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.

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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Friday
Jan272012

The Commentariat -- January 28, 2012

President Obama's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

Maybe you're sick of the State of the Union address, but Jim Fallows -- a former presidential speechwriter, BTW -- has a terrific edition, with his own smart annotations. Click on the underlined text, and the annotations pop up. Some are pretty funny. ...

... Robert Scheer writes an excellent reality check on President Obama's SOTU address. CW: what he writes is exactly the reason I backed Obama over Hillary Clinton -- I did not want to get Clintonized again. Yet Obama, if he is Bush III on foreign affairs, is Clinton II on domestic policy. ObamaCare is fiscally-conservative HillaryCare, Dodd-Frank & its Volcker Rule is nowhere near Glass-Steagall, & Obama's Simpson-Bowles Commission belt-tightening deficit-reduction is as Clintonesque as it gets -- right down to Bowles, who was Clinton's chief-of-staff. Occupy is far from finished its work. Read Scheer, who hits other topics in the SOTU. I think the only difference between then & now is that WE are smarter this time. We must stay smart. And tough.

Diane Sawyer interviewed President Obama; the interview aired Thursday:

video platform video management video solutions video player

Peter Whoriskey of the Washington Post: "The Commerce Department on Friday issued its quarterly report showing that the economy expanded at a comfortable rate of 2.8 percent during the last quarter of last year.... But the report and other recent economic data suggest a stark divide between the fortunes of businesses and people. Companies are thriving again, but households have come under financial stress.... The employment level is down about 6 million from its peak of about 146 million just before the downturn.... Wage increases have been modest, too.... Though consumers are spending more, they are also saving less, with the personal savings rate dropping for each of the last four quarters.... Moreover, disposable personal income is slightly lower than it was a year before in inflation adjusted dollars."

Here's the text of an e-mail I just got from my friends at Google. See the January 26 Commentariat for related new stories:

We're getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.

We believe this stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at http://www.google.com/policies. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.

March 1, 2012 is when the new Privacy Policy and Terms will come into effect. If you choose to keep using Google once the change occurs, you will be doing so under the new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Reuters: "Apple Inc has never turned 'a blind eye' to the problems in its supply chain and any suggestion it does not care about the plight of workers is 'patently false,' Apple Chief Executive Tim Cooksaid in an email to employees. Cook was responding to a report in The New York Times about working conditions at Apple's main contract manufacturer, Foxconn, in China, an issue that for years has been a thorn in the company's side." CW: Ah, good. None of those damning reports is true. And Cook is really earning his $60 million a year, isn't he?

Matthew Yglesias in Slate: "... Data released this month as part of the [International EnergyAgency]’s ltest World Energy Outlook report ... shows that in 2010 the world spent $409 billion on subsidizing the production and consumption of fossil fuels, dwarfing the word’s $66 billion or so of subsidies for renewable energy. Phasing fossil fuel subsidies out would be sufficient to accomplish about half the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions needed to meet the goal of preventing average world temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius."

David Firestone of the New York Times: in case you've forgotten, because Republicans keep lying to you about them & Newt & Willard keep sliming each other with them, Fannie & Freddie did not cause the financial crisis.

Right Wing World

** Daniel Denvir in Slate: "... the stereotyping of black government dependency ... serves the strategic end of discrediting the entire social safety net, which most Americans of all races depend on. Black people are subtly demonized, but whites and blacks alike will suffer." CW: I thought this was 40-year-old "news," but Denvir puts the history of social safety net programs together to make some very good points. For instance, I never thought of this: "On Social Security, [Rick] Santorum is making what appears to be a safe argument for reform: cutting rich people out of the program. Right now, Social Security belongs to everyone. Cutting rich people out is the first step to making it a program for the poor. Making something a program for the poor — see food stamps, Medicaid and welfare — is the first step toward eliminating it."

Mitt Romney, Candidate of the Great Vampire Squid. Nicholas Confessore, et al., of the New York Times: "No other company is so closely intertwined with [Mitt] Romney’s public and private lives [than is Goldman Sachs --] except Bain itself. And in recent days, Mr. Romney’s ties to Goldman Sachs have lashed another lightning rod to a campaign already fending off withering attacks on his career as a buyout specialist, thrusting the privileges of the Wall Street elite to the forefront of the Republican nominating battle." Goldman has been bankrolling Willard for decades, and now they're his biggest contributors.

