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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
Jan262011

The Commentariat -- January 27

Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, write a story for the Times Magazine about Times' reporters encounters will Julian Assange. Watch the video here. ...

... John Cook at Gawker has a pretty good take on Bill Keller's literary effort. It would be a fair guess that Cook is not hoping for a job at the Times.

Scott Wilson & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration is openly supporting the anti-government demonstrations shaking the Arab Middle East, a stance that is far less tempered than the one the president has taken during past unrest in the region." CW: this is more evidence that the Obama Administration was delighted with WikiLeaks. ...

... Related News. New York Times: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had executed more than 40 search warrants in the United States on Thursday as part of an investigation into an international group of computer hackers who attacked corporate Web sites last year in a show of support for WikiLeaks."

Speaking of Leaking... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Two hours before President Obama delivered his State of the Union address on Tuesday..., a full-length draft of the speech was posted on a news Web site without White House knowledge. And for a moment, one of the most scripted acts of Washington stagecraft was thrown off balance. The leak of the speech ... appeared on NationalJournal.com at 7:14 p.m.... The National Journal was keeping tight-lipped about how it obtained the speech, saying only that it came from a Democrat." ...

... Ben Smith: "If there's one thing President Obama did go on about a bit about in the State of the Union, it was American exceptionalism -- as the National Journal's Ron Fournier noted at some length. Two who didn't entirely notice were Speaker John Boehner and Kathleen Parker.... It should also be noted that Obama called Boehner Speaker of 'The Greatest Nation on Earth.'" ...

... Here's is Parker interviewing Speaker Boehner. The exchange in which they bemoan the President's not acknowledging American exceptionalism begins 5 minutes in:

     ... Greg Sargent: "What's amusing about this ongoing assertion from the right is how easily debunked it is, and how casually its proponents simply pretend that the historical record doesn't exist." ...

... Hey, here's a new criticism of the President's SOTU speech, from Alvin Felzenberg, a Princeton historian & veteran of two Republican Administrations: plagiarism. "Had the president submitted the text of his second State of the Union Address in the form of a college term paper, he would have been sent forthwith to the nearest academic dean. Once again, our public affairs are such that we have one standard for presidents and another for undergraduates." Huf-fy! ...

... David Meadvin, writing in Political Wire, explains why the snap polls showed such a positive reaction to the President State of the Union speech.

"On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner talked to The Wall Street Journal's David Wessel about the [President's] initiative [to equalize & reduce the corporate tax rate]. Mr. Geithner emphasized the administration's insistence on offsetting the corporate rate, now 35%, by eliminating deductions, credits and incentives."

Amanda Terkel: "Although President Obama avoided talking about the contentious issue of gun control in Tuesday's State of the Union address, his top advisers say he will soon be jumping into the debate. In a discussion with a small group of bloggers and reporters on Wednesday at the White House, Senior Advisor David Axelrod said there was 'no doubt' the President will address the gun issue at a later date."

Raw Meat for Republicans. AP: "... Social Security will run at a deficit this year and keep on running in the red until its trust funds are drained by about 2037, congressional budget experts said Wednesday in bleaker-than-previous estimates."

Raw Meat for Democrats. Frank Newport & Lydia Saad of Gallup: "Prior to the State of the Union address, a majority of Americans said they favor cutting U.S. foreign aid, but more than 6 in 10 opposed cuts to education, Social Security, and Medicare. Smaller majorities objected to cutting programs for the poor, national defense, homeland security, aid to farmers, and funding for the arts and sciences."

Matt Yglesias: print more money & get the unemployed off the couch.

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "President Obama vowed during his State of the Union address Tuesday to end enforcement of the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy this year, providing the clearest indication yet that the ban on gays openly serving in uniform will end in a matter of months, not years as some have feared."

I think it's absolutely wrong, and the public should understand that the president has enough power; he should back off and let us do what we do. -- Harry Reid, on President Obama's pledge to veto earmarks

Two posts on the Democrats' cave on filibuster reform:

     Sam Stein: The window to change the Senate rules during this session through a simple majority vote ended without action ... as lawmakers in the chamber agreed to adjourn the first day of the 112th Congress." Unfortunately, Stein uses the passive voice to the point he doesn't really reveal why this happened.

     Jon Walker of Firedoglake: "Senate Democrats had the ability to easily solve the problems they spent the last two years endlessly complaining about, but choose not to.... Every single procedural problem [Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell causes Democrats in the next two years is ultimately the fault of Senate Democrats because, despite knowing his modus operandi, they still choose to leave themselves at his mercy." ...

