The Ledes

Friday, September 27, 2024

The Washington Post's live updates of developments related to Hurricane Helene are here: “Hurricane Helene left one person dead in Florida and two in Georgia as it sped north. One of the biggest storms on record to hit the Gulf Coast, Helene slammed into Florida’s Big Bend area on Thursday night as a Category 4 colossus with winds of up to 140 mph before weakening to Category 1. Catastrophic winds and torrential rain from the storm — which the National Hurricane Center forecast would eventually slow over the Tennessee Valley — were expected to continue Friday across the Southeast and southern Appalachians.”

Mediaite: “Fox Weather’s Bob Van Dillen was reporting live on Fox & Friends about flooding in Atlanta from Hurricane Helene when he was interrupted by the screams of a woman trapped in her car. During the 7 a.m. hour, Van Dillen was filing a live report on the massive flooding in the area. Fox News viewers could clearly hear the urgent screams for help emerging from a car stuck on a flooded road in the background of the live shot. Van Dillen ... told Fox & Friends that 911 had been called and that the local Fire Department was on its way. But as he continued to file the report, the screams did not stop, so Van Dillen cut the live shot short.... Some 10 minutes later, Fox & Friends aired live footage of Van Dillen carrying the woman to safety, waking through chest-deep water while the flooding engulfed her car in the background[.]”

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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 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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Tuesday
Aug022011

The Commentariat -- August 3

I've posted an Open Thread for today Off Times Square.

"Washington Chain Saw Massacre." Maureen Dowd sees "the gory, Gothic melodrama on the Potomac [as] a summer horror blockbuster — without the catharsis."

And for the next storyline in the continuing soaper "As the Capitol Turns," Greg Sargent begins the speculation derby on what legislators will be appointed to the deficit-reduction super committee. The good news: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi "came close to endorsing the idea" that she would only appoint members who would hold the line on liberal prioities. The bad news: ConservaDem Sen. Mark Warner is angling for a seat on the committee. ...

... Steve Benen: "I hope folks are ready to live with those triggers included in the deal, because the likelihood of the Super Committee reaching some kind of consensus that can (a) be approved by a majority of its members; (b) pass the House and Senate; and (c) earn President Obama’s signature, is already extremely low." ...

... Karen Garcia has two excellent posts on the aftermath of the Swampy Horror Picture Show here and here. Or just go to her site here. ...

... AND Michael Scherer of Time games "the sequestration." Sounds dull, but it's pretty interesting. It doesn't bode well for comity. But then, what does in D.C.? ...

... Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner writes an op-ed for the Washington Post:

Blah blah blah ... compromise ... blah blah blah ... fiscal sustainability ... blah blah blah. It is not enough for Congress to have prevented a disaster it brought on itself. Lawmakers should return in September prepared to act to strengthen the economy and get more Americans back to work. Doing so will help repair the damage this fractious debate inflicted on an economy that was already slowing, not just here but around the world. ...

... Jared Bernstein: Sen. Mitch McConnell has promised that every time the President asks for the debt ceiling to be raised, we can expect another one of these crises. "To understand how nonsensical Sen McConnell’s ... position is, you have to appreciate that Congress knows when they pass their budget whether it will breach the debt ceiling or not, just like you know when you order your lunch whether you’ll be able to pay for it." ...

... Ezra Klein: "Hearing McConnell’s comments last night, economist Jared Bernstein was shocked. 'This is not the way of great nations,' he wrote. I disagree.... This is certainly the way of great nations. It’s the way they fall." ...

... Dave Weigel of Slate elaborates.

CW: like me, Matt Taibbi here and Glenn Greenwald here, do not buy the memes that Obama is a "weak negotiator" or was "forced" by Tea Party incalcitrance to make a bad deal for ordinary Americans. As Greenwald writes, "Obama's so-called 'bad negotiating' or 'weakness' is actually 'shrewd negotiation' because he's getting what he actually wants (which, shockingly, is not always the same as what he publicly says he wants)."

... Robert Reich: "With the hostage crisis behind him, the President is now ready to talk about the nation’s real problem": unemployment. But the deal he cut with Congress, and the radical right Congress in general, will not allow any spending on jobs programs. Reich echos Drum (& Bernstein): "The radical right has not only captured the federal budget. In convincing so many Americans the problem is the size of government rather than their shrinking paychecks and growing economic insecurity, the radical right has also captured the American mind." ...

... AND Ben Smith shows why Obama's announcement that his Administration will now "pivot to jobs" is another repeat of an old refrain without substance.

** Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "The public ... mostly aren't on our side. They think deficits are bad, they don't trust Keynesian economics, they don't want a higher IRS bill (who does, after all?), and they believe the federal government is spending too much on stuff they don't really understand. Conservatives have just flat out won this debate in recent decades.... I blame the broad liberal community for our failures, not just President Obama. My biggest beef with Obama is ... that he's never really even tried to move public opinion in a specifically progressive direction." ...

The Case for the Obama Approach. We didn't lose this fight. Barack Obama was in law school when this fight was lost. The role of Democrats should not be to convince people that government is great; it should be to help people reach their potential -- and government is a tool to do that. There has been a strain of skepticism about the government in the American character since the founding. Only the New Deal changed that significantly, but we have been returning to the norm ever since then. -- a "Senior Democrat," to Ben Smith

... Joan Walsh of Salon: President Obama is mistaken in his wager that "independents" will support him in 2012 because he's such a good compromiser. "Obama's best hope for re-election is the fact that Generic Republican won't win nomination; he'll be running against either a Tea Party extremist or Mitt Romney, and in most polls he beats both of them." ...

