The Ledes

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Washington Post: “Rescue teams raced to submerged homes, scoured collapsed buildings and steered thousands from overflowing dams as Helene carved a destructive path Friday, knocking out power and flooding a vast arc of communities across the southeastern United States. At least 40 people were confirmed killed in five states since the storm made landfall late Thursday as a Category 4 behemoth, unleashing record-breaking storm surge and tree-snapping gusts. 4 million homes and businesses have lost electricity across Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, prompting concerns that outages could drag on for weeks. Mudslides closed highways. Water swept over roofs and snapped phone lines. Houses vanished from their foundations. Tornadoes added to the chaos. The mayor of hard-hit Canton, N.C., called the scene 'apocalyptic.'” An AP report is here.

The Wires
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The Ledes

Friday, September 27, 2024

New York Times: “Maggie Smith, one of the finest British stage and screen actors of her generation, whose award-winning roles ranged from a freethinking Scottish schoolteacher in 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' to the acid-tongued dowager countess on 'Downton Abbey,' died on Friday in London. She was 89.”

The Washington Post's live updates of developments related to Hurricane Helene are here: “Hurricane Helene left one person dead in Florida and two in Georgia as it sped north. One of the biggest storms on record to hit the Gulf Coast, Helene slammed into Florida’s Big Bend area on Thursday night as a Category 4 colossus with winds of up to 140 mph before weakening to Category 1. Catastrophic winds and torrential rain from the storm — which the National Hurricane Center forecast would eventually slow over the Tennessee Valley — were expected to continue Friday across the Southeast and southern Appalachians.” ~~~

     ~~~ The New York Times' live updates are here.

Mediaite: “Fox Weather’s Bob Van Dillen was reporting live on Fox & Friends about flooding in Atlanta from Hurricane Helene when he was interrupted by the screams of a woman trapped in her car. During the 7 a.m. hour, Van Dillen was filing a live report on the massive flooding in the area. Fox News viewers could clearly hear the urgent screams for help emerging from a car stuck on a flooded road in the background of the live shot. Van Dillen ... told Fox & Friends that 911 had been called and that the local Fire Department was on its way. But as he continued to file the report, the screams did not stop, so Van Dillen cut the live shot short.... Some 10 minutes later, Fox & Friends aired live footage of Van Dillen carrying the woman to safety, waking through chest-deep water while the flooding engulfed her car in the background[.]”

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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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Tuesday
Nov152011

The Commentariat -- November 16

Some politicians may physically remove us from public spaces -- our spaces. You cannot evict an idea whose time has come. -- Occupy Wall Street, via Bloomberg News!

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been committed to peaceful, nonviolent action from its inception. And it will keep spreading no matter what elected officials tell police to do. But that doesn’t mean these raids are acceptable. In fact, they are inexcusable. -- Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO

Cara Buckley of the New York Times: "In New York, where the police temporarily evicted Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park early Tuesday, and in other cities, dozens of organizers maintained that the movement had already reshaped the public debate. They said it no longer needed to rely solely on seizing parks, demonstrating in front of the homes of billionaires or performing other acts of street theater.... Even before the police descended on Zuccotti Park overnight, some early proponents of Occupy Wall Street had begun suggesting that it was time to move on. On Monday, Adbusters, the Canadian anti-corporate magazine that conceived of the movement, indicated that the protesters should “declare victory” and head indoors to strategize." ...

... So here's the Washington Post's take on the Occupy movement: Eli Saslow & Colum Lynch: "... lately the most divisive issue has become the protests themselves. The Occupy Wall Street encampments that formed across the country to spotlight crimes committed on Wall Street have become rife with problems of their own. There are sanitation hazards and drug overdoses, even occasional deaths and sexual assaults. On Tuesday, New York and other cities across the country continued the chaotic, disruptive process of picking sides. Police made arrests in at least six states; three civil rights groups filed lawsuits on behalf of protesters. Mayors and city officials from coast to coast held emergency meetings...." ...

... The Official Presidential Waffle is here. ...

... CW: my response to Tom Friedman's column appears in today's editon of the New York Times eXaminer. Take a look at the eXaminer's front page, as there's quite a lot of interest. You can find my column here. Here's the lede graph:

The news of the day was that Mayor Michael Bloomberg shut down Zuccotti Park where protesters were advocating for the 99 Percent. But Tom Friedman, America’s No. 1 Very Serious Person, is in India, so he was not in a New York state of mind when he wrote his column for today’s New York Times. Friedman is a multimillionaire, and as Belén Fernández noted in a recent New York Times eXaminer interview, he has boasted that he has 'total freedom, and an almost unlimited budget, to explore.' We assume that his current sojourn in India is a similarly extravagant exploration. Really, contemplating America’s 99 Percent would not be on his itinerary.

