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.”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
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.“

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
Wednesday
Jun292011

The Commentariat -- June 30

I've added an Open Thread for today's Off Times Square.

On the President's Press Conference

Now is the time to go ahead and make the tough choices. That’s why they’re called leaders…. They’re in one week, they’re out one week. And then they’re saying, ‘Obama has got to step in.’ You need to be here. I’ve been here. I’ve been doing Afghanistan and bin Laden and the Greek crisis. You stay here. Let’s get it done. And so, this thing, which is just not on the level, where we have meetings and discussions, and we’re working through process, and when they decide they’re not happy with the fact that at some point you’ve got to make a choice, they just all step back and say, ‘Well, you know, the president needs to get this done.’ They need to do their job.
-- Barack Obama

Bravo! This is the fight House Democrats have been making for the last six months under the Republican Majority as they move to end Medicare and continue tax breaks for Big Oil. -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

This was Obama as he ought to be. -- Dana Milbank (good column by Milbank)

Ron Fournier of the National Journal: "In Obama's world, Democrats are for kids and Republicans are for corporate jets. That is a sharp distinction that could help put the GOP on defensive, but it may not be enough to persuade Republicans to change their posture on the debt-ceiling talks."

Greg Sargent: "President Obama ... mounted a surprisingly aggressive moral case for ending high end tax cuts, casting it as a test of our society’s priorities, and argued — crucially — that anyone who fails to support ending them is fundamentally unserious about the deficit."

Ezra Klein sees the President's sharp language today as evidence that negotiations with Republicans have failed.

Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "If you don't ask the wealthy to pay their share, the money is going to come from children and the elderly. And that's not morally defensible."

E. J. Dionne: "... President Obama put a question to congressional Republicans that should be asked over and over and over until they blink: Are they really willing to risk the nation’s credit and economic turmoil in order to preserve tax breaks for corporate jets, outlandishly low tax rates for hedge fund managers and loopholes for the oil companies?

The Weather Service Matters. Stephen Stromberg of the Washington Post: "The biggest danger on debt is that our leaders don't do enough to balance America's books. The next biggest is that, whether guided by ideology, ignorance or desperation, our leaders decide to shortchange the cost-effective investments that will sustain my generation's standard of living, relegating us to crumbling infrastructure, poor education, pathetic government services — and, perhaps, sloppy weather reports."

CW: Andrew Sullivan could be right here: "By staying ever so slightly above on this issue, Obama is doing the right presidential thing -- while presiding over what may well be the most seismic period for gay equality in history." Still, I find it more than a little dismaying that gay Americans are denied many rights the rest of us enjoy, and I would like to see the POTUS speak out against such nonsensical discrimination.

Dear Jim, You are unbelivably ignorant, but I will try to set you straight for the umpteenth time. Love, Tim. Or words to that effect. The Wall Street Journal publishes an epistolary exchange on the debt limit between Sen. Jim DeMint (Radical Right-Wing Tea Party R-S.C.) and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (Just Plain R).


CW: Okay, now I get why Washington doesn't care about jobs. In a post about on-line headhunters TheLadders.com, Annie Lowrey of Slate cites a February 2010 Northwestern U. study that found

The recession hit all workers, but it did not hit them equally . According to the study, the unemployment rate topped 30 percent in the lowest income decile. For workers in the second-highest decile, those making about $100,000 a year, the unemployment rate was only 4 percent. And those in the highest-income bracket, making more than $138,700 a year, the jobless rate was just 3 percent. In short, unemployment was 10 times worse for those in the bottom rung of the income ladder than for those at the top of the ladder....

Steve Benen: "... as frustrated as Americans are, they’re not blaming Obama for the mess."

The New Harold Koh. Glenn Greenwald on how low a respected law school dean will go when corrupted by power. Oh, yeah: pay no attention to what Barack Obama says.

Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks on the Senate floor on Monday:

     ... Full transcript of his remarks here. Thanks to Karen Garcia for posting this link on Sardonicky.

Adam Serwer of American Prospect on the significance of the 6th Circuit's ruling for the Affordable Care Act. Although one of the three judges disagreed that the individual mandate was consititutional, they all agreed that the right's "activity/inactivity" distinction was ridiculous. Serwer also notes that this is the first case in which a Republican-appointed judge decided the individual mandate was constitutional. CW: It was also the first appelate-level decision on the ACA.

One of Ezra Klein's readers highlights a way anti-abortion Congressional jerks are likely to effect an increase health inequality, "possibly eradicating these diseases [detected in fetuses] among the affluent and concentrating them among the poorest of society." CW: the test that is the subject of this post has not been administered yet, but the writer's point is well-taken & should make you even sicker about being governed by stupid, sexist bigots.

"Memoirs of Torturers." David Swanson: President Obama's decision not to prosecute Americans involved in torture allowed for a boomlet of books by those advocating for & committing torture. Swanson reviews The Interrogator: an Education by former CIA agent Glenn Carle. "This is the story of how a none-too-bright, self-centered, insecure, careerist bureaucrat with weak principles, a fragile ego, a troubled marriage, and no interrogation experience, but the ability to actually speak Arabic, was chosen to lead the interrogating (or 'interviewing') of an innocent man the CIA boneheadedly believed to be a 'top al Qaeda terrorist' when they kidnapped him off a street and flew him to an undisclosed location outside any rule of law."

