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 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!

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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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Friday
Sep022011

The Commentariat -- September 3

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

President Obama's Weekly Address:

     ... Here's the transcript. It's about jobs. Funny, no mention of how killing the new ozone standards will create lots of jobs for the healthcare industry. ...

... Obama the Ozone Liar. Brad Plumer of the Washington Post on the big double-cross behind Obama's directive to halt ozone standards. To make a long story shortish, the Administration played environmentalists the way the Boner plays Obama. The current standards in place are from 1997, & scientists agree that these standards are so low that people are dying from the resulting pollutants. The Bush Administration proposed stronger standards in 2008, but not strong enough for environmentalists who sued to force higher standards. Now for the Obama double-cross: the Obama EPA told the plaintiffs they agreed with them & would be issuing stronger standards by August 2010, so please hold back on the suit. Ha ha. The EPA slipped its deadline again and again, and now it's slipping it all the way to 2013 (when there might be a Perry Administration). The worst part -- had the Obama EPA not got environmentalists to drop their suit, the Bush standards, which were more rigid than the 1997 Clinton standards, would have been put in place, or -- if the plaintiffs had prevailed in their suit -- exceeded. So hack cough, piss me off. ...

... New York Times Editors: "President Obama’s decision not to proceed with stronger air-quality standards governing ozone is a setback for public health and the environment and a victory for industry and its Republican friends in Congress.... There is still no excuse for compromising on public health and allowing politics to trump science." ...

... Karen Garcia: "You're in the O-Zone.... Just hold on, try to breathe the ozone until 2013, and he'll look at reducing pollution levels then. After the campaign, after those same businesses [that lobbied against the new regs] have donated about a billion into his war chest. I guess Malia and Sasha don't have asthma." ...

... Keith Olbermann & Brian Beutler of TPM on President O-Zone:

     ... Here's Beutler's post on Obama's directive: "The development most likely means smog standards in many states will remain lower than they would have been if President George W. Bush's lax policy had been fully pursued." ...

... NEW. Paul Krugman: "... tighter ozone regulation would actually have created jobs: it would have forced firms to spend on upgrading or replacing equipment, helping to boost demand. Yes, it would have cost money — but that’s the point! And with corporations sitting on lots of idle cash, the money spent would not, to any significant extent, come at the expense of other investment.... So, a lousy decision all around. Are you surprised?"

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... it took the Republican National Committee exactly 94 minutes to coin a new, demeaning title for Barack Obama: President Zero. In an e-mail to reporters, the committee took note of the worst jobs report in nearly a year, saying that there has been 'two and a half years of Obamanomics and nothing to show for it.'” ...

... Yeah, But: "The Conservative Recovery" Fizzles. Matt Yglesias: "... we had 17,000 thousand new private sector jobs in August, which were 100 percent offset by 17,000 lost jobs in the public sector.... This has been the trend all year. The public sector has been steadily shrinking. According to the conservative theory of the economy, when the public sector shrinks that should super-charge the private sector.... Conservatives complain about the results because the President is a Democrat.... But the policy result is what conservatives say they want." CW: as Paul Krugman & many other economists have written repeatedly, cutting government spending does not create jobs. Period. ...

** Ari Berman of Rolling Stone: "Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots.... In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process."

William Cohan, whom you may remember from the New York Times op-ed and business pages, is now at Bloomberg News. He writes that it's time to get rid of the corrupt SEC and start all over with a new regulatory agency free of conflict-of-interest. He presents some compelling evidence. ...

... Compelling evidence that Cohan got from this long piece by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, who has a singular ability to make financial stories interesting reading (not that his ethically-challenged subjects don't help): "For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG."

Brady Dennis, et al., of the Washington Post: "Federal regulators launched a broad legal assault on big banks Friday, claiming they sold nearly $200 billion in fraudulent mortgage investments to housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to massive losses during the financial crisis. The suits, brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, name 17 domestic and foreign banks as defendants." The article reports some of the implications of the suits.

We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen. -- Navy SEAL ...

... Dana Priest & William Arkin of the Washington Post: "... the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC..., has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into America’s secret army. When members of this elite force killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May, JSOC leaders celebrated not just the success of the mission but also how few people knew their command, based in Fayetteville, N.C., even existed. This article, adapted from a chapter of the newly released 'Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State,' by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, chronicles JSOC’s spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly disclosed before. Two presidents and three secretaries of defense routinely have asked JSOC to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria."

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "... more than 12,000 Iraqis have been killed in at least 1,000 suicide attacks since the American-led invasion," their usage largely a tactic of sectarian warfare.

Right Wing World

The level of ignorance among some of the Republican presidential candidates about monetary policy is stunning. Mr. Perry has been taken to task for his choice of language, but not for the substance of his remarks, which is outrageous. -- Economics Prof. Mark Gertler ...

It must be exciting to accuse him of things he hasn’t done. -- Conservative Econ. Prof. Robert Hall

... James Stewart of the New York Times: "... our political leaders and those who aspire to replace them should be debating the fiscal policies that will put Americans to work in the short term and reduce the deficit in the long term — not bashing the Fed.... Many voters seem determined to find a scapegoat for the financial crisis and its aftermath, and some candidates are only too willing to pander by serving up [Fed Chair Ben] Bernanke." CW Reminder: Bernanke is a Republican.

The Perry Oeuvre. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... blunt assertions ... in two books [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry wrote ... have drawn new scrutiny now that Mr. Perry, a Republican, is running for president." CW: this article is kind of a fun read because it lists some of Perry's greatest hits and demonstrates anew what a dangerous whacko he is.

News Ledes

New York Times: "In a strong rebuke to the Irish government, the Vatican said Saturday that it had never discouraged Irish bishops from reporting the sexual abuse of minors to the police and dismissed claims that it had undermined efforts to investigate abuse as 'unfounded.' The statement was the latest salvo in a tense diplomatic standoff since the Irish government released a report in July accusing the Vatican of encouraging bishops to ignore guidelines requiring them to report abuse cases to civil authorities." Irish Times story here. The text of the Vatican statement is here (pdf).

The Hill: "Public health advocates slammed the White House on Friday for abandoning tougher ozone regulations, and vowed to fight the Obama administration in court. The American Lung Association called the decision 'outrageous' and said it would 'severely jeopardize public health.' The association said it would restart litigation that had been put on hold following the administration's promises to strengthen standards set under then-President George W. Bush.... The EPA has estimated that the new standards could have prevented 12,000 premature deaths and 58,000 asthma attacks a year." (Emphasis added.)

Times-Picayune: "Tropical Storm Lee continues its slow, 2 mph drift onto the southeastern Louisiana coastline Saturday morning, with its ill-defined center expected to cross the coast near Morgan City sometime this afternoon, bringing maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. More than 5 inches of rain had fallen in some parts of the New Orleans area overnight, and forecasters said Lee remained a major flooding threat, predicting a minimum 15 inches of rain will fall over much of the New Orleans area before the storm makes its exit on Tuesday. It's likely some locations could receive 20 inches of rain or more." The Weather Channel report here, with links to related content.

New York Times: "Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture."

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