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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Wednesday
Oct122011

The Commentariat -- October 13

I've posted a question on today's Off Times Square: Why would anyone vote Republican?

The Seven Biggest Lies about the Economy. Thanks to commenter Calyban for the link:

... NEW. Prof. Nouriel Roubini has a pretty good gloss on how we got in this mess. And he reminds us, "Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unless the relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, the protests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instability eventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare."

Photo via the Monkey Cage."Barack Obama Is a Negative Campaigner." John Sides of the Monkey Cage: "Some commentators seem to assume or imply that Obama’s 2008 message of unity and bipartisanship meant that he didn’t 'go negative' in the heat of that campaign. He did. And he will." With stats to prove it. ...

 

... Senate Republicans voted down the American Jobs Act yesterday, but President Obama "will not take no for an answer." Here's a video he released last night (oh, and he elliptically disses Herman Cain's disastrous 999 plan):

 

David Roberts of Grist: "The debate over upcoming EPA regulations is a perfect microcosm of contemporary U.S. politics, in all its unreality and venality.... Two things have been fairly well established about these rules: Their benefits far exceed their costs and they are enduringly popular with the American people. Yet inside the Beltway bubble, it's perfectly legitimate to argue that they would cripple the $14 trillion U.S. economy or, incredibly, that preventing them amounts to a jobs bill.... The latest evidence comes from a nationwide poll ... like so many polls before it -- that the public overwhelmingly supports clean air protections across demographic and party lines. Via Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post.

I am sorry that this week my Republican colleagues have proven once again that the only jobs they care about are their own.They voted against a plan creating 2 million jobs because they believed it was good Republican politics. -- Majority Leader Harry Reid, from the Senate floor

New York Times Editors: "... the unanimous decision by Senate Republicans on Tuesday to filibuster and thus kill President Obama’s jobs bill was still a breathtaking act of economic vandalism.... The Republicans offer no actual economic plans, only tired slogans about cutting regulations and spending, and ending health care reform.... Republican candidates fear the Tea Party too much to acknowledge that economists are solidly behind government intervention to awaken growth.... The record is increasingly clear who is advocating real ideas, and who is selling an empty vessel." ...

... CW: AND remember this, which perhaps I haven't emphasized enough: the public favors Obama's jobs plan. Here's one polling result, but a number of other polls reflect the same findings.

Unbelievable! Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling: "Yesterday PPP released numbers showing Herman Cain leading Mitt Romney 30-22 in Iowa and our monthly look at the national picture finds the exact same numbers.  Cain is up 30-22 on Romney with Newt Gingrich sneaking past Rick Perry for 3rd place at 15% to Perry's 14% with Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul tied for 5th at 5%, Jon Huntsman 7th at 2%, Rick Santorum 8th at 1%, and Gary Johnson 9th with less than 1%." (CW: PPP is a left-leaning pollster with a good track record.)

Graph by Public Policy Polling.In a long New York Times Magazine piece, Matt Bai makes a stab at figuring out who the Republican "party establishment" is and how they're looking at the 2012 election. The article is mildly interesting. ...

... AND Reid Wilson of the National Journal says, "At the moment, there is no such thing as the Republican establishment."

... Dana Milbank: "Boehner and his Republican colleagues aren’t necessarily wrong in their desire to expand trade with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, as they did Wednesday, or to prevent a tit-for-tat with China. But the Republican support for the free-trade deals, and the leadership’s refusal to consider the China legislation, show where the power still resides in Washington. For all the talk of populist foment – the Tea Party on the right and the new Occupy Wall Street movement on the left – business interests remain firmly in control. Forced to choose between their voters and their donors, lawmakers don’t hesitate before choosing the latter."

Prof. Martin Feldstein in a New York Times op-ed: the only way to stop a drop in U.S. home values is by "permanently reducing the mortgage debt.... To halt the fall in house prices, the government should reduce mortgage principal when it exceeds 110 percent of the home value.... If the bank or other mortgage holder agrees, the value of the mortgage would be reduced to 110 percent of the home value, with the government absorbing half of the cost of the reduction and the bank absorbing the other half." CW: Feldstein headed President Reagan's economic council. see also today's Ledes. Let's see: the banks made bad loans & now I have to pay for half of the cost of their screw-ups. Seems fair. ...

... Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "A handful of the nation’s largest banks have begun giving away scores of properties [in cities across the country] that are abandoned or otherwise at risk of languishing indefinitely and further dragging down already depressed neighborhoods. The banks have even been footing the bill for the demolitions — as much as $7,500 a pop. Four years into the housing crisis, the ongoing expense of upkeep and taxes, along with costly code violations and the price of marketing the properties, has saddled banks with a heavy burden. It often has become cheaper to knock down decaying homes no one wants."

** It's Working! CW: You'll have to get into the weeds to ferret out the numbers, but this new Time Magazine poll shows that Americans favor Occupy Wall Street & their views over the Tea Party & their views. ...

     ... Update. Steve Benen breaks down the poll numbers & concludes, "... the establishment seems to assume Tea Partiers are sensible patriots, worthy of considerable attention, while Occupy Wall Street includes a bunch of hippies, not worth taking seriously. Americans, in general, appear to believe otherwise." ...

     ... Update 2: Here's the New York Daily News headline in its front-page story: "Occupy Wall Street Is Twice as Popular as the Tea Party."

... NEW. Charlie Rose had a good discussion of Occupy Wall Street on his show last night with Paul Krugman, Jaren Bernstein, Bill Buster & Marshall Ganz. You can watch the segment here. Thanks to commenter Meredith for the heads-up. ...

Left-Wing Billionaires Caught Helping the Middle Class!

Occupy Wall Street Is a George Soros Plot! Mark Egan & Michelle Nichols of Reuters: "According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation. Disclosure documents also show Tides ... gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.... Adbusters [is] an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street."

Warren Buffett Makes Insidious Deal with Supercommittee! Alan Fram of the AP: "In an exchange of letters between the billionaire investor and a Republican congressman that Buffett sent the committee this week, Buffett is offering to release his federal tax returns — with a condition. 'If you could get other ultra rich Americans to publish their returns along with mine, that would be very useful to the tax dialogue and intelligent reform,' Buffett wrot"

Yesterday a reader sent me a link to this video produced by the Massachusetts GOP which cuts, alters the video & remixes the audio to make Elizabeth Warren sound like a scary, rock-throwing radical hippie:

... So Massachusetts Democrats respond with this parody starring scary Scott Brown:

... ** Scott Brown Is Just Like Elizabeth -- Dole. Exactly Like Her. Alex Katz of the Boston Globe: "In a message to students, the Massachusetts senator uses the exact words as remarks delivered by the former North Carolina senator [Elizabeth Dole] at her campaign kickoff in 2002":

I was raised to believe that there are no limits to individual achievement and no excuses to justify indifference. From an early age, I was taught that success is measured not in material accumulations, but in service to others. I was encouraged to join causes larger than myself, to pursue positive change through a sense of mission, and to stand up for what I believe. -- Scott Brown, 2111/Elizabeth Dole, 2002

     ... "Brown’s staff acknowledged yesterday the words originally were Dole’s and said their presence in Brown’s message was the result of a technical error."

This kind of plagiarism makes me wonder how many things about Scott Brown are really genuine. The fact that he can’t come up with a personal values statement of his own, that he has to steal someone else’s, I think is very instructive of what kind of politician he is. -- Rodell Mollineau, president of left-leaning American Bridge 21st Century, which uncovered the theft

      ... CW: Hey, Scott. Way to teach the kids about plagiarism. I've been trying to do that myself (see Off Times Square, "Plagiarism Explained, to Dummies."

Right Wing World

Glenn Kessler, the WashPo's fact-checker, does not comment on the merits of making the tax code less progressive, as Herman Cain's 999 plan most certainly does, but he does examine Cain's statements about the potential impacts of his plan on Americans at various income levels: "Just like it would be wrong to claim pizza is a low-calorie meal, Cain’s description of the plan’s impact on working Americans is highly misleading." Kessler also gives a pretty good rundown of how the plan would kick in (or not -- Kessler says there's no way the tax code could so quickly be modified). ...

