The Ledes

Thursday, September 19, 2024

New York Times: “A body believed to be of the suspect in a Kentucky highway shooting that left five people seriously injured this month was found on Wednesday, the authorities said, ending a manhunt that stretched into a second week and set the local community on edge. The Kentucky State Police commissioner, Phillip Burnett Jr., said in a Wednesday night news conference that at approximately 3:30 p.m., two troopers and two civilians found an unidentified body in the brush behind the highway exit where the shooting occurred.... The police have identified the suspect of the shooting as Joseph A. Couch, 32. They said that on Sept. 7, Mr. Couch perched on a cliff overlooking Interstate 75 about eight miles north of London, Ky., and opened fire. One of the wounded was shot in the face, and another was shot in the chest. A dozen vehicles were riddled with gunfire.”

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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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Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Tuesday
Sep142010

The Newt Embraces Social Darwinism and Reincarnation

Art by Barbara Broido.(For more great doodles, go to Broido's site, Barbara's Doodle Blog.)

Maureen Dowd uses her bully pulpit wisely today to excoriate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for "shamelessly embracing his party's lunacy." She notes that Newt is "claiming not only that the president is a socialist but that he suffers from a socialism gene." The Newt's muse, an "Ann Coulter-in-pants" named Dinesh D'Souza, argues that Barack Obama's father "is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son."

The Constant Weader comments:

Oh boy! Social Darwinism and reincarnation!

In fairness, it's quite possible Newt has a mental disease and we should be more understanding. But as long as the media give him a microphone & introduce him as "the former Speaker," we must treat him as if he knows what he's saying.

Barack Obama barely ever saw his father after the younger Obama was two years old. The President's mother & maternal grandparents reared him. If he has any "intellectual heritage," it comes from Kansas (and I'm not talking about The Wizard of Oz, Newt).

How was it exactly that Papa Obama infiltrated the mind of the future President? Is a man really genetically engineered to take on his father's political beliefs? Nature beats nurture? Or is it that reincarnation thing? Let's have a seance!

It's fairly hilarious that Gingrich is busy rewriting President Obama's childhood inasmuch as Gingrich -- according to an Esquire profile -- has completely rewritten his own. Writer John Richardson details how Newt makes his childhood "sound ideal," yet,

His mother married his father when she was sixteen, left him a few days later, and struggled with manic depression most of her life. His stepfather [who reared Newt & moved the family to a series of Army bases] was an infantry officer who viewed his plump, nearsighted, flat-footed son as unfit for the Army.

Whatever Newt's actual family history, he appears to be the reincarnation of a cruel, mendacious, opportunistic lowlife -- a newt with a personality disorder. It is one of the tragedies of American history that this man once held a powerful position. He was never a leader, always a follower, & now he is following his party over a cliff of right-wing extremism that knows no boundaries and is trying to break its fall by holding tight to an umbrella of fear-mongering, prejudice and outright lies.

Update: Commenter Jim F. of Los Altos (#3) points to Paul Krugman's blogpost on the Gingrich/D'Souza "madness." Krugman remarks that the whole basis of the "Kenyan" plot theory is an Export-Import Bank loan to Brazil. Says Krugman,

Except, you know, the Ex-Im bank’s job is to promote US exports — and this was a loan for the specific purpose of buying US-made oilfield equipment. And the board approving the loan was … a board appointed by George W. Bush. In other words, aside from being ignorant, this is complete the-Commies-are-putting flouride in the water to steal our vital bodily fluids stuff.

Update: without actually employing the terms "racial prejudice" or "ethnic stereotyping" or "lying through their yellow teeth," Matt Bai of the New York Times postulates that Republican lowlifes (another term he doesn't use) are trying to cast President Obama as "The Other" in order to motivate their base of stupid, racist yahoos (okay, Bai doesn't describe the base as "yahoos," either, but you know that's what he would write in a less hoity-toity publication).

Update. Brendan Patrick Keane in Irish Central: the real scandal in Newt's outrageous rant is this: "Newt Gingrich embraces British colonialism."

