REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- Aug. 17, 2013

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

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.

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.”

Page Links

Friday

Aug162013

The Commentariat -- Aug. 17, 2013

CW: In my link to Barton Gellman's blockbuster story in yesterday Washington Post, I did not include this sentence: "The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance." I didn't notice it, but I should have, and I should have included it. As Charles Pierce writes, "... this story really ought to end the debate over whether or not Snowden is a 'whistleblower' or not. He shared with The Washington Post -- and therefore, with the country that pays the bills for it all -- information proving that the government agency for which he worked regularly violated its own regulations, and that it at best actively deceived the responsible oversight authorities in both the Department Of Justice and in the intelligence community." ...

... David Firestone of the New York Times: "The lack of oversight revealed in The Post's report is staggering.... So much for President Obama's recent assurance that the government is not abusing its authority. And Congress, as usual, is nowhere to be found.... Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall just issued a statement saying the mistakes and rule-breaking reported by the Washington Post are just the 'tip of the iceberg' of a much larger body of classified violations, which they are unable to reveal." ...

... Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post has some officials' reactions to the Post story. Entertaining. ...

... New York Times Editors: "... the Justice Department was in federal court on Thursday defending its refusal to release memos containing information about its policies governing the use of GPS and other potentially invasive technologies.... The public has a right to know the government's policies on these matters. There is very good reason to be concerned about the government's interpretation of its police powers, especially given the Obama administration's insensitivity to privacy in its mass collection of phone data in the national security sphere.... It is distressing that the administration, which claims to welcome a debate over the government's surveillance practices, time and again refuses to be transparent about those practices. Instead of awaiting a court order, the administration should release the tracking memos on its own."

James Hohmann of Politico: "The Republican National Committee passed a resolution Friday to bar NBC and CNN from hosting GOP primary debates in 2016 if the networks move forward with their Hillary Clinton projects. But the vote was not just about Clinton. But the vote was not just about Clinton. The RNC's very vocal outrage over the projects gave party leaders a perfect excuse to do what they've long wanted to do anyway: get some control over a process that led to 20 grueling primary debates last cycle and gave Mitt Romney many chances to get himself into trouble with comments about self-deportation, contraception and the like." ...

... Dylan Byers of Politico: "While NBC and CNN's competitors stand to benefit from the RNC's decision, there's another potential winner who has gone unmentioned: Univision. On Friday, RNC communications director Sean Spicer told Politico that the boycott would extend to NBC and CNN's Spanish-language channels: Telemundo and CNN Español." ...

... CW: nobody ever mentions ABC. Will Reince let former Clinton guy Snuffolopoulos question the wackos? ...

... Greg Sargent: "And so, it looks as if one of the recommendations in that RNC autopsy [which determined that the party needed to broaden its base by reaching out to 'alienated' groups] has finally been acted on. Only it just happens to be one that is all about (again) playing to the base and encouraging an insular view -- that outside news sources offering information that counters what is heard inside the conservative entertainment complex are only out to get Republicans -- rather than broadening the party's appeal.... It's [also] possible this could have the effect of minimizing the exposure of GOP outsized rhetoric and policy to a broader audience." ...

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "As a blogger, I would really look forward to making the GOP clown show even more clownish. I know that hardly seems possible, but think about it. "Governor Jindal, do you think Christian churches should merely be free of all government interference, or do you think that state governments should require the adoption of Christian curricula in our schools?" "Representative Ryan, do you think global warming is a myth, or do you think it's actually a sinister plot by the scientific community to destroy the economy?" Bring it on!" ...

... Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "The problem isn't that the network personalities are liberals, it's that they're just terrible. They try to come up with clever 'gotcha' moments to trap Republicans and Democrats alike, and they ask one inane question after another, like what sporting event they'll be watching this weekend or what kind of pizza they prefer.... Let's not forget that primaries are supposed to be partisan. The point isn't for the country to choose a candidate, it's for a party to choose its representative. Ideological questioners are going to ask the questions to which primary voters want to know the answers." ...

... Bill Carter of the New York Times: "An outlet of Fox Entertainment said on Friday that it would not be involved with the hotly debated Hillary Rodham Clinton mini-series on NBC, after all. And though the decision by the Fox Television Studios production company came on the same day as a vote by the Republican National Committee to ban any presidential debates in the 2016 primary season from NBC because of the proposed movie, an executive involved in the negotiations between the Fox studio and NBC said political pressure was not a factor. Rather, the executive said, the financial terms being offered by NBC simply were not attractive enough to Fox." ...

