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
Oct052011

The Commentariat -- October 6

Gail Collins can't stand "to spend the next 13 months watching Mitt Romney run against Barack Obama," so she's looking for alternative Republican candidates. She lingers on Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho because she likes his name, on former New York Gov. George Pataki for the same reason (another president named George!), but she finally settles on Gov. Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota, whose state suffers from a labor shortage because of a hydrofracked oil boomlet. An environmentalist Collins interviewed, though horrified by the oil companies' waste of millions of cubic feet of natural gas daily, says North Dakota is "not as bad as Kazakhstan," which Collins thinks is a catchy phrase. ...

... On today's Off Times Square, you can name your own Republican candidate for president. Oh, there are so many choices.

Occupy Wall Street

Cara Buckley of the New York Times: "The Occupy Wall Street gathering, now midway through its third week in a Lower Manhattan park, was hatched by a Canadian magazine, Adbusters, and is heavily populated by youthful out-of-towners. But it has also become a magnet for scores of New Yorkers who said they had rarely if ever attended a protest before." ...

... CW: This video of NYPD white shirts swinging billy clubs at Occupy Wall Street protesters is so violent I had to sign in to YouTube to view it. The Daily News story, linked just above Wedneday's Ledes, has been updated to report the violence:

... Now comes this gem from a New York Times story by Steven Greenhouse & Buckley:

[There was] ... a disturbance about 8 p.m. Wednesday as the march was breaking up. The police said they arrested eight protesters around the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, after people rushed barriers and began spilling into the street. While a couple of witnesses said that officers used pepper spray to clear the streets, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that one officer 'possibly' used it.

      ... CW: Browne is he same genius who said the NYPD used pepper spray "appropriately" two weeks ago when Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna pepper-sprayed women who were respecting police barricades. The gist of the Times' underlying story is that unions, though wary of "the protesters' hostility to the authorities," have decided to join Occupy Wall Street anyway. Watch the video above & decide for yourself where the "hostility" lies. ...

... AND this from Fox 5 New York: "While covering the Occupy Wall Street protests on Wednesday night, Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by mace from a police officer and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by an officer's baton." This is shocking video:

... The Guardian's liveblog of yesterday's events is pretty good. It includes this note: "Despite the march having a permit, and the roads being closed, police funnelled protesters onto the sidewarks and into tightly-penned areas." CW: Explain that, Mayor von Bloomberg. ...

... Alicia Cohn of The Hill: "Several liberal House lawmakers endorsed the protests Wednesday, and the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said they had been inspired by demonstrators who have been arrested and pepper sprayed during altercations with police." ...

... Oh, AND here's Herman Cain with the Republican response: (a) Occupy Wall Street is an Obama plot; (b) unemployment is the fault of the unemployed. Think Progress has video:

I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself! -- Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain ...

... More from Fox "News" & other corporate media, again via Think Progress:

... AND the Chicago Board of Trade responds to Occupy Chicago:

Photo by an Occupy Chicago protester, via the Chicagoist.     ... The Chicagoist reports the message was taped to the 8th floor of the Board of Trade Building & adds, "If only someone could hurl rocks that high." ...

... Charles Pierce of Esquire writes an excellent, ascerbic post contrasting Occupy Wall Street & the Tea Party AND the media coverage of both:

The national media largely have blown off the protests because none of the people on their speed-dials have had anything to do with it.... We get snotty New Republic reporters on play dates among the hippies, and insufferable Chaunceys from the conservative press exercising the half of the wit they have, and Erin Burnett, who's never met a hedge fund she didn't adore, launching her new CNN show with video of a longhaired guy with funny glasses. And everybody else gets on the bus to drive around New Hampshire, mourning the loss of the transformational figure that is Chris Christie.


** Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council.... Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."

