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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
Aug252023

The Conversation -- August 26, 2023

Jack Shafer of Politico, in Politico Magazine, argues that [Donald] Trump's return to Twitter-currently-trying-to-be-known-as-X will prove he can never go home again. "Trump's [X-Twitter] post [of his mugshot], essentially concedes that his plan to build his own social media empire under the Truth Social banner is a bust.... But no man ever steps in the same river twice -- it's not the same river, and he's not the same man, as the sage said.... Thanks to inertia, changing technology, fickle tastes and Musk's determination to wreck it, the site has lost its cachet.... Trump became a Twitter star by two means. The first was the novelty of a presidential candidate popping off like a sloppy drunk at closing time.... [The second -- I guess, Shafer isn't clear -- is that journalists dutifully copied down & reported on Trump's tweets.] It's not the same press corps that transmuted his tweets into news stories back. They learned a lesson."

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "If there were any justice in the world, Donald Trump would have taken the Mug Shot of Dorian Gray. It should have shown Trump's corroding soul rather than his truculent face.... ... Trump has long felt that squinting or scowling is a good look for him.... Thursday night was performative for Trump: sweeping in with his private jet and giant motorcade that screamed two-tiered justice system, with law enforcement clearing the Atlanta streets, like centurions clearing the way for Caesar."

~~~~~~~~~~

Trump Family Crime Blotter

Inmate No. P01135809

Alex Gangitano of the Hill: "President Biden on Friday chimed in on former President Trump's mug shot.... When asked about the mug shot, Biden told reporters, 'I did see it on television. Handsome guy.'... Biden spoke to reporters while on vacation in Lake Tahoe, Nev." MB: Biden was smiling broadly when he weighed in on Trump's good looks.

Jennifer Behney of Mediaite: In a NewsMax interview Thursday night, Donald Trump said his booking in the Fulton County jail was a &"terrible experience." "'I came in, I was treated very nicely. But, it is what it is; I took a mugshot, which, I'd never heard the words "mug shot." They didn't teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance,' Trump said before railing about what he called 'election interference' by a 'radical-left district attorney.'" MB: So here's Trump, Leader of the People, portraying himself as superior to them. He's treated very nicely, implicitly because he's better than the usual inmate who would get roughed up or maybe even killed at the Fulton County Jail. He's never heard of mugshots because people in his rarefied circle have no occasion to discuss or even read about such things. He had a very fine education -- where professors are fastidiously silent on the travails of the "other" -- because he's a very fine person. Oh, and he showed up in Atlanta in his own jet plane and traveled to & from the jail with an entourage & an escort of maybe 100 law enforcement officers. I'm still waiting to learn how that happened.

Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "As of late Friday morning, all 19 defendants in the state election interference case involving ... Donald J. Trump had turned themselves in. Jeffrey A. Clark, the former high-ranking Justice Department official..., was booked at the Fulton County Jail early on Friday, a few hours after the former president's dramatic booking at the same Atlanta facility.... The last two defendants in the case, Trevian C. Kutti and Steven C. Lee, surrendered on Friday morning before noon, the deadline the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, had set for them to appear at the jail before she would start to issue arrest warrants. All but one of the 19 defendants negotiated bail agreements with prosecutors ahead of time, and were released immediately after being processed at the jail. The one defendant [Harrison Floyd] who did not do so was still being held at the jail on Friday." (Also linked yesterday.)

Michael Conway, a House Judiciary Committee counsel during the Watergate investigation, in an MSNBC opinion piece: "... the felony charges against little-known Georgia residents [Scott] Hall, Cathy Latham and Misty Hampton -- who have been charged with conspiracy to commit election fraud, computer fraud, illegal access to voting machines and invasion of privacy -- reveal the extent of the Trump campaign's effort to overturn the election. Their brazen intrusion and the futility of their efforts recall ... the hapless criminal conduct of the White House's so-called Plumbers[, which] was a major element of the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. Both Nixon's Plumbers and the Coffee County Three tried to seize sensitive information.... And it was the need to subsequently hide the existence of the Plumbers -- whose members, [Gordon] Liddy and [Howard] Hunt, oversaw the burglary -- that was a key factor in the Watergate cover-up.... The Trump loyalists who breached the voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia, made little effort to conceal their activities.... Just as the rule of law punished the guilty almost five decades ago, the prosecutions of those who broke the law to do Trump's bidding must succeed in order to preserve our democracy."

Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Attorney John Eastman, an architect of Donald Trump's last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election, may not postpone his ongoing disbarment hearings just because he's been indicted in Georgia, a California judge ruled Friday. Yvette Roland, a judge on the California State Bar Court, said Eastman had effectively waived any rights against self-incrimination by taking the stand in his disbarment proceedings in June -- even though he knew he could be indicted in either Washington, D.C., or Georgia."

MEANWHILE, in Arizona. Alex Henderson of Alternet: Rolling Stone reports, "'Investigators assigned ... by Arizona's Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes have recently asked potential witnesses and other individuals specific questions not only about [Rudy] Giuliani's behind-the-scenes [post-election activity], but that of other key Trump lieutenants at the time, as well.... Prosecutors appear particularly interested in a number of notable meetings and phone calls, including a late November 2020 meeting with members of Arizona's state legislature convened by the Trump legal team, which aired bogus claims of voter fraud and lobbied lawmakers to "take over" the state's selection of electors, the sources say.'... [Rolling Stone reporters Adam] Rawnsley and [Asawin] Suebsaeng report that Arizona investigators, sources say, 'have also at times inquired about [Donald] Trump's level of personal involvement in' the 'Arizona-focused pressure campaign....'"


Darlene Superville of the AP: "President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will observe Monday's 60th anniversary of the March on Washington by meeting with organizers of the 1963 gathering and relatives of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial. The Oval Office meeting will be held six decades after President John F. Kennedy and King met at the White House on the morning of the march on Aug. 28, 1963.... Biden also will speak later Monday at a White House reception commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legal organization that was established at Kennedy's request to help advocate for racial justice.... Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies will gather in Washington on Saturday to mark six decades since the first march."

More Trouble in Winger World. Natalie Allison of Politico: "The vice chair of the Conservative Political Action Coalition has resigned from his longtime position on the organization's board and is calling for investigations into the group's top leader and its financial practices, among other issues. Charlie Gerow, an attorney and communications executive who has served on the board of CPAC and its parent organization, the American Conservative Union, for nearly two decades, submitted his letter of resignation on Friday.... Gerow's resignation follows months of turbulence at the prominent conservative organization, where Chair Matt Schlapp earlier this year was sued by a former Herschel Walker Senate campaign staffer over allegations of sexual assault. Board member and treasurer Bob Beauprez resigned from his position in May, citing concerns over the organization's financial reports, while Randy Neugebauer and Mike Rose also stepped down from the board earlier this year."

Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) could face new corruption charges as prosecutors meet with lawyers to weigh a decision, reported the Wall Street Journal on Friday. According to the report, prosecutors are looking into whether he or his wife Nadine Arslanian sold political favors in exchange for gifts. They are also investigating how a New Jersey businessman became the sole certifier of Halal meat exported from the United States to Egypt one month after a meeting with Menendez. A report earlier this summer found that another person caught up in the probe, real estate magnate Fred Daibes, has ties to the mob."

Presidential Race 2024

Hannah Demissie & Laura Gersony of ABC News: "... over the past few weeks a growing body of conservative scholars have raised the constitutional argument that [Donald] Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election make him ineligible to hold federal office ever again ... [under] Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment.... On Tuesday, Bryant 'Corky' Messner, a lawyer who lives in New Hampshire, became the first person to announce concrete plans to ... keep Trump off the ballot.... New Hampshire's Secretary of State Office confirmed to ABC News that Messner met with Secretary of State David Scanlan Friday to discuss Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. 'Secretary Scanlan will be conferring with the New Hampshire Attorney General and other legal counsel on this issue; however, he believes any action taken under this Constitutional provision will have to be based on Judicial guidance,' Anna Sventek, communications director for Scanlan, told ABC News...." Two public advocacy organizations, CREW & Free Speech for People, also say they are pursuing efforts to keep Trump off state ballots.

Lisa Lerer & Nicholas Nehamas of the New York Times: Ron DeSantis is using an unverifiable story of a botched abortion that was supposed to have taken place in 1955 as his rationale for draconian anti-abortion laws. MB: That's pretty odd. There have been numerous verified stories about botched state-run executions, yet this year DeSantis made it easier to impose the death penalty.

