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
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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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Thursday
May242012

The Commentariat -- May 25, 2012

My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on Krugman's response(s) to Brooks. It's titled "'The Conversation' -- 'A Fairy Tale"' The NYTX front page is here.

** Jim Fallows of The Atlantic on Barack Obama & John Roberts, ca. 2005, each predicting what kind of chief justice Roberts would be: "We have two men who now sit atop two of the three branches of the government. They both laid down markers seven years ago on how one of those men was likely to perform once in office. One of the predictions seems a lot more prescient than the other."

New York Times Editors: "The Obama administration has added to its string of victories in a tawdry pursuit -- making overly expansive claims of secrecy and executive power to deny full disclosure of torture and other abuses of prisoners committed during the George W. Bush administration. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York has upheld the administration's claim that cables describing the Central Intelligence Agency's use of waterboarding and a photograph of a 'high value' detainee, Abu Zubaydah, taken during the time he was subjected to repeated waterboarding, are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.... The judges should have given the government's overwrought claims of national security and secrecy special scrutiny, not extreme deference."

Our Educational Racket. Floyd Norris of the New York Times: "The volume of federally guaranteed student loans to students at so-called proprietary colleges — the ones that intend to operate at a profit and get nearly all their revenue from the government -- continues to grow. At the same time, state and local governments across the country are slashing spending on higher education, and community colleges -- the ones most likely to offer alternatives to the students recruited by the far more expensive proprietary schools -- are suffering some of the largest reductions."

Keith Bradsher of the New York Times: "Though the Chinese economy continues to expand, construction workers are losing jobs in droves and retail sales grew last month at the slowest pace in more than three years. Investments in fixed assets have increased more slowly this year than in any year since 2001."

** Paul Krugman: "In the wake of a devastating financial crisis, President Obama has enacted some modest and obviously needed regulation; he has proposed closing a few outrageous tax loopholes; and he has suggested that Mitt Romney's history of buying and selling companies, often firing workers and gutting their pensions along the way, doesn't make him the right man to run America's economy. Wall Street has responded -- predictably, I suppose -- by whining and throwing temper tantrums." Krugman then takes a delightful detour to whack David Brooks' phony paean to vulture capitalists (published Tuesday)! He hits Cory Booker, too. ...

... Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post: "The Facebook affair provides one more bit of confirmation -- not that any should be needed -- that our economic system, when left to its own devices and when regulated by rules that powerful interests have shaped, tilts grotesquely toward the rich and their institutions.... The dysfunction of American capitalism has become the backdrop before which this year's elections are playing out." Read the whole column. ...

... Gene Robinson: "Suppose a company is failing and appears beyond rescue. Suppose a private-equity firm buys the company with borrowed money, burdens it with more debt, and then spends the next few years firing workers, selling assets, eliminating pension plans — all while collecting handsome 'management fees.' Then the company fails anyway, as it was fated to do. What higher economic purpose has been served? Why is this not what [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry memorably called 'vulture capitalism'?

Presidential Race

I heard Governor Romney here called me an economic lightweight because I wasn't a Wall Street financier like he was. Do you really believe this country wants to elect a Wall Street financier as the president of the United States? Do you think that's the kind of experience we need? Someone who';s going to take and look after, as he did, his friends on Wall Street and bail them out at the expense of Main Street America? -- Rick Santorum, March 2012

Peter Baker of the New York Times: In Iowa yesterday, "the president attacked Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat whose prescriptions for the economy would reverse the fragile gains of the last couple of years. 'There may be value in that kind of experience, but it's not in the White House,' Mr. Obama told supporters at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Thursday night. He used the setting to needle Mr. Romney about a controversial comment he made here during the primaries. 'The world view that Governor Romney gained' in private finance, he said, 'explains why the last time he visited these very same fairgrounds he famously declared that corporations are people.' Encouraged by the partisan audience, Mr. Obama then mimicked Mr. Romney. '"Human beings, my friend" -- that's what he called them.' Then, he called Mr. Romney's speech here last week warning of a 'prairie fire of debt' more like 'a cow pie of distortion.' He added, 'I don't know whose record he twisted the most, mine or his.'" ABC News story by Devin Dwyer here. Des Moines Register story by Jennifer Jacobs here.

