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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
Dec222010

The Commentariat -- December 23

President Obama walks out of the Oval Office to board Marine One before departing for Hawaii. He will join his wife and daughters, who are already there, for the Christmas holiday. Getty image.Tim Egan tells a lovely Christmas story. in the tradition of O'Henry's "Gift of the Magi." Read it to the end. BTW, if you're looking for the O'Henry story, you can find it here.

Dana Milbank: during his press conference yesterday, "... when [President Obama] wasn't praising his accomplishments, he was praising himself.... Careful, Mr. President. What got Obama in trouble in the first place were the extraordinarily high expectations that the nation had for his administration - and that Obama's campaign had encouraged." CW: Milbank says it was "the humility forced on him by the Republicans' triumph in November" that accounted for Obama's success. I doubt that assessment. See other analysis of the lame duck Congress & Republican mutiny below. ...

... Nonetheless, Jay Newton-Small of Time is impressed as all get-out by President Obama. She notes that "The headlines this week read, "Obama Bested GOP in Extraordinary Lame Duck Session" (Washington Post), "No Congress Since 1960s Makes Most Laws for Americans as 111th" (Bloomberg), "With Major Bills Passed, [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid Takes a Victory Lap (New York Times)." Small remembers this President Obama --

      -- who has r-evolved into the old Obama we fell in love with at the 2004 Democratic convention:

Dan Friedman of the National Journal: "All Democratic senators returning next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging him to consider action to change long-sacrosanct filibuster rules.... Adding to the momentum for change, say proponents, is a push by [Sen. Tom] Udall [D-NM] to seek a simple majority vote on changing Senate rules at the start of the session, rather than a two-thirds majority, that is gaining steam." ...

... Ezra Klein on the Democrats' letter to Reid: "They say elections have consequences. So too, it turns out, does obstruction.... [The Democrats'] Their unity stems from an unlikely source: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has mounted more filibusters in the past two years than occurred in the ’50s and ’60s combined." ...

... ... CW: I don't usually link to political analysis by Politico writers, but how can I resist this one by Glenn Thrush & Manu Raju titled "Mitch McConnell's Iron Grip Slips"? "... while nobody in the White House thinks McConnell has lost his grip, they see an opportunity to increase their leverage as McConnell finds himself squeezed between an incoming class of emboldened conservatives with a tea party tinge - and the eight to twelve Republicans who showed their independence on “don’t ask don’t tell” and START." ...

... Gail Collins celebrates the success of President Obama & the lame-duck Congress. ...

... What a Difference a Lame Duck Makes. Perry Bacon of the Washington Post: "... a six-week session that was expected to reflect a weakened president has turned into a surprising success." ...

... Ezra Klein on why the lame-duck Congress succeeded in passing so much legislation: "Sen. Lindsey Graham summed up the session by saying, 'When it's all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has eaten our lunch.' But it wasn't really Harry Reid who ate their lunch.... It was the Republicans.... The incumbent -- and the outgoing -- Republicans know that the fact that Republicans will have more power in 2011 doesn't necessarily mean that they'll use that power to pass sensible legislation. So those of them who wanted to pass sensible legislation decided to get it all done now...." ...

... Adam Serwer on why Republican obstructionism rendered Republicans their own worst enemy & gave a boost to President Obama, whom they hoped to destroy.

"Murkowski Goes Rogue."Meredith Shiner of Politico reports on Sen. Lisa Murkowski's new situation: "... she heads back to the Senate with a fresh six-year term without owing much to either her home state party establishment or her Washington leadership."

David Halbfinger of the New York Times examines the Senate career of New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. ...

... Scott Keyes of Think Progress: Ground Zero workers visited Sen. Tom Coburn's office yesterday. Coburn was blocking the 9/11 responders' bill & eventually won deep cuts in its funding. Watch the video to the end:

Holiday Cheer! In this USA Today op-ed, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the TSA is doing a great job. ...

... BUT Tara Bahrampour of the Washington Post reports that "Muslims aren't alone in their antipathy toward the new security measures. Followers of other religions, including Sikhs and some Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians, also say the scanners and pat-downs make them uncomfortable or breach the tenets of their faiths."

Greg Gordon & Kevin Hall of McClatchy News: "The Federal Reserve Board ... missed a chance to prevent much of the financial chaos ravaging hundreds of small- and mid-sized banks. In early 2005..., the Fed rejected calls from one of the nation's top banking regulators, a professional accounting board and the Fed's own staff for curbs on the banks' use of special debt securities to raise capital that was allowing them to mushroom in size. Then-Chairman Alan Greenspan and the other six Fed governors voted unanimously to reaffirm a ... magic bullet [that] allowed the banks to count the securities as debt, even while counting the proceeds as reserves. Banks were then free to borrow and lend in amounts 10 times or more than the value of the securities being issued."

Nate Silver looks at the potential effects of the upcoming changes in the Electoral College, and concludes it won't have much of an effect on the of the 2012 presidential election.

Lanny Davis & Mike Espy -- Two Sleazy Democrats Get Sleazier. Helene Cooper & Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "As the United States continued to push for President Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast to step down, two former Clinton administration officials were trying to present Mr. Gbagbo, who has clung to power despite international condemnation, in a more sympathetic light. Michael Espy, the former agriculture secretary who is now a lobbyist, has appeared on Ivorian television on behalf of Mr. Gbagbo’s government, while Lanny J. Davis, former chief counsel to President Clinton who was hired by Mr. Gbagbo’s government this month, worked the phones and described himself as a liaison of sorts to the tainted regime." ...

... Justin Elliott of Salon has more here and here.

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