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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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Saturday
Jan012011

The Commentariat -- January 2

For Slate, Mark Fiore looks back over "The Year that Wasn't":

"The Constitutional Option." In a New York Times op-ed, former Vice President Walter Mondale, who was also a Senator & President of the Senate, says, "Fix the Filibuster." Mondale makes several suggestions, but he also explains why Majority Leader Reid & Minority Leader McConnell's little scheme to require a super-majority to change the filibuster rules in unconstitutional:

A long-standing principle of common law holds that one legislature cannot bind its successors. If changing Senate rules really required a two-thirds supermajority, it would effectively prevent a simple majority of any Senate from ever amending its own rules, which would be unconstitutional. Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution states: 'Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.' The document is very explicit about the few instances where a supermajority vote is needed — and changing the Senate’s procedural rules is not among them. In all other instances it must be assumed that the Constitution requires only a majority vote.

The Rich Are Held to a Lower Standard. Charles Bagli of the New York Times: "While a homeowner who lost a house to foreclosure would find it difficult to borrow for years, developers who defaulted on enormous loans have still been able to attract money. The reasons, experts say, are that there is still plenty of money floating around and that the market has a very short memory."

New York Times: "President Obama took time out of his Hawaiian vacation on Sunday to sign into law one of the surprise accomplishments of the lame-duck Congress: a measure covering the cost of medical care for rescue workers and others sickened by toxic fumes and dust after the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center."

Imtiwaz Delawala of ABC News: "President Obama's top economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, warned today against 'playing chicken' with raising the country's debt ceiling, saying it would cause 'a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008.' ... Some conservatives in Congress, especially new Tea Party members, have said they will vote against raising the debt limit again, saying government should drastically cut spending instead." Here's Jake Tapper's full interview of Goolsbee:

     ... Even George Will agrees with Goolsbee., saying that voting against raising the debt ceiling would be "suicidal." With video. ...

... Bridget Johnson of The Hill: Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz & Anthony Weiner introduce new Republican pontificator Rep. Mike Kelly (Penns.) to the real world on "Face the Nation." CBS News story & video here.

Washington Post: Darrell Issa, "the Republican congressman who is taking over responsibility for congressional oversight, called President Obama's administration 'one of the most corrupt administrations' on Sunday and predicted that the investigations he is planning over the next two years could result in about $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), incoming chairman of one of the House committees that oversees health policy, said undoing the Democrats' health reform law would be a top priority for the new GOP-controlled Congress. Upton said on 'Fox News Sunday' that he believes there may be enough opposition in the new House to reach the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto. Short of that, he said House leaders will 'go after this bill piece by piece.'"

Republicons Beware! Kate Zernike of the New York Times: "Just a month ago, Tea Party leaders were celebrating their movement’s victories in the midterm elections. But as Congress wrapped up an unusually productive lame-duck session last month, those same Tea Party leaders were lamenting that Washington behaved as if it barely noticed that American voters had repudiated the political establishment."

Julia Preston of the New York Times: Republican "legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.... Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them. Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents. Opponents say that effort would be unconstitutional, arguing that the power to grant citizenship resides with the federal government, not with the states."

Norm Ornstein in a Washington Post op-ed: there are death panels, but they don't come from the Affordable Care Act. "They come from Republican administrations in states such as Arizona and Indiana.... The nightmares of conservatives bitterly opposed to health reform are coming true..., but with zero relation to the reform bill they opposed.... Things are about to get worse."

Daniel Gross of the Washington Post reviews All the Devils Are Here, a book the delves into "the hidden history of the financial crisis," by Bethany McLean & Joe Nocera. Gross concentrates on one of the devils -- a shady character named Roland Arnall, "the real subprime pioneer."

Pat Garofalo of Think Progress: the Mortgage Bankers Association, which successfully lobbied Congress last year to defeat a program to help foreclosure victims, "is once again standing in opposition to programs aimed at keeping families in their homes — this time by taking aim at what are known as mortgage mediation programs, which push banks to negotiate with borrowers before finalizing a foreclosure."

On Christmas Day, Pope Benedict XVI offered his "Thought for the Day," published in the Guardian, & recorded by the BBC; the link is to the transcript & video, the recording of which, the BBC notes, "followed months of negotiations between the BBC and the Vatican." Part of the pope's message:

And it was not a political liberation that he [Jesus] brought, achieved through military means: rather, Christ destroyed death for ever and restored life by means of his shameful death on the Cross.

     ... CW: sounds like standard Christian fare to me, but it got Richard Dawkins in a lather about the implicit message, a central Roman Catholic tenet, of original sin. Dawkins calls the pope "Ratzinger":

Ratzinger has much to confess in his own conduct, as cardinal and pope. But he is also guilty of promoting one of the most repugnant ideas ever to occur to a human mind: 'Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness' (Hebrews 9:22). -- Richard Dawkins

Local News

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is sworn in (for a second time) & delivers his inaugural address:

New York Times: during his inaugural address today, New York Gov. Andrew "Cuomo said he would unveil an emergency financial plan this week — a month before his first budget proposal is due — and push aggressively for stronger ethics enforcement in Albany." Here's the full text of Gov. Cuomo's speech.

Danny Hakim of the New York Times on former Gov. Mario Cuomo, father of new New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. ...

... Elizabeth Harris of the Times on the Cuomo governors' housing in Albany's Wellington Hotel, which was "sort of a dump" back in the day & is an empty shell now -- and in the governor's mansion. ...

... Thomas Kaplan of the Times: "Andrew M. Cuomo flung open the doors of the Executive Mansion on Saturday, saying he wanted people to feel connected once again to their state government. But for some visitors, the real draw was ... Mr. Cuomo's girlfriend, Sandra Lee, the Food Network star, who for a time greeted guests alongside him in the mansion’s cavernous receiving hall...."

Elizabeth Stevens of the New York Times: four retirees from Livermore Labs "... have brought [suit] against the Regents of the University of California. The retirees, who received U.C. paychecks for decades, say the university unfairly cast them out of its retiree health care system shortly after the federal Department of Energy, which owns the lab, turned management over to a private company in 2007."

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