Giant Hanging Icicle. Derek Thompson of The Atlantic borrows four graphs from Calculated Risk: "... they compare key recession indicators as a share of their pre-recession peaks. The outcome reveals each recession in the last 50 years as a kind of hanging icicle. Ours is by far the longest, and we don't yet know when we'll trace our way back to the 2007 [level]."

Right Wing World *

President Krugman, I Presume. CW: I know Newt Gingrich is a big fat liar, so one might assume he was just lying here. But I don't think so. I am thinking he is genuinely clueless.

Art via Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller."The Mittness Protection Program." Maybe you didn't notice he was gone, but Ben Smith notes that Mitt has been MIA. "Romney’s absence has been particularly pronounced in the heat of the budget debate. His last event in either an early state or Washington, D.C. was on July 15.... Romney has been acting more as a full-time fundraiser and occasional candidate, and many of his stops — like the most recent two in Los Angeles and Ohio — are tacked on to his fundraising schedule."

Frances Martel of Mediaite: "... given [Pat] Buchanan’s record of questionable comments, it’s hard not to find something off-color about his debate with [MSNBC host Al] Sharpton today [Tuesday], where, discussing the debt, he argues that 'your boy,' President Obama, was 'whipped' by Sen. Mitch McConnell, and adds a 'briar patch' reference for good measure." Here's the video:

     ... CW: I think Buchanan has found his match in Sharpton. Note: I don't see where anyone has commented on it, but Buchanan also calls Rep. Emanuel Cleaver [D-Missouri], who is black, "your boy." He just can't stop. ...

... Eric Hananoki of Media Matters: "Pat Buchanan has a long history of bigotry." ...

... Fox Nation (my absolutely favorite source for news): "Buchanan "forced to apologize for 'your boy' quip."

* Where the leaders are (1) nitwits, (2) liars, or (3) nitwits & liars. Oh, and they're all white.


More on D. B. Cooper from Pierre Thomas of ABC News: "A woman claiming to be the niece of infamous skyjacker D.B. Cooper has spoken to ABC News in an exclusive interview about her role in the recently re-ignited 40-year-old cold case that has haunted the FBI for years. Marla Cooper told ABC News that she has provided the FBI with a guitar strap and a Christmas photo of a man pictured with the same strap who she says is her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper."

News Ledes

Washington Post: "After months of inaction, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday issued its first formal condemnation of Syria for its use of force against civilians during a bloody crackdown that has killed as many as 2,000 anti-government protesters. The action came as Syrian authorities severed telephone lines, electricity and water supplies to the besieged city of Hama."

AP: "A federal judge has ruled that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a former U.S. military contractor who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq. The lawsuit lays out a dramatic tale of the disappearance of the then-civilian contractor, an Army veteran in his 50s whose identity is being withheld."

AP: "The bruising debt fight behind him for now, President Barack Obama is planning a Midwest bus tour later this month that will focus on jobs."

President Obama speaks to the press before his Cabinet meeting:

... Politico: "President Barack Obama says his 'expectation' is that a partial shutdown at the Federal Aviation Administration will be resolved this week. The crisis at the FAA, which started July 23, has put 75,000 people out of work, stalled construction projects across the country and has forced safety inspectors to cover their own travel expenses while working without pay." Washington Post story here.

New York Times: "Hosni Mubarak, who served longer than any ruler in modern Egypt’s history..., faced charges of corruption and killing protestors Wednesday before a court in Cairo."...

... The Guardian is liveblogging the trial & related news. Includes livefeed of trial. Guardian raw video: "Hosni Mubarak arrived in court in Cairo on a stretcher, charged with the unlawful killing of pro-democracy protesters in the uprising against him earlier this year. He is also accused of profiteering by abusing his position of power and exporting gas to Israel for prices lower than international market rates. Sentences for these charges range from five years in prison to the death penalty." ...

... Al Jazeera's liveblog is here. Includes video. Lead story: "Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak has denied charges of corruption and complicity in the killing of protesters at the start of his historic trial in Cairo."

Reuters: "Syrian tanks occupied the main square in central Hama Wednesday after heavy shelling of the city, residents said, taking control of the site of some of the largest protests against President Bashar al-Assad." Al Jazeera story here.

Guardian: "Stock markets took fright on Wednesday as fears grew over the health of the global economy and the ongoing European debt crisis. There was heavy selling in London when trading began, sending the blue-chip FTSE 100 index falling by 91 points, or 1.6%, to 5626. There were also heavy losses across Europe, The French CAC and German DAX indices were down 1.6% and 1.1% respectively." New York Times story here.

New York Times: the U.S. Air Force is replacing the aged U-2 spy planes with the Global Hawk, a surveillance drone. "Since 2001, the cost of the Air Force program has more than doubled, and the service recently cut its planned fleet of Global Hawks to 55 from 77. That lifted the total estimate for each plane, including the sensors and all the research and development, to $218 million, compared with $28 million for the Reaper, the largest armed drone."

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