Right Wing World *

Sarah Bufkin for Think Progress: Rep. Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus Bachmann calls gays "barbarians" who "need to be educated" and "disciplined."

The People's Encyclopedia. Matthew Desmond of Addicting Info finds that Bachmann's supporters -- in a futile & hilarious effort to make one of her latest gaffes seem less loony (see yesterday's Commentariat) -- altered the Wikipedia entry for John Quincy Adams to designate him "a founding father." With screengrab of the altered page. CW: The Wiki page has since been corrected.

* Is downright disgusting.

News Ledes

Stephen Colbert's victory speech:

The FEC's decision on ColbertPAC:

Washington Post: "In a meeting devoid of anything beyond a gentle chuckle, the FEC decided that [Stephen] Colbert could go ahead with his plans to form a self-titled 'super PAC' that could raise and spend unlimited money on the 2012 elections. But the panel also concluded that the television host’s employer, Viacom Corp., would have to report any help it gives to Colbert for political activities outside the 'Colbert Report' show. The FEC’s 5-1 decision came as something of a relief to campaign-finance reformers, who feared the panel might go further by allowing Viacom — and thus any other media company — to spend unlimited resources in elections without having to disclose the spending." The Hill story here.

Washington Post: "A federal prosecutor has expanded his inquiry into harsh CIA interrogation practices during the Bush administration and is conducting a full criminal investigation into the deaths of two detainees, U.S. officials said Thursday. At the same time, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham has concluded that no charges will be filed in the interrogations of 99 other detainees who were in U.S. custody after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said. At Holder’s request, Durham has been examining the actions of CIA interrogators and contractors at 'black site' prisons for nearly two years."

The Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Thursday morning that he will cancel the July 4 recess so that lawmakers can continue to focus on deficit-reduction negotiations. Reid will schedule a vote on Tuesday, July 5, forcing senators to cancel their plans and show up to the Senate floor. Reid said lawmakers will also work on legislation to create more jobs...."

     ... Washington Post: "President Obama surprised Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Thursday with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, paying tribute to his four decades of public service at a regal farewell ceremony outside the Pentagon. The honor came on Gates’s last day as defense secretary after four and a half years in the job. The citation for the medal — the highest civilian honor the commander in chief can bestow — said that Gates had 'selflessly dedicated his life to ensuring the security of the American people.'”

New York Times: "Hundreds of thousands of teachers and public-sector workers across Britain walked off their jobs on Thursday to protest the government’s proposed changes to their pension plans. Union officials warned that this could be the beginning of a wave of strikes this summer and fall over pensions and public-sector budget cuts."

** New York Times: "In a decision that could have far-reaching effects on immigration cases involving same-sex couples, federal officials have canceled the deportation of a Venezuelan man in New Jersey who is married to an American man, the couple’s lawyer said Wednesday. The announcement comes as immigration officials put into effect new, more flexible guidelines governing the deferral and cancellation of deportations, particularly for immigrants with no serious criminal records." CW: one reason to have a Democratic president.

Washington Post: "The Federal Election Commission ... finds itself the target of a very public joke by television comedian and provocateur Stephen Colbert, who is set to testify Thursday on his tongue-in-cheek bid to form an eponymous 'super PAC' for the 2012 election season."

Reuters: "The United States would immediately have its top-notch credit rating slashed to 'selective default' if it misses a debt payment on August 4, Standard & Poor's managing director John Chambers told Reuters. Chambers, who is also the chairman of S&P's sovereign ratings committee, said on Tuesday that U.S. Treasury bills maturing on August 4 would be rated 'D' if the government fails to honor them. Unaffected Treasuries would be downgraded as well, but not as sharply, he said."

Reuters: "President Barack Obama's plan for pulling U.S. troops from Afghanistan will intensify risks in the thick of next year's fighting season, but Obama was right to factor in waning support at home for the war, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Reuters."

Reuters: "Greece's parliament is expected to pass a second austerity bill on Thursday to enable the country to avert bankruptcy by securing a 12 billion euro ($17 billion) loan tranche from the EU and IMF. After two days of violent protests just meters (yards) from where deputies passed initial austerity legislation on Wednesday, they began debating detailed measures to implement 28 billion euros in spending cuts, tax hikes and privatizations." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "Greek lawmakers on Thursday passed legislation allowing for the rapid implementation of new austerity measures, a day after voting to sharply reduce government spending and sell off an array of national assets, staving off default on the country’s debt and easing, for the moment, a crisis among countries that use the euro."

New York Times: "Afghan officials said on Thursday that they have arrested two former executives involved in the collapse of Kabul Bank. According to Rahmatullah Nazari, the deputy attorney general, authorities arrested Sherkhan Farnood, the former chairman of Kabul Bank, and Khalilulah Frozi, its former chief executive officer, on Wednesday in connection with what he said was hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent loans to bank officers and insiders."

Comments Off