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The Ledes

Friday, October 11, 2024

Washington Post: “Floridians began returning to damaged and waterlogged homes on Thursday after Hurricane Milton carved a path of destruction and grief across the state, the second massive storm to strike Florida in as many weeks. At least 14 storm-related deaths were attributed to the hurricane, which made landfall south of Sarasota at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, officials said. Six of them were killed when two tornadoes touched down ahead of the storm in St. Lucie County on Florida’s central Atlantic coast. The deadly tornadoes, rising waters, torrential rain and punishing winds battered the state from coast to coast as Milton churned eastward before heading out to sea early Thursday.”

Washington Post: “Twelve people were rescued from an inactive Colorado gold mine after they were trapped 1,000 feet underground for about six hours following an elevator malfunction. One person was killed in the accident, which happened about 500 feet underground at the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near Cripple Creek, Colo., Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said at a Thursday news conference. The site is a tourist attraction. Eleven other people aboard the elevator at the time, including two children, were rescued shortly after the mechanical malfunction, which Mikesell said 'created a severe danger for the participants.' He said four suffered minor injuries.... Twelve others in a separate group remained trapped in a mine shaft 1,000 feet underground for several hours after the incident, before they were rescued Thursday evening, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said.”

The Wires

The Ledes

Thursday, October 10, 2024

CNBC: “The pace of price increases over the past year was higher than forecast in September while jobless claims posted an unexpected jump following Hurricane Helene and the Boeing strike, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The consumer price index, a broad gauge measuring the costs of goods and services across the U.S. economy, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.4%. Both readings were 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus. The annual inflation rate was 0.1 percentage point lower than August and is the lowest since February 2021.”

