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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Saturday
Jun252011

The Commentariat -- June 26

Faint Praise. Maureen Dowd says of Barack Obama's slow "evolution" on gay marriage, "He’s not as bad as New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who gave another grumpy interview on Thursday ... asserting: 'You think it’s going to stop with this? You think now bigamists are going to want their rights to marry? You think somebody that wants to marry his sister is going to now say, "I have a right"? I mean, it’s the same principle, isn’t it?'” Yup, gay marriage is just like incest & bigamy. Oh, why not do the full Santorum & add bestiality? ...

... I've added a Dowd page to today's Off Times Square, but write on any topic. Karen Garcia & I have commented on Dowd. The Times has squelched my comment, but you can recommend Garcia's, which is Comment #1.

Frank Bruni, in his first Washington Post op-ed column, writes a fine one about gay rights & gay marriage.

This bears repeating. New York Times Editors: "Multinational companies say they could repatriate hundreds of billions in foreign profits and pump them into domestic investment and hiring, but only if Congress and the White House agree to cut the tax rate on those profits to 5.25 percent from 35 percent.... According to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the proposed cut would cost $79 billion over 10 years.... They call their plan 'the next stimulus.' Sounds more like extortion. In the last five years American businesses have kept abroad more than $1 trillion worth of foreign earnings.... The Obama administration should not give in to such corporate coercion.... The last time big businesses got such a 'tax holiday,' in 2005, companies spent most of the money rewarding their shareholders with stock buybacks and dividends, not in hiring."

There should start to be some real investigations as to whether Clarence Thomas can continue to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court. -- Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

Darlene Superville of the AP: "On her second overseas business trip without the president, and to the black motherland, [Michelle Obama,] America's first black first lady, was warmly received everywhere she went, often with song and to the point of almost being moved to tears. She spoke passionately about her causes, tickled and danced with some of the youngest Africans, and sat with presidents and first ladies, including Nelson Mandela, South Africa's former president and a hero of the anti-apartheid movement."

The Washington Post's top story today, by Carol Leonnig, et al., asks if President Obama is too cozy with clean-energy manufacturers -- some of whom contributed heavily to his 2008 campaign -- at the expense of, you know, dirty energy producers. CW: I think the Republican party wrote this one for the Post.

Crime Blotter

Douglas Martin of the New York Times: "Randall Dale Adams, who spent 12 years in prison before his conviction in the murder of a Dallas police officer was thrown out largely on the basis of evidence uncovered by a filmmaker, died in obscurity in October in Washington Court House, Ohio. He was 61.... The film that proved so crucial to Mr. Adams was 'The Thin Blue Line,' directed by Errol Morris and released in 1988." CW: Now that we know so much about wrongful convictions, I don't know if we would be so shocked by "The Thin Blue Line" as viewers were in 1988, but if you haven't seen it, do so. Most documentaries aren't riveting; this one is. Martin's article, which outlines Adams' story is pretty riveting, too.

Life on the Lam with Whitey. Katharine Seelye of the New York Times profiles Catherine Elizabeth Greig, reputed Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulgar's companion. The FBI has arrested both, and they are back in Boston where they both face trials for multiple felonies.

The trailer for the documentary film "Incendiary," on the execution of Texan Cameron Todd Willingham for a crime of arson and murder he most likely did not commit:

Right Wing World *

Melanie Mason & Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times: "Rep. Michele Bachmann has been propelled into the 2012 presidential contest in part by her insistent calls to reduce federal spending.... But the Minnesota Republican and her family have benefited personally from government aid, an examination of her record and finances shows. A counseling clinic run by her husband has received nearly $30,000 from the state of Minnesota in the last five years, money that in part came from the federal government. A family farm in Wisconsin, in which the congresswoman is a partner, received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies."

* Where taxpayers should subsidize me but not you.

Local News

Crocker Stephenson, et al., of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "An argument between state Supreme Court Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley became physical earlier this month, according to sources who told the Journal Sentinel two very different stories Saturday.... According to some sources, Prosser wrapped his hands around Bradley's neck. According to others, Bradley charged Prosser, who raised his hands to defend himself and made contact with her neck. A joint investigation by Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism first reported Saturday on the incident, stating that Prosser 'grabbed' Bradley around the neck.... The confrontation occurred after 5:30 p.m. June 13, the day before high court's release of a decision upholding a bill to curtail the collective bargaining rights of public employees." ...

     ** ... Update: "Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley late Saturday accused fellow Justice David Prosser of putting her in a chokehold during a dispute in her office earlier this month. 'The facts are that I was demanding that he get out of my office and he put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold,' Bradley told the Journal Sentinel."

... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "Under Wisconsin law, '[w]hoever intentionally causes bodily harm or threatens to cause bodily harm to the person or family member of any judge ... is guilty of a Class H felony.' ... Should the allegations prove true, however, there are at least four paths to remove Justice Prosser from office.” ...

... Steve Benen: "Given Prosser’s track record and apparent hostility towards women, it’s awfully difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt. And if true, putting one’s hands around a colleague’s neck, in anger, seems like a no-brainer when it comes to removing a judge from the bench. Indeed, it sounds an awful lot like assault and battery."

Daniel Bice of the Journal Sentinel: "After dropping nearly $9 million from his own pocket to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, Ron Johnson didn't have to feel the pain for very long. Johnson's plastics company paid him $10 million in deferred compensation shortly before he was sworn in as Wisconsin's junior senator, according to his latest financial disclosure report.... 'It looks like a scheme to get around a century-old law' barring corporate donations to candidates, said Mike McCabe, head of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign."

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Hu Jia, a prominent Chinese dissident whose activism on behalf of the environment and AIDS suffers [sic.] landed him in prison for the last three and a half years, was released in the pre-dawn hours Sunday and returned to his home in Beijing, his wife said in a Twitter posting."

AP: Lulz Security, "a publicity-seeking hacker group that has blazed a path of mayhem on the Internet over the last two months, including attacks on law enforcement sites, said unexpectedly on Saturday it is dissolving itself. Lulz Security made its announcement through its Twitter account. It gave no reason for the disbandment, but it could be a sign of nerves in the face of law enforcement investigations. Rival hackers have also joined in the hunt, releasing information they say could point to the identities of the six-member group."

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