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
Sep282011

The Commentariat -- September 29

I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square.

E. J. Dionne on why conservatives hate Warren Buffett & why characters like those on the Wall Street Journal editorial board try to subject him to higher standard of disclosure than they do all their hedge-fund manager & right-wing secret campaign-donor friends who pay taxes at a rate lower than many of us do. CW: wouldn't it be fun to know what tax rate the Koch brothers pay? I'd guess, because they own an energy company, they pay even less than hedge-fund operators do.

New York Times Editors: "The American Bar Association, the Judicial Conference of the United States and every major organization focusing on criminal justice opposes mandatory minimum sentences. The federal and state governments should get rid of them — and the injustices they produce."

Law Prof. Jonathan Turley, in a scathing Los Angeles Times op-ed, excoriates President Obama as "a disaster for civil liberties." Turley writes, "... the election of Barack Obama may stand as one of the single most devastating events in our history for civil liberties." He isn't saying anything Glenn Greenwald & other civil libertarians haven't been saying from the get-go, but his review of Obama & Holder's appalling record of excusing war criminals, etc., and publishing it in an MSM outlet, is welcome.

Glenn Greenwald has a good post on the dismissive way in which the mainstream has dismissed & marginalized the Wall Street protesters. It's what mainstream types do when outliers protest their shenanigans.

John Dickerson of Slate: "What the president's [conservative] critics really mean when they say the president 'isn't leading' is that he hasn't announced that he is supporting their plans, or that he hasn't decided to commit public suicide by announcing a position for which they can then denounce him. By any measure [including Chris Christie's in his critique of the President], Obama is a leader.

Fred Bergsten, an Assistant Treasury Secretary under President Jimmy Carter, in a New York Times op-ed: "The United States runs an annual trade deficit of about $600 billion, or 4 percent of our entire economy. Eliminating that imbalance would create three million to four million jobs, according to Commerce Department estimates, at no cost to the budget.... Mr. Obama has set a goal of doubling the nation’s exports over five years. But his administration has done little to achieve that goal, which is inadequate to begin with.... First, the United States must, in effect, weaken the dollar by 10 to 20 percent. This step alone would produce one million to three million jobs.... Second, the United States must negotiate a reduction in foreign regulations, monopoly practices and other barriers to the export of American services.... Third, we must get serious about defending the intellectual property rights of our companies...."

"Regulatory Uncertainty: a Phony Explanation for Our Jobs Problem." Lawrence Michel of the Economic Policy Institute: "An examination of current economic trends, and especially what employers are doing in terms of hiring and investment, debunks this story [which conservatives tell] about regulatory uncertainty as the cause of our dismal job growth." (CW: the paer is longish & wonkish.) Via Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post.

Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog reports on the Justice Department's decision to ask the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of the individual mandate during this court term. ...

... Here's the White House explanation, laid out in a blogpost by Stephanie Cutter, a senior advisor to President Obama:

We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional.  We are confident the Supreme Court will agree. ...

... Massimo Calabresi of Time weighs in on possibilities of how the Court might rule & how these could effect President Obama's standing -- and his re-election chances.

Paul Ryan Proposes to End Employer-Based Health Care Insurance. Reuters: "In a speech to Stanford University's Hoover Institution in California, [Rep. Paul] Ryan [R-Wisc.] said his measure, which would effectively dismantle the way most Americans receive medical coverage, should be part of any Republican plan to replace President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul." Ryan's plan would "eliminate healthcare tax breaks for business, [which] would likely encourage most companies to drop their employer-sponsored plans."  ...

... Cameron Joseph of The Hill: "The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) will soon send out press releases pressuring 50 potentially vulnerable House Republicans to take a stand on ... Ryan's (R-Wis.) Tuesday speech calling for the government to end the practice of giving tax breaks to companies that provide health insurance to their workers." ...

... David Morgan of Reuters: "With billions of dollars in Medicaid spending at risk in Congress, states are forming a loose confederacy to oppose any federal cuts that could damage state budgets already awash in red ink.... Lobbyists say governors, legislators and other state officials, Republican and Democrat alike, have found common ground in a push to convince a special congressional deficit panel that White House-backed Medicaid cuts totaling $41 billion will only weaken a system that already struggles to deliver care to 60 million beneficiaries."

Cara Buckley of the New York Times: "In summer 2010, Congress set aside $1 billion for a program intended to bail out people in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. It was estimated that the program, administered by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, would help as many as 30,000 households. But the program is now ending after achieving lackluster results and stirring widespread recrimination. Fewer than 15,000 households are expected to receive help despite enormous demand, and perhaps half of the money will go unspent." CW Surprise: Congress & the Obama Administration blame each other.

Drones Rule. Christian Caryl in an NYRB review: "... the US Air Force now trains more UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] operators each year than traditional pilots.... The US aerospace industry has for all practical purposes ceased research and development work on manned aircraft. All the projects now on the drawing board revolve around pilotless vehicles. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies around the country eagerly await the moment when they can start operating their own UAVs."

