result of an election which hasn't yet taken place? Suppose some real irregularity happens this time in some state? Is a pol really supposed to say, in advance, that he'll just let it go?

Example:

Candidate Gore challenged the initial results in Florida in Election 2000. There's no reason why he shouldn't have done so, and it would have been silly to make him pledge, before the fact, that he'd never do such a thing.

Or did Welker mean something different by her repeated question? We have no sympathy for Scott in this matter, or for his tedious, time-killing non-answer answers. But it seems to us that Welker's question made and makes little sense, and it makes absolutely no sense as a "yes or no" type of question.

Are we the people bright enough to run a so-called democracy? That's one of the questions we'll be asking over the next few months.

The Post has started to try to explain the legal basis for the Gotham "hush money" trial. We think the Post deserves at least two cheers, but we don't think Welker's (rather familiar) question made a whole lot of sense.

ACHAEANS: As Blue America earns its way out...

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2024

...are we all Achaeans now? We start today with a question:

What is the total student enrollment at Columbia University?

You're asking an excellent question! At this site, we have a close relative who will be a freshman there in the fall. Her exploits as a schoolwide spelling bee star were described in these pages way back when she was in the third grade!

How many students will she be joining in September? According to Columbia's provost, these were the enrollment figures as of the fall of 2022:

Columbia University enrollment, fall 2022:
Undergraduate schools: 9,739
Morningside graduate and professional schools: 22,063
Medical center graduate schools: 4,825
Special programs: 22 

Total enrollment: 36,649

That's the best we can show you. As of the fall of 2022, there were over 36,000 students enrolled at the well-known Gotham school.

Now for our second question:

How many Columbia students were arrested last week—arrested for their participation in the takeover of the school's Hamilton Hall?

As we noted yesterday, the numbers have been all over the place in the New York Times. That said, according to this report by NPR, "city officials" have set the total number of arrests at Columbia at a whopping 112.

We're never happy to hear that someone has been arrested. (Sometimes such action is necessary.) Meanwhile, here's a supplementary call of the roll from the Times:

HARRIS ET AL (5/6/24): After pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied a building on Columbia’s campus this [sic] week, demanding that the university end all financial ties with Israel, the New York Police Department moved in and arrested more than 100 people there.

[...]

A New York Times review of police records and interviews with dozens of people involved in the protest at Columbia found that a small handful of the nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university had also participated in other protests around the country. One man who was taken into custody inside Hamilton Hall, the occupied campus building, had been charged with rioting and wearing a disguise to evade the police during a demonstration in California nearly a decade earlier.

On Saturday, that account appeared online. Today, the report appears in the Times' print editions.

According to the Times report, of the "more than 100 people" who were arrested, there were "nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university." 

If we stick with the semi-official number of arrests (112), that suggests that something like eighty people who did have ties to Columbia were arrested last week.  

If all eighty of those people were students, that would mean that 80 Columbia students—out of more than 36,000 in all!—were arrested in connection with the building takeover which produced so much commentary nationwide.

Something like eighty students tops, out of something like 36,000! Using the numbers we have, 360 students would have been one percent of the student population. Eighty students—or maybe just sixty or seventy?—would be something like one-fifth of one percent.

In short, a tiny percentage of Columbia students got arrested last week. We doesn't necessarily mean that those students were "wrong" in what they did, though we ourselves aren't major fans of their highly dramatic behavior.

The small number of participants doesn't necessarily mean that the takeover of Hamilton Hall was "wrong." It may suggest that something is "wrong"—that something is lacking—in the way we, as a floundering nation, report and then pretend to discuss such high-profile events.

In fact, ludicrous conduct has been observed at some of our floundering nation's largest, best-known "news orgs." Consider what happened on the Fox News Channel when Howard Kurtz attempted to discuss the protests at UCLA.

To its credit, the Fox News Channel has seemed to be making an adjustment in the way it presents such events. At issue is the following question:

When students conduct the protests in question, how should those students be described?

Should they be described as pro-Palestinian? Should they be described as anti-Israel?

On Fox News Channel programs, hosts were frequently describing such students as "pro-Hamas," full stop. This is the way the jackals are inclined to behave on the clown-car "cable news" channel.

