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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Wednesday
Nov102010

The Commentariat -- November 11

Micah Cohen of the New York Times has an update on the still-unresolved midterm races. Unbelievably, the pig in the ducky jammies won by about 800 votes; his Democratic opponent, an incumbent, is applying for a recount:

Stephen Gandel of Time: how Sarah Palin & the tea party could cause hyperinflation: "The real threat of inflation comes from tax policy, namely lower taxes. Lower taxes and the government will have a harder time paying back its debt. Investors run from our bonds and currency. Inflation ensues." Moreover, no matter what the actual policy, if investors & the public think the government is unwilling to pay for itself, inflation will follow.

The White House gives a whole new meaning to passive aggression - it has institutionalized a personality disorder into a governing style.... Obama promises he will veto any tax cuts for the rich.  He loses the midterms and leaves the country.  Droopy Dog Axelrod 'leaks' the caving-in to some inside- the- Beltway establishment reporter.  It is officially denied. But since we now have a heads-up, the official pill won't be so bitterly hard to swallow once it becomes 'official.'
-- Karen Garcia ...

... Chicken-Shit, White House-Style. Howard Feinman & Sam Stein: "President Barack Obama's top adviser suggested to The Huffington Post late Wednesday that the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board, temporary continuation of steep Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest taxpayers. That appears to be the only way, said David Axelrod, that middle-class taxpayers can keep their tax cuts, given the legislative and political realities facing Obama in the aftermath of last week's electoral defeat." ...

... NEW. You can sign Bold Progressives' (PCCC) petition against the tax cut for the rich. ...

... BUT Carrie Budoff Brown: "In an e-mail to POLITICO, Axelrod said: 'There is not one bit of news here. I didn't go beyond what we said before.'" CW: the inference here is that the White House has not committed to accepting tax cuts for the rich. Then why this? -- ", David Axelrod, said Wednesday that the White House has to deal with “the world of what it takes to get this done” – a signal to Democrats that they don’t have the votes to kill the high-end tax cuts in the face of a new Republican House majority and resistance from Democratic moderates in the Senate." This makes no sense. The tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. The Democrats still hold healthy majorities in both houses. There is not "a new Republican House majority" until early January 2011. ...

... AND Katy O'Donnell of the National Journal: "Senior White House adviser David Axelrod said this morning that President Obama has not caved to GOP demands on the extension of the Bush tax cuts, despite a report to the contrary."

... Marcy Wheeler: "Let yesterday be marked as the day when a nominally Democratic President began to dismantle Democrats’ signature policy achievement, social security, so he could shovel $700 billion to the very rich." ...

Catfood Commission Draft Proposal

Artwork via PoliticsPlus.org.New York Times: "A draft proposal released Wednesday by the chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the federal debt calls for deep cuts in domestic and military spending starting in 2012, and an overhaul of the tax code to raise revenue. Those changes and others would erase nearly $4 trillion from projected deficits through 2020, the proposal says." Here's the report.

 

CW: the chairmen put out the draft report, but there is no chance the full commission will ratify it. Ezra Klein explains more.

Megan Carpentier of TPM lists the chairmen's main proposals.

President Obama won't discuss it:

Dow-Jones: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) ... call[ed] the plan 'simply unacceptable.' The outgoing speaker said that any proposal must do 'what is right for our children and grandchildren's economic security as well as for our nation's fiscal security, and it must do what is right for our seniors, who are counting on the bedrock promises of Social Security and Medicare.'" Update: here's Speaker Pelosi's official statement.

More reactions via Alexander Bolton of The Hill -- but none from the White House (CW: which reportedly was blindsided by the early release).

The chairmen of the Deficit Commission just told working Americans to ‘Drop Dead.’ Especially in these tough economic times, it is unconscionable to be proposing cuts to the critical economic lifelines. -- Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President

Kevin Drum: "Bottom line: this document isn't really aimed at deficit reduction. It's aimed at keeping government small. There's nothing wrong with that if you're a conservative think tank and that's what you're dedicated to selling. But it should be called by its right name. This document is a paean to cutting the federal government, not cutting the federal deficit."

