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
powered by Surfing Waves
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."

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Saturday
Oct082011

The Commentariat -- October 9

We have an Open Thread going on Off times Square.

Occupy Wall Street

Chris Bowers of Daily Kos has an interactive map & list, which appear to be updated regularly, of Occupy Wall Street events & Facebook pages for cities throughout the country. You can also get to it via the URL OccupyWallStreetEvents.com ...

... Jennifer Preston of the New York Times: "What began as a small group of protesters expressing their grievances about economic inequities last month from a park in New York City has evolved into an online conversation that is spreading across the country on social media platforms. [CW Note: the following links take you to the site pages, not to the NYT story.] Inspired by the populist message of the group known as Occupy Wall Street, more than 200 Facebook pages and Twitter accounts have sprung up in dozens of cities during the past week, seeking volunteers for local protests and fostering discussion about the group’s concerns. Some 900 events have been set up on Meetup.com, and blog posts and photographs from all over the country are popping up on the WeArethe99Percent blog on Tumblr from people who see themselves as victims of not just a sagging economy but also economic injustice."

... ** In a major repudiation of their own news departments, not to mention the "chattering classes," the Editors of the New York Times back the Occupy Wall Street protesters: "There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing." ...

This is the Obama generation declaring their independence from his administration. -- Prof. Jeremy Varon, on Occupy Wall Street ...

... Prof. Todd Gitlin in a New York Times op-ed: "By allying itself with the protest, the left at large is telling the president that a campaign slogan that essentially says 'We’re better than Eric Cantor' won’t cut it in 2012. 'We are the 99 percent' would be more like it. If President Obama takes this direction, the movement’s energy may be able to power a motor of significant reform." ...

... And Now for a Few Words from the Clueless on Occupy Wall Street:

No, I feel a lot of sympathy for what you might describe as the general sense among Americans that we’ve lost a sense of possibility, that after a lost decade of income growth and fiscal irresponsibility, a devastating financial crisis and a huge loss of confidence in public institutions, people do wonder whether we have the ability to do things that can help the average person’s sense of opportunity. -- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, more or less, in what Steven Pearlstein calls a "generously edited and cleaned-up version" of Geithner's actual remark

I don’t know if it’s helpful. -- White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, who made a bundle on Wall Street ...

... Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post: "I’m sure Daley and Geithner are keenly aware that there’s a nasty political war going on out there and that they’re losing. What I suspect they don’t fully understand is that one reason they’re losing it is that people aren’t sure which side they’re on. And the way to let people know which side you’re on is to send clear signals through what you say and what you do." CW: oh, I think we know. ...

... More from the Clueless and the Derisive:

... Christiane Amanpour of ABC News interviews Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: at about 3:45 in, Amanpour asks Pelosi about Majority Leader Eric Cantor's remark about "the mob." Pelosi's answers are terrific. She goes on to discuss Scott Brown's "Thank God!" response to Elizabeth Warren:

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player 

... Prof. David Meyer, in a Washington Post op-ed, credits Occupy Wall Street with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to pay for the jobs bill with a millionaires' surtax. ...

... Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle profiles one of the Occupy San Francisco protesters & delves into the impetus behind the protests.


Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.... The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war.... The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat."

Drone Wars. Off Times Square commenter Haley S. brought up this issue last weekend. Scott Shane of the New York Times is catching up: "Eventually, the United States will face a military adversary or terrorist group armed with drones, military analysts say. But what the short-run hazard experts foresee is not an attack on the United States, which faces no enemies with significant combat drone capabilities, but the political and legal challenges posed when another country follows the American example.... The qualities that have made lethal drones so attractive to the Obama administration for counterterrorism appeal to many countries and, conceivably, to terrorist groups: a capacity for leisurely surveillance and precise strikes, modest cost, and most important, no danger to the operator, who may sit in safety thousands of miles from the target."

Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "More than six months after the start of the Syrian uprising, Iraq is offering key moral and financial support to the country’s embattled president, undermining a central U.S. policy objective and raising fresh concerns that Iraq is drifting further into the orbit of an American arch rival — Iran. Iraq’s stance has dealt an embarrassing setback to the Obama administration...."

** David Leonhardt of the New York Times outlines some of the reasons this recession is worse than others, including the Great Depression, and likely to linger longer: the economy & jobs markets were weak going into the recession; no major new technologies or industries have developed; the workforce is not becoming better-educated; the country isn't welcoming foreign scientists & entrepreneurs; and "three giant industries — finance, health care and housing — now include large amounts of unproductive capacity.... It is hard to see how the jobs of the future will spring from unnecessary back surgery and garden-variety arbitrage." ...

... ** Ezra Klein on government economic policies designed to reverse the recession. Could this time have been different? Yes, if the policymakers had understood the depth, breadth and length of the recession, they could have done some things better. But overall, given the political and cultural will, they probably could not have done much more than they did. We would still be in a recession but with a slightly better jobs outlook. CW: This is a comprehensive, informative piece. Klein doesn't say so directly, but surely one of Obama's most boneheaded moves was to shrink the federal workforce in the name of deficit reduction. No one forced him to do this (& Republicans surely didn't give him any kudos for this "belt-tightening"); he devised this anti-stimulus, anti-jobs program all by himself.

Graham Bowley of the New York Times: "Regulators in the United States and overseas are cracking down on computerized high-speed trading that crowds today’s stock exchanges, worried that as it spreads around the globe it is making market swings worse. The cost of these high-frequency traders, critics say, is the confidence of ordinary investors in the markets, and ultimately their belief in the fairness of the financial system."

