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.”

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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.”

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Monday
Nov022020

ELECTION RESULTS -- November 3, 4

President-Elect Biden delivers very presidential remarks Wednesday afternoon:

~~~ MEANWHILE. Mark Sherman of the AP: “The Trump campaign said it filed lawsuits Wednesday in Pennsylvania and Michigan, laying the groundwork for contesting the outcome in undecided battleground states that could determine whether ... Donald Trump gets another four years in the White House. Suits in both states are demanding better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, the campaign said. The campaign also is seeking to intervene in a Pennsylvania case at the Supreme Court that deals with whether ballots received up to three days after the election can be counted, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark said. The campaign said it is calling for a temporary halt in the counting in both states until it is given 'meaningful' access in numerous locations and allowed to review ballots that already have been opened and processed. Trump is running slightly behind Democratic nominee Joe Biden in Michigan. The president is ahead in Pennsylvania but his margin is shrinking as more mailed ballots are counted.”

Alexander Burns & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: “With no winner declared in the 2020 presidential race, President Trump appeared in the White House just after 2 a.m. on Wednesday to brazenly claim he had already won the election — and to insist that votes stop being counted even though the ballots of millions of Americans had yet to be tallied. Speaking with a mix of defiance, anger and wonder that the election had not yet been called in his favor, the president recounted his standing in an array of battleground states before falsely declaring: 'Frankly, we did win this election.' No news organizations declared a winner between Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr., and a number of closely contested states still had millions of mail-in ballots to count, in part because state and local Republican officials had insisted that they not be counted until Election Day. Mr. Trump said, without offering any explanation, that 'we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,' and added: 'We want all voting to stop.' No elected leader has the right to unilaterally order votes to stop being counted, and Mr. Trump’s middle-of-the-night proclamation amounted to a reckless attempt to hijack the electoral process as results in key battleground states were still not final, something without precedent in American politics.” ~~~

~~~ Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: “Addressing the nation from the White House about 2:30 a.m., Trump challenged the integrity of the vote to an unprecedented and breathtaking degree. The president said the ongoing vote count in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other key battleground states amounted to 'a major fraud on our nation,' and he vowed to file lawsuits to stop it. Claiming a conspiracy to keep from declaring him the victor, Trump said: 'This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.'” ~~~

~~~ David Bauder & Lynn Elber of the AP: “In a stunning scene in the middle of the night, news organizations rebuked ... Donald Trump after he falsely said on live television that he had won reelection even as votes were still being counted.... CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell said Trump was 'castrating the facts' by 'falsely claiming that he has won the election and disenfranchising millions of voters whose ballots have not been counted.' 'Donald Trump is losing right now both in the popular vote and the electoral vote and there are many states left to be called,' ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos said. Said NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie, 'The fact of the matter is we don’t know who won the election.' Guthrie had interrupted Trump’s speech to tell viewers that several of Trump’s statements were not true.... 'This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it,' said Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace.” ~~~

~~~ Mark Sherman of the AP explains what's going on to Fuckface von Clownstick: “... Donald Trump says he’ll take the presidential election to the Supreme Court, but it’s unclear what he means in a country in which vote tabulations routinely continue beyond Election Day, and states largely set the rules for when the count has to end. 'We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court — we want all voting to stop,' Trump said early Wednesday. But the voting is over. It’s only counting that is taking place across the nation. No state will count absentee votes that are postmarked after Election Day. Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s campaign called Trump’s statement 'outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect.'”

Joe Scarborough asks, "If Democrats can't beat a candidate like Donald Trump, whom can they beat?" Good question.

Max Greenwood of the Hill: “Joe Biden said early Wednesday that he is on track to win the 2020 presidential election, as vote returns show a narrowing, yet still viable, path to victory for the former vice president. Speaking to supporters at a drive-in election night event in Wilmington, Del., in the early hours of Wednesday, Biden urged patience while election officials across the country tally outstanding ballots. But he projected confidence in his chances of capturing the White House, laying out a path to victory that runs through Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 'It may take a little longer,' Biden said to honking car horns. 'As I’ve said all along, it’s not my place or Donald trump’s place to declare who won this election. It’s put to the American people. But I’m optimistic about the outcome.'”

