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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
Apr062011

The Commentariat -- April 7

** Matt Miller in the Washington Post: "Paul Ryan’s new fiscal blueprint doesn’t balance the budget until sometime between 2030 and 2040, and racks up more than $14 trillion in new debt by then. By Ryan’s own reckoning, his plan adds $5.7 trillion to the debt in the next decade alone, while more than tripling interest payments, from $212 billion this year to nearly $700 billion in 2021. The only way such a profligate plan can be called 'fiscally conservative' is by comparison to Barack Obama’s budget, which never comes close to balance and loads on more debt even faster. Meanwhile, both the House budget chairman and the president shortchange needed investments in America’s future. The question sane citizens should ask in the face of these dueling disappointments is: Why are these the only choices?" CW note: this column is a two-pager I can't link as a single page; it's worth clicking through to Page 2. ...

... Ezra Klein sums up his own observations about Ryan's budget plan in a post that's a pretty handy synopsis. ...

... Cheez Whiz. Karen Garcia on Paul Ryan: "The obvious point of the Ryan plan is to Scare Us All To Death, as well as start a generation war between Millennials and their grandparents." ...

... Captain "Courageous." Mark Thompson of Time: "Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to cut the federal budget is garnering a lot of attention because it makes tough choices. Except when it comes to defense spending, that is."

... Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities talks to Neil Cohen of NPR about decreasing the deficit:

... Paul Krugman notices that somebody at the Heritage Foundation scrubbed the most ridiculous figure on the "the Heritage report that’s the basis for the Ryan plan": an "amazing" 2.8 percent unemployment rate. (CW: I hate to be fair to Paul Ryan since he isn't fair to any of us, but what Krugman doesn't say is that Ryan himself rejected the 2.8 figure & projected a slightly higher unemployment rate of 4. percent.) ...

... The Right Hand Doesn't Know What the Right Hand Is Doing. Jed Graham of Investors.com: "Under the balanced budget amendment proposal unveiled last Thursday with all 47 GOP senators on board, the blueprint presented by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on Tuesday would be unconstitutional until sometime after 2030."

New York Times Editors: "The employment discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart, which the Supreme Court heard last week, is the largest in American history. If the court rejects this suit, it will send a chilling message that some companies are too big to be held accountable."

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, in Al Jazeera, on manageable risks American politicians refuse to manage: Both the Fukushima nuclear crisis and the American financial crash of 2008 "provide stark lessons about risks, and about how badly markets and societies can manage them.... Experts in both the nuclear and finance industries assured us that new technology had all but eliminated the risk of catastrophe. Events proved them wrong: not only did the risks exist, but their consequences were so enormous that they easily erased all the supposed benefits of the systems that industry leaders promoted."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "If you didn’t know it was a Supreme Court argument, you might think you were seeing a catastrophically overbooked cable television show. The justices of late have been jostling for judicial airtime in a sort of verbal roller derby." ...

... AND in case you were wondering why Congress can't get anything done -- David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: an academic study finds that Members of Congress spend 27 percent of their time taunting each other.

Our Friends in Bahrain. Clifford Krauss of the New York Times: "With Saudi troops now in the country to support King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, Bahrain has taken on the likeness of a police state. There have been mass arrests, mass firings of government workers, reports of torture and, on Sunday, the forced resignation of the top editor of the nation’s one independent newspaper."

Democrats Make Up Stuff, Too. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed that under the House's effort to kill the Affordable Care Act, "6 million seniors are deprived of meals — homebound seniors are deprived of meals." But, Kessler, writes, "It’s bad enough that she repeatedly mixed up 6 million meals and 6 million people — and made no effort to correct the record after her statement was reported in the media. But the figure she used appears to have been invented itself, with little basis in fact."

Right Wing World *

* House Members Vote against Facts. Ben Geman of The Hill: "The House rejected a Democratic amendment Wednesday that would have put the chamber on record backing the widely held scientific view that global warming is occurring and humans are a major cause. Lawmakers voted 184-240 against Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) amendment to a GOP-led bill that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gases."

I Oppose Federal Government Spending -- Except in My District. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "As a candidate, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler [R-Wash.] denounced stimulus spending and, once elected, voted for a Republican budget bill that would make $61 billion in cuts to a vast array of programs this year." But now she's trying to get a $10 million grant for her district that she voted against in the omnibus Republican spendng bill HR 1. "In some cases, [like this one, Republican members of Congress] are trying to circumvent the very cuts they voted for." CW: we've heard this story before, and we'll hear it again. And again.

Sam Hananel of the AP: "Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., said the average federal worker earns $101,628 in total compensation — including wages and benefits -- compared with $60,000 for the average private employee.... But ... a disproportionate number of federal employees are professionals, such as managers, lawyers, engineers and scientists.... A 2002 study of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office ... found that federal salaries for most professional and administrative jobs lagged well behind compensation offered in the private sector." CW: think of it as comparing the compensation of a Wal-Mart greeter and a NASA scientist as evidence federal workers are overpaid.

