REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- January 15, 2012

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.”

The Wires

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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.

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.”

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.'”

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The Commentariat -- January 15, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Frank Bruni's latest escape from fact-based commentary. The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute to NYTX here.

Nicholas Kristof: GOP presidential candidates warn that President Obama wants to turn the U.S. into a European socialist nation. "... it is worth acknowledging Europe’s labor rigidities and its lethargy in resolving the current economic crisis.... But embracing a caricature of Europe as a failure reveals our own ignorance — and chauvinism." Despite problems, Western Europe is doing better economically and socially than the U.S.

I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was. So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way. -- Former Penn State Coach Joe Paterno, on why he didn't confront Jerry Sandusky, accused of 50 counts of child sexual abuse ...

... Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post interviewed Paterno on the Sandusky scandal. Her story is here. Video of Jenkins discussing the interview is here, and includes brief audio clips of the interview. The Post's page on the scandal is here.

Paul Krugman: Angela Merkel, "Still barreling down the road to nowhere."

CW: Here's a Friday afternoon White House document dump I missed (and of course that's the idea). Carol Leonnig & Joe Stephens of the Washington Post: "Senior White House officials were warned that solar-panel-maker Solyndra planned to announce layoffs just before the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections, newly released e-mails show. The White House also got advance notice that the company had agreed to postpone delivering the politically damaging news, according to the e-mails provided Friday by a government source. Energy Department officials persuaded the company to delay the announcement until after Election Day."

Jonathan Alter in the Washington Monthly: President "Obama was reportedly stunned that [White House Chief-of-Staff Bill] Daley quit after only a year in the post, but he shouldn’t have been. The affable Chicago banker had already experienced Washington’s classic death of a thousand cuts."

For a project I'm working on, I just read Jimmy Carter's 1976 Democratic convention nomination acceptance speech. We have not come a long way, baby. But the goals President Carter expressed in the bicentennial year are still worthy -- and most are still just goals more than 35 years later. Hope springs eternal, even if progress is much too elusive.

Right Wing World

** Mitt Romney Was Always a Liar. William Cohan, in a Washington Post op-ed: When Mitt Romney was running Bain Capital, Cohan has first-hand knowledge that Bain didn't play fair; it so often played bait-and-switch, to the unfair detriment of companies for sale, that Cohan refused to deal with Bain. Bain's "word [was] not worth the paper it [was] printed on.... This win-at-any-cost approach makes me wonder how a President Romney would negotiate with Congress, or with China, or with anyone else — and what a promise, pledge or endorsement from him would actually mean.... When he was running Bain Capital, his word was not his bond." ...

... 'Corporations are people'? In this little figure of speech, wouldn’t that make Mitt Romney a metaphorical serial killer? ... Steve Benen, August 11, 2011 ...

... "Mitt the Ripper," courtesy of the Stephen Colbert Jon Stewart superPAC (sorry, this thing may just start on you uninvited; just click it off):

... For a slightly less bombastic take, here's a brief clip of Paul Krugman on Fareed Zakaria's GPS:

... Mitt Romney Is White! He's Really White! Lee Siegel in a New York Times op-ed: "Mr. Romney’s Mormonism may end up being a critical advantage. Evangelicals might wring their hands over the prospect of a Mormon president, but there is no stronger bastion of pre-civil-rights-America whiteness than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.... Mr. Romney meticulously cultivates [his] whiteness.... He is implacably polite, tossing off phrases like 'oh gosh' with Stepford bonhomie.... He has ... a practiced insincerity, an instant sunniness that, though evidently inauthentic, provides a bland note that keeps everyone calm. This is the bygone world of Babbitt, of small-town Rotarians. Mr. Romney does not merely use the past as an inspirational reference point.... He conjures it as a total social, cultural and political experience that must be resurrected and reinhabited." ...

... Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: But many white evangelical Christians consider Mormonism apostasy. ...

... Maureen Dowd begins, then drops an attempt to compare & contrast Romney & Obama, but some of the details she provides about Romney are mildly interesting. ...

