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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Tuesday
Sep142010

CW: Akhilleus' comment on David Brooks' column is so fine & got so buried among the other comments that I felt obliged to post it here. It is an excellent short-course in American history:


Where to begin?

I am so sick of listening to this pap about the innocence and virtue of conservatism being destroyed by big government Democrats.

Since we're talking history, how about this? First the country that Misters Ryan and Brooks (both Brookses I would wager) weep for, that small government, Don't Tread on Me, stay out of my way America, was a small, largely agrarian nation straddling the Atlantic seaboard. The population was relatively small, though growing, industry was sporadic, and in many areas, slavery was a vital support to a system in which only rich, landed, white men had a say. I realize this is still an enormous pipe dream for many right-wingers, a return to the halcyon days of yore but those days are gone.

This little country grew quickly. By the middle of the 19th century industrialization came hard and fast. The rich got richer and the poor led lives of meager hope and soul-killing desperation. The kind of plutocrats STILL supported wholeheartedly by the likes of Ryan and Brooks did all they could to secure enormous wealth and power on the backs of their less well off, less well connected countrymen and women.

At this juncture, the moral imperative became so great, and the dangers of big business overrunning all in their way prompted many politically minded citizens, including a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, to stand up and use the power of government to try to strike a balance between overweening greed and the needs of average working class Americans.

This, of course, was considered an outrage by Republicans and their wealthy, robber baron cronies. Years later, after the greed of a later generation of robber barons pushed us into a depression, another president, Mr. Roosevelt's cousin, saw fit to use the power of government to strike back at the forces that were destroying the country. FDR is still reviled by the right for taking their candy away and making them play nice.

The fact is that that little nation that could function with a small government, one not concerned with interstate trade, child labor abuses, uncontrolled and dangerous products being sold, unsafe working conditions, the moral blight of slavery, and citizens who would starve and live horrible existences all because they weren't smart enough to be born, like today's Wall Street Masters of the Universe, into wealth and privilege, is long gone. It lasted perhaps a generation or two. The country, as it grew up, developed problems that required solutions only a strong government could provide.

Who, after all, was going to end slavery or prevent unscrupulous business owners from putting young children to work for a pittance? Who? The predecessors of the plutocrats Ryan and Brooks moan about?

Right.

Sorry, Mr. Brooks, yet another imploding right wing fantasy. As for virtue and innocence, I don't believe either of those fine qualities apply to many on the right today. There is, however, virtue in attempting to make life better for the vast majority of Americans. If that means that Ryan and Brooks and their buddies can only have three vacation homes instead of four or five, well, too bad.


Reposted with permission of the author.

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