... Related News. New York Times: "... Senate ... leadership on Thursday promised to temper the procedural warfare that has consumed the chamber in recent years and increased partisan tension. The bipartisan agreement left intact the filibuster.... But the Senate approved other changes Thursday in rules intended to quicken the pace of action, including new limits on a single lawmaker’s ability to anonymously block legislation and nominations." ...

... Speaking of Stupid Senate Stuff, Ian Millhiser of Think Progress reports that the Republican leadership has put Mike Lee (R-UT) on the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is the guy, Millhiser quips, who defines a sentence as "a noun, a verb, and 'unconstitutional.'” "Lee has recently claimed that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution."

Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post: "It is the narrowly divided Democratic-led Senate -- not the Republican House -- that is most likely to tackle the bipartisan initiatives Obama laid out Tuesday, including free-trade deals, border security and immigration reform, and an overhaul of the corporate tax code."

Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "By voting Wednesday to abolish public financing for presidential campaigns, House Republicans endorsed a policy that could cause serious problems for ... fellow Republicans hoping to run for the White House in 2012":

For the major candidates, the best-known candidates, the system is irrelevant at this point. The ones who are relying on it now are the more marginal candidates. . . . The question is whether the Republican leadership is happy not to finance those people. -- Lawrence Noble, former SEC counsel

Rick Pearson & David Kidwell of the Chicago Tribune assess the political leanings of members of the Illinois State Supreme Court & how their political affiliations may influence the justices' decision on the Rahm Emanuel petition to remain on the Chicago mayoral ballot.

Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: a "string of political miscalculations ... have left [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai a diminished and more isolated leader, members of Parliament, Western diplomats and analysts say. At the very least, they say, the outcome seems certain to signal the beginning of a potentially more precarious period in Mr. Karzai’s relations with Afghanistan’s power brokers."

Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "A coalition of rabbis wants Fox News chief Roger Ailes and conservative host Glenn Beck to cut out all their talk about Nazis and the Holocaust.... The rabbis have called on ... Rupert Murdoch to sanction his two famous employees via a full-page ad in Thursday's editions of the Wall Street Journal -- one of many other media properties controlled by Murdoch's News Corp."

News Items

Washington Post: "Opposition activists in Egypt vowed to defy a government ban and turn out by the thousands for demonstrations Friday, prompting authorities to apparently cut access to the Internet in an attempt to limit their ability to organize."

Washington Post: "Sporadic anti-government protests continued across Egypt Thursday, with demonstrators facing off against police outside the lawyers' guild in central Cairo and activists reportedly setting fire to a police post in the eastern city of Suez."

New York Times: "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that the military could be ready this year to carry out the repeal of a ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the armed forces, and that he has accelerated efforts to revise training and regulations."

Chicago Tribune: "The Illinois Supreme Court ruled today that Rahm Emanuel can stay on the ballot for mayor of Chicago, saying in a unanimous decision that he meets the state's residency requirements despite spending most of the last year as White House chief of staff." ...

... NEW. Here's a facsimile of the Illinois Court's decision.

Politico: "President Barack Obama on Thursday named Jay Carney, communications director for Vice President Joe Biden and former Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, to replace Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary. Carney’s new posiition was announced in an email from chief of staff Bill Daley that detailed more than a dozen other personnel moves made as part of a broader White House staff reorganization." Here's the full text of Daley's e-mail.

New York Times: "Yemen, one of the Middle East’s most impoverished countries and a haven for Al Qaeda militants, became the latest Arab state to witness mass protests on Thursday, as thousands of Yemenis took to the streets in the capital and other regions to demand a change in government."

New York Times: David Kato, "an outspoken Ugandan gay activist whose picture recently appeared in an anti-gay newspaper under the headline 'Hang Them,' was beaten to death in his home, Ugandan police said on Thursday."

The President speaks in Wisconsin:

Here's the Los Angeles Times report of Obama's visit to Manitowoc, Wisconsin yesterday. AND here's the AP report. New York Times report on President Obama's trip to Wisconsin. Video above. ...

     ... Politico Related: "White House officials will travel across the country in the days after President Obama’s State of the Union speech in an effort to promote some of its key themes.... Obama [is] visiting Wisconsin and Vice President Biden [is] heading to Indiana." New York Times story here.

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