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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
Feb042011

The Commentariat -- February 4

President Obama made a statement about Egypt this afternoon:

     ... At 2:35 min. into the video below, President Obama takes only one question, that one coming from Reuters's Alister Bull:

     ... Here's Politico's liveblog of the presser. The full press conference is here, but you'll get the meat of it from the excerpts above:

Noam Chomsky in the Guardian: it isn't radical Islam that worries U.S. leaders -- it's independence; the U.S. supports the regimes that support us.

Maram Mazen, a Bloomberg reporter who was on vacation in her native Cairo, is set upon by plainclothesmen & police. A policeman tells her, "You will be lynched." Video.

Christiane Amanpour interviews Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman:

     ... Here's Amanpour's print report on the interview.

Nicholas Kristof reports again from Tahrir Square in Cairo with vivid descriptions like this: "As I arrived near the square in the morning, I encountered a line of Mr. Mubarak’s goons carrying wooden clubs with nails embedded in them." Here's a video report from Kristof:

New York Times Editors: Egyptian President Hosni "Mubarak’s attempt to blame the opposition and foreigners for the mayhem ... is patently absurd.... Mr. Mubarak has lost the legitimacy to continue governing Egypt, but he has chosen survival over his people.... An important question is what role the army — which gets nearly $1.5 billion in annual American aid — is prepared to play.... Egypt and its people need a quick transition to an era of greater political and economic freedoms. The violence is making that transition harder." Here's Christiane Amanpour's report of her interview of Mubarak, which the Editors mention:

... Here's a related story by Amanpour. ...

... Rachel Maddow explains the Mubarak strategy of violence & why his paid "demonstrators" are attacking journalists:

... Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "... as the crisis in Egypt has intensified this week, elevating foreign affairs above domestic political skirmishes, the potential Republican candidates and the party’s leaders in Congress have, with only a few exceptions, had little to say.... The lack of debate underscores the relative absence of muscular Republican voices on foreign affairs in general." CW: biggest loudmouth: the Newt.

Zachary Goldfarb & Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration is likely to recommend reducing the size of mortgages eligible for government backing..., a move that could make getting a home loan in high-priced areas ... more expensive.... The proposal to let the higher limits lapse is among the most concrete elements in [a] long-awaited review, which examines various options for reshaping the role government plays in the mortgage finance market."

Robert Reich in Salon on House Republican budget cuts: "They discovered the job of tackling the budget will be far bigger and tougher than it looked from the far end of the campaign trail. Americans don't want big spending cuts. They want to cut what doesn't work. And now congressional Republicans have got to explain this to the Tea Partiers, who are still howling and yelling."

Betty Friedan & unidentified 1960s-era "housewife." New Yorker art.CW: Today is the fifth anniversary of feminist Betty Friedan's death & the 90th anniversary of her birthday. Last week I linked to this New Yorker article by Louis Menand on the impact of Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. To celebrate the advances in women's rights that Friedan espoused & helped inspire, Sunday night at 10 pm ET (right after the Super Bowl!) PBS is airing a documentary about Nancy Reagan, who just said no to feminism, too. Emily Bazelon has a review of the PBS special here. So, Republicans, you wanna wait till after the Nancy Reagan Show to eliminate that PBS funding?

 

 

Local News

You are voting for the first time in the history of our state to codify discrimination into our constitution. -- Zach Wahls ...

... Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old student, speaks before the Iowa legislature against a resolution to end civil unions in the state. It's an amazing speech in every way:

 

Stephen Colbert comments on Ohio Gov. John Kasich's all-white cabinet:

... CW: in case you were wondering, Kasich is a Republican. It isn't his fault. He only knows white people.

News Ledes

President Obama met with Canadian PM Stephen Harper, this afternoon. They held a joint press conference. AP: "President Barack Obama on Friday appealed to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to begin an orderly process to relinquish the power he has held for 30 years. But Obama stopped short of calling for Mubarak's immediate resignation. 'My hope is he will end up making the right decision,' Obama said...." Washington Post story here. See videos of statement above. ...

... AP: "President Barack Obama will take questions from reporters Friday on the continuing violence in Egypt during what may be a pivotal day in the crisis, as anti-government demonstrators aim to escalate their street protests. Obama and members of his administration are edging closer to blaming the government of authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak ... for the violent clashes in Cairo." ...

... AP: "U.S. intelligence agencies are drawing criticism from the Oval Office and Capitol Hill that they failed to warn of revolts in Egypt and the downfall of an American ally in Tunisia. President Barack Obama has told National Intelligence Director James Clapper that he was 'disappointed with the intelligence community' over its failure to predict the outbreak of demonstrations would lead to the ouster of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis...." ...

... New York Times: "Defying a wider government crackdown, tens of thousands of Egyptians packed Cairo’s central Tahrir Square on Friday, chanting slogans, bowing in prayer and waving Egyptian flags to press a campaign for the removal of President Hosni Mubarak that has transfixed the Arab world and tested American diplomacy." Story has been updated; the new lede: "Cracks in the Egyptian establishments’s support for President Hosni Mubarak began to appear Friday as jubilant crowds of hundreds of thousands packed the capitol’s central Tahrir Square to call for his ouster, this time unmolested by either security police or uniformed Mubarak loyalists."

New York Times: "A lawsuit brought by the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme accuses the owners of the Mets of being so enamored of the enormous profits they earned while investing over decades with Mr. Madoff that they ignored repeated and specific warnings that he might have been operating a fraud. The lawsuit, unsealed in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan on Friday morning, contends that the team’s owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, used the profits from their investments in Madoff to establish personal fortunes, create dozens of family trusts and financially fuel their array of businesses, from the Mets to real estate to the creation of a cable sports network."

New York Times: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, warned Congressional Republicans on Thursday not to 'play around with' a coming vote to raise the government’s legal borrowing limit or use it as a bargaining chip for spending cuts.... It was the first time that Mr. Bernanke, who in contrast to his predecessors has avoided taking sides in partisan debates on fiscal matters, had spoken out on the debt ceiling issue."

Politico: "Mark Kelly, husband of wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will fly the space shuttle Endeavour's final mission in April, according to a source familiar with the decision. Kelly and NASA are expected to make an announcement at a press conference Friday." AP update here.

Hattiesburg (Mississippi) American: "A federal judge has dismissed part of a lawsuit filed by Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and 10 other Mississippians challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform law. U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett, in a 23-page decision handed down Thursday, said Bryant and the other plaintiffs did not have standing to file the lawsuit."

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