New York Times live updates of election results are here.

New York Times' presidential results page is here.

New York Times live updates of Senate election results are here.

NBC News' House race results are here.

New York Times live updates of gubernatorial election results are here.

The Guardian's live Election Day updates are here.

Pre-Poll Closings, Brought Forward from November 3

Maggie Miller of the Hill: "Election results will be delayed almost an hour in the Tar Heel State after the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) voted Tuesday to extend hours at four polling locations due to early delays from technical issues."~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: To give you an idea of how little Republicans want Americans to have the right to vote, CNN reported that the N.C. state election board's vote was 3-2, with the three Democrats on the board voting yea & the two Republicans voting nay. These extensions were for only a few minutes & were to make sure voters in these precincts had the same access to the ballot as everyone else in the state had. It's a straightforward matter of fairness. The effect on outcomes would be negligible. And that was too much for Republicans.

John Kruzel of the Hill: "A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Postal Service to sweep facilities for remaining mail ballots and rush their delivery, as receipt deadlines close in. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has presided over several lawsuits aimed at Postal Service election mail delays, gave the Postal Service until 3 p.m. to 'ensure that no ballots have been held up' in regions that have been slow to process mail ballots."

Mike Allen & Margaret Talev of Axios: "If news organizations declare Joe Biden the mathematical president-elect, he plans to address the nation as its new leader, even if President Trump continues to fight in court, advisers tell Axios.... Biden advisers learned the lesson of 2000, when Al Gore hung back while George W. Bush declared victory in that contested election, putting the Democrat on the defensive while Bush acted like the winner. So if Biden is declared the winner, he'll begin forming his government and looking presidential — and won't yield to doubts Trump might try to sow. Biden's schedule for Tuesday includes a clue to this posture: He 'will address the nation on Election Night in Wilmington, Delaware.'"

The Washington Post's live election updates are here. They are free to non-subscribers.

