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.'”

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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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The Commentariat -- Aug. 5, 2013

Tom Toles of the Washington Post. ViaAnnie Laurie in Balloon Juice. ... Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times: "How divided are Republicans in Congress? So divided, one conservative joked, that it shouldn't be called a civil war: 'It's not organized enough for that.' ... Perhaps the biggest problem the Republicans have is one of leadership. When asked to identify the leader of the Republican Party, the first-place winner in the Pew poll was, accurately enough, 'nobody.'" ...

... ** Paul Krugman: "... Republicans, confronted with the responsibilities of governing, essentially threw a tantrum, then ran off to sulk." ...

... They'll Be Busy While They're Sulking. Matea Gold of the Washington Post: "An array of interest groups has methodically plotted how to use the congressional recess to press causes." ...

... Oh, But They Planned for That. The AP takes a look at the House GOP's planning kit for promoting their agenda during the August recess. It's the usual "bash Washington/blame Obama" stuff. I like the part where it advises them to emphasize their accomplishments.

** Frank Rich: "Washington may be a dysfunctional place to govern, but it's working better than ever as a marketplace for cashing in. And that's thanks, more than anything, to the Democratic Establishment." CW: Thanks to MAG for the link. Rich doesn't say so, but the ONLY thing that could change Them-v.-the-Rest-of-Us is a strict Constitutional amendment requiring public financing of political campaigns & banning private financing. Since, typically, the Congress proposes amendments (state legislatures can do so, too), that clearly is not going to happen. Some have promoted the idea of a "popular amendment" since the Constitution derives from the people, but that won't happen either.

** John Shiffman & Kristina Cooke of Reuters: "A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues..., law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin -- not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.... Federal agents are trained to 'recreate' the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence -- information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.... Legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records." ...

... Brendan Sasso of the Hill: "Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, revealed on Sunday that the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance programs uncovered information about current terrorist threats to the United States." Chambliss tied the closings of most of the U.S. Middle East embassies -- see News Ledes -- to a threat detected by the NSA. ...

... Barbara Starr of CNN: "An intercepted message among senior al Qaeda operatives in the last several days raised alarm bells that led to the closing of embassies and consulates Sunday across the Middle East and North Africa, CNN has learned. CNN has agreed to a request from an Obama administration official not to publish or broadcast additional details because of the sensitivity of the information." ...

... Max Ehrenfreund in Washington Monthly: "Marci Wheeler is speculating openly that these warnings might be politically motivated.... It would be premature to assume anything about the current warning, and it is partly a measure of Wheeler's cynicism that she is speculating. Not completely, though. It's also a measure of the degree to which the military and the intelligence communities have lost reporters' trust over the past ten years, beginning with the invasion of Iraq." ...

... Wheeler's post is here. CW: I have to admit the second I read that Chambliss, a Southern conservative Republican who is no fan of the administration (and has a dismal ACLU rating), went on the teevee to claim the embassy closings & travel warnings were the result of intelligence gathered "under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to intercept communications between suspected terrorists," I just thought, "Isn't that perfect!" Plus, who do you suppose Barbara Starr's source is? James Clapper's top aide? ...

... Not Exactly News. Glenn Greenwald: "... members [of Congress] who seek out basic information - including about NSA programs they are required to vote on and FISA court (FISC) rulings on the legality of those programs - find that they are unable to obtain it. Two House members, GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, have provided the Guardian with numerous letters and emails documenting their persistent, and unsuccessful, efforts to learn about NSA programs and relevant FISA court rulings." Here's a LOL bit: "In early July, Grayson had staffers distribute to House members several slides published by the Guardian about NSA programs.... But, according to one staff member, Grayson's office was quickly told by the House Intelligence Committee that those slides were still classified..., and directed Grayson to cease distribution or discussion of those materials in the House, warning that he could face sanctions if he continued." ...

... Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "... amid a national debate over how much the government should be able to find out about the private activities of its citizens in the name of combating terrorism, the next issue seems teed up for Supreme Court review: Cellphones." CW: courts have ruled in various ways on this, but it seems to me there's an easy answer: to protect evidence, officers should be able to confiscate cellphones found on suspects, but they should have to get warrants to access the data on a confiscated phone unless there is a compelling reason -- say, in a kidnapping case -- to review the data immediately. Ditto for people questioned but not arrested; if you're going to carry around incriminating evidence, you should expect to be incriminated. P.S. When I called up this article, it came with a Galaxy ad. Big WashPo knows I'm interested in cellphones.

Kate Taylor of the New York Times: "Cities and towns across the country are pushing municipal unions to accept cheaper health benefits in anticipation of a component of the Affordable Care Act that will tax expensive plans starting in 2018.... Cities including New York and Boston, and school districts from Westchester County, N.Y., to Orange County, Calif., are warning unions that if they cannot figure out how to rein in health care costs now, the price when the tax goes into effect will be steep, threatening raises and even jobs.... But some prominent liberals express frustration at seeing the tax used against unions in negotiations."

Richard Riordan & Tim Rutten in a New York Times op-ed: "President Obama should propose, and push Congress to establish, a public employee pension reform program..., [which] would essentially serve as an insurance agency. It would not bail out distressed local retirement plans. Instead, cities, and perhaps states, would be permitted to sell bonds to cover their pension liabilities, with the federal government guaranteeing repayment. Participants would pay fees -- a kind of insurance premium -- to finance the program, so there would be no net cost to Washington.... We must avoid demonizing public employees and their unions. "

E. J. Dionne: liberals must be more tolerant of religion so as not to alienate religious progressives. CW: I get that, but religious progressives should be more tolerant of non-religious liberals, too. There is a widespread -- and wholly erroneous notion -- that a person can't have morals or ethics unless based on faith in a higher power and/or an afterlife.

Buh-bye, Burbs? Washington Post: "In her new book, 'The End of the Suburbs,' Leigh Gallagher argues that the suburban way of life, once the epitome of the American dream, is becoming increasingly undesirable. Capital Business reporter Jonathan O'Connell, who has questioned whether Washington can grow up with its 20-somethings, chatted with Gallagher this past week about how Americans choose to live. An abridged version of that conversation follows."

"The Second Guantanamo." Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post: "The United States holds 67 non-Afghan prisoners there, including some described as hardened al-Qaeda operatives seized from around the world in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. More than a decade later, they're still kept in the shadowy facility at Bagram air base outside Kabul. Closing the facility presents many of the same problems the Obama administration has encountered in its attempt to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. Some U.S. officials argue that Bagram's resolution is even more complicated -- and more urgent. The U.S. government transferred the prison's Afghan inmates to local authorities this year. But figuring out what to do with the foreign prisoners is proving to be an even bigger hurdle to shutting the American jail. 'Is there a plan? No. Is there a desire to close the facility? Yes,' Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said in an interview."

Senate Race

Nate Cohn of the New Republic: "The last few weeks have been full of bad news for Senator Mitch McConnell. He earned a long awaited tea party challenger and, yesterday, two polls showed Allison Lundergan Grimes, the likely Democratic nominee, ahead by 1 and 2 points. As a result, Democrats are starting to believe they have a good chance in Kentucky. They shouldn't get their hopes up. Certainly not yet. Mitch McConnell is a clear favorite because he's a Republican incumbent running in a red state, assuming he wins the primary."

Election 2012

Howell Raines reviews Dan Balz's book on the 2012 election. "Dan Balz's history of the 2012 campaign ends with an astonishing scene from a post-election interview with Mitt Romney. When the reporter brings up his infamous '47 percent.' remark, Romney blurts, 'Actually I didn't say that.' He then retrieves his iPad and leads Balz, line by line, through an excruciatingly delusional exegesis of the speech that crippled his campaign. Balz ... resists the temptation to belabor the obvious. The Republican nominee just didn't understand, then or now, what happened last fall, particularly voters' mystifying insistence on verbal precision. Like his father, George, whose Republican presidential candidacy in 1968 flamed out when he said he had been "brainwashed" by the generals and others about the Vietnam War,' Mitt Romney is a master of the self-immolating quote." CW: The whole review is entertaining.

