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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Monday
Oct242011

The Commentariat -- October 25

I've posted an Open Thread for comments on today's Off Times Square.

Chris Matthews, Sam Stein & John Heilemann compare President Obama & Mitt Romney's approaches to governance:

... Andrew Leonard of Salon asks, "Can Obama fix Geithner's housing bust?" As Zach Goldfarb oulined in the Washington Post (see yesterday's Commentariat for link), "The responsibility for the failure to move aggressively to help struggling homeowners ... gets blamed fairly definitively on the treasury secretary. Geithner was consistently more worried about the health of the financial sector than he was about the housing sector and actively discouraged Obama from diverting resources toward helping homeowners.... [Maybe] the Obama administration is finally getting its act together and tackling the real problems. But it’s much easier to look at the plan and say 'too little, too late,' than to nod along with the mantra 'we can’t wait.'” ...

... "Can Obama fix Geithner's housing bust?" Apparently not. Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times:  "The federal government’s expansion of a mortgage refinancing program could reduce the monthly payments of up to one million homeowners, but analysts said the modest scope of the plan meant it would probably do little to heal the housing market or help the broader economy." ...

... Derek Kravitz of the AP: "The Obama administration is hoping at least 1 million [underwater] borrowers will take advantage of its refinancing program under more lenient rules unveiled Monday. Homeowners who are current on their payments will be eligible to refinance no matter how much their home's value has dropped. Still, it's unclear how many borrowers will benefit. Lenders will remain under no obligation to refinance a mortgage they hold." ...

... The whole political class is just getting the memo that Ozzie and Harriet don't live here anymore. -- Dean Edward Hill of Cleveland State University, on poverty in the suburbs ...

... Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times: "The poor population in America’s suburbs ... rose by more than half after 2000, forcing suburban communities across the country to re-evaluate their identities and how they serve their populations. The increase in the suburbs was 53 percent, compared with 26 percent in cities. The recession accelerated the pace: two-thirds of the new suburban poor were added from 2007 to 2010."

CW: maybe it's inevitable, given the realities of politics & policy, but Michael Scherer of Time makes the case that Obama has gone from being a transformational candidate to a transactional one. The hopey-changey thing? It's now he hopes he can win re-election.

Manhattan-based brand consultant David Intrator discusses the nature of the Occupy Wall Street movement. TruthDig reporter Alexander Reed Kelly tells how he met Intrator. Share this one with your conservative friends! Thanks to reader Bonnie for the link:

New York Times Editors: "... Community Board 1, which represents residents and businesses in Lower Manhattan, is expected to vote Tuesday evening on a resolution that endorses the right to protest and opposes 'the use of excessive and unnecessary force by the City of New York' or the owners of the park, Brookfield Properties. (The resolution also endorses the extension of the 'millionaire’s tax' in New York State to soften cuts to education and other services.) The community calls on everyone involved, including protesters and elected officials, to address the problems this event has created around the park." CW: hope they also suggested port-a-potties & other sanitation aids. ...

... Arun Gupta of Salon: In three deindustrialized cities [-- Allentown, Pennsylvania, Youngstown Ohio, & Toledo, Ohio --] Occupy protesters find friendly cops, determination and despair." ...

Richard Cohen, who is the Washington Post's idea of a liberal -- i.e., he's a David Brooks-type blowhard -- goes looking for anti-Semitism in Zuccotti Park & can't find any of it, despite the best effort of wingers, especial Bill Kristol, to decry OWS as an anti-Semitic movement. "The smear is in deadly earnest, a reminder that the devious tactics of the Old Left have been adopted by the New Right. (No accident, maybe, that the practitioners are the descendants of lefties.)" Cohen still thinks Occupy Wall Street is a stupid diversion, "a conspiracy to have left-leaning writers make jackasses of themselves by imparting grave and grand meaning to what is little more than a vast sleepover."

Brian Beutler of TPM: a report issued by the Government Accountability Office "implies ... that ... repealing ObamaCare would consign us to swift, ugly fiscal and health care crises. The health care reform law will extend subsidized private health insurance to millions of Americans, paid for with new taxes and Medicare savings. But it also included numerous demonstration projects and reforms intended to rein in the growth of health care costs, and thus Medicare spending. Some of them have great promise — if they can survive." CW: this is something the CBO & independent economists have also emphasized: if you want the deficit to skyrocket while killing off & sickening millions of Americans, let Republicans repeal the ACA. Every Republican candidate for president has promised to do that -- Mitt Romney claims he would do so on his first day in office, evidently figuring he can just executive-order a Congressional law out of existence.

