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.”

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The Ledes

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The New York Times is live-updating developments in the progress of Hurricane Helene. “Helene continued to power north in the Caribbean Sea, strengthening into a hurricane Wednesday morning, on a path that forecasters expect will bring heavy amounts of rain to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and western Cuba before it begins to move toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.” ~~~

~~~ CNN: “Helene rapidly intensified into a hurricane Wednesday as it plows toward a Florida landfall as the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in over a year. The storm will also grow into a massive, sprawling monster as it continues to intensify, one that won’t just slam Florida, but also much of the Southeast.... Thousands of Florida residents have already been forced to evacuate and nearly the entire state is under alerts as the storm threatens to unleash flooding rainfall, damaging winds and life-threatening storm surge.... The hurricane unleashed its fury on parts of Mexico’s Yucátan Peninsula and Cuba Wednesday.“

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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.'”

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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Wednesday
Jul052023

July 5, 2023

Afternoon Update:

Ed Mazza of the Huffington Post: "Sen Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is under fire for a Fourth of July tweet that managed to include both a false claim and a false quote. Hawley tweeted a quote he claimed to be from Founding Father Patrick Henry saying the United States was founded 'on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'... The quote is actually from a 1956 magazine article that discussed Henry's faith." See comments in today's thread. ~~~

     ~~~ Steve Benen of MSNBC writes that the magazine that published Hawley's fake quote was "a white nationalist publication." Despite being roundly lampooned in social media, Hawley has let the tweet stand. MB: Perfect Hawley reading material, though I don't suppose Hawley read the citation in the "original fake." BTW, Hawley comes honestly to his sloppy work: he clerked for CJ John Roberts, whom Garrett Epps, linked below, calls "openly, flamboyantly anti-intellectual."

~~~~~~~~~~

The D.C. fireworks were quite spectacular:

President Biden issues a statement on gun violence across the U.S. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Petula Dvorak of the Washington Post: "In America, under the tyranny of a culture that celebrates gun ownership over the unburdened pursuit of happiness, we are no longer free to feel safe[.]... We are not free from atrocity at schools, airports, military bases, movie theaters, restaurants, hospitals, swimming pools, medical offices or even someone's driveway that we may have accidentally pulled into.... We have absolutely failed the vision of our Founding Fathers for a peaceful, safe and prosperous nation if we're willing to apply rules conceived of when a breakaway people in revolt deployed muskets, flintlock pistols and hunting rifles to today, when high-tech killing machines can be bought with ease."

Tyler Pager of the Washington Post: "... President Biden is facing renewed pressure from a range of elements in his party, from liberal lawmakers to abortion rights activists, to more forcefully embrace far-reaching changes to the high court. Biden has harshly criticized the Supreme Court's sharp pivot to the right, but he has stayed away from endorsing any of the broad array of reforms -- including court expansion, term limits and mandatory retirements -- that are being pushed by the left flank of his party and increasingly backed by core parts of his base.... Democrats argue that the mounting number of what they call radical rulings by the court, along with reports that some justices have accepted lavish trips from wealthy figures, have created a crisis of legitimacy." ~~~

~~~ ** Garrett Epps in the Washington Monthly: "Until this week, every affirmative action ruling has at least paid lip service to the idea that decisions by educators should receive some deference from judges.... At the federal level, courts -- and as of this week, only courts -- dictate educational policy on questions of diversity and inclusion. We should be used to such usurpation by now. The Supreme Court majority has also assumed responsibility for climate policy, public health, firearms regulation, and Clean Water Act enforcement.... [Previously, courts] understood that the question was, 'What effect will this decision have on living human beings?' Today's Court majority freely acknowledges that courts do not have the knowledge or skills to understand the consequences of legal rules in areas like medicine, education, and public health, but instead of deferring to institutions that do, the Court's majority has proclaimed that the practical consequences of legal rules are simply no longer relevant.... [For instance, as Justice Alito effectively wrote in his Dobbs decision]: What will the new rule mean for women? Who knows -- and, for that matter, who really cares?... The majority says 'history and tradition' -- and only history and tradition' -- are the sources of constitutional law....

