The Ledes

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Washington Post: “ John Amos, a running back turned actor who appeared in scores of TV shows — including groundbreaking 1970s programs such as the sitcom 'Good Times' and the epic miniseries 'Roots' — and risked his career to protest demeaning portrayals of Black characters, died Aug. 21 in Los Angeles. He was 84.” Amos's New York Times obituary is here.

New York Times: “Pete Rose, one of baseball’s greatest players and most confounding characters, who earned glory as the game’s hit king and shame as a gambler and dissembler, died on Monday. He was 83.”

The Ledes

Monday, September 30, 2024

New York Times: “Kris Kristofferson, the singer and songwriter whose literary yet plain-spoken compositions infused country music with rarely heard candor and depth, and who later had a successful second career in movies, died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday. He was 88.”

~~~ The New York Times highlights “twelve essential Kristofferson songs.”

The Wires
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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

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.”

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The Commentariat -- July 30, 2012

New York Times Editors: "A new Republican spending proposal revives some of the more extreme attacks on women's health and freedom that were blocked by the Senate earlier in this Congress. The resurrection is part of an alarming national crusade that goes beyond abortion rights and strikes broadly at women's health in general.... Even [though Speaker Boehner has postponed consideration of the bill], the subcommittee's anti-woman work product is a statement of Republican policy.... There is a striking overlap between the subcommittee's regressive politics and the polices espoused by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. That makes it a window on what a Romney presidency could mean for women’s rights and lives."

Daniel Devise of the Washington Post: "A Senate committee that successfully pressed for tighter regulation of the for-profit higher-education sector published a report Sunday that said the business had put shareholders before students."

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "... half of the nation's adjustable-rate home mortgages are based on" the Libor index. "That's a lot of money resting on an interest rate that turns out to have been rigged." But A.R.M.s used to be tied to a federal index. Wall Street changed that, for Wall Street.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post: "A U.S. initiative to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on construction projects in Afghanistan ... is running so far behind schedule that it will not yield benefits until most U.S. combat forces have departed the country, according to a government inspection report to be released Monday. The report, by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, also concludes that the Afghan government will not have the money or skill to maintain many of the projects, creating an 'expectations gap' among the population that could harm overall stabilization efforts."

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker profiles Paul Ryan. Or "What We're in for if the GOP Wins Big in November."

Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post: half the money spent on the 2012 election so far has been "dark money" -- donated to groups that don't reveal the names of their donors. CW: laughably, the conservatives on the Supremes said in their Citizens United decision that transparency would be a guarantee against corruption. Scalia said the same thing in his CNN appearance last week -- but that didn't stop him from ruling against Montana's election finance law without even hearing arguments.

Ron Brownstein, writing in the Atlantic, says "Obama would be foolish not to pursue gun control.... Among the voters who might actually vote for Obama (particularly minorities and college-educated white women), restrictions on gun ownership still attract solid majority support." ...

... AND Justice Scalia ruminates on the teevee about the limitations of the Second Amendment. "'Yes, there are some limitations that can be imposed,' he said. 'What they are will depend on what the society understood was reasonable limitation' when the Constitution was written. He cited, for example, a misdemeanor at the time, of carrying a frightening looking weapon such as a 'head ax'." CW: can anybody see anything wrong with limiting Constitutional interpretation to what it meant to wealthy white men 225 years ago? If you can, you're smarter than a Supreme Court justice.

** Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "... a team of genealogists is ... saying that Mr. Obama's mother had, in addition to her European ancestors, at least one African forebear and that the president is most likely descended from one of the first documented African slaves in the United States." CW: The Ancestry.com page that has links to the pdfs on Obama's slave ancestor is here; however, when I tried the links, the files did not come up, perhaps because the pages are overloaded. I'll try later.

Presidential Race

Obama wants to take my money and give it to do-nothing animals. -- Republican Matron at a Dick Morris party ...

... This whole idea of American exceptionalism, that we're the greatest, when people don't have health insurance, don't have housing. There are all these people in this country who are just not participating in the American Dream at all.... Right now, for some bizarre reason, a lot of these people are supporting Republicans who want to cut taxes on the wealthy. At some point, if we keep doing this, their numbers are going to keep swelling, it won't be an Obama or a Romney. It will be a ­Hollande. A Chávez. -- Jeff Greene, crass billionaire Democrat who gets it ...

... Jessica Pressler of New York interviews Jeff Greene at his Hamptons estate.

When Even Politico Gets It. Emily Schultheis of Politico: "At least 5 million voters, predominantly young and from minority groups sympathetic to President Barack Obama, could be affected by an unprecedented flurry of new legislation by Republican governors and GOP-led legislatures to change or restrict voting rights by Election Day 2012.... Perhaps an even bigger complication than the laws themselves is that so much of the voter legislation around the country is in flux, and could still be by Election Day." ...

... AND don't forget about longstanding laws. "A Lifetime Sentence." Washington Post Editors: "... laws in 11 states ... disenfranchise felons.... "About 7.7 percent of the African American voting-age population is disenfranchised, compared with 1.8 percent of the non-African American population. In Virginia, Kentucky and Florida, felon disenfranchisement affects a staggering one in five African Americans. There's no excuse for that."

Beth Fouhy of the AP: "Former President Bill Clinton will have a marquee role in this summer's Democratic National Convention, where he will make a forceful case for President Barack Obama's re-election and his economic vision for the country."

