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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The Conversation -- June 23, 2024

Presidential Race

Lisa Kashinsky of Politico: Donald Trump "couldn't stop talking about his upcoming [debate] against Joe Biden as he rallied in the president's adopted home turf of Philadelphia on Saturday night.... He mocked Biden for holing up behind closed doors at Camp David to prepare for the debate, suggesting the president would turn to illicit substances to boost his performance.... Trump ... claim[ed Biden] ... would get 'a shot in the ass' ahead of the bout ... and come on stage 'all jacked up.' He repeated, though indirectly, his claim that the president has used cocaine.... He disparaged CNN debate moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, whom he called 'Fake Tapper.'... [Trump] has traded mock debates for a series of informal 'policy discussions' with senators, policy experts and other allies. And he has stayed on the campaign trail, hitting two events in two cities on Saturday alone."

One Sick Bastard. Marianne LeVine, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump expanded his portrayal of migrants as violent with a suggestion that they could be pitted in fights for entertainment. During a speech to Christian conservatives on Saturday afternoon, and again at a rally in Philadelphia that evening, Trump claimed that he told his friend Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, that he should start a spinoff competition featuring migrants.... At a post-fight news conference in Saudi Arabia later Saturday, White confirmed that Trump made the comments but said they were 'a joke.'... The remarks are part of Trump's broader pattern of using dehumanizing language when discussing immigrants...." A Politico story is here.

Yes, Trump Is Getting Worse. And It Sells. Josh Dawsey & Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post: Donald Trump's "incendiary emails are part of a concerted strategy that has allowed the campaign to erase a financial lead that President Biden's campaign had opened up in recent months, according to people close to the former president who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak for the campaign. But experts in small-dollar fundraising say the solicitations are aggressive even by the standards of Trump's frequently hyperbolic and inflammatory language.... One person with knowledge of the pitches said donations increase any time Trump seems to be under attack or argues that he is being treated unfairly.... The Biden campaign condemned the messages, [in which Trump complained 'THEY WANT TO SENTENCE ME TO DEATH' by 'GUILLOTINE,'] as laying the groundwork for more violence."

Meredith McGraw, et al., of Politico: "Trump keeps flip-flopping his policy positions after meeting with rich people." Like when he decided last week, after meeting with the Business Round Table, that immigrants with U.S. college degrees did not "poison the blood" of the country and had earned green cards along with their sheepskins. "Trump floated a similar idea during his 2016 campaign, saying at the time that forcing non-citizens to leave the U.S. shortly after graduating from college was 'ridiculous' and that they should have a path to citizenship. But once elected president, Trump reversed himself, restricting immigration and limiting visas for high-skilled professionals and employers.... [President] Biden revoked the order soon after taking office." MB: Do you brilliant business folks not realize that Trump can flip-flop again? (Also linked yesterday.)

What happens when you gather thousands of conspiracy theorists and gullible believers in Trumpy-QAnon lies? Ha ha ha. ~~~

~~~ At Least One Real Right-Wing Conspiracy! Yvonne Sanchez & Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post: At a gathering in a Phoenix suburb, far-right Arizona delegates to the Republican National Convention plotted a coordinated release of Trump delegates, possibly out of fear that the "deep state" was controlling Donald Trump. "The exact purpose of the maneuver was not clear.... Whatever the goal, the Trump campaign rushed to head off the stunt and replace the delegates.... The fracas exposed the challenges of choreographing next month's convention in Milwaukee, where some 5,000 delegates and alternates will participate -- many of them inclined toward the falsehoods and baseless accusations that animate many of Trump's supporters.... Suspicions have circulated among Trump's supporters that covert saboteurs have somehow infiltrated their ranks." (Also linked yesterday.)

Book Report! Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times: "'Apprentice in Wonderland' [by Ramin Setoodeh], published Tuesday, depicts [Donald Trump] as a lonely and sometimes dotty man, longing for the days when he was still accepted by his fellow celebrities, even as he seems to crave political power.... 'He compares himself to Clint Eastwood and Marlon Brando, and sees himself in a lot of ways as an actor and a famous person,' said Mr. Setoodeh.... Talking about those simpler times, Mr. Trump slipped into a few moments of something approaching introspection, as when he accidentally admitted he 'lost the election' (though he quickly reversed himself to say 'when they said we lost')."

