The Ledes

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The New York Times:' live updates of Hurricane Helene developments today are here. “Hurricane Helene was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday en route to Florida, where residents were bracing for extreme rain, destructive winds and deadly storm surge ahead of the storm’s expected landfall. The storm could intensify to a Category 4, if not higher, before making landfall late Thursday, and forecasters warned Helene’s anticipated large size could make its impacts felt across an extensive area. Areas as distant as Atlanta and the Appalachians are at risk for heavy rains.... Many forecast models show the storm making landfall late Thursday near Florida’s Big Bend Coast, a sparsely populated stretch....” ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post has forecasts for some cites in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina & Tennessee that are in or near the probable path of Helene. ~~~

     ~~~ This morning, an MSNBC weatherperson said Tallahassee (which is inland) would experience wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. and that the National Weather Service said expected 20-foot storm surges near the coast would be “unsurvivable.”

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The Ledes

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The New York Times is live-updating developments in the progress of Hurricane Helene. “Helene continued to power north in the Caribbean Sea, strengthening into a hurricane Wednesday morning, on a path that forecasters expect will bring heavy amounts of rain to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and western Cuba before it begins to move toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.” ~~~

~~~ CNN: “Helene rapidly intensified into a hurricane Wednesday as it plows toward a Florida landfall as the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in over a year. The storm will also grow into a massive, sprawling monster as it continues to intensify, one that won’t just slam Florida, but also much of the Southeast.... Thousands of Florida residents have already been forced to evacuate and nearly the entire state is under alerts as the storm threatens to unleash flooding rainfall, damaging winds and life-threatening storm surge.... The hurricane unleashed its fury on parts of Mexico’s Yucátan Peninsula and Cuba Wednesday.“

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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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Saturday
Jul162011

The Commentariat -- July 17

Both Maureen Dowd & Frank Bruni write fairly interesting columns, each on a matter having to do with law and order. ...

     ... Dowd laments that the prosecution in the Roger Clemens perjury case made such a boneheaded error that the judge had to declare a mistrial. ...

     ... Bruni discusses an incident in which a gun-totin' Arizona state legislator allegedly pointed her loaded gun at an Arizona Republic reporter. "... the only state that still forbids concealed weapons is Illinois, said Chad Ramsey, Federal legislation director for the Brady Campaign." Bruni notes that "... a cavalier attitude about guns persists and even flourishes." ...

     ... I've posted a "Law & Order" comments page on Off Times Square. I'll add my comments soon.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, in a Washington Post op-ed: "The Obama administration and Congress must raise the federal debt ceiling by Aug 2. That is all there is to it.... I expect that they will find a way to increase the debt ceiling on time. If they also figure out how to even partially address our long-term fiscal problems during their negotiations over the next couple of weeks, that would be a big plus. But it is not necessary right now." ...

... Paul Krugman: "... the idea that if families are tightening their belts, the government should do the same, is as deeply intuitive as it is deeply wrong. But the susceptibility of politicians — including, alas, the president — and pundits to these wrong ideas demands a deeper explanation." That explanation, Krugman suggests, is this:

     ... Mike Konczal: "... there’s been a wide refocusing of the mechanisms of our society towards the crucial obsession of oligarchs: wealth and income defense." ...

... Reid Wilson of the National Journal: John Boehner has been trying to teach Econ 101 basic arithmetic to Tea Party members of the House. He even brought an expert in. With charts! If you only have three apples but you promised Johnny four apples. ...

... David Leonhardt of the New York Times: We're living through a tremendous consumer bust, & the nature of the proposed deficit-reduction proposals is only going to make it worse.

You've Never Heard of Mike Mondelli, but He Knows All about You. Ylan Mui of the Washington Post on the "fourth bureau" -- private companies that track your personal data, including "auto warranties, cellphone bills and magazine subscriptions..., purchases of prepaid cards and visits to payday lenders and rent-to-own furniture stores..., whether your checks have cleared and ... public records [that] mention ... your name." Sometimes the fourth bureau makes mistakes; good luck getting the errors corrected. ...

     ... PLUS, five facts about the fourth bureau. You won't like them.

Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times analyzes the sources of President Obama's big campaign fund haul: "More than half a million people have donated to the president’s campaign or his joint fund with the Democratic National Committee..., and the two accounts gained a combined record-breaking $86 million for the campaign by the end of June. But Mr. Obama’s bundlers — 271 in all — accounted for at least 40 percent of the total, according to the campaign’s estimates."

"Murdoch's Watergate?" Carl Bernstein in Newsweek: "The circumstances of the alleged lawbreaking within News Corp. suggest more than a passing resemblance to Richard Nixon presiding over a criminal conspiracy in which he insulated himself from specific knowledge of numerous individual criminal acts while being himself responsible for and authorizing general policies that routinely resulted in lawbreaking and unconstitutional conduct. Not to mention his role in the cover-up." ...