Over the weekend, the term "pro-Hamas" had seemed to disappear from this channel's chyrons. But sad! Sunday morning, on Kurtz's MediaBuzz program, the rank designation was suddenly back in a chyron you can see simply by clicking here:

4 UCLA REPORTERS ATTACKED 
PRO-HAMAS ATTACKERS SEND ONE TO HOSPITAL

That's what the chyron said. To his tiny credit, Kurtz didn't use that noxious term of art as he discussed this topic. Somewhat oddly, though, he failed to describe the people who conducted this attack in any way at all.

We decided to fact-check the incident. When we did, sure enough! 

In fact, the handful of people who conducted this violent attack were actually pro-Israel! For the Daily Bruin's report, click here. Headline included, here's the relevant part of the report from the Los Angeles Times:

Four UCLA student journalists attacked by pro-Israel counterprotesters on campus

Four student journalists who work for the UCLA Daily Bruin were attacked shortly before 3:30 a.m. Wednesday by pro-Israel counterprotesters during a campus demonstration that turned violent.

Daily Bruin news editor Catherine Hamilton, 21, told The Times she recognized one of the counterprotesters as someone who had previously verbally harassed her and taken pictures of her press badge. The individual instructed the group to encircle the student journalists, she said, before they sprayed the four with Mace or pepper spray, flashed lights in their faces and chanted Hamilton’s name.

As she tried to break free, Hamilton said, she was punched repeatedly in the chest and upper abdomen; another student journalist was pushed to the ground and beaten and kicked for nearly a minute. The attack was first reported in the Daily Bruin.

This handful of violent people were actually "pro-Israel." Somehow, Kurtz failed to say anything, one way or another—and someone inside the belly of the breakdown tagged them as "pro-Hamas."

That's the way this garbage frequently works at the Fox News Channel. That said, how well are we the people of Blue America doing over here?

Long ago ad far away, the western world's first poem of war was composed. As the famous poem begins, Achaean forces had spent almost ten years conducting a siege of Troy.

Judged by conventional modern norms, the Achaeans were pretty much out of their minds. That said, the current "hush money" trial in Gotham reminds us of their early ways.

Are we all Achaeans now? Is it possible that our own tribe, here in Blue America, is in the process of earning its way out?

This morning, a new survey by ABC News/Ipsos has Biden leading Trump by four points in the nationwide popular vote. On the down side, that's a margin which might suggest a close outcome in the Electoral College.

It's entirely possible that President Biden will be re-elected this year. But are we all Achaeans now? And is it possible that this bromide is actually true:

Everything we ever needed to know we learned from reading the Iliad.

Over here in Blue America, are we all Achaeans now? We'll start to explore that complex question this week—though in our view, the anthropological answer may possibly tilt toward yes.

A tony percentage of Columbia students took part in the Hamilton Hall takeover.

Despite that fact, a deluge of media coverage followed. This may well best we best we know how to do, even at this point in time.

We Blues! Are we earning our way out? Perhaps more to the ultimate point, are we all Achaeans now?

Tomorrow: Before the Magna Carta

SUNDAY: How many outsiders were arrested?

SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2024

The New York Times doesn't seem sure: For starters, we strongly agree with Nia Prater concerning one basic point.

Last week, Prater began writing for New York magazine about the arrests by the NYPD at Columbia University.

On Wednesday, she did an initial post on the subject. On Thursday, it was updated. 

For starters, we agree with the general thrust of the observation with which Prater closed her piece. In this passage, she's speaking about a term of art employed by Mayor Adamas and by the NYPD:

The term outside agitator is notably fraught: It was frequently deployed by authorities to undermine civil-rights protests in the 1960s. And in 2020, New York’s then-police commissioner Dermot Shea used the term to justify harsh police crackdowns on social-justice demonstrators in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

"Outside agitators" were in the house! Like Prater, we'd been struck by the oddness of the adoption of that heavily fraught old term.

(For the record, we'd been struck by the way the term was being used by journalists, principally by the Morning Joe team.)

According to Mayor Adams, "outside agitators" had been in the house! In our view, that term has a terrible, murder-soaked history. It ought to be laid to rest.

In our view, Prater's aim was true concerning the use of that term. That said, Prater was mainly examining a different question:

How many people who got arrested at Columbia weren't affiliated with the university?

Prater seemed to be a hard sceptic concerning the NYPD's claims. In her updated report, she said the NYPD had been refusing to offer specific numbers, even as she linked to sites where something resembling specific numbers seemed to be provided.

