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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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Sunday
Jan022011

The Commentariat -- January 3

Steven Davidoff of the New York Times: "Goldman Sach’s investment in Facebook once again raises the issue of whether the Securities and Exchange Commission will force the social networking company into an initial public offering. In particular, this issue arises because of the special purpose vehicle that Goldman plans to create in order to allow its clients to invest up to $1.5 billion in Facebook." ...

... Evelyn Rusli of the New York Times: "Goldman Sachs may have found a new friend in Facebook, but the financial firm isn’t finding much love from members of the social network." ...

... Related News Stories: "New York Times: "Facebook, the popular social networking site, has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor in a deal that values the company at $50 billion, according to people involved in the transaction. The deal makes Facebook now worth more than companies like eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner." AND "As part of a deal that values Facebook at $50 billion, Goldman Sachs is offering wealthy clients a chance to invest in the company without its going public." CW: so fucking egalitarian.

New Yorker art."Oh, Shut Up." Rick Hertzberg: "In the absence of the filibuster, the health-care law would offer a public alternative to private insurance, the financial reform would be strong enough to close off the likelihood of another meltdown, and the very rich (and their heirs) would pay something closer to their fair share of taxes. Nearly two hundred qualified nominees for executive and judicial offices would be on the job instead of in limbo. And a climate-and-energy bill, a bill to require corporations to be open about their political spending, the DREAM Act, and dozens of other worthy measures — all of which passed the House and had majority support in the Senate — would now be the law of the land."

Steve Kornacki of Salon takes the MSM approach to the Obama presidency & declares that 2010 wasn't a bad year for Obama after all. CW: I don't really agree with Kornacki, but his POV is worth considering.

Paul Krugman: "... what we’re looking at over the next few years, even with pretty good growth, are unemployment rates that not long ago would have been considered catastrophic — because they are. Behind those dry statistics lies a vast landscape of suffering and broken dreams. And the arithmetic says that the suffering will continue as far as the eye can see." ...

... Emily Kaiser of Reuters: "U.S. private employers have recorded 11 consecutive months of job gains, yet the number of people who are so discouraged that they have given up searching for work stands at an all-time high."

"Chewing Gum for Terrorists." Law Prof. David Cole in a New York Times op-ed: "Under current law, it seems, the right to make profits is more sacrosanct than the right to petition for peace, and the need to placate American businesses more compelling than the need to provide food and shelter to earthquake victims and war refugees." ...

... Glenn Greenwald has a different take on the Paris meeting, which David Cole references, in which "Rudy Giuliani and former Bush officials Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge, and Fran Townsend ... appeared at a forum organized by supporters of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) -- a group declared by the U.S. since 1997 to be [a] 'terrorist organization' -- and expressed wholesale support for that group." Greenwald writes that, "The reason there isn't more uproar over these Bush officials' overt foreign-soil advocacy on behalf of a Terrorist group is because they want to use that group's Terrorism to advance U.S. aims." ...

... John Cook gives the story a Gawker flavor: "Rudy Giuliani & John Bolton Are Terrorists Now."

NEW. Katharine Seelye of the New York Times: Pennsylvanian "Patrick J. Toomey was elected to the Senate in November as part of the Republican revolution, with a big assist from Tea Party activists, an endorsement from Sarah Palin and the expectation that he would join with other antiestablishment conservatives to remake Washington. But as he prepared to take office this week, Mr. Toomey hardly sounded like a partisan rabble-rouser." ...

... "Lindsey Graham Joins the Loonies." Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "... Graham seems to grasp ... that default could be catastrophic. But that's not stopping him from making his demands." ...

... BECAUSE, as David Dayan of Firedoglake argues, "... the Democrats and the White House are talking about insanity, while the Republicans are banking on the responsibility of their opponents."

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in a New York Times op-ed: during the state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao, Presidents Obama & Hu should establish "a joint charter ... [which would], in effect, provide the framework not only for avoiding what under some circumstances could become a hostile rivalry but also for expanding a realistic collaboration between the United States and China."

Justin Elliott of Salon on the neo-imperialism of Sen. Lindsey Graham & amigos. With video.