From the NYT election updates: Thomas Kaplan, et al.: “Joseph R. Biden Jr. returned to his Pennsylvania birthplace, Scranton, on the morning of Election Day, addressing supporters outside a carpenters’ union hall and visiting his childhood home. 'It’s good to be home,' the former vice president said at a canvass kickoff, wearing a mask and speaking through a bullhorn with Biden-Harris stickers on it. 'Scranton is where I learned, like you did, all my basic values.'... Mr. Biden also paid a visit to his childhood home, where he signed a message the living room wall: 'From this house to the White House with the grace of God.'... Mr. Biden had started the day attending St. Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington, Del., with his wife, Jill, and two of their grandchildren, and then visiting the cemetery where several members of his family are buried, including his son Beau, his first wife, Neilia, and their daughter, Naomi....” ~~~

~~~ Maggie Haberman, et al.: “... President Trump said Tuesday morning in an interview on 'Fox & Friends' that he would declare victory 'when there is victory, if there is victory.... I think the polls are, you know, suppression polls. And I think we will have victory....' At another point in the interview, when one of the hosts tried to get Mr. Trump to respond to criticism from his predecessor, President Obama, about the safety of Mr. Trump’s rallies amid a pandemic, the president instead started attacking Fox News. The network 'has changed a lot,' Mr. Trump said, falsely saying they’ve 'had Democrats on more than Republicans.'... Mr. Trump sounded tired, after spending all day Monday flying from rally to rally. He spent much of his last day on the campaign trail attacking the Supreme Court, accusing it of putting 'our country in danger' by ruling to allow Pennsylvania to continue accepting absentee ballots after Election Day, at least for the time being. In Kenosha, Wis..., Mr. Trump told a crowd, without basis, that the justices had made a 'political' decision that would lead to cheating by ... Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. His comments followed an angry tweet in which he charged — without providing any evidence — that the court’s decision would 'allow rampant and unchecked cheating' and 'induce violence in the streets.' Twitter quickly flagged the president’s assertions as potentially false....”

Erik Ortiz of NBC News: "A federal lawsuit is accusing police in North Carolina of voter intimidation after they deployed pepper spray during a get-out-the vote rally and hauled several participants to jail in a chaotic display of pre-Election Day discord. The complaint, filed late Monday against the police chief of Graham, a rural community west of Durham, and the Alamance County sheriff, says that protesters were not expecting conflict at Saturday's 'I Am Change' march, but that the situation escalated 'when deputies and officers planned and orchestrated the violent dispersal' of a peaceful crowd."

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley held an off-the-record video call with top generals and network anchors this weekend to tamp down speculation about potential military involvement in the presidential election, two people familiar with the call tell Axios.... The nation's top military official set up Saturday's highly unusual call to make clear that the military's role is apolitical, one of the sources said — and to dispel any notion of a role for the military in adjudicating a disputed election or making any decision around removing a president from the White House."

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Reader Comments (5)

The Guardian has this as their headline:

"The Message from the 2020 election? The U.S. still stands divided."

No doubt about that. But I hadn't realized that so many millions of Americans think that having a sociopath for a president is just fine and dandy and their one issue, like say, abortion, is sufficient enough to vote the guy back in. I speculated that Trump would win in many of the red states but am shocked at the truly large expanse of his wins.

The Hartford Courant had a lengthy piece about these Trumpsters who testified how utterly captivated they were with him–-many traveled to wherever he was holding his rallies saying that they had never felt such excitement before in their whole lives. The chorus of voices sounded very much like the old religious tent followers back in the twenties. We touched upon that segment several times–-the mix of religiosity with that sense of camaraderie. And then there's that fear of socialism from the left––horror that a bit of equality should be put forth, which ironically many of these people yap about in terms of the "elite" looking down at them. So––here we are–-holding our breath and beating our chests.

"A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility." Aristotle

November 4, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

@PD Pepe: The Trumpbots are right about one thing: they can count me in as one of the "elites" (ha ha) looking down our noses at them.

November 4, 2020 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Me too: Super elite. Looking down my nose. I think that last night daughter and I were aghast that so many people seem to think the liar, thief, murderer is an all-right guy and voted for him again. I agree that they are sad people who want to be a part of the fraternity, and he rags on women and minorities, and they love that. But the fact that so many have gotten sick, and so many have died continues shockingly to elude their brain cells-- meh, just the flu. I think this disconnect on their part is not fixable. Joe talks of "bringing people together" and he doesn't seem to know how impossible it will be. I don't wanna be friends with a trumpist, but I guess that is okay cuz I am old (75) and decrepit, so who cares... Just reserve us oldies a space in the local home, and in a year or two, maybe the "flu" will go away. Survival of the fittest.

Anyhow, 1:30pm Wednesday and my hope is rearing its fluffy head again. Although I am super sad about the senate.

November 4, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterJeanne

Joe said "America can be better than this". My question is "Does America want to be better than this?" Seems that a good chunk of the country is just fine with how things are.

November 4, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterBobby Lee

Mark Danner, attending many of Trump's rallies, gives us the flavor of the crowd . One example is one of the rallies in Michigan where Trump begins his con job with this:

"We brought you a lot of car plants, Michigan! We brought you A LOT of car pants. You know that, right?"

And the unmasked crowd cries back positively. This, of course is a lie–-plus since his ascension not less than three thousand Michiganders has lost jobs in the vital auto sector.

Danner scans the crowd and comments on the many men with T.shirts that have the face of Trump as Superman, Rocky, and other super heroes. He then has a conversation with a woman with whom the reality of their fealty stands stark:

"He had promised Michigan new car plants and within the chilly expanse of his own mind he had delivered. And the roar of worshipful approbation meant that he had carried these thousands of souls to that place with him. “Dang!” a sweatshirted middle-aged woman told me afterward as we waited in line to buy hot dogs and lemonade. “I had no idea he had done so much for the state! I mean, people hardly even talk about it…” She was a nurse, trained in anatomy, physiology, biology—science, that is to say. But to her the president’s word was Truth; the idea that “people hardly even talk about” the car plants because they don’t exist was not only heretical but inconceivable. She couldn’t conceive it and neither could the thousands of others shouting around me."

This says so much, don't it?

November 4, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe
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