SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:03 P.M. ET:

JOBS REVERSAL – The six-month run of good job-creation numbers has come to an end.  The report for last month burst a big bubble.  From CNN:  "Yuck. The jobs market lost some steam in August, with only 142,000 jobs added last month.  The consensus forecast from economists surveyed by CNNMoney was for a jobs gain of 226,000 jobs.  The unemployment rate dipped slightly to 6.1%, down from 6.2% in July. That was in line with estimates, but it wasn't much for job seekers to celebrate.  This breaks a streak of six straight months with more than 200,000 jobs added."  We need 150,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth.  So this report is grim.

WHERE ARE YOUR CHILDREN? – From the Washington Free Beacon:  "Cuba’s communist-led intelligence services are aggressively recruiting leftist American academics and university professors as spies and influence agents, according to an internal FBI report published this week.  Cuban intelligence services 'have perfected the work of placing agents, that includes aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service],' the five-page unclassified FBI report says. It notes that the Cubans 'devote a significant amount of resources to targeting and exploiting U.S. academia.'"   I'm sure the Cuban service gets plenty of volunteers from "progressive" academics.

HORSE RACE – Many pundits had written off Scott Brown in his attempt to return to the Senate by taking on Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.  Not so fast.  From the Weekly Standard:  "Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic senator from New Hampshire, leads her likely Republican challenger Scott Brown by just three points in a new poll commissioned by American Crossroads. The conservative super PAC's poll of likely New Hampshire voters was conducted at the end of August....This is the second poll in recent weeks to suggest a tightening contest between Shaheen and Brown. This comes after several months of a wider race, with Shaheen leading in some polls by double digits."  It's still uphill, but Brown is making it a horse race.  We can hope.

September 5, 2014