... New York Times Editors: "We suspect there was a better, less-disruptive way to get demonstrators to deal with problems cited by the city and the park’s owner, Brookfield Office Properties." CW: if you read the whole editorial, you'll find plenty of waffle -- with syrup -- here, too. The Times editors clearly want to stay on Bloomberg's team. ...

... Meanwhile, Alex Pareene of Salon has the goods on the New York Daily News in the title to his blogpost: "Daily News cheers Occupy Wall Street raid, until Daily News reporter is arrested." Pareene writes, "They [the Daily News] seem totally uninterested in the NYPD’s excessively violent tactics, including the harassment, abuse and arrest of various reporters, which doesn’t get a mention in the editorial. Then a Daily News reporter was arrested, along with at least two other reporters. Now, according to the Daily News Twitter feed, at least, the NYPD’s behavior is 'alarming.' The newspaper has alerted its attorney. The Daily News is owned and published by billionaire real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman."

... In is not just radical lefties who are complaining about Baron von Bloomberg's secretive, militaristic midnight raid on Zuccotti Park. Here are Brian Stelter & Al Baker of the ever-so MSM New York Times on "police suppression of the press.... At a news conference ... Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the police behavior, saying that the media was kept away 'to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect members of the press.'" So the press can go into war zones with bullets flying, but they can't go to downtown Manhattan. Seems reasonable. ...

... Paul Krugman: "By acting so badly, Bloomberg has made it easy to see who won’t be truthful and can’t handle open discourse. He’s also saved OWS from what was probably its greatest problem, the prospect that it would just fade away as time went on and the days grew colder. Quite a night’s work." ...

... Felix Salmon of Reuters: when Paul Krugman debated Larry Summers. An interesting read. ...

     ... Krugman responds: "... my pessimism has been selective; I’ve been pessimistic about unemployment and growth, but optimistic about interest rates and inflation. So it’s not just about crying doom, doom. I think that counts for something — especially since I’ve been right."

Brian Beutler of TPM: "CBO Director Doug Elmendorf’s testimony before the Senate Budget Committee Tuesday was full of bad news for the unemployed, and thus for President Obama. This is the stuff Republicans blasted out to reporters: Unemployment will likely be sky high through next year, GDP growth has been and will continue to be anemic. But his prepared remarks confirm this is in part a product of the GOP’s unwillingness to pass the big-ticket items in Obama’s jobs bill. And they also imply that the GOP’s economic counter-proposals would do almost nothing to actually improve things." Read Beutler's whole post, which includes the money (literally) quote of Elmendorf's testimony.

CNN: "Americans are skeptical that a congressional super committee will reach a deficit reduction agreement by next week's deadline, according to a new national survey. And a CNN/ORC International Poll released Wednesday, one week before the panel's November 23 deadline, also indicates that a plurality of the overall public, as well as crucial independent voters, would blame the Republicans more than the Democrats if no agreement's reached." CW: good. Some people are paying attention. ...

... Alexander Bolton of The Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that Democrats will block Republican efforts to torpedo cuts to the Pentagon should the supercommittee on deficit reduction fail. Reid’s threat is yet another signal that Democrats are preparing for a supercommittee flop, and are largely comfortable with the cuts that would be triggered if there is no bipartisan agreement." ...

... ** Steve Benen writes a short post that tells you pretty much all you need to know about the impending Super Committee fail: "When this panel fails next week, major news organizations will tell the public that “both sides” chose not to reach an agreement. Those reports will be wrong." Read the whole post. ...

... Here's a contrary view from Jay Newton-Small of Time, who looks at the up- and downsides -- for Democrats -- of a Super Committee washout.

Law Prof. Einer Elhauge, in a New York Times op-ed: "For decades, Americans have been subject to a mandate to buy a health insurance plan — Medicare.... Many opponents dismiss this argument because Medicare (unlike the new mandate) requires the purchase of health insurance as a condition of entering into a voluntary commercial relationship, namely employment, which Congress can regulate under the commerce clause.... Even if you accept this distinction, it means that Congress can mandate the purchase of health insurance as long as it conditions that mandate on engagement in some commercial activity." And guess what? We all "engage in commercial activity." The Court has decided in the past, for instance, that even producing your own food can be regulated under the commerce clause. CW: in other words, the individual mandate is a slam-dunk, unless you take a look at yesterday's Commentariat & see what Justices Scalia & Thomas are up to -- in which case, all objective arguments are moot.

