The Ledes

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Washington Post: “Towns throughout western North Carolina ... were transformed overnight by ... [Hurricane Helene]. Muddy floodwaters lifted homes from their foundations. Landslides and overflowing rivers severed the only way in and out of small mountain communities. Rescuers said they were struggling to respond to the high number of emergency calls.... The death toll grew throughout the Southeast as the scope of Helene’s devastation came into clearer view. At least 49 people had been killed in five states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. By early counts, South Carolina suffered the greatest loss of life, registering at least 19 deaths.”

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The Ledes

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Washington Post: “Rescue teams raced to submerged homes, scoured collapsed buildings and steered thousands from overflowing dams as Helene carved a destructive path Friday, knocking out power and flooding a vast arc of communities across the southeastern United States. At least 40 people were confirmed killed in five states since the storm made landfall late Thursday as a Category 4 behemoth, unleashing record-breaking storm surge and tree-snapping gusts. 4 million homes and businesses have lost electricity across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, prompting concerns that outages could drag on for weeks. Mudslides closed highways. Water swept over roofs and snapped phone lines. Houses vanished from their foundations. Tornadoes added to the chaos. The mayor of hard-hit Canton, N.C., called the scene 'apocalyptic.'” An AP report is here.

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
Nov302011

The Commentariat -- December 1

CW: The New York Times has rolled out its full "Trusted Commenter" program. For info on the program, here's the Times' help page, and here's a note from Jill Abramson, the Times' executive editor on the program. Abtramson's note is open for comments on the new program, and they are snarky! If you've commented since the full system went up, please share your experience on today's Off Times Square, whether you're "trusted" or "mistrusted."

It's getting to be retrospective time, so here's a funny one: GQ's depiction of the least influential moment of the year. The who's who is here:

The Debt Ceiling. GQ. Art by Victor Juhasz.

** Eliot Spitzer in Slate: while telling the public, the market, their own shareholders & the Congress that they were solvent & didn't need TARP money, the big banks borrowed $7.7 "— one-half of the GDP of the entire nation.... This was perhaps the single most massive allocation of capital from public to private hands in our history, and nobody was told.... So where are the inquiries into the false statements made by the bank CEOs?... In addition to the secrecy, what is appalling is that these loans were made with no strings attached, no conditions, and no negotiation to achieve any broader public purpose." The banks made about $13 billion in profits on these near-zero-interest loans. Spitzer suggests some appropriate paybacks to the public. ...

... Judy Woodruff of PBS "News Hour" interviews Bob Ivry, one of the Bloomberg News reporters who broke the story of our $7.7-billion gift to Wall Street. Thanks to Haley S. for the link to the video & to the Spitzer post:

... Dean Baker: "The [Washington?] Post ran an article ... with the headline: 'big banks got $13 billion in undisclosed Fed loans.' ... This $13 billion was effectively a gift from the taxpayers to J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and other large banks. It was not a loan as the Post headline implies." ...

... Nicholas Kristof gets a Florida mortgage banker on the record -- and it's one disgusting record.

Dean Baker in TruthOut: "The deficit is the agenda of the One Percent." A very interesting essay, with a clever idea that would help reduce healthcare costs, and it's so-o-o free market-y!

Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Responding to a plan by Senate Democrats to pay for [a one-year extension of the] payroll tax holiday by enacting a surtax on wealthy individuals, Republicans outlined a counter-proposal that would extend the current two-year pay freeze for federal workers by an extra year, trim the federal workforce by 10 percent and means test programs such as Medicare and unemployment insurance so that benefits are reduced for higher earners." ...

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones on why Republican obstructionism on policy matters like the payroll tax holiday work: "When it comes to domestic policy, there's virtually nothing the president can do without congressional approval. The American public, however, rather famously seems not to understand this, and Republicans know it perfectly well."

"We Regret Those Deaths." Glenn Greenwald in the New York Times eXaminer on the New York Times Editors' jingoistic tilt in the way they refer to U.S. & NATO deaths, on the one hand, and Afghan & Pakistani deaths on the other.

Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian: "Environmental groups and elected officials have warned Barack Obama that America was emerging as the spoiler of the UN climate summit in Durban, unless there is a big shift in its negotiating stance. In two separate, but strongly worded rebukes, Obama heard from some of his closest allies that his administration was not living up to his election promises on climate action."

