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.'”

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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Sep242011

The Commentariat -- September 25

Whether you can win or not in a fight that’s worth fighting, get caught trying. -- Bill Clinton

Activist Sally Kohn offers up some ideas in this Washington Post op-ed that are pretty impractical, but some of you-all will like them. Most of her ideas are do-able and reasonable.

... I've posted a comments page for Kohn's op-ed on Off Times Square.

Frank Bruni of the New York Times never really answers his own question, but he gives you reason to answer it for yourself: "HAS American political life become a carnival so invasive, indiscriminate and sometimes even crude that it repels some of the best potential officeholders and almost guarantees that the most important business of the country won’t be properly done?

As Karen Garcia noted in a blogpost some months ago, if you want to find out about protests in New York City, you'll have better luck going to Al Jazeera than to the New York Times. On today's front page, the Times has teeny links to two blogposts about the protests (both linked under today's Ledes), one of which has a glaring error -- at least at this writing the post embedded the same video twice, although the caption accompanying one of the videos refers to another one, which was not posted. But wait! The Times front page does link to a "real" article (as opposed to a blogpost) about the protesters by one Ginia Bellafante, who devotes her report to documenting how few, how clueless & how disorganized the young protesters are. See, they're as dumb as teabaggers.

Ross Douthat argues that Troy Davis's death sentence was a real boon for him, because if he'd received a lesser sentence, his case would not have got all that public attention. Douthat doesn't dwell on the fact that part of Davis's good fortune included being executed for a crime in which it turned out there was plenty of reasonable doubt of his guilt. Instead, Douthat argues, "Abolishing capital punishment ... would tell the public that our laws and courts and juries are fundamentally incapable of delivering what most Americans consider genuine justice. It could encourage a more cynical and utilitarian view of why police forces and prisons exist, and what moral standards we should hold them to. And while it would put an end to wrongful executions, it might well lead to more overall injustice." In other words, capital punishment is a good thing because it "sends a message" that our justice system works, and we should have confidence in it.

Really? In a comment, Gemli from Boston responds. Read Gemli's whole comment, & recommend it, please:

When I was young and innocent, and didn't know the difference between liberals and conservatives, I read a quote that said as far as criminal justice was concerned, 'Conservatives prefer unfairness to disorder.' I always thought that was an exaggeration just to make a point. Who could be so lacking in human empathy that one could punish someone, even put them to death, with a cloud of innocence hanging over them? But here is an entire column making that case.

** "The Fraying of a Nation's Decency." Anand Giridharadas of the New York Times highlights the Morning Call story we linked last week on Amazon.com's Allentown, Pennsylvania, sweatshop (If you haven't read the Morning Call story, it's here, and it's horrifying.). "Amazon.com, the books-to-diapers-to-machetes Internet superstore, is a perfect snapshot of the American Dream, circa 2011.... And what the story revealed about Amazon could be said of the country, too: that on the road to high and glorious things, it somehow let go of decency....Far beyond official Washington, we would seem to be witnessing a fraying of the bonds of empathy, decency, common purpose.... It doesn’t feel like one nation when a company like Amazon, with such resources to its name, treats vulnerable people so badly just because it can.... People who run companies like Amazon operate as though it never occurred to them that it could have been them crawling through the aisles.... What is creeping into the culture is simple dehumanization, a failure to imagine the lives others lead."

CW: Several readers have asked me privately about the White House "We the People" petition facility, which allows citizen to post petitions to the Obama administration. Any petition that receives at least 5,000 signers will receive "consideration" from White House staff. As Karen Garcia reports, "The winner and undisputed champion on the White House's new citizen petition webpage is the legalization of marijuana." Read Garcia's post, which I think is about right. In today's Off Times Square Kate Madison highlights another petition to recognize the Wall Street protesters. IMHO, the so-called petition capability is a way to shut you up by giving you the satisfaction you've "done something" for the causes that interest you. Since the site also requires you to provide basic information about yourself in order to sign a petition (which is SOP) & provides you the "opportunity" to get e-mails from the White House, obviously "We the People" is also a tool for the re-election campaign. Expect a fundraising letter in your inbox. But heck, maybe President Obama will get into the weed.