One More Time. In case you were still thinking maybe Joe Nocera was half-right (his half-witted column is here) about Democrats being responsible for the bad blood in the Senate on accounta Teddy Kennedy's picking on that nice Robert Bork, Driftglass should shut down your last lingering pro-Nocera brain waves.

Right Wing World

The "I'm Crazier than You" Primary, Con'd. Perry Bacon of the Washington Post: "Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry has released an economic plan full of long-held conservative goals, including personal accounts for Social Security, an optional flat tax, major spending cuts and a series of tax cuts. The 'Cut, Balance and Grow' plan, which Perry first unveiled in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and will formally announce in a speech in Gray Court, South Carolina on Tuesday, puts Perry to the political right of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the front-runner in the GOP presidential race." Perry's Wall Street Journal op-ed is here. ...

     ... Update. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Rick Perry’s decision to embrace a flat tax as a central part of his economic plan, as several other Republican candidates have, is providing an opportunity for President Obama’s campaign. The president’s advisers are eager to characterize the advocates of a flat tax as shills for the wealthy in the United States.... That’s just what his campaign argued in a new memorandum issued Tuesday morning by Mr. Obama’s policy director, James Kvaal. Kvaal's memo is here (pdf). ...

... Perry Bacon & Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "Welcome to Rick Perry 2.0. The Republican Texas governor is retooling his presidential campaign, shuffling staff and touting a bold but controversial new tax plan, hoping to rebound from a recent plunge in the polls." ...

... Yep. And as part of his "retooled" campaign, Perry thinks it's "fun" to remind his troglodyte base that Obama might not be a legitimate president because he was born in the black African nation of Kenya. Who wouldn't want a president with such a great sense of humor?

... Dana Milbank: "If at first you don’t secede, try the birther movement. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who more than once has dipped his cowboy boot into the secessionist swamp, has found a new outlet for his fringe instincts. The Republican presidential candidate has revived questions about President Obama’s birth certificate." ...

... What a Chump! Steve Kornacki of Slate: "Flirting with birtherism has always been an awful play for a politician with national ambitions, an easy way to get yourself tagged as a fringe figure.... That Perry has faded so badly in the polls this fall is a direct result of the skepticism and even hostility from GOP elites that his performance has provoked." ...

... So Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post wonders, "how long can Romney refrain from embracing the crazy?"

AP: "Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann’s former New Hampshire staffers say they were deceived and treated as second-class citizens before they quit in frustration last week. In a news release, the five former staffers said ... they could not continue working for her because her national campaign team had been 'rude, unprofessional, dishonest, and at times cruel' to them and 'abrasive, discourteous, and dismissive' of the state’s voters."

Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "Republicans are objecting to new infrastructure spending because they don't want the top 1/500th of American taxpayers to pay an average of 1/217th more of their income in taxes." ...

    ... Greg Sargent has more detail here.

Their storyline is that there must be some villain out there who’s keeping this administration from succeeding. -- Mitch McConnell, on Democrats

... After running through more than a year's worth of McConnell's promises to sandbag the President, Steve Benen thinks he knows who the villain is. ...

... Here Lewison rolls the videotape. "So Mitch McConnell went on CNN's State of the Union yesterday and claimed Republicans haven't been obstructing efforts by Democrats and the Obama administration to take action on the jobs crisis. Either he was lying through his teeth, or there's a really good Mitch McConnell impersonator on YouTube who's been saying the exact opposite for the past three years:

Senate Republicans Call for More Gridlock. Jamison Foser of Media Matters: "... after years of gridlock caused by Republicans filibustering nearly everything — even jobs bills in the middle of an unemployment crisis ... two Republican senators, Jeff Sessions (AL) and Olympia Snowe (ME), want to make it harder for the Senate to pass important legislation. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Sessions and Snowe propose requiring a supermajority for passage of appropriations bills." CW: remember, Olympia Snowe is a "moderate" Republican.

More Expanding Fish Stories from Senator Marco: Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "National Public Radio has raised more questions about the biography of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who told a reporter two years ago a story of his family’s departure from Cuba that does not mesh with his current accounts." Rubio told NPR's Robert Siegel in 2009 that the Castro government held Rubio's mother in Cuba for nine months in 1960. No, it didn't.

