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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
Dec172010

The Commentariat -- December 18

Julia Preston of the New York Times: "Latino leaders have turned up the pressure on senators facing a vote on Saturday on a bill that would grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students, saying support of the measure will be used as a litmus test by Latino voters in the 2012 elections.

** Dana Milbank: "The only reason WikiLeaks has been a sensation is the absurd secrecy of the Obama administration, in some ways worse than that of George W. Bush.... The [WikiLeaks] episode spotlighted Obama's surprisingly poor record on government openness. The administration has already undertaken four prosecutions of government leakers, more than any predecessor, in some cases using the arcane, World War I-era Espionage Act. At the same time, the administration stymied efforts in Congress to pass a 'shield law' to protect journalists' confidential sources." ...

... Mark Hosenball & Jeremy Pelofsky of Reuters: "WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange's crusade for greater official transparency could backfire by provoking a U.S. government crackdown on leaks that might entangle even journalists, legal experts warn."

Read Charles Blow's column in the New York Times. Then read the comments, which are wonderful.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "A month ago President Obama was the big loser of 2010, the leader whose party had given up historic losses in the House and who was facing questions about his future. On Friday, with the stroke of his pen on a compromise tax bill, he reminded his adversaries of the essential resilience of the occupant of the Oval Office." ...

... Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "As President Obama prepared to sign his $858 billion tax deal Friday, White House aides moved quickly to soothe the anger among liberal constituency groups.... An e-mail distributed to black leaders declared the package a 'major victory for African-Americans,' arguing that a series of middle-class tax cuts will give 'targeted' aid to minorities. The White House also invited ... the Rev. Al Sharpton to Friday afternoon's bill signing and scheduled a private meeting with top labor union leaders who had railed against extending the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy."

In an article titled, "Explaining the Crisis with Dogma," Joe Nocera of the New York Times follows up on Paul Krugman's criticism [see yesterday's Commentariat] of the Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Nocera both mocks & laments their imaginative Cliff Notes "presponse" to the commission's final report, to be published next month.

Matt Yglesias & Ezra Klein attack the Ryan-Rivlin health "reform" plan:

     ... Yglesias (you'll have to read his whole post; it's complicated) says the plan represents "a sleight of hand designed to make you think that the structural shift is saving money' when in fact it does nothing of the sort." CW: sounds like "death panels for all" to me. ...

    ... Klein says Paul Ryan, Alice Rivlin (& Republican proponents of this crappy idea) are really promoting a version of ObamaCare with another name & a lousier deal. "Right now, Medicare is much cheaper than private insurance. If you think that moving Medicare to a model of private insurance sold on exchanges will make it even cheaper, what you're saying is that an ObamaCare model will not only be cheaper than the current private-insurance system, but cheaper than the even-cheaper Medicare system."

Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart & Rep. Anthony Weiner on the 9/11 Responders Bill, which Senate Republicans are filibustering (because they are subhuman):

Mark Mazzetti & Salmon Masood of the New York Times: "The Central Intelligence Agency’s top clandestine officer in Islamabad was pulled from the country on Thursday amid an escalating war of recriminations between American and Pakistani spies, with some American officials convinced that the officer’s cover was deliberately blown by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency."

CW: evidently you don't have to be intelligent to get on the House Intelligence Committee. Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times reports that Weeper of the House-to-be John Boehner has appointed as one of its new members Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

To Hell with Little Girls. ABC News: "This week, House Republicans blocked passage of a bipartisan bill to protect women and girls in developing countries from child marriages. The bill needed a two-thirds majority of the House to pass, but fell short by the count of 241-166." The Senate had passed the bill unanimously. At the last minute, Republican leadership sent out a memo claiming the bill "could end up funding abortions."

Help the Torturers! AP: "When the CIA decided to waterboard suspected terror detainees in overseas prisons, the agency turned to a pair of contractors. The men designed the CIA's interrogation program and also personally took part in the waterboarding sessions. But to do the job, the CIA had to promise to cover at least $5 million in legal fees for them in case there was trouble down the road, former U.S. officials said."

** New York Times: "The Obama administration issued long-awaited, long-delayed guidelines on Friday to insulate government scientific research from political meddling and to base policy decisions on solid data. Under the guidelines, government scientists are in general free to speak to journalists and the public about their work, and agencies are prohibited from editing or suppressing reports by independent advisory committees."

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