The Ledes

Friday, September 27, 2024

The Washington Post's live updates of developments related to Hurricane Helene are here: “Hurricane Helene left one person dead in Florida and two in Georgia as it sped north. One of the biggest storms on record to hit the Gulf Coast, Helene slammed into Florida’s Big Bend area on Thursday night as a Category 4 colossus with winds of up to 140 mph before weakening to Category 1. Catastrophic winds and torrential rain from the storm — which the National Hurricane Center forecast would eventually slow over the Tennessee Valley — were expected to continue Friday across the Southeast and southern Appalachians.”

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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 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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Tuesday
Jul262011

The Commentariat -- July 27

Today's Off Times Square asks "Now What?"

Not to worry. The Obama 2012 campaign is going well. From The Final Editon:


Get your ass in line. -- Speaker John Boehner to House Republican caucus ...

AND here's a headline you don't often see in the right-leaning Politico: "GOP in Chaos." ...

... ** Paul Krugman takes down both David Brooks & Tom Friedman in one short blogpost: Republicans crazies have created "the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war," yet "the cult that is destroying America ... the cult of centrism -- portray[s] it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship." ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM: "... the conventions of journalistic 'objectivity', as currently defined, frequently make journalists violate their biggest duty, which is honesty with readers. The top headline running now on CNN reads: 'They're all talking, but no one is compromising, at least publicly. Democratic and GOP leaders appear unwilling to bend on proposals to raise the debt ceiling.' By any reasonable measure, this is simply false, even painfully so."

No Way, No How. I want to eliminate any expectation that the Fed through any mechanism could offset the impact of a default on the government debt. -- Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, to a Congressional committee

Why are we going through this trauma/drama now? Felix Salmon of Reuters: because back in December 2010, Harry Reid thought making House Republicans have "skin in the game" would be a great tactical move for Democrats. Really. Thus guy narrowly beat Sharron Angle! and he doesn't know how crazy Teabaggers are?

"We get the sacrifice. They share the wealth." -- Nancy Pelosi, speaking to union workers about the Republican "vision"

Prof. David Barash in a New York Times op-ed, reviews aspects of game theory and elephant mating practices! and concludes that "The president is best advised to ... declare that the other side has foregone all pretense at rational legitimacy, and simply proceed to govern as best he can for the good of the country." ...

... New York Times Editors: The Reid & Boehner deficit reduction "plans each call for cutting federal spending by trillions of dollars over the next 10 years without bringing in any additional revenue. They are a choice between bad and worse. Americans will inevitably be harmed as government programs are cut sooner than they should be in this weak economy and far deeper than they need to be because of the Republicans’ refusal to accept any tax increases — even on the wealthiest Americans." ...

... Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "This week, there were three events in the world of exceedingly complicated financial markets that showed growing concern about the state of the debt negotiations in Washington: The dollar fell sharply against other currencies. Investors who make short-term loans to the government demanded a higher interest rate. Investors who wanted to buy insurance against a U.S. default on its debt had to pay vastly more." CW: of course it isn't "the govenment" who will pay those higher interest rates, it's you, the taxpayer. Thank your Republican representative.

In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, while two wars and an expensive prescription drug program were simply added to our nation’s credit card.As a result, the deficit was on track to top $1 trillion the year I took office.
-- Barack Obama, in his speech to the nation Monday ...

... Economist Dean Baker: "President Obama does not have the most basic understanding of the nature of the budget problems the country faces. He apparently believes that there was a huge deficit on an ongoing basis as a result of the policies in place prior to the downturn. In fact, the deficits were relatively modest. The huge deficits came about entirely as a result of the economic downturn brought about by the collapse of the housing bubble." [emphasis added] Via Karen Garcia ...

... Jed Lewison of Daily Kos runs down a list of influential conservative groups who oppose Speaker Boehner's deficit reduction plan; those who favor it are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce & Americans for Tax Reform -- both "establishment" Republican groups who are more interested in business than ideology. ...

... Locked out of the House It Built. Binhamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent millions of dollars last year helping elect Republicans to Congressional seats, is struggling to convince the House it helped to build that the debt ceiling must be increased." ...

