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[.]”

Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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
Oct042011

The Commentariat -- October 5

On today's Off Times Square, I ask readers how they deal with letters from friends & relatives spouting crazy Conspiracy Theories.

I will say that my big priority is making sure that as many people are participating in our democracy as possible. Some of these moves in some of the other states that we’ve seen try to make it tougher to vote, restricting ballot access, making it hard on seniors, making it hard on young people. I think that’s a big mistake, and I have made sure that our Justice Department is taking a look at what’s being done across the country to ensure that people aren’t being denied access to the franchise. -- Barack Obama, in an interview last week ...

... Ari Berman of The Nation: "The fact that Obama invoked the Justice Department is very important, since the department has the authority under the Voting Rights Act to approve, deny or modify these laws.... Career lawyers in the civil rights division of the Justice Department, who were frequently sidelined and overruled during the Bush Administration, are reasserting their authority and independence under Obama. They may be the only ones who can halt the GOP’s war on voting."

President Obama talks to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News:

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

David Nakamura & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "There is a noticeably more aggressive, confrontational President Obama roaming the country these days, selling his jobs plan and attacking Republicans for standing in the way of progress by standing up only for the rich.... The emergence of this more pugnacious Obama has heartened Democrats.... 'We don’t see it as confrontation; we see it as leadership,' said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union."

You don’t have some inherent right just to, you know, get a certain amount of profit, if your customers are being mistreated. This is exactly the sort of stuff that folks are frustrated by. -- Barack Obama on Bank of America's decision to charge customers $5 a month to use their debit cards ...

... Ylan Mui of the Washington Post: President "Obama is the latest of a chorus of critics to take aim at the new fee, which will be assessed monthly on customers who use their debit card to make purchases starting next year. Bank of America has said that new government regulations — most notably a cap on the amount banks can charge retailers each time a debit card is swiped — have eaten into their profit margins." ...

... Felix Salmon of Reuters: "the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not exist to prevent banks from charging stupid fees as part of a self-defeating protest against the Durbin amendment... Debit-card payments ... are pretty much the cheapest way that any customer can transact, from the bank’s perspective. It costs vastly more for a bank to process a paper check.... As for the proper role of the CFPB, one thing I’m desperately looking forward to is a simple public database of all the banks..., with a very easy way of comparing the features and fees of each. It would be particularly great if the CFPB could bestow some kind of gold star on the best and cheapest products."

I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what's happening. They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess. And they're dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington. And at some level, I can't blame them. -- Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, on Occupy Wall Street ...

... Neil Irwin & Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Ben S. Bernanke went to Congress on Tuesday with a message: Cut out the brinkmanship over tax and spending policy and slash budget deficits more than planned — but don’t do it so fast that it undermines economic growth. In making this unusually explicit push, the Federal Reserve chairman told lawmakers that the increasingly likely scenario — that they do nothing to put the nation’s finances on a sound footing and let the nation lurch from crisis to crisis — is not an acceptable option."

Liz Alderman & Jack Ewing of the New York Times: "The European debt problems that have roiled global financial markets for the last 18 months are showing signs of turning into a far deeper challenge: Europe’s second recession in three years. Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain are already in downturns or fighting to avoid them, as high unemployment and austerity belt-tightening take their toll. But in the last few weeks, even prosperous Germany and France, the Continent’s powerhouses, have started to be dragged down, hurt by the ebbing of business orders from indebted countries in the rest of Europe."

New York Times Editors: "a Senate bill, with strong bipartisan support, to punish countries that manipulate their currencies is a bad idea. It could do even more damage to the American economy if — as is all too likely — China decides to retaliate."

Scholar Jenna Jordan in a New York Times op-ed: "Evidence shows that killing terrorist leaders — or 'decapitating' terrorist organizations, in military parlance — rarely ends violence on its own and can actually have adverse consequences."

Occupy Wall Street

Jillian Rayfield of TPM: "Occupy Wall Street’s momentum is reaching new heights this week as the movement spreads throughout the country and the core group of protesters in New York City prepare for the unions to join up on Wednesday." ...

... Drew Grant of the New York Observer: a Fox "News" producer interviews Occupy Wall Street activist Jesse LaGreca for a segment of the Greta van Susteran show. Funny, LaGreca ended up on the metaphorical "fair & balanced" cutting room floor [despite the fact that the producer made a big point of telling LaGreca how fortune he was that Fox "News" was giving him air time]. But, courtesy of Occupy Wall Street & the Observer, La Greca does get his message out -- just not to Foxbots, most of whom really need to hear it. Thanks to reader Haley S. for the link:

... Clear enough. That's why Jared Bernstein is scratching his head over why news "analysts" are scratching their heads over the Occupy Wall Street protests. After all, what's not to understand? --

Given the facts of the income distribution, the trends in real middle-class incomes and poverty, the failure of policy to do much to change these trends, the government bailouts of the only class that’s benefitted from the recovery so far, the absence of clear punishment/accountability for the financial and political institutions that helped inflate the debt bubble that continues to squeeze economies across the globe, and the dysfunctionality of the current political system (they’re arguing more about whether they can keep the lights on than whether they can help solve the economic problems), the more interesting question is what took so long for such protests to show up?

