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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Friday
Oct152010

The Commentariat -- October 15

Banksters, Robo-Judges & a Do-Nothing Administration

Paul Krugman explains & comments on "the mortgage morass" as it stands today: "True to form, the Obama administration’s response has been to oppose any action that might upset the banks.... The response from the right is, however, even worse." ...

... The Rocket Docket. Brady Dennis, a straight reporter at the Washington Post, describes Florida's "rocket docket": judges whom the state has hired out of retirement to handle the foreclosure backlog are robo-signing uncontested foreclosures even though the banks' paperwork is not in order. Many judges, attorneys argue, are worse than the banks. ...

... How did we get in this mess? William Cohan shows us how it all started -- investment banks not only ignored advice that a large percentage of the loans they were bundling failed to meet standard underwriting guidelines, they withheld that information from investors to whom they sold the packages. Cohan is hopeful some banksters finally will get their comuppance: "So far, not a soul on Wall Street has been found to be criminally liable for the practices that led to the financial crisis. But thanks, in part, to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, we are getting closer than ever to the day when the culprits will pay for what they did." ...

... New York Times: "Angelo R. Mozilo, the founder and former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, agreed to pay $67.5 million Friday to settle a civil fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission last year." ...

... Ezra Klein has some good suggestions on how to fix the meltdown. CW: unfortunately, Klein's solutions require the federal agencies to get off their lazy, do-nothing asses. Good luck with that. ...

... The New York Times Editorial Board also suggest some fixes, including modifying bankruptcy laws to force banks to modify loans. "Throughout this crisis, the Obama administration has been far more worried about protecting the banks than protecting homeowners.... The banks that got us into this mess can’t be trusted to get us out of it. The administration and Congress need to act." ...

... David Hilzenrath of the Washington Post: "Stocks of major banks declined sharply Thursday amid concern that widespread corner-cutting in the foreclosure process could saddle the financial system with a costly and paralyzing mess. The sell-off was one of the most vivid indications yet that, just as banks were recovering from the financial crisis of recent years, foreclosure problems could take a new toll." ...

... Mark Gongloff of the Wall Street Journal on the markets' "acute uncertainty" about banks in light of the foreclosure crisis. ...

... Which only adds to pressure on the bank-friendly Obama Administration & on the friendly banks themselves to get off the dime, Bloomberg reports. CW: so far, nobody's budging. ...

... Max Abelson of the New York Observer: Wall Street blames the homebuyers: as one Goldman Sachs analyst said, "The problem is they don't deserve to be in that place. They probably deserve to be there less than they used to." ...

... The New York Observer's "Horror Stories from the Foreclosure Crisis." The first one: "Man without Mortgage Gets Foreclosed." Slideshow.

Thomas Cox. New York Times photo.... David Streitfeld of the New York Times: the little house in Maine that broke the bank. Thomas Cox, a former bank foreclosure officer, now working for a nonprofit, took on GMAC on behalf of a foreclosed homeowner & laid "the groundwork for foreclosure challenges nationwide." ...

... Digby points out that way back in 2007 she & Bill Moyers were on the Case of the Disappearing Paperwork. CW: this isn't a surprise to anybody in the industry, & it shouldn't be a surprise to regulators.

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

I have this new diet, it’s called the 'Pretend You’re a Republican Diet.' It’s every time you see carbs or sweets or fats, you pretend you’re a Senate Republican and just say no. -- Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who has lost 40 pounds since she gave birth two years ago

Justin Elliott of Salon: according to Gen. Hugh Shelton, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during part of President Clinton's Administration, an unnamed Clinton cabinet member whispered to Shelton,

What we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?

Shelton says he replied, Why, of course we can. Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go.

Smurfers. Scott Hensley of NPR: "how CVS became meth makers' favorite drugstore."

Sam Stein: Drummond Pike, "... the founder and CEO of the Tides Foundation (a frequent [Glenn] Beck target), has written advertisers asking them to remove their sponsorship of the Fox News program or risk having 'blood on their hands.'" ... Pike, who along with his organization was recently targeted by an assassin inspired by Beck's program, penned a letter on Friday to the Chairmen of the Boards of JP Morgan Chase, GEICO, Zurich Financial, Chrysler, Direct Holdings Americas, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Lilly Corporate Center, BP, and The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc." The full text of Pike's letter is here.

How Low the Bar? Steve Benen: "The political world seems to realize that some real nutjobs have won major-party nominations this year, which then apparently leads to surprise when clearly unqualified nominees manage to engage in a debate without drooling on themselves for an hour.... We seem to have developed a depressing checklist: (a) did the candidate show up; (b) did the candidate speak English; (c) did the candidate remember the talking points drilled into his/her head by handlers from Washington; (d) did the candidate repeat the poll-tested zinger; (e) did the candidate avoid some kind of mental breakdown."

Scott Woolley of Fortune: why Carly Fiorina never mentions the job that gave her name recognition: head of Lucent Technology. Under Fiorina, they gambled big, & shortly after she moved to Hewlitt-Packard, Lucent went under because of huge, unwise vendor loans made on Fiorina's watch. But Fiorina made out like a bandit.

David Brooks wrote an op-ed column today about what a nice guy Rep. Mark Kirk is, even though he lied repeatedly about his military service record. (See my comment [#10, Marie Burns].) I'll bet Our Miss Brooks thinks Kirk's voter intimidation program is A-okay, too. But Olbermann doesn't:

Chad Levingood of the Delaware News Journal reports on Chris Coons' & Christine O'Donnell's second debate. ...

I've got Sean Hannity in my back pocket, and I can go on his show and raise money by attacking you guys. -- Christine O'Donnell, to GOP insiders who aren't helping her campaign

... "People thought of her as an ignorant, deadbeat witch." Keith Olbermann & Howard Fineman discuss Christine O'Donnell's candidacy:

Karoun Demirjian of the Las Vegas Sun recaps the debate/smackdown between Harry Reid & Sharron Angle. CW: rhymes with "witch." You can watch it on C-SPAN.

Bruce L. R. Smith, in a Washington Post op-ed, remembers Barack Obama, Sr., from their days at Harvard. Smith refutes Dinesh D'Souza's flimsy charge that President Obama inherited "Kenyan anti-colonialist" philosophy from his father.

Nick Seaver of AmericaBlog applied to be a member of the audience in President Obama's youth town hall, held yesterday. The "casting" rep who interviewed him asked him to come up with a "lighter" question than the alreadly boring one he suggested, but evidently his response wasn't light enough because the producers rejected Seaver. ... Washington Post follow-up: asked about the Seaver incident, Robert Gibbs gave a non-response response.

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