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
Oct222010

The Commentariat -- October 23

The New York Times' "War Logs" page with links to stories on the newly-released Iraq documents & to the Afghanistan papers. The other English-language paper to get the new documents was the Guardian. Here's their "Iraq War Logs" page. ...

... Here's an ABC News report:

     ... ABC News' print report is here. ...

... Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic: "The big reveal from the hundreds of thousands of documents posted on Wikileaks today is probably going to be the incredibly awful reports of systematized detainee abuse by Iraqi soldiers and security forces right under the noses of the American-led coalition...."

... John Burns & Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times profile WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a hunted & perhaps haunted man.

David Hoffman of Foreign Policy: "The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Gen. Hugh Shelton, says in his just-published memoir, Without Hesitation: the Odyssey of an American Warrior,   that President Bill Clinton’s White House lost the 'presidential authorization codes' for launching a nuclear strike, and they were missing 'for months.' Shelton writes, 'This is a big deal -- a gargantuan deal -- and we dodged a silver bullet.'” But Hoffman says Shelton's story "doesn't add up."

After spending weeks trashing all the loons, Gail Collins finally found a candidate to love -- Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. 

Ashley Parker of the New York Times interviews Clarence Thomas's former girlfriend Lillian McEwen. McEwen believes Anita Hill was telling the truth about Thomas because the incidents Hill described are consistent with McEwen's experience with Thomas. See related stories in yesterday's Commentariat. ...

... McEwen speaks with ABC News reporter Rebecca Cooper:

... Phone Sex. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The phone call Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife placed to Anita Hill earlier this month seeking an apology for Hill’s allegation 19 years ago that Thomas sexually harassed her may go down as a textbook lesson in unintended consequences. ...

... Heather at Crooks & Liars: "Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife Ginni makes a fool out of herself and [Sen. Orrin] Hatch goes on the air and attacks Anita Hill." According to Hatch, Hill is just delusional & the Thomases, Clarence & Ginni are pure as the driven snow. With video & transcript. Hatch warns us,

But don't smear Clarence Thomas and above all don't smear his wife, Ginni. She's a really good person.

... Here's a refresher course on the hearings from PBS. Thomas's likely perjury begins two minutes in:

... Ann Woolner of Bloomberg News: before she called Anita Hill, Ginni Thomas should have called all those witnesses who corroborated Hill's story to see if they would recant. ...

Racism is a lazy man's substitute for using good judgment ... Common sense becomes racism when skin color becomes a formula for figuring out who is a danger to me. -- Juan Williams, 1986, rebutting a racist Richard Cohen column, via Michael Moore

... Paul Farhi of the New York Times reports on the fallout from NPR's firing of Juan Williams. ...

... Michael Moore writes "an open letter to Juan Williams":

Now that you have a new $2 million contract with Fox, let me come on with you for some in-depth discussions about the terrorists' real motivations. We can't let another day go by letting the PC brigade stop us from telling the truth: Terrorists aren't trying to kill us because they hate our freedom. They're killing us because we're in their countries killing them.

Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times: in some races around the country, Democrats are playing dirty, financially supporting third-party candidates of the tea party persuasion whom they hope will siphon off votes from the Republican candidates.

"The Swift Boaters Are Back." Dan Eggen & T. W. Farnam of the Washington Post: "Funders of the stealth campaign against presidential candidate John Kerry have returned in force six years later, giving millions of dollars to independent groups targeting Democrats in the November midterm elections...."

Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: since Americans oppose privitization of Social Security, Republicans are just renaming it. Here's Oregon's senatorial nominee Jim Huffman in a debate with Sen. Ron Wyden simultaneously speaking out of both sides of his mouth:

I have argued for allowing newcomers to the Social Security system to have the option of private accounts. I have not argued for privatizing the Social Security system.

     ... Huffman is a law professor. He knows what he's doing. What "privitization" is is "having the option of private accounts." With video.

Merry Christmas! Chris Johnson of the Washington Blade: Daniel Alter, "a gay New York attorney whose nomination to the federal bench was rejected by the White House over anti-Christian comments he allegedly made, claims that media outlets mischaracterized his views."

Because Charles Murray is a right-wing ideologue, he reads data & draws loony conclusions. But the data he outlines in this Washington Post op-ed are interesting. Murray, who was co-author of the deservedly controversial book The Bell Curve, identifies a "New Elite" (caps his) who "live in a world that doesn't intersect with mainstream America in many important ways." Murray concludes that since the elite don't go to tractor pulls or watch "Dancing with the Stars," they are "ignorant" of & "isolated" from Real America. In fact, he says, "they are not of America."

Washington Post: "With his party's control of Congress hanging in the balance, President Obama touched down [in Las Vegas, Nevada] Friday night to help bail out Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), an ally now locked in a dead heat with a heroine of the tea party movement." C-SPAN has the video; President Obama begins speaking about 15 min. in.

San Francisco Chronicle: "President Obama starred Friday at the largest political rally of California's 2010 election season [at USC's Alumni Park], imploring a raucous crowd of 32,000 to vote and telling them, 'You have the chance to set the direction of this state, and this country - just like you did in 2008.'" C-SPAN has the video; the President comes on stage about 10:15 min. in.

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