The Ledes

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Washington Post: “ John Amos, a running back turned actor who appeared in scores of TV shows — including groundbreaking 1970s programs such as the sitcom 'Good Times' and the epic miniseries 'Roots' — and risked his career to protest demeaning portrayals of Black characters, died Aug. 21 in Los Angeles. He was 84.” Amos's New York Times obituary is here.

New York Times: “Pete Rose, one of baseball’s greatest players and most confounding characters, who earned glory as the game’s hit king and shame as a gambler and dissembler, died on Monday. He was 83.”

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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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

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.”

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The Commentariat -- May 12, 2014

Internal links, obsolete audio & video removed.

Paul Krugman: Ask any winger -- all attempts to mitigate climate change & reduce pollution are part of a tyrannical Marxist plot.

I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it And I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy. -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who says he's ready to be POTUS

I do not believe Marco is ready for the fourth grade. -- Constant Weader

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, takes Krugman to task for not taking into account wingnut obsession with Ayn Rand bullshit. Krugman wonders what the problem would be for Republicans who believe that capitalism can handle any problem thrown at it, even climate change. This might be a reasonable question in a sane world where an entire party didn't base its policy decisions on a god-awful novel by a hypocritical ideologue, but not in Red State World. "Right-wingers love the notion that they're arrayed against what seems to be an all-powerful, seemingly unstoppable enemy; in the real world we all actually live in right now, capitalism has won everything, but right-wingers would rather believe it's under assault, because then capitalists (and, by extension, their champions) are superheroes." The problem with never really graduating from 9th grade.

Frank Rich, in the wake of an exhaustive climate change report released last week from by the White House, points out that Republicans have no intention of allowing the dire outlook from global warming to show up on conservative radars. Why? In his first sentence, Rich gives the game away: "The report confirms in no uncertain terms what sentient Americans already knew...". "nuff said.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells in New York: The popularity of Thomas Piketty's book reflects both a new national preoccupation with economics & the data-driven life. Thanks to MAG for the lead.

Fat & Jobless. Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post: "A subject long ignored by policymakers, and one that unemployment counselors are too sheepish to raise with job seekers, the link between bulging waistlines and joblessness is now of intense interest to researchers studying the long-term effects of the country's economic malaise."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times on the ideologically & politically polarized Supreme Court: It's worse than ever. "The perception that partisan politics has infected the court's work may do lasting damage to its prestige and authority and to Americans' faith in the rule of law." Thanks to MAG for the link.

What to Do When Your Incessant Dire Predictions Don't Come True. Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "House Republicans have no scheduled votes or hearings on ObamaCare, signaling a shift in the party's strategy as the White House rides a wave of good news on the law. Not a single House committee has announced plans to attack the healthcare law in the coming weeks, and only one panel of jurisdiction commented to The Hill despite repeated inquiries." CW: So I guess it's all Benghaaazi! all the time. ...

And Andy Borowitz, in the New Yorker, says "Benghazi all the time, just in time!" According to Mr. Borowitz, out of work Americans and those needing serious answers to problems of jobs, housing, and other dire quality of life issues, are adamant that congress do nothing until every Benghazi question has been answered. And asked again. And again: "In the House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner released the following statement: 'I want to reassure the American people that, until we have completed our Benghazi investigations, there will be absolutely no action on job creation, infrastructure, immigration, education housing, or food.'"

... Asked & Answered. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said on Sunday morning that ... one of the biggest questions he would like to ask former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is why the United States was still there.... other members of Congress have asked [the questions Gowdy wants answered], and they've actually asked them of Clinton." With video & transcripts. ...

     ... CW: Apparently the purpose of the Gowdy hearings is to let Republicans do a replay. But, hey, somebody else is asking the questions so it's "news," a la Fox "News."

Lucy McCalmont of Politico: "Some clear tension arose between Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann during a segment Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," as the two went head to head on a handful of issues, starting with the new Benghazi select committee in the House." ...