Not since the late Chief Justice Warren Burger -- ... [or earlier] -- has a Supreme Court justice been so openly, flamboyantly anti-intellectual as [John] Roberts.... When voting-rights advocates presented extensive evidence of the power and effect of computerized partisan gerrymandering in Gill v Whitford in 2018, Roberts shut down the inquiry.... Voting rights advocate Paul Smith vainly protested that the math 'is not complicated.' He was missing the point -- it was math, so the Chief, like Cher Horowitz in Clueless, was B-O-R-E-D. At oral argument [in the student-debt-relief case], Roberts chucked textualism and explained that the precise wording of the [Congressional] act was irrelevant...." Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Marie: If you think a law or executive action has harmed you, your recourse is to "take it to the judge." But what if the judge is corrupt, or like Roberts, et al., pretends to be stupid to justify the results s/he wants? This is the situation in which all Americans find themselves today. Even if we had a Congress inclined to curb the third branch's claim to extreme supremacy (we don't, but it's conceivable we could get one), the Supremes would overrule it. The very best we can hope for then is a standoff/Constitutional crisis and hope that justice might prevail because the courts cannot raise an army and Congress can.

     ~~~ Update: OR, if the court gets to radical, maybe some future Democratic president and Congress will expand it. Here's a brief rundown (August 2022) of how some others countries manage their judiciaries. Of course in a country like ours, where fascists control at least one House of Congress and the Supreme Court and may soon have control of the presidency*, too, we'd have to have a revolution to modernize our system. Meanwhile, Roberts & the Dancing Alitos are laughing and tripping the light fandango, while the so-called liberal justices are left powerless to do nothing more than read scathing rebuttals from the bench.

Karoun Demirjian of the New York Times: "Republicans are deeply divided over impeaching President Biden, with newly energized lawmakers on the far right applying pressure to do so and leaders and rank-and-file members concerned they have undertaken a politically risky battle that they cannot win. A vote last month to send impeachment articles against Mr. Biden for his border policies to the Homeland Security Committee alongside the Judiciary Committee amounted to a stalling tactic by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to quell the urgent calls for action from the hard right. But it has also highlighted the rifts in the House G.O.P. over moving forward and complicating a separate monthslong drive by the panel to prepare an impeachment case against Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, for the same offenses. Neither pursuit appears to have the votes to proceed, and many Republicans are worried that without a stronger case against the president, even trying the move could be disastrous for their party." MB: But can't they impeach President Biden for being the Drug-Lord-in-Chief? (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Katelyn Caralle of the Daily Mail: "A dispatch call reviewed by DailyMail.com reveals a preliminary test found that the white powder discovered [in the White House library] on Sunday tested positive for cocaine – and led to emergency services shutting down 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.... The discovery came two days after recovering drug addict Hunter [Biden], 52, was last seen at the White House as he headed to Camp David with his father for the long holiday weekend.... The White House library is part of the public tour experienced by hundreds daily, meaning there could be multiple suspects. It is also two floors below the first family's living quarters.... Pro-Trump Republican Rep. Jim Banks tweeted: 'They never found cocaine in the Trump White House!... The Bidens are unfit to live in the White House!' Meanwhile, far-right Newsmax host Robb Schmitt said during a report on the cocaine discovery: 'It wouldn't be a thumpin' July 4th weekend without Hunter Biden ripping lines off of a bust of Teddy Roosevelt.'" Marie: Don't tell me you didn't predict this reaction. Gym Jordan should convene an emergency subcommittee to investigate. Subpoenas all around! (Also linked yesterday.)

Trumpy Judge Figures There Just Aren't Enough Trumpy Liars on the Internet. Cat Zakrzewski of the Washington Post: "A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies about 'protected speech,' in an extraordinary injunction in an ongoing case that could have profound effects on the First Amendment. The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who allege that government officials went too far in their efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts that they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic or upend elections. The Trump-appointed judge's move could upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies. The injunction was a victory for the state attorneys general, who have accused the Biden administration of enabling a 'sprawling federal "Censorship Enterprise"' to encourage tech giants to remove politically unfavorable viewpoints and speakers, and for conservatives who've accused the government of suppressing their speech." Politico's report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

GOP Wraps Itself in Liberian Flag. Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "On Tuesday, the Republican Party's official Twitter account posted to mark the Fourth of July, writing, '247 years ago, our forefathers told Ol' King George to get lost! Happy Independence Day from the GOP!'... The flags they used in the graphic were not the American flag. They were the Liberian flag. The GOP's tweet was swiftly deleted -- but not before being buried in an avalanche of mockery and criticism from commenters on social media. 'You'd think they'd recognize the flag they beat cops with,' wrote the account @iputadollarin. 'BREAKING: GOP officially pledges loyalty to Liberia by posting their flag on the 4th of F**king July,' tweeted @middleageriot."

