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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Thursday
Dec292011

The Commentariat -- December 29

My column in the New York Times eXaminer: "Did the New York Times publish a 'lazy rewrite' of a 2008 Reason magazine story? Both of the former Reason reporters – Julian Sanchez and Dave Weigel – say so. Sanchez ... calls New York Times reporters Jim Rutenberg and Serge Kovaleski “a couple of indolent hacks … too desperate to give the appearance of being real reporters to provide a reference and do original work.'” ...

NYTX Editor Chris Spannos: "The New York Times has experienced a dramatic series of changes closing out this year and that seem to cast the shadow of instability over the “paper of record” as it enters into 2012. This month alone delivered news of massive changes including CEO Janet Robinson’s departure from the Times, as well as more than ten buyouts of long-time columnists and editorial staffers. If this news wasn’t enough, the Times also recently announced the sale of 16 local papers that made up its regional media group, and the Newspaper Guild of New York has strongly expressed worker dissatisfaction with Times managerial practices. The Times put icing on its own cake yesterday when it mistakenly sent 8.6 million confusing e-mails notifying recipients that they, the subscriber, had requested cancellation of their own home delivery service." CW: this is a TERRIFIC article, and of course I don't say so just because Spannos mentions ME. The NYTX front page is here.

Paul Krugman: "... the debt we create is basically money we owe to ourselves, and the burden it imposes does not involve a real transfer of resources.... Talking about leaving a burden to our children is especially nonsensical; what we are leaving behind is promises that some of our children will pay money to other children, which is a very different kettle of fish." With graphs! CW: you'll have to read the post. I didn't understand it when Dean Baker wrote about this the other day, but I think I get it now. Oh, bottom line: David Brooks is wrong again.

Denver Post Editorial Board: "... more than 80 years after the federal government issued the first television station license, the [Supreme] Court remains a TV-free fortress. Justices over the years have provided various explanations for this aversion to allowing a camera (and yes, it would probably be a single unobtrusive instrument) in the courtroom — explanations that seem increasingly shopworn as time passes.... We hope the court's longtime ban on TV cameras during arguments will give way to a more enlightened policy." ...

... Linda Greenhouse on the factors that influence judges and justices, and what the public thinks these factors are. It's complex!

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones on "the slippery slope of drone warfare." CW: this is something many of us have been thinking about since the targeting killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki (along with his young son and others). ...

... Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic: "Drones are a perfect weapon for a democracy. One gains all of the political credit for killing the country's enemies, and none of the blame for military casualties.... But I wonder about ... what [the victims' families] think of [a] country [that] executes children a world away with a joystick. I wonder about their anger. But mostly I wonder about the secrecy here at home."

Right Wing World

** James Kirchick of The New Republic in a New York Times op-ed: "... there is one major aspect of [Ron Paul's] newsletters, no less disturbing than their racist content, that has always been present in Paul’s rhetoric, in every forum: a penchant for conspiracy theories.... Paul has frequently attacked the alleged New World Order that 'elitist' cabals, like the Trilateral Commission and the Rockefeller family, in conjunction with 'globalist' organizations, like the United Nations and the World Bank, wish to foist on Americans.... Paul has not just marinated in a stew of far-right paranoia; he is one of the chefs.... Ron Paul is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who regularly imputes the worst possible motives to the very government he wants to lead." ...

... Mike Konczal on how the Ron Paul newsletters for "white dudes" translates into today's Tea Party belief that social welfare is fine for hardworking white people but not for those Other undeserving freeloaders.

"Feel Free to Ignore Iowa." Gail Collins on the Iowa caucuses: "On Tuesday, there will be a contest to select the preferred candidate of a small group of people who are older, wealthier and whiter than American voters in general, and more politically extreme than the average Iowa Republican." ...

... On the Other Hand... Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post: "The 'skip Iowa' strategy has been tried many times, from Al Gore in 1988 to John McCain in 2000 to Wesley Clark in 2004 to Rudy Giuliani in 2012, and it’s never worked yet."