... Charles Pierce recaps some other Sunday shows. Bill Kristol stands by his "guess" that Hillary Clinton engineered the Monica Lewinsky Vanity Fair piece.

Los Angeles Times: "L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling on Sunday broke his silence, apologizing for racial comments that prompted the National Basketball Assn. to ban him for life. 'I'm a good member who made a mistake and I'm apologizing and I'm asking for forgiveness," he told CNN's Anderson Cooper. 'Am I entitled to one mistake, am I after 35 years?' ... In [an] ABC interview [with Barbara Walters], Shelly Sterling also suggested Donald is suffering from dementia, which she said could explain comments caught on tape. (Donald Sterling did not address his health in the interview material CNN released Sunday.)"

Boer Deng & Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "... the reason lethal injection has become more gruesome and violent in recent years is at least partly a result of opposition to the death penalty.... As American physicians sideline themselves and European pharmaceutical firms (and American ones wit global ties) decline to supply the most known and efficacious lethal injection drugs, corrections officials have been pushed to use inferior methods and substandard providers. In other words..., the real culprit in the death of Clayton Lockett is opposition to the death penalty. In pushing for outright abolition of capital punishment, we have undermined the counterveiling effort to make it as clean and painless as possible. The perfect has become the enemy of the good-enough execution."

Haley Edwards of Time: Sen. Al Franken on the FCC's proposed rules governing/destroying net neutrality & the proposed Time-Warner/Comcast merger -- he's against 'em.

James Hamblin in the Atlantic: Something else to worry about: artificial intelligence may take over the Earth. And climate change. And biological warfare. And asteroids.

Conservatives and Those Pesky Poors.

In 1919, as the leaders of the allied powers sat down to decide the fate of nations after WWI, it was brought to their attention that the French were still blockading food and supplies to help 20 million civilians, mostly women and children, starving in Germany. Georges Clemenceau's response was that that was 20 million Germans too many. This is pretty much how right-wingers seem to feel about poor people in this country. But they're trying to change. Oh, not their policies, just the message. The Kochs are on top of this problem: "They're still firmly wedded to their beliefs that government assistance programs engender laziness and that the federal government should be slashed down to just the army and the patent office. What they're trying to do is find a way to convince the less fortunate that cutting taxes for billionaires and blocking minimum wage increases will lead to the sort of shared prosperity that will lift them out of economic hardship." Because this has always worked before. And less than two weeks ago, Republicans demonstrated their concern for poor people in the way they know best. Killing a minimum wage increase. But it's all of a piece with Paul Ryan's "concern" for the poor: 'I want to figure out a way for conservatives to come up with solutions to poverty. I have to do this.' In the meantime, there are still a few social programs left to cut. Republican senate candidate in North Carolina, Tom Tillis has an answer if Paul Ryan doesn't: "...you’re on your own." His plan is to divide and conquer those pesky poors.

Construction on a Maginot Line to keep those poor people at bay and away from decent hard working wingnuts begins any day now.

GOP Heroes.

By way of Tom Tomorrow from Daily Kos.

Congressional Race

Philip Rucker & Dan Balz of the Washington Post: Joni Ernst's "edgy"/(CW: stupid-disgusting) ads have made her a contendah in the Iowa GOP Senate race, despite her relatively meager spending & lack of name recognition. (Obsolete video removed here.)...

... And if Joni Ernst's request to "give me a shot" isn't enough, there are plenty more ads like this out there in Right-Wing World. Dave Weige' at Slate offers a full clip of videos of Republicans shooting at shit to prove their worthiness to lead. Or something.

Presidential Election

Jonathan Chait: "Ben Highton, a political scientist at the University of California-Davis, has identified a trend that hardly anybody in Washington has noticed yet. In a pair of blog posts, Highton persuasively makes the case that the Electoral College has taken on a strong pro-Democratic tilt. That is, the states in the center of the Electoral College distribution lean more strongly Democratic than the electorate as a whole." CW: Well, let's hope that's true.