Local News

Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University, in Slate: "Last week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott [CW: a/k/a America's Worst Governor] called for reductions in state appropriations for particular academic disciplines so that public universities can focus resources on producing graduates in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math.... For some reason, he seemed especially concerned that Florida universities might be producing too many anthropologists.... His approach to both higher education and economic development is misguided and counterproductive. The notion that we must strip away academic programs not seemingly relevant to workforce development reflects a simplistic and retrograde view of the role of higher education in the American economy." Crow elaborates.

Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a far-reaching Florida law that requires public assistance applicants to take a drug test, saying the law probably violates a constitutional ban on unreasonable search and seizure." CW: Gov. Scott's wife owns a chain of walk-in clinics that do drug-testing. The clinic business used to belong to Scott, but rather than sell it because it created a conflict-of-interest, he "transferred" it to the Missus when he became governor.) Gov. Scott campaigned on & initiated the drug-testing law. ...

     ... Correction, via the St. Pete Times: "Scott [and I guess his wife] sold his interest in the clinic chain in April 2011. ...

... Voter Supression, Florida Style. Daytona Beach News-Journal: "Prepping 17-year-olds for the privileges and responsibilities of voting in a democracy is nothing new for civics teachers, but when [teacher] Jill Cicciarelli organized a drive at the start of the school year to get students pre-registered, she ran afoul of Florida's new and controversial election law. Among other things, the new rules require that third parties who sign up new voters register with the state and that they submit applications within 48 hours.... Cicciarelli hadn't registered with the state before beginning the registration drive. And she didn't submit the forms to the elections office on time." Thanks to Charlie Pierce of Esquire, who has a great post on this. And thanks to a reader for directing me to the Pierce blogpost.

Quinnipiac University: "Ohio voters support 57 - 32 percent the repeal of SB 5 [which slashed collective bargaining rights for public employees and is] the centerpiece of Gov. John Kasich's legislative program.... Gov. Kasich's standing is in the same negative neighborhood as SB 5, with Ohio voters disapproving of his job performance 52 - 36 percent, down from 49 - 40 percent disapproval in September's survey...."

The Ledes

The Hill: "The White House announced Tuesday that it supports passage of a House Republican bill intended to boost job creation and due up for a vote on Thursday. The bill repeals a requirement that the federal government withhold 3 percent of payments to contractors as a down payment toward future taxes owed. It was intended to increase compliance with tax laws, but the provision has been delayed repeatedly."

AP: "A federal judge blocked part of North Carolina's new abortion law Tuesday, ruling providers do not have to place an ultrasound image next to a pregnant woman so she can view it, nor do they have to describe its features and offer her the chance to listen to the heartbeat. The law was set to take effect Wednesday, but U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles' decision puts a key section of it on hold until she can hear more arguments."

Reuters: "President Barack Obama is taking steps to ease the burden of student loans, the White House said Tuesday, potentially helping millions of cash-strapped college graduates in a tough economy. Obama plans to accelerate a plan to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income, bringing it forward to start in 2012 from 2014."

Los Angeles Times: "Tuesday's pre-dawn sweep of the Occupy Oakland encampment, which resulted in about 80 arrests, came after the diverse community of protesters refused to allow police and fire officials -- as well as at least two ambulance crews -- access to the area to provide services, city officials said. Oakland had issued repeated warnings to the campers over the last week, citing an increase in public urination and defecation, rats and fire hazards from cooking. The greatest concern, however, stemmed from violence." ...

     ... San Francisco Chronicle Update: "Police fired tear gas Tuesday night into a crowd of several hundred protesters backing the Occupy movement who were seeking to retake an encampment outside Oakland City Hall that officers had cleared away more than 12 hours earlier."

New York Times: "Tunisia’s moderate Islamist political party emerged Monday as the acknowledged leader in elections for a constitutional assembly and began talks to form a unity government with a coalition of liberals in a rare alliance that party leaders hailed as an inclusive model for countries emerging from the tumult of the Arab Spring."

Washington Post: "Former Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi was buried in a secret location on Tuesday, officials of the interim government said, ending a four-day spectacle in which his bloody body was displayed to a public celebrating his gory death as a fitting end to decades of repression."

Reuters: "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faced growing pressure on Tuesday over European Union demands for swift economic reforms with a member of his cabinet warning that the government could fall over the issue. EU leaders ... have demanded that Berlusconi present firm plans for growth and reducing Italy's massive debt in time for a summit meeting in Brussels on Wednesday. However an emergency cabinet meeting late on Monday ended without agreement after Berlusconi's coalition allies in the Northern League party refused to budge on their opposition to raising the pension age to 67 years."

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