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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Wednesday
Mar072012

The Commentariat -- March 8, 2012

J. D. Crowe, Mobile Register.My column in today's New York Times eXaminer looks at several New York Times op-eds that demonstrate what conservatives are doing to infringe on the rights of women, minorities, the poor & gays. They just don't quit. The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here.

Steve Kornacki of Salon: "It’s not just that [Limbaugh] said something awful about a 30-year-old woman who hadn’t said anything about him. It’s that he did so by way of amplifying the GOP’s message on contraception. Republicans had been taking pains to claim their objections to the Obama administration’s mandate ... were all about protecting religious liberty — that they weren’t on some puritanical crusade. With his unparalleled platform, Limbaugh has made a mockery of that idea, and he’s put a particularly nasty face on the GOP’s posturing."

Charles Pierce: No, Rush Limbaugh is not just like Bill Maher. ...

... BUT then again, maybe he is. Maher says liberals should quit picking on Rush. After all, he apologized. CW: Really?

... M. J. Lee of Politico: "At least 42 companies have pulled their ads from the 'The Rush Limbaugh Show' since the conservative talk show host called a law student a “slut” on the air last week, as the social media blitz against the popular radio program showed no signs of slowing down Wednesday."

** The War on Planned Parenthood, Lone Star Edition: Pam Belluck & Emily Ramshaw of the New York Times: More than a dozen Texas Planned Parenthood clinics have closed "after financing for women’s health was slashed by two-thirds by the Republican-controlled Legislature. The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close — and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions — supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion. Now, the same sentiment is likely to lead to a shutdown next week of another significant source of reproductive health care: the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which serves 130,000 women with grants to many clinics.... Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have said they would forgo the $35 million in federal money that finances the women’s health program in order to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it." Several other states are trying similar stunts. "Nationally, the newest target is Title X, the main federal family planning program. All four Republican presidential candidates support eliminating Title X, which was created in 1970 with Republican support from President Nixon and the elder George Bush, then a congressman."

President Obama spoke about American energy in Mount Holly, North Carolina, yesterday:

... Barack Obama, at Harvard, ca. 1990 or 1991, at a protest in support of Prof. Derek Bell:

... Tim McCown of the Philadelphia Progressive Examiner: "Today I saw the first of Andrew Breitbart's tapes of a supposedly radical Obama that (yawn) proves that yes Barack Obama did attend Harvard Law School. This is part of the supposed expose that some on the Right believe that Andrew Breitbart was killed to prevent the release of. If today's film is any indication of what is yet to come, the Coroner is going to find Andrew Breitbart likely died of boredom not some assassination plot." ...

... Here's the trailer for a 17-minute Obama campaign documentary film to be released next week. Somehow, I don't think you'll have to wait till NetFlix stocks it to see the full film:

T. W. Farnam of the Washington Post: "More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees." CW: I'm sure I've covered this before; I think maybe the Post has, too.

David Dayen of Firedoglake: "Chellie Pingree, the progressive member of Congress who considered running for Senate after Olympia Snowe retired, backed out of the race today. The presence of independent former Governor Angus King in the race was enough to get her to drop her plans." Dayen runs the numbers & says she made a mistake. ...

... Digby: "I tend to think it would be a good thing to have more than 16% of the elected US legislators be women. Call me wacky. Why is it always the woman who has to step aside?" Do read a least a bit of the interview transcript Digby provides. The difference between King & Sarah Palin is he wears pants & can speak in complete sentences. Their ideas are equally thoughtful. For philosophical inspiration, King Googled a speech by George Washington. It was great! Washington was worried about deficits!

Neal Broverman of the Advocate: "Three Iowa Supreme Court justices who voted to legalize same-sex marriage and were later removed from the bench by voters will be honored with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Justices Marsha Ternus, Michael Streit, and David Baker voted in 2009 to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa, making the state the first outside of New England to offer marriage equality. A year later, a right-wing effort brought by Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats helped oust the judges when they were up for a retention vote."

This veteran, who lives in Tennessee, brings up a very good point: he is being required to pay to get a copy of his birth certificate as proof of identification. Without it, he is not allowed to vote, except by provisional ballot, which may not be counted. I don't know how all the new state voter restriction laws work, but it seems apparent that some of them are operating as de facto poll taxes, which are unconstitutional:

Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: Sen. Scott "Brown [R-Mass.], who will face a difficult reelection fight, probably against Harvard professor and former Obama administration official Elizabeth Warren, is working hard to define himself as a 'Massachusetts moderate.' ... Romney, meanwhile, has been working equally hard to escape that label, which his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination have used as a slur against him.... The likely result is that Brown will be forced into a delicate dance ... to distance himself from a political mentor and his state’s other most prominent Republican politician."