Say you want a revolution? These complaints about the lack of specifics struck as an unfortunate brand of weak Blue American tea. That said, no one has played the fool concerning this question in quite the way the New York Times has.

In this morning's print editions, the Times offers a profile of a veteran organizer who played a role in the takeover of Columbia's Hamilton Hall. Along the way, headline included, the Times report says this:

The 63-Year-Old Career Activist Among the Protesters at Columbia

Among the throng of Columbia University student protesters gathered outside Hamilton Hall on campus early Tuesday morning was a gray-haired woman in her 60s.

In a video captured by The New York Times, the protesters can be seen trying to push their way toward the building as the woman—decades older than the crowd—pleads with two young counterprotesters trying to block them from barricading the occupied building.

“This is ridiculous,” the woman says, as the men stand with their backs against the doors, apparently trying to keep protesters away from the building. “We’re trying to end a genocide in Gaza.”

The woman at the center of this encounter on the night protesters stormed and then occupied the building was Lisa Fithian, a longtime activist and trainer for left-wing protesters whom the Police Department would later publicly describe as a “confirmed professional agitator.”

[...]

City and university officials have not said how many of the protesters arrested were not affiliated with the school.

Linda Fithian wasn't present during the arrests and she wasn't arrested. That said:

According to the New York Times, "city and university officials haven't said how many" of the people arrested "were not affiliated with the school."

It seems to us that various police officials actually have offered some such numbers. That said, someone else has called this particular roll. 

We refer to the New York Times! Yesterday, the New York Times called the roll concerning this question in this online news report:

Outsiders Were Among Columbia Protesters, but They Dispute Instigating Clashes

A New York Times review of police records and interviews with dozens of people involved in the protest at Columbia found that a small handful of the nearly three dozen arrestees who lacked ties to the university had also participated in other protests around the country. One man who was taken into custody inside Hamilton Hall, the occupied campus building, had been charged with rioting and wearing a disguise to evade the police during a demonstration in California nearly a decade earlier.

Yesterday, the Times reported that "nearly three dozen" of the people arrested "lacked ties to the university." As of today, a reader could almost get the impression that no one has any idea.

For what it's worth, yesterday's head count wasn't the first attempt by the Times to address this knotty question. On Thursday, the Times had published a report which nailed the numbers down in the following way:

Locks, Chains, Diversions: How Columbia Students Seized Hamilton Hall

[...]

Most of those arrested on and around Columbia’s campus appeared to be graduate students, undergraduates or people otherwise affiliated with the school, according to a Police Department list of people who were arrested that night that was obtained by The Times.

At least a few, however, appeared to have no connection to the university, according to The Times’s review of the list. One was a 40-year-old man who had been arrested at anti-government protests around the country, according to a different internal police document. His role in the organization of the protest is still unclear.

[...]

On the list of protesters arrested at or near Columbia were a handful of people without clear ties to the university, including one man who apparently lives in the neighborhood and who was arrested outside, and a woman who describes herself online as a “poet and farmer” who went to college in Vermont.

According to that Times report, the number of arrestees who weren't affiliated with Columbia was either "a handful" or "at least a few." The Times knew that because they'd reviewed a Police Department list.

(How many arrestees were affiliated? According to the Times, the specific number was "most.")

Yesterday, the Times reported that the actual number of unaffiliated arrestees is "nearly three dozen." (On Thursday morning's Morning Joe, we saw the NYPD's John Chell set the number of outsiders arrested at Columbia at 30-35.)

Today, the Times may give readers the impression that the actual number remains unknown. There's no mention of yesterday's report that the actual number is "nearly three dozen." 

There's no mention of the paper's earlier claim that the actual number was "a handful," and there's no mention of the ongoing claim that police officials haven't been willing to say.

This is the way the game is played by our brightest Blue Tribe newspaper. In fairness, the official organs of Red America are sometimes even worse. 

We agree with Prater about the use of that noxious, blood-soaked term. That said, she hasn't updated her  own claim about the NYPD's refusal to offer numbers or to back up its assertions.

How many outsiders got arrested? What role had they played in these events? We're not entirely sure, but it sounds like the number may have been 30-35!

Meanwhile, at the New York Times, does anyone know what anyone else is saying? It's a bit like with New England weather:

If you don't like the New York Times' numbers, you can just wait a while.