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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
Feb112011

The Commentariat -- February 12

** As the Worm Turned. Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "Mubarak's defiant speech - described by some U.S. officials as bordering on delusional - was a final, wild plot twist in a saga that had played out in Egypt and Washington over the past 18 days. The likelihood of Mubarak's departure alternately rose and dipped as U.S. military officers and diplomats quietly worked with their Egyptian counterparts in a search for peaceful resolution to the country's worst unrest in six decades." CW: Warrick's report reads like a thriller. ...

Kareem Fahim & David Kilpatrick of the New York Times on Egypt -- and the Arab world -- the day after Mubarak's forced resignation.

... Tom Shanker & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times attempt to profile the two Egyptian military officers who will probably lead the government: Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi & Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan. Not very attractive portraits. ...

... Marcus Baram of the Huffington Post on how the Mubarak family acquired its billions.

Bob Herbert: "As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States.... We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only."

Obviously, Gibbs's departure is not the biggest one today.
-- Barack Obama

Dana Milbank on Robert Gibbs' testy tenure as President Obama's press secretary. Yesterday was Gibbs' last day on the job.

CW: President Obama is ready, willing & able to conspire with Republicans and ConservaDems in Congress to cut Social Security benefits. If you don't think so, read this post by Susan Madrak of Crooks and Liars; she heavily cites a Wall Street Journal article which is firewalled.

Eric Lipton & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: a group of firms that indirectly worked for the Bank of America & the Chamber of Commerce proposed to make misrepresentations to discredit and/or to blackmail their critics. BoA and the Chamber claim they never knew a thing about it. WikiLeaks, Glenn Greenwald and Think Progress were among their Targets. ...

... Greenwald has a thorough analysis of how these saboteurs work and he explains how the Department of Justice figures into the picture: "... the firms involved here are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the U.S. Government and the nation's largest private corporations....  Moreover, these kinds of smear campaigns are far from unusual....  And perhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams [the law firm which represents BoA & which received the proposals] was recommended to Bank of America's General Counsel by the Justice Department -- meaning the U.S. Government is aiding Bank of America in its defense against/attacks on WikiLeaks." ...

... Lee Fang describes the proposed attacks on Think Progress: "ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ... is working with [a] set of 'private security' companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign."

Ezra Klein: "... the House GOP leadership has little sway and less control over the rank-and-file. The Republican Study Committee seems more powerful than the Republican leadership at this point. The budget proposal produced by Rep. Jim Jordan won out over the one favored by Rep. Paul Ryan.... I'd say the odds of a government shutdown -- either over cuts or the debt ceiling -- just went up dramatically."

Susan Stellin of the New York Times: "... in the wake of the furor last fall over pat-downs and body scanners, several industry organizations are working on proposals to overhaul security checkpoints to provide more or less scrutiny based on the risk profile of each traveler. While the proposals are in the early stages, they represent a growing consensus around a concept that has the support of John S. Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration: divide travelers into three groups — trusted, regular or risky — and apply different screening techniques based on what is known about the passengers." CW: this story is several days old, but an old friend of mine, who is cited in the article, just brought it to my attention. 

The Revolving Door Keeps on Revolving. Eric Dash of the New York Times: "Joseph Jiampietro, one of the government’s top deal makers during the financial crisis, has joined Goldman Sachs as a senior investment banker covering the financial services industry...." He was the FDIC's "main liason to hedge funds and broader Wall Street community.... Mr. Jiampietro is the latest in a parade of top federal official to leave Washington for Wall Street." (Emphasis mine.) Prior to "his stint in Washington," he was an investment banker. CW: why do I think Mr. Jiampietro's "stint in Washington" had nothing to do with public service?

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) won the always-anticipated, rarely predictive presidential straw poll Saturday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, but he did so with less than a third of the vote.... Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney came in second with about 23 percent. Beyond that the vote splintered, with no potential candidate rising above the single digits." ...

AP: "Protesters, still partying over their victory in pushing Mubarak out, now pressed for a voice in guiding their country's move to democracy." ...

... AP: "Egypt's military rulers have promised the country will abide by its international agreements, a nod to allay concerns that Egypt's peace deal with Israel could be threatened following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. The military has also asked the current government, appointed by Mubarak, to continue operating until a new one is formed. It also says it is committed to eventually handing over power to an elected administration." ...

... Los Angeles Times: "Across the Middle East, [Egypt's] euphoria was contagious. Young men waved flags through the streets of Ramallah in the West Bank, spontaneous rallies broke out at the Egyptian Embassy in Jordan, and people across the region ripped through the contact lists on their cellphones to share an empowering sense of incredulity, followed by possibility, that accompanied the news." ...

... Washington Post: "Even as they celebrated their triumph over a dictator, many of Egypt's revolutionaries vowed Saturday to continue their peaceful occupation of Tahrir Square, saying their demands for democracy and accountability were still unmet."

New York Times: "With the government likely to bump up against its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit sometime between April 5 and May 31, and a difficult drama about to play out in Congress, Treasury officials are trying to buy as much time as they can to avoid a default." They are taking a series of emergency steps "which could, in theory, push back the projected date for hitting the debt limit by as much as eight weeks, possibly into July."

New York Times: "Citing Wisconsin’s gaping budget shortfall for this year and even larger ones expected in the years ahead, [Republican] Gov. Scott Walker proposed a sweeping plan on Friday to cut benefits for public employees in the state and to take away most of their unions’ ability to bargain. The proposal ... is expected to receive support next week in the State Legislature...."

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