... The Washington Post's Editors are less circumspect than Kessler: "Mr. Cain’s plan is problematic, but not for the reasons his fellow presidential contenders claim. Rather than putting the country on a sustainable fiscal path, it risks not producing enough revenue to fund the government’s needs. It would turn the current progressivity of the tax code upside-down, giving a windfall to the wealthy and hiking the tax burden for the least well-off.... The appealing simplicity of Mr. Cain’s plan is deceptive. Rather, it is simplistic — not to mention fiscally irresponsible and fundamentally unfair."

Steve Benen on Michele Bachmann's latest conspiracy theory, expressed in last night's debate: President Obama is secretly planning to dissolve Medicare -- you know, the way the right wing is. And he told her so! Well, at least he mumbled it to her. CW: Hey, maybe she heard it through a filling in her teeth.

News Ledes

President & Mrs. Obama welcome Republic of Korea President Lee & his wife Kim Yoon-ok to the state dinner.

President & Mrs. Obama hosted a state dinner for President Lee & First Lady Kim Yoon-ok this evening.

Presidents Obama & Lee held a joint press conference early this afternoon. Washington Post: "President Obama pledged Thursday to hold Iran accountable for 'dangerous and reckless behavior' in pursuing an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. In his first comments on the purported murder-for-hire scheme unveiled Wednesday by the Justice Department, Obama described the U.S. allegations as well supported by evidence and said they would contribute to stronger enforcement of existing sanctions against Iran." Video of the press conference (which was fairly tedious but did contain some news, as reflected in the Post report) is here.

President & Mrs. Obama & Vice President Biden welcomed South Korean President Lee Myung-bak & First Lady Kim Yoon-ok to the White House this morning. You can watch the ceremony here.

New York Times: "Responding to what he called unsanitary conditions at the private park in Lower Manhattan that has served as home base to the Occupy Wall Street protest for more than three weeks, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Wednesday night that protesters would be made to leave temporarily as the property was cleaned in stages." ...

     ... Update: :There was much talk among the protesters at Zuccotti Park on Thursday about cleaning up after themselves to stave off eviction. But by early afternoon, only a handful had translated words into action and begun the daunting task of ridding the park of the accumulated detritus of a four-week occupation." ...

     ... Update 2: MoveOn.org thinks the mayor will make the "temporary" move permanent & is circulating a petition to ask the mayor to cancel the eviction. You can sign the petition here. ...

     ... Update 3: PPPC also has a petition to Baron von Bloomberg.

Reuters: "Libyan government fighters have captured Muammar Gaddafi's son Mo'tassim as he tried to escape the battle-torn city of Sirte, National Transitional Council (NTC) officials said. The capture of the deposed leader's national security adviser, and the first member of the Gaddafi family, is a big boost to Libya's new rulers, whose forces are still battling pro-Gaddafi fighters in his home town of Sirte."

AP: "More U.S. homes are entering the foreclosure process, but they're taking ever longer to get sold or repossessed by lenders. The number of U.S. homes that received a first-time default notice during the July to September quarter increased 14 percent compared to the second quarter.... That increase signals banks are moving more aggressively now against borrowers...."

AP: "President Barack Obama's campaign raised more than $70 million combined for his re-election and the Democratic party during the summer, an amount that gives him a clear advantage over his Republican rivals but is less than his initial fundraising effort."

AP: "The Wall Street Journal says its publisher in Europe resigned after an internal investigation determined that he had tried to influence editorial content to favor a partner in a cut-price circulation deal. The report on the newspaper's website Thursday appeared to differ from a statement by its owner, News Corp. subsidiary Dow Jones, which said Tuesday's resignation of publisher Andrew Langhoff was unrelated to a circulation deal with the Netherlands-based Executive Learning Partnerships. The Wall Street Journal is the U.S. crown jewel of the many papers in Rupert Murdoch's global media empire...." A more expansive Guardian report is here. The Journal article is here.

Reuters: "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday called a confidence vote on his government, saying a collapse of his center-right coalition now would be catastrophic for the country and its economy. Under pressure over corruption and sex scandals and facing criticism for his center-right government's erratic handling of the economic crisis, Berlusconi has accused the left-wing opposition of 'obsessively' seeking to drive him from office."

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