When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently. That was the point. -- Barack Obama, ca. 2006

Right Wing World

"Nice Try." Maureen Dowd: "[Rick] Perry is proving to be [Mitt] Romney's best asset." ...

... Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Martin of Politico: "With the party’s front-runner sagging, Chris Christie is reconsidering pleas from Republican elites and donors to run for president in 2012.... The New Jersey governor has indicated he is listening to big-money and Republican influence-makers, and will let them know in roughly a week whether he has moved off his threat-of-suicide vow...."

News Ledes

New York Times: "In his first speech since returning to Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh confirmed on Sunday that his deputy remained authorized to sign a transfer-of-power agreement that would lead to early presidential elections, but he did not make any new concessions."

New York Times: "King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Sunday granted women the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, the biggest change in a decade for women in a puritanical kingdom that practices strict separation of the sexes, including banning women from driving."

AP: "After eight months of contract-wrangling and negotiations that dragged past a strike deadline, supermarket workers in Southern California will stay on the job.... Members of the region's United Food and Commercial Workers voted to ratify a new contract with three major grocery chains..., averting a strike of more than 60,000 workers that could have crippled the industry and left shoppers scrambling."

AP: "Pakistan's army chief will convene a special meeting of senior commanders Sunday following U.S. allegations that the military's spy agency helped militants attack American targets in Afghanistan, the army said."

Reuters: Pope Benedict said on Saturday the Catholic Church could not accept gay marriage and urged young people to root out evil in society and shun a 'lukewarm' faith that damages their Church. The 84-year-old pope ended the third day in his homeland with a rally for more about 30,000 young people at a fairground outside the southern city of Freiburg, a Catholic area where he received the warmest welcome of his trip so far."

CNN: "Two American hikers freed last week from an Iranian prison are expected to arrive in the United States on Sunday. Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer were released by Iran on Wednesday and were flown to Muscat, Oman's capital, where they enjoyed several days of freedom after more than two years in prison." ...

... New York Daily News: Actor & activist "Sean Penn played a real-life role in the mediation that secured the release of two American hikers who were held captive in Iran for more than two years. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his ally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to release the hikers after the South American leader was lobbied by pals in U.S. 'intellectual circles,' Reuters reported. One of those Americans was Penn, who flew to Venezuela to meet with Chavez and push him to talk to Ahmadinejad."

AP: "About 80 people were arrested Saturday as demonstrators who were camped out near the New York Stock Exchange marched through lower Manhattan, police said. The 'Occupy Wall Street' protest is entering its second week. Demonstrators said Saturday they were protesting against bank bailouts and the mortgage crisis; some also held signs decrying Georgia's execution of Troy Davis.... At Manhattan's Union Square, police tried to corral the demonstrators using orange plastic netting.... Activists posted the videos online. One video appears to show officers using pepper spray on women who already were cordoned off." New York Times item here. Two videos here. Al Jazeera video above. ...

... Firedoglake has a liveblog here.

Guardian: "Police have been accused of heavy-handed tactics after making 80 arrests on Saturday when protesters marched uptown from their makeshift camp in a private park in the financial district. Footage has emerged on YouTube showing stocky police officers coralling a group of young female protesters and then spraying them with mace, despite being surrounded and apparently posing threats of only the verbal kind":

     ... The Times post -- linked above -- makes reference to this video, but does not embed it.

     ... CW Note: this video is of the full speech to the CBC. I had posted a clip earlier.

AP: "In a fiery summons to an important voting bloc, President Barack Obama told blacks on Saturday to quit crying and complaining and 'put on your marching shoes' to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity. And though he didn't say it directly, for a second term, too."

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