The New York Times' live updates of Hurrucane Milton consequences Thursday are here: “Milton was still producing damaging hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall to parts of East and Central Florida, forecasters said early Thursday, even as the powerful storm roared away from the Atlantic coast and left deaths and widespread damage across the state. Cities along Florida’s east coast are now facing flash flooding, damaging winds and storm surges. Some had already been battered by powerful tornadoes spun out by the storm before it made landfall on the Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane. In [St. Lucie] county [Fort Pierce], several people in a retirement community were killed by a tornado, the police said.... More than three million customers were without power in Florida as of early Thursday.” ~~~

~~~ Here are the Weater Channel's live updates.

CNN: “The 2024 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Han Kang, a South Korean author, for her 'intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.' Han, 53, began her career with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine, before making her prose debut in 1995 with a short story collection. She later began writing longer prose works, most notably 'The Vegetarian,' one of her first books to be translated into English. The novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, charts a young woman’s attempt to live a more 'plant-like' existence after suffering macabre nightmares about human cruelty. Han is the first South Korean author to win the literature prize, and just the 18th woman out of the 117 prizes awarded since 1901.” The New York Times story is here.

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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.”

Page Links

Saturday

May172014

The Commentariat -- May 18, 2014

CW: It pains me to owe an apology to Charles Murray, the charlatan "scholar" of the American Enterprise Institute, but it rends me in two Rumpelstiltskin-style to owe a big mea culpa to David Fucking Brooks. But I do, I do. Yesterday I linked as straight news a satirical article about Murray that claimed he said women had smaller brains than men -- which explained why there were no great female philosophers. He did make the assertion about female philosophers, but he never claimed women had teeny-weeny brains. So, Charles Murray, I apologize. Gulp. And David Brooks, I'm vewwy, vewwy sorry. I am sorriest for misleading readers who trusted me not to lead them astray. Thanks to contributor Lisa for setting me straight.

Annals of Journalism, CYA Edition

NEW. Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times: "Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times, released a statement Saturday afternoon detailing his decision to fire the newspaper’s executive editor, Jill Abramson. He was responding to a growing controversy over accusations by Ms. Abramson’s supporters that gender played a role in her dismissal."

... Sulzberger's statement is here. CW: Nothing about her smallish brain. The Times is all for gender equality, Sulzberger sez.

NEW. Dylan Byers of Politico: "New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger fired executive editor Jill Abramson after concluding that she had misled both him and chief executive Mark Thompson during her effort to hire a new co-managing editor, according to two sources with knowledge of the reason for her termination."

Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times on the early history of the Koch brothers' political involvement in politics. CW: I was interested to see they were among those influenced by the Powell memo.

David Ferguson of the Raw Story: "Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) said in an interview Friday that he is ready and willing to serve on the House Republican committee slated to investigate the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.... In appearance on Rev. Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show on Friday night, Grayson said, 'I would be their worst, worst nightmare. I’d be their worst and last nightmare.'”

Maureen Dowd, following up on Tim Egan's most recent column (linked here May 15), writes an excellent essay about Condoleezza Rice.

Senate Race -- Mississippi-Style

AP: "Authorities say a conservative Mississippi blogger went into a nursing home, photographed the bedridden wife of Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran without permission and posted an image online. Rose Cochran has lived at St. Catherine's Village since 2000 and has dementia. Madison police say 28-year-old Clayton Thomas Kelly of Pearl was arrested Friday and charged with a felony, exploitation of a vulnerable adult. He remained jailed Saturday under $100,000 bond." ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM: "I'm inclined to say this is what happens when you've got a Tea Party candidate who dabbles in neo-confederate and supremacist politics. But boy is this one weird and dirty. Here are the key facts. Incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran's wife has been in a nursing home for more than a decade. Precise details are sketchy but she appears to suffer from some form of advanced dementia and is in precarious health. The Tea Party candidate McDaniel has been dishing out an avalanche of oppo over recent days including a very weird article in Breitbart which in the guise of talking about spending on congressional trips was clearly intended to suggest that Cochran is having an affair." ...

... CW: Excuse me. Are voters supposed to be horrified that a man whose wife has been hospitalized with dementia for 10 years has a relationship with another woman? Is Jane Eyre really relavant in 21st-century Mississippi? Maybe so.

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Friday

May162014

The Commentariat -- May 17, 2014

Your Friday Afternoon News Dump. Richard Oppel of the New York Times: "One day after deflecting calls from unhappy senators to shake up his leadership team, Eric Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs, ousted the department’s soon-to-retire head of health care. The move came amid snowballing allegations that veterans hospitals manipulated waiting lists to hide long delays many patients faced to see physicians.... But ... Republican officials quickly pointed out that Dr. [Robert] Petzel’s retirement had already been announced last September — to take effect this year — and that two weeks ago President Obama nominated Dr. Jeffrey A. Murawsky, a senior department official, to replace him." ...

... Dana Milbank: Shinseki must go.

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "With border authorities in South Texas overwhelmed by a surge of young illegal migrants traveling by themselves, the Department of Homeland Security declared a crisis this week and moved to set up an emergency shelter for the youths at an Air Force base in San Antonio, officials said Friday. After seeing children packed in a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Tex., during a visit last Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Monday declared 'a level-four condition of readiness' in the Rio Grande Valley."