Mitt, et al., to Public: MYOB. Stephen Braun of the AP: "Romney's selective policy toward public access and preservation of his executive records raises stark questions about how transparent his administration would be if he were to become president.... Other leading candidates for the presidency — incumbent Barack Obama and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — have touted their commitment to transparency, but their administrations also have been selective at times in the records they disclose. They have limited, stalled or denied access when it suited their purposes."

Right Wing World

The latest in the GOP presidential race from NBC News:

Martin Bashir of MSNBC hosts a fairly good segment on Cain, et al.:

Brian McGrory, former Romney fan, of the Boston Globe: "Mitt Romney has yet again relinquished his role as the adult in this race, the serious-minded reformer who soars above the fray to tell it like it is. Romney, yet again, is just another politician willing to sacrifice what’s left of his integrity for a vote."

... What a Difference a Presidential Campaign Makes. There are a lot of people who say, ‘you know Governor, I don’t like this idea that people are going to be required to buy insurance. This is America. They should be free.’ Well, they are going to get free health care if they don’t buy insurance. I don’t think it is appropriate to say individuals have a choice of saying I don’t want to buy insurance even though I can afford it and I want to make somebody else pay for it. That’s not American. -- Mitt Romney, 2006

Mike McIntire & Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: for a guy who insists he wasn't a lobbyist, Newt Gingrich sure did a lot of the same things a lobbyist does -- and he made millions doing it. ...

     ... Citizen Gingrich. Jim Rutenberg: "Newt Gingrich said on Wednesday night that his advocacy with state and federal legislators for policies that would help his paying clients was in keeping with his role as a citizen, and was not evidence that he ever acted as a lobbyist." CW: The fact that corporations paid me millions to do my civic duty is simply evidence that corporations are people, too, and they are committed to making sure all Americans participate in this great democracy of ours.

... The Ron Paul campaign hits Newt Gingrich's hypocrisy:

     ... Ben Smith: "Ron Paul's gleefully vicious video attacking Newt Gingrich ... is rooted in a fifteen-year old relationship in which Paul has been, characteristically, typecast as the purist against the compromising Gingrich." CW: I wonder if well-paid historian Newt remembers why Paul doesn't like him.

Herman Cain explains international relations. This is not a spoof. It's from his actual Website:

Ben Smith sez the Cain map reminds him of this one:

News Ledes

President Obama on World AIDS Day:

Bloomberg News: "More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits during the holiday- shortened week, signaling limited recovery in the labor market. Jobless claims climbed by 6,000 to 402,000 in the week ended Nov. 26 that included the Thanksgiving holiday."

New York Times: "Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, hinted Thursday that the bank might be willing to step up its support for the European economy if political leaders take decisive steps to prevent future debt crises. Mr. Draghi stopped well short of offering a European version of the massive securities purchases that the Federal Reserve has used to try to stimulate the U.S. economy."

New York Times: "Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring."

AP: "President Barack Obama is renewing the U.S. commitment to ending HIV and AIDS on Thursday, setting goals for getting more people access to life-saving AIDS drugs and boosting spending on treatment of the virus in the U.S. by $50 million dollars. Senior Obama administration officials said the president will set a goal of getting antiretroviral drugs to 2 million more people around the world by the end of 2013. In addition, the U.S. will aim to get the drugs to 1.5 million HIV-positive pregnant women to prevent them from passing the virus to their children."

Not Officially Sorry. New York Times: "The White House has decided that President Obama will not offer formal condolences — at least for now — to Pakistan for the deaths of two dozen soldiers in NATO airstrikes last week, overruling State Department officials who argued for such a show of remorse to help salvage America’s relationship with Pakistan, administration officials said."

New York Times: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Thursday that the United States would loosen some restrictions on international financial assistance and development programs in Myanmar in response to the country’s nascent political and economic reforms." ...

... AP: "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is meeting with opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi (ahng sahn soo chee) on a historic visit to Myanmar."

AP: "Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday thanked U.S. and Iraqi troops for sacrifices that he said allowed for the end of the nearly nine-year-long war, even as attacks around the country killed 20 people, underscoring the security challenges Iraq still faces."

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