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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Thursday
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The Commentariat -- October 8

... Michael Crowley of Time on Jim Jones' departure & Tom Donilon who will replace Jones. ...

... David Sanger of the New York Times dishes on office resentment of Jones. Sanger says of Donilon, "In the Afghanistan-Pakistan review, he argued that the United States could not engage in what he termed 'endless war,' and has strongly defended Mr. Obama’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan next summer."

"Double-Crist?" Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal: "Republican leaders in [Florida] ... are fretting that a deal may be in the works to get Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek out of the Florida Senate race in order to boost Charlie Crist's flagging chances of beating Republican Marco Rubio. Across the state, groups such as Palm Beach Democrats for Crist and Tampa Democrats for Crist are emerging. Republican fears are further stoked by the almost universal acknowledgment that Mr. Meek has almost no chance to win." CW: if Crist would pledge to caucus with Democrats, this might be okay-ish. See more on the Florida Senate race on the Florida page.

Okay When I Do It; Unconstitutional When You Do It. Anchorage Daily News, October 7: "U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller acknowledged Thursday that in the past his family received assistance from federal Medicaid and Denali KidCare, the state low income health care program. His opponents in the race responded that he’s a hypocrite for taking assistance while now saying federal entitlement programs are unconstitutional. Miller’s campaign didn’t provide an answer for for the past week-and-a-half did not answer when asked what low-income assistance he has received." See more on the Alaska race on the Alaska page.

Brent Budowsky of The Hill: "Bill Raggio, the minority leader in the Nevada state Senate and a leading Silver State Republican, added a major new dimension to the U.S. Senate race there by blasting Sharron Angle for being radical and extreme, and endorsing Sen. Harry Reid (D) for reelection.... Raggio has never before endorsed a Democratic candidate in a major race. His political viewpoint is Republican-conservative." See more on the Nevada Senate race on the Nevada page.

Ezra Klein charts the "Anti-Stimulus." It's what Krugman & others have been predicting for two years. ...

... One result of Klein's Anti-Stimulus: David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "Local governments are cutting jobs at the fastest rate in almost 30 years." ...

... Steve Benin: "We have an obvious economic problem. But the political problem is standing in the way of making things better."

Kim Zetter in Wired: "A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online.... A half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi’s apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device. Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, cooperated willingly.... Comments the agents made during their visit suggested he’d been under FBI surveillance for three to six months."

Paul Krugman explains why New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's decision to scuttle a much-needed new rail tunnel between New Jersey & Manhattan was "destructive and incredibly foolish," and how it was emblematic of "a nation whose politicians seem to compete over who can show the least vision, the least concern about the future and the greatest willingness to pander to short-term, narrow-minded selfishness." ...

Killing the ARC tunnel will go down as one of the biggest policy blunders in New Jersey's history. -- Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)

... The underlying story from Angela Delli Santi of the AP: "As a candidate last year, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was willing to support the planned New Jersey-to-Manhattan rail tunnel. As governor, he now says the nation's largest public transportation project is a luxury the state can no longer afford. Christie justified his decision ... as a move to protect the long-range financial interests of New Jersey taxpayers. But supporters of the nearly $9 billion project said the decision will have the exact opposite result." Related Star-Ledger story. Lautenberg says the cancellation will cost the state $300 million.

Michael Luo of the New York Times: "Television spending by outside interest groups has more than doubled what was spent at this point in the 2006 midterms.... The explanation for how these interest groups have become such powerful players this year includes not just the Supreme Court’s ruling in January in the Citizens United case ..., but also a constellation of other legal developments since 2007 that have gradually loosened strictures governing campaign financing and the regulation of third-party groups."

CW: I don't do polls, BUT ... from Rasmussen: "Republican challenger Sharron Angle has now moved to a four-point lead over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada’s bare-knuckles U.S. Senate race." In November 2008, I really thought we had moved out of a country that could ever again elect an insane, lying right-wing extremist to Congress. We have not. ...

... This, and other, scary election predictions inspire me to post this blatantly self-serving video:

Obama's First Veto. Andrew Leonard of Salon thinks Elizabeth Warren may be behind President Obama's veto of a fast-tracked bill that would have made it easier for banks to foreclosure on homes. ...

So far, banks are claiming that the many forged documents uncovered by courts and attorneys represent a simple 'technical problem' with foreclosure processes. This is not true. What is happening is fraud to cover up fraud. -- Rep. Alan Grayson, in a letter to regulators

... NEW. Annie Lowrey of the Washington Independent: the winners & losers in the foreclosures fraud fiasco. ...

... Andrew Martin & David Streitfeld of the New York Times: "... as a scandal unfolds over mortgage lenders’ shoddy preparation of foreclosure documents, the fallout is beginning to hammer the housing market, especially in states like Florida where distressed properties are abundant." ...

NEW. Banks were lying and committing fraud, and our regulators were covering them and so a bad problem has become a hellacious one. -- derivatives expert Janet Tavakoli, on the origins of the housing crisis, in an Ezra Klein interview

... Jon Stewart explains the financial meltdown & foreclosure crisis:

Junk Bonds Are Back. Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: "The market for high-yield securities, as junk bonds are more politely known in the business, is booming as never before."

I feel so disappointed that the secretary and the president let a misrepresentation of my words on the part of the tea party be the reason to ask me to resign. Please look at the tape and see that I use the story from 1986 to show people that the issue is not about race but about those who have versus those who do not." -- Shirley Sherrod, from her forced resignation letter

Anatomy of a Fiasco. Peter Nicholas & Kathleen Hennessey in the Los Angeles Times: "Obama administration officials knew they did not have all the facts last summer when they rushed to dismiss Shirley Sherrod ... after learning of a video that painted her as a racist, newly released e-mails show."

Isabel Macdonald of The Nation & Lou Dobbs face off on Lawrence O'Donnell's show re: Macdonald's charge that Dobbs employed illegal immigrants. Here's the link to Macdonald's story:

CNN: "Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is asking voters to give her a second look. At a candidate forum sponsored by a group of local Republicans, O'Donnell blamed her campaign's recent troubles on unfair coverage in the 'liberal media'" who had subjected her to "character assassination."

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