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
Oct202010

The Commentariat -- October 21

Eric Lipton, Mike McIntire & Don Van Natta Jr. of the New York Times on how & where the national Chamber of Commerce gets its millions to run ads against the Obama Administration & other Democrats.

Matt Cooper of the National Journal: "Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell rarely agree, but this week, in separate interviews, both the president and the Senate minority leader called for humility as the two parties prepare for the election and its aftermath."

** John Judis of The National Review New Republic (oh crap!) how the Obama Administration blew management of the housing crisis from the beginning & how they remain clueless both actually & politically. CW: it's a short piece, packed with sensible analysis. As I've said before, fire Shaun Donovan. Fire Tim Geithner. ...

... Gretchen Morgenson & Andrew Martin of the New York Times: "... missing and possibly fraudulent documents are at the center of a potentially seismic legal clash that pits big lenders against homeowners and their advocates concerned that the lenders’ rush to foreclose flouts private property rights. That clash — expected to be played out in courtrooms across the country and scrutinized by law enforcement officials investigating possible wrongdoing by big lenders — leaped to the forefront of the mortgage crisis this week as big lenders began lifting their freezes on foreclosures and insisted the worst was behind them." ...

... Economist Simon Johnson: "The foreclosure morass clearly poses systemic risk, both through its general effects on uncertainty about losses and because any manifest weakness at one big bank could spread – in some obvious ways and in some unanticipated ways – through the rest of the system." Johnson recommends that the Financial Stability Oversight Council created under the Dodd-Frank Act perform bank stress tests now.

James Risen of the New York Times: "Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart.... Federal prosecutors have failed to overcome a series of legal hurdles, including the difficulties of obtaining evidence in war zones, of gaining proper jurisdiction for prosecutions in American civilian courts, and of overcoming immunity deals given to defendants by American officials on the scene."

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Brian Stelter of the New York Times: "NPR’s decision Wednesday to fire Juan Williams and Fox News Channel’s decision to give him a new contract on Thursday put into sharp relief the two versions of journalism that compete every day for Americans’ attention."...

... Glenn Greenwald welcomes NPR's firing of Juan Williams for expressing his anti-Muslim bigotry on Bill O'Reilly's Fox "News" show. (See Infotainment, in the lower right column, for the backstory.) ...

... Adam Serwer, writing in the Washington Post, takes a slightly more nuanced view.

The Backstory

Sheiks on a Plane! When I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous. -- Juan Williams

New York Times: "NPR has terminated its contract with Juan Williams, one of its senior news analysts, after he made comments about Muslims on the Fox News Channel." ...

... Here's the segment where Williams did himself in:

... Politico Update: "Fox News moved swiftly to turn the controversy over Juan Williams’ firing by NPR to its advantage, offering Williams an expanded role on the network and a new three-year contract Thursday in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million.... NPR’s decision to fire Williams over comments he made about Muslims on Fox has prompted calls on the right for Congress to remove its funding. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) plans to introduce a bill to strip any federal money – which NPR says amounts to about 2 percent of its annual budget."

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"Three Things to Do When Clarence Thomas's Wife Calls You." Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker: "Like many Americans, over the past several years I have been the recipient of multiple unwelcome voicemails from the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas...."

... Lawrence O'Donnell, Jackie Calmes & Dahlia Lithwick discuss Ginni Thomas's strange call to Anita Hill:

     ... Here's Calmes' October 8/9 New York Times story about Ginni Thomas's secretly-funded tea party group. ...

... Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, the exemplar of inside-the-beltway elitism, always annoys me, but her column today -- after she gets through talking about herself & her elite husband -- on the Thomas-Hill Affair provides a succinct history lesson for those who have forgot the details or were five years old during the Thomas confirmation hearings. The preponderance of the evidence, says Marcus who covered the hearings, is that Hill, not Thomas, was telling the truth.

You might call New York's Jimmy McMillan a single-issue candidate:

CW: I don't do polls, but.... Alexander Burns of Politico: "A new wave of polling shows virtually every close Senate race growing even more competitive, raising the pressure on both parties in the final days of the midterm campaign." Democrats are moving up.

Washington Post: Bob J. Perry of Houston, "a wealthy Texas homebuilder who helped finance the anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, contributed $7 million to American Crossroads, [the Karl Rove-Ed Gillespie outfit,] making him the top contributor to one of the main groups dedicated to helping Republicans win control of Congress." ...

... Keith Olbermann discusses the Chamber of Commerce's efforts to help American corporations move jobs overseas & elsewhere. And other stuff. Rep. Barney Frank joins him:

... Probably when tea partiers sent their hard-earned nickels & dimes to the Tea Party Express, they didn't realize their contributions would go to sending TPE staffers on cruises, but as Ken Vogel of Politico reported, that what happened. In fairness, it was a "working" cruise. And it only cost $103,000. So far. And one staffer didn't have fun.

Michael Shear of the New York Times: philanthropist George Soros gives Media Matters $1 million....

... Glenn Beck Goes Bonkers. Jeremy Holden of Media Matters: "Tonight [October 20], Glenn Beck responded to news that philanthropist George Soros had made his first donation to Media Matters by once again vilifying Soros, the Tides Foundation, and a host of progressive organizations, while portraying Beck as the target of a Soros-ordered hit."

Alan Schwarz of the New York Times: football "helmets both new and used are not — and have never been — formally tested against the forces believed to cause concussions. The industry, which receives no governmental or other independent oversight, requires helmets for players of all ages to withstand only the extremely high-level force that would otherwise fracture skulls. The standard has not changed meaningfully since it was written in 1973, despite rising concussion rates in youth football and the growing awareness of how the injury can cause significant short- and long-term problems with memory, depression and other cognitive functions, especially in children."

Mark Sherman of the AP explains why the DOJ defends laws the President says he opposes. "The tradition flows directly from the president's constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed...." ...

... Devin Dwyer of ABC News: Ted Olson, a former U.S. Solicitor General who has challenged California's ban on same-sex marriage, disagrees. With video.

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