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The Ledes

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Washington Post: “Rescue teams raced to submerged homes, scoured collapsed buildings and steered thousands from overflowing dams as Helene carved a destructive path Friday, knocking out power and flooding a vast arc of communities across the southeastern United States. At least 40 people were confirmed killed in five states since the storm made landfall late Thursday as a Category 4 behemoth, unleashing record-breaking storm surge and tree-snapping gusts. 4 million homes and businesses have lost electricity across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, prompting concerns that outages could drag on for weeks. Mudslides closed highways. Water swept over roofs and snapped phone lines. Houses vanished from their foundations. Tornadoes added to the chaos. The mayor of hard-hit Canton, N.C., called the scene 'apocalyptic.'”

The Wires

The Ledes

Friday, September 27, 2024

New York Times: “Maggie Smith, one of the finest British stage and screen actors of her generation, whose award-winning roles ranged from a freethinking Scottish schoolteacher in 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' to the acid-tongued dowager countess on 'Downton Abbey,' died on Friday in London. She was 89.”

The Washington Post's live updates of developments related to Hurricane Helene are here: “Hurricane Helene left one person dead in Florida and two in Georgia as it sped north. One of the biggest storms on record to hit the Gulf Coast, Helene slammed into Florida’s Big Bend area on Thursday night as a Category 4 colossus with winds of up to 140 mph before weakening to Category 1. Catastrophic winds and torrential rain from the storm — which the National Hurricane Center forecast would eventually slow over the Tennessee Valley — were expected to continue Friday across the Southeast and southern Appalachians.” ~~~

~~~ The New York Times' live updates are here.

Mediaite: “Fox Weather’s Bob Van Dillen was reporting live on Fox & Friends about flooding in Atlanta from Hurricane Helene when he was interrupted by the screams of a woman trapped in her car. During the 7 a.m. hour, Van Dillen was filing a live report on the massive flooding in the area. Fox News viewers could clearly hear the urgent screams for help emerging from a car stuck on a flooded road in the background of the live shot. Van Dillen ... told Fox & Friends that 911 had been called and that the local Fire Department was on its way. But as he continued to file the report, the screams did not stop, so Van Dillen cut the live shot short.... Some 10 minutes later, Fox & Friends aired live footage of Van Dillen carrying the woman to safety, waking through chest-deep water while the flooding engulfed her car in the background[.]”

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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.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Page Links

Sunday

Apr232023

April 23, 2023

Coral Davenport & Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "President Biden's administration is poised to announce limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that could compel them to capture the pollution from their smokestacks, technology now used by fewer than 20 of the nation's 3,400 coal and gas-fired plants, according to three people who were briefed on the rule. If implemented, the proposed regulation would be the first time the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, which generate about 25 percent of the planet-warming pollution produced by the United States. It would also apply to future plants.... The proposed rule is sure to face opposition from the fossil fuel industry, power plant operators and their allies in Congress. It is likely to draw an immediate legal challenge from a group of Republican attorneys general that has already sued the Biden administration to stop other climate policies. A future administration could also weaken the regulation." MB: Because of course what the world needs is assurance that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions continue apace.

Rebecca Beitsch of the Hill: "The silencing of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after she called Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas a liar in a hearing has led to a pledge for a more civil House Homeland Security Committee going forward -- a standard lawmakers may struggle to meet as they gear up for the secretary's impeachment.... Greene called the decision to silence her for the rest of the hearing unfair, noting that numerous Republican speakers before her accused Mayorkas of lying to Congress, even if they did not label him as a liar directly... '... I think most Republicans were calling [the] secretary names, belittling him and not allowing him to speak, insinuating that he was lying -- all things which are false,' [Rep. Robert] Garcia [D-Calif.] told The Hill.... Several Democrats, meanwhile, have sought to dismiss the budding impeachment argument from the GOP. 'They can disagree with [Mayorkas] on policy, but that is not a high crime and misdemeanor, nor does it in any way violate the Constitution and has no grounds for impeachment,' Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) said." ~~~