Amy Davidson of the New Yorker on why the Monica Lewinsky scandal is still relevant. "We seem doomed to repeat our decades, even when they were farcical the first time around. But is Lewinsky the problem? Or is it, as Barbara Bush said recently, that 'if we can't find more than two or three families to run for high office, that's silly.' She had been asked about her son Jeb, and the possibility of four out of five Presidents in a row being named either Bush or Clinton. It's our apparent poverty of political choices, not our taste for scandal, that has us caught in an endless loop."

CW: Didn't have time to read it all, But Glenn Thrush's account of his covering the Hillary Clinton primary campaign of 2008 looks like a promising light read.

"Run, Joe, Run." Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: "While a[n Elizabeth] Warren candidacy would spark one valuable debate inside the Democratic Party -- about government's role in the economy -- a Biden candidacy would spark another: about America's role in the world."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (9)

"Ben Highton, a political scientist at the University of California-Davis, has identified a trend that hardly anybody in Washington has noticed yet. In a pair of blog posts, Highton persuasively makes the case that the Electoral College has taken on a strong pro-Democratic tilt."

Persuasively? Really? If so, then perhaps the esteemed Dr. Highton can explain how it's possible for a Democratic candidate to win the popular vote yet lose the electoral vote.

I'm an academician myself, and I see a lot of this sort of research where people make statistical arguments to support some notion or other. They often forget that statistical significance doesn't equal actual significance.

Statistics say one thing, reality tells us another. Reality tells us that Republicans continue to exercise strong control over the House despite the fact that more people voted for Democratic Congressional candidates in 2012 than for Republicans. Better he should have written about gerrymandering.

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterNoodge

I think Senator Rubio should put our money where his mouth is: Pass a law stating that Florida will not succumb to the hammock of Federal aid for natural disasters. Florida will only accept a level of Federal disaster aid equal to the average over the 8 years when St. Ronald was President. Surely his constituents will support his noble cause.

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterNiskyGuy

Thanks to MAG for the Liptak article. The Court has already lost much of its gravitas under the ruling five. There's the overwhelming holier-than-thou mindset (mind you, only his particular brand of holy), steerage class legal minds, an angry black man cartoon and a guy who feels he is the reincarnation of a wealthy colonial landowner. The four remaining Justices stand at the bottom of a steep incline, shoveling manure with a teaspoon. With the help of the media, this picture has been perverted to seem as normal. The US becomes more "exceptional" by the day.

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterDiane

Rachel Maddow via Juan Cole has a great piece on the Koch's futile attempts at destroying the $2 billion wind industry in Kansas. She does a good investigation into how the Kochs, in their own fiefdom, can't turn the tide against non-oil energy and thus reduce themselves to the most cynical political tactics available: impersonating the poor ol' elderly folk running low on their meager savings.

These fucking guys are despicable. We often refer to Kansas as Brownbackistan ever since the Republican revival tore through our state bringing Brownback to power. But really that's too flattering to Brownback. He's just the ugly marionette, willing to put his face on the Koch agenda. I seriously doubt he has any actual ideas or has ever had a personal vision for governing.

Kansas is Kochistan, plain and simple.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/05/slammed-cripple-kansas.html

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered Commentersafari

It occurs to me that certain words and concepts are tossed off pretty cavalierly by wingnut proponents and pundits. I'm wondering, if we gave these people a spot quiz, could they come up with an actual definition for concepts like Marxism, Communism, and Socialism, and if they know the difference, histories, and origins and what these terms really mean in political and social settings?

But just in case they couldn't (unpossible, right?), I am, as a public service, offering a brief lexicon for some of the more common terms bandied about in the right-wing media echo chamber (also known as the spin cycle at the local laundromat from hell).

Marxism: Evil plan to take over the world and steal our Freedoms. Some guy with a beard. Might be Jewish.

