The Ledes

Monday, September 30, 2024

New York Times: “Kris Kristofferson, the singer and songwriter whose literary yet plain-spoken compositions infused country music with rarely heard candor and depth, and who later had a successful second career in movies, died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday. He was 88.”

~~~ The New York Times highlights “twelve essential Kristofferson songs.”

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The Ledes

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Washington Post: “Towns throughout western North Carolina ... were transformed overnight by ... [Hurricane Helene]. Muddy floodwaters lifted homes from their foundations. Landslides and overflowing rivers severed the only way in and out of small mountain communities. Rescuers said they were struggling to respond to the high number of emergency calls.... The death toll grew throughout the Southeast as the scope of Helene’s devastation came into clearer view. At least 49 people had been killed in five states — Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. By early counts, South Carolina suffered the greatest loss of life, registering at least 19 deaths.”

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Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

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.'”

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The Commentariat -- March 12, 2012

By popular request, here's my column on Brother Douthat's Sunday sermon in praise of -- wise Republican voters. The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here. ...

... Jonathan Chait of New York magazine: "For Douthat’s argument to work, though, you have to assume that Romney won because ... he is intelligent and well-accomplished.... I see little evidence that this is the case."

** Adam Liptak's analysis in the New York Times of the Roberts Court, and the critical decision the Court will make on the Affordable Care Act, is something of a must-read.

Thomas Edsall in the New York Times: "Instead of serving as a springboard to social mobility as it did for the first decades after World War II, college education today is reinforcing class stratification, with a huge majority of the 24 percent of Americans aged 25 to 29 currently holding a bachelor’s degree coming from families with earnings above the median income." CW: read Edsall's post, with its shocking statistics that make his point; then remind yourself that Mitt Romney does not want to help poor & lower-middle class students get college degrees. He really is one mean prick.

** Ezra Klein in the New Yorker: the bully pulpit doesn't bully anybody; in fact, it's pretty ineffectual.

Colin Moynihan of the New York Times: In New York City, "For the last few months, [Occupy] protest organizers say, police officers or detectives have been posted outside buildings where private meetings were taking place, have visited the homes of organizers and have questioned protesters arrested on minor charges. 'The N.Y.P.D. surveillance does not appear to be limited to unlawful activity,' said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.... A police spokesman did not respond to a request for comment."

Gary Langer of ABC News: "More than half of Americans for the first time expect Barack Obama to be re-elected -- but that won't make it easy: Even as expectations have moved his way, rising gas prices have dented the president's rating on handling the economy, his overall job approval has slipped back under 50 percent and he's reverted to a dead heat in public preferences against Mitt Romney."

Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker: "All the signs are that the United States military and its NATO allies have not only outlived their welcome in Afghanistan but also passed the point at which their presence is anything other than toxic." ...

... Michael Hirsh of the National Journal: "Recent events in Afghanistan, including Sunday’s horrific shooting of Afghan civilians by a U.S. soldier, are not just going to alter U.S. strategy there. They are very likely to upend it. Even before the latest tragedy, President Obama was trying to expedite his way out of that quagmire, which is already the longest war in American history, as he faced a tough fight at home for re-election. Now Obama is likely to only speed things up further." ...

... Gary Langer: "Sixty percent of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been not worth fighting and just 30 percent believe the Afghan public supports the U.S. mission there.... A majority in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, 54 percent, say the United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan without completing its current effort to train Afghan forces to become self-sufficient."

What Global Warming? MSNBC: "Great Lakes ice coverage declined an average of 71 percent over the past 40 years, according to a report from the American Meteorological Society." CW: No doubt part of God's plan to hold down home-heating bills in the Midwest.

Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker on the many ways attacking contraception coverage is a political loser. 

E. J. Dionne: "The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops will make an important decision this week: Do they want to defend the church’s legitimate interest in religious autonomy, or do they want to wage an election-year war against President Obama?"

David Dunlap of the New York Times: more than 100 years after expelling her, the Park Avenue Christian Church restores the membership of feminist reformer Elizabeth Bartlett Grannis.

Right Wing World

Quote of the Day. I told them they have ocular rectitis. That's when your eyes get confused with your butt, and it develops into a shitty outlook on life. -- John Boehner (R-Ohio), Speaker of the House, to the Republican caucus (CW: Peggy Noonan bleeped the word I have translated as shitty; the bowdlerization she used was "unnecessarily fecal"? Am I missing an adverb? Please advise.)

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "With two key Southern primaries on the horizon this week, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich sharpened their attacks against Mitt Romney on Sunday, as Mr. Santorum bluntly declared that his leading rival 'can’t close the deal,' and Newt Gingrich called Mr. Romney the party’s weakest front-runner since 1920."

Molly Ball of The Atlantic: actually, Mitt Romney is pretty funny. People misunderstand his dry, self-deprecating humor. Here's Mitt in 2007, explaining his hunting prowess to a group of Texans:

... Ned Martel of the Washington Post: "Dressage demands agility and finesse — and money. Ann Romney’s involvement in the sport has allowed her access to the heady world of high-level competition, but it has also exposed her to horse dealing. Two years ago, it resulted in a lawsuit against her alleging fraud in the sale of one of her horses. And that lawsuit provided testimony in which she spoke in unusual detail about the benefits — and the costs — of riding." CW: there's an exponential factor of people who can't afford to field a stable of warmbloods but can afford to go windsurfing. See John Kerry, 2004.