Matt Bai profiles Newt Gingrich for the New York Times Magazine. CW: I didn't read much of it.

News Ledes

The Hill: "New light bulb efficiency standards will begin phasing in on Jan. 1 despite intense opposition from conservatives, who have blasted the rules as a textbook unnecessary federal regulation. While Republicans secured inclusion of a measure blocking funding for enforcementof the standards in a year-end spending bill, energy efficiency groups say the provision will have little practical impact. The Energy Department rules will nonetheless go into effect at the start of 2012."

New York Times: "Fortifying one of its key allies in the Persian Gulf, the Obama administration announced a weapons deal with Saudi Arabia on Thursday, saying it had agreed to sell F-15 fighter jets valued at nearly $30 billion to the Royal Saudi Air Force."

Reuters: "A week after settling a landmark federal discrimination case, Bank of America Corp's Countrywide unit was ordered to face a lawsuit by a Hispanic couple who said it applied excessive pressure to refinance their home on terms they did not accept and could not afford. In an opinion by a prominent Republican-appointed judge, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California said a lower court was wrong to dismiss the complaint by Victor and Belen Balderas, who claimed they could not read the English language loan documents they signed."

If you're wondering if your Sears or K-Mart store has been flagged for closure, the AP has a partial list of stores to be closed.

New York Times: "Egyptian security forces stormed the offices of 17 nonprofit groups around the country on Thursday, including at least three democracy-promotion groups financed by the United States, as part of what Egypt’s military-led government has said is an investigation into “foreign hands” in the recent outbreak of protests.... The raids were a stark escalation in what has appeared to be a campaign by the country’s military rulers to rally support by playing to nationalist and anti-American sentiment here. But for the military rulers to suggest that American government funding may have played a role in the recent unrest is remarkable, in part because the Egyptian military itself receives $1.3 billion in annual American aid."

Bloomberg News: "Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits over the past month than at any time in the past three years, a sign the U.S. labor market is on the mend heading into the new year.... . Applications ... rose for the first time in a month in the week ended Dec. 24, climbing by a more-than- forecast 15,000 to 381,000." ...

... Bloomberg: "The number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes rose more than forecast in November as falling prices and low borrowing costs boosted demand."

Washington Post: "Against the backdrop of persistent questions about his conservative credentials, [Mitt] Romney drew enthusiastic crowds as he rumbled across eastern Iowa in a bus making the case that he is the most electable Republican in the field. A Time-CNN poll released Wednesday put Romney at the front of the pack despite his decision to spend relatively little time in Iowa, where a conservative GOP electorate has resisted his candidacy. Romney had 25 percent support, compared with Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) at 22 percent and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) at 15 percent. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.), who was the front-runner just a month ago, trailed with 13 percent in the Time-CNN poll."

Washington Post: "With the Iraq war over and troops in Afghanistan on their way home, the U.S. military is getting down to brass tacks: culling generals and admirals from its top-heavy ranks. Pentagon officials said they have eliminated 27 jobs for generals and admirals since March, the first time the Defense Department has imposed such a reduction since the aftermath of the Cold War, when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted the military to downsize."

New York Times: "North Korea declared on Thursday the young heir Kim Jong-un supreme head of the country, as tens of thousands of people rallied in Pyongyang one day after the funeral of his father, Kim Jong-il, to swear their allegiance to the dynastic transfer of power."

New York Times: "Turkish airstrikes killed at least 35 people in the Kurdish border region with Iraq on Thursday in what the army said was an operation aimed at separatist fighters. Local villagers said the dead were instead young diesel smugglers who had been misidentified by the Turkish military."

Reuters: "Syrian security forces shot dead 17 protesters Thursday, six of them in a city being visited by Arab League monitors checking on President Bashar al-Assad's compliance with a pledge to stop a military crackdown on popular unrest."

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