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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Saturday
Oct152011

The Commentariat -- October 16

Adrian Chen of Gawker: Tom Ryan, a conservative "New York-based computer security expert..., has leaked thousands of emails from Occupy Wall Street organizers and told us he's identified members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous involved in the protest.... Now they're being used by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart to smear the movement. The emails show that Occupy Wall Street is a 'conspiracy to "destabalize" Global Markets,' Breitbart says!" ...

... In a follow-up post, Chen writes that since the start of Occupy Wall Street, Ryan "has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement, [and] he was forwarding interesting email threads to contacts at the NYPD and FBI.... He was also giving information to companies" like NBC Universal.

Nicholas Kristof: "... the United States is [economically] more unequal a society than either Tunisia or Egypt. Three factoids underscore that inequality (the following links are to data referenced):

¶The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

¶The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

¶In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.

Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic for the New York Times, on the significance of place -- and of face-to-face contact -- to protest movements. "In his 'Politics,' Aristotle argued that the size of an ideal polis extended to the limits of a herald’s cry. He believed that the human voice was directly linked to civic order."

Closing your [Citibank] account is now a go-to-jail offense. -- Ken Layne, Wonkette ...

... A woman wearing a business suit is manhandled, detained & arrested at the La Guardia Place (Manhattan) Citibank branch -- AFTER she shows police & security guards her Citibank documents & repeatedly declares, "I'm a customer!" According to Layne, the woman went into the bank to close her account. Watch from about 60 secs. in:

The View from the Court of Louis XVI. Nelson Schwartz & Eric Dash of the New York Times: Wall Street bankers see Occupy Wall Street protesters as "a fringe group" & "a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," people who don't have the sense to realize bankers "pay all the taxes." [CW: And why is that? you jerks.] One banker said Sens. Chuck Schumer & Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), both of whom get plenty of Wall Street campaign money, should be defending the Street: "They need to understand who their constituency is." That, of course, is the exactly problem.

"We Are the 53 Percent." Or Not. Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Monthly on Erick Erickson's "response" to the 99 Percent -- a Tumblr grievance site that allows wingers to complain that they are paying taxes and you're not. BUT, Bernstein writes, "... a substantial portion of them … don’t actually pay income taxes, and therefore are not, in fact, part of the 53 percent of households who do. For example, [a] citizen claims to be a college senior working '30+ hours a week making just barely over minimum wage.' ... If that’s all he’s got he’s not paying any income tax. Just as a guess, I’d be surprised if any fewer than 10 percent of the posters are actually income-tax free, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s about 50/50."

How to Identify a Moderate Republican. Jamison Foser of Media Matters: The votes by Maine Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins against the American Jobs Act, which Moody's Analytics estimated would create nearly 2 million new jobs, have sparked protests in Augusta, [Maine's capital].... In her five-paragraph statement about her vote against the jobs bill, Snowe indicated an objection to only one of the bill's provisions: the surcharge on adjusted gross income in excess of one million dollars a year, which would affect only one-tenth of one percent of Maine residents. So it's pretty clear what side Snowe is on: She sides with the richest one-tenth of one percent of Mainers, and against 99.9 percent of her constituents.... But just to drive the point home, Snowe spoke to group of businessmen..., where she courageously told them their taxes are too high and they are over-regulated.... Snowe also backed a balanced budget amendment, which, according to ... Moody's Analytics ..., 'is likely to push the economy back into recession.'"

Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "The Internet banking services that have been sold to customers as conveniences, like online bill paying, also serve as powerful tethers that keep customers from jumping to another institution.... Representative Brad Miller [D-NC] ... introduced a bill this month that would make it easier for customers to switch" banks.

Nicholas Confessore & Griff Palmer of the New York Times: "Mitt Romney has raised far more money than [President] Obama this year from the firms that have been among Wall Street’s top sources of donations for the two candidates. That gap underscores the growing alienation from Mr. Obama among many rank-and-file financial professionals and Mr. Romney’s aggressive and successful efforts to woo them." CW: this is the top story in this morning's online Times, which can only please Barack Obama. ...

... CW: guess I was right. From Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "President Obama and his team have decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy. The move comes as the Occupy Wall Street protests gain momentum across the country and as polls show deep public distrust of the nation’s major financial institutions. And it sets up what strategists see as a potent line of attack against Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, a former investment executive whom Obama aides plan to portray as a wealthy Wall Street sympathizer." CW: the Obama campaign probably fed the Times reporters the Obama-Romney Wall Street fundraising story above.

Right Wing World *

As the Worm Turns. Ryan Foley of the AP: "Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has cast himself as the outsider, the pizza magnate with real-world experience who will bring fresh ideas to the nation's capital. But Cain's economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers [David & Charles Koch] who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity."

From yesterday's Commentariat: CW: the AP reported that "the United States is ... sending about 100 U.S. troops to central Africa to [act as advisers] ... against a guerrilla group accused of horrific atrocities." AND here is Rush Limbaugh's "news" report on the development. The headline: "Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians." ...