~~~~~~~~~~

Michigan. Carl Gibson of AlterNet: "Michigan state representative Neil Friske, who is a freshman Republican lawmaker representing a rural district in the northern part of the state, is now being held without bond, and potentially faces three felony charges. The Washington Post reported that Friske was arrested at approximately 3 AM Eastern Time on Thursday morning, following a 'late-night incident' involving a man with a gun chasing a woman, and potentially shots fired. While Friske hasn't yet been formally charged, police are reportedly requesting that prosecutors file charges of sexual assault, along with a separate assault charge and a gun charge.... Friske is one of the most conservative members of the lower chamber...." MB: Uh, where "conservative" means assaulting a woman, chasing her in the middle of the night and maybe shooting at her. Because what "conservative" really means is "white male power über alles."

New York. Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: "Columbia University placed three administrators on leave this week, a university spokesman said on Saturday. The moves came a little more than a week after images emerged showing the school officials sharing disparaging text messages during a panel discussion about antisemitism on campus. The panel, which focused on Jewish life on campus amid tensions over Israel's war in Gaza, occurred during a Columbia College reunion on May 31. The spokesman did not identify which officials were placed on leave, but The Washington Free Beacon, the website that first published the images, reported that they were Susan Chang-Kim, the vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student and family support. Ms. Chang-Kim also exchanged texts during the event with Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, [who is cooperating with investigators]." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The comments reported are no anti-Semitic, but they show complete disregard for the panelists. If you're a student who suspects university administrators don't care about your well-being, there's a good chance you're right.

~~~~~~~~~~

Israel/Palestine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in the Israel/Hamas war are here.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The end of the unusually early heat wave that gripped much of the United States over the past seven days is in sight. But first, the country will need to endure another day, possibly two, of scorching hot temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic States and along the I-95 urban corridor on the East Coast. The National Weather Service predicts that the heat wave, which has more than 100 million people under heat advisory alerts, will last through early this upcoming week."

The New York Times yesterday liveblogged the Great American Heat Wave of June 2024. "On the first weekend of summer, a brutal heat wave took hold for a sixth consecutive day, continuing to scorch large swaths of the United States.... Heat-related emergency room visits spiked this week in regions of the United States that had been hit the hardest by the heat wave, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (12)

Climate change? What climate change so saith the ignorant.

We went cherry picking and blueberry picking this morning.

This is something we normally do in July, not June. Both places said
that everything is at least two weeks earlier for the first time ever.
They think peaches in a couple of weeks. That's September stuff.

Saw some Biden-Harris signs on the way. No Trump signs, so guess
I'm in the right territory.

June 23, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterForrestMorris

@Forrest Morris: Same here. I have tiger lilies naturalizing here and there. They usually start blooming mid-July. Even though we didn't get the worst of the heat wave here -- in fact, the highs have been in the 60s and 70s the past three days -- the tiger lilies started blooming on the summer solstice.

June 23, 2024 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Our tiger lilies have been out for almost two weeks.

The deep state guys must show up at night sprinkling liberal fairy dust on them to make it look like climate change. Sneaky, sneaky. Investigation! Subpoena! Impeach!

June 23, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

New York Magazine has gotten a start on the Felonious Fascist’s Enemies List.

By November this thing will look like the Domesday Book (all you guys will be on it, don’t worry).

It’ll make Nixon’s look like a list of kids to be picked last after bucking up for sides in a playground basketball game. The Tricky One was a nasty guy but he wasn’t talking about having his enemies imprisoned, shot, or hanged. When Fatty rants about a guillotine, it’s just more projection. You can bet Steve Bannon has already picked out the tumbrels.

June 23, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

There are bad pennies, and then there’s this fucking guy.

I’m gonna say a name, and I will bet my entire collection of books that most, or all of you guys, will be looking for something heavy to throw.

Ready?

Elliott Fucking Abrams.

That really is his actual middle name. He may not be aware of it, but I went to court years ago and had it changed. There were a passel of scoundrels, crooks, creeps, liars, schemers, and traitors who flooded Washington like untreatable cancer cells during the Reagan Debacle, but this asshole stands out in so many ways as a murderous, lying Kissinger mini-me:

