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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Friday
Jul082011

The Commentariat -- July 9

I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square. which includes some links to opinion pieces & a video about Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal.

The President's Weekly Address, in which he crams as many wrong-headed, counterintuitive, right-wing ideas as possible into one brief speech:

     ... The transcript is here. ...

     ... Reuters: "Under pressure to reduce America's 9.2 percent jobless rate, Obama used his weekly radio and Web address to vow to seek common ground with his Republican opponents and try to overcome serious disagreements on taxes and spending cuts that he says will improve the atmosphere for job creation."

What everyone seems to forget is that as the stimulus passed its peak and began to decline it became anti-stimulus. The recovery had to be strong enough to weather that pullback in spending. It hasn't been.
-- Atrios ...

... Any revenue reductions that result from the debt ceiling negotiations will increase the size of the anti-stimulus and further weaken the recovery.
-- Constant Weader ...

... David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "We are also committing an unforced economic error. We’re cutting government at the same time that the private sector is cutting. It is the classic mistake to make after a financial crisis. Hoover and even Roosevelt made a version of it in the 1930s. The Japanese made a version of it in the 1990s. Now we are making it." ...

... Paul Krugman notes in a blogpost that buried in the dismal jobs report was the news that wages had declined slightly. "... stagnant wages are NOT good for recovery; all they do is ensure that the burden of debt relative to income remains high, keeping demand and employment down. The situation cries out for aggressively expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. Instead, however, all the political push is in the opposite direction." ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic, borrowing a graph from another Krugman blogpost, calls the picture "political insanity in one graph.... An agreement to increase short-term deficits in ways that boost growth and then reduce long-term deficits through structural economic policy changes would be pretty close to ideal. But the chances of that happening seem awfully slim right now." CW: I'll say! (I thought Cohn explained the whys better than Krugman did.) ...

... Eli of Firedoglake compares Obama to Bush II: "Instead of using the financial crisis or the current debt hysteria to push through a progressive agenda like Bush used 9/11 to push through a conservative one, he’s using them as an excuse to capitulate to Republican budget chickenhawks, and even to cut Social Security and Medicare.... So which is worse? The president who serves his base and sets the country on fire, or the president who stiffs his base and fights fire with gasoline?"

... Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Senate Democrats have drafted a sweeping debt-reduction plan that would slice $4 trillion from projected borrowing over the next decade without touching the expensive health and retirement programs targeted by President Obama. Instead, Senate Democrats are proposing to stabilize borrowing through sharp cuts at the Pentagon and other government agencies, as well as $2 trillion in new taxes, primarily on families earning more than $1 million year.... On Friday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) visited the White House to brief Obama and Vice President Biden on the blueprint, which differs significantly from the framework under discussion with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other leaders." ...

     ... CW: remember this. Kent Conrad is one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. YET his budget proposal is considerably to the left of the one President Obama is proposing. ...

... Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Long-simmering tensions between the White House and congressional Democrats on how best to address the country’s debt boiled over Friday, with leaders and rank-and-file members alike fuming at reports that President Obama is mulling cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of a bipartisan debt-limit deal":

There’s been very little conversation between the White House and the Senate about this, and I think they’re making a grievous mistake if they think they can just present anything to us and assume that because we’re Democrats, we’ll go along with what the president has capitulated to. -- Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) ...

... AND Greg Sargent: "House liberals are launching an organizing drive inside the Democatic caucus, in an effort to line up Democrats and get them to commit to opposing any final deficit deal that contains any cuts to entitlements benefits...." ...

... BUT Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Republicans cited the [jobs] report in renewing their assault on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the economy, with lawmakers saying they would not accept tax increases at a moment when the economic recovery appears to be losing steam." CW: I believe the Republicans know this is B.S., and they are purposely sacrificing the nation's economy for their own benefits.

Tara Siegel Bernard of the New York Times: "Corning, I.B.M. and Raytheon all provide domestic partner benefits to employees with same-sex partners in states where they cannot marry. But now that they can legally wed in New York, five other states and the District of Columbia, they will be required to do so if they want their partner to be covered for a routine checkup or a root canal."

She's got hometown appeal, she's got ideological appeal, and, I hate to say it, but she's got a little sex appeal, too. -- Former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), on why Michele Bachmann would be "very hard to beat" in the Iowa caucuses ...

... AND, hours later: I made a mistake that was disrespectful to my friend Congresswoman Bachmann. I've been a Bachmann supporter in her congressional bids and I apologize. I was not speaking on behalf of Gov. Pawlenty's campaign, but, nevertheless, it was inappropriate and I'm sorry. -- Vin Weber

 

Right Wing World *

Susan Crabtree of TPM: "Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis." Oh, and then they ordered another bottle of the same. The Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand the party drank is the most expensive wine on Bistro Bis' wine list. After the meal, economist Susan Feinberg, who was sitting at a nearby table, "approached the table and asked Ryan 'how he could live with himself' sipping expensive wine while advocating for cuts to programs for seniors and the poor." Ryan later characterized Feinberg as "crazy" and "possibly drunk." Read the whole story.

... I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week. -- Susan Feinberg ...

... Fuck her. -- one of the reputed economists, in response to Feinberg's challenge to Ryan  

Romney is the most transparent phony. He's rolling up his shirtsleeves, he's letting a few pieces of hair fall out of place, a little less hair gel, and we're supposed to believe he's Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. -- Frank Rich (See video of Rich talking about both Romney & Obama on "The Tavis Smiley show at this New York Mag site.)

* Where what's good for me, you can't have.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "House Speaker John A. Boehner abandoned efforts Saturday night to reach a comprehensive debt-reduction deal worth more than $4 trillion in savings, telling President Obama that a midsize package was the only politically possible alternative to avoid a first-ever default on the nation’s mounting national debt." New York Times story here.

New York Times: "The Obama administration is suspending and, in some cases, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military, in a move to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight militants more effectively."

New York Times: "A new nation was ... born [today] in what used to be a forlorn, war-racked patch of Africa, and to many it seemed nothing short of miraculous. After more than five decades of an underdog, guerrilla struggle and two million lives lost, the Republic of South Sudan, Africa’s 54th state..., declared its independence in front of a who’s who of Africa, including the president of the country letting it go: Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, a war-crimes suspect."

Los Angeles Times: "Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared Saturday that the United States is 'within reach' of 'strategically defeating' Al Qaeda as a terrorist threat, but that doing so would require killing or capturing the group's 10 to 20 remaining leaders. Arriving in Afghanistan for the first time since taking office earlier this month, Panetta said that intelligence uncovered in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against Al Qaeda had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives, most of whom are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa."

Reuters: The Icelandic bank that briefly gave WikiLeaks access to Visa & MasterCard did so unwittingly and has cut off WikiLeaks' payment provider DataCell.

New York Times: "For more than a week, Minnesota has stopped performing all services not deemed critical because Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Legislature have been unable to agree on a state budget for this fiscal year. Though the shutdown meant that about 22,000 government employees became suddenly unemployed, the most significant impact so far for Minnesotans who do not work for the government appears to be in the sort of everyday thing, like child care for the poor, that had been easy to overlook for those not dependent on it."

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