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[.]”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
The Ledes

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The New York Times:' live updates of Hurricane Helene developments today are here. “Hurricane Helene was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday en route to Florida, where residents were bracing for extreme rain, destructive winds and deadly storm surge ahead of the storm’s expected landfall. The storm could intensify to a Category 4, if not higher, before making landfall late Thursday, and forecasters warned Helene’s anticipated large size could make its impacts felt across an extensive area. Areas as distant as Atlanta and the Appalachians are at risk for heavy rains.... Many forecast models show the storm making landfall late Thursday near Florida’s Big Bend Coast, a sparsely populated stretch....” ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post has forecasts for some cites in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina & Tennessee that are in or near the probable path of Helene. ~~~

     ~~~ This morning, an MSNBC weatherperson said Tallahassee (which is inland) would experience wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. and that the National Weather Service said expected 20-foot storm surges near the coast would be “unsurvivable.”

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
Friday
Sep162011

The Commentariat -- September 17

President Obama's weekly address:

    ... The transcript is here; AP story here.

Oh, it's Constitution Day, and not surprisingly the Tea Party is mucking it up. Kate Zernike of the New York Times: "Tea Party groups, armed with lesson plans and coloring books, are pushing schools to use the day to teach a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, where the federal government is a creeping and unwelcome presence in the lives of freedom-loving Americans. Progressive groups, accusing the Tea Party of selectively reading the founding document, have responded with a campaign to “take back the Constitution.” They are urging Americans and lawmakers to sign a pledge to honor the whole Constitution, even the parts many Tea Party supporters would prefer to ignore — say, the amendments allowing an income tax, and granting birthright citizenship. And they are trying to get people to see the Constitution not as a limit on federal power but as the spirit behind progressive laws."

"The Apotheosis of Washington," ceiling of the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.... Jonathan Alter has a very good piece in the Washington Monthly on "America's Lost Decade"; i.e., the Dubya years. Alter looks both to past eras -- all the way back to "the Washington Era" -- George, that is --  & to a possible one to come: "If Perry is elected, he has pledged to 'make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.' He and his supporters may have forgotten that it was Washington [D.C.] that helped build everything from the interstate to the Internet." 

I've posted an Off Times Square comments page titled "Let's Talk about Death."

"Let's Talk about Death"

Peter Capatano of the New York Times reviews some of the commentary on Ron Paul's remarks during the most recent Republican presidential debate & the audience's "let him die" reaction: "... those who saw last week’s 'Texas death penalty cheer' — in which Rick Perry’s role in Texas’s execution rate was roundly applauded, twice, by an audience at a Republican debate — and judged it an aberration were proven wrong on Monday, when something strangely similar happened." ...

... In this MoveOn.org video, a woman named Susan Grigsby tells what happened when her then-55-year-old brother lost his job & health insurance:


... New York Times Editorial Board: "After granting a stay of execution to Duane Buck just hours before he was to be put to death in Texas on Thursday, the Supreme Court must now review the case or, at the very least, order a lower federal court to consider Mr. Buck’s plea for a new sentencing hearing. It cannot allow a terrible injustice to stand." The  state used Buck's race as proof of "future dangerousness," a requirement for a death sentence in Texas.... The gross racism in Mr. Buck’s case is proof again that the death penalty is cruel and unusual because it is arbitrary and discriminatory, as well as barbaric, and must be abolished." CW: read the whole editorial; then ask yourself where the "unworried" Gov. Rick Perry was in all this. ...

     ... Update: David Savage of the Los Angeles Times has the answer to "Where's Perry?": "Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst did not respond to pleas urging them to grant Buck a 30-day reprieve. Perry, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, was campaigning in Iowa on Thursday, leaving Dewhurst to preside over the execution. After the stay was issued, Dewhurst's office said he would have no comment. A Perry spokeswoman in Austin said, 'This is a matter before the courts.'" ...

     ... As David Dayen writes in Firedoglake: "Hanging over this is the extreme surety with which Perry touts the 'very thoughtful, very clear process' for death sentencing in Texas. That’s obviously not true in this case, and hopefully this will force a reckoning from major media on other cases."

... AP (via the NYT): "Hundreds of thousands of people are rallying behind Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis — not just because they oppose capital punishment but because they believe the state could put an innocent man to death. The case is fraught with drama: The murder of an off-duty police officer. Conflicting eyewitness testimony. Last-minute court decisions sparing a condemned man's life and global dignitaries who say they fear an innocent man could die." ...

... From last fall, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on the death penalty; NPR interview by Nina Totenberg -- audio here; transcript here. (The whole interview is pretty interesting.) ...

... CW: "I Do Not Fear Death." -- Roger Ebert in a Salon essay, which I highly recommend. It isn't often you find a meaning-of-life essay on mostly-political Websites. This would be one of those rare occasions in which you do. By coincidence, a friend asked me the same meaning-of-life questions earlier this week, & Ebert's answers are so like mine it would be creepy if I didn't feel that millions of other people of a certain age have reached the same general conclusions. Thanks to my friend Kate M. for directing me to Ebert's piece, which is excerpted from his memoir Life Itself.

Many voters seem to think that government has the power to protect them from the consequences of their sins. -- David Brooks ...