Let the Class Warfare Begin. Steven Dennis of Roll Call: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved quickly to shore up support in his Democratic caucus for President Barack Obama's jobs bill Wednesday, announcing it would come to the Senate floor shortly and be paid for by a surtax on millionaires. Reid's decision ... gives Democrats a poll-tested package that most can run on for the next year — even though the surtax itself is dead on arrival with Republicans. Indeed, Reid appears to be setting the stage for a major floor battle that will raise the specter of 'class warfare' and Obama recently called himself a 'warrior for the middle class.' ... Recent polls ... have shown that two-thirds or more of Americans believe millionaires should pay more into federal coffers." ...

... Vicki Needham, et al., of The Hill: "The Senate Banking Committee will vote [today] on whether [Richard Cordray,] President Obama's selection to head the new agency should win the gig, but the vote will likely be the latest round in what has been a knock-down, drag-out partisan fight over the agency and how it should operate. While it's expected the former Ohio attorney general will advance on a party-line vote, Cordray's nomination could get stuck...."

Carol Leonnig & Joe Stephens of the Washington Post: "Newly released e-mails show the Obama administration’s Energy Department was poised to give Solyndra a second taxpayer loan of $469 million last year, even as the company’s financial situation grew increasingly dire. The department was still considering providing the second loan guarantee to the solar-panel manufacturer in April and May 2010, at a time when Solyndra’s auditors were already warning that the company was in danger of collapsing.... The agency didn’t drop plans for a second loan until October 2010.... That was the month Solyndra executives and investors first warned the government that the company faced the threat of liquidation.... Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Wednesday that OMB staffers were wrong in describing the agency as actively pushing to provide the second loan."

Shaila Dewan of the New York Times: although there are multiple efforts to forgive portions of the debts owned by homeowners whose morgages are underwater, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac refuse to participate. "The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration do not allow principal reduction on their loans either.... Fannie and Freddie’s rejection of principal reduction may simply be postponing losses that will occur anyway." CW: in short, the government isn't helping the problem (Fannie & Freddie are now essentially taxpayer-owned; and it is probably hurting it -- and the homeowners).

Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: "Voters in the early presidential nominating states will soon be bombarded with millions of dollars in advertising from independent political organizations whose donors can remain secret until after the first five primaries and caucuses are held. That is the unintended result of decisions in recent days by state Republican officials to move up several key early contests, putting them ahead of the Jan. 31 financial disclosure deadline for super-sized fundraising committees."

El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar in a New York Times op-ed: "Many Republican politicians — and not a few Democrats, too — use the bogeyman of border violence to justify exorbitant security measures, like the ever-lengthening border fence that costs $2.8 million per mile (for a total of $6.5 billion, including maintenance, over the 20-year lifetime of the fence). [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry’s brainchild, security cameras, have so far cost $4 million to put in place and maintain.... During their first two years in operation, Mr. Perry’s cameras led to the arrest of a whopping 26 people — that’s $154,000 per arrest. And once undocumented immigrants are apprehended, costs continue to mount: in this fiscal year alone, the federal government is budgeting $2 billion just for detention."

New York Times Editors: "By a 6-to-6 vote last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit cleared the way for a legal challenge against a dubious legacy of the George W. Bush administration: the wiretapping of Americans’ international communications without a warrant or adequate judicial supervision in antiterrorism investigations. The tie decision, which allowed an earlier ruling to stand, was a well-deserved setback to the Justice Department’s accountability avoidance strategy.... We hope the Obama administration does not appeal to the Supreme Court, and allows the legal challenge to go forward. Given its dismal record on this matter, we are not holding our breath."

Supreme Court Justices Breyer & Scalia testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Former Justice John Paul Stevens on cameras in the Supreme Court:

     ... CW: the excuses for not airing Supreme Court hearings are so lame as to defy credulity. They would not hold up in -- court.

Chris Hayes of The Nation & Ta-Nehisi Coats of The Atlantic: No, racism is not just an American "historical" anomaly:

Sen. Scott Brown [R-Mass.] Gives a Lesson on How to Belittle Half of the Electorate:

The State Column: "In response to a question about how the candidates paid for tuition bills, [Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth] Warren said 'I kept my clothes on.' Warren’s response was a reference to Brown’s nude photo shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine while in law school." ...

