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.”

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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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The Commentariat -- September 4

Maureen Dowd: "Just as Obama miscalculated in 2009 when Democrats had total control of Congress, holding out hope that G.O.P. lawmakers would come around on health care after all but three senators had refused to vote for the stimulus bill; just as he misread John Boehner this summer, clinging like a scorned lover to a dream that the speaker would drop his demanding new inamorata, the Tea Party, to strike a 'grand' budget bargain, so the president once more set a trap for himself and gave Boehner the opportunity to dis him on the timing of his jobs speech this week."

Frank Bruni: "Who's smarter? Barack Obama or Rick Perry? "Instead of talking about how smart politicians are or aren’t, we should have an infinitely more useful, meaningful conversation about whether we share and respect their values and whether they have shown themselves to be effective. Someone who rates high on both counts is someone to rally unreservedly around. Right now, neither Perry nor Obama fits that double bill."

** I've posted a Dowd-Bruni comments page on Off Times Square, but if you want to comment on something else, feel free.

** Economist Bob Reich, who was Labor Secretary during the Clinton Administration, writes a very good short history of American fiscal policy in a New York Times op-ed: "During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats." ...

... The New York Times Editorial Board outlines what President Obama should say in his jobs speech. CW: fat chance. ...

The DeLong Confession. Economist Brad DeLong tells of giving top Obama Administration officials a talking-to in early 2010 -- you know, explaining Econ 101 to them -- and they didn't get it. DeLong admits, "... I think of my confidence in December 2008 and January 2009 that the Obama administration understood that you needed not economic policies that sounded good and polled good but economic policies that actually worked, and I wince." CW: this is a very readable post. Apparently Krugman has had the same conversation with some of these same usual suspects, with the same results. They -- and the President -- as I've said before, are not all that bright.

Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "The Republican field is entering a pivotal stage as candidates increasingly move beyond criticizing President Obama and start to run against one another. The outcome of three debates in the next three weeks — starting Wednesday night, the first time Mr. Perry, Mr. Romney and Mrs. Bachmann will face each other — will influence fund-raising, shape strategy and set perceptions as the candidates hurtle toward the start of voting early next year. In both parties, there is now a sense that the president’s political frailty, underscored by the report on Friday that showed zero net job creation in August and new projections that unemployment will remain elevated until Election Day, is even greater than it appeared at the start of the summer, injecting additional energy and urgency to the Republican primary race."

"What Was He Thinking?" Juliet Eilperin & Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "President Obama’s controversial decision last week to suspend new anti-smog standards offered hints — but not the full road map — of how the White House will navigate politically explosive battles with congressional Republicans over which industry regulations to sacrifice and which ones to fight for this fall.... Most notable in the smog decision was that Obama made it himself — undercutting his own Environmental Protection Agency leadership and siding with industry officials.... And yet ... advocates on both sides are left wondering what broader strategy may be guiding the White House...." ...

... Leslie Kaufman of the New York Times: "... representatives of ... environmental groups saw the president’s actions [to drop new ozone pollution standards] as brazen political sellouts to business interests and the Republican Party, which regards environmental regulations as job killers and a brick wall to economic recovery. The question for environmentalists became, what to do next?" John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group based in New York, said "his group would resume a smog lawsuit against the government that it had dropped because it had been lulled into believing that this administration would enact tougher regulations without being forced to do so by the courts.” ...

... AND Steve Benen asks, "... even if West Wing officials sincerely believed these ozone standards would be bad the job market, why not keep this realization close to their chest, and then trade it to Republicans in exchange for something else? Why not use the rules as a bargaining chip?

Brent Budowsky, writing in The Hill, plays "If Al Gore Had Been Inaugurated": "A recent poll by '60 Minutes' and Vanity Fair found that a majority of Americans, and a majority of Democrats, do not believe things would have changed much if Al Gore had been inaugurated president in January 2001.... The Gore v. Bush poll is breathtaking." After Budowsky compils a laundry list of stuff Gore would have done differently from Bush, he writes, "It is a sad commentary about Democrats today, especially but not only President Obama, that Democrats feel so depressed and let down that they cannot tell the difference between eight years of President George W. Bush and eight years of President Gore." CW: An interesting commentary; in other words, Obama has tarnished the reputations of all elected Democrats, including Al Gore.

Oh, Great. Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "At least one in seven Afghan soldiers walked off the job during the first six months of this year, according to statistics compiled by NATO that show an increase in desertion.... At one point this summer, the pace of desertions climbed to an annualized rate of 35 percent, though it has since declined.... Afghan and U.S. military officials also said poor leadership is a main reason soldiers desert the ranks."

A New Twist in the Strange Case of Abdel-Hakim Belhadj. Patrick McDonnell & Ken Dilanian of the Los Angeles Times: "A few years ago, documents show, Belhadj was a wanted Islamic militant whom the CIA handed over for 'debriefing' to the government of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, then an ally in the fight against terrorism. Today, Belhadj is a top military commander in the provisional Libyan government and Kadafi is on the run, his government toppled, in part, by U.S. and allied airstrikes."

Right Wing World

Kevin Sack of the New York Times: "The three most prominent current or former governors running for president — Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr. — are firmly united in their commitment to repealing President Obama’s health care law. But that unanimity masks a broad divergence in their approaches to the issue while in office, spanning the spectrum of Republican positioning.... Each of the governors has vulnerabilities, and they have sought thus far to credential themselves less by their own past records than by their current opposition to what is officially known as the Affordable Care Act."

Local News

What's Wrong with This Picture: Jennifer Gollan & Sydney Lupkin of the Bay Citizen: California has been spending more and more on prisons & less and less on higher education. The result: the state now spends more on prisons than on university education. The picture:

Graphic by Bay Citizen.

News Ledes

President Obama visits New Jersey, where power still has not been reconnected since Hurricane Irene, & flood damage is rife:

... New York Times: in Paterson, New Jersey, "President Obama, surveying some of the most crippling flood damage from Tropical Storm Irene, vowed on Sunday that budgetary wrangling in Washington would not delay federal aid to stricken communities."

AP (via the NYT): "The center of Tropical Storm Lee lurched across Louisiana's Gulf Coast early Sunday, dumping torrential rains that threatened flooding in low-lying communities in a foreshadowing of what cities further inland could face in coming days." The Times-Picayune is carrying this story by the National Weather Service; includes related links. Here's the Weather Channel's main story.

New York Times: "The Obama administration has initiated a last-ditch diplomatic campaign to avert a confrontation this month over a plan by Palestinians to seek recognition as a state at the United Nations, but it may already be too late, according to senior American officials and foreign diplomats."

Al Jazeera: "Libyan fighters outside Bani Walid, a key city still controlled by supporters of toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi, have told Al Jazeera that efforts to negotiate a peaceful handover have ended. An official for the National Transitional Council (NTC) said fighters were preparing to take the town by force after talks ended on Sunday." With video. AP story here. ...

    ... New York Times Update: "Rebel forces in Libya said Sunday that they were on the verge of winning a peaceful surrender of Bani Walid, one of Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s last remaining strongholds, as thousands of rebel fighters converged on the town."

Guardian: "Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Saturday night in Israel's biggest ever demonstration to demand social justice, a lower cost of living and a clear government response to the concerns of an increasingly squeezed middle class. About 430,000 people took part in marches and rallies across the country, according to police. The biggest march was in Tel Aviv, where up to 300,000 took part." Haaretz story here.

New York Times: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and onetime hopeful for the French presidency, returned to his native land early on Sunday morning, in a low-key coda to the international furor that erupted when he was arrested in mid-May and charged with sexually assaulting a New York hotel housekeeper."

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