CW: Oh, we just can't highlight this story enough times. Ezra Klein in Bloomberg News on the powerlessness of workers when unemployment is high. Gee, Klein uses Amazon's Allentown warehouse as an exemplar. Are you buying that new Kindle Fire? And don't think this is going on only in Allentown, or only at Amazon.

Jonathan Bernstein reveals the secret coded messages in President Obama's schools back-to-school speech. CW: short & funny.

Ben Smith on The Accidental Governator. Arnold says he had no intention of running for governor of California -- he announced his candidacy as a gag while appearing on Leno to promote "Terminator 3."

Right Wing World

Forget Krugman. And Stiglitz. Forget Baker & Reich & DeLong. Joshua Holland of AlterNet: God will save the economy. If she feels like it. According to conservative fundamentalists. Which is one reason right-wing politicians want to starve the government -- their base thinks that god will decide what needs fixing and will fix it.

The idea for a health care plan is not mine alone. I was told that Newt Gingrich was one of the very first people that came up with an individual mandate. -- Mitt Romney (Romney also noted the right-wing Heritage Foundation also supported the individual mandate)

Michael Shear & Richard Perez-Pena of the New York Times: "If he runs for president, Chris Christie might highlight the themes he mentioned on Tuesday night in his speech at the Reagan Presidential Library, promising a new era of bipartisanship and compromise like the one he largely takes credit for achieving as governor of New Jersey." BUT "Despite the legislative accomplishments that his office frequently promotes, Mr. Christie’s brief tenure at the helm of New Jersey’s government in Trenton has been marked by as much acrimony as there has been agreement." CW: OR, you think a guy who yells at & belittles whomever he pleases is a model for bipartisanship?

Making Up Stuff Because, Well, It's Sensational! Greg Sargent: "... the [right-wing] Daily Caller took a terrible hit yesterday after falsely reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency is looking to hire 230,000 new 'bureaucrats' — at a cost of $21 billion! — to implement new climate rules. The tale quickly went viral on the right." Once the Daily Caller's claim was completely debunked the editor did what you'd expect; in the face of overwhelming evidence the story was completely false, he backed the original story. ...

... Dave Weigel of Slate: guess who else stands by the bogus story even after learning it was not true? -- why, Sen. Jim Science-Is-a-Hoax Inhofe (R-Okla.). CW: Evidently, the oath of office comes with a "no-shame" clause.

... Steve Benen: "The conservative media world ... just doesn’t seem to care [about facts]. It explains a great deal about why those who rely on outlets like these seem so woefully uninformed about current events." ...

... AND this from Benen: Rick Perry gets the Boston Tea Party story wrong, too. "The moral of the story? If you learn American history from right-wing talk radio, you’re bound to get a lot of the details wrong."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Texas Gov. Rick Perry, facing a conservative backlash over his labeling as heartless those who oppose his state law giving college tuition breaks to the children of illegal immigrants, said Wednesday that the tone of his remarks was 'inappropriate.'" CW: Right. Because bigots opposed to sound economic policies that help innocent non-white young people might like cute puppies.

Ah, looks like Florida Republicans are going to screw up the primary calendar by moving their primary to a date in January 2012, before everybody else's, per Alex Pareene of Salon. CW: this is bad news for secondary candidates like the lovely Michele, who might be able get their special blocs, like the lovely apocalyptic crowd, to give them early boosts. Candidates with cash have a big advantage in a state the size of Florida. Plus, the Republican electorate is more mainstream here, so far-right candidates have less appeal. I'm betting Karl Rove & Co. are not unhappy about Florida's expected move, no matter what they may say on the teevee.

Funny Money. Murray Waas & Peter Henderson of Reuters: "Contradictions in sworn statements about Rick Perry's fundraising for his 2006 reelection bid raise questions about whether aides to the Texas governor, who is now running for president, gave false or misleading testimony under oath. In a civil suit later filed by Chris Bell, Perry's Democratic challenger in that race, the testimony of aides David Carney and Deirdre Delisi was directly contradicted by a sworn statement from Perry's own gubernatorial campaign committee."

News Ledes

New York Times: "The United States Capitol Police on Thursday said they were investigating The Onion, a satiric media organization, for making false reports on Twitter claiming that there was a hostage situation inside the Capitol building."

New York Times: "This week, Judge James Zagel of United States District Court indefinitely delayed ... sentencing [of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich], which had been set for Oct. 6. He offered no explanation."

AP: "Federal agents raided a Boeing plant that makes military helicopters in suburban Philadelphia on Thursday and charged more than three dozen people with distributing or trying to get prescription drugs, among them powerful painkillers."

AP: "German lawmakers on Thursday overwhelmingly approved expanding the powers of the eurozone bailout fund, a major step toward tackling the sprawling debt crisis, in a vote that also helped strengthen Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government." Here's the Spiegel story (English). ...

... Reuters: "Following a now-familiar script, Europe again averted disaster in its debt crisis when German lawmakers rallied behind Chancellor Angela Merkel to approve a stronger euro zone bailout fund on Thursday. But bigger challenges loom for the euro zone now. Financial markets are already anticipating a likely Greek default and demanding more far-reaching measures to prevent the crisis that began in Athens from spreading far beyond Europe and its banks."

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