Two Three "Big Picture" Think Pieces

     Prof. Andrew Bachevich in Common Dreams: "... the most disturbing aspect of contemporary American politics, worse even than rampant dysfunction borne of petty partisanship or corruption expressed in the buying and selling of influence.  Confronted with evidence of a radically changing environment, those holding (or aspiring to) positions of influence simply turn a blind eye, refusing even to begin to adjust to a new reality." P.S. Read the comments, too, especially the one by "Siouxrose." Thanks to reader Lisa for all three links.

      Prof. Juan Cole: though you wouldn't know it from listening to or reading American media, the protests movements in the U.S., Europe & the Middle East, including Israel, are all about the same thing: the concentration of wealth in a corrupt, connected elite that deprives ordinary citizens of a decent standard of living.

     Tom Engelhardt in Al Jazeera on the "other" American dream: imperialism a/k/a the imaginary Pax Americana. Um, it's a nightmare.


The DOJ Loves Banksters. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutions for financial institution fraud have tumbled over the last decade, despite the recent troubles in the banking sector.... Federal prosecutions for other crimes have grown tremendously, with the number of total new prosecutions filed for all federal crimes nearly doubling over the last decade." With charts to prove it. CW: if you don't think this is a reflection of Wall Street control of Washington, call me; I've got a bundle of swell mortgage derivatives to sell you.

Carol Leonnig & Joe Stephens of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections..., newly released e-mails show.... The announcement [of layoffs] ultimately was made on Nov. 3, 2010 — immediately following the Nov. 2 vote."

Scott Brown, Overnight Populist. Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: "In an attempt to burnish his Wall Street reformer credentials ahead of his race against Harvard Law Professor and consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) today plans to introduce the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2011, which would apply laws against insider trading to members of Congress.... Brown’s move comes after a 60 Minutes report [featured in yesterday's Commentariat].... [Brown] earlier endorse[d] President Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But these positions don’t change the fact that Brown worked to water down key provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law before granting the law his support, actions which earned him the appreciative donations of the financial services industry."

Right Wing World

President Newt. Steve Thomma of McClatchey News: "Newt Gingrich is the strongest Republican candidate when matched head to head against Democratic President Barack Obama, according to a McClatchy-Marist Poll released Tuesday. The former speaker of the House of Representatives is neck and neck with the incumbent president, back just 2 percentage points among registered voters. Obama leads 47 percent to 45 percent."

Gingrich is definitionally what conservatism, properly speaking, opposes. Conservatism was born in the eighteenth century against the grand pronouncements of the French philosophes; it roots itself in practice not theory; it distrusts massive, profound reorganization of anything. In all of this, Gingrich is, in fact, conservatism's nemesis: an autodidact megalomaniac, contemptuous of existing institutions, and bent on dragging an entire culture, country and, yes, civilization into a fantastic pocket of his own small mind. -- Andrew Sullivan, putting the Newt into historical perspective

 News Ledes

Public Opinion has some of the latest developments in the Occupy movement, via the AP. A very good synopsis. ...

... ABC News: "President Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday announced that the US military will begin a permanent presence Down Under — part of a greater Obama administration strategy to contain the rise of China in the Pacific. By mid-2012, a company-sized rotation of Marines, between 200-250, will be stationed at an Australian military base in the Northern territory. That will ramp up to a full force of 2,500 Marine personnel as part of a Marine, Air, Ground Task Force In addition, the US Air Force will be able to use Australian Air Force facilities significantly more than it does now."

ABC News: "... authorities are increasingly concerned that a man sought in connection with a bizarre shooting incident on the Washington Mall last week may pose a threat to President Obama. The Secret Service now suspects that a bullet fired in this incident may have hit the White House after a bullet round was found in a White House window, though the round had not yet been conclusively linked to the incident.  The round was stopped by ballistic glass behind the historic exterior glass, while an additional round has been found on the exterior of the White House. Police believe the suspect, 21-year-old Oscar Ramiro Ortega of Idaho, is mentally ill." With video.

New York Times: "As a steady drizzle began early Wednesday morning, only a few dozen protesters remained in Zuccotti Park.... There were no tarps or sleeping bags — just a few dozen people clustered together or slumped on granite benches, shielding themselves with whatever they had: umbrellas, rain coats, pieces of cardboard and garbage bags."

Al Jazeera: "Syrian activists say that army defectors have attacked an intelligence complex in the Damascus suburbs in what appears to be one of their boldest assaults so far against government security forces. Members of the Free Syrian Army fired heavy weaponry and machine guns at a large air force intelligence complex situated in Harasta on the northern edge of the capital along the Damascus-Aleppo highway early on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Syrian Revolution General Commission told Al Jazeera."

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