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
Oct012010

The Commentariat -- October 2

Dana Milbank on Glenn Beck's fantastic view of history, which revolves around his obsession with Adolf Hitler & President Woodrow Wilson, both of whom, Beck says, explain President Obama. "Beck has created an online 'Beck University' to spread his unique views of the past and has hosted 'Founders' Fridays' on his television show, devoted to rewriting the nation's early history as that of a fundamentalist state." Here's Milbank on Beck & Hitler:

In case you were wondering, Justin Elliott of Salon has a viable theory of how Bob Woodward gains access to the high & mighty. ...

... Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Bob Woodward's powerful new book, 'Obama's Wars,' underscores the delicacy of the relationship between [President] Obama and [General] Petraeus by highlighting the tensions that have long existed between the two ambitious and competitive men." ...

... Oh dear, the right's Woodward turns on its Bernstein. Andrew Breitbart says James "O'Keefe owes his supporters an explanation" for his plan to seduce or pretend to seduce CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau. For the backstory, see the September 30 Commentariat. ...

... Speaking of Brietbart & O'Keefe, Driftglass explains how "Chicago-style politics" works.

I believe in a country that rewards hard work and responsibility, a country where we look after one other, a country that says I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, I'm going to give a hand up, join hands with folks and try to lift all of us up so we all have a better future, not just some - but all of us. That's what I believe.
-- Barack Obama, at Gen44

President Obama gets his groove back at the Gen44 shindig. He begins speaking about 2 min. in:

     ... AP: "... President Barack Obama whipped up young supporters at a rally Thursday night." He spoke before "a sold-out crowd of 3,000 at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at DAR Constitution Hall" in Washington, D.C.

** CW: Peter Birkenhead speaks for me. "I'll quit whining when you start fighting.... When Democrats tacitly accept Republican delusions and lies, when they characterize them as mere 'differences of opinion,' or adopt them as their own, they help give body and shape -- the weight of reality -- to insidious fantasy." Read every word.

Tobin Harshaw of the New York Times has a good roundup of opinions about TARP, which has been in the news lately because of mounting evidence it may not be nearly as costly as expected. ...

... Here's a somewhat expanded version of the Simon Johnson post Harshaw links. CW: Johnson seems to me to have the best overall perspective. The "three serious mistakes" Johnson mentions seem to be at the heart of what is really wrong with TARP, as opposed to what teabaggers think is wrong with it.

Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post: "The Taliban in recent months has developed increasingly sophisticated and nimble propaganda tactics.... U.S. officials and Afghan analysts say the Taliban has become adept at portraying the West as being on the brink of defeat, at exploiting rifts between Washington and Kabul and at disparaging the administration of President Hamid Karzai as a 'puppet' state with little reach outside the capital. The group is also attempting to assure Afghans that it has a strategy for governing the country again, presenting a platform of stamping out corruption and even protecting women's rights."

Jacob Weisberg in Slate tries to decipher what the right means by "elitism": it has "connotations of education, geography, ideology, taste, and lifestyle — such that a millionaire investment banker who works for Goldman Sachs, went to Harvard, and reads the New York Times is an elitist but a billionaire CEO who grew up in Houston, went to a state university, and contributes to Republicans, is not." Weisberg remarks that during the 2008 presidential race, John McCain,

... the son and grandson of admirals, a millionaire who couldn't remember how many houses he owned, accuse[d] his mixed-race opponent, raised by a single-mother and only a few years past paying off his student loans, of being the real elite candidate in the campaign.

Meatballs Matter. Bill Maher's "Christine O'Donnell Clip of the Week." Here O'Donnell speaks of her "faith journey":

... Daughter of Bozo. Mark Leibovich of the New York Times profiles Christine O'Donnell. ...

... Lying about the Lies. Keith Olbermann & David Corn discuss Christine O'Donnell's fantasy

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