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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Friday
Nov252011

The Commentariat -- November 25

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is titled, "Life Lessons from the New York Times Op-Ed Page: How to Cut-and-Paste, and Still Get It Wrong." You can read it here. (You may not be surprised to discover that Our Mister Brooks plays a starring roll.) The front page of NYTX is here. ...

... Paul Krugman: on the 99.9 Percent: "'We are the 99 percent' is a great slogan. It correctly defines the issue as being the middle class versus the elite (as opposed to the middle class versus the poor). And it also gets past the common but wrong establishment notion that rising inequality is mainly about the well educated doing better than the less educated; the big winners in this new Gilded Age have been a handful of very wealthy people, not college graduates in general."

** Today's Off Times Square topic is Black Friday. For some reason.

Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post: "Over the past year..., capitalism has fairly rolled over democracy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Europe, where financial institutions and large investors have gone to war under the banner of austerity, and governments of nations with not-very-productive or overextended economies have found that they could not satisfy those demands and still cling to power.... What the markets are doing, is, in essence, extending to the realm of once-equally-sovereign nations the one-dollar-one-vote principle that our Supreme Court enshrined in its Citizens United decision last year."

Prof. Robert Frank, in a New York Times op-ed, on "How to End the Black Friday Madness": "Inspired by the 9-9-9 proposal of the Republican presidential contender Herman Cain, I call it the 6-6-6 plan — an across-the-board 6 percent national sales tax (on top of any existing state and local sales taxes) in effect from 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 6 a.m. on Black Friday." CW: Black Friday always reminds me of the film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" a story (based on a 1935 novel by Horace McCoy) about Depression-era dance marathons. In both, desperate Americans put themselves under extreme stress and complete with other desperate people for a few extra bucks the rich toss out as part of a scheme to further enrich themselves. ...

... Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times: "As the busiest retail weekend of the year begins late Thursday night, the differences between how affluent and more ordinary Americans shop in the uncertain economy will be on unusually vivid display.... Many affluent shoppers will avoid the [Black Friday] scene altogether.... Still, a deal is a deal.... Neiman Marcus sold out of pewter-color Ferraris (luggage set matching the interior included) at $395,000 each within 50 minutes of making 10 of them available through its 'fantasy' holiday catalog late last month." ...

... A statement from Adbusters is here. Related AP story here. ...

... Update: Karen Garcia has a lovely post on "The Nightmare before Christmas." Don't miss the comparative photos. ...

... Update 2. Borowitz Report: "In what economists are hailing as a clear sign of economic recovery, Walmart customers across the USA jammed into stores on Black Friday, sometimes killing each other to buy useless shit.... Dr. [Davis] Logsdon said that the increased violence and mayhem at retail outlets across the country was 'a testament to the greatness of the American consumer.”

Aaron Davis & Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post: "Funding cuts for school lunches, home energy assistance, child support enforcement, HIV care, Race to the Top grants and other government programs will come quicker than advertised following the failure this week of the congressional 'supercommittee.' ... Members of Congress cast the breakdown as likely having little to no effect on federal spending over the coming year.... But in state capitals, where legislatures are bound by requirements to balance budgets, the committee’s failure cocked a trigger on $1.2 trillion in cuts that must, by law, be built into spending plans that governors will begin releasing within weeks."

Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "A smaller share of Americans currently serve in the Armed Forces than at any other time since the era between World Wars I and II, a new low that has led to a growing gap between people in uniform and the civilian population...."

CW: I finally forced myself to read this profile of Arianna Huffington by Vanessa Grigoriadis, writing in New York Magazine. The profile is long, informative and seems balanced. It will not give you new insights into the meaning of life. ...

... As an antidote, here's a brief profile of Andy Borowitz by Paul Farhi of the Washington Post. ...

