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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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Thursday
Jan202011

The Commentariat -- January 21

** Best Blogpost Ever on Court Challenges to the Affordable Care Law. Rick Ungar of Forbes (of all places), in a post titled, "Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance...":

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed - 'An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.' The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

Steve Benen on Joe Lieberman -- still able to get "foreign policy AND feminism wrong at the same time."

I'm posting this for the behind-the-scenes stuff, which I love:

CW: Mary Williams Walsh of the New York Times writes what I think is an alarming report on what some policymakers are advocating for cash-strapped states: bankruptcy, including reneging on pension obligations to retirees. My friend Peter S. directs you to the most recommended comment by Zeppo.

Jeffrey Immelt in a Washington Post op-ed: "President Obama has asked me to chair his new President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.... The president and I are committed to a candid and full dialogue among business, labor and government...." (See today's news.) ...

... Read Marcy Wheeler on Jeff Immelt: "... no matter how many times Immelt gets up on a podium or in an op-ed and feigns an interest in American jobs, his actions make him the poster child for everything wrong with the U.S. economy right now." Marcy embeds this terrific clip from Bernie Sanders' Senate "filibuster":

... Also, please read Melissa McEwan on Obama's choice of Immelt. I can't match her sarcasm, but she perfectly captures my sense of the pick. ...

... Pat Garofalo of the Wonk Room: "... due to a corporate tax system that is loophole-ridden and full of giveaways, General Electric pays a pittance in corporate income tax. Though the statutory corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, GE last year paid a paltry 3.6 percent. In 2009, despite making $10.3 billion in pretax income, GE paid nothing in corporate income tax (and, in fact, received $1.1 billion in tax benefits)." ...

... The new chairman of our "Council on Jobs" is what you might accurately call a "jobs-killer."

Noam Scheiber in The New Republic on President Obama's Wall Street Journal op-ed piece re: regulatory reform. Here's the President's piece. Scheiber's analysis is pretty illuminating.

Ezra Klein: "It's the age of civility in American politics, but there's one institution that's been civil all along: the Congressional Budget Office.... The nonpartisan agency ... speaks in the polite language of actuarial tables, refuses to reliably please or disappoint either party and is the closest thing American politics has to an umpire. And the Republicans are getting sick and tired of it."

Jonathan Martin of Politico: Dick Armey to House Republican Tea Party members: "Curb your enthusiasm." Includes three videos of Dick Armey talking, none of which I even clicked on. CW: my friend Kate Madison warned at least a year ago that Armey, a big financial backer of the TP, would try to make regular Republicans out of any tea party members who made it to Congress. Let's see how that goes. ...

... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "House Republican leaders confronted pressure from conservatives on Thursday to take more aggressive steps to cut federal spending, with a large group of lawmakers calling for outlays to be slashed by $2.5 trillion over the next decade, far more than the party has sought so far." ...

... Steve Benen: "The likelihood of these cuts actually passing is non-existent, but it is a helpful snapshot of Republican priorities. But also note perhaps the most important detail about a plan such as this one: it would be devastating for American jobs. Indeed, if lawmakers were to get together to plot how Congress could deliberately increase unemployment, their plan would look an awful lot like this one. The RSC proposal would deliberately fire thousands of civilian workers, force states to make sweeping job cuts, and lay off thousands more who work in transportation and infrastructure." ...

... David Dayan of Firedoglake: "The value in [the Republican Study Committee's spending cuts] document is knowing that the battle lines have been drawn.... The end of the continuing resolution on March 4, as well as the need to increase the debt limit, hang out there over the horizon."

As the Worms Turn. AP: Justices Scalia & Thomas try to explain away their relationship with Charles Koch, one of the brothers who have benefited from the Citzens United ruling, in which Scalia & Thomas were in the majority. The Supremes look shady to me. But you decide. Here's the New York Times' backstory, which I linked to yesterday.

Another reason DADT was stupid. Mark Thompson of Time: "The Government Accountability Office has concluded it cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $200 million to oust 3,664 service personnel for violating the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' law between 2004 to 2009.... That works out to $52,800 per person."

Floyd Norris of the New York Times suggests a new chapter for Gail Collins' proposed book, Everything Bad Is Joe Lieberman's Fault. Norris says had it not been for Lieberman's insistence in 1994 upon allowing fantastical stock-option accounting, "some of the worst excesses of the technology stock bubble might have been avoided."

AP: "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords left a Tucson hospital Friday and is being flown to a Houston rehabilitation center for her next steps in her recovery, less than two weeks after the congresswoman was shot in the head. Well-wishers ... lined the ambulance's route between the hospital and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, where Giffords was loaded on a specially outfitted jet." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's transfer Friday from a Tucson trauma center to a Houston hospital went 'flawlessly,' and she will begin rehabilitation right away, doctors said."

Michelle Obama is killing people on the streets! Jason Linkins mocks the Daily Caller's latest lunacy.

President Obama on the 50th Anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Scroll down for JFK's inaugural address:

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