“Promoted to assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in 1985, Abrams repeatedly denounced the continued protests from Democrats and human rights activists about the carnage in Guatemala. When The New York Times published an op-ed challenging the official State Department account of one set of the mass murders underway—by a woman who had witnessed a death-squad assassination in broad daylight in Guatemala City that had never been mentioned in the press—Abrams responded by lying outright. In a letter to the editor, he cited an imaginary story in a nonexistent newspaper to insist that the man’s murder had, in fact, been reported.

At the end of the Reagan administration, when it became obvious that he had consistently lied to Congress multiple times about many events, including especially his deep involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, he plea-bargained his crimes with special counsel Lawrence Walsh down to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress about secret efforts to provide illegal aid to the contras in Nicaragua. As a result of his conviction, Abrams was put on probation for two years and ordered to devote 100 hours to community service before being pardoned. The District Bar Board on Professional Responsibility recommended that he be suspended from the practice of law in the District of Columbia for a period of one year.

Yet today Abrams is successfully selling himself to the media as a Middle East expert, where, once again, he is either minimizing or defending mass murder.”

He’s doing the selling and guess who’s doing the buying?

Why, it’s the Supine, Both Sides, Corporate Media! But of course.

So go ahead, ask yourself how could this be? How could this rat bastard, lying snake in the shithole be considered by reporters and policy wonks as some kind of Wise Old Man of international relations? I mean, it’s like referring to Jeffrey Dahmer as a gourmet chef, right?

“The answer, unfortunately, is simple but unavoidable: He takes their calls. He gives good quotes. And he once criticized Donald Trump. Sure, there’s the lying, the repeated policy failures, the mass murders—even the genocide stuff—but they just don’t care. They never have.”

Simple as that. Like I said. There are bad pennies, and then there are serial killers.

One other question. Why is it that these evil fucks are all Republicans?

Another tautology perhaps?

June 23, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

@Akhilleus: Thank you for explaining the Mystery of the Blooming Tiger Lilies. Now that you've let us know what's really going on, I hope @Forrest Morris will apologize for casting asparagus on climate change deniers.

June 23, 2024 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

@Akhilleus: I can't access the Nation, so I turned to my old friends at Wikipedia to find out what-all Elliot Fucking Abrams was up to these days, and to my horror, I learned that about a year ago, Joe Biden had nominated E. Fucking to "the non-partisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy." It seems it's a job that requires Senate confirmation, so my congratulations to whatever senators are slow-walking the confirmation proceedings.

June 23, 2024 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Yes, I apolagize for calling climate change deniers ignorant.

They're actually morons, dumbf***s and sh**heads.

Also, my asparagus has gone to seed already, about a month early.

June 23, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterForrestMorris

@Forrest Morris: Ha ha and ha.

June 23, 2024 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Here in south central PA, all our day lilies are blooming their little heads off—. Ditto hydrangeas and vibirnums and magnolias and various other shrubs—it’s a flower madhouse—. They are all a howling, seething success and very pro-climate change, I think! Everything has been early and wildly colorful. We might soon run out of perennials (tending to be early) and end up shamelessly replacing them with petunias, god help us…. Yeah, I think even our zones have changed. Climate change is totally here and I look forward to pumpkins showing up in August. Does this mean we have to finish Christmas shopping before Joe’s reelection?

June 23, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterJeanne

Jeanne,

Yup. Four more years for Joe, and for little donnie, a bib and as many boxes of diapers that fit into the cart. Former president* Shitzenpantz will need them all.

June 24, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

The Nazi Bannon and the SS compiling the lists of bad employees as civil servants really are lying about it not being revenge etc. It is indeed revenge and retribution against the people who quietly do their jobs day by day. This is not McCarthyism, this is flat out Hitler "Youth/Oldsters" in spades. I marvel at how one can absolutely despise these crapweasels, and, lo and behold, there is a s***load of hatred which needs to be offloaded onto them, so our work is never done. Let's start by detesting the House and Senate Repugnants, then move on to the crazies currently in charge of preparing for the Second Coming of the Orange Slime.

June 24, 2024 | Unregistered CommenterJeanne
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