... OR maybe this heartbreaking site -- "We Are the 99 Percent" -- would help clueless news "analysts." Nothing will help Mitt Romney (see his "analysis" of Occupy Wall Street in today's Right Wing World. And he's the best the GOP's got.) ...

... Ezra Klein: "The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work....  Ninety-nine percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy -- work hard, play by the rules, get ahead -- has been broken, and they want to see it restored." ...

... Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post: "Better late than never, the movement to take America back from Wall Street has arrived. On Wednesday, the ranks of the Occupy Wall Street encampment will swell as Move­On.org members, union activists and ordinary disgruntled citizens join the demonstration against our financial sector’s misrule of the American economy.... Once the servant of industry, banking became our dominant industry. It has ceased to serve us. We serve it."


"The Apocalypse Caucus." David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "Twenty [House] lawmakers ... calculate that the best way to fix government is to act as if you wouldn’t mind if it burned down.... The group now includes 12 Republicans and eight Democrats. Their votes say something about wh at it means to be a legislator in a Congress that governs by cliffhanger — both sides reaching agreement only when a catastrophe looms. This unofficial caucus believes that power goes to those who seem least afraid of catastrophe."

Chris Frates of the National Journal: "A top staffer to Eric Cantor is leaving the House majority leader's office to launch a Super PAC aimed at raising Cantor's national profile....  The PAC will be run by Cantor's deputy chief of staff John Murray and would give Cantor a vehicle he could use to run for vice president, should the opportunity arise...." CW: because what the U.S. needs is a vice president who "is trying to stop the U.S. government in its tracks." (See Jason Zengerle's profile of Cantor, linked in yesterday's Commentariat.)

CW: Debunked. A few days ago the New York Times published an op-ed by Martin Lindstrom, who identifies himself as a "branding consultant," & who postulated that people love the iPhones because the devices stimulated "the insular cortex of the brain," an area he associated with "love and compassion." I didn't link to the piece, but it was popular on the Times Website. In today's paper, 45 neuroscientists signed onto a rebuttal letter to the editor, which says, in part, 

The kind of reasoning that Mr. Lindstrom uses is well known to be flawed, because there is rarely a one-to-one mapping between any brain region and a single mental state; insular cortex activity could reflect one or more of several psychological processes. We find it surprising that The Times would publish claims like this that lack scientific validity. ...

      ... Just thought you might want to know.

Right Wing World

I think it’s dangerous — this class warfare. -- Mitt Romney, on Occupy Wall Street

The 'Romney Rule' seems to be that millionaires like Mitt should pay a lower tax rate than maids. -- Paul Begala, Democratic pundit

CBS News: "Herman Cain has moved into a tie with Mitt Romney atop the field of Republican presidential candidates, according to a new CBS News poll, while Rick Perry has fallen 11 percentage points in just two weeks." CW: As bizarre as the poll results are, they really reflect the GOP base's longing for ABR, i.e., Anyone but Romney.

Are You Ready for Some Crow Pie?
Hank Williams, Jr., Wants His Royalties Back

Hank Williams, Jr., Monday: "In an interview ... on Fox News' 'Fox & Friends,' Williams, unprompted, said of [President] Obama's outing on the links with House Speaker John Boehner: 'It'd be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.' Asked to clarify, Williams said, They're the enemy,' adding that by 'they' he meant Obama and Vice President Joe Biden." AND "Anchor Gretchen Carlson later said to him, 'You used the name of one of the most hated people in all of the world to describe, I think, the president.' Williams replied, 'Well, that is true. But I'm telling you like it is.'" 

ESPN Monday: "While Hank Williams, Jr. is not an ESPN employee, we recognize that he is closely linked to our company through the open to Monday Night Football. We are extremely disappointed with his comments, and as a result we have decided to pull the open from tonight’s telecast."

Hank Williams Tuesday: "I have always been very passionate about politics and sports and this time it got the best or worst of me. The thought of the leaders of both parties jukin' [sic] and high fiven' [sic] on a golf course, while so many families are struggling to get by, simply made me boil over and make a dumb statement, and I am very sorry if it offended anyone. I would like to thank all my supporters. This was not written by some publicist."

ESPN Tuesday: "ESPN said it had made no decision on Williams' future beyond the Monday night telecast."