~~~ Marie: I'm sorry, but people like Miss Margie have never learned to have any self-control. I believe she would tell the Pope to his face he was an asshole if she disagreed with him about something. And if chastised, she would defend her remark because these people also have no inclination toward self-reflection. They suffer from extreme arrested development; they got stuck in their terrible twos and they can't get out.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "... the Supreme Court's order on Friday night maintaining the availability of a commonly used abortion pill nonetheless sent a powerful message from a chastened court. 'Legal sanity prevailed, proving that, at least for now, disrupting the national market for an F.D.A.-approved drug is a bridge too far, even for this court,' said David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University.... In his concurrence in Dobbs, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the majority had abandoned 'principles of judicial restraint' at the cost of 'a serious jolt to the legal system.' Friday's order avoided a second jolt.... Notwithstanding his pledges that the court was getting out of the abortion business, [Justice Samuel Alito] issued a dissent that packed a lot of grievance into its roughly three pages.... He devoted much of it to accusing the Biden administration of acting in bad faith.... 'Justice Alito, who wrote so passionately [in Dobbs] about returning abortion to the states to be decided by their elected representatives, would have allowed an order to take effect that made abortion less accessible only in states where abortion remained legal,' [University of Pittsburgh law professor Greer Donley said." ~~~

~~~ Marie: Note that if "legal sanity prevailed," as Prof. Cohen says, then it follows that Alito's and Thomas's dissents are exercises in "legal insanity." I'll go along with that. ~~~

~~~ Alito's Opinion "Reads Like a Fox News Grandpa's Rant." Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post:"In the rush to celebrate the failure of medical zealots (this time) to dredge up an antiabortion activist in robes to countermand the FDA, Alito's dissent shouldn't be ignored, for it perfectly encapsulates the degree to which he's become 'unmoored from reason,' as legal scholar Norman Eisen tells me.... Supreme Court advocates and constitutional experts with whom I spoke ... cite a batch of objectionable arguments and remarks in his dissent.... Alito's dissent begins with an extended, bitter and unnecessary rant about the shadow docket.... It's entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand and, as with so much of Alito's writing, utterly intemperate.... [His] unprecedented attack on the government's obedience to court rulings -- based on nothing -- is out of order.... Moreover, Alito's dissent demonstrates that he does not care one whit about the women affected if the drug were suddenly made unavailable. (At least he's consistent; he also utterly ignored the interests of women in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, giving them no weight in contrast to the seemingly inviolate interest of states in commandeering women's reproductive choices.)" Read the whole column. ~~~

~~~ Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times argues that the mifepristone case & several others cases before the courts demonstrate how religious (MB: I would say "Christian fundamentalist") beliefs have informed judicial decisions.

Roberts Punts Again. Ariane de Vogue of CNN: "Chief Justice John Roberts has declined to directly respond [link fixed] to a congressional request to investigate Justice Clarence Thomas' alleged ethical lapses. Roberts instead referred the request from Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin to the Judicial Conference, which serves as the policy-making body of the federal courts. The Illinois Democrat had penned a letter urging Roberts to investigate Thomas after a ProPublica report that found that Thomas had gone on several luxury trips at the invitation of a GOP megadonor. The trips were not disclosed on Thomas' public financial filings.... Durbin has also sent a separate letter to Roberts asking him to testify in an upcoming hearing regarding Supreme Court ethics. Roberts has yet to respond to that letter. The senator said in a statement Saturday, 'It is clear that such an appearance by the Chief Justice may be the only way for the Court to set out with clarity and meaningful and credible reform.' He added that if the "Court does not address shortcomings in its ethical standards," then Congress must. Durbin's statement included a letter from Judge Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the secretary of the Judicial Conference, that said, 'I write in response to the letter of April 10, 2023, from you and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Chief Justice of the United States, which has been referred to me.' Mauskopf added that she would send the matter to the conference's Committee on Financial Disclosure." ~~~

~~~ Marie: The headline of de Vogue's article describes Roberts as "punting" Durbin's request. Roberts punts a lot. He wanted to punt on Dobbs, for instance, but he couldn't control the Court's zealots. He did manage to punt on the mifepristone case. In his confirmation hearings, Roberts famously claimed, "My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat. I have no agenda." That baseball analogy of course turned out to be a "misdirection," as Roberts led the Court's sharp right turn. The football analogy is a better fit.

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Anyone expecting that Fox's $787.5 million settlement with Dominion this week would make the network any humbler or gentler is likely to be disappointed. And there probably won't be much of a shift in the way the network favorably covers [Donald] Trump and the issues that resonate with his followers.... After a hiatus from the network that lasted much of 2022, Mr. Trump is back on Fox News.... In Mr. Trump's recent interview with the Fox host Tucker Carlson, he implied that there was good reason to doubt the legitimacy of President Biden's victory, saying, 'People could say he won an election.' Mr. Carlson, for his part, has also dipped back into election denialism recently. 'Jan. 6, I think, is probably second only to the 2020 election as the biggest scam of my lifetime,' he said on the air on March 14.... In the immediate term, [Rupert] Murdoch seems unlikely to make any major changes at any of his Fox properties."

