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 Ledes

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The New York Times:' live updates of Hurricane Helene developments today are here. “Hurricane Helene was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday en route to Florida, where residents were bracing for extreme rain, destructive winds and deadly storm surge ahead of the storm’s expected landfall. The storm could intensify to a Category 4, if not higher, before making landfall late Thursday, and forecasters warned Helene’s anticipated large size could make its impacts felt across an extensive area. Areas as distant as Atlanta and the Appalachians are at risk for heavy rains.... Many forecast models show the storm making landfall late Thursday near Florida’s Big Bend Coast, a sparsely populated stretch....” ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post has forecasts for some cites in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina & Tennessee that are in or near the probable path of Helene. ~~~

     ~~~ This morning, an MSNBC weatherperson said Tallahassee (which is inland) would experience wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. and that the National Weather Service said expected 20-foot storm surges near the coast would be “unsurvivable.”

Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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April 30, 2023

Paul Farhi of the Washington Post reports on the White House Correspondents' Dinner. "In a ... serious part of his speech, [President Biden] drew a sharp contrast with his predecessor, who called the news media 'the enemy of the people,' telling the throng, 'The free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar of a free society -- not the enemy.' The president also paid tribute to two captive journalists, freelancer Austin Tice and the Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich. Tice has been held captive in Syria for nearly 11 years. Gershkovich was arrested last month and held by Russian authorities on spying charges -- the first American journalist to be held captive in Russia since the Cold War. 'I'm working like hell to get them home,' he said. And Biden acknowledged the presence of WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was released by Russian officials in December after 10 months of captivity in a prisoner exchange negotiated by his administration. As he turned things over to 'The Daily Show's' Roy Wood Jr..., Biden referenced an internet meme, which his camp has lately embraced, that suggests the existence of a sinister presidential alter ego called 'Dark Brandon.' 'I'm gonna be fine with your jokes,' he said; then added, while putting on aviator sunglasses: 'But I'm not sure about Dark Brandon.'"

David Wallace-Wells interviews Anthony Fauci for the New York Times Magazine.