Thank God! -- Scott Brown, in response to Warren's quip

Right Wing World *

I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings. -- Roger Ailes of Fox "News," an EEOC-compliant employer

But don't worry, Megyn Kelly! He hired you because he respects your journalistic talents. -- Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine

The idea of a mentally ill vice president who suffers in complete isolation was obviously sparked by the behaviors I witnessed by Sarah Palin. -- Nicolle Wallace, former McCain-Palin aide, on her new novel which "explores what would happen if a woman were plucked from relative obscurity and elected Vice President of the United States — only to find herself completely unprepared for the job" ...

AND. There certainly were discussions — not for long because of the arc the campaign took — but certainly there were discussions about whether, if they were to win, it would be appropriate for [Palin] to be sworn in. -- Nicolle Wallace ...

... This certainly is a shocking admission, in no small part because the Constitution does not provide any process short of impeachment to remove a vice president. -- Tanya Somanader of Think Progress

 

* Where news & commentary is only delivered by hot babes & crusty male curmudgeons.

News Ledes

The Hill: "In a shocking development Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered a rarely used procedural option informally called the 'nuclear option' to change the Senate rules. Reid and 50 members of his caucus voted to change Senate rules unilaterally to prevent Republicans from forcing votes on uncomfortable amendments after the chamber has voted to move to final passage of a bill.... The surprise move stunned Republicans." For more on Reid's strategic move, see Brian Beutler of TPM.

Washington Post: Jonathan Silver, "the head of the Energy Department’s controversial loan guarantee program has decided to step down.... While DOE made the initial loan to Solyndra before Silver took the program’s helm — a point he made repeatedly during his congressional testimony last month — he remained the administration’s point person for the embattled initiative."

President Obama held a press conference this morning. New York Times report here. Washington Post report here.

AP: "Unions lent their muscle to the long-running protest against Wall Street and economic inequality Wednesday.... Thousands of protesters, including many in union T-shirts, filled lower Manhattan's Foley Square on Wednesday and then marched to Zuccotti Park, where the protesters have been camping since Sept. 17. Labor leaders say they will continue to support the protests, both with manpower and donations of goods and services." Los Angeles Times story here. See today's Commentariat & yesterday's Ledes for other news, commentary & video on yesterday's events. ...

... Washington Post: "The Occupy Wall Street protest movement is trying to build momentum in Washington, with Occupy D.C. demonstrators planning to gather Thursday at Freedom Plaza." With Video. The Post's Annie Gowen will be tweeting developments from this page. The Occupy DC Website is here. ...

     ... Update: the Washington Post report on the peaceful "occupation" is here.

NBC News: "Nevada will hold its presidential nominating contest Jan. 14.... The primary calendar continues to take shape, moving into early January. Florida started the chain reaction, when it defied Republican National Committee rules and set its primary for Jan. 31. Following that, South Carolina moved its primary to Jan. 21."

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. -- Barack Obama ...

... The New York Times obituary for Steve Jobs, which we also linked in yesterday's Ledes, has links to related stories & multimedia-format information about Jobs.

New York Times: "Derrick Bell, a legal scholar who worked to expose the persistence of racism in America through his books and articles and his provocative career moves — he gave up a Harvard Law School professorship to protest the school’s hiring practices — died on Wednesday in New York. He was 80."

AP: "The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded Thursday to Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II."

AP: "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords [D-Ariz.] is scheduled to attend her husband's retirement ceremony in Washington. The Arizona congresswoman ... is set to join her husband, Navy Capt. Mark Kelly, at an event Thursday that will be presided over by Vice President Joe Biden."

AP: First Lady "Michelle Obama ... paid a visit to Secret Service headquarters on Wednesday to thank workers at the agency that, among its many duties, protects the first family."

AP: Entergy, "the operator of an aging nuclear power plant near New York City, has hired former Mayor Rudy Giuliani to vouch for its safety in a new ad campaign.... The operator is seeking to renew its licenses for its two reactors. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for the plant to be shut down due to safety concerns."

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