Right Wing World

Mitt Romney, Dangerous War Monger, Again. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a Washington Post op-ed: "While wise Republicans stress the perils of loose war talk and the value of engagement to isolate Iran, Romney seeks to create political division with an attack on the Obama administration’s Iran policy that is as inaccurate as it is aggressive. I join this debate because the nuclear issue with Iran is deadly serious business. It should invite sobriety and thoughtfulness, not sloganeering and sound bites."

Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "Mitt Romney's campaign team has appealed for his rivals to quit the Republican presidential race, claiming that it is near impossible for them to catch him after the Super Tuesday results and that by staying in they are boosting President Barack Obama's re-election chances. But Rick Santorum, boosted by his three wins on Tuesday and running Romney close in Ohio, was out on the campaign trail again on Wednesday and stubbornly refusing to concede, intent on pushing Romney to the end. The former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, too was out campaigning and refusing to pull out."

Azi Paybarah of Capital New York. "Pataki Makes a Romney Endorsement that the D.N.C. Would Like You to Watch." Via Greg Sargent:

Mitt is not a perfect candidate. He has a number of problems. It’s hard for blue-collar families like mine to identify with him. It’s hard for economic conservatives to identify with him. He needs to do more to reach out to Latinos. -- George Pataki, former New York governor

What we will go to in a very short period of time, the next two years, a little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them. After Obamacare, it will not be less than 50 percent; it will be 100 percent. -- Rick Santorum, GOP presidential candidate

As the GOP race for the presidential nomination has dragged on, Santorum has shown an increasing tendency to shoot from hip, with little attention to the facts. His latest claim about entitlement spending falls into this category. There is not a shred of evidence to back up this claim. -- Glenn Kessler, Washington Post fact-checker

Dana Milbank: "The Republicans are synthesizing a higher-octane blend in their bid to fuel Americans’ anxiety about rising gas prices.... The recent spike in gas prices — in part a byproduct of higher economic growth — [is] a potentially crucial issue for the opposition. The facts aren’t on their side (policymakers have little sway over oil prices; and one policy area that is spurring prices, the prospect of attacking Iran, has been pushed by Republican presidential candidates), but political reality is: The incumbent will be credited or blamed for whatever happens on his watch.

News Ledes

Washington Post: "In the wake of lobbying by President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders, the Senate Thursday defeated legislation to speed up construction of a U-S.-Canadian oil pipeline. The White House victory came after the president started personally calling Democratic senators Wednesday night. The vote underscored the extent to which rising gas prices and energy supply have become a central political issue."

New York Times: "The House on Thursday overwhelmingly approved legislation to ease small businesses’ access to investments and capital markets, a sign that the shadow of the November election is pressing Congress into action. The 390-to-23 vote on the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act is likely to propel the legislation forward. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said a Senate version was likely to be unveiled early next week, and aides said it would likely reflect the House bill."

Space: "The biggest solar storm in five years is battering our planet right now, and may cause disruptions to satellites, power grids and communications networks over the next 24 hours, space weather experts say."

Guardian: "Syria's deputy oil minister, Abdo Hussameldin, has announced his defection on YouTube, becoming the first high ranking civilian official to abandon President Bashar al-Assad since the uprising against his rule erupted a year ago." The Guardian includes the video with the story; it has English subtitles. ...

     ... Reuters Update: "Four more high-ranking officers have defected from the Syrian armed forces and joined the year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, two rebel groups said on Thursday."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (7)

Only the poor women in this country are damaged by the right wing attack on insurance paid birth conrol. The people with good paying jobs and those with money have no problem.
Abortion is the only out of poor women with too many children or the need to work to maintain their families. Save women from abortions, provide birth control.

March 8, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterCarlyle

Repeat after me; politicians afraid of Rush Limbaugh will be devoured by Putin.
Repeat after me; Following a foreign leader, like Netanyahu, in opposition to American policy is treason.
Repeat after me; Partisanship ended at the American border prior to the current batch of panderers.