... Jane Timm of NBC News: "From same-sex marriage to race in America, Republican leaders lack 'the guts to stare down the crazies in their own party,' Joe Scarborough said on Morning Joe today during a conversation that exposed the hypocrisy of GOP officials willing to show compassion in private but not in public.... The Republican Party is sending out signals, Scarborough said: 'If you're not white, you're really not welcome in this party.'" With video. Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... Prince Reibus Never Called Mitt a Racist. Brent Logiurato of Business Insider: "Correction, 12:26 p.m. ET: An original version of this story said that Reince Priebus referred to Mitt Romney's comments as 'racist.' He said it 'hurts us.' Business Insider regrets the error." CW: I had to listen to the tape three times, but on the third time, I decided that Priebus did say "hurts us," not "racist":

"Tell him to stop lying." Sy Mukherjee of Think Progress: "Obamacare critics who have incessantly demonized the reform law and pushed for its repeal have been brushing up against a growing number of people that support its consumer protections." Here's Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) being questioned by constituents who are fearful of not having health coverage. The pushback begins at about 2:10 min. in when Webster claims that both he & the President agree that "ObamaCare is bad for America":

... Steve Benen on the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity misleading/lying ads against ObamaCare: "If Obamacare were really as horrible as right-wing activists and lawmakers claim, shouldn't it be easier to attack the law without making stuff up? Wouldn't conservatives be eager to simply give people the truth, rather than resort to ugly demagoguery? Careful, Kochs, your desperation is showing."

Gubernatorial Race

Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia, does a pretty good job, in a Washington Post op-ed, of defending his involvement with & investment in GreenTech Automotive.

Local News

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: California Gov. Jerry "Brown -- who at 75 is the oldest governor in the nation and about to become the longest-serving governor in the history of California -- is enjoying a degree of success and authority he and his opponents could scarcely have imagined when he returned to Sacramento to begin a second tour as governor in 2010."

The Hits Just Keep on Coming. Rosalind Helderman & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Maureen McDonnell, the first lady of Virginia, twice purchased stock in Star Scientific in the same timeframe she and Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) were taking steps to promote the dietary supplement company, a spokesman for McDonnell's legal team confirmed Friday night. Spokesman Rich Galen said the first lady did not inform the governor either time she purchased stock, which he said she bought to assist her and her children.... Evidence that the couple took official acts to indirectly help their own financial stake in a single company would likely increase their legal jeopardy in a potential criminal case."

John Schwartz of the New York Times: "A state judge in Pennsylvania on Friday prohibited enforcement of a strongly contested law requiring voters to show state-approved identification. Enforcement of the law, one of the toughest in the nation, had been blocked by judicial order in two prior elections, and the state had agreed not to require ID to vote in November. But poll officials were required to tell voters that they would have to show ID's in the future or be turned away.... Judge Bernard L. McGinley of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ... said that the ban on enforcing the law should be extended until the matter of whether to issue a permanent injunction on enforcement could be heard in court and decided on the merits of the case." ...

... Charles Pierce on National Review editor Rich Lowry's defense -- in Politico -- of North Carolina's new voter suppression law (yes, I know that's not what they call it, but that's what it is). Pierce dregs up National Review founder Bill Buckley's 1969 column, "On Negro Inferiority." "So Rich Lowry and his little racist fk of a magazine can pretty much bite it. It's been on the wrong side of history since the first issue rolled off the press."

News Ledes

AP: "Egyptian security forces stormed a Cairo mosque Saturday after a heavy exchange of gunfire with armed men shooting down from a minaret, rounding up hundreds of supporters of the country's ousted president who had sought refuge there overnight after violent clashes killed 173 people."

Comments Off

Permalink

Email Article

Reader Comments (5)

Re: NSA. I don't think the President really knows what NSA is doing; I doubt if anyone does. There is no way to adequately supervise that many employees. This thing has metatisized beyond its original purpose. whatever [classifed] it was. The first thing to do is repeal the "PATRIOT" Act.

August 17, 2013 |

Barbarossa

Again, regardless of what our fearless leader knows or does not know about the NSA's activities, I agree with Barbarossa. The sports cliche "momentum" explains much. Along with its companion "inertia" these two physical laws can be seen at work everywhere in our history. Faulkner's dictum that the past is not past was only another (memorable) way to say the same thing. Once the human race gets started on a path, it's hard to reverse course, especially when we are foolish enough to make sure that path is showered with money or paved with gold.

Our religious institutions, our defense and security industry and our health care monster are only three instances of these laws in operation. A true conservative would think at least twice before initiating or abetting the growth of an apparatus designed from its inception to consume all that any lover of freedom, libertarian or just plain liberal, would hold dear. But then that's not what conservative means these days; it means frightened of everything but money.

Akhilleus, in our benighted universe is it too late for a Hari Sedon to set us on the right course?

Does anyone have any candidates in mind for the job? As much as I admire our current President, I don't think he's the One.

August 17, 2013 |

Ken Winkes

Make that SELDON!

August 17, 2013 |

Ken Winkes

Note to Rich Lowry from a progressive keyboard. I completely understand the only argument left is lying when you are speaking through a slit in a white hood as you piss all over democracy and claim its raining. Cross burning at 10 p.m., immediately following the revival meeting for the elimination of homosexuals, debunking of man made climate change and a treatise of the true role of women.

August 17, 2013 |

Diane

Just watched "Inside Job" again. Larry Summers is a peach.

August 17, 2013 |

James Singer

Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.