Socialism: Evil plan to take over the world and steal our Freedoms and money and give them to lazy-ass poor people who vote Democrat party. Some guy with a name like one of those hippie Beatles. Also, any legislation put forward by Democrats, Obama, Clinton, and supported by evil liberal media socialists. And hippies.

Non-discrimination: Evil plan by gays, feminists, and blah people to take over the world and steal our jobs. And Freedoms too. Did we mention gays?

Voting Rights: As long as you vote the right way you get them. Also, evil plan to blah, blah, blah.

The One Percent: American Hee-roes. We'll all be saluting the flag with them. And rich. Someday.

Religious Freedom: The right of Christians not to be tortured, crucified, and humiliated. Just like what gays and liberals did to Our Lord. Or told what to do. By anybody. Because, Jesus.

Justice: Ability to stand our ground and shoot anyone who tries to take our freedoms. Or anything else. Glocks are nice. AR-15s too.

Science. Evil plan to enslave children and make them doubt the word of god, and turn them into autistic zombies using liberal vaccinations.

Freedom: You don't know? If you don't know you must be some kinda pinko, America hating radical. So we don't have to answer that. This is a free country, you goddam commie.

Free Country: Where freedoms are. Fuckin' mooslem.

We clear?

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Newsflash:

Ice sheet melting in West Antarctica triggers sea level rise warnings.

According to two papers being released this week an "unstoppable" melting of major ice sheets are just the beginning of a dramatic and irreversible rise in sea levels, the exact outcome predicted 36 years ago, a prediction ignored and villified by conservatives.

"The new finding appears to be the fulfillment of a prediction made in 1978 by an eminent glaciologist, John H. Mercer of the Ohio State University. He outlined the uniquely vulnerable nature of the West Antarctic ice sheet and warned that the rapid human release of greenhouse gases posed 'a threat of disaster.' He was assailed at the time, but in recent years scientists have been watching with growing concern as events have unfolded in much the way Dr. Mercer predicted."

The loss of several meters of glacial height every year means that the subsequent rise in sea level will change nearly all the world's coastlines within the next hundred years or so. Adios, Miami.

But, on the happy side, as eminent historian and philosopher George W. Bush once opined, "Fuck it. We'll all be dead by then."

Looking out the window of his seaside home, noted wingnut "intellectual" George Will, who for decades has been doing a really, pretty good scientific type study, by, you know, looking out the window, and other sciencey sorts of things, says that he's seen nothing yet, so it must be a hoax.

So there ya have it.

Hey, sea levels might go up, but at least taxes on the wealthy won't. Priorities, people.

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Memo to the White House:

Hey guys, in light of the fact that the repetition of a certain coastal city in Libya has, by dint of its ease of pronunciation, created a louder than usual din from the loonies on the right, I suggest that the next place you plan a conspiracy to have Americans murdered, abet local terrorists, and try to take freedoms away from the tin-foil hatters, be this one:

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, New Zealand.

Saying that three times in a row should take us to the first commercial break.

Problem solved.

(And if that's no good, my back up suggestion is Whiskey Dick Mountain, WA, if for no other reason than it would be a hoot to listen to wingnut pundits demanding to know what the hell happened at Whiskey Dick Mountain.)

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

And the Right has a perfect reason to go after Whiskey Dick. It's the site of a Puget Sound Energy wind farm, which, thanks to today's Krugman, we now all know is (thanks to Akhilleus) part of the vast Marxist conspiracy that has tightened the knots in Right Wing shorts.

As I said in my Krugman comment last night, if thinking ahead and noticing what's happening to our planet is Marxist, we'd all better convert. Now.

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs


The above is a link to Tom Leher sing his song "We Will All Go Together When We Go." I'm sure the Kochs and others of their ilk think Climate Change will only affect poor people, that is, if it even exists. News Flash: it will affect all of us. First to go is water, then food. Not to mention violent weather.

May 12, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa
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