March 8, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterCarlyle

On a different take, as a geneticist I have always wondered if genetics plays a part in what I will politely call the two subsets of humans. Well research published today may create a start for understanding the issue. It turns out the the human genome is a great deal similar to that of gorillas than previously thought. It certainly helps explain New Jersey's governor.

March 8, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterMarvin Schwalb

@Carlyle. It looks as if until at least 2014, depending on what the Supremes do with the Affordable Care Act, women & men of all economic classes may find expensive contraception methods, well -- expensive. The ACA will require large companies -- more than 50 employees -- to cover dependents beginning in 2014 (or pay a fine), but until then, dependent coverage is optional. Right now there is no such requirement. Businesses like Catholic Charities of Washington, D.C., have already dropped dependent coverage so they won't have to cover same-sex partners (even tho employees usually pay the premium for family members); expect fireworks on this if the Court allows the ACA to go forward as legislated.

In addition, the students at schools like Georgetown are not necessarily from poor families, but they are apparently required to purchase health insurance -- without contraceptive coverage. That is, they're paying for their insurance (& likely it is more expensive because of the lack of contraceptive coverage), but the school will not allow them to pay for contraceptive coverage. I can't be the only person who sees the hypocrisy in that. It seems to me this is a clear-cut case of the Church imposing its beliefs on non-believing citizens. In all of the hoo-hah, I've never seen this issue raised. I think if I were the Georgetown law students, I'd get in a little practice lawyering by bringing suit against the school for its violation of their First Amendment rights.

March 8, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterMarie Burns

@Marvin Schwalb. There has been some scientific and sociological research done that suggests conservatives & liberals are "wired" differently. There is some research, like the study reported here that suggests some of the differences may be hard-wired; that is, we're born that way. I've looked at abstracts of a few studies & haven't seen anything that tells me we -- or some of us -- are definitely genetically disposed to liberal or conservative POVs, but there has not been a lot of research done in this area, so I think more work could generate some kind of consensus one way or the other.

Sociological studies, on the other hand, which don't address the genetic factor, do seem to show that -- not surprisingly -- political conservatives are more resistant than are political liberals to all kinds of change. Conservatives just aren't as good at adaptation or changing course when new circumstances suggest taking a new direction would be more advantageous. They either can't figure out what to do or resist doing the obvious because it's "different."

Now, I don't know that it's fair to place a value judgment on genetic or psychological predispositions, but one might argue that liberals are literally more evolved than conservatives inasmuch as they are better able to adapt to changing environments. Just saying.

March 8, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterMarie Burns

Re: the suits you suggest be filed where the rights of the Georgetown students to birth control (which of course they would pay for either out of pocket or through tuition) might trump those of their unenlightened institution would be interesting to see, but I suspect a "reasonable" response might be that the students who feel they are being harmed didn't have to enroll in the silly school in the first place. That is, they made a choice and should be content to live with it; kinda like the occasional untoward consequences of unprotected sex.

I'm not a lawyer, so don't know how a court might sort out these conflicting "rights," (though we all know when it comes to courts, a rose is not a rose) but I think what we're seeing are facets of 1) anti-Obamamania, which has always had a distinct racial component, which energizes many conservative groups, some of which are distinctly religious, 2) a disguised attack on the Affordable Health Care Act and the foray it makes into single-payer territory, which scares the bejeezus out of both small government conservatives (the kind who want all income streams privatized) and those who simply don't like the individual mandate (the damn gummint telling me what to do!), and 3) a coordinated effort by religious groups to affect public policy the way they did in the run to and during Prohibition. They miss the good ole days and see a chance to recreate them.

And, as the saying goes, we all know (or have we forgotten) how well that worked out.

March 8, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

@Ken Winkes. Yeah, I thought of that. But one of the assumptions of going to a university that accepts students of all faiths, and particularly of going to graduate school, is that the university will not impose the religious beliefs of some of its board members on students (I understand that Georgetown has a Muslim board member). When it imposes on students to the extent of only affording them access to health coverage that meets a religious test AND when it tells the students that must purchase that church-approved insurance, I think they're crossing a line. Whether a court would agree with me is another matter, but it seems worth the test.

On top of that, if Georgetown wants to be taken seriously, it can't (a) discriminate against women, as it is doing now & (b) impose religious tests on students who are pursuing secular fields of study.

Right now, the Georgetown Law women are taking the approach, "This isn't fair." Since that hasn't moved the board, I'm suggesting they try, "This isn't legal."

March 8, 2012 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns
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