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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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Wednesday
Apr272011

The Commentariat -- April 28

The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al-Qaeda terrorists. Really. -- Paul O’Neill, U.S. Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush, via Time

"Good News!" Gail Collins "just [doesn't] see how things can get better than this when it comes to current affairs. Prince William is about to get married and President Obama has released his long-form birth certificate." CW: Reader comments are open for Collin's column and an Open Thread on Off Times Square. I've posted my comment on Collins' column. Update: so have Kate Madison & Karen Garcia. ...

     ... Update 2: there are a couple of excellent posts on today's Open Thread.

Joe Klein of Time: "So long as the conversation is about deficit-reduction, in the teeth of a recession, conservative extremists are playing offense and the President is, essentially, on the defensive.... To the extent that he continues playing this game, Obama is hurting himself in two ways: He continues to give the impression that he’s out of touch with the public’s real concerns–and he’s laying the groundwork for an economy that limps, sputters and perhaps stalls in 2012."

The President announces top personnel changes:

Glenn Greenwald: "... the CIA, under Obama, is more militarized than ever, as devoted to operationally fighting wars as anything else, including analyzing and gathering intelligence. This morning's Washington Post article on the Petraeus nomination -- headlined: "Petraeus would helm an increasingly militarized CIA" -- is unusual in presenting such a starkly forthright picture of how militarized the U.S. has become under the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner." ...

... Charles Hoskinson of Politico: "By choosing Leon Panetta as his next secretary of defense, President Barack Obama has signaled that he’s serious about cutting the Pentagon budget — even if that just happens to make life more difficult for the GOP. Obama’s plan to cut hundreds of billions of dollars worth of defense and security spending has exposed a growing chasm in the Republican Party — a split between security hawks who want to protect the Pentagon budget and deficit hawks who say that everyone has to share the pain."

What's wrong with the U.S.? These two headlines, juxtaposed on the front page of the Los Angeles Times online, give a clue, don't they?

     ... If  you want to read the stories, the hospital CEO story is here & the worker furlough story is here.

Jon Stewart interviews "the longest-serving Independent Senator in history" Bernie Sanders. In two parts, here and here.

Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times: "The announced reconciliation on Wednesday between Fatah and Hamas, the estranged Palestinian movements, puts the Obama administration in the uncomfortable position of having to reconsider its financial support for the Palestinian Authority, including millions of dollars the United States has spent to train and equip Palestinian security forces, officials and members of Congress said. The agreement, reached after secret talks brokered by Egypt, caught the Obama administration, like many others, by surprise."

Nicholas Kristof: China, "in the middle of its harshest crackdown on independent thought in two decades," has taken "a great leap backward."

Mike Huckabee sends out mixed signals & keeps everybody guessing. Will he or won't he run for president?

Jake Tapper of ABC News has a good post on the backstory behind President Obama's decision to seek a waiver from the State of Hawaii to obtain his long-form birth certificate. ...

... Media Birthers. Dave Weigel asks good questions: "In the seven years and four months of George W. Bush's presidency after 9/11, how many times did reporters ask "9/11 Truth" questions in White House briefings? How many times did they ask it of the president himself? I can't recall any times (although I welcome any corrections from readers.) But Obama has been asked multiple times about the birth certificate."

Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: "During a Las Vegas stump speech last night, [Donald] Trump fired off several hearty f-bombs to a group of adoring fans." With unedited video, which is definitely recorded on Shaky Cam.

Right Wing World, Birther Edition *

Remember way back when Republicans wanted a foreign-born President? On July 10, 2003, Orrin Hatch [R-Utah], chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, took action against what he calls 'an anachronism that is decidedly un-American.' He introduced a bill that would allow a person who has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years and a resident for 14 years to run for president. -- Weekly Standard

     ... Blast from the Past, via Justin Elliott of Salon. The purpose of the amendment, known colloqually as the "Arnold Amendment," was to allow Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president.