... Your Sickening Romney Story of the Day -- A Come-to-Willard Moment. Emily Friedman of ABC News. "God" tells a desperate unemployed South Carolina woman to seek out Mitt Romney and Romney reaches into his wallet and pulls out "about $50 or $60," and gives it to the woman. Noblesse oblige. The woman is now voluntarily cleaning Romney's Columbia, South Carolina campaign office -- I guess Romney got his money's worth. A jobs program worthy of Newt Gingrich's schoolkids-to-janitors plan. Who needs big government when the needy can beg political candidates for alms?

Stephen Colbert appears on ABC News's "This Week with Whoever." The interview might have gone better if "Whoever" had not been George Stephanopoulos. Colbert discusses, among other things, the superPAC ad "Mitt the Ripper," seen -- sometimes without your prompting -- above:

News Ledes

No SOPA. AP: "The Obama administration raised concerns Saturday about efforts in Congress that it said would undermine 'the dynamic, innovative global Internet,' urging lawmakers to approve measures this year that balance the need to fight piracy and counterfeiting against an open Internet. White House officials said in a blog post that it would not support pending legislation that 'reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk' or undermines the global Internet, cautioning the measure could discourage innovation and startup businesses." ...

... Update: here's the White House's response to two anti-SOPA ("Stop Online Piracy Act") petitions it received. ...

... Update 2: The Hill: "House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said early Saturday morning that Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised him the House will not vote on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) unless there is consensus on the bill."

The Hill: "The Obama administration has signaled to allies that it will take a more aggressive role this year in protecting homeowners from foreclosure, a posture that fits with Obama’s populist campaign stance."

Reuters: "Iran said [in a letter directed to U.S. officials] on Saturday it had evidence Washington was behind the latest killing of one of its nuclear scientists, state television reported, at a time when tensions over the country's nuclear program have escalated to their highest level ever.

Reuters: "A South Korean honeymoon couple and an injured crewmember were plucked from a capsized Italian liner on Sunday, more than a day after it was wrecked, as rescue workers struggled to find any others still trapped on board. Teams were painstakingly checking thousands of cabins on the Costa Concordia for people still unaccounted for after the huge vessel foundered and keeled over with more than 4,000 on board, killing at least three people and injuring 70."

Reuters: "Influential evangelical Christian leaders endorsed Rick Santorum on Saturday for the Republican presidential nomination, in an attempt to strengthen him as the more conservative alternative to front-runner Mitt Romney."

Reuters: "European leaders promised on Saturday to speed up plans to strengthen spending rules and get a permanent bailout fund up and running as soon as possible, a day after U.S.agency S&P cut the ratings of several euro zone countries' creditworthiness."

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Reader Comments (3)

Re: Romney and his cheerful exterior:

Sir Thomas More to Oliver Cromwell: "This relentless bonhomie of yours––I knew it would wear out in the end. It is a coin that has changed hands so often. And now we see the small silver is worn out and see the base metal".

January 15, 2012 |

PD Pepe

Can we hope that someone from the NYT reads the NYTX? Marie's Bruni column was a killer. Unfortunately, I can't decide which is worse.....that her prediction on Bruni's career path is correct or that he continues to write his op-eds.

January 15, 2012 |

Haley Simon

I posted this earlier on NYTX, and planned to write another comment for Reality Chex, but I must use what energy I have left to roast root vegetables for dinner.

Comment:
It occurred to me that FRANK Bruni “replaced” FRANK Rich at the NYT! How sad is that?

I think you have said what needs to be said about this lightweight “fair and balanced” op ed columnist, Marie. I will not call him a journalist, because he is not. You are a journalist, and I hope Bruni reads what you have written and sees the difference between your thoughtful, accurate, well-sourced piece and the dribble he writes using a source he met at a Romney rally. Yikes.

I think it is time for the Times to give Bruni his severance and wish him luck reviewing restaurants for Rupert Murdoch, but not before they outright fire Art Brisbane. And NO SEVERANCE for that guy. He is unethical and dangerous. Bruni is just a bad joke.

January 15, 2012 |

Kate Madison

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