... Steve Benen runs down some recent polls and finds, "... any fair reading of the polls over the last couple of months, as the Republicans’ debt-ceiling crisis has intensified, finds that while the public is broadly frustrated, the GOP fares the worst — by a wide margin. Republicans are seen as too unwilling to compromise, too reckless, too wedded to bad ideas, too indifferent to the needs of the middle class and seniors, and too reluctant to even consider a balanced agreement with additional revenue. Democrats aren’t winning any popularity contests, but compared to the GOP’s current standing, Dems enjoy vastly more public support." ...

... AND as Joan McCarter of Daily Kos points out, these poll results are a stark warning to Democrats as well as to Republicans. Nonetheless, Republicans are leading clueless Democrats (Obama) "merrily down the path" to entitlement cuts, which will neutralize what would have been the key campaign issue of 2012.


Truth to Power. In his last New York Times column on the economy, David Leonhardt does tell it as it is.

Ben Smith of Politico: "The Navy Times ... reported last week that Navy Secretary Ray Mabus stripped the Silver Star from a Vietnam swift boat veteran, Capt. Wade Sanders.... Sanders is now in jail on child pornography charges. But he's best known as the man who introduced John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and, ironically, vouched for the authenticity of Kerry's service."

News Ledes

A Rare Union Victory in Our Banana Republic. New York Times: "Workers in southern Virginia at Ikea’s only factory in the United States voted Wednesday to belong to a union. Employees at the Swedwood plant in Danville, Va., voted 221-69 to have the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers represent them in collective bargaining, union and plant officials said."

Politico: "... Republicans prepared to bring to a House vote Thursday a two-step $2.5 trillion debt ceiling bill that will avert default next week but threatens more conflict — and renewed instability — in six months. Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell remain in conversation over how to defuse the building confrontation.... But with stocks falling again Wednesday, he fight between Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama has become ... personal.... Fifty-three senators, 51 Democrats and two independents, signed a letter to Boehner on Wednesday vowing to oppose the House bill." New York Times story here. ...

... Making It Even Worse. The Hill: "Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will rework his two-step plan to raise the debt ceiling after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found the bill would not cut as much spending as promised." ...

     ... Washington Post: "... even before the [CBO] report, some House conservatives had already come out against the plan, arguing that it doesn’t cut deeply enough. On Tuesday, Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio) said that fewer than 218 Republicans would support the measure, meaning that Boehner would need the backing of some Democrats to pass the measure on Thursday. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, insist that few, if any, of their members will back the plan." ...

... New York Times: "Thanks to an inflow of tax payments and maneuvering by the Treasury Department, the government can probably continue to pay all of its bills for several days after Aug. 2, providing potentially critical breathing room for Congress to raise the debt ceiling, according to estimates by several Wall Street banks and a Washington research organization. The consensus is that the government will not run short of money until Aug. 10, when it would be unable to cut millions of Social Security checks without borrowing more money." CW: Good. Now the loonies will have a whole week to say, "See, I told you there was no crisis." ...

... Reuters: "Prioritizing debt payments to avoid a default would be 'deeply disruptive' to the economy, Standard & Poor's global head of sovereign ratings said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday." ...

... New York Times: "A House Financial Services oversight panel on Wednesday will give lawmakers their first chance to ask senior executives at Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s about their judgments in putting the government on notice that its top-flight credit rating is at risk."

Los Angeles Times: "Congressional offices were deluged with feedback Tuesday after President Obama urged Americans to make their voices heard on the gridlocked debt ceiling debate.

AP: "A suicide bomber hiding explosives in his turban assassinated the mayor of Kandahar on Wednesday, just two weeks after President Hamid Karzai's powerful half brother was slain in the southern province that is critical to the U.S.-led war effort."

USA Today: "First lady Michelle Obama, who has made the fight against childhood obesity a major part of her platform, praised McDonald's today for plans to add apples to Happy Meals and other new nutritional projects."

Guardian: Tim DeChristopher, "an activist who became a hero to campaigners for disrupting a Bush administration auction for the oil and gas industry with $1.8m (£1.1m) in bogus bids, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday.... Environmental and leftwing campaigners, from actress Daryl Hannah to film maker Michael Moore and writer Naomi Klein, immediately denounced the sentence as excessive."

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