... CW: Matt Yglesias is apparently one of the few Washington-watchers on my side v. Brooks' blame-it-on-us POV. Yglesias writes, "That something along these lines has become something like the conventional wisdom in Washington is, to me, maddening." Yglesias cites "a story about bus drivers in Nevada "getting laid off as a result of state/local budget woes. Are those soon-to-be-unemployed bus drivers really suffering for their sins? ... The amazing thing about this crisis is the extent to which suffering and responsibility are completely out of proportion with one another.... The government has done immensely more to protect creditors, shareholders, and managers of major banks from the negative consequences of their sins than it’s done to protect bus drivers."

Rachel Maddow on Ronald Reagan, the GOP and Christian fundamentalism:

Matthew Dickinson on recent criticisms, direct & implied, of White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley. Dickinson argues that the criticisms are unfair. Via Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post.

Steve Benen: an Iowa family finds "Obamacare" works for them.

Right Wing World

Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: Rick Perry was for TARP before he was against it. But since he lives in Right Wing World, he denies he ever favored TARP, evidence to the contrary. Shortly after Congress failed on its first vote to pass TARP, Perry -- as head to the National Governors' Association, urged Washington legislators "to leave partisanship at the door and pass an economic recovery package." In a related flip-flop, Perry once bashed Wall Street as "being run on greed"; now he favors repealing financial reform. CW: in other words, he's for whatever will get him elected, even if he has to lie about it. ...

... But maybe we shouldn't be too quick to give Perry the Hypocrisy Prize. Here's Marie Diamond of Think Progress: [House Speaker John] "Boehner had the audacity to rebuke 'too big to fail' banks [in a speech this week], despite voting to bail out those very banks and fighting tooth-and-nail against Wall Street reform."

CW: I'm not sure why the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board is just getting around to this, but better late than never: Justice Clarence Thomas's "spousal income and his ties with a real estate developer who paid for some of Thomas' air travel raise disclosure questions.... To our mind, Thomas has been too free in forming such connections. But regardless of his off-the-bench activities, he should follow — and not just make — the law."

News Ledes

"The Buffett Rule." New York Times: "President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers."

New York Times: the NYPD shut down Wall Street before a long-planned protest over the financial system could take place today.

Los Angeles Times: "The daughters of two legendary Democratic politicians have died: Kara Kennedy, the oldest child of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, and Eleanor Mondale, the daughter of former Vice President Walter F. Mondale." Both women had been battling cancer." Both women were 51 years of age. ...

     ... The New York Times obituary for Kara Kennedy is here. ...

     ... The New York Times obituary for Eleanor Mondale Poling is here.

Chicago Tribune: "Charles H. Percy, a brilliant businessman who represented Illinois for nearly 20 years in the U.S. Senate, once headed the chamber’s powerful Foreign Relations Committee, and harbored unrealized ambitions to run for the presidency, died early Saturday. He was 91." Washington Post obituary here.

New York Times: "The United Automobile Workers and General Motors said late Friday that they had reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract." Detroit Free Press story here, with links to related documents.

AP: "Dozens of employees at Honolulu's airport were fired or suspended after an investigation found workers did not screen checked bags for explosives, the Transportation Security Administration said Friday."

Friends in High Places. AP: "The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors — including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show. Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work."

AP: "Facing a potentially destabilizing diplomatic clash, President Barack Obama heads to the United Nations next week already looking beyond a potential vote on Palestinian statehood and toward laying the groundwork for the resumption of stalled Middle East peace talks."

New York Times: "Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner made an unusual appearance at a meeting of euro zone finance ministries. Mr. Geithner had been invited to offer some advice on fixing Europe’s sovereign debt and banking problems. European leaders, who have been slow to react to the root causes of the problem, emerged from the meeting dismissive of Mr. Geithner’s ideas and, in some cases, even of the idea that the United States was in a position to give out such pointers."

Everybody's a Crook. New York Times: "Federal ethics officials are expected to recommend that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation into actions taken by David M. Becker, the former general counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who determined the agency’s proposal for compensating victims of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme when he had a financial interest in the outcome. A possible criminal referral from the Office of Government Ethics is expected to be part of a report issued next week by H. David Kotz, the inspector general of the S.E.C...."

AP: "Revolutionary fighters struggled to regroup Saturday outside the loyalist stronghold of Bani Walid after being beaten back by fierce resistance from followers of Moammar Gadhafi, temporarily quieting one battlefield while commanders leading a second offensive tried to open a new front into Gadhafi's tightly defended hometown."

AP: "The defense lawyer for two Americans jailed in Iran moved ahead with bail arrangements on Saturday, as international efforts intensified to seal a freedom-for-bail deal for the two men, convicted of spying. Attorney Masoud Shafiei told The Associated Press he was in court, 'following up the case' of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal. Shafiei said he hopes Iran's judiciary will clear the way for payment of $1 million in exchange for the Americans' release." ...

     ... NBC News Update: "A bail application for two U.S. men sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran for alleged espionage was in limbo Saturday, after it was signed by one judge, but a second judge failed to appear as expected...."

Emory Wheel: "Former U.S. President and Distinguished Professor Jimmy Carter discussed his thoughts on topics ranging from the 2012 presidential election to his love of country singer-songwriter Willie Nelson at the 30th annual Carter Town Hall Wednesday evening.... Students erupted into applause when Carter declared the 2010 Supreme Court decision allowing for unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns as 'one of the stupidest rulings ever consummated or perpetrated on the American people.'”

Comments Off