Steve Kornacki of Salon: "More than half of Republicans still aren't buying Obama's story. 18 percent of them told Survey USA that they consider the long-form a forgery, and another 33 percent say they still have doubt. Moreover, nearly 60 percent of Republicans say that they either still consider Obama's birthplace to be open to debate or aren't sure, and 33 percent claim that the president was 'definitely' or 'probably' born elsewhere."

Alex Pareene of Salon produces "The Birther's Guide to Staying Relevant in a Post-'Long Form' World." Some of the new "avenues of investigation" birthers are already pursuing: "The certificate is a forgery..., his 'African' father disqualifies him..., soemthing about British citizenship & the Kenyan constitution..., he lost his citizienship..., still a secret Muslim..., how did he get into Columbia.... Birthism will survive. It will mutate and adapt."

Birther King. Susie Khimm of Mother Jones: self-described Birther King Andrew Martin tells Khimm, ""The pressure for his [Obama's] college records is going to become relentless." Martin also will demand Obama's admissions files & says he "has questions about Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, whom fringe activists claim is a black Muslim nationalist who paid for Obama's law degree." Oh, and Martin is running for president! CW: I doubt he has any college records.

Birther Queen. Ryan Reilly of TPM: Hey, here's a surprise -- Orly Taitz, the Birther Queen suggests the long-form birth certificate the State of Hawaii produced is a fake because "In those years ... when they wrote race, they were writing 'Negro' not 'African'," Taitz says. "In those days nobody wrote African as a race, it just wasn't one of the options. It sounds like it would be written today, in the age of political correctness, and not in 1961 when they wrote white or Asian or 'Negro'." CW: and isn't the whole point of Taitz' campaign to make sure nobody forgets that the President is a NEE-gro?

People Voted for This Guy. Emily Ramshaw of the Texas Tribune: "State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has checked out the birth certificate President Barack Obama released [Wednesday] morning — and he's not satisfied. ...

Berman, who has filed a 'birther' bill this session that would force future presidential and vice presidential candidates to show their birth certificate in order to get on the Texas ballot, said he's got several key questions with Obama's birth certificate: Why did it take the president so long, amid a conservative firestorm, to release it? Why does it look 'brand new,' he said, when it's supposed to be five decades old? Why doesn't the hospital listed on the birth certificate have a 'plaque on the door' commemorating Obama's birth there? And has anyone checked with the delivery room doctor listed on the birth certificate (whose name Berman says is curiously difficult to make out)?

Media Matters analyzes Fox "News" coverage of birtherism. "A Media Matters review of Fox News' opinion programs found that in recent weeks, the network devoted nearly two hours and 20 minutes to the issue, and in the vast majority of the cases, the hosts either espoused birther conspiracies or did not challenge or correct false claims about Obama's birth that aired on their shows." With charts!

Jed Lewison in Daily Kos: according to some on the right -- like Jonah Goldberg -- the real conspiracy was perpetrated by Obama himself: he lured gullible wingers into being crazy birthers. Well, no, he didn't.

Donald Trump said he’d release his tax returns as soon as the president released his birth certificate, so the ball is in his court now and I know everybody is anxious to see his tax returns over the last 10 years. -- Robert Gibbs, former Press Secretary to President Obama

Gibbs is a loser. -- Donald Trump, in "response" to Gibbs' comment

Ari Melber of The Nation on Donald Trump's none-too-coded racism card -- a very fine analysis.

David Remnick of the New Yorker: "... to do what Trump has done (and he is only the latest and loudest and most spectacularly hirsute) is a conscious form of race-baiting, of fear-mongering.

I’ve come to New Hampshire today because I’m very concerned.  I want to see the original long-form certificate of Donald Trump’s Republican registration. -- Sen. Rand Paul

David Neiwert of Crooks & Liars: "Obama actually released a birth certificate back in 2008 -- but it wasn't enough to satisfy nutcases like Trump and his political adviser, WorldNutDaily's Joseph Farah. Trump has nothing to be proud of: Indeed, he owes the president an apology -- for smearing his name and casting doubt on his birth and citizenship. Not that we'll ever get it. After all, Being Republican Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry."