Local News

Rick Hertzberg on New York City's history of sex scandals. Highly entertaining & beautifully-written, as usual.

News Ledes

San Francisco Chronicle: "BART trains will be rolling for at least another week after Gov. Jerry Brown stepped in late Sunday night to block an impending strike, just hours before the scheduled 12:01 Monday walkout by the transit system's union workers. At the request of BART management, the governor appointed a three-member board of inquiry to investigate the stalled negotiations."

Military Times: The trial of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood & wounded 30 more (which he admits), begins today. ...

... The New York Times has a story on the uniqueness of the trial.

AP: "Prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected to present lengthy closing arguments to jurors as they lay out their cases in the racketeering trial of reputed gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger. Closing arguments were scheduled for Monday in U.S. District Court...."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (7)

I am with you, Marie, (and Marci Wheeler) on Saxby Chambliss' not so subtle new "fear campaign." Or should I say repetitive fear campaign. Getting people all psyched up about Al Qaeda threats seems to be the last bastion of the rich, crazy and powerful guys who "run" our country! I am much more concerned about some crazy, drunk guy who is angry and vindictive plowing his car into a group of people innocently walking on the Venice, CA boardwalk! Do people realize at all how much of THAT kind of craziness goes on in our sad little country?

And, of course, there has not been--and never will be--an intelligent discussion in the MSM about why Al Qaeda is so successful at recruiting young jihadists. Because, of course, America is good and well-meaning and "We are Empire." We just happen to kill quite a few Middle Eastern women and children (unavoidable collateral damage) in our wars and drone strikes--by complete accident, because, ya know--Shit Happens!

'Scuze me. Gotta go reload.

August 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKate Madison

The lobbyists have control of the mad house.

Related to the WaPo article by Matea Gold that CW mentions, one should check out the new Frank Rich's piece "The Stench of the Potomac" in the New York magazine. He draws from several recently published books (looks like some great summer reading!) Mark Lebovich's "This Town" and George Packer's "The Unwinding."

Rich writes: "... thanks to the Democratic
Establishment...Washington may be a dysfunctional place to govern, but it's working better than ever as a marketplace for cashing in....It was during the Clinton–Rubin–Greenspan–Lawrence Summers deregulatory spree of the nineties that the innovation of bipartisan lobbying shops also took off in earnest, obliterating any remaining distinctions between the financial interests and imperatives of the two parties. "

Or as one lobbyist put it “the rest of the country may be divided into red and blue, but D.C. is green.”

http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/this-town-washington-lobbyists-2013-8/

August 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterMAG

Regarding the lack of leadership among Republicans, a root cause of this sad predicament is the present sclerotic condition of Right Wing World which, through the sensitive offices of drool radio, Fox "News", and conservative heavy hitters like Bachamann, Palin, Gingrich, Gohmert, Akin, Cruz, Rubio, Paul, Ryan, etc. (heavy on the hitting but light on gravitas or any workable solutions), have nurtured the GOP into its current hideous state of advanced lunacy.

But I have a suggestion!

The good people of Dorset, MN, (pop. 22) have an excellent idea. They pick their mayor from names dropped in a hat. And this year, for the second year in a row, the mayor is Robert ("Bobby") Tufts, four years old (see video below).

Bobby seems like a fine upstanding young man who likes to fish and ride the horsey outside the general store and has a girlfriend named Sofia (no tweeting of pee-pee pictures, as far as we know). I'm pretty sure he's not installing any environment murdering oil pipelines or legislating against people just because they don't like the same kind of fish as he does.