** Women Are "Nice Enough," Just Not Too Bright. David Neilson of Newslo: "American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray -- who is an educational advisor to Republican governor candidate Greg Abbott, told an audience at the University of Texas this week that there is no 'evidence' showing that any woman has ever been a 'significant original thinker.' He then said the reason for this was the smaller size of the female brain. 'When you compare the size of a man’s brain with that of a woman, there’s no comparison,' explained Murray. 'It’s not that I have anything against women. They’re nice enough, but it’s just a physical fact that their brains have developed to the same degree that men’s brains have developed.'” Thanks to Julie L. for the link. ...

... CW: Let me just add here that Murray is NYT columnist David Brooks' favorite "scholar." Brooks has cited him extensively & approvingly in his columns (& in his books, I think), & -- if I recall correctly -- they have stroked each other on various Villager symposia & write lovely things about each other on book jacket blurbs. The Times may have fired the "pushy" broad, but Brooks would have to screw Pinch's lady friend at the entrance to 620 8th Ave. to lose his place on the op-ed page. ...

... CW UPDATE: Oh noes! I've been punked. See comment in May 18 Commentariat.

Marjorie Connelly of the New York Times: "In response to polling data showing that the Affordable Care Act has become more popular, a prominent Republican pollster said that he expected Republicans to change how they talked about the law. 'After the primaries, expect a shift in Republican candidates’ rhetoric against Obamacare,' said Bill McInturff, a partner in Public Opinion Strategies. 'Only [a] few want to repeal the law; most want to fix and keep it,' he added." ...

... "We Can't Pass Laws Because Obama Won't Enforce Them, Ctd." Kate Nocera of BuzzFeed: "An aide to House Speaker John Boehner rejected Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett’s comments that the administration has a 'commitment' from Boehner to pass immigration reform... "But as the speaker has said repeatedly, it’s difficult to see how we make progress until the American people have faith that President Obama will enforce the law as written,' [said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel]. ...

... CW: Here's an indication of Boehner's "commitment" to immigration reform. Seung Min Kim of Politico: "House Majority Leader Eric Cantor won’t allow attempts next week to include a measure on a must-pass defense policy bill that would legalize young undocumented immigrants who serve in the military. A spokesman confirmed Friday that the legislation, known as the Enlist Act, will not be among those debated with the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon. Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), the Enlist Act’s chief sponsor, had pledged to bring it up as part of the floor battle over the defense bill."

David Dayen of the New Republic: "People power" has put true net neutrality back on the agenda. "The grassroots pressure got tech firms off the sidelines. Over 100 of them, including Google, Facebook and Amazon, publicly opposed [FCC] Chairman [Tom] Wheeler’s rules, arguing that the rules should not allow 'individualized bargaining and discrimination.'”...

... Lee Drutman & Zander Furnas of the Daily Dot have done an analysis of which companies have spent the most $$$ lobbying for & against net neutrality: The biggest oppo spenders: Verizon, AT&T & Comcast.

CW: Glad to read your differing takes yesterday on Tim Egan's column about preserving the "diversity" of commencement speakers. Could we agree that this is carrying political correctness too far?

Cindy Boren of the Washington Post: "Embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has no intention of accepting two-thirds of the punishment imposed upon him by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. He may be staying away from his team and the league, but he will not pay the $2.5 million fine levied against him and he will sue the league to retain ownership of the team...."

Annals of Journalism, Ctd.

Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times: "The controversy over the firing of Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, continued on Friday as the company’s chief executive [Mark Thompson] sent a letter to senior editors in an effort to further address the reasons for her dismissal." ...

... Here are the New Yorker articles, by Ken Auletta, which Somaiya refers to in his piece linked above: Part 1 and Part 2 of why Pinch fired Jill. Very interesting, if this is the kind of gossip that interests you. CW: Bottom line, I think: the principals are all people who don't play well with others, so firings are hardly surprising. Add to that the Times' long history of misogyny, & Abramson's ouster seemed nearly inevitable. ...

... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "A New York Times spokeswoman demanded on Friday morning that the New Yorker magazine correct a report about the newspaper's firing of executive editor Jill Abramson. The magazine, however, responded by saying its original report was accurate." ...

... Michelle Dean of Gawker: It's the old "If X = Y, then woman = pushy/man = bold" equation. ...

... Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast: "When they tell you it’s not about the money, it’s about the money. In Abramson’s case, it’s about the money and a lawyer. It’s also about being, to put it politely, less than forthcoming with Dean Baquet, her deputy and now successor, regarding her plan to hire Guardian journalist Janine Gibson to be Baquet’s co-managing editor in charge of digital journalism."

A Big Day in Pretend Journalism:

Gail Collins: Everybody's talking about Hillary.

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Friday

May162014

The Commentariat -- May 16, 2014

CW: I'm baaaack! Sort of.

Paul Krugman: The Republican "party's intellectual evolution (or maybe more accurately, its devolution) has reached a point of no return, in which allegiance to false doctrines has become a crucial badge of identity."

Tim Egan: Political correction, from the left & right, is depriving grads "of hearing something that might spoil a view of the world they've already figured out."

News Ledes

AP: "Jeb Stuart Magruder, a Watergate conspirator-turned-minister who claimed in later years to have heard President Richard Nixon order the infamous break-in, has died. He was 79."

New York Times: "The Indian National Congress, which has headed India's government for nearly all the country's post-Independence history, conceded defeat to the opposition leader Narendra Modi on Friday, as voters rendered a crushing verdict on their country's flagging economic growth and a drumbeat of corruption scandals. Election officials had not yet finished counting the 550 million votes cast in the five-week general elections, but the contours of Congress's defeat quickly became clear."

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