Barbara Morrill in Daily Kos: ConservaDem Kent Conrad uses Veterans Day to tout the Catfood Commission proposals like this one:

Establish co-pays in the VA medical system and change the co-pays and deductibles for military retirees that remain in that system.

       Morrill writes, "... nothing says remember the sacrifices made by our military men and women more than telling them they'll have to start paying for their VA care! But I'm sure Conrad had a flag pin on his lapel when he said it."

Digby: the "villagers are thrilled."

Karoli at Crooks & Liars: "Simply put, it makes the Reagan administration initial proposals for Social Security reform look progressive, ignores the truth about Social Security's funding status, pays lip service only to cutting the defense budget while simultaneously taking shots at unions, the poor, the underprivileged and the elderly."

** Skin in the Game. Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: the catfood commission has taken an "... unusual approach to staffing: ... about one in four commission staffers is paid by outside entities, many of which have strong ideological points of view about how to tackle the deficit." The commission's director says he employed these nonpaid ideologues to be "fiscally responsible." CW: you just want to slap these assholes:

Taxpayers fund the commission and they should work independently of Washington lobbyists and power brokers, This is the type of shenanigans that average Americans are so upset about right now - that money talks and everyone else is left out. -- former Rep. Barbara Kennelly, an advociate for preserving Social Security & Medicare

David Lindley & Wally Ingram, "Cat Food Sandwiches," via Firedoglake:

******************************************************************

The Economist: "It was chance that [President Obama's] tour took him to Asia’s biggest and richest democracies — South Korea and Japan were on the itinerary as hosts, respectively, of the G20 and Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summits. But that lent the tour its tacit theme: that, crudely put, the American model still trumps the Chinese one."

Paul Kiel of ProPublica: "When the Obama administration launched its flagship foreclosure prevention program in early 2009, it pledged to spend up to $50 billion helping struggling homeowners. But the government has so far only spent a tiny fraction of that."

President Obama speaks at a Veterans Day rally in Seoul, South Korea. The President appears about 5 min. in:

Ed O'Keefe & Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "A Pentagon study group has concluded that the military can lift the ban on gays serving openly in uniform with only minimal and isolated incidents of risk to the current war efforts, according to two people familiar with a draft of the report, which is due to President Obama on Dec. 1."

Tim Egan of the New York Times posits that the Republican Congressional leadership will have to rein in the lying lunatics in their caucus if they expect to actually govern. CW: Not. Going. To. Happen. ...

... BUT Perry Bacon of the Washington Post: "Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a favorite of conservative activists around the country, ended her campaign to join the GOP leadership late Wednesday, electing to bow out rather than face near-certain defeat in next week's leadership elections."

Austan Goolsbee explains that the President is in Asia to help boost American exports:

... Paul Wiseman of the AP explains why other countries oppose Fed Chair Ben Bernanke's move to buy bonds. CW: Wiseman does not try to explain economist Sarah Palin's opposition to the Fed's program.  

Cenk Uygur rants on why gays should not vote for GOP candidates. CW: I agree with Cenk, but he doesn't go far enough. On this issue alone, no one, straight or gay, who supports basic human rights can vote Republican:

Joe Wilson reacts to Dubya's memoir Decision Points.

CBS News: The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the Justice Department to investigate whether President George W. Bush violated anti-torture laws by authorizing the use of waterboarding against detainees in the war on terror -- an admission Mr. Bush makes in his new memoir 'Decision Points.'" More in the Huffington Post here. ...

... CBS News: "Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder said Tuesday that former President George W. Bush 'is not telling the truth' in his new memoir 'Decision Points.'" He  says Bush's description of an exchange between Bush & him about the Iraq War is false. "In his memoir 'Decisions: My Life in Politics,' Schroder wrote that Mr. Bush spoke in 'almost Biblical semantics' and gave off the impression 'that political decisions are a result of this conversation with God.'"

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