Marie: Here's an important Senate vote I missed. Thanks to Forrest M. for highlighting it. Forrest is wondering when Republicans will deem women and minorities to be more than 3/5ths persons. And Patrick, in yesterday's thread, was wondering why CNN didn't notice that it was Senate Republicans, not "the Senate" that blocked passage. ~~~

~~~ Al Weaver & Mychael Schnell of the Hill (April 27): "Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a measure that would have allowed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to be added to the Constitution. Senators voted 51 to 47 to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed, falling short of the 60 votes it it needed. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) were the lone Republicans to vote with every Democrat. The ERA passed Congress in 1972, having been first proposed in 1923. Constitutional amendments, under U.S. law, must be ratified by three-quarters of all state legislatures, meaning 38 states. In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA, but it did so after the 1982 deadline to ratify the amendment.... The Senate resolution would have removed the deadline so that the ERA could become the 28th Amendment. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Murkowski were the resolution's lead co-sponsors. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) argued throughout the week that the legislation was needed following the Supreme Court's ruling last summer that overturned Roe v. Wade. 'This resolution is as necessary as it is timely. America can never hope to be a land of freedom and opportunity so long as half of its population is treated like second class citizens,' Schumer said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: This is infuriating. I don't think Chuck & Friends were serious about passage. Otherwise, they would have raised a stink twice a day every day about Republicans who would not support the most fundamental right of all Americans to be treated equally under the law. Moreover, they should have been educating Americans about what the ERA actually says. There's nothing vaguely radical about it -- unless you're one of those who think women, Black people and others should be chattel.

Rudy Was Always a Shady Character. Maya Yang of the Guardian relates the account Rudy Giuliani gave to Steve Bannon Tuesday about how in his campaign for New York City mayor in 1993, Rudy had operatives who gave out cards all over East Harlem that read, "If you come to vote, make sure you have your green card because INS are picking up illegals." Rudy won the race by 53,000 votes. Rudy's rationale for this particular dirty trick is that he was preventing illegal voting because only people trying to vote illegally would avoid the polls. But of course that's not true. Citizens who are registered to vote don't want to be hassled or subjected to a mistaken-identity foul-up where they wind up in Rikers for three months trying to straighten it out. Given the likelihood INS agents would rough them up or arrest & jail them on some error or pretext, many legal voters most likely chose not to go to the polls. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Reminds me of this quintessential scene from "Frazier" in which Frazier & Niles try to launch an upscale restaurant (play to the end):

From Trump Honcho to Starbucks Barista Trainer. Drew Harwell of the Washington Post: "About six months ago, Will Wilkerson was the executive vice president of operations for ... Donald Trump's media business, a co-founder of Trump's Truth Social website and a holder of stock options that might have one day made him a millionaire. Today, he is a certified barista trainer at a Starbucks inside a Harris Teeter grocery store, where he works 5:30 a.m. shifts..., making Frappuccinos for $16 an hour. Wilkerson, 38, has become one of the biggest threats to the Trump company's future: a federally protected whistleblower whose attorneys say has provided 150,000 emails, contracts and other internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and investigators in Florida and New York.... Wilkerson last year publicly accused Trump Media and Technology Group of violating securities laws, telling The Washington Post he could not stay silent while the company's executives gave what he viewed as misleading information to investors, many of whom are small-time shareholders loyal to the Trump brand." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I see where Wilkerson also enjoys the non-exclusive distinction of being sued for defamation by Devin Nunes. (Last week, a federal judge tossed a Nunes (or Devin Nunes' cow) defamation suit against Esquire after the judge determined that the supposedly defamatory story by Ryan Lizza was "substantially, objectively true.")

Way Beyond the Beltway

Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out Saturday's drone attack on a fuel depot in Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by the Kremlin in 2014. Ukraine hasn't claimed responsibility for the strike, which comes as Kyiv is preparing for a long-anticipated spring counteroffensive to retake territory seized by Moscow.... Wagner Group founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin reportedly threatened to withdraw his mercenaries from the besieged city of Bakhmut, which Kyiv and Moscow have been fighting over for months. In an interview with a Russian war blogger posted on Telegram, Prigozhin said his fighters will need to 'withdraw in an organized manner or stay and die.' Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said his remarks are probably intended to secure more ammunition from the Kremlin.... Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she and members of a U.S. delegation who visited Ukraine a few months after Russia's invasion 'thought we could die' during the trip. 'It was very, it was dangerous,' Pelosi told the Associated Press in an interview."

News Lede

Washington Post: The man who shot five people dead in Cleveland, Texas, escaped the immediate area, probably on foot, and is still on the run. Related story linked yesterday.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (10)

Roy Wood Jr: "We can all see Clarence Thomas, but he belongs to billionaire Harlon Crow. And THAT'S what an NFT is."

Concise, true, and funny.

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterNiskyGuy

@Nisky Guy: Yeah, I hadda look up "NFT." For those of you equally acronym-challenged, that's "non-fungible token." I knew that joke was funny -- it got a lot of laughs -- but I didn't know why.

April 30, 2023 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

That musky smell just won't go away.
https://fortune.com/2023/04/27/new-york-mta-twitter-service-alerts-
elon-musk/

New York's subway will no longer post alerts on Twitter after Elon
Musk demanded $50,000.00 per month.

That's one way to pay off that failed rocket launch.

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterForrest Morris

Time for a Sunday sermon....and I just happen to have one ready to deliver.

"The connections have been there for a long time. The news this last week made them obvious.

Ranging from the national debt limit standoff to the shootings of people who mistakenly knocked on the wrong door, drove into the wrong driveway or attempted to enter the wrong car, the common thread is clear: Don’t disagree with me, don’t frighten me, or don’t make me mad. Do what I want, or you’ll be sorry.

The debt standoff has been accurately described as hostage taking. If the administration will not agree to deep cuts to education, health care, and food assistance for poor children, Republicans threaten to send the economy into a tailspin. That they themselves had a large hand in the creating the debt they now won’t honor doesn’t matter. Just like those who shot the innocent people on porches and driveways, they’re using the power they possess to protect themselves from what they fear.

Guns can make the weak feel strong. Similarly, threatening default is now emboldening the Republican minority. Republicans do hold the House, if only by a thread. They have an unpopular and ethically challenged Supreme Court. They have state legislatures setting higher thresholds for initiative approval, requiring sixty percent, sometimes more, rather than fifty-plus for passage (pewtrusts.org). But since coddling the rich, outlawing abortion, discouraging voters, and ignoring the proliferation of gun violence are all unpopular, democracy no longer works for them.

Frightened by a majority that supports abortion and voting rights, that senses that the economic game is stacked against them, that rejects gender discrimination, Republicans have decided attacking democracy and pointing a metaphorical gun at the nation’s economic head are great equalizers.

Were last week’s victims of gun violence at the wrong door, in the wrong driveway—or in a country that’s going wrong?"

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

Some pleasing news for some, or a glass half-full account featuring my local hero...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/30/democrat-attorneys-general-abortion-guns/

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

Relax everyone, the May 3 2023 deadline has been extended to
May 7, 2025.
I didn't know about it either, so checked my driver's license, and
sure enough, I'm good to go. Can fly or enter a federal building with
just my driver's license for ID.
Check for a gold star. Mine is in the upper right corner, good for 3
more years.

https://www.dhs.gov/real-id/news/2021/04/27/dhs-announces-
extension-real-id-full-enforcement-deadline

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterForrest Morris

"Don’t disagree with me, don’t frighten me, or don’t make me mad. Do what I want, or you’ll be sorry."
Oh dear, Ken, I've recognized something:
It just may be slightly true that in the dim past, I might have sat the living room couch amid a pile of clothes, an unmade dinner and very noisy kids, that I thought the very same thing.

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterVictoria

Victoria: OR we can switch the roles here and those very same thoughts and actions come from children whose parents let them "get away with murder"and when adults actually commit them.

Marie: thank you for the Frasier clip––-so good to laugh! Also thanks for explaining what NFT stands for---we older folks here be lost in translation.

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterP.D.Pepe

I heard an interview with Roy Wood on Fresh Air yesterday. A funny guy. They played a clip from a stand-up he did in which he explained why he liked Confederate flags.

“Confederate flag shows you where the dangerous white people are. I pull up to a diner and see a confederate flag in the window, I don’t go in.” He also said he wished there was some way to identify the cool white people, like a bracelet or stamp on the back of the hand like you get at nightclubs.

Don’t think a single R pol would get one of those. If they did, they’d be silenced or just kicked out of the White Supremacy Club.

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Victoria,

I think we’ve all been there at some point in our lives. The difference is, when you felt that way you were probably reaching for aspirin, not a gun.

April 30, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus
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