     ... Matt Yglesias: "... Rush Limbaugh’s instinct is to embrace brutal murderers.... Reasonable people can disagree as to whether or not chasing a relatively small band of depraved mass murderers around central africa is a reasonable thing for American military personel to be doing. But let’s make no mistake—these are depraved mass murderers. And yet Rush Limbaugh is pleased to welcome them as fellow Christian allies." ...

     ... Digby: "Considering that Rush is a leader of a rather large group of people who insist that Hitler was a leftist, I'm not entirely surprised. Rightwingers' worldview is so Manichean they literally cannot conceive of anyone a Democrat or liberal might oppose not being the good guys --- particularly if that enemy calls itself 'Christian.' (Again, the proof offered for Hitler's alleged leftism is that the word 'socialism' appears in the name of the Nazi Party. So there you go.)" ...

     ... Steve Benen: "I don’t care that Limbaugh is a professional liar; I do care when he sides with depraved, roving band of mass murderers, solely because he hates the U.S. president.... When Congress passed the LRA Disarmament & Northern Uganda Recovery Act, authorizing U.S. military support against the LRA [the group the U.S. military is targeting], it was approved unanimously in both chambers.... Given that Limbaugh is one of the nation’s most prominent Republican leaders, perhaps the GOP presidential candidates can be asked for their opinion on this. Does Mitt Romney agree with Limbaugh? Will Limbaugh’s embrace of the LRA ... stop the candidates from appearing on Limbaugh’s show?" ...

     ... Commenter Mike on Benen's post: "The Limbaugh show is still carried on Armed Forces Radio, btw." CW: I've written to Armed Forces Radio to protest their continued carrying of a program which supports terrorists. You can write to P. J. (Jerry) Weaver, an Armed Forces Radio director, at pjweaver94@gmail.com Here's my letter to him:

Dear Mr. Weaver:

As you probably know, last week Rush Limbaugh came out in support of the terrorist African group the Lord’s Resistance Army. In 2009, the U.S. Congress unanimously passed the LRA Disarmament & Northern Uganda Recovery Act, authorizing U.S. military support against the LRA (you can find reference to it here). Last week the President sent Congressional leaders a letter advising them that he had “authorized a small number of combat equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony [the LRA leader] from the battlefield.”

In view of Mr. Limbaugh’s support of a group which the Congress and President have recognized as a violent terrorist organization, and against whom American troops are fighting, I ask you to immediately and permanently remove Mr. Limbaugh’s program from your schedule. Armed Forces Radio Network, which is taxpayer-funded, should not carry a radio show that advocates for enemy terrorists.

Thank you for your urgent attention to this matter.

Marie Burns

* Where nothing is as it seems.

Local News

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The push to repeal ... [Ohio State] Senate Bill 5..., Gov. John R. Kasich’s [R] signal achievements..., a law that weakens public employees’ bargaining rights..., will be one of the biggest battles in the country this Election Day, with the law’s supporters and opponents expected to spend in total more than $20 million in the fight."

News Ledes

AP: "Libyan revolutionary forces bulldozed the green walls surrounding Moammar Gadhafi's main Tripoli compound on Sunday, saying it was time 'to tear down this symbol of tyranny.'"

New York Times: "More than six months before the French presidential election, the main candidates appear to be set, with François Hollande, 57, winning a runoff election on Sunday to become the Socialist Party presidential candidate.... The putative favorite for the Socialists’ nomination — Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund — did not run after he was arrested on charges of attempted rape in New York. The charges were dropped, but Mr. Strauss-Kahn retreated from political life." Hollande will likely face President Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France's major right-wing political party.

New York Times: "Israel on Sunday released the names of the first 477 Palestinian prisoners that it will exchange for a soldier held by the militant faction Hamas, and the list revealed why the country has found the trade so wrenching: the majority of the inmates were convicted of manslaughter, attempted murder or intentionally causing death."

President Obama spoke at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial dedication on the National Mall this morning. AP story here. A post-speech AP story is here.

AP: "Iran's supreme leader warned the United States on Sunday that any measures taken against Tehran over an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington would elicit a 'resolute' response."

New York Times: "Buoyed by the longevity of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Manhattan, a wave of protests swept across Asia, the Americas and Europe on Saturday, with hundreds and in some cases thousands of people expressing discontent with the economic tides in marches, rallies and occasional clashes with the police.... At least 88 people were arrested in New York, including 24 accused of trespassing in a Greenwich Village branch of Citibank and 45 during a raucous rally of thousands of people in and around Times Square. More than 1,000 people filled Washington Square Park at night, but almost all of them left after dozens of police officers with batons and helmets streamed through the arch and warned that they would be enforcing a midnight curfew. Fourteen were arrested for remaining in the park."

Reuters: "The world's leading economies pressed Europe on Saturday to act decisively within eight days to resolve the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis which is endangering the world economy. In unusually direct language, finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of 20 major economies said they expected an October 23 European Union summit to 'decisively address the current challenges through a comprehensive plan'."

AP: "Arab foreign ministers have called an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss whether to suspend Syria from the Arab League, officials said, ramping up the pressure on Damascus to end its bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters."

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