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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Friday
Jan062012

The Commentariat -- January 7, 2012

President Obama's Weekly Address:

... The transcript is here. Caren Bohan & Jeff Mason of Reuters: "President Barack Obama kicked off an effort to encourage businesses to keep jobs at home instead of outsourcing them overseas, as he rolled out a new election-year theme on Saturday aimed at courting middle-class voters."

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Today ... DOJ filed its brief defending the Affordable Care Act’s insurance coverage requirement, and with one sentence the Justice Department takes the plaintiff’s silliest and most successful argument off the table." You can read the brief here.

Citizens United Redux? As a follow-up to an item we linked several days ago, here's David Sirota in Salon: "Last week ... a major ruling out of Montana paved the way for a likely U.S. Supreme Court showdown over the role of corporate money in politics. In the case, which was spearheaded by the state’s Democratic Attorney General Steve Bullock, Montana’s top court restored Big Sky country’s century-old law banning corporations from directly spending on political candidates or committees. Legal experts believe that upon appeal, this case will come before the nation’s highest court. While there, it could serve as the first test of the precedents in the infamous Citizens United decision." Sirota spoke to Bullock about the case, and includes an edited transcript of the interview in the post. Audio of the full audio podcast is here.

Elizabeth Warren speaks in Franklin, Massachusetts. Warren begins speaking about 3 min. in. Thanks to reader Trish R. for the heads-up:

Right Wing World

"Willard Must Be Destroyed" -- Charles Pierce

Charles Pierce gives you the lowdown on what to expect during the two -- yes, two -- GOP unpresidential debates AND the Sunday morning talkshows. He makes it fun!

Here's your drinking game for your Sunday morning mimosa: Take a sip every time [that twit David] Gregory begins a question with the phrase, 'Last night, you said....' Drink the whole thing down every time he prefaces matters with the phrase, 'Do you stand by...?' I promise you, if you play this game, you will be utterly sockless long before Pittsburgh and Tebow tee it up Saturday afternoon. ...

... Steve Benen chooses Willard's "Top Five Lies of the Week." This could be a running series. ...

... Edward Mason in Salon: "Money may not be buying Mitt Romney much Republican love, but it’s going a long way toward helping him buy the next best thing: endorsements in the GOP primaries. Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC and its affiliates states have lavished close to $1.3 million in campaign donations to federal, state and local GOP politicians, almost all since 2010. His recipients include officials in the major upcoming primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, and in three southern Super Tuesday states where he was trounced four years ago."

... Randy Johnson, one of the thousands of people Willard laid off, speaks out: 

Live Free or Die if You're a One Percenter. Center for Tax Justice: "Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s $6.6 trillion tax plan would give the richest one percent of New Hampshire residents an average tax cut of $125,900 which would be over 90 times as large as the average tax cut of $1,400 that the middle fifth of the state’s residents would receive. Former Senator Rick Santorum’s $9.4 trillion tax plan would give the richest one percent of New Hampshire residents an average tax cut of $219,570, which would be over 90 times as large as the average tax cut of $2,390 that the middle fifth of the state’s residents would receive." (File is a pdf.)

Gene Robinson on why progressives should not be rooting for Rick Santorum on the theory that President Obama could easily beat him. (1) Santorum is a good campaigner who connects with working people. (2) "With the exception of Ron Paul, the Republican candidates have competed to see who can be most hawkish on Iran’s nuclear program. Santorum wins, hands down.... It’s quite difficult for a president to change the nation’s culture. It’s quite easy for a president to start a war. Yes, the GOP’s clown-car nomination battle is a source of amusement. The prospect of a Santorum presidency, though, is a source of alarm."

Dana Milbank on Newt Gingrich's Ego Bus Trip: "Me! Largest! First! Best! Gingrich talks often on the stump about 'American exceptionalism,' but his campaign seems to be based on the theory of Newtonian exceptionalism...."

Elections Have Consequences. Reader Haley S. points us to an article by Thomas Mann & Norm Ornstein in the Washington Monthly, which presents an entirely plausible -- in fact, likely -- path to how the GOP, if they hold the House & take back the Senate & presidency, would complete dismantle the social safety net in 2013.

** You Thought I Was Kidding When I Said The GOP Wants to Take Us Back to the Dark Ages. They're already back to 1215. That's close. The following would be local news, except for the fact that the same people who elected these guys are about to have an outsized impact on deciding who the Republican presidential nominee, and possibly the next POTUS, will be:

     Karen Langley & Matthew Spolar of the Concord Monitor: Republicans in the New Hampshire state legislature plan to introduce a bill requiring all civil rights legislation to derive from the Magna Carta. You can't make this stuff up. Here's their whole bill:

All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived.

     The bill doesn't specify which version of the Magna Carta must be cited, so I guess there's some leeway. Here's the model -- directly from the Magna Carta, mind you, that women's rights legislation would have to follow: "No-one is to be taken or imprisoned on the appeal of a woman for the death of anyone save for the death of that woman’s husband." Bankers & the Anti-Defamation League will love this one from the 1297 (and more important) version of the charter: "If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age." BTW, -- much as they cherished it -- the Brits repealed most of the Magna Carta in the 19th century. In New Hampshire, the GOP is bringing it back!

Local News

Chris Bowers of Daily Kos: "Thirty-seven Indiana Democrats are on their third day of denying Republicans the 67-member quorum necessary to proceed with union-busting 'right to work' legislation in the Indiana House of Representatives. The Democrats continue to not show up to the chamber despite now facing fines of $1,000 a day.... Democrats and unions are within striking distance of stopping the bill."

News Ledes

ABC News: "The [GOP presidential] debate ... will air from 9-11 p.m. ET [tonight] from Saint Anselm College, where it will be moderated by ABC News’ Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos, as well as WMUR-TV anchor Josh McElveen." CW: Be sure to check if the candidates are wearing flag pins, George. ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Mitt Romney and his rivals for the Republican nomination appealed to voters across [New Hampshire] Saturday, while also bracing for a weekend of debates that could reshape the contest just before Tuesday’s primary."

     ... Los Angeles Times Update: "An unusually sunny Newt Gingrich pledged to be a happy warrior at tonight’s debate, contrasting Mitt Romney’s record with his own but not attacking him."

     ... The New York Times has a pretty good live update of the debate, including some fact-checking. Here are the Washington Post updates on the debate.

New York Times: "In a naval action that mixed diplomacy, drama and Middle Eastern politics, the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis broke up a high-seas pirate attack on a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, then sailors from an American destroyer boarded the pirates’ mother ship and freed 13 Iranian hostages who had been held captive there for more than a month." ...

... Washington Post Update: "Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday welcomed the U.S. Navy’s rescue of 13 Iranian fishermen held captive by pirates, just days after it had warned all U.S. ships to leave the region."

AP: "Defending President Barack Obama's signature health care overhaul, the administration is urging the Supreme Court to uphold the contentious heart of the law, the requirement that individuals buy insurance or pay a penalty. The administration filed a written submission with the court Friday describing the 2010 law as an appropriate response to a 'crisis in the national health care market.'" See also today's Commentariat.

Reuters: "A wrongful death lawsuit linked to a defining moment of the Iraq war has ended with the company formerly known as Blackwater agreeing to settle with the families of four security contractors killed in a gruesome 2004 ambush. The victims' survivors reached a confidential settlement with the company's successor, Academi, agreeing to dismiss the case before the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit."