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."

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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."

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Tuesday
May312011

The Commentariat -- June 1

Wow, what a boom in my neighborhood at 2:28 am ET. I'd say the Space Shuttle Endeavour just returned.

"Non Means Non." Maureen Dowd writes about the effects on French attitudes about gender issues in the wake of the DSK scandal. ...

... I've posted a comments page for Dowd's column on Off Times Square. Comment on Dowd's column or what you will. I just added my comment.

Neil Irwin of the Washington Post: "The U.S. economic recovery is faltering. Manufacturing — a consistent driver of growth over the past year -- slowed dramatically last month, according to data released Wednesday. Private job creation was exceptionally weak in May, other data showed Wednesday. Adding to that, home prices are falling, consumers are spending less, and companies are laying off more workers, according to other recent reports." CW: who could possibly have known? ...

... Dina ElBoghdady of the Washington Post: "The Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index shows that single-family home prices fell 4.2 percent nationally in the first quarter from the previous quarter, leading analysts to conclude that prices have fallen by more than they did during the Great Depression."

** Early Primaries. David Leonhardt of the New York Times: two "... economists estimated that an Iowa or New Hampshire voter had the same impact as five Super Tuesday voters." The early primary system "distorts economic policy in several damaging ways. Most obviously, the federal government has lavished subsidies on ethanol ... partly because candidates pander to the Iowa corn industry.... A recent peer-reviewed study found that early-voting states received more federal dollars after a competitive election — so long as they supported the winning candidate." Iowa & New Hampshire also are "so unrepresentative.... Their populations are growing more slowly than the rest of the country’s. Residents of Iowa and New Hampshire are more likely to have health insurance. They are older than average. They are more likely to work in manufacturing. Above all, Iowa and New Hampshire lack a single big city.... So the presidential calendar becomes another cause of what Edward Glaeser, a conservative-leaning Harvard economist, calls our 'anti-urban policy bias.'”

Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "President Obama on Tuesday nominated former electric utility executive John E. Bryson as his next Commerce secretary. ... Bryson spent nearly two decades as the head of the largest utility in North America, Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, and today serves as a senior adviser to the private-equity giant Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts. He also is a director of Boeing and Walt Disney, a former energy regulator in California and a noted environmentalist who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council.... Senate Republicans immediately vowed Tuesday to block the nomination in a dispute with Obama and Senate Democrats over outstanding free-trade agreements."

S.E.C. = Swindlers & Excrement Collaborators. Louise Story & Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times: "How [Fabrice] Tourre [of Goldman Sachs] alone came to be the face of mortgage-securities fraud has raised questions among former prosecutors and Congressional officials about how aggressive and thorough the government’s investigations have been into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage crisis. In the fall of 2009..., his lawyers drafted private responses to the S.E.C., maintaining that Mr. Tourre was part of a 'collaborative effort' at Goldman.... Now, however, as criticism has grown about the lack of cases brought by regulators, the scope of the inquiries appears to be widening. The United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., has said publicly that his lawyers were reviewing possible charges against other Goldman officials...."

In a Washington Post op-ed, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner touts the success of the auto industry bailouts.

Sorry to be so late on this, but I've been preoccupied. Paul Krugman has a terrific response to Jared Bernstein's post (see yesterday's Commentariat) on Krugman's last column. Krugman offers a brief laundry list of the Obama Administration's misjudgments about the stimulus and the jobs crisis.

I'm literally behind the Times here, too. Robert Pear of the New York Times: "The administration plans to establish “Medicare spending per beneficiary” as a new measure of hospital performance." ...

     ... Krugman writes, "I do believe that many people in the commentary business can manage to read stories like this, tut-tut about the difficulties, and then — in the very next breath — complain that Obama is doing nothing to limit the growth of health care costs. The point is that this is what cost control looks like. Things like the Ryan plan, which just shift the cost of care onto seniors, are fake; this is the real thing." ...

... Anecdotal Evidence. A friend writes, "A transfer service charges $1,500 a day, three times a week, to take my sister-in-law from a nursing home to a dialysis center ten miles away. No wonder Medicare is in trouble." ...

... Mediscare Claims Redux. Roger Simon, in the Chicago Sun-Times: "The Republicans have wrapped their arms around the Ryan plan, and public opinion be damned, they are hugging it. The Democrats are delighted. They are planning to turn that hug into a death grip." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.

We Voted against It before We Voted for It. Adam Sorensen of Time: "The House of Representatives voted 97-318 against increasing the federal borrowing limit by $2.4 trillion without preconditional spending cuts on Tuesday night. The Republican leadership designed the vote to fail: They used a procedural trick to require a 2/3 majority for passage and convinced every last member of their caucus to oppose it. The idea, they said, was to prove ... that raising the debt ceiling won’t happen without a package of accompanying spending cuts.... Tuesday’s failed vote only served to provide political cover for members of Congress who will eventually have to back the incredibly unpopular increase in borrowing capacity."

