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The Ledes

Sunday, October 6, 2024

New York Times: “Two boys have been arrested and charged in a street attack on David A. Paterson, a former governor of New York, and his stepson, the police said. One boy, who is 12, was charged with second-degree gang assault, and the other, a 13-year-old, was charged with third-degree gang assault, the police said on Saturday night. Both boys, accompanied by their parents, turned themselves in to the police, according to Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack in Manhattan, according to an internal police report.... Two other people, both adults, were involved in the attack, according to the police. They fled on foot and have not been caught, the police said. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault....”

Weather Channel: “Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center says that 'there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.'”

The Wires

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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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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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Tuesday

May142013

Thank You, "Low-Level" IRS Agents

With outrage erupting from every corner, pundits & politicians seem to be missing the point of the IRS exercise: to ferret out applicant organizations which had primarily political agendae & would therefore be ineligible for the tax-exempt status for which they were applying. Fox News reported,

The internal IG timeline shows ... that list of criteria drastically expanding.... It then included groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes, and education on ways to 'make America a better place to live.' It even flagged groups whose file included criticism of 'how the country is being run.' By early 2012, the criteria were updated to include organizations involved in 'limiting/expanding government,' education on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and social economic reform.

I don't see how an organization interested in "expanding government" or in "social economic reform" or in "making America a better place to live" is necessarily conservative.

In fact, "The IRS says that 300 groups were set aside for extra review. About 75 of them had the words 'tea party' or 'patriot.'" That is, about 25 percent of the groups who received closer scrutiny identified themselves as tea party or "patriot" groups. Since the tea party was expanding rapidly during the time frame in question, it is possible that the IRS under-"targeted" conservative groups.

The so-called scandal does not appear to be an effort to "intimidate political groups," as everyone is braying, but rather an effort to separate true charitable groups from political organizations which might have been trying to obtain undeserved tax-exempt status.

Maybe all these Congressional investigations will reveal some politically-motivated scheme. But right now I don't see any IRS intimidation. I see IRS employees following the law and protecting the government -- and the honest taxpaying public -- from potential tax cheats. I see IRS agents doing their jobs.

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Reader Comments (4)

Regarding this IRS "scandal", I couldn't agree more. As a CPA, and a member of a 401(c)(4) which I took through the application process, I can tell you that it sounds to me like the IRS was doing was it is SUPPOSED to do. It took two tries for our tiny little non-profit to get through the application process and receive tax-exempt status, so why shouldn't clearly politically motivated organizations get closer scrutiny as well? What I find scandalous is that all these organizations apparently received their tax-exempt status, no one was declined. Please tell me, what social welfare Glenn Beck's 401(c)(4) is providing.
Those liberal media folks play right into Repub hands by giving this "scandal" any coverage at all.

May 14, 2013 |

cakers

@cakers: Hear! Hear! You are so correct. I still can't see what "social welfare "many of these groups offer, yet they get tax-exempt status anyway. Chris Hayes had a good overview of what a 501(3)(c) is supposed to be using the IRS guidelines. To fit many of these groups into that is a real stretch. He also pointed out ho much damage the Citizens United decision has done.

Not for the first time, Obama let himself be snookered by the media.

May 14, 2013 |

Barbarossa

The numbers on my keyboard shifted right. The code sections cited should be FIVE01(c)(4)......

May 15, 2013 |

cakers

The numbers on my keyboard shifted right. The code sections cited should be FIVE01(c)(4)......

And to clarify further, a 501(c)(3) is a charitable organization and is the only type capable of receiving donations that are tax deductible. A 501(c)(4), is a social welfare organization and while they may receive donations, they are not tax deductible by the donors. Businesses get around that by treating them as a business expense such as "business promotion".

May 15, 2013 |

cakers

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