... Don Van Natta of the New York Times: for more than four years, "senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid." Yet they were sitting on "a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World.... At best, former Scotland Yard senior officers acknowledged in interviews, the police have been lazy, incompetent and too cozy with the people they should have regarded as suspects. At worst, they said, some officers might be guilty of crimes themselves." ...

... NEW. Max Read of Gawker notes that Rebekah Brooks' arrest today, just two days ahead of her scheduled testimony before a parliamentay committee "helps her more than hurts her," & it helps Scotland Yard, too, who could not have been looking forward to any testimony that suggested their complicity o participation in aspects of the scandal.

Right Wing World

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times on the Bachmann Formula: "... he political rise has its roots in her dogged pursuit of an amendment to the State Constitution prohibiting same-sex marriage ... and her mixing of politics with her evangelical faith. The 'Bachmann marriage wars' ... offer a case study in the congresswoman’s ability to seize an issue and use it to circumvent the party establishment — the same tactic, analysts say, that made her a Tea Party star in Washington and a hot commodity on the campaign trail.

Local News

Rick Ungar of Forbes: one outcome of the "fake" Wisconsin Democratic primary forced because the state Republican party mounted "fake" Democratic challengers (they're called Republicans): the little ploy cost taxpayers $400,000, in a state which Gov. Scott Walker has claimed was "broke." Ungar writes, "Walker’s willingness to blow taxpayer money in so cynical a fashion ... speaks ... to Mr. Walker’s true character and convictions...." CW: Americans know elections cost money, and it's a cost of governance we're generally glad to pay, but this was, as even Republicans admitted, a "fake" primary, since all of the challengers came from the GOP. It was, by every account, a GOP stunt. The taxpayers should not pay for it; the Republican party should. Maybe to help pay for it, "Fake Koch" will write them a check.

News Ledes

Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post maps out what steps Congress is likely to take next in relation to raising the debt ceiling. Actually raising the debt ceiling does not seem to be one of the steps.

New York Times: "President Obama said Sunday that he would nominate Richard Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio, to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mr. Cordray came to national attention for his aggressive investigations of mortgage foreclosure practices during his one term as attorney general. He has already joined" the CFPB "as the head of its enforcement division."

Guardian: "Rebekah Brooks has been arrested by police investigating allegations of phone hacking by the News of the World and allegations that police officers were bribed to leak sensitive information.... An arrest by appointment on a Sunday is unusual." The Telegraph has a liveblog on scandal developments. ...

     ... The New York Times reports some of the media responses to Brooks' arrest. Here's the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal report.

     ... ** UPDATE: "Britain's top police officer, Sir Paul Stephenson, announced his shock resignation as he was brought down by his failure to tell senior figures, including the prime minister, that Scotland Yard had hired a former News of the World executive as an adviser while refusing to reopen inquiries into phone hacking." AND this from the Guardian on what precipitated Stephenson's resignation. ...

     ... Telegraph: "The News of the World allegedly hacked into the mobile phones of [actor] Jude Law and his personal assistant while they were in New York, opening the way for News International to be prosecuted in the United States.... The Sun said it has carried out an investigation and found there is 'no foundation' to the claim." ...

     ... Telegraph: "A senior Scotland Yard officer has told The Sunday Telegraph that News International executives – including Mr Murdoch’s son James – are being investigated for any alleged role in covering up the extent of “industrial scale” phone hacking." ...

... Telegraph: " Pressure on News Corporation to make fundamental changes to its business increased last night after it was revealed that members of the BSkyB board are to meet in special session to discuss James Murdoch’s future as chairman and leading shareholders said the company should sell off its UK newspaper business."

Haaretz: "Wishing to avoid an American veto at the Security Council, the Palestinian Authority is considering turning directly to the United Nations General Assembly in September in order to gain international recognition of Palestinian statehood."

Reuters: "Temperatures averaged up to 15 degrees above normal, with most peaks in the 90s but triple digit heat expected to strike from Montana to New Mexico, according to lead meteorologists for The Weather Channel and The National Weather Service."

** The Hill: "House Republican leaders have missed a 36-hour deadline President Obama set during a Thursday meeting for lawmakers to give him a plan to avert a national default. The deadline came and went Saturday morning without a response from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Instead, Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) plan to move the Cut, Cap and Balance Act on the floor next week, which would require passage of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the debt limit is raised." ...

     ... CW: perhaps this CNN story -- that Tea Party oganizations are ramping up pressure on members of Congress -- explains the House leadership's irresponsibility. ...

... BUT Washington Post: "Even as President Obama and congressional leaders focus on a fallback plan to lift the nation’s debt ceiling, top Democrats and Republicans have begun to map a new way to craft the same sort of ambitious deficit-cutting plan they abandoned last week. As part of the deal being discussed to raise the debt ceiling, leaders on Capitol Hill are forming an especially powerful congressional committee that would be charged with drawing up a new 'grand bargain,' possibly by the end of the year."

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