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.”

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.”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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.”

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Tuesday
May012012

The Commentariat -- May 2, 2012

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is here, and for once I mostly agree with Ross Douthat. The NYTX front page is here.

Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: Wall Streets hates Obama, loves Romney, and they're saying so with their big fat checkbooks -- closed for Obama, open for Willard.

Matthew O'Brien of The Atlantic: Chicago Fed President Charles Evans goes populist & breaks with the Fed orthodoxy. Looks as if somebody listens to Krugman.

Paul Waldman in the American Prospect, commenting on Tagg Romney's extraordinary good fortune -- see yesterday's Commentariat for the link to the NYT story: "... conservatives have become particularly vehement in defending inequality since the meltdown of 2008, insisting that in America, there is no such thing as privilege, money comes only from merit, wealth is a sign of virtue, and if we raise taxes a smidge on those at the top of the income ladder, we're only 'punishing success.' ... When [Tagg] decided this private equity thing looked interesting, there was an escalator waiting, and all he had to do was hop on. That's opportunity."

Not So Supreme. M. J. Lee of Politico: "The Supreme Court's favorability rating has plummeted to a 25-year low, with Americans on both sides of the aisle demonstrating historically negative views of the high court, according to a new poll released Tuesday. Barely more than half of those polled, 52 percent, have a favorable opinion of SCOTUS, a Pew Research Center survey found — the lowest figure in the history of the poll, which began in 1987, and a steep drop from a high of 80 percent in 1994.

Spencer Ackerman in Wired: there's no end in sight of the "war on terrorism"; the U.S. has no idea what the future of Al Qaeda is or even what/who Al Qaeda is. ...

... CW: I don't know if Jonathan Chait is right about this, but I think he might be: "The neoconservatives who dominated the [Bush] administration’s foreign policy believed before the attacks that states, not non-state actors like a band of terrorists, were the thing to focus on.... Democrats believed the Republican focus on state sponsorship was mistaken.... When figures like Romney and McCain were scoffing at Obama promises to capture bin Laden even if it meant violating the sovereignty of our nominal ally Pakistan, they were signaling partisan and ideological fidelity with the Bush administration."

Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: Meet Richard Carmona, former Bush surgeon general, actual hero & the Democrat's hope to become U.S. Senator from Arizona, & he might help Obama pull off an upset victory in the state, too. CW: Seriously, you're gonna love this guy.

Nate Silver of the New York Times: Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) "has probably become a modest underdog to retain his seat." His primary opponent is a Sarah Palin-backed Tea Partier. "If Mr. Lugar loses, it should increase Democrats’ odds of picking up the Senate seat in November."

Some of the cast of "The West Wing" reunite for a PSA:

Every Emerging Detail Is a Story. Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "U.S. Secret Service personnel tied to last month’s night of heavy drinking, partying and sexual encounters in Cartagena, Colombia paid 10 of the 12 women they became involved with, officials said. None of the women were found to be connected to terrorist organizations or drug cartels."

Recess! Dana Milbank: "To call this 112th Congress a do-nothing Congress would be an insult — to the real Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-48. That Congress passed 908 laws. To date, this one has passed 106 public laws. Even if they triple that output in the rest of 2012 — not a terribly likely proposition — they will still be in last place going back at least 40 years."

Farhad Manjoo of Slate on the FCC Report on Google's stunning snooping program. Google says "We're sorry; we had no idea." Manjoo says, "Oh yeah?" "When a Street View car encountered an open Wi-Fi network -- that is, a router that was not protected by a password -- it recorded all the digital traffic traveling across that router. As long as the car was within the vicinity, it sucked up a flood of personal data: login names, passwords, the full text of emails, Web histories, details of people's medical conditions, online dating searches, and streaming music and movies."

Matt DeLuca of the Daily Beast on yesterday's May Day demonstratins.

Presidential Race

The Obama campaign will run this add in three swing states:

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post on Willard Romney's day as Not-President. Check out Romney's "explanation" of his 2007 remark that it was wrong for the U.S. to go after bin Laden. Hey, it was Joe Biden's fault. ...

... Steve Kornacki of Salon says Obama's dramatic drop into Afghanistan was a lesson in "how to make Mitt look small." ...

... Fred Kaplan of Slate: "The Republicans have glommed on to a neat rhetorical trick: When Barack Obama does something indisputably admirable or effective, simply pretend that he had nothing to do with it.... Now Mitt Romney, this year's presumptive GOP nominee, is waving off Obama's role in the killing of Osama Bin Laden -- the president’s signal national-security achievement -- by chortling that 'any thinking American would have ordered the exact same thing,' even Jimmy Carter. Two new investigative reports ... thoroughly rebut that notion."

David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix: "A couple of weeks ago, when the Mitt Romney campaign hired Richard Grenell as foreign-policy spokesperson, I had two immediate thoughts: 1) man, Romney just keeps digging in deeper with the nutty John Bolton foreign-policy crowd; and 2) man, Romney really had to wait until the nomination was completely wrapped up before hiring an openly gay staffer, huh? Well, turns out that even with the Republican nomination sewn up, Romney still couldn't hire a gay staffer. According to Jennifer Rubin, Grenell has quit the campaign because of the controversy stirred up by his gayness....For anyone wondering how Governor Etch-a-Sketch would actually behave in office, on issues that you suspect he campaigns on but doesn't personally believe, this may be instructive. When he gets a little pressure from the conservative base, Romney quickly kowtows to them." ...

... Nia-Malika Henderson & Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Richard Grenell ...stepped down from his post Tuesday, suggesting that the conservative backlash over his sexuality prevented him from being effective in his role." CW: to refresh your memory on what a swell guy Grenell is, read the story. Grenell lost his job for the wrong reasons.

Joel Siegel of ABC News: "Newt Gingrich ends his White House dream today with his political committee facing a mountain of debts -- owing about $4 million to scores of businesses and campaign workers around the country who fear they will never get paid. Campaign watchdogs said the size of Gingrich's debt is extraordinary -- and could have been avoided if the candidate and his team had been more disciplined."

Right Wing World

Glen Johnson of the Boston Globe: "Senator Scott Brown, who won office vowing to be the 41st vote to block President Obama's health care law and who has since voted three times to repeal it, acknowledged Monday that he takes advantage of it to keep his elder daughter on his congressional health insurance plan. 'Of course I do,' the Massachusetts Republican told the Globe. Brown is insuring his daughter Ayla, a professional singer who is 23 years old, under a widely popular provision of the law requiring that family plans cover children up to age 26."

CW: I missed Driftglass's hilarious take on Paul Ryan's (RTP-Wisc.) shocked discovery that Ayn Rand was an atheist. But it's not too late to read it.

News Ledes

Raleigh News & Observer: today's testimony in the John Edwards case focused on Elizabeth Edwards' reactions to his affair with Rielle Hunter.

Guardian: "News Corporation has released a unanimous statement of support for Rupert Murdoch, after its board met to consider the findings of the parliamentary report that concluded the media mogul was "not a fit person" to lead a major global corporation." ...

... BUT. Guardian: "Rupert Murdoch's global media empire is facing a challenge on a new front in the billowing phone-hacking scandal after a powerful US Senate committee opened direct contact with British investigators in an attempt to find out whether News Corporation has broken American laws."

Boston Globe: "Ending a yearlong campaign and a weeklong farewell, former House speaker Newt Gingrich formally ended his presidential candidacy Wednesday in Arlington, Va."

Guardian: "Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has pleaded for help to let him leave the country with his family, with a US-brokered deal for his future unravelling within hours of his leaving the Beijing embassy where he had taken shelter." ...

... New York Times: "Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident who fled house arrest last month in a dramatic escape from security forces, left the American Embassy compound for treatment at a medical facility in Beijing, American officials said on Wednesday in the first public acknowledgment by the United States that it knew of his whereabouts.... Under the arrangement agreed to by the United States, China and Mr. Chen, the lawyer would be relocated to a different part of China from his hometown in Shandong province, where has been under house arrest and where he says his family has been physically attacked, the officials said." ...

     ... Story has been updated; new lede: "In a series of dramatically conflicting developments on Wednesday, the Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng left American custody under disputed circumstances, and what briefly looked like a deft diplomatic achievement for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton turned into a potential debacle." ...

     ... More on the Chen story here from the New York Times.

Washington Post: "At least 11 people were killed in clashes that broke out early Wednesday at demonstrations outside the Egyptian Defense Ministry, the Health Ministry said. The demonstrations evolved from a sit-in convened to decry the way the Egypt’s generals have been ruling the country."

Washington Post: "The Labor Department on Tuesday ordered Wal-Mart to pay $4.8 million in back wages and damages to thousands of employees who were denied overtime charges, the latest in a string of embarrassments for the company over its business practices."

New York Times: "Daw Aung San Suu Kyi took her place in Myanmar's Parliament on Wednesday, reciting the oath of office in a brief ceremony that marked a watershed in national reconciliation after decades of military rule."

