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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Thursday
Oct062011

The Commentariat -- October 7

Paul Krugman: "It may have taken a while to gain respect, but Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point." ...

Dana Milbank, writing on the Occupy DC & Take Make the American Dream rallies in Washington, concludes, "... liberals should by now know that a nuanced president cannot be a movement’s mouthpiece." ...

... I've posted a page on Krugman's column for today's Off Times Square. See also videos & links to stories below on Occupy Wall Street & related protests.

Is the Hostage Crisis Over? David Corn of Mother Jones: in his press conference (yesterday), President Obama once again signaled he was through "negotiating" with Hill Republicans who won't take "yes" for an answer. Still, inquiring reporters wanted to know, "Mr. President, why aren't you bending over backward to negotiate with a political opposition that threatened economic default in order to get its way?" (Corn's translation.) ...

... Yesterday, the Republican Majority Leader in Congress, Eric Cantor, said that right now he won’t even let this jobs bill have a vote in the House of Representatives. This is what he said. Won’t even let it be debated. Won’t even give it a chance to be debated on the floor of the House of Representatives. Think about that. I mean, what’s the problem? Do they not have the time? They just had a week off. Is it inconvenient? -- Barack Obama, Tuesday, October 4 ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "A new ABC-Washington Post poll suggests that, so far, Obama's campaign is working. The public still think that the president, like Congress, is doing a lousy job overall. But public support for the elements of his jobs bill is high. And, more important, Obama has opened up a substantial gap with the Republicans over which party voters trust more to handle 'job creation.'" The efforts of the Senate leadership to get ConservaDems on board may not be enough to get a filibuster-proof majority, but if Senate Democrats get more than 50 votes for the American Jobs Acts -- which they should be able to do -- "then the obstacle to enactment won’t be Democrats."

Oh, Look. Scott Brown wants a jobs bill. He urges Senate Leaders Reid & McConnell to "set aside politically driven legislation and focus on a jobs bill that can pass both chambers of Congress and be signed into law." Thank you, Elizabeth Warren. Via Greg Sargent. ...

... M. J. Lee of Politico: "Two words uttered in seeming jest by Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) about Elizabeth Warren on Thursday have infuriated women’s rights groups, with some even calling for the senator to drop his reelection bid. In an interview with WZLX radio, Brown had laughed and said, “Thank God,” in response to Warren’s recent comment in which she said she didn’t have to take her clothes off to pay for law school — a reference to Brown having posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine in his 20s." ...

... Here's more from Noah Bierman of the Boston Globe. CW: see also yesterday's Commentariat. Glad to see I'm hardly standing alone on this. ...

... AND, not that it matters, but here's Warren in a photo taken when she was probably in her 40s or 50s. If you don't think she looked great at 20, Scott Brown, with or without clothes, you're an even bigger idiot than your remark would suggest:

Elizabeth Warren. Harvard U. photo.

Diane McWhorter has a fine tribute in the New York Times to the Rev. Fred Shuttleworth, a rough-edged civil rights leader who prodded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to get with the program.

Occupy ...

     ... Related Al Jazeera story here.

... Prof. Anne-Marie Slaughter, in a New York Times op-ed: "... the twin drivers of America’s nascent protest movement against the financial sector are injustice and invisibility, the very grievances that drove the Arab Spring.... People abroad with long experience of disenfranchisement and trampling of their dignity may in fact understand the fissures in our society better than we do ourselves." ...

... If one of your know-it-all friends tells you Occupy Wall Street is "just like" the Tea Party ...

Occupy Wall Street sign.

     (... And another kudo to the signmaker for learning from Rick Perry how to cover over objectionable material so as not to offend. ...)

     ... You might suggest there is some difference:

Tea Party sign.

