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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
Apr142011

Republicans v. Women

Gail Collins: The Republican attack on Planned Parenthood "is a wide-ranging attack on women’s right to control their reproductive lives that the women themselves would strongly object to if it was stated clearly." It is not, as Republicans pretend, an anti-abortion crusade. And it all "makes sense, as long as you lay off the factual statements." Collins highlights Sen. Jon Kyl's Senate floor speech in which he asserted that "over 90 percent" of Planned Parenthood's services were abortions. The actual percentage is closer to three. Here's a clip from Kyl's floor speech:

A Kyl spokesperson later put out a statement in which he said Kyl's "...remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions." Here's Don Lemmon of CNN reporting on that:

The New York Times moderators have scrambled out my comment (see Update 2 below), so here it is, and it's probably worth reading:


Let's face it: Jon Kyl is anti-woman. Not only is he unconcerned about women's ability to obtain contraceptive and other reproductive-related services, he doesn't even care if they get proper care AFTER he makes sure they become pregnant if they're going to indulge in sex.

Second only to his fact-free attack on Planned Parenthood last week is his indifference to maternity care. During the healthcare debate, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said during a committee hearing that insurers should be required to cover basic maternity care. Kyl sneered: "I don't need maternity care. So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive." Stabenow replied: "I think your mom probably did." (The amendment went down to defeat anyway.) Here's the videotape:

It isn't just Republican men who so vehemently oppose contraception that they're willing to lie about it. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) asserted on Monday, "The executive director of Planned Parenthood in Illinois said they want to become the LensCrafter of BIG ABORTION in Illinois."

This wasn't the first time she had made such a statement, either. Of course, it wasn't true, but in fact-free Right Wing World, that doesn't matter. As Anderson Cooper of CNN laid out, it turns out that the CEO of Planned Parenthood Illinois said, "I like to think of Planned Parenthood as the LensCrafters of FAMILY PLANNING."

In other words, just as Collins lays out, to Bachmann, "big abortion" and "family planning" are the same thing. And they're both really bad. (Bachmann has promised to quit spreading this disinformation, not because Planned Parenthood complained it was untrue, but because LensCrafters asked her to knock it off!)

The party that claims it wants to "get us our freedoms back" does not include a women's right to personal privacy among those "freedoms." It's hard to imagine any law that is much more intrusive than one that comes between a woman and her health provider. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? Not if they in any way involve sex.

Republicans really want to make sure that girls who just wanna have fun -- don't.


Update: Rachel Maddow weighs in:

     ... Maddow's interview of Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, who is -- you know -- factual, is here.

Update 2: you can find my comment at #235 & Karen Garcia's at #234. The reason we were pushed off the front page? As nearly as I can tell, it's because we both used the word "sex" in our comments. Oh, horrors! And in response to a column about -- sex!

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