The Ledes

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The New York Times:' live updates of Hurricane Helene developments today are here. “Hurricane Helene was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday en route to Florida, where residents were bracing for extreme rain, destructive winds and deadly storm surge ahead of the storm’s expected landfall. The storm could intensify to a Category 4, if not higher, before making landfall late Thursday, and forecasters warned Helene’s anticipated large size could make its impacts felt across an extensive area. Areas as distant as Atlanta and the Appalachians are at risk for heavy rains.... Many forecast models show the storm making landfall late Thursday near Florida’s Big Bend Coast, a sparsely populated stretch....” ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post has forecasts for some cites in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina & Tennessee that are in or near the probable path of Helene. ~~~

     ~~~ This morning, an MSNBC weatherperson said Tallahassee (which is inland) would experience wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. and that the National Weather Service said expected 20-foot storm surges near the coast would be “unsurvivable.”

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The Ledes

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The New York Times is live-updating developments in the progress of Hurricane Helene. “Helene continued to power north in the Caribbean Sea, strengthening into a hurricane Wednesday morning, on a path that forecasters expect will bring heavy amounts of rain to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and western Cuba before it begins to move toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.” ~~~

~~~ CNN: “Helene rapidly intensified into a hurricane Wednesday as it plows toward a Florida landfall as the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in over a year. The storm will also grow into a massive, sprawling monster as it continues to intensify, one that won’t just slam Florida, but also much of the Southeast.... Thousands of Florida residents have already been forced to evacuate and nearly the entire state is under alerts as the storm threatens to unleash flooding rainfall, damaging winds and life-threatening storm surge.... The hurricane unleashed its fury on parts of Mexico’s Yucátan Peninsula and Cuba Wednesday.“

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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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The Commentariat -- May 26, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura of the New York Times: "Ireland voted decisively to repeal one of the world's more restrictive abortion bans, the prime minister said Saturday, sweeping aside generations of conservative patriarchy and dealing the latest in a series of stinging rebukes to the Roman Catholic Church. The surprising landslide cemented the nation's liberal shift at a time when right-wing populism is on the rise in Europe and the Trump administration is imposing curbs on abortion rights in the United States. In the past three years alone, Ireland has installed a gay man as prime minister and has voted in another referendum to allow same-sex marriage."

*****

Trump Again Wins Lies & Empty Words Trophy. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Trump declared Friday that the United States is 'respected again' because of a military that is 'a lot stronger,' as he welcomed the 2018 graduates of the Naval Academy into what he called 'the most powerful and rightful force on the planet.'" ...

... "Three False Claims From Trump's Naval Academy Speech." Linda Qiu of the New York Times: (1) 'We have ended the disastrous defense sequester. No money for the military, those days are over.' False. (2) 'Very soon, you're going to have 355 beautiful ships -- 355. That's almost a couple hundred more ships.' False twice. (3) 'We just got you a big pay raise, first time in 10 years.' Mrs. McC: Trump often makes this last false claim.

Noam Scheiber of the New York Times: "President Trump on Friday signed a series of executive orders making it easier to fire federal government workers and to curb the workplace role of unions that represent them.... The push also reflects conservatives' long-running suspicion of the federal bureaucracy, one reflected in pronouncements by the president's advisers. Shortly after Mr. Trump took office, Stephen K. Bannon, then his chief strategist, called for 'the deconstruction of the administrative state.'" ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: So here we taxpayers are paying $400K/year to a man -- and untold millions ferrying him to golf outings to promote his own resorts -- who has done nothing but muck up the federal government & sabotage its purposes & operations, and that same guy is doing everything he can to punish modestly-paid workers trying to do their jobs. However, I think the real problem Trump finds with federal workers is that there are half-again as many black federal employees per capita (about 18%) as in the general population (about 12.5%). The reason Trump thinks maybe black athletes who protest police brutality should be deported & federal employees' union activity should be curtailed is no doubt the same reason -- as it turns out -- he's really good with police unions. ...

... Gregory Pratt of the Chicago Tribune: "... Donald Trump on Friday tweeted his support for Chicago police union members who protested Mayor Rahm Emanuel this week.... 'Chicago Police have every right to legally protest against the mayor and an administration that just won't let them do their job,' Trump tweeted. 'The killings are at a record pace and tough police work, which Chicago will not allow, would bring things back to order fast...the killings must stop!' Trump's comment followed a Wednesday protest by more than 100 off-duty officers and Fraternal Order of Police members who marched at the City Council meeting. Police officers called for Emanuel to be removed from office, with FOP officials saying the mayor has cast their interests aside by endorsing a federal consent decree and not yet agreeing to a new contract nearly a year after the union's last one expired.... Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins tweeted a response to Trump's tweet: '... Chicago is a Trump-free zone, not a fact-free zone, and we had a 21% drop in gun violence in 2017 and a 21% drop in 2018. Have a nice weekend!'"