New York Times: "Less than two hours after President Obama left Afghanistan airspace on Wednesday, explosions shook the capital and the Interior Ministry said a suicide attacker had exploded a large bomb at the gates of a compound used by foreigners in the east of Kabul, killing seven Afghans."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

Yesterday Victoria made an interesting observation regarding Willard's hazy and perhaps entirely incurious relationship to foreign policy which puts voters in the tenuous position of considering yet another untrustworthy hand at the wheel of state. That previous occupant of the Oval Office who demonstrated such an impervious mind with respect to knowledge, facts, history, and intelligence turned that wheel of state hard to the right like it was fitted with a suicide knob. The forces that drove him were powered by merciless ideology rather than real world intelligence and acute intelligence (pardon me while I take a moment to guffaw loudly at the connection of that phrase with the person of George W. Bush) and the pressures came from all sides.

He fancied himself The Decider but really, he was pushed around by everything and everyone around him from his ambivalent relationship with his old man to the war criminals and self-styled Straussian Neo-Con supermen around him.

Was Bush so hollow at the core that he could have casually ignited two murderous wars (that still call down the thunder), destroyed the economy, put millions out of work while going to the mattresses for the wealthy, and....well, it would take pages to on and on about the failures and weaselly lies of George W. Bush?

But here's the thing. And it's really troublesome.

Bush wasn't a hollow man. He was incurious, he was immune to facts, disinterested in history, and spiteful as could be. But he wasn't without a core. That that core was basically warped to the point of evil is beside the point. He did have values, such as they were.

What are Willard's values? About the only thing one can seriously peg as a constant in his life is "More Money for the Rich."

Oh, he seems to be a good family man and all, but what is at the heart of those presidential good looks and $5,000 suits?

Zippo. At least in terms of the type of qualities one would like to see in a president. Sorry, but blind ambition isn't one of them. Just wanting to be the boss (all the better to fire people) isn't good enough.

There has to be more.

My old friend Marcus Aurelius could sometimes be a bit of an annoying prig, but he was an honest man who knew a lot about rich people and political power. He came from a rich family, had everything handed to him, including the greatest seat of power in the world, that of Emperor of the Roman Empire. But for all that, he was grounded in the real world and he appreciated the values of temperance, moderation, and wisdom.

Here's what he had to say about those, like Willard, who strive purely out of ambition:

"A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires."

But to return to Victoria's point, what do you think a Romney presidency would be like? Here we have a guy with no heart, no core, someone who is immeasurably malleable who will be forced by the crazy wing of the GOP (is there another?) to surround himself with ideologues and insane people.

They will push him around like the dorky kid in an inner city playground who shows up in a suit coat wearing a bow tie and a pocket square. They will beat him up, take his milk money and make him say uncle every day of his presidency. He will be forced to do their bidding. He will be the bitch of the GOP hard right for however long he's in office.

Why? Because he has no core beliefs other than money. He flip flops on everything for political gain and like a character in a Twilight Zone episode, as soon as he wins the prize, it will be taken from him and the big boys will run the show.

And what a show it would be. Paul Ryan, Sec'y of the Treasury, Rick Santorum, Sec'y of People's Personal Lives. Eric Cantor, Darrell Issa, the list goes on. They'll all be lining up to get their piece of the action. Ignoble and vulgar men all, surrounding a man without a core.

May 2, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Oh, one other thing. Marie posted a link to a prospect.org piece about how incensed Tagg Romney is that anyone would think he has made millions because his name is Romney.

Isn't this a little like a guy named Fredo getting pissed when someone attributes his wealth, position, connections, and the support of a whole bunch of very well armed guys just because his dad is Don Corleone?

These people kill me. But we'll be hearing for the next few months what an easy life Barack Obama has had, him being a 'Harvard elite' and all (btw, someone needs to rescue that word from the playbook of imbecilic right-wingers) while Mitt and Tagg and whoever the hell else in that family raking in millions, are posed as average Joes who 'get' what it means to be an average American.

Just like the Corleone family.

May 2, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

I think if we sliced Mitt open we would indeed find a core, but one filled with religious murmurs from the Mormon fathers. He has early on––not so much lately––let evangelicals know that he WOULD let them push him around (unlike Kennedy who had to convince people that he would not let the Vatican push HIM around). He's already given them a theological formula on Jesus which he hopes they will accept. He has attacked Kennedy's absolute separation of church and state using the evangelicals' own slogan: those who think (like Kennedy) that "religion is seen merely as a private affair" are, Romney said, "intent on establishing a new religion in America––the religion of secularism. They are wrong." So, Akilleus, if you are right about the prospect of Romney as the dorky kid everyone pushes around then not only will we be in a land of Ryanism, Cantorism, et. al , but we'll all be having our own come to Jesus moment. Amen, brother, amen.

May 2, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.