Presidential Race 2024. Democrats in Disarray! Ross Barkan of the New York Times: Many Democratic party officials -- especially those from New Hampshire -- are not happy with President Biden's plan to make South Carolina the first presidential primary state in the nation. And, as Barkan points out, South Carolina is in fact not ideal. The article goes into some of the intra-party conflicts.

Guardian & Agency: "This Monday, 3 July 2023, was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The average global temperature reached 17.01C (62.62F), surpassing the August 2016 record of 16.92C (62.46F), as heatwaves sizzled around the world."

Way Beyond the Beltway

Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Wednesday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates for Wednesday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings for Wednesday are here: "Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is in Washington for a meeting at the White House with President Biden. The visit comes as Sweden's application to join NATO has been held up by objections from Turkey and Hungary. Kyiv and Moscow traded allegations that a false-flag attack was looming at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine.... Russian and U.S. officials have had discussions on a potential prisoner swap that could include detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, though they 'don't want them to be discussed in public.'... A Russian investigative journalist and a human rights lawyer were brutally beaten in Russia's Chechnya republic as they were en route to a high-profile trial Tuesday.... Two Russian regions were attacked early Wednesday and one person was wounded, authorities there said. Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the town of Valuyki -- about 110 miles east of Ukraine's Kharkiv -- was shelled for 'more than an hour.'... Belgorod and Kursk have come under fire in the past due to their proximity to the Ukrainian border."

France. Catherine Porter & Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle of the New York Times: "After five nights of fury over [Nahel] Merzouk's killing, the country has calmed down and begun to assess the damage: more than 5,000 vehicles burned, 1,000 buildings damaged or looted, 250 police stations or gendarmeries attacked, more than 700 officers injured. Some 3,400 people were arrested as a massive police presence set out to restore order. The justice system is running almost around the clock to process them. Many are being funneled through hasty trials, known as comparutions immédiates.... With comparutions immediates, justice is routinely as harsh as it is quick: Lawyers often have just 30 minutes to prepare, and cases often end in prison time.... After flooding the streets with 45,000 officers night after night, the French state is looking to send a second harsh message. Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti advised prosecutors to systematically seek prison sentences for people charged with physical assault or serious vandalism.... The majority of those arrested, according to French authorities, had no prior criminal record. And most are minors...."

News Lede

New York Times: "As the long Fourth of July weekend drew to a close, a final spasm of gun violence close to midnight left four people dead and seven others wounded at an outdoor party in Shreveport, La., following earlier shootings in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Fort Worth and other cities. All told, the shootings left at least 15 people dead, and injured more than 50 others. Among those killed was a 7-year-old boy in Tampa, Fla., whose grandfather was trying to shield him from bullets fired by two groups who were arguing over someone recklessly driving a jet ski, the police said."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (7)

Here's a juicy tidbit to start your day off:

Sen Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is under fire for a Fourth of July tweet that managed to include both a false claim and a false quote.
Hawley tweeted a quote he claimed to be from Founding Father Patrick Henry saying the United States was founded “on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Tweet
Josh Hawley

@HawleyMO
Patrick Henry: “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

""The United States was not founded as a Christian nation ― the First Amendment makes that clear ― and Henry, while deeply religious, didn’t say anything of the sort.
Nor did any of the other Founding Fathers.
The quote is actually from a 1956 magazine article that discussed Henry’s faith."

Poor ole Josh, he just can't get a break: fist in the air boy gets shot down whenever he opens his mouth and one wonders if he is lame on lessons or will just continue to put foot in mouth.

