REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- March 14, 2012

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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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Mar132012

The Commentariat -- March 14, 2012

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on Tom Friedman's cronyism. The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here.

Wow! The New York Times publishes Confessions of a Goldman Sachs Derivatives & Hedge Fund Manager. Greg Smith explains why he is quitting the firm today: "... the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money.... The current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch.... It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as 'muppets.'" ...

... Update: Nelson Schwartz of the Times reports on Smith's op-ed, some reactions to it & some history of Street "ethics."

Michael Cavna of the Washington Post interviews cartoonist Garry Trudeau. The "Doonesbury" page is Slate is here.

... Charles Pierce: " Apparently..., Garry Trudeau's 'Doonesbury' is once again giving the vapors to the people who run our nation's newspapers. The important thing to remember is that nobody is objecting that the facts of the Dildos Mandating Dildos laws on which Trudeau is riffing here are in any way untrue.... The reasons for this is that many of America's newspapers ... are now in the hands of bean-counting poltroons.... Some of the bravest people I know work for daily newspapers, and very damn few of them work in management." ...

Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women’s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world. -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Saturday

... Maureen Dowd: "The attempt by Republican men to wrestle American women back into chastity belts has not only breathed life into President Obama, it has roused and riled Hillary."

** Howard Friel writes an excellent piece in the NYTX on the media's participation in war cheerleading. He covers a lot of ground, beginning by asking the question, "Are we civilized?" The answer appears to be "nope."

Digby riffs on Ezra Klein's New Yorker piece, linked in yesterday Commentariat, on presidents' power of persuasion -- or lack thereof. She makes a good point: "The reason [progressives] wanted [Obama] to make speeches was to mobilize his followers to help 'persuade' their representatives to pass progressive legislation --- or even just reaffirm his commitment to shared goals and educate the public about what those goals are.

David Goodfriend rants about big oil:

Both Sides Do It. CW: I never link columns by the Washington Post's Richard Cohen because Richard Cohen is a dick. Here's a good example of what I mean. Cohen's thesis is that "Sarah Palin's foolishness ruined politics." To prove it, Cohen writes a good synopsis of this year's field of GOP presidential candidates:

Apres Palin has come a deluge of dysfunctional presidential candidates.... Herman Cain ... had a nonsensical tax plan, zero knowledge of foreign affairs and had never held elective office.... Michele Bachmann told a touching fib about vaccinations and Rick Perry did not know squat about who governs Turkey.... He got wrong the number of justices on the Supreme Court — he said eight — and could not remember a Cabinet department he had vowed to eliminate. Rick Santorum knows his stuff, but his stuff includes a wild denunciation of John F. Kennedy’s famous speech about the proper role of religion in public life and a characterization of President Obama as a snob for extolling the value of college. Newt Gingrich has the wattage to be president, but so does Hannibal Lecter, if you get my drift. As for Ron Paul, he appears to be running for president of some theme park.

Then he writes this:

Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these no longer may matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise.

I rest my case.

Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "About 3.7 million Americans live within a few feet of high tide and risk being hit by more frequent coastal flooding in coming decades because of the sea level rise caused by global warming, according to new research. If the pace of the rise accelerates as much as expected, researchers found, coastal flooding at levels that were once exceedingly rare could become an every-few-years occurrence by the middle of this century."

Right Wing World

Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: what happens next in the GOP presidential primary depends on what Newt Gingrich does.

Robert Draper details Romney's political aspirations in a long GQ article.

I think he is great. -- Matt Romney, Mitt's son, on President Obama

The man has had a 10-to-1 money advantage. He’s had all the organizational advantage. He’s had Fox News shilling for him every day.... And yet, he can’t close — he can’t seal the deal because he just doesn’t have the goods to be able to motivate the Republican base and win this election. -- Rick Santorum on Romney

I'm afraid his conclusions are exactly wrong. Senator Santorum is at the desperate end of his campaign, and trying in some way to boost his prospects. Frankly misrepresenting the truth is not a good way of doing that. -- Mitt Romney on Santorum ...

... To make Santorum's point, this chart from BuzzFeed:

Andy Rosenthal of the New York Times: Sarah Palin wants the Obama campaign to stop using her own words against her.

Local News

Nice Work, Scott Walker! Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Newly revised jobs figures released Tuesday show Wisconsin with the biggest decline in total jobs in the US over the past 12 months."

News Ledes

New York Times: "In what could prove to be one of the most damaging chapters yet in the scandal enveloping Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers in Britain, Scotland Yard arrested a former chief reporter for The News of the World on Wednesday on suspicion of intimidating a witness, the first time the police have raised the specter of witness tampering in the course of their investigations."

