Starting Five
Oh, it’s happening alright. It began in Boston last night — the 238th anniversary of the night in this city when Paul Revere and William Dawes rode out of town to warn the colonists that the British were coming to Concord to seize the American arsenal (apparently, after I tweeted out this info last night, Ann Coulter retweeted it). In 2013 Revere and Dawes have been replaced by Twitter, where information –some of it inaccurate, as we will see (and some of it disseminated by yours truly, but obviously involuntarily) — travels faster than the speed of television news. Here are some items.
1. You have to deduce that last night’s events were incited by the 5 p.m. press conference in which law enforcement released video and still photos of the two unidentified suspects at large. Within hours the fugitives had ambushed and killed an MIT police officer (since identified by the Boston Globe as 26 year-old Sean Collier), robbed a convenience store and committed a car-jacking Some time shortly before midnight my friend Ken Fowler, a Notre Dame alum and a third-year law student at Duke, sent me a link to live coverage of the events unfolding in Watertown. At the time –and misinformation was flying as furiously as bullets — police units were reporting IED’s being tossed from the vehicle and “hand grenades.” It’s still too early to know precisely what happened, but this timeline from the New York Times is a trove of information.
2. What I got wrong (some of the information came first-hand from the Boston police scanner and eyewitnesses): The young man lying on his stomach, arms extended over his head and being held at gunpoint by police, was never a suspect. That video and photo ran on television and was all over Twitter… the missing Brown student, Sunil Tripathi and another young man, Mike Muguleta, were identified as the suspects. It turns out that they were not.
3. CNN’s Anderson Cooper is obviously the news network’s leading on-air personality. On Wednesday afternoon Cooper was reporting from Boston, but by Thursday night Cooper had flown to West, Texas, to cover the deadly explosion from the fertilizer plant that claimed more lives. CNN should never have dispatched him there. The story was always in Boston as long as the suspects were on the loose. Guessing that Cooper is miffed about having missed the story of the year.
4. According to CNN the younger suspect, still at large, is a graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public high school in Cambridge, Mass. Notable alumni include Matt Damon, Patrick Ewing, Rumeal Robinson, two other pairs of brothers — Ben and Casey Affleck and Tom and Ray Magliozzi (the hosts of NPR’s “Car Talk”), poet E.E. Cummings, and former Baywatch actress Traci Bingham.
5. CNN’s Judy Woodruff is NOT happy with her camera crew for shooting footage of police units moving in Watertown. I’d hazard a guess that the TV news media is trying to cooperate with law enforcement in not giving away any tactical positions or movements, as the remaining known suspect is at large and may be watching TV.
Reserves
Here is a photo essay on the older brother, a Golden Gloves champion (CNN’s Don Lemon referred to him as a “Golden Globes boxing champion” but, hey, we’ve all made mistakes this week), from back when he was using his time more constructively.
I’ve not been watching non-stop, but has anyone seen John King on CNN since Wednesday afternoon’s fiasco?
Sea World (SEAS) has its IPO this morning. We hear that none of the marine mammal employees were offered shares in the company.
Agree or disagree, but nobody makes a more cogent and hilarious argument than Jon Stewart (and his writing staff). He just destroys the senators who voted against background checks here.
A “Fly By Night” Outfit
The Canadian trio Rush (and others) were at long last inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night. The ceremony was held in Los Angeles. The pr0g-rockers were inducted by Dave Grohl, who is to R&R induction ceremonies what Teddy Atlas is to televised fights. The band finally took the stage at the Nokia Theater –to rousing applause — and played face-melting versions of Tom Sawyer and The Spirit of Radio.
$389 per share?!?! How do you like them AAPLs?
For what it’s worth: There are 30 companies that comprise the Dow Jones Index (DJI), all of them quite monolithic, huge American corporations (e.g., General Electric, Exxon). Apple, which is not in the Dow Jones Index, has more cash than any of them. The stock price of Apple has dipped more than $300 per share, more than 40%, since September. One metric –and not the only one– for measuring stocks’ values against one another is to compare their Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio, a unit that takes the value of the stock and divides it by the actual value of the company (more or less). In other words, how much more than the company’s actual worth investors are willing to pay for it.
Apple (AAPL) is trading this morning at 8.8 times earnings. Its P/E is 8.8. Only two companies on the DJI are trading at a lower P/E than that: Chevron and JP Morgan. The 28 others are trading at a higher P/E, which translates to investors being more bullish about where those companies are heading. We may be looking back at this week, when AAPL fell below $400 per share, and wondering why anyone would not buy AAPL at this insane discount. Or we may be seeing a company in the early throes of its demise.
In news that seemed like forever ago, Tiger Woods’ former caddie, Steve Williams, believes that Woods should have been disqualified from The Masters. Williams, whose golf acumen is a little (a lot) better than mine, lays out the same argument that I did on Monday.
O Captain, My Captain!
Derek Jeter will be out until the All-Star break. As will A-Rod. Jeter and Mariano Rivera last shared a box score was April 30, 2012, in a 2-1 defeat of the Orioles in the Bronx. DJ went 1 for 4 and Mo got the save.
No, you are wrong about why Judy was frantically waving her arms on CNN. I watched that LIVE this morning. At the time, another person at a different locale was talking on air & Judy apparently smelled smoke & noticed police movement (1st, just some & then massive) into that area & she wanted to break in & get on the air to alert the viewers what was happening. I clicked around quickly to various other channels & noone else had that yet. After about 10 minutes, the police then came & moved her team back a bit.
AAPL – I bought a little more when it got pounded down to around $400 & I’ll buy a little more if it gets to $350 or so. And yes, it will eventually be seen if this was geeeenius or I’ll be in need of “thoughts & prayers”. As long as it’s not another Chinese small cap (my personal investing bane), I feel optimistic. Now, about ISRG… Rock’em, sock’em robots on the ropes?
I think our pal Ann gets an assist, but that Revere tweet was retweeted 578 times. Gotta think that’s a Dubs record, if not a Revere record. #threeifbytwitter
Was talking to a friend about NBC sending Matt Lauer to Texas, where the story was never more compelling than Boston. Poor Matt can’t win right now.
Well, despite the impressive activation of thousands of ‘Jr Joneses’ knocking on doors & being personally thrilled & thankful that at least one of “the suspects” was apprehended, the bottom line for me is that law enforcement had let the wounded KID get way AND had no idea where he was when they dismissed the lock-down of Watertown (um, is there a Tumstown next to BEANtown too?). It took the homeowner/neighbor (not sure which, I’ve heard both versions on various TV channels) to INFORM the cops of his boat location.
And then this morning, I heard the police commissioner state that NO ONE had contacted the police of the suspects’ identities after the video/photo release Thursday night & they still had no idea who the perps were until said perps robbed the 7-11, killed the MIT policeman, carjacked the SVU, & instigated the gunfight. I was shocked to hear this as all day Friday, what seemed like hundreds of Dzhohkar’s high school & college “friends” were chating away about how well they knew him & their shock over what was transpiring. NONE of these people had seen the video/photos?!
The biggest shock of all is that these guys STAYED in the Boston area after Monday & did not seem to have any ‘getaway’ plan at all. If one has to rob a 7-11 AFTER your photo/video has been plastered all over the entire nation to finance your way out of town, I’d say this does not qualify as a “plan”. Makes me wonder if they were planning more bombings for the area & perhaps the latter as suicide-type. Or they just never imagined that anyone would ever be able to identify the bombers. Which do you think?