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "When Mitt Romney came to an inner-city charter school [in West Philadelphia, Penn.,] Thursday to promote his new education agenda, he received something of a history lecture about the persecution of blacks in America and the struggles of African American children to meet the academic achievements of their white counterparts.... Romney was venturing for his first time in this campaign into an impoverished black neighborhood to hear the concerns of local educators and community leaders. But here in the streets of West Philadelphia, the emotion surrounding his contest with the nation's first black president was raw, as dozens of neighborhood residents shouted, 'Get out, Romney, get out!'"

The Haunting of Williard Romney. Emily Friedman of ABC News: "It's not just the media that won't forget Mitt Romney saying in New Hampshire earlier this year that he likes 'being able to fire people.' The candidate revealed in a wide-ranging interview with the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan that the remark ... is one that has stuck with him -- and haunted him -- ever since. CW: The Noonan opinion piece, which -- in my never-ending search for the truth I have declined to read -- is here.

Eric Pfeiffer of Yahoo! News: "Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker ... has been under fire since a Sunday appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" during which he said Democratic attacks on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital were 'nauseating,' Having endured days of excoriating criticism, and having tried to explain his comments on multiple talk shows and via a self-produced web video, Booker took to [Twitter].... Booker lashed out at his critics Thursday night: 'Sorry I make u sick. And sorry I made a mistake. I'm sorry that 15 seconds on MTP erodes my 20 yrs of work in inner cities around our nation.' That was almost immediately followed up by another tweet to his more than 1,150,000 followers, reading, in part: 'In the end we are all imperfect. Best we can do is learn from our mistakes, not let them stop u but make u stronger.'" The New York Times' David Brooks criticized Booker for "collapsing under a bit of pressure."

Eric Ostermeier of the University of Minnesota: Forget the Wisconsin recall; "looking at the state's 2012 U.S. Senate race to replace the retiring Herb Kohl may just give an indication of where the presidential race will ultimately end up in Wisconsin."

Local News

Dan Kaufman, writing in the New York Times Magazine, on the political divisiveness in Wisconsin.

Tim Egan: "There’s no mystery what a nation run by the Tea Party and talk-radio zealots who’ve taken over the G.O.P. would look like. It would be Arizona."

Political Hack. Tim Mak of Politico: "A New Jersey mayor and his son were arrested Thursday by the FBI for allegedly hacking into an email account and website tied to a recall effort -- and then intimidating those associated with the site. Felix Roque, 55, the Democratic mayor of West New York, N.J., and his son Joseph, 22, allegedly accessed and cancelled the domain registration for Recallroque.com, a website that was critical of the mayor and associated with a movement to recall him in early February."

Gross News

Denise Lavoie of the AP: "Harvard University alumni attending their 50th class reunion this week are getting updates on classmates -- including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski graduated in 1962 and is locked up in the federal Supermax prison in Colorado for killing three people and injuring 23 during a nationwide bombing spree between 1978 and 1995. In an alumni directory, he lists his occupation as 'prisoner' and says his awards are 'Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998.' Harvard's alumni association said ... it regrets including his references to his convictions."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The Senate Ethics Committee has smacked the hand of Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, for his minor role in the sordid scandal that ended the career of John Ensign, the former Republican senator from Nevada. The committee on Friday issued a public letter of qualified admonition that mildly rebuked Mr. Coburn for arranging a meeting about potential lobbying work for a former aide to Mr. Ensign -- Doug Hampton, the husband of Mr. Ensign’s paramour. Mr. Hampton was precluded from lobbying at that time under federal law."

AP: "The private company SpaceX made history Friday with the docking of its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, the most impressive feat yet in turning routine spaceflight over to the commercial sector. It marked the first time a business enterprise delivered a supply ship to the space station."

New York Times: "Spain's banking crisis worsened Friday as the board of Bankia, the country's biggest mortgage lender, warned that it would need an additional 19 billion euros ($23.88 billion), far beyond what the government estimated when it seized the bank and its portfolio of delinquent real estate loans earlier this month."