So I'm all for this form of selection for states and local governments which have seceded from the real world. They couldn't do worse.

Oh wait a minute. Maybe they could. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a Republican version of this lottery system was more Shirley Jackson than Bobby Tufts.

Never mind.

Hizzoner, the mayor

August 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

I'm one who has criticized Mr. Dionne when he lets his religion get in the way of his usual good sense. I do not mean I object to his having his beliefs. They're not for me, but I have no problem with his devotion of Things Unseen and Unknowable--as long as they don't interfere unnecessarily with my life.

When some months back he wrote the Obama administration should be more accommodating to the Catholic Church's reluctance/refusal of include birth control in their health insurance plans, for instance, he was supporting church doctrine over the progressive values he usually espouses. For God's (or Zeus') sake, the female employees of Catholic schools and hospitals don't have to take the darn pills. They have a choice, the essence it seems to me of progressivism, and it is the church in this case that was/is by denying woman that choice anything but progressive. Sadly, Dionne fell in line and helped circle the Church's wagons. And I thought looked silly doing so.

Here in the Skagit Valley, the whole church thing is particularly sensitive right now, as local public hospitals consider allying with Providence or Peace Health, two Catholic institutions. Last week six hundred citizens attended a public forum on the issue; most attendees had concerns about the possible effects of Catholic control over the vital matters of birth and death hospitals exist to deal with.
I expect Mr. Dionne would tell me not to worry, but I am. Regardless of Dionne's enthusiasm for Pope Francis, when it comes to the beginning and the end of life, the Church is hardly progressive.

That said, Mr. Dionne's recent book "Our Divided Political Heart" is worth a read. No original research but a good, occasionally insightful summary of the strains of American political thought and behavior from the Founders to the present. I'd recommend it.

August 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

I'd like to recommend this new post by Ian Welsh:
http://www.ianwelsh.net/bin-ladens-insights-and-the-egyptian-coup/.
It can also be found at http://ianwelsh.net/
Best to all,
Keith Howard

August 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKeith

I would agree with Marie that toleration of any religious group should be the order of the day but I would also hope that religious progressives, if they don't already know, should acquaint themselves with what's being preached in many fundamentalist churches. Liberals are doing the devil's work, trying to convert their children to a secular lifestyle that includes homosexual indoctrination and hatred of god and country, that people who don't agree with this will burn in hell and deserve it. Religious progressives, by the way, are lumped into that group as well. Don't believe what we believe? Don't interpret the Bible the way we do? You're all fucked.

I don't think progressives of a religious bent would, in fairness, lack understanding if liberals didn't feel so warm and cozy towards those who characterize them as evil incarnate and, in certain instances (planned parenthood workers, abortion providers), wish death upon them.

This isn't a case of "they started it first" but Mr. Dionne should recognize that the kind of narrow-mindedness preached in many churches of the Christian right goes way beyond simple intolerance into raging bigotry and venomous hatred.

Do many liberals have a warped view of some right-wing Christian groups? Sure. But I don't think they advocate death or call them traitors and pawns of the devil. The opportunistic and cynical political wing of this faction is one of the primary reasons for decline in this country encouraged by willful ignorance and obdurate intransigence, and if religious progressives are unhappy with that, they need to acknowledge that the dark side of religion is far more dangerous than perceived or actual liberal prejudice.

August 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

After reading Frank Rich's piece I am almost ready to throw in the towel. Our "green" DC is fraught with two degrees of separation and the handshakes are all warm and cozy on both sides. When reading the Teddy Roosevelt biography by Edmond Morris I recall he said this about Washington at the turn of the 19th century: It was prized for social splendor, a power center in an increasingly powerful country. POWER, not breeding, was the basis of protocol in this democratic town. And today outside of DC proper are ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives whose air is thick with the stench of all those deals and handshakes that favor themselves above all. Are we surprised?

August 5, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe
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