Presidential Race 2024. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "Even in a world made crueler by social media and Donald Trump, [Ron] DeSantis seems mean, punching out at Mickey Mouse, imigrants, gays and women; pushing through an expansion of his proposal to ban school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity to include all grades, as well as a draconian ban on abortion after six weeks. He even admonished some high school kids during the pandemic for wearing masks. On Thursday, DeSantis signed a bill cutting the number of jurors needed to give a defendant the death sentence from 12 to 8."

Beyond the Beltway

Alaska. Sean McGuire of the Anchorage Daily News, via Yahoo! News: "In a landmark decision, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional under the Alaska Constitution's equal protection doctrine. The decision follows a contentious recent reapportionment cycle: The Alaska Redistricting Board was twice found by the state's highest court of having unconstitutionally gerrymandered the state's political maps by attempting to give solidly Republican Eagle River more political representation with two Senate seats. Following a court order, the board approved an interim map last year for November's general election that kept Eagle River intact in one Senate district. The court ruled Friday that the redistricting board would have 90 days to appear before a Superior Court judge and show cause why the interim political map should not be used until the 2032 general election." ~~~

~~~ Marie: If all state supreme courts would recognize the right to equal representation, we would have a different House of Representatives, most likely one with a Democratic majority. (Of course, a few states have only one House member, so on the federal level, there would be no change. But in state houses, forbidding gerrymandering -- as a few states already do -- would make quite a difference.)

Way Beyond

Sudan. The New York Times is live-updating developments in the crisis in Sudan: "The United States military airlifted embassy officials out of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, amid continuing violence as rival military leaders battled for control of Africa's third-largest country, President Biden said late on Saturday. In a briefing for reporters, officials said that just over 100 special operations troops were involved in evacuating under 100 people -- mostly U.S. Embassy employees -- using helicopters that flew in from the nation of Djibouti, about 800 miles away." ~~~

~~~ John Hudson of the Washington Post: "The U.S. military completed the evacuation of all American embassy personnel and family members from Sudan early Sunday local time, President Biden said, as rival military factions battled for control of the country amid a sharp uptick in casualties in Africa's third-largest nation. 'I am grateful for the unmatched skill of our service members who successfully brought them to safety,' Biden said in a statement that also thanked the governments of Djibouti, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia for help." CNN's report is here. ~~~

~~~ President Biden's statement, via the White House, is here.

Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "The Kremlin will expel more than 20 German diplomats from Russia, state media reported, in a move characterized by Moscow as retaliation for a similar move by Berlin. The German Foreign Ministry acknowledged that it had kicked out Russian diplomats as part of an attempt to decrease the number of intelligence agents in the country.... Russia told its citizens to avoid travel to Canada due to alleged incidents of discrimination and physical attacks. It did not substantiate the accusations.... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced new measures targeting 322 companies and numerous other entities. The blacklist includes Russian weapons manufacturers and those who help Russia circumvent punitive measures.

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Today is World Book Day, organized by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to promote
reading, publishing, etc.
Take that, red states, if they have any books left to ban!

Trickle down racism, sexism and the like , has now reached the
county level here in West Michigan. County commissions are firing
any qualified person, some with 30 or more years experience and
replacing them with like minded racists and sexists. What does a
used car salesman know about running a particular division of
government?
And I thought it could never happen here. Can't vote them out 'cause
only Republicans run for office. Dems don't have a chance in hell.
(Hell is a small town in southern Michigan).

April 23, 2023 |

Forrest Morris

Getting the name right

Jen Rubin, in the article linked above, points out, should any pointing still be required, Hit Man Sam Alito’s antipathy towards any concerns women might have about being denied access to mifepristone.

One needs only to recall the title of the case that allowed this off the chain, extremist, theocratic court to effectively ban abortions in most states which involved Thomas Dobbs, state health officer of the Mississippi State Department and the Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

According to most accounts of the case, Dobbs played no active role in the Supreme Court’s theocratic infused deliberations. The anti-democratic theocrats on the Court simply saw this case as their chance to shiv Roe. Thus, the case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health should more accurately and truthfully be known as Supreme Court v Women’s Health.

That says it all.

April 23, 2023 |

Akhilleus

A former judge resigns from the S.C. Bar and details reasons for in a letter to Roberts–--he says he has lost faith in the court. It's worth a read.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/judge-james-dannenberg-supreme-court-bar-roberts-letter.html

Forest: And I thought Michigan was going great guns with Whitmore as a feisty arbiter of democracy. Guess you can't control everything.

"I thought it could never happen here" is the refrain from others through the ages after their lives have been shattered.

April 23, 2023 |

P.D.Pepe

https://www.yahoo.com/news/18-northern-us-states-able-
16580413.html

Everyone has to stay up late tonite if you're in the northern states.
Northern lights should start after 10:00 P.M.

April 23, 2023 |

Forrest Morris

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