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
Nov162010

The Commentariat -- November 16

President Obama awards the Medal of Honor to Army SSgt. Salvatore Giunta. Here's the New York Times story on Giunta's acts of valor:

Michael Moore tells Senate Democrats they've got seven weeks to get off their asses & pass the 420 bills the House already passed. CW: unfortunately, the majority of Senate Democrats are not of a mind to do what's right by the American people.

** Michael Hudson, writing for AlterNet, demonstrates how President Obama's cynical economic policy is indistinguishable from Bush-Cheney pro-Wall Street policies."

Charlie Rangel and Congressional Ethics Farce. Dana Milbank: "The man who until recently had sway over hundreds of billions of dollars as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee was now claiming that he was too indigent to hire a lawyer. Half an hour into the public hearing he had demanded for so long, Rangel announced that he was leaving."

We never did enough in terms of [the unemployment rate] for us to have the kind of success we would have. We had a Roosevelt moment and responded like Hoover.-- Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) ...

... Jordan Fabian of The Hill: "Rep. John Larson (Conn.), the House Democratic Caucus chairman who is expected to keep his position in a vote on Wednesday, said that his party did not do enough in the eyes of voters to help bring down the nation's 9.6 percent unemployment rate."

Tom Scotta, in Slate, has a terrific takedown, not just of partisan pollsters Pat Caddell & Douglas Schoen for their disingenuous "bilge," but also of the lowlife editor of the Washington Post's editorial page Fred Hiatt:

Fred Hiatt, the insufferable editor of the Post's opinion pages, seems to believe that people hate his section because he has clung with fearless integrity to his support for invading Iraq ... and because the section's overall politics are to the right of the beliefs of the average reader of the Washington Post. Actually, the reason some of us despise Hiatt and his section is that he consistently chooses to print dishonest garbage, composed by disingenuous partisan hacks, lobbyists, or lobbyist-hacks. The Post opinion section is ... a place where ... professional propagandists float their newest lies, slogans, and unsubstantiated nonsense, to see if they can get them to bob into the political mainstream.

Speaking of hacks writing op-ed nonsense for the Washington Post, here's pseudo-journalist Keith Olbermann harumphing about former journalist Ted Koppel's harumphing over Olbermann & his part in the "death of real news." Keith gets it right:

CBS News: "Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowki told CBS News' Katie Couric today that she would not support Sarah Palin for president because Palin lacks the "leadership qualities" and "intellectual curiosity" to craft great policy":

... Matt Bai of the New York Times: the airing of the first episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" is just a reminder that Sarah Palin herself is a media production. "Palin expertly allowed herself to be shaped by the demands of the marketplace, and in this way she became the best example yet of a new phenomenon in our politics -- what we might think of as the crowd-sourced candidate."

... Nick Bilton of the New York Times: "... refudiate has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, published by the Oxford University Press, beating out a number of other locutions - many technology-related -- that have spread through the language and the Web over the past year."

Alex Pareene of Salon has an appropriately snarky take on Ginni Thomas' departure or demotion or whatever from her tea party "non-profit": "Not because political activism and fundraising (from anonymous donors) by the wife of a Supreme Court justice raises ethical questions, but because the media keeps bugging Ginni about said ethical questions. Just last month, Ginni had to remove her name from a 'memo' that called Obamacare unconstitutional, so that her husband wouldn't have to recuse himself when it came time for him to decide that Obamacare is unconstitutional." ...

Wonkette, of course, is even snarkier. Highly recommended for a laugh.

Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "Senate Republicans opened the lame-duck session of Congress on Monday by signaling their commitment to the antispending posture that fueled their big gains on Election Day, underscoring the Tea Party movement’s influence on the Republican leadership. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, drove the point home as soon as the Senate convened by announcing that he would support a proposed ban on Congressional earmarks, reversing his longtime practice of avidly pursuing money for his state." ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times thinks John McCain, who for years has made the banning of earmarks his cri de coeur, must have a bittersweet reaction to President Obama & former earmark lovers being the ones who may actually end earmarks.

Republican Hypocrisy Watch. Glenn Thrush of Politico: Freshman Maryland Republican Congressman Andy Harris, a physician no less, was upset to learn his government-subsidized health insurance policy would not kick in the day he was sworn in. "Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap," said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The staffer "was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine." ...

... I think we finally have a working definition of a health insurance crisis -- when a member of Congress has to go a whole month without coverage. Of course nothing's stopping him [Rep. Harris] from using his own money and purchasing private health insurance in the individual market. Those onerous Obamacare regulations haven't taken effect yet so he can explore the wonders of a still-functioning private insurance market as God and Adam Smith intended. -- Jonathan Chait of The New Republic

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