Matt Viser of the Boston Globe: "Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has long been critical of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, blaming the government-backed housing lenders for inducing the home-mortgage crisis and saying they have become too unwieldy.... Yet Romney has profited from investments that were made in both government entities.... And unlike most of Romney’s financial holdings, which are held in a blind trust that is overseen by a trustee and not known to Romney, this particular investment was among those that would have been known to Romney."

Local News

Campbell Robertson & Stephanie Saul of the New York Times: "A close look at some of the clemency applications of the nearly 200 others who were pardoned [by outgoing Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi] reveals that a significant share contained appeals from members of prominent Mississippi families, major Republican donors or others from the higher social strata of Mississippi life." Barbour issued "more than 10 times as many pardons as his four predecessors combined."

News Ledes

New York Times: "NBC News is asking that the Romney campaign remove from its ads any references to material from the network in response to a new commercial that consists almost entirely of old footage of its former news anchor, Tom Brokaw, reporting on Newt Gingrich’s legal troubles.... The Romney campaign said Saturday that it ... was reluctant to take the ad off the air because it believes it falls within the provisions of the fair-use doctrine...." Here's the ad:

Here's the campaign ad which NBC wants the Romney campaign to take down:

Reuters: "The Justice Department issued civil subpoenas to 11 financial institutions as part of a new effort to investigate misconduct in the packaging and sale of home loans to investors, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Friday. Holder declined to provide specifics, including the names of the firms."

New York Times: New York City "Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Friday that 'The Third Jihad,' a film depicting many American Muslim leaders as extremists, 'should not have been shown' to New York City officers. The film was played on a loop for officers during 2010 in a waiting area outside a counterterrorism training course, Mr. Kelly said. He placed responsibility for the decision to show the film on a sergeant, whom Mr. Kelly did not identify."

Guardian: "The head of the Arab League monitoring mission in Syria has said violence has risen significantly in the country in recent days, as the UN prepares to debate a resolution on the crisis next week. The flashpoint city of Homs has again been the focal point of clashes, which are thought to have killed at least 100 people since Wednesday. Activists in the besieged city reported a massacre had taken place at the hands of regime forces on Thursday."

Guardian: "Four current and former employees of the Sun newspaper and one serving police officer have been arrested as part of Scotland Yard's investigation into police corruption. The Metropolitan police have also launched a search at News International's headquarters in Wapping in a bid to secure any potential evidence relating to suspected payments to police by journalists."

Reuters: "Greece and its private creditors head back to the negotiating table on Saturday to put together the final pieces of a long-awaited debt swap agreement needed to avert an unruly default."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

Thanks for the Jim Fallow's edition––found it interesting and yes, pretty funny in parts. I then clicked on to to his link re: his GRRRRR response to the ubiquitous God bless business after all of Obama's speeches. I recall one time that Obama didn't end with that and Fox had a fit about it. For those of us who cringe at that piety, pretty sure that this nation isn't being blessed by any god at any time, we keep hoping that this kind of thing will be dropped from the end of speeches and replaced by something like Ya'all have a nice day, hear?"

January 28, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

@ P.D. Pepe: ha ha! Love your substitute for "God bless America." "Hear," BTW, should be pronounced "hee-yah," a pronunciation that may be incomprehensible in the Midwest & West, but works well in the South & New England.

I used to correspond with Jim Fallows -- haven't lately -- and I think I got him on the the anti-"God bless America" kick. We were discussing some of the basic elements of Obama's speeches, and Fallows helped me get an idea to Obama's speechwriters that I was sure would make the message clearer to the average, low-info listener. The speechwriters did throw in my idea once, but they dropped it, tho it's back now since Obama got on his populist/re-election kick.

Somewhere in the course of that discussion with Fallows, I mentioned how I hoped Obama would drop the "God bless America" coda -- which at first he didn't always use -- and Fallows took up the cause. I love that guy!

January 28, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterMarie Burns

On the subject of religion in public life — which nearly always overlaps at least somewhat with politics, because there is always a politician or would-be politician ready to blast the opposition for being inadequately pious — let’s not forget the case reported in the NYT January 26 of the Rhode Island atheist teenager catching great flak for her successful lawsuit against her public school for its display of a large prayer in the auditorium.

Despite the Constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state, often the most vehement intolerance is directed towards those not making what the religious consider to be sufficient public display of belief in some religion.

January 29, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterFred Drumlevitch
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