They Know It's Bad Because a Right-Wing Nut Said So. Justin Elliott of Salon: "One of the more striking things about the current anti-sharia craze is how often state legislators who introduce anti-sharia bills can't answer basic questions about Islamic law or why they see it as a threat." That's because "... many of the anti-sharia bills being considered around the country are either based on or directly copied from model legislation created by an obscure far-right Arizona attorney and activist named David Yerushalmi."

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

Patrick Marley, et al., of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the state supreme court race, which is almost certain to go to a recount, will keep the focus on the explosive standoff between unions and Gov. Walker & his Republican allies. "The campaigns of Kloppenburg and Prosser have talked to election officials about the process for recounts and what fundraising rules would be in place...." ...

... Kevin Brennan of the National Journal: "While the final outcome of Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court race likely won't be known until after a recount, one result is already in: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) and his allies suffered a political loss. Before the drawn-out controversy over Walker's collective bargaining reforms, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser seemed poised to cruise to reelection. Prosser won 55 percent of the vote in the February 15 primary, while Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg finished with just 25 percent. Less than two months later, Prosser finds himself trailing Kloppenburg by a few hundred votes, albeit with a few thousand absentee ballots left to count."

News Ledes

President Obama "reports to the nation" on progress this evening on budget negotiations:

New York Times: some top conservative Republicans publicly signal Speaker Boehner that he should cut a deal & not allow the government to shut down. ...

... Politico: "President Obama has 'postponed' his trip to Indiana scheduled for Friday, the White House announced late Thursday."

If presented with this bill, the President will veto it. -- White House statement on H.R. 1363, a stopgap bill which the House passed today ...

... Washington Post: "President Obama and congressional leaders met again Thursday night to try to negotiate a deal on a spending bill that would avert a looming federal government shutdown, and the lawmakers vowed to keep working on an agreement ahead of a Friday deadline." ...

We’ve been close on the cuts for days. The only things — I repeat, the only things — holding up an agreement are two of their so-called social issues: women’s health and clean air. -- Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader

... New York Times: "The frenetic negotiations to avert a government shutdown seem largely focused not on dollars and cents, where the two sides are not all that far apart, but on policy issues, primarily abortion and environmental regulations, that defy easy compromise.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold released new vote totals adding a net total of 7,582 new votes in the tight state Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor."

President Obama & Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos spoke to the press this afternoon. Washington Post: "The government of Colombia has agreed to better protect union members and vigorously prosecute those responsible for violence against them, potentially paving the way for the Obama administration to seek congressional approval of a free trade treaty with the South American country."

New York Times: "Cathleen P. Black, a magazine executive with no educational experience who was named New York City schools chancellor last fall, stepped down Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced. Mr. Bloomberg called Ms. Black into his office Thursday morning and urged her to resign, officials said, ending a tumultuous and brief tenure for the longtime publisher."

Washington Post: "A powerful aftershock 16 miles off the northeastern coast of Honshu, Japan’s main island, late Thursday triggered tsunami warnings, one month after the country’s strongest quake on record hammered the same region."

AP: "Republicans ... plan to hold a House vote Thursday on one-week legislation to avoid a government shutdown, despite opposition from the White House and Senate Democrats pressing for a longer-term solution.... Thursday's GOP measure would combine a full-year Pentagon budget with a big slice of cuts to domestic programs as the price to keep the government running.... [Speaker] Boehner's move appeared aimed at shifting political blame if a shutdown occurs, but the announcement of Thursday's vote angered Democrats who felt talks were progressing." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "Congressional negotiators working through the night failed to reach an agreement to fund the federal government for the remainder of the year, increasing the likelihood of a government shutdown beginning this weekend, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday morning. Reid said the talks foundered over two Republican policy provisions on abortion and the environment and that the negotiators largely agreed to an amount of spending cuts. But House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disputed that, saying there was 'no agreement on a number' and that the disagreements were not limited to a couple of policy provisions known as 'riders.'” ...

     ... Politico Update: "Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that he’s starting to doubt whether Speaker John Boehner wants to reach a deal and avoid a government shutdown. 'Are you starting to question whether Speaker Boehner truly wants a deal?' a reporter asked Reid Thursday. 'Yes I am,' Reid responded."

... New York Times: "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Thursday that if the United States government shuts down this weekend and into next week, American troops would experience a temporary halt in their pay." ...

The New York Times has the latest on what federal government services will be curtailed & what ones will not in the event of a shutdown.

Washington Post: "The Senate on Wednesday evening rejected a Republican measure that would limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Four Democrats – Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.) – joined most Republicans in voting for the measure; one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), joined Democrats in voting against it."

AP: "Rebel fighters are claiming that NATO airstrikes hit their forces on the front lines and touched off a retreat from the outskirts of the oil port of Brega."

AP: "Syria's president [Bashar Assad] has granted thousands of Kurds living in a northeastern province Syrian citizenship in the latest overture by Bashar Assad to try and quell extraordinary anti-government protests."

New York Times: "Portugal’s caretaker government gave in to market pressures on Wednesday and joined Greece and Ireland in seeking an emergency bailout. The decision came after the government was forced to pay much higher rates to sell more debt."

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