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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Tuesday
Sep072010

The Commentariat -- September 7

Lulu Moretti was cleaning out her computer files today when she came across this item from 2002. Sadly, not much has changed:

Government Announcement:

The government announced today that it is changing its emblem to a condom because it more clearly reflects the government's political stance. A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while it's actually screwing you.

Plouffe Wants You:

And over the last two years, that's meant taking on some powerful interests.... And they're not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That's not in my prepared remarks, it's just -- but it's true. -- Barack Obama, Labor Day speech

Once again, they’re striking right at the capillaries -- Paul Krugman, on the President's itty-bitty infrastructure spending proposal

... Bob Herbert liked the President's Labor Day speech: "Leaning toward the microphone, with his shirt collar unbuttoned, Mr. Obama spoke in a way that belied his reputation for aloofness, for struggling to connect in a visceral way with ordinary working people." ...

... Peter Slevin of the New York Times reports on the speech. ...

... AND from Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Mary Williams Walsh, the President's Labor Day speech in Milwaukee: "President Obama, looking to stimulate a sluggish economy and create jobs, called Monday for Congress to approve major upgrades to the nation’s roads, rail lines and runways — part of a six-year plan that would cost tens of billions of dollars and create a government-run bank to finance innovative transportation projects."

      ... Paul Krugman responds to the proposal for $50 billion in new spending on infrastructure:

1. It’s a good idea
2. It’s much too small
3. It won’t pass anyway — which makes you wonder why the administration didn’t propose a bigger plan, so as to at least make the point that the other party is standing in the way of much needed repair to our roads, ports, sewers, and more– not to mention creating jobs.

Because what the New York Times op-ed page really needs right now is another white male columnist, & the best bet would be a careless womanizer who knocked up his super-rich girlfriend, then dumped her for a hotter babe -- they now bring us Peter Orszag. Orszag, Obama's nerdy, burned-out budget director, naturally has something to say about budgets & taxes. It's long. You might want to read it. I don't. So I didn't. ...

... Fortunately, John Chandley/Scarecrow at Firedoglake read it for me & tore into Orszag more-or-less as I would have if I had the stomach to read that creep: "For the thousandth time, tax cuts aren’t very effective, and those applied to rich people suck." ...

     ... Greg Sargent Update: Orszag tries to walk back his "rift" with President Obama. CW: sorry, Petie; I know you're a numbers guy, but words count, too.

... John Cole gets in a fight with Jake Tapper, which is not worth reading about unless you like that stuff, but Cole's summary of Orszag's op-ed will spare your reading the original. ...

... Ben Smith of Politico reported on Orszag's new gig last week. Smith has a humorous comment on the move.

Peter Boyer of The New Yorker: "Inside C Street, Washington's Frat House for Jesus." CW: I haven't read this long piece yet, but it looks great. I will be reading it.

Devona Walker in TruthOut: "The real estate and foreclosure crisis ... has stripped black families of more wealth than any single event in U.S. history. Due entirely to subprime loans, black borrowers are expected to lose between $71 billion and $92 billion.... Black and Latino minorities have been disproportionately targeted and affected by subprime loans."

Not satisified with his Rachel Maddow appearance calling out Haley Barbour's wholesale lies about the "history" of "Republican support" for civil rights, Gene Robinson covers Barbour's disgusting revisionist -- i.e., totally invented -- history in his WashPo column. (You can watch Robinson's discussion with Maddow here.)

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had a rule: all his clerks must first have trained with appeals court judges appointed by Republican presidents. The other justices, on both right & left, also routinely make ideological hires. "The polarization among law clerks has had consequences for the development of the law, a 2008 study published in the DePaul Law Review found." Liptak covers several aspects of the Justices' hiring practices & dips into the history of how hiring practices have changed.

Driftglass assesses Tom Friedman's Sunday morning performance on ABC's "This Week with Whoever Christiane Amanpour." You can watch all the segments of the gabfest here, including more footage of Tony Blair (who, in case you forgot, Driftglass reminds us was "once the tribal chieftain of a group called the Britons") than you'll ever care to see. In the segment below, Paul Krugman reminds his colleague Friedman, et al., that Obama did the stimulus package before he did healthcare. Because everybody, right on Republican message, fucking "forgot":

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