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Jonathan Lemire & Eric Tucker of the AP: "... Donald Trump's legal team wants a briefing on the classified information shared with lawmakers about the origins of the FBI investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election and may take it to the Justice Department as part of an effort to scuttle the ongoing special counsel probe. Rudy Giuliani ... told The Associated Press on Friday that the White House hopes to get a readout of the information next week, particularly about the use of a longtime government informant...."

William Rashbaum, et al., of the New York Times: "Eleven days before the presidential inauguration last year, a billionaire Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin visited Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with ... Michael D. Cohen according to video footage and another person who attended the meeting. In Mr. Cohen's office on the 26th floor, he and the oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, discussed a mutual desire to strengthen Russia's relations with the United States under President Trump, according to Andrew Intrater, an American businessman who attended the meeting and invests money for Mr. Vekselberg." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Jonathan Chait runs down what-all else we know about Vekselberg's U.S. dealings & concludes: "The chance that the firm [Columbus Nova] linked to a Russian oligarch [Vekselberg] with a record of using his influence for secret state purposes met with Trump's fixer, and then the firm he is linked to gave [Michael] Cohen $1 million, and that all this occurred without Vekselberg's knowledge seems quite low. The likelihood that their protestations of innocence hold up is lower still given that they forgot to mention the small detail of Vekselberg's meeting with Cohen. It looks, instead, like a secret payoff from the Kremlin to Cohen. And then the more explosive question is whether any of that money ever made its way into Trump's pockets."

Trump Is Not Giving up on SPYGATE! Max Greenwood of the Hill: "President Trump on Friday once again made the claim that the FBI improperly spied on his presidential campaign, suggesting that the bureau used a top-secret informant to surveil his team long before it began investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. 'The Democrats are now alluding to the the concept that having an Informant placed in an opposing party's campaign is different than having a Spy, as illegal as that may be,' he tweeted. 'But what about an "Informant" who is paid a fortune and who "sets up" way earlier than the Russian Hoax?'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say, why haven't we heard from Devin Nunes since he got the goods on the intelligence agencies way yesterday? No press conference decrying FBI spies? No interviews revealing a CIA conspiracy? I'm so disappointed.


Max Greenwood of the Hill: "South Korean President Moon Jae In and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met on Saturday to discuss the possibility of renewed talks between the U.S. and North Korea, the South's Blue House said. The meeting came as a surprise, and was not made public until after it ended. Moon and Kim met on the North Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries, in the village of Panmunjom." ...

... Blah, Blah, Blah. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that his administration was back in touch with North Korea and the two sides may reschedule his summit meeting with Kim Jong-un, perhaps even on the original June 12 date, a stunning reversal just a day after the president canceled the get-together. 'We'll see what happens,' Mr. Trump told reporters. 'It could even be the 12th,' he said. 'We're talking to them now. They very much want to do it. We'd like to do it. We'll see what happens.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Susan Glasser of the New Yorker: "Sixteen months into the Trump Presidency, it is finally time to say: ... There are no deals with Trump, and there are increasingly unlikely to be. Not on NAFTA. Not on Middle East peace. Or Obamacare or infrastructure. On tax cuts, the one big deal that did get passed, Republicans in Congress agreed to give their grandchildren's money to American corporations and wealthy families and put it all on the nation's credit card; Trump championed it but ... played little role in shaping the legislation, and did nothing to build consensus with skeptical Democrats. On North Korea, Trump spontaneously (and over the fears of his advisers) agreed to meet a dictator whose family, for three generations, has made the acquisition of nuclear weapons the centerpiece of its national security; Trump's negotiating strategy was to demand that the Kim dynasty completely give them up. How surprised are we that it didn't work out? No, Trump is a much better dealbreaker than dealmaker." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ana Swanson of the New York Times: "The Trump administration told lawmakers it had reached a deal that would keep the Chinese telecom firm ZTE alive, a person familiar with the matter said, a move that could clear the way for further trade talks with China but provoke anger in Congress. Under the agreement brokered by the Commerce Department, ZTE would pay a substantial fine, hire American compliance officers to be placed at the firm and make changes to its current management team. In return, the Commerce Department would lift a so-called denial order that is preventing the company from buying American products, the person said." ...