Patricia Zengerle & Eric Johnson of Reuters: "With their favored candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination lagging or out of the race, many U.S. Tea Party activists are shifting focus to the struggle for control of the U.S. Senate. The fizz has gone out of the presidential contest for some supporters of the fiscally conservative movement now that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is not running and Texas Governor Rick Perry and congresswoman Michele Bachmann are slipping in polls."

Right Wing World

Only on Fox "News"! We need more hungry Americans and "more ruthless capitalism!" Thanks to News Hounds -- "We watch Fox so you don't have to":

Steve Benen: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week that the White House’s 'explicit strategy' is to 'make people believe that Congress can’t get anything done.' Seriously, that’s what he said. As McConnell sees it, President Obama doesn’t want Congress to function. Yes, after years of tragic dysfunction and Republican-imposed obstructionism unseen in American history, the conservative GOP leader from Kentucky believes this is all the president’s fault."

How Scoundrels Have Taken over America. Jayne Mayer has a long piece in the New Yorker on Art Pope, a sleazy right-wing millionaire who, for relatively little cash outlay, has purchased the State of North Carolina -- a state which was once, by Southern standards, fairly progressive. CW: Mayer doesn't emphasize it or really even connect the dots, but what makes my blood boil is that Pope got rich selling cheap Chinese merchandise in a string of shabby discount stores, where he pays his workers the minimum wage. He then turns around & uses the money he made on the poor (while not creating any good jobs & essentially sending many offshore) to back candidates (in outrageous ways) who are commited to making those same poor poeple poorer. And the punidts can't figure out what Occupy Wall Street is all about? P.S. Sorry not to have linked to this sooner; I just couldn't get around to reading it.

Karen Garcia has a hilarious post on a proposed House Tea Party bill that would eliminate the life insurance benefit heirs of Members of Congress currently receive. Too bad, Honey. If "something happens to me," you & the kids should be able to get great jobs even if we do manage to meet our goal of eliminating the minimum wage. Remember, it's all about me, and I won't need the money once I'm in heaven with Jesus.

News Ledes

AP: "Flames lit up downtown Cairo, where massive clashes raged Sunday, drawing Christians angry over a recent church attack, Muslims and Egyptian security forces. At least 24 people were killed and more than 200 injured in the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February." Al Jazeera story here, with video.

Reuters: "Donald Tusk will be the first Polish prime minister since the fall of communism in 1989 to rule for two successive terms after his center-right Civic Platform trounced its rivals in a parliamentary election. An exit poll showed Tusk's pro-business party had won nearly 40 percent of votes in Sunday's election, short of an absolute majority but far ahead of Jaroslaw Kaczynski's nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party on just over 30 percent."

Al Jazeera: "Germany and France stand ready to recapitalise banks according to common criteria, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said. 'We are not going into details today, we will present a complete package' for stabilising the eurozone at the end of the month, Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin on Sunday following a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The meeting came ... hours after France, Belgium and Luxembourg agreed to a rescue plan for Dexia, that is expected to lead to the dismantling of the troubled bank." New York Times story here.

AP: "The Rev. Joseph Lowery was one of the first believers that a black senator from Illinois could become president, and Barack Obama was among those adding his thanks to the civil rights icon Sunday night during a tribute to the 90-year-old's legacy."

Los Angeles Times: California "Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday granted illegal immigrants access to state financial aid at public universities and community colleges, putting California once again in the center of the nation's immigration debate. But he vetoed a measure that would have allowed state universities to consider applicants' race, gender and income to ensure diversity in their student populations. Deciding the fate of 50 education-related bills, the governor also rejected an effort to make it more difficult to establish charter schools. But he accepted a move to improve college life for gays, lesbians and bisexual and transgender people and a measure to restrict the privatization of libraries."

New York Times: "Facing an unprecedented order from the Supreme Court to decrease its inmate population by 11,000 over the next three months and by 34,000 over the next two years, California prisons last week began to shift inmates to county jails and probation officers, starting what many believe will be a fundamental and far-reaching change in the nation’s largest corrections system."

Reuters: "Anti-Wall Street demonstrators said on Saturday they are growing out of their lower Manhattan encampment and are exploring options to expand to other public spaces in New York City." ...

... Seattle Times: "Hundreds of peaceful protesters rallied and marched through downtown Seattle as part of an ongoing Occupy Seattle demonstration against what they called corporate domination of America, with crowds approaching 1,000 supporters at midday.... Just before 7 p.m., the crowd cleared except for two people, who were arrested. One, a young woman, held a sign saying "No War but Class War," and she was cheered as she was led handcuffed into a police van. The other, a young man, refused to stand up and was carried off by police."

AP: "A man who left his Presbyterian ministry in California more than 20 years ago after telling his congregation that he is gay was welcomed back into the church leadership as its first openly gay ordained minister. In a quavering voice ripe with emotion, 56-year-old Scott Anderson on Saturday told the hundreds of friends and backers who packed Covenant Presbyterian Church in Madison, Wisconsin for his ordination ceremony that he never thought the day would come."

Reuters: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel will thrash out differences with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday over how to use the euro zone's financial firepower to counter a sovereign debt crisis threatening the global economy."

Reuters: "Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh suggested Saturday that within days he would step down, a promise he has made three times already this year, and analysts said it was yet another stalling tactic. A government official said Saleh was merely indicating readiness to reach a deal to end months of unrest."

Comments Off