The Butler Did It. New York Times: "An on-again-off-again scandal that the Italian press has called VatiLeaks burst into the open on Friday with the arrest by Vatican gendarmes of a man, identified in news reports as Paolo Gabriele, the pope's butler, who the Vatican said was in possession of confidential documents and was suspected of leaking private letters, some of which were addressed to Pope Benedict XVI."

New York Times: 'International atomic inspectors in Iran have detected traces of uranium enriched to levels of purity higher than the Iranians have previously disclosed, according to a new report on Tehran’s nuclear program made public on Friday."

Washington Post: "Vice President Biden, speaking Friday to families and friends of military personnel killed in action, gave a powerful retelling of the death of his wife and daughter 40 years ago -- saying he'd realized then how grief might push a person to suicide."

Reuters: "Republican Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed a bill aimed at keeping state courts and agencies from using Islamic or other non-U.S. laws when making decisions, his office said on Friday, drawing criticism from a national Muslim group."

Washington Post: "The controversial auction of a vial that contained President Ronald Reagan's blood has been halted, and the valuable glass tube is being donated to the former president's foundation."

Yahoo! News: "A new Amnesty International report paints a gruesome picture of summary executions, torture and ill-treatment in North Korea as Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father, Kim Jong Il, as the country's ruler last December. The country used firing squads or staged traffic accidents to execute 30 officials involved in talks to unite North and South Korea, according to the 2012 Amnesty International report released Thursday."

Ah, Democracy! New York Times: "The Islamist candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood will face former President Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister in a runoff to become Egypt's first freely elected president, several independent vote counts concluded Friday morning. Out of a broad field of more than a dozen candidates, the runoff will pit the two most polarizing figures against each other in a reversion to the decades-old power struggle between Egypt's secular-minded military elite and its longstanding Islamist opposition." Al Jazeera's liveblog is here.

Washington Post: "President Obama on Thursday nominated Allison M. Macfarlane, a professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University, to be the next chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Macfarlane, a geologist by training, served as a member of the White House Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which examined nuclear waste disposal."

Al Jazeera: "US senators outraged by Pakistan's jailing of a doctor for helping the CIA track down Osama bin Laden have voted to cut aid to Islamabad by $33mn -- one million for each year in the doctor's sentence. 'It's arbitrary, but the hope is that Pakistan will realise we are serious,' said Senator Richard Durbin after the unanimous 30-0 vote by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday."

New York Times: "French President François Hollande made a surprise visit to French troops in Kapisa Province, [Afghanistan,] on Friday, assuring them that their mission in Afghanistan would be over this year."

New York Times: "The investigations editor [of the Albany, New York, Times Union], J. Robert Port, said he believed that the city's mayor and local law enforcement agencies targeted his wife's business in retaliation for critical coverage in his newspaper, including a series of articles questioning the practices of an undercover unit of the sheriff's office that investigated drug cases, prostitution and gambling.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

I love that bit about the Unabomber...with all the really gross news about Romney's lies and evasions, humor is much needed.

May 25, 2012 | Unregistered Commenteralphonsegaston

I wonder if the warden at the Colorado Supermax brought old Ted a bottle of champagne, some brie and a baguette for him to enjoy under a picture of Harvard Yard. Nah....he'd probably figure a way to combine the bubbly the brie and the bread into some kind of high explosive. Those Harvard guys are tricky.

May 25, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Ah, Harvard––– I am close to many, mostly Jews, who have graced their halls and lived to tell about it. In 1920 Harvard imposed a quota to restrict the number of Jews. In 1924 former president, Charles Eliot publicly declared it "unfortunate" that growing number of the "Jewish race" were intermarrying with Christians. Few such marriages turn out well, he said, and since biologists had determined that Jews are "prepotent" their children "will look like Jews only."

Harvard accepted a few blacks, but president Lowell refused to allow them to reside in freshman dorms with whites.

Always good to recall the good old days when we had those golden years of equality and good fortune––when the bubbly and the brie were a lot cheaper and the skies were sunny all day––or was it "nothin like blue skies" that Bing kept singing about.

May 25, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe
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