... Damian Paletta of the Washington Post: "A growing group of lawmakers is threatening to intervene to stop the White House from cutting a deal with China to save ZTE Corp., seeking to upend sensitive negotiations over the embattled Chinese telecommunications company that are expected to intensify next week.... Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has led the GOP charge pushing against President Trump's effort to release ZTE from strict prohibitions, and he criticized the administration again on Friday.... It's unusual for a White House to advance a foreign policy decision that has virtually no congressional support, and so far few lawmakers have said they believe helping ZTE is a good idea." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yes, but it's also unusual for a president to take a big bribe to advance a foreign policy decision that has virtually no congressional support, and that's what it appears Trump did.

Ellen Knickmeyer of the AP: "Newly released emails show senior Environmental Protection Agency officials collaborating with a conservative group that dismisses climate change to rally like-minded people for public hearings on science and global warming, counter negative news coverage and tout Administrator Scott Pruitt's stewardship of the agency. John Konkus, EPA's deputy associate administrator for public affairs, repeatedly reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute, according to the emails.... The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing environmental regulation and enforcement...." ...

... Chris Sommerfeldt of the New York Daily News: "Taxpayers have spent nearly $3.5 million on Scott Pruitt's security detail over the past year, far exceeding the cost of protecting his predecessors, according to figures released by the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday.... The actual taxpayer-funded security tally might be even higher, because the records released Friday do not account for training, equipment and vehicle costs."

Trump Nominates Hate-Group Fellow for Top State Immigration Post. Adam Raymond of New York: "President Trump on Thursday nominated Ronald Mortensen, a vocal critic of undocumented immigrants, to serve as assistant secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. The Utah native is the founder of the Utah Coalition on Illegal Immigration and serves as a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. The group, which says its mission is to highlight the negative effects of legal and illegal immigration, is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center."

Theodoric Meyer & Margaret McGill of Politico: "Corey Lewandowski is advising T-Mobile on how to win approval for its proposed merger with Sprint, according to the company. Lewandowski is advising T-Mobile through Turnberry Solutions, a lobbying firm started last year by two fellow veterans of ... Donald Trump’s campaign, which Lewandowski managed before being fired. T-Mobile hired Turnberry last year, but Lewandowski has denied any connection to the firm in the past.... Jason Osborne, a Turnberry lobbyist, said in an interview that Lewandowski was acting as an 'unpaid strategic adviser' to the firm and had never lobbied for its clients."

New Candidate for Worst Congressional Boss. Rachel Bade, et al., of Politico: "Virginia Rep. Tom Garrett [R] and his wife turned the congressman's staff into personal servants, multiple former employees to the freshman Republican told Politico -- assigning them tasks from grocery shopping to fetching the congressman's clothes to caring for their pet dog, all during work hours.... The couple called on staff to pick up groceries, chauffeur Garrett's daughters to and from his Virginia district, and ... watch and clean up after Sophie, their Jack Russell-Pomeranian mix, the aides said. The staffers said they feared that if they refused Garrett's or his wife's orders -- both were known for explosive tempers -- they would struggle to advance in their careers. It wasn't just full-time staff: many of the allegedly inappropriate requests were made of interns, the former aides said."

Marwa Eltagouri of the Washington Post: "The supermarket chain Publix on Friday announced that it would suspend its political contributions to Adam Putnam, a Republican candidate for Florida governor, after being faced with overwhelming pressure to cut ties with him because of his fierce support for the National Rifle Association. The announcement came moments before 'die-in' protests organized by 18-year-old gun-control activist David Hogg began at several Publix supermarkets, forcing store managers to reroute shoppers around the protesters, who lay on the floors of the aisles.... The protesters were calling for an end to Publix's support for Putnam, Florida's agricultural commissioner, who has called himself a 'proud NRA sellout.'... Publix has faced increasing backlash since the Tampa Bay Times reported that the company had given $670,000 to Putnam in the past three years." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Publix -- where has stores throughout the South -- is employee-owned, & for that reason I've been happy to shop there, although I never bought their produce because they refused to support the Immokalee farmworkers' modest demands. But employees are people, too, as Mitt might acknowledge, & people make mistakes. Supporting a far-right "proud NRA sellout" is a terrible mistake. It's pretty clear I didn't go far enough with my lettuce-and-tomato boycott. Then again, thanks to Publix for making sure innocent grads don't have to see the "cum" in "cum laude."