Right Wing World *

... if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison. -- Rand Paul

Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress: Rand Paul, staunch defender of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, obviously isn't too keen on the First Amendment.

Alex Altman of Time. Former Republican governors Jon Huntsman & Tim Pawlenty face questions about their prior expressions of support for the dreaded individual mandate. CW: If they weren't running away so fast from their original sensible support for the mandate and other Republican base bugaboos, their presidential candidacies would be more credible. ...

... As Verum Serum highlights in this terrific RINO video, Huntsman's reasonable stances on a number of hot-button issues make him radioactive among the nut jobs of his party's base:

"The $7 Trillion Lie." Judd Legum of Think Progress: "Sarah Palin, in the only interview she’s granted during her 'One Nation' bus tour, claimed that the U.S. federal debt had grown more under Obama than 'all those other presidents combined.' [whoever they were; she's not sure] ... When Obama took office the debt stood at $10.6 trillion. After inheriting two wars and the worst economy since the Great Depression, the debt has grown by $3.7 trillion since Obama has been in office. Palin is off by about $7 trillion.... The deficit ... has increased less under Obama than our last president, George W. Bush. Under President Bush..., the deficit increased by $4.9 trillion." With video.

* Where facts are sometimes hard to hide, but it's always worth a try.

Local News

Tax-Free Texas. Zaid Jilani of Think Progress: "In Texas, state lawmakers — overwhelmingly conservative Republicans — ... passed a bill that would tighten sales tax rules and force many online retailers to begin collecting sales taxes just like any other business. This morning, [Gov. Rick] Perry quietly vetoed the bill, protecting Amazon and other large retailers’ tax-dodging...."

Austerity, Christie-Style. Anahad O'Connor of the New York Times: "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie hopped in a state helicopter on Tuesday afternoon and headed for an event that is not exactly considered important business: His son’s baseball game.... A rising star in the Republican party who some consider presidential material, Mr. Christie has ... tak[en] a hard line on state and local spending, forcing deep budget cuts and proposing budget reforms to eliminate waste.... The Star Ledger reported that Mr. Christie had no public events on his schedule Tuesday. But he did have an event scheduled at 6:30 p.m. at the governor’s mansion..., a meeting with a group of Iowa donors looking to persuade him to run for president in 2012." CW: Sometimes a governor just has to do a little something for himself.

Patrick Marley & Emma Roller of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "State election officials on Tuesday approved recall elections against three Republican senators but put off decisions on certifying recall petitions against three Democrats." That puts the number of recall elections at six for Republicans and, as yet, zero for Democrats. Naturally, Republicans are crying foul. The election board, which all state Republicans voted to create four years ago, is nonpartisan.

Pugilistic Politicians. Kevin McDermont of the Political Fix: "Illinois' rough-and-tumble politics took a turn for the literal late Tuesday, as a northern Illinois Democrat allegedly punch[ed] a Metro East Republican on the Senate floor after a debate over utility legislation. The altercation took place during a lull in the long final day of the legislative session Tuesday, with no reporters around to witness it." Oh, shoot, it would have been so much better if we'd had a video.

News Ledes

President Obama will meet with House Republicans this morning. Should be fun. AP story here. Washington Post Update: "Republican lawmakers demanded Wednesday that President Obama produce a detailed plan to cut government spending in return for agreement to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. But there was no indication that the White House meeting resulted in any progress on the issue, despite an Aug. 2 deadline to increase the federal debt limit or risk defaulting on obligations."

AP: "Space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts returned to Earth early Wednesday, closing out the next-to-last mission in NASA's 30-year program with a safe middle-of-the-night landing. Endeavour glided down onto the runway one final time under the cover of darkness, just as Atlantis, the last shuttle bound for space, arrived at the launch pad for the grand finale in five weeks."

AP: "Government media said the daughter of a prominent Iranian dissident died of a heart attack while attending her father's funeral Wednesday, but opposition websites said she died in a scuffle with security forces. Haleh Sahabi, 54 and a prominent activist and rights campaigner herself, collapsed and died Wednesday at the funeral of her father. He died on Tuesday."

Terrorists in the Heartland? (Bowling Green, Kentucky) Daily News: "Two Iraqi refugees living in Bowling Green were arraigned today on federal terrorism charges -- including accusations of attempting to kill U.S. troops with explosive devices in Iraq. Waad Ramadan Alwan, 30, and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 23, are charged in a 23-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Bowling Green on May 26. The men made their initial federal court appearance today in Louisville."

Comments Off