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
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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[.]”

Help!

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

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

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

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

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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Thursday
Apr202023

Hold My Beer, Traitor Edition

Marie: For those of you too busy to check out Thursday's Comments, or even too busy to run through all the recently-linked stories, I'm republishing here a comment by Akhilleus that will get you caught up on what some of our fine public officials have been doing:

By Akhilleus

Hold My Beer, Traitor edition

While it may seem as if the Incroyables and merveilleuses on the right are all locking arms in a Palais Glide of the ghastly, they take pains (and pain is the word) to break up the group’s gallop to Dante-land every so often to flaunt their own personal idiom of idiocy, a kind of “Hold my beer. Watch this!” demonstration of Who Is the Biggest Asshole.

We have a Supreme Court completely corrupted by its right-wing partisans, notably the single most corrupt Justice in US history who is allowed to get away with pretty much any ethical violation he chooses, deigning only to give the most flimsy and laughable excuses for his criminality, excuses that, were they to be offered to him in his role as a judge, he would slap down hard and hit the defendant with a contempt citation to boot.

We have the fascist Florida governor going mano a mano with a mouse, again, after having his authoritarian ass kicked. And in an attempt to prove his manliness now sez only eight out of twelve jurors are good enough to execute someone. Interestingly, this is supposedly in response to the Parkland murderer getting life instead of death (it’s not; it’s all about appealing to the right’s love of vengeance and blood). Funny, though…one would think if the Parkland murders (executed with Republican authorized weapons) were such a great concern, something would be done about gun violence. But no. The gun violence is fine. They just want to be able to kill that guy later.

Over here we have MTG, screaming about a Democrat having SEX WITH A CHINESE SPY!!! Aieeee! Of course, with no evidence. In fact “with no evidence” should be their collective middle name. Actual SEX with underage girls by Matt Gaetz, however, is perfectly fine.

Speaking of Gaetz, he came out the other day sniffing that there should be no assistance for poor people, including help with feeding children, unless these moochers have a job. This from a rich kid who has never had a job and does nothing in the job he has now, bought for him by his rich daddy.

But don’t forget My Kevin’s plan for fiscal sobriety: child starvation. Seems reasonable, right?

And in another Hold My Beer moment, MTG goes to town on supporting an openly racist knucklehead who has given away military security secrets to show off for other racist knuckleheads. MTG sez he’s a hero.

Then there’s Lauren Boebert…yeah…permanently pencilled in under Hold My Beer.

And talking about what passes for heroism on the right, the goobernator of Texas is chomping at the bit to pardon a guy who murdered a BLM protester. Because what’s wrong with killing people who say African-American lives matter?

Gym Jordan, instead of doing his job (as for another fact, NONE of these fucking people EVER does their job), moves his committee to New York for a show trial to help out the most corrupt and criminal president* in US history (seems to be a pattern here with all these Most Evers).

Abortion bans in all red states, going down from 15 days to 6 days, pretty soon it’ll be a half hour. And leave us not forget that abortion is a perfectly legal and often essential medical procedure. These bans are not based on science, medicine, or law. They are 100% the result of the religious beliefs of a single group being forced on the entire country.

And, as Marie points out, one of the other corrupt wingers on the Court is likely getting ready to uphold a blanket ban on mifepristone, probably in the dead of night (another trend) put in place by a Trumpy judge who effectively lied to get his job.

Other Trumpy judges are doing just fine in this Palais Glide of the ghastly. Another one is working hard to help Gym Jordan fuck over Alvin Bragg, because Trump.

In KKK land, Tennessee, black Democrats are expelled for being uppity, a putsch organized by a speaker who himself is embroiled in scandal. But no biggie there. He’s white. And a he.

In Wisconsin, a newly elected Supreme Court Justice is threatened with impeachment before she even takes her seat. Because democracy is just not their cup of tea.

Elsewhere, Party of Traitor stalwarts are giving the big thumbs up to child marriage and the big thumbs down to child labor laws. “Hey! You twelve year old kids! Git married then git to work!” How’s that for grooming?

Books are banned. When people complain, Rs simply defund the entire library system.

It’s a never ending game of Can You Top This? Can you be a bigger asshole than me?

Sure! Hold my beer…


Update. Marie: For those of you who aren't up on 1938 popular British dances, Patrick has provided us with a demonstration of the Palais Glide:

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

Akhilleus, thanks for the tour d'horizon. It has the bones on which one could hang a campaign speech.

Here's a clip of old Scot gliding

https://www.scottish-country-dancing-dictionary.com/video/palais-glide.html

April 20, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterPatrick

Old Scot Gliding is what 55% of my ancestors were involved in.
40% were from England and the other percentages from Scandinavia
and Romanian gypsies.

Thanks Patrick for the update.

April 20, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterForrest Morris

Thanks, AK. I'm sure it's been said a thousand times, but probably needs to be said a thousand more: There is a cognitive dissonance between authoritarian religion and democratic governance. If you believe in the former, no number of votes in the latter will convince you that what your pastor claims is wrong has become right. So, the other side is by definition illegitimate before it even gets started, and doing whatever is possible to overturn that illegitimate, non-Godly will of the electorate is not shameful in the least; rather, the assault on others' human rights in the guise of freedom of religion is the modern equivalent of Medieval Crusaders heading to Jerusalem to reestablish the correct superstition and slaughtering populations of nonbelievers on the way. It's likely that they felt great about it.

April 21, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterJack Mahoney
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