Digby comments on the Ken Griffin interview, which is here. (Griffin is that billionaire Chicago hedge-fund operator & Romney supporter who thinks the mega-rich don't have enough influence over politics.) "He sounds as if his political views were shaped by reading a couple of chapters of Atlas Shrugged in high school and multiple viewings of Red Dawn. In that respect I suppose he does personify the idea that absolutely anyone can become a billionaire no matter how little they know."

Local News

CW: especially if you live in Florida, you will want to read Tim Padgett's excellent summary in Time of the state government's pivot toward culture wars and away from superfluous stuff like higher education. I am ashamed to live here on Knuckledragger Drive at Neanderthal Palms Villas.

Jackie Borchardt of the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News: "Before getting a prescription for Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs, men would have to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency, if state Sen. Nina Turner has her way. The Cleveland Democrat introduced Senate Bill 307 this week.... Turner said if state policymakers want to legislate women’s health choices through measures such as House Bill 125, known as the 'Heartbeat bill,' they should also be able to legislate men’s reproductive health." Via Jud Legum of Think Progress.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The outrage from the back-to-back episodes of the Koran burning and the killing on Sunday of at least 16 Afghan civilians imperils what the Obama administration once saw as an orderly plan for 2012: to speed the training of Afghan forces so that they can take the lead in combat missions, all while drawing the Taliban into negotiations to end more than a decade of constant war." ...

... Washington Post: "The Taliban vowed Monday to take revenge for the killing of at least 16 Afghan civilians by a rogue American soldier, and the nation’s parliament said people 'have run out of patience' with foreign forces. In protesting the killings, some Afghan lawmakers demanded that the U.S. soldier in custody be tried in an Afghan court, the latest sign that the incident could mark an adverse turning point in the deteriorating relationship between Kabul and Washington."

New York Times: "In another milestone in the banking industry’s recovery from the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve this week will release the results of its latest stress tests, which are expected to show broadly improved balance sheets at most institutions."

Washington Post: "A Gaithersburg, [Maryland,] Catholic priest who triggered national debate late last month when he denied Communion to a lesbian at her mother’s funeral Mass has been placed on administrative leave from ministry in the Washington archdiocese."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (6)

When the police need to intimidate 20 something year olds for holding signs, I'm thinking they reveal the concerns of the power elite. I think mayor-for-life billionaire Bloomberg is concerned that there may be nuggets of wisdom in the Occupy movement that need to be exterminated before they grow.
When the right to peacefully assemble is revoked, we are no longer a free society. And by the way, whatever happened to the cops who assaulted protesters without provocation? Are they like their brothers on Wall street, the one percenters, who damage and pillage without consequence?

March 12, 2012 | Unregistered Commentercitizen625

@ citizen625: "And by the way, whatever happened to the cops who assaulted protesters without provocation?"

Thanks for writing. Sgt. Anthony "Bologna was docked 10 vacation days for 'using pepper spray outside of department guidelines,' police said in October." Two young women whom he peppersprayed at close range sued the city in February.

"The New York Police Department reprimanded an officer and a sergeant who obstructed journalists covering Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, according to Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne."

These are the only two outcomes I found quickly; I did not make an exhaustive search. This is the type of question I prefer to have readers answer rather than ask. I just do not have time to be the Answer Lady. If this was meant as a rhetorical question, sorry. I missed the implication.

March 12, 2012 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Furthermore why is it that occupy is infiltrated, spied on, and generally held with contempt by the establishment while Tea Party demonstrations, during which members threaten secession, violent revolution (anyone remember Sharon Engle?), an openly display firearms were/are tolerated? I never recall reading or hearing anything about infiltration or spying, although I'm sure some of the more well known radical elements have been under surveillance for some time. But to the point: Why is Occupy considered subversive and the Tea Party are just good concerned citizens exercising their constitutional prerogatives?

March 12, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterDaveS

^^rhetorical :)

March 12, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterDaveS

Rhetorical: Why does Stanley Fish still have a job commenting anyplace? Pease read today's column and cringe. His temporary insanity occurs quite often causing wonder at his employment at the NYTimes.

March 12, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterCarlyle

Sometimes we forget that the people we are killing in Afghanistan are Afghans and we are not. We have spent ten years and a lot of lives and treasure there and a lot of American families have suffered.
Since we have a paid army, most Americans only glance at the headlines and have no connection to this war.
The American military from General to private has the understanding that these are an inferior people that need guidance and discipline. Troops resent multiple tours with no progress. Ten years are a long time to fight a thankless war.
The unofficial position of many American troops is that these are "camel jockeys" and there are too many of them anyway.
We are occupiers of "untermenschen."
There is no good outcome on the horizon.
For Christ's sake run!

March 12, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterCarlyle
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