... FINALLY, Don't Worry. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly Is Ready for the Joker. John Hudson of The Atlantic: "... Kelly has had to walk back even further his eye-opening claim on 60 Minutes last month that the NYPD has the authority and technology to shoot down an aircraft in the event of an emergency." In explaining his latest position to the New York City Council Thursday, Kelly said,

What we didn't want to be is totally helpless, at 2 o'clock in the morning, [with] a small plane disseminating anthrax over Manhattan and waiting for somebody to come from an Air Force base in Massachusetts.

      ... which, as Hudson notes, is the plot of Batman 4. From the Comics.org synopsis: "... the Joker mounts a crop duster plane to spread poisonous gas over Gotham Square" on New Years Eve. ...

... ** On a Related Note: "Charging Debit Card Fees Is Robbery." Lloyd Constantine in a New York Times op-ed: "The [decades-long] practice of deceiving stores and forcing them to accept overpriced debit transactions was challenged in a 1996 antitrust lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard, in which I was the lead attorney for the plaintiffs." Under the Dodd-Franks Act, the Fed, "after initially deciding that debit interchange fees should be lowered from 44 cents to 7 to 12 cents..., in yet another huge handout to big banks, revised the fee range to 21 to 24 cents. That is the change ... which Bank of America cites as it attempts to begin charging a large new fee to its debit cardholders.... Retail customers of Bank of America and of any other banks that follows its lead should swiftly move their business." Read the whole essay; it isn't long, and it's a fascinating look at one tiny piece of robber-baron sleight-of-hand.


Ben Smith & Maggie Haberman of Politico have a story about how Chelsea Clinton is working toward a Ph.D. in public policy, raising speculation that the nation's most guarded First Daughter will step into the political spotlight on her own. CW: sorry, but little Miss Chelsea's first career decision was to become a hedge fund manager, which was one more reason I didn't vote for her mom in 2008. I won't be voting for Chelsea O-Is-for-Opportunist Clinton for anything, ever.

Right Wing World *

I’m hoping that the ‘ living’ Constitution will die. -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Dim Shafts of Light Threaten to Penetrate Right Wing World. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "On Tuesday, Representative Frank R. Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, took to the House floor for a rare excoriation of the anti-tax activist Grover G. Norquist and his strictly worded pledge, which has been signed by almost the entire Republican caucus as well as a few Democrats.... Anti-tax pledges are beginning to worry lawmakers, fund-raisers and others because of fears that they hamstring efforts to rewrite the nation’s tax code.... To be sure, the majority of Republican lawmakers are not running away from Mr. Norquist. All the Republican presidential candidates other than Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, have gotten on board."

* Where 1789 was a very good year. And it still is.

News Ledes

The protests that are trying to destroy the jobs of working people in this city aren't productive.... What they're trying to do is take away the jobs of people working in the city, take away the tax base that we have.... We're not going to have money to pay our municipal employees or anything else. -- NYC Mayor Michael von Bloomberg ...

... Village Voice: "Mayor Bloomberg fired a warning shot Friday at the city unions who have backed the Occupied Wall Street protests...."

AP: "The federal government asked an appeals court on Friday to halt an Alabama immigration law considered by many as the toughest in the United States, saying it invites discrimination against foreign-born citizens and legal immigrants. The federal government filed the challenge to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. It claimed Alabama's new law 'is highly likely to expose persons lawfully in the United States, including school children, to new difficulties in routine dealings.'"

The AP reports that the U.S. added 103,000 jobs in September, & the unemployment rate remains at 9.1 percent. No link. Update: the Bloomberg News story is here. ...

... Yahoo! News: "The average unemployed American has now been out of work for a longer period than at any time since records began being kept more than 60 years ago -- more evidence, as if any were needed, that the jobs crisis is in reality a crisis of long-term unemployment."

Leymah Gbowee, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, & Tawakul Karman. Photos by the New York Times, AFP & Reuters, respectively.New York Times: "The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded on Friday to three campaigning women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. The winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner."

NEW. TPM: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) threw her weight behind the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations Thursday, showering praise on a movement that has so far spread to dozens of cities, including Washington, D.C."

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