New York Times: "The Senate easily approved a two-year, $109 billion transportation and infrastructure bill on Wednesday, putting pressure on House Republicans to set aside their stalled version and pass the Senate’s before the federal highway trust fund expires at the end of the month."

Al Jazeera: "President Barack Obama has said the prospect of international military intervention in Syria is premature and could lead to a civil war. Speaking at a White House news conference on Wednesday, Obama said military intervention could lead to more deaths in Syria. Obama says he and David Cameron, the British prime minister, discussed possible 'immediate steps'' their countries could take in order to make sure humanitarian aid is being provided to the Syrian people." Al Jazeera's Syria liveblog is here.

Washington Post: "An American soldier who is suspected of killing 16 Afghan civilians in a shooting rampage was flown out of Afghanistan on Wednesday and is likely to face legal proceedings back in the United States, Pentagon officials said."

New York Times: "Rick Santorum captured twin victories in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries on Tuesday, overcoming the financial advantages of Mitt Romney and the Southern allegiances to Newt Gingrich on a night that amplified his argument that the Republican nominating fight is becoming a two-man race with Mr. Romney."

AP: "Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has won the Republican presidential caucuses in Hawaii, salvaging a much-needed victory after resurgent rival Rick Santorum won primaries in Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday."

New York Times: "Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta landed [at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan] Wednesday morning on an unannounced and tense trip, the first by a senior member of the Obama administration since an American soldier killed 16 Afghan civilians, mostly children and women." ...

... Story has been updated: "A tense visit to Afghanistan by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta got off to an unscripted start when a stolen truck sped onto a runway ramp at the British military airfield as his plane was landing. Mr. Panetta was unhurt, but Pentagon officials said the Afghan driver emerged from the vehicle in flames."

New York Times: "After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print."

AP: "Basketball fan-in-chief President Barack Obama gave British Prime Minister David Cameron a front-row seat to March Madness on Tuesday, taking his European partner to an election swing state [Ohio] for an NCAA tournament basketball game."

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Reader Comments (6)

It is clear from the results of the Republican primaries so far that Lincoln made a serious mistake. He should have freed the slaves and let the confederacy become it's own country. My guess is the Confederate States of America today would have an economy similar to Greece and a political system like Afghanistan.

March 13, 2012 |

Marvin Schwalb

@Marvin Schwalb. They're kinda already there. One thing that is saving Mississippi & Alabama is people like you, who are subsidizing them.

Mississippi got $2.83 from the federal government for every dollar they paid in, & Alabama got $2.21 (2007-2009). New Jersey got 62 cents on the dollar. The 2/3 of Mississippi & Alabama Republicans who don't believe in evolution have you to thank for keeping them in cheesy grits. It's ironic that voters in the states that are the biggest leeches are the ones screaming the loudest about cutting government spending. But try to explain this to a gang of bozos who think they are the direct descendents of Adam & Eve.

P.S. Maybe one of those intellectual giants could explain something to me: Who exactly begat the spouses of Adam & Eve's kids?

March 13, 2012 |

Marie Burns

The NYT says that Santorum 'sweeps' two southern states. Will somebody explain to me how getting about a third of the votes is a sweep? A win yes, but not exactly wonderful support.

March 14, 2012 |

Marvin Schwalb

Marie, you are on dangerous ground here. The Creation myth was an explanation of creation by a primitive people. All primative societies have one. The Navajo tribe has a very detailed and complicated creation myth. The Navajos do not involve a talking snake however.
You should not be asking about the spouses of Adam and Eve's children. The implications are obvious.

March 14, 2012 |

Carlyle

Mr. Schwalb : Be pleased. Santorum is a blessing.He is unelectable but is keeping the wing nuts baloney on the front pages. We have a special interest in keeping the war on women and education Santorum preaches alive. In addition he is making Willard lean farther right to try to reach the wing nuts that despise him. Let's hope this show stays on the road all the way to Tampa.

March 14, 2012 |

Carlyle

When I was a wee girl attending religious instruction classes my hand was always up asking questions. I once asked the old Lutheran minister how all these people in the Bible could come from Adam and Eve––gee, I said, there was just Cain and Able and then all of a sudden they had wives and lots of other people appeared. I remember this so clearly because he humiliated me by saying how shameful that I would doubt the teachings of the Lord. I had another question, but never asked: Who made God? Surely Santorum would be able to answer that little gem along with the other nonsense he's able to thrill the populace with.

On the woman issue: In Turkey, supposedly a secular society, there is a kerfuffle about scarves on the head once again. That women are political footballs isn't anything new in many countries, but it now seems it has become as big a game here as elsewhere. Scarves on the head is one thing, vaginal probes quite another and probing these misogynistic leanings leads us to ponder whether control is the reason––I smell something more venomous––hatred.

March 14, 2012 |

PD Pepe

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