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.”

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

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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.”

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Saturday
May242014

The Commentariat -- May 25, 2014

Internal links removed.

Tim Noah of NBC News: "... there's no reason to believe veterans' wait times to see a VA doctor exceed, on average and to any significant degree, non-veterans' wait times to see a private-sector doctor. Inadequate access to health care is a VA problem. But it's a national problem, too."

Two Salon columnist, Andrew O'Hehir here & Elias Isquith here, take Glenn Greenwald's side against Michael Kinsley & George Packer who critique Greenwald's book (and personality).

Has Cake, Eats It, Too. AP: "Robert Gates, the new president of the Boy Scouts of America, said Friday that he would have moved last year to allow openly gay adults in the organization but said he opposes any further attempts to address the policy now.... 'I would have supported having gay Scoutmasters, but at the same time, I fully accept the decision that was democratically arrived at by 1,500 volunteers from across the entire country.'"

Jodi Rudoren of the New York Times: "Pope Francis called 'urgently' on Saturday for a 'peaceful solution' to the Syrian crisis and a 'just solution' to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as he started a three-day sojourn through the Holy Land at a time of regional turmoil and tension."

Eric Lach of TPM: "The creationist Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky. plans to unveil a new attraction this weekend: a world-class Allosaurus skeleton. But unlike other museums, where dinosaur skeletons are used to 'indoctrinate our kids with belief in evolution,' according to the institution, the Creation Museum's skeleton will serve as 'a testament to the truths found in God's Word.'" Via Steve Benen.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Pope Francis inserted himself directly into the collapsed Middle East peace process on Sunday, issuing an invitation to host the Israeli and Palestinian presidents for a prayer summit at his apartment in the Vatican, in an overture that has again underscored the broad ambitions of his papacy."

New York Times: "With their country caught in a fierce tug-of-war between Russia and the West over a new security order, Ukrainians elected Petro O. Poroshenko as president on Sunday, turning to a pro-European billionaire to lead them out of six months of wrenching turmoil, including a continuing separatist insurrection in the east."

Los Angeles Times: "Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department officials Sunday identified the first three victims of the Isla Vista rampage, each found fatally stabbed Friday night inside an apartment not far from the UC Santa Barbara campus. Now, all the attacker's victims have been identified, and they were all UCSB students." The Times currently has several related stories on its front page.

AFP: "Afghan President Hamid Karzai was offered a meeting with President Barack Obama at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul but declined, a US official said Sunday."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (6)

Hesitate to say something nice about him here, but for a change Douthat has some sensible things to say, this time about the Tea Party, its appeal, origins, effects and possible legacy...that is, until he runs into the impossible job of making three of the possible 2016 Presidential candidates sound credible...but I don't fault him for that failure. Even Superman couldn't do it.

legacy.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-tea-party-legacy.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

May 25, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

Robert Gates. Boy Scout. It figures.

May 25, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer

@Re: Creationists. Their logic, or lack thereof, escapes me. Arguing with them is pointless, because they always refer back to Genesis and shoehorn whatever cockamamie theory they're peddling into it.

What scares me is the number of people who swallow their BS. S

May 25, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa

I submitted the following to the Times in response to "The Power of Political Ignorance." It might be a bit shrill, but I think it is on point:

Our media strain to reach sunny conclusions from gloomy evidence. See Ross Douthat's phoned-in endorsement of the Know-Nothing Party in today's edition.

It pleases many to think that the critical votes that gives one candidate a win are those of the vaunted "moderates" who think more deeply about the issues than do partisan riff-raff like ourselves.

However, there is no middle ground between war and peace. There is no middle ground between climate disaster and acting with celerity to address climate issues. There is no middle ground between those who would treat the historically ostracized as the humans they are and those who would maintain the xenophobic, homophobic, aggressively racist points of view from which lynching disrespectful black people was regrettable but necessary and driving gay kids to suicide or even killing them was merely doing God's work.

After all, if you hate certain people and believe in a deity, you must customize your deity to mirror your hatred or yourself suffer the guilt and shame that accompany such hateful emotions.

So, in the midst of our own Cultural Revolution, in which erudition and science have not been in such disrepute since Pol Pot decided to kill all the educated people in Cambodia, our press has performed acrobatically trying to pass off zealots like Ted Cruz (and his charming father) as if they were give-and-take participants in the national dialogue.

When the low-information voter splits his vote, the press can take a bow.

May 25, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterJack Mahoney

Excellent, Jack. Well said.

May 25, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer

Jack: Well said! Thanks for sharing it.

And if the Right's attack on "erudition and science" mounted with nary a demurrer from the national press, did not have a clear endgame in sight, witness the new Thai military government's arrest/detention of professors and intellectuals for a glimpse of our own future, if the Cruzers and his cadre of know-nothing haters continue to have their way.

Extracts from my own comment to the Times in which I might have been a bit shrill, too.

"....The Tea Party amalgam is an expression of discontent from those who don't like the way the country is going, their growing sense that events are out of their control. To that degree, the Tea Partyers are correct. They are. But the changes they do not like have little to do with our own government. They arise from international demographic and economic forces over which individual nation-states hold little sway. International corporations and the financial sector are both more powerful than any one individual government, even our own. They are free to benefit from the world's resource scarcity, using the geographic fiction of national barriers as a means to profit without paying taxes. Because they are not tied to any one nation, they have no compunction about dislocating workers and inequitably distributing resources and the wealth derived from them, thereby tearing hundreds of communities' social fabric to shreds.

Unfortunately the TP's reaction to all this is grounded in a misunderstanding of history and a constricted vision of our future.

(I would add here that constricted view would simply eliminate anything they do not like or understand, and that's a bundle.)

The government they have been schooled to hate may be ineffective, but it is not the problem."

May 25, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes
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