Jim Fallows: "I wonder how many people think Donald Trump is in a position to judge Obama's smarts.... ** There is no avoiding the racist connotation of saying that a successful black person got there -- wink wink -- through special treatment.... Yesterday, about half of all Republicans thought Obama was foreign born, and therefore an illegal occupant of the White House.... Here we have a wonderful real-world test: if "actual knowledge" mattered, the number of people who thought Obama was foreign-born would approach zero by next week -- with exceptions for illiterates, the mentally disabled, paranoid schizophrenics, etc. My guess is that the figures will barely change."

** "Dumber than You Think." Joshua Green of The Atlantic: "... Donald Trump's presidential candidacy is presumed by most people to be a stunt designed to goose ratings for his television show, 'Celebrity Apprentice' on NBC. But while Trump has gotten plenty of airtime by suggesting, wrongly, that the president was not born in the United States, Nielsen rating for 'Celebrity Apprentice' are lower than they were a year ago -- and dropping fast. One reason Trump's audience is abandoning him may be that, according to demographic research... , the audience for 'Celebrity Apprentice' is among the most liberal in primetime television.... Rather than add viewers, Trump foolishly appears to be driving them away."

"A Certificate of Embarrassment." New York Times Editors: "... the birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race. It was originally promulgated by fringe figures of the radical right, but mainstream Republican leaders allowed it to simmer to satisfy those who are inflamed by Mr. Obama’s presence in the White House."

They Have No Shame: The disgusting Daily Caller: "Republican leaders distanced themselves from the White House’s release of President Obama’s birth certificate Wednesday, calling it a 'sideshow' and a 'distraction' and knocked the administration for releasing it." CW: of course this is after these same "leaders" stoked the story for two years. I guess it wasn't a "sideshow" for them to aid & abet the birther story, but it is for the President to try to lay it to rest.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

Politico: "House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan called for ending oil subsidies Thursday, further complicating Republican efforts to stay on message about rising gas prices. The Wisconsin Republican told constituents at a Waterford, Wis., town hall meeting that he agreed that federal oil subsidies ought to end. ...

... He Was for Them before He Was against Them. Think Progress: "But Ryan voted twice this year to actually extend subsidies to oil companies...."

Wall Street Journal: "A day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) put Republicans on the spot by saying he will bring the House Republicans’ budget proposal up for a vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) turned the tables by exercising his legislative prerogative to call for a vote on President Barack Obama’s budget."

Bloomberg: "The Dollar Index slid to the lowest level since 2008, Treasuries rose and gold rallied to a record after economic growth slowed. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed an almost three-year high as rising earnings and takeovers overshadowed the report on gross domestic product." Related New York Times story here.

"The Corporate Court." Washington Post: "Large corporations won a substantial victory at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as ideologically split justices ruled that consumers may not band together in class-action arbitration to pursue their complaints. The specific case involved cellphones and a familiar contract that requires customers to press claims through arbitration rather than lawsuits. Such ubiquitous contracts, which mandate individual rather than group claims, are becoming standard for companies offering loans, cable service, credit cards and even employment." The decision, concurring opinion & dissent are here (pdf).

The Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will hold a vote on Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget in an effort to divide the Senate GOP conference. Reid said on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday that he would hold a vote, saying it would give the Senate GOP an opportunity to say where it stands." ...

... AND, in the same vein -- TPM:: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) ... said he would hold a vote as soon as possible on a bill to eliminate the tax breaks for the five largest oil companies, Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips, which have reported record profits in recent weeks and months."

The Hill: "Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) announced Wednesday he will appoint Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) to fill Sen. John Ensign's (R-Nev.) seat."

AP: "The death toll from severe storms that punished five Southern U.S. states jumped to a staggering 178 after Alabama canvassed its hard-hit counties for a new tally of lives lost. Alabama's state emergency management agency said early Thursday it had confirmed 128 deaths, up from at least 61 earlier." New York Times Update here.

AP: "A military court in Bahrain on Thursday convicted four Shiite protesters and sentenced them to death for the killing of two policemen during anti-government demonstrations last month in the Gulf kingdom, state media said. Three other Shiite activists, who were also on trial, were sentenced to life in prison for their role in the policemen’s deaths."

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