Not Enough Kiss-Ass. Jason Zengerle of New York: "... now that Obamamania has subsided, the president and his fund-raisers are discovering that they're not exempt from the usual rules of what's politely called 'donor maintenance.' Some top-level 2008 backers complain about not being sought out for policy advice. Others carp that they haven't been invited to any state dinners." CW: Just one more argument for campaign finance reform.

They Know They Have to Lie to Win. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post on Romney's newest false ad: "In any case, the Romney campaign clearly ripped these words out of context, leaving them untethered from their original meaning -- in order to score political points in a highly misleading way. Obama was not talking about today's economy, but about different philosophies of taxation."

** Michael Tomasky in Newsweek's cover story on "what's really wrong with Romney. He's kind of lame, and he's really ... annoying. He keeps saying these ... things, these incredibly off-key things. Then he apologizes immediately -- with all the sincerity of a hostage. Or maybe he doesn't: sometimes he whines about the subsequent attacks on him. But the one thing he never does? Man up, double down, take his lumps."

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker writes a brief review of Romney's visit to Israel, in which he did not, as Andy Borowitz claims, attempt to deposit $10 million at the West Bank. ...

... Foot, Permanently Inserted in Mouth. Aside from declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel & having a top advisor (Dan Senor, a/k/a Mr. Campbell Brown) who told the media that Romney endorsed Israel's unilateral action again Iran (something Romney himself later walked back), there's this. Kasie Hunt & Karin Laub of the AP: "Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who suggested his comments were racist and out of touch with the realities of the Middle East. His campaign later said his remarks were mischaracterized." CW: This guy cannot even pander without grossly insulting somebody. So far, during his three-country excursion, Romney has said the British people may not be up to snuff & the Palestinians definitely are not. On to Poland! If he doesn't explain why it takes 5 Poles to change a lightbulb, I'm going to be very disappointed. ...

     ... Update: the New York Times has just published a "Caucus" blogpost by Ashley Parker. Lede: "Mitt Romney found himself on the defensive yet again on his overseas trip, this time after offending Palestinian leaders with comments he made at a breakfast fund-raiser here on Monday."

Margaret Hartmann of New York: "In an interview with ABC News' David Muir, Romney was unable to say whether he'd ever paid less than his 2010 rate of 13.9 percent, which is a lower rate than many middle-class Americans pay. However, he assured voters that he hasn't been overpaying his taxes...." The transcript of the interview is here. The bit about the taxes is on page 2, the linked page. Here's the video. The discussion of taxes begins at 2:20 min. in:

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta sought Sunday to portray the United States and Israel as unified in their support for increasingly tough international sanctions, rather than military measures, against Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.... Panetta is to arrive in Israel on Tuesday, just days after a visit by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose campaign has tried to suggest that the Obama administration is not sufficiently supportive of Israel."

Raflaca, Doing Her Bit for the 1 Percent. Mary Mycio, in Slate: "The association between horses and wealth was forged millennia ago. In fact, the first people known to celebrate hierarchies of power, whose inequalities of wealth were integral to their society and culture -- the people you could call the first 1 percent -- were the first people to ride horses."

News Ledes

Washington Blade: "The Democratic Party platform drafting committee approved on Sunday language endorsing same-sex marriage in addition to other pro-LGBT positions as part of the Democratic Party platform, according to two sources familiar with the drafting process. Retiring gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who sits on the committee, told the Washington Blade on Monday that the 15-member panel unanimously backed the inclusion of a marriage equality plank...."

Reuters: "The former graduate student accused of killing 12 people in a shooting spree at a Denver-area movie house was due to make a second court appearance on Monday as prosecutors and defense lawyers sparred over a mysterious package sent to his psychiatrist.... Criminal charges against [James] Holmes, who has remained jailed since his arrest, were expected to be formally presented at Monday's hearing." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Colorado prosecutors formally charged James Eagan Holmes on Monday with 142 criminal counts, including first-degree murder, attempted murder and explosives charges in the shooting rampage at a crowded Aurora, Colo., movie theater this month."

AP: "Northern India's power grid crashed Monday, halting hundreds of trains, forcing hospitals and airports to use backup generators and leaving 370 million people -- more than the population of the United States and Canada combined -- sweltering in the summer heat."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (4)

The NYT's editorial on the crusade against women fits my post yesterday. The sole purpose of women is to manufacture more men. For those still locked in the evolutionary words of 5000 years ago (we call them Republicans), women have no other purpose. Their lives must be devoted to 'The Purpose'. It's all in their magic book. And if women die, as long as they can manufacture a replacement before it happens, no problem.
When are we going to start using the words that reflect the true Republican position? It's called biblical fascism.

July 30, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterMarvin Schwalb

What a disgrace... saw this yesterday on The Guardian's page...
Not sure who reported it first.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/29/mississippi-church-african-american-wedding?newsfeed=true
So much for the changes in Mississipi.... and the churches!
Mae Finch

July 30, 2012 | Unregistered Commentermae finch

"the conservatives on the Supremes said in their Citizens United decision that transparency would be a guarantee against corruption"

I guess that depends on how you define corruption. If it's the plutocracy getting their way in everything, that's the natural order of things If it's poor folks or dark-skinned folks or progressive folks trying to get a level playing field, then it's corruption.

July 30, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterTrish Ramey, Louisville, KY

Re: It's their DNA; Finally I've been coded properly, I'm a "Do Nothing Animal". I just wonder if Ms. Pissy, Republican party going matron could last a day with me; work or play. I think not. I wish Ms. Pissy and I would be dropped off on a island to see how we'd fare.

July 30, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterJJG
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