... Today Our Mister Brooks writes (well, copies from others) a saccharine column in which he excerpts "life lessons" from septuagenarians-plus for the edification of the young. In a column I'll link later, I've summed up the lessons Brooks has chosen to share:

Cheating on your wife can lead to divorce. Also, cheating on your wife makes you feel ashamed. If you drink too much, you might cheat on your wife, which has the aforementioned downsides. When a loved one dies, you will feel really sad. When a child is hit by a car, God is more likely to mend the child's injuries than are doctors. (We do not learn why God let the driver of that car hit the child. Perhaps that will be a life lesson for another day.) When you yourself get sick, it's nice to have friends and be cheerful.

... Here is Andy Borowitz, whose Thanksgiving gift to us is an illumination of that last lesson.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Tom Wicker, one of postwar America’s most distinguished journalists, who wrote 20 books, covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for The New York Times and became the paper’s Washington bureau chief and an iconoclastic political columnist for 25 years, died on Friday at his home near Rochester, Vt. He was 85." You can read Wicker's account of JFK's assassination here.

Chicago Tribune: "Maggie Daley, who dedicated herself to children’s issues and the arts while also zealously guarding her family’s privacy during 22 years as Chicago’s First Lady, died a little after 6 p.m. Thursday, more than nine years after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 68." With links to related stories.

AP: "A week into his new job, Premier Mario Monti is running out of time to reassure nervous investors that his government has a strategy to deal with Italy's crippling debts.The nation's borrowing rates skyrocketed Friday after a grim set of bond auctions, with a new auction looming Tuesday."

Reuters: "Sprint Nextel may be forced to abandon the biggest advantage it has over its rivals - unlimited data services for a flat fee - because of heavy data users and a shortage of wireless airwaves."

Reuters: "Former MF Global Chief Executive Jon Corzine is expected to testify at a congressional hearing next month, a committee aide said on Friday, tamping down speculation that the former head of the bankrupt brokerage would decline to take part."

AP: "Anti-Wall Street demonstrators in encampments around the country spent Thanksgiving serving turkey, donating time in solidarity with the protest movement and, in some cases, confronting police."

The New York Times story on Black Friday is here.

New York Times: "As huge crowds of demonstrators gathered in Tahrir Square on Friday, state television reported that the generals running Egypt had appointed a politician from the era of deposed president Hosni Mubarak to lead the cabinet, potentially hardening the lines between the interim military rulers and protesters demanding their exit. At the same time, stepping directly into the crisis, the Obama administration urged the generals to transfer power immediately to a civilian government 'empowered with real authority.'" The Al Jazeera story is here, with video....

... AP: "Family and friends of three American students arrested during a protest in Cairo waited anxiously Friday for news that they had been released from police custody. Derrik Sweeney, Luke Gates and Gregory Porter, who attend the American University in Cairo, were arrested on the roof of a university building near Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square on Sunday. Officials accused them of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters. A court in Egypt ordered the release of the students, a lawyer in Philadelphia confirmed Thursday." ...

     Update: "A Cairo airport official says the first of three American students arrested during a protest in Cairo has left Egypt. Luke Gates, 21, left Cairo early Saturday morning on a flight to Frankfurt, Germany."

Al Jazeera: "Syria is facing the prospect of economic sanctions as an Arab League deadline to sign a protocol allowing rights monitors into the country or face punitive measures passed with no apparent response from Damascus. As the deadline expired on Friday, fresh anti-government protests were reported in various towns across Syria and activists said three people had been killed." New York Times story here.

AP: "Moroccans began voting for a new parliament Friday in Arab Spring-inspired elections that are facing a boycott by democracy campaigners who say the ruling monarchy isn't committed to real change."

New York Times: "Quashing recent speculation of a softening in Germany’s hard-line stance on the euro, Chancellor Angela Merkel repeated on Thursday her firm opposition either to bonds issued jointly by the euro zone countries or to an expansion of the role of the European Central Bank as quick responses to the sovereign debt crisis."

Washington Post: "AT&T and T-Mobile on Thursday moved closer to abandoning their proposed $39 billion merger, saying they have withdrawn their application from the Federal Communications Commission."

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