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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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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Wednesday
Jun152011

The Commentariat -- June 16

This Is Not a Movie. But this speech is as dramatic, moving & cynamatic as ever came from any actor in any film. This is Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-Mich.) speaking at one of Peter King's anti-Islam committee hearings. The subject here: prisoner "radicalization"; i.e., becoming Muslim. Here's the story by Benjy Sarlin of TPM:

Nicholas Kristof sees "our lefty military" as a good model for society: after all, it has low income disparity, great educational, healthcare and daycare benefits, high racial integration and a true sense of camaraderie. ...

... I've opened a comments page for Kristof's column on Off Times Square.

** Prof. Juan Cole responds to James Risen's New York Times report that the Bush Administration asked the CIA to obtain damaging information about him (Cole): Retired CIA official Glenn"Carle’s revelations come as a visceral shock.... Carle is taking a substantial risk in making all this public. I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned. Like Mr. Carle, I am dismayed at how easy it seems to have been for corrupt WH officials to suborn CIA personnel into activities that had nothing to do with national security abroad and everything to do with silencing domestic critics." Risen's story, also linked in today's Ledes, is here. ...

     ... CW: I'm sorry the Weiner resignation is going to push the Cole story to the sidelines, because I think the Bush Administration's attempt to dig up dirt on a university professor to discredit his criticism of their policies is a lot more important than Weinerpix. ...

... Greg Sargent: "Twitter claims its first major political casualty." ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM is disgusted with the Democratic leadership's calls for Weiner's resignation & efforts to strip him of his committee seats. ...

... BUT Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post: "Weiner’s colleagues turned on him almost certainly because he lied, and because of how he lied — because of the very specific lie that he told.... Claiming to have been hacked when it wasn’t true was too specific a lie. It meant that colleagues who were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt repeated that lie.... And while they might have been willing to forgive Weiner for misbehavior, it’s a lot harder to forgive him for tricking them into telling lies to their own constituents." ...

... CW: SO I tend to agree with attorney Jonathan Turley's take on the Weiner affair, who makes several points I've made myself & some legal ones that I haven't. ...

... What Matters to the Media. Brian Beutler of TPM has a terrific video (below) & print report on Nancy Pelosi's regular Thursday presser. All the networks were breathless on the run-up to the press conference & all cut to it as soon as she stepped up to the podium. But the minute she said she would not make any remarks about Weiner but would speak about "jobs..., Medicare and the middle class," the networks cut away. The evidence:

     ... In case you thought you were watching news of importance to the nation when you tuned in to your favorite news channel, this should disabuse you of that idea.

Louise Story of the New York Times: "Regulators overseeing financial reform are delaying many of the planned changes in the $600 trillion market for complex securities known as derivatives< because they are running drastically behind schedule in writing their new rules. The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday that market participants would not have to comply with many aspects of derivatives reform scheduled to take effect in mid-July. It declined to specify how long the delay would be in the equity derivatives it oversees. The announcement follows a similar statement on Tuesday from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, although that agency imposed a year-end deadline for many of the changes in the derivatives it oversees."

Glenn Greenwald on the illegality of U.S. participation in the Libyan war: "The growing bipartisan pressure on the White House today forced the President to once again offer a painfully ludicrous justification for why he is permitted to wage this war in Libya: namely, that the U.S. role is so limited that it does not require Congressional approval.... It is also worth noting that the War Powers Resolution, on its face, is not triggered by a 'war,' but rather 'any case in which U.S. Armed Forces are introduced into hostilities.'" ...

... We’re not engaged in hostilities, we’re just launching courtesy bombs! -- Translation of the Administration's Libya justification by John Cole of Balloon Juice

Fred Schulte, et al., of the Center for Public Integrity: "More than two years after President Obama took office vowing to banish 'special interests' from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events...." ...

... Jay Carney's truly lame responses:

Dana Milbank: "In formal settings — news conferences, or Monday night’s debate — [Mitt] Romney is confident and competent. But in casual moments, such as Tuesday morning’s retail politics in New Hampshire, his weirdness comes through — equal parts 'Leave It to Beaver' corniness and social awkwardness." Read Milbank's column for the details. Romney sounds like the kind of guy whose comments would cause you to get up & move to another table.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The House approved large cuts in food aid for the poor and various agriculture programs on Thursday after a steely weeklong debate that pitted Democrats against Republicans, and farm-state members against those within their own party who vehemently oppose certain types of farm aid. At the same time, the Senate voted 73 to 27 to end tax credits and trade protection that benefit the corn-based ethanol industry, with broad bipartisan backing. As a practical matter, the measure ending federal ethanol benefits will probably not become law because it is part of a larger measure that is likely to fail." The House vote probably won't go anywhere, either.

Los Angeles Times: California "Gov. Jerry Brown issued a historic veto of the budget approved by Democratic lawmakers hours after they passed it, opening wide a rift within his own party and throwing the state's financial future into limbo. The Democrats had pushed through the spending plan Wednesday, relying heavily on crafty accounting to patch over the state's deficit, after the governor's talks with Republicans on a tax package faltered. On Thursday morning, Brown called the budget 'unbalanced.'"

The New York Times has obtained from court papers some fairly mundane statements Dominique Strauss-Kahn made following his detention.

... Contains audible crude remarks from at least one member of the crowd.

** Politico: "Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) will resign from his seat in Congress, heeding calls from President Barack Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and dozens of other congressional Democrats, sources confirm to POLITICO." New York Times story here. ...

     ... Updated Times lede: "Representative Anthony D. Weiner, an influential Democrat who had been considered a leading candidate to be the next mayor of New York City, said Thursday that he was resigning from Congress following revelations of lewd online exchanges with several women."

** New York Times: "A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him. Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.... Mr. Carle, who retired in 2007, has not previously disclosed his allegations. He did so only after he was approached by The New York Times, which learned of the episode elsewhere."

New York Times: "Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s No. 2, is assuming the leadership of the organization, less than two months after Osama bin Laden was killed by American special forces, the group said in a statement posted online Thursday. Mr. Zawahri, 59, an Egyptian who long served as second in command to Bin Laden, had been expected to inherit leadership of the terrorist organization after Bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2. 

Dennis Kucinich: "Congressmen Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Walter Jones (R-NC) today [Wednesday] led a bipartisan group of 10 Members of Congress to file a suit in federal court against President Barack Obama to challenge the commitment of the United States to war in Libya absent the required constitutional legal authority."

Time: "Notorious hacker group LulzSec isn't pulling punches — it now claims to have taken down the CIA's website just today, Wednesday afternoon."

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