 

Local News

To the Members of the California State Senate:

I am signing SB 769 which allows for a dead mountain lion to be stuffed and displayed. This presumably important bill earned overwhelming support by both Republicans and Democrats.

If only that same energetic bipartisan spirit could be applied to creating clean energy jobs and ending tax laws that send jobs out of state.

Sincerely,
Edmund G. Brown Jr. [Governor, State of California]

CW: not as on point as this classic letter from Brown's predecessor, but a good letter all the same:

M. J. Lee of Politico: "Trying to calm fearful parents after many Hispanic students stopped showing up in school in response to Alabama’s new immigration law, the state’s top education official said kids will be enrolled even if they don’t have birth certificates. The state’s interim superintendent, Larry Craven, ... said that while a contentious provision of the law upheld by U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn last week requires all students enrolling on or after Sept. 29 to present their birth certificate, they will be accepted at school even without documents."

News Ledes

     ... CNN has more here.

Even ABC News has a liveblog: "We've heard reports on crowd size ranging from 2,000 (an officer guessed) and 15,000 (organizers guessed). I'd say it's much closer to the latter. And for every protester, there must be two metal barriers. This is a very tightly-held rage." New York Daily News story here.

New York Times: "... the Supreme Court on Wednesday [heard arguments] over whether Congress acted constitutionally in 1994 by restoring copyright protection to foreign works that had once been in the public domain. The affected works included films by Alfred Hitchcock and Federico Fellini, books by C. S. Lewis and Virginia Woolf, symphonies by Prokofiev and Stravinsky and paintings by Picasso."

New York Times: "Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court crossed Constitution Avenue on Wednesday to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the role of judges under the Constitution, offering unscripted responses on issues like conflicts of interest and cameras in the courtroom." See video under Thursday's Commentariat.

ABC News: "Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56." ...

     ... Update: The New York Times obituary is here. Wall Street Journal obituary here; with video.

New York Times: "The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a storied civil rights leader who survived beatings and bombings in Alabama a half-century ago as he fought against racial injustice alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Wednesday in Birmingham, Ala. He was 89."

New York Times: "Senate Democratic leaders on Wednesday proposed a 5 percent surtax on people with incomes of more than $1 million a year to pay for the package of job-creation measures sought by President Obama and to quell a brewing revolt among Democrats against the White House plan."

New York Times: "Sarah Palin is not running for president. Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, ended her inscrutable cat-and-mouse game with the political establishment on Wednesday afternoon by saying that she would not join the field of Republican candidates seeking her party’s nomination, but would still work to oust President Obama." ...

... Gawker has Palin's full statement.

AP: "President Barack Obama has signed legislation to keep the federal government running for another six weeks. Congress must now finish work on agency budgets for the new fiscal year.... Obama had been expected to sign the bill into law later Wednesday, but signed it when he returned to Washington after appearances Tuesday in Texas."

New York Times: "Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, narrowly won a special election for governor [of West Virginia] on Tuesday, successfully defending himself against Republican attacks that tried to link him with
President Obama and his health care overhaul." Charleston Gazette story here.

Bloomberg News: "The Obama administration outlined a plan to upgrade the U.S. electric grid, providing as much as $250 million in loans for rural towns and urging steps that would bar utilities from using market power to raise prices. The strategy encourages state and federal regulators to favor “smart-grid” technologies such as advanced meters that can increase energy efficiency. It advises protections for consumers against anti-competitive actions as companies develop services to take advantage of new technologies."

Forbes magazine named Scott Brown Wall Street’s favorite senator. I was thinking that’s probably not an award I’m going to get.... The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. -- Elizabeth Warren, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Massachusetts

Boston Globe: "Elizabeth Warren ... clearly was the most adept in the first debate among the six candidates vying for the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s 2012 US Senate nomination.... But that’s not to say it’s time for a general election matchup against Republican Scott Brown, either. Four of the five other candidates on stage passionately articulated views across the liberal end of the political spectrum, highlighting their different backgrounds and showing reason to hear them another day." ...

... If you want to watch the debate, the Boston Herald has a report & full video here.

Washington Post: "... officials at the Army Corps of Engineers and technology company representatives ... were indicted on corruption-related charges that were made public Tuesday." They "got together and agreed to file inflated invoices for federal contracting services, prosecutors said. Then they bought millions of dollars worth of BMWs, Rolex and Cartier watches, flat-screen televisions, first-class airline tickets and investment properties across the globe." All have pleaded not guilty.

New York Times: "The New York attorney general and the United States attorney in Manhattan filed separate lawsuits on Tuesday against the Bank of New York Mellon, accusing it of cheating state and other pension funds nationwide out of foreign exchange fees over the last decade."

New York Times: "An Israeli scientist ... Daniel Shechtman, 70, a professor of materials science at Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology -- ... won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a material in which atoms were packed together in a well-defined pattern that never repeats."

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