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
Jan042012

The Commentariat -- January 5, 2012

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on Mitt Romney, the New York Times' favorite presidential candidate. The NYTX front page is here. And you can contribute to the online paper here.

President Obama appointed Richard Cordray to direct the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday. It is a recess appointment, bypassing the Senate, where Republicans refused to allow Cordray an up-or-down vote:

... David Dayen of Firedoglake: "There’s plenty of reason to believe that the whole pro forma session strategy is a sham.... For all the posturing and posing on the right, I’m not seeing any legitimate threats of court action over this. One problem with suing the White House over recess appointments would be standing. It’s unclear whether the courts would want to get involved in this at any level. And that may be why you just hear people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner yelling about this being 'unprecedented' without saying that the lawyers have been called or anything like that.” ...

... Greg Sargent: "Here’s a pretty clear sign of which way the politics are moving in the fight over Obama’s decision to employ a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Senator Scott Brown — who’s facing a stiff populist challenge from Elizabeth Warren, the creator of the agency — has now come out in support of the move." ...

Via Mother Jones... Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "Few presidents have seen their appointments subject to as much obstruction as Obama, and few have been so timid about taking advantage of recess appointments.... during their time in office President Ronald Reagan made 240 recess appointments, President George H. W. Bush made 77 recess appointments, President Bill Clinton made 140 recess appointments, and George W. Bush made 171. Obama's first term has seen a paltry 28."

Amanda Bronstad of the National Law Journal: "Rejecting a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision giving corporations the right to make independent campaign expenditures, the Montana Supreme Court has ruled that banning such spending is justified given Montana's long history of businesses corrupting the state's political process. The state high court ruled on Dec. 30 that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission did not apply to Montana's Corrupt Practices Law, which prohibits corporations from using general funds to make political contributions." Thanks to a reader for the link.

More from Lynn Sherr in the New York Times on "America the Beautiful" Sherr literally wrote the book on it. See also yesterday's Commentariat.

Right Wing World

Natalie Wolchover of Live Science: "Presidential candidate Mitt Romney received eight more votes than candidate Rick Santorum last night in the Iowa caucus, 'eking out a victory' on the path to winning the Republican nomination for president — or so officials and the media are saying. But according to academics, Romney and Santorum actually tied. 'From a statistical point of view, you can't say Romney won anymore than you can say Santorum won,' said Charles Seife, a professor of journalism at New York University who studies election error." ...

... Derek Thompson of The Atlantic posts this handy chart of what the GOP candidates spent for each caucus vote they got in Iowa:

Peter Wallsten & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "... Mitt Romney landed [in Manchester, New Hampshire] Wednesday and immediately faced intense attacks from Republican presidential rivals who vowed to challenge him more aggressively. Newt Gingrich held a news conference in Concord to say that Romney is a liberal and a political chameleon, willing to change positions to suit his needs. Jon Huntsman Jr. dismissed Romney’s newfound support from Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), saying that 'nobody cares' about his backing.... And Rick Santorum ... said in an e-mail to supporters that Romney is a 'bland, boring career politician who will lose to Barack Obama.'”

Dave Weigel of Slate: Rick Santorum wants the Senate to sue President Obama over his recess appointments. And everything else pisses him off, too.

Matthew Mosk & Brian Ross of ABC News: "Rick Santorum's powerful finish in the Iowa caucus is bringing fresh attention to his tenure in Congress, including ethics questions that dogged him about a preferred mortgage he received from a bank run by campaign donors, and federal funds that went to a real estate developer who backed his charity. One of the top donors to Santorum's charity was also the beneficiary of an $8 million Santorum-sponsored federal earmark...."

Romney's 25 Percent Solution. Massimo Calabresi of Time: "An eight-vote, 25% victory may look weak, but Mitt Romney’s narrow win in the Iowa caucuses Tuesday has his campaign charting a plan for ultimate victory by the time Florida Republicans hold their primary on Jan. 31. The strategy: use a dominating win in New Hampshire to cast weak victories in Iowa and South Carolina as a sign of Romney’s inevitable nomination."

Helene Cooper & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "The day after Mr. Romney squeezed out a razor-thin victory in the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Obama’s political brain-trust trained most of its fire on him, painting him as both a Wall Street 1 percent type and an unprincipled flip-flopper. How long the Obama campaign can condemn Mr. Romney ... on both counts is not clear, given that independent voters may view his protean tendencies as evidence of pragmatism." CW: This is Frank Bruni's argument. I don't buy it.

Holly Bailey of Yahoo! News: "While [Sen. John] McCain and [Mitt] Rommey never became close friends, their relationship has gradually become less chilly over the years — enough so that McCain backed off his pledge to stay neutral in this year's Republican presidential race and endorsed Romney on Wednesday." ...

... Dana Milbank: Romney isn't enjoying his victory in Iowa. "The day after his impossibly thin eight-vote victory, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination flew here [to Manchester, New Hampshire] for a town hall meeting at Manchester High School Central, where he was to bask in the endorsement of his 2008 arch rival, John McCain. But the senator grimaced when he was introduced, and as Romney delivered his own stump speech, an increasingly impatient McCain pulled up his sleeve and checked his watch." Then some Occupy reps asked questions. ...

... How to Win in Vegas. Or Anyplace. Always. Paul Krugman and others are looking for some straight talk from the Romney camp on what figures he used to make his claim that he was a jobs creator and Obama was a jobs destroyer. No luck on the 2nd, but on the first, the Romney campaign produced figures for Bain Capital from the periods during and after Romney worked there. Krugman sums up the Romney rationale: "So if something good happens, even if it’s long after Romney was at Bain, it’s Romney’s achievement. If something bad happens, even if it’s in a company that Bain took over when Romney was there, never mind. By that standard, everyone who’s spent a lot of time with slot machines is a big winner, since only the pluses count." ...

... Jeremy Holden of Media Matters: Wait, wait. It was 100,000 jobs Romney created, as he claimed. It was 150,000, according to Fox "News." They are not, however, showing their homework.

News Ledes

President Obama spoke on the Defense Strategic Review today:

     ... The New York Times story is here.

Bloomberg News: "Companies added more workers than forecast in December, a sign that the U.S. labor market was gaining momentum heading into 2012, according to a private report based on payrolls." ...

Bloomberg: "Fewer Americans filed claims for unemployment insurance payments last week, showing the labor market is starting 2012 on better footing than a year earlier."

New York Times: "Insurgents unleashed a fierce string of bombings against Iraq’s Shiites on Thursday, attacking pilgrims marching through the desert and neighborhoods in Baghdad in an attempt to stir sectarian violence amid a political crisis that has brought the government to a halt. At least 60 people died and at least 138 were wounded, security officials said, in the second devastating and apparently coordinated attack in Iraq in less than a month." Al Jazeera story here.

Haaretz: "Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and 17 others were indicted on Thursday in the so-called Holyland case, for allegedly giving or receiving bribes to advance various real estate ventures. Almost two years after one of the largest corruption scandals in Israel's history first erupted, indictments in the case are due to be filed on Thursday."

Guardian liveblog: the euro hits a 15-month low against the dollar.

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