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."

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

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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."

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The Commentariat -- June 12

I've posted an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square. Update: see Karen Garcia's excellent comment on Dowd here; the Times moderators axed it, at least so far.

Maureen Dowd argues that "At a moment when powerful men are self-destructing by betraying their wives, [Newt] Gingrich is self-destructing by honoring his."

Know-It-All Tom Friedman explains the U.S. economic crisis to anyone who has just emerged from a coma that began prior to September 2008.

Chuck Mikolajczak of Reuters: "Don't be surprised if Wall Street racks up a seventh consecutive week of losses as the likelihood of more poor economic data and other disconcerting signals outweigh any thoughts that stocks are cheap." CW: the good news -- if Wall Street keeps taking hits, maybe to help out their BFFs, the Administration & the Congress will wake up & DO something to improve the overall economic picture. They obviously will do nothing when it's only ordinary Americans who are taking hits.

Scott Wilson & Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are applying fresh pressure on the Obama administration to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan faster than many military leaders say is responsible, forcing the president to balance his party’s demands with his generals’ on-the-ground assessment as he nears another milestone in the war."

Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema in a New York Times op-ed on the murder of investigative reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad & on his own abduction & torture for "upsetting the government" and "defying the authorities."

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... there are signs that [Iowa's] influence on the nominating process could be ebbing and that the nature of the voters who tend to turn out for the Republican caucuses — a heavy concentration of evangelical Christians and ideological conservatives overlaid with parochial interests — is discouraging some candidates from competing there."

Edward R. Murrow's "Harvest of Shame" -- the Update. David von Drehle of Time: "More than half a century later, journalist Barry Estabrook has returned to those fields and reports that things are no better. Read the citation from Estabrook's book Tomatoland. CW: The Fort Myers News-Press has published several stories about the enslavement of farm workers in South Florida. Law enforcement has also uncovered sex slaves rings here. Most of these slaves are foreign-born.

Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life.... He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me -- which forced his resignation facing impeachment -- are now legal. -- Daniel Ellsberg

CW: So we have real slaves in America. In the "Democracy Now" segment I posted yesterday, we learned that because of the 40-year-old "war on drugs," there are more African Americans under correctional control than there were slaves in 1850. Income disparity between the rich & middle class is much greater now than it was in the Eisenhower years & that disparty continues to widen as tax policies encourage the establishment of an aristocracy. Millions of Americans are still living in poverty. American children go to bed hungry. K-12 education is getting worse for everyone but the elite, & higher education has become significantly less affordable. Big banks & large corpoations have more power than ever. Healthcare for middle-class Americans less than age 65 is becoming less & less affordable. The political parties can no longer work together because a good percentage of Republicans are nuts. Instead of the activist progressive Warren Court we have the activist regressive Roberts Court. Government services have been sharply reduced. Much of our infrastructure is half-a-century old and crumbling. Nixon's impeachable war crimes are no longer war crimes. We torture our prisoners. We're arguably engaged in three wars. Climate change is leading to severe weather patterns & all the Florida homes encumbered by underwater mortgages will soon be literally underwater. The United States was a 20th-century nation. The 21st century belongs to somebody else. ...

... BUT on to the important news. I know Anthony Weiner is in tweetment & we're all supposed to be politically correct. Well, Mr. Politically Incorrect himself & "Glee" star Jane Lynch do a reading of the Weiner tweets. Pathetically hilarious:

Right Wing World *

Gordon Gekko for President. Steve Benen: Mitt "Romney ... would just as soon hope people forget he was even a governor.... Businessman Mitt [is] running as a less ridiculous version of Herman Cain.... I think Romney’s biggest problem is that the message brings to the fore his key weaknesses — Romney’s record on jobs is atrocious.... During his tenure, Massachusetts ranked 47th out of 50 states in jobs growth.... And this is the part of Romney’s record he’s most proud of. Romney slashed American jobs as if his career depended on it — and it did." Here's the hilarious -- and accurate -- Colbert segment Benen highlights in his post. All you need to know about Mitt Romney's vaunted business acumen:

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

Al Jazeera: "The escalating military offensive in northwest Syria began after what corroborating accounts said was a shoot-out between members of the military secret police in Jisr al-Shughur, some of whom refused to open fire on unarmed protesters. A growing number of first-hand testimonies from defected soldiers give a rare but dramatic insight into the cracks apparently emerging in Syria’s security forces as the unrelenting assault on unarmed protesters continues."

Politico: "Rep. Anthony Weiner took several pictures of himself grabbing his privates, part of a new batch of embarrassing photos that surfaced online Sunday morning. The gossip website TMZ.com posted 11 photos it claimed were taken in the House member’s gym, a private exercise facility in the Capitol complex that is open to current and former lawmakers." The TMZ page is here.

New York Times: "Syrian troops retook control of a rebellious northern town on Sunday, smashing what remained of an armed uprising after thousands of residents fled into neighboring Turkey, barely escaping a force backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, according to residents and the Syrian state media."

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, in a photo released by her staff today. Staff did not identify the woman with her. Photo by P. K. Weis of SouthwestPhotoBank.Washington Post: "Two photos of a smiling Rep. Gabrielle Giffords were released early Sunday by her office, her hair shorn short but few other telling signs of her gunshot wound to the head. The Facebook photos, taken May 17 outside her Houston hospital, are the first clear snapshots of Giffords since the shooting five months ago during a constituent meet-and-greet in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson." Giffords' Facebook page is here. ...

... Washington Post: "U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords could be released from a rehabilitation hospital in Houston sometime this month, a top aide says, offering the latest indication that the Arizona congresswoman is making progress in recovering from a gunshot wound to the head."

New York Times: "The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy 'shadow' Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks."

The Hill: "The third-ranking House Democrat is breaking with party leaders who called for Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) to resign. Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) issued a brief statement Saturday saying 'he stood by his earlier assertion that 'the full caucus should address this issue when we meet next week.”

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