News Lede

New York Times: "Alan Bean, who became the fourth man to walk on the moon and turned to painting years later to tell the story of NASA's Apollo missions as they began receding into history, died on Saturday at Houston Methodist Hospital. He was 86."

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Reader Comments (3)

From Jeffrey Toobin's "The Impeachment War" (New Yorker) that I think was linked here a few days ago something worth remembering was Jerold Nadler's warning about impeachment:

"If you're going to remove the President from office, you are in effect in one sense nullifying the last election. What you don't want are recriminations for the next twenty years–-'We won the election, You stole it.' And to do that you have to have a situation where some appreciable faction––of the people on the other side of the proceedings [ say] that 'yeah, they really had to do it.' "

The problem here at this time is that there is not only an absence of an appreciable faction of Republicans in the House supporting this, there isn't a single Republican who does. Not even Jeff Flake, I guess.

In this same article Toobin tells us that Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) thinks that the foreign-emoluments clause isn't getting enough attention probably because it's unfamiliar––no other president ever came close to violating it before. Trump, as we know, "has turned the federal government into a money-making operation, which is just what the framers feared."

Raskin, as the only constitutional– law professor who is a voting member of congress, has been entering into his thick notebook episodes of Trump's Obstruction of Justices. He says his fellow democrats see Trump as "eminently deserving of impeachment but they don't want it to become a fetish if it's not going anywhere."

In the meantime we muddle through this malodorous mess –-waiting–-waiting until...

Yesterday I suggested to myself that perhaps washing my kitchen floor on my hands and knees might be just the thing to quell the killer instinct that has been creeping around the edges of my usual sunny self but then I saw this ad in my local rag:

MESSAGES FROM THE OTHER SIDE
Saturday–-from 7 to 9–- [location]
Two hours of spirit messages & validations from your loved ones who have passed (including pets).
$30 in advance
$30 at the door.

Hot Damn! Mother can tell me to shape up and stop that hatred in my heart; Daddy will just laugh; and me old dog Kappy will bark like crazy cuz he be so excited to see me again.

So see you later homies–-I be chilling with the dead but not forgotten.

May 26, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

PD Pepe's mention of her local news rag reminded me of a letter
to the editor in yesterdays rag from 15 miles up the highway,
ancestral hometown of Betsy DeVos, Erik Prince and mother, Elsa
Prince Broekhuizen (she married the minister to be closer to God, I
guess).
Anyway, in this woman's letter, the main theme is "judge not lest
ye be judged". Her president* enjoys a 50% approval rating. His
character is constantly under attack. (Could that be because he's
a crook, liar, racist, womanizer, etc.?) And his big accomplishment
is finally moving the American embassy to Jerusalem. And he's
keeping America from being part of a one-world government ruled
by man. He knows that God has authority over all the nations.
Then comes the judgement which she previously railed against:
"sadly we christians are being attacked over the truths of the bible
by LGBTQ activists who deny God and science (?????) but trump
is strongly defending the first amendment."
This is what we have to contend with. Sounds like lots of people
are being brainwashed by the pulpit, and of course, Fox noise.
Hopefully they'll be in the minority by the midterm elections.
I would have written a reply to this letter to the editor but it would
never be published. They're in denial.

May 26, 2018 | Unregistered Commenterforrest morris

This information needs shouting from the hill top if you can get past the sink holes: Trump's crackdown on immigrant parents puts more children in an already strained system.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/immigrant-children-separated-from-parents_us_5b087b90e4b0802d69cb4070

Last night on the PBS News Hour Judy interviewed Marc Short–-W.H. Director of Legislative Affairs (and best buds with the Kochs). Many of us here have had problems with Judy's interviewing––soft ball questions and no real follow up even when it's clear the person is telling a whopper. Short, long on slick rhetoric, gave Judy pure bull pocky and he does it so well. When the issue of immigration was brought up––children being taken away from parents, etc. Marc said this:

"We believe that Sec. Nielsen and the A.G. are doing a great job on helping us secure the border with the limitations they have on them" and he added that our laws are bad. Yup––we are doing very bad things to parents and children because the law is bad. Really? And Judy just sat there, mute.

Then on Chris Hayes some guy from the ACLU (they are suing) and a woman who is involved in the immigration system both told horrific stories about children–-as young as 18 months in one case–-snatched from their parents who then are separated from them and in some cases taken away to other states. The cruelty here is––and I hesitate to use this word––unbelievable! We have gotten used to the unbelievables but this is evil––this must be stopped. Chris asked us to contact our representatives and he said this with tears in his eyes.

May 26, 2018 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe
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