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Tuesday
Sep142010

The Commentariat -- September 15

Note: Internal links have been removed.

How to Get $345 Billion. Kate Pickert of Time: eliminate tax cheats. The problem is how.

What Deficit? Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post: "Even as they hammer Democrats for running up record budget deficits, Senate Republicans are rolling out a plan ... that would deprive the Treasury of more than $4 trillion over the next decade, nearly doubling projected deficits over that period.... The measure, introduced by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) this week, would permanently extend the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts..., rein in the alternative minimum tax and limit the estate tax to estates worth more than $5 million for individuals or $10 million for couples." ...

... NEW. The editors of the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald-Leader are unimpressed with McConnell's crocodile tears for his rich friends & demonstrate that his tax cuts for the rich argument doesn't make sense. ...

... Sara Murray of the Wall Street Journal: "Efforts to tame America's ballooning budget deficit could soon confront a daunting reality: Nearly half of all Americans live in a household in which someone receives government benefits, more than at any time in history. At the same time, the fraction of American households not paying federal income taxes has also grown—to an estimated 45% in 2010...."

Mary Williams Walsh of the New York Times: Neil Barofsky, "the special inspector for taxpayer bailout funds, is looking into whether the Obama administration pressed General Motors in bankruptcy to backstop the pensions of the union retirees of a former division, Delphi.... Barofsky ... said he intended to find out 'whether political considerations played a role in favoring hourly over salaried retirees.'”

Well, bless his heart. You know, we love our friends there in the machine, the expert politicos, but my message to those who say that the GOP nominee is not electable ... or that they’re not even going to try, I say buck up. buck up.... We need to go forth and conquer for the American people. -- Sarah Palin, on Karl Rove's comment that Christine O'Donnell is not electable because she's too nutty & her past too checkered

What we're seeing in the Republican Party is that they invited the Tea Party in and it's turning into the Donner Party, in some instances, because they're turning the energy and the ferocity against each other. -- Tim Kaine, DNC Chair, via Amanda Terkel at HuffPost

... Oh, look, Even Christine O'Donnell agrees with Kaine:

... Mike Allen of Politico: "Christine O’Donnell, the tea-party backed GOP nominee for Joe Biden’s Senate seat, on Wednesday morning attacked 'Republican cannibalism' and said she doesn’t need the GOP establishment to win her Delaware race in November." ...

... After she won the primary, that paragon on honor & fair play Karl Rove whacks O'Donnell for "a lot of nutty things she's been saying." "Republican cannabalism"? Oh, yes:

... Wall Street Journal: "The National Republican Senatorial Committee does not plan to spend money on its Delaware Senate nominee, Christine O’Donnell, an NRSC official said tonight." ...

     ... Update: What a Difference a Day Makes. Ben Smith of Politico: NRSC reverses itself, sends O'Donnell at $42K check.

... Gene Robinson: "Christine O’Donnell’s victory over Rep. Mike Castle in the Senate primary ... comes pretty close to wiping out the possibility of the Republicans taking control of the Senate in November." ...

... Republican party leaders agree with Robinson:

Sarah Skidmore & David Runk of the AP: "... many food stamps users still don't know they can shop at [farmers'] markets, lack transportation or time to get to them or simply believe they can spend their benefits better elsewhere. Advocates say the issue is important because one in eight Americans now receives food stamps, and low-income communities often have higher rates of obesity, diabetes and other health problems."

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Tuesday
Sep142010

Nobody gets to write your destiny but you. Your future is in your hands.... Nothing will have as great an impact on your success in life as your education.... Your success in school will also help determine America's success in the 21st century.... Excelling in school or in life isn't mainly about being smarter than everybody else. It's about working harder than everybody else.... Life is precious, and part of its beauty lies in its diversity.... It's the things that make us different that make us who we are. And the strength and character of this country have always come from our ability to recognize ourselves in one another, no matter who we are, or where we come from, what we look like, or what abilities or disabilities we have. -- Barack Obama

President Obama speaks to school kids at the beginning of the academic year:

...  The text of the President's prepared remarks.

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