News Lede

AP: "Multiple people were fatally shot Saturday inside a Jacksonville, Florida, Dollar General store, the city's mayor has told a television station. Mayor Donna Deegan told WJXT 'there are a number of fatalities' inside the store but didn't give a precise number." MB: Officials have released very little information about the shootings. ~~~

     ~~~ The story has been updated. New Lede: "A white man fatally shot three people inside a Jacksonville, Florida, Dollar General store on Saturday in a predominately Black neighborhood in an attack that the local sheriff called 'racially motivated.' The shooter then killed himself. 'He hated black people,' Sheriff T.K. Waters told a news conference. 'There is absolutely no evidence the shooter is part of any larger group.'"

Comments Off

Reader Comments (11)

I see where DeSantolini is squinting far back into the past to envision and support future misogynistic maliciousness. Why didn’t he say so? Go all the way! I’m sure King Alito could point Ronito in the direction of jumbo sized jiggery-pokery spurious enough to undergird the most vindictive legalisticky contrivances..

King Sam I Am specializes in putrefied palimpsests from appropriately prurient 13th C poseurs. Why mess about with piddling tales from Elvis era America when you can conjure up witch burnin’, women hatin’ humbugs from the European Dark Ages? Go for the gusto, Ronito! And don’t forget yer go-go boots! Them medieval streets were knee deep in horseshit and pig manure*. You’ll be right at home!

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

About that DeSantis story of a botched abortion:

What about that botched appendectomy? Or the botched knee replacement? Or the botched liposuction? Or...??

Outlawing all those procedures in the interest of pubic health otta keep the Florida legislature busy for a while...

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "If there were any justice in the world, Donald Trump would have taken the Mug Shot of Dorian Gray.

As with Oscar Wilde’s charismatic and amoral narcissist, the Picture of Donald Trump should have been a 'foul parody,' a reflection of what the chancer has done with his life. It should have shown Trump’s corroding soul rather than his truculent face."


She also notes that, as a fan of Clint Eastwood, "Trump has long felt that squinting or scowling is a good look for him. "

a free link of:

"Catch the Smug Mug on That Thug!"

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered Commenterlaura hunter

Trump's never heard of a mugshot? Is Donnie getting dementia or Alzheimer's? Someone who was that obsessed with the tabloids and did business with mobsters would definitely have heard the term mugshot. Roy Cohn the mob lawyer was his mentor. It's mentioned on tv programs all the time, at least the kind he would watch. Many of his "friends" have been mugshotted before. It's not as if it's a new woke term that just gained use. It has been around since he was a kid back in the 1880s. And the right loves this moron and his ignorance and his failing memory.

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterRAS

It seems that DiJiT and his image consultants had him practice that scowl for his mugshot ("What's that?" "Oh, a kind of full-face Rembrandt-lighting portrait, sir.") to emulate Yusef Karsh's 1941 portrait of Churchill. That this may be true is reinforced by DiJiT lifting Churchill's well-known maxim (among Churchill's many well-known maxims), "Never Surrender", in his TrootSoshul dropping.

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterPatrick

And the irony is that few but the very astute, conversant with now-ancient history, will never get the Churchill reference.

And those few are far fewer on the Right.

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

@Patrick: I think you're right. I had not made the Churchill connection because frankly, Mr. Trumpelthinskin, you're no Winston Churchill.

Patrick, MoDo backs you up in today's column. She writes, "Maggie Haberman noted in The Times that when Trump posed for his official White House portrait, he scowled into the camera and told aides he thought he looked 'like Churchill.'”

"... we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...." -- Winston Churchill, June 1940, following the Dunkirk evacuation

"We shall fight on the shores of Palm Beach, we shall fight on my Mar-a-Lardo helipad, we shall fight in the streets in front of courthouses where I'm on trial, and in the Capitol, we shall fight in the hills of Georgia where I won by a lot; we shall never surrender. Make online contributions of $25 or more at www.trumpdefensefund.com." -- Donald Trump, August 2023, following the release of his mugshot

August 26, 2023 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

I was looking only for a nice Trump mugshot mug when I found one. No mugshot, but the menu sounds right:

Trump Lunch Special:
White Bread
Full of Bologna
w/Russian Sressing
& a Small Pickle

August 26, 2023 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Lawyers cost money. Lots of Donald's co-defendents are having trouble paying the legal bills coming their way. Tiny violins can be heard all over Fulton County.

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterRAS

One of the comments "Such tiny hands"

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterRAS

RAS,

A little while back, Winston Molehill claimed never to have heard of a subpoena. I thought he had all the best words. I wonder if those words include “Guilty”, “incarceration”, and “body cavity search”.

August 26, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus
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