July 5, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterP.D.Pepe

Hate to say it, P.D. but the Stanford history department must be squirming in embarrassment....At least I'd hope so.

And if Hawley is a devout Christian of any stripe, I'd eat my hat.

July 5, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

@P.D.Pepe: One would think that Josh would be up on all that
founding fathers and religion stuff. He attended a private Jesuit
boys prep school and his mother was a teacher.
Guess his mind was elsewhere.

July 5, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterForrestMorris

I've reached the point where I can't credit people like Hawley with being careless or stupid. He knows that Patrick Henry quote is BS, but he also knows that it will resonate with the people he wants to gin up, and that he will not suffer for propagating a falsehood. He and his ilk have departed the society of decent people. There is no shame anymore in being caught purposely lying.

PS: Get to know more about Patrick Henry, and the more you realize that we've had blowhard a-holes around this place forever.

July 5, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterPatrick

They don’t need no stinking bombs…

I listened to a podcast recently about the rise of the violent and anti-democratic far right. I take issue with the descriptor “far right” however. Today, it’s just “the right”. Even if there are the odd few who don’t subscribe knee-jerkily to Trump style ignorance, hatred, and violence, along with misogyny, racism, and authoritarianism, they don’t matter a whit.

That being said, one of the episodes in this podcast spent a lot of time reviewing the Oklahoma City bombing, designed by Timothy McVeigh after a similar mass murder of innocents described in the astonishingly horrible “Turner Diaries”, which depicts liberals, blacks, Jews, and abortion doctors as hanging from lampposts all across the country as the real ‘mericans (which sound very like MAGAts) cheer. There’s a lengthy and careful description of the bomb building process. It took McVeigh and Terry Nichols almost a year to gather up all the materials, to steal money, equipment, and the necessary ingredients, then to plot out the actual bombing itself.

There are still plenty of McVeigh types around, which got me wondering why other haters haven’t gone that route.

Then I realized, they have.

But these days, they don’t need fertilizer, jet fuel, and all the other bombing ingredients, plus a truck big enough to hold it all.

Today, they can walk into a gun store and buy a weapon powerful enough to wipe out dozens of blacks, Latinos, children, school teachers, whoever’s on the hate list. No need for months of planning and assembling a bomb. So maybe they don’t kill 200. They can kill a few dozen in just seconds. And a lot more of their fellow travelers can do the same. Bombs are old fashioned. AND, they have an entire political party and the Supreme Court giving them permission to do so, and not only permission, but making the purchase of WMD easier than trying to find a copy of the New York Times in a red state.

One more thing. McVeigh was caught because he was driving an unlicensed vehicle as a getaway car. But that’s not why he was captured, which led quickly to his identification as the bomber. He was arrested because the cop who stopped him saw that he was carrying a weapon. An unlicensed weapon.

Today, he would never have been arrested for that. Today it’d be “Get that car licensed Mr. McVeigh, and have a nice day. Goodbye now.”

July 5, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

From the You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet department…

If you thought this year’s rulings by the traitors on the Supreme Court were bad, just wait til next year.

Next year the (partial) Second Amendment absolutists on the court (fuggedabout all that well ordered militia stuff—the framers wanted guns for everyone!) will take up the case, just an awful miscarriage of Justice, of a poor drug dealer who beat his girlfriend and threatened to shoot her. So, under a federal law against domestic abusers owning guns, his cache of weapons were taken away. The idea!

A Trump appointed judge in the Fifth Circuit quickly acted to overturn that terrible law. Bitches need to shut up, and guv’mint overreaching deep state agents need to give that poor violent drug dealer his guns back. The Framers, said this Trumpy judge, would never hold with domestic violence laws. Were they all wife beaters too?

Next session, the Supremes will make sure that poor violent, murder threatening drug dealer gets his weapons back. Cuz no one takes guns away from violent criminals. They got rights! Harrumph!

It’s only going to get worse from here, kids.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/07/supreme-court-second-amendment-domestic-violence

July 5, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Sen. Josh Hawley is a spuddler. He fits right in with the rest of them.

July 5, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterForrestMorris
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