Joe Klein of Time: President "Obama -- or his advisors -- undercut [Special Envoy Richard] Holbrooke from the very outset, which crippled our ability to push the Afghan government toward legitimacy and made Holbrooke's mission near-impossible." Here's Leslie Gelb's tribute to Holbrooke, which is the basis for Klein's post.

At the Diplomats' Bazaar. Eric Lipton, et al., of the New York Times: "United States diplomats were acting like marketing agents [for Boeing], offering deals to heads of state and airline executives.... This is the high-stakes, international bazaar for large commercial jets, where tens of billions of dollars are on the line, along with hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs.... To a greater degree than previously known, diplomats are a big part of the sales force, according to hundreds of cables released by WikiLeaks, which describe politicking and cajoling at the highest levels." With links to related documents.

Nelson Schwartz of the New York Times: in anticipation of a WikiLeaks document dump, the Bank of America does some forensic sleuthing of its own transactions.

Jake Sherman of Politico: "Rep. Darrell Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.... The House Oversight and Government Reform is also planning to investigate how regulation impacts job creation, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis; recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown." ...

... Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars has a terrific reprise of Darrell Issa's appearance yesterday on CNN's "State of the Union." Issa's interrogator -- Republican-friendly Ed Henry, of all people. As Belle writes, "It's amazing how ridiculous these GOP talking points are rendered when the media does their job even a little bit." With video. ...

... AND Some Big-Mouth Republicans Retreat. Alan Zibel of the Wall Street Journal: "Earlier this year, leading House Republicans proposed to privatize mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or place them in receivership starting in two years. Now, as Republicans prepare to assume control of the House next week, they aren't in as big a rush, cautioning that withdrawing government support in the housing market should be gradual." ...

... AND Carrie Johnson of NPR: the Justice Department gets ready for Republican attacks. Plus audio.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.). New York Times photo.More Reasons to Miss Alan Grayson. Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "He has zero faith in the incoming speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, whom he calls a 'tool of special interest.' He derides the Tea Party’s successes as 'bought and paid for by the enormously rich and the selfish.' And he can barely contain distaste for his Republican successor, whose views he sums up as 'bizarre fundamentalist.' Representative Alan Grayson ... is leaving office on Wednesday much as he entered it two years ago — as the pugnaciously partisan, verbal-bomb-tossing, liberal folk hero of the 111th Congress.... While surveying the wreckage of the November elections that cost him his seat and looking to the Congressional term ahead, Mr. Grayson posits that many Democrats have not been acting Democratic enough." Read the whole article.

Two Essays I've Been Meaning to Link:

(1) "According to most scientists, the sun rises in the east, although critics say...." Garrett Epps of The Atlantic on why lawsuits against the Affordable Care are crap & the judges who buy into the plaintiffs' arguments are dumb as posts. And journalists are not doing their jobs in explaining the crap cases, either.

(2) Sam Harris in the Huff Post: "... throughout the 1950's -- a decade for which American conservatives pretend to feel a harrowing sense of nostalgia -- the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent." Harris goes on to skewer just about every conservative economic myth. He then proposes a 21st-century American Renaissance, brought to you by our wealthiest countrymen.

Prisoners Go High-Tech. Kim Severson & Robbie Brown of the New York Times: "A smartphone hidden under a mattress is the modern-day file inside a cake."

Do give yourself a treat & read the blog post of Steven Lee Myers, et al., of the New York Times on the antiquities of Iraq. Update: a related story is here. Here's one of the videos incorporated into the post:

... Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post reports on a $5 billion U.S.-funded program that has done nothing but build new ruins: "investments under the plan -- known as the Commander's Emergency Response Program, have created no more than a temporary illusion of progress. They have also shown a lack of U.S. foresight and highlighted the shortcomings of an Iraqi government the Americans were trying to boost."

XO Movie Night. Anahad O'Connor of the New York Times: Navy "Capt. Owen Honors reportedly not only orchestrated the making of ... raunchy videos, but also starred in them and filmed them aboard the [U.S.S.] Enterprise with government equipment while the carrier was deployed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The videos were splashed across the Internet over the weekend, and are now at the center of a Navy investigation. According to The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk..., Captain Honors made the videos in 2006 and 2007 to entertain and boost the morale of sailors aboard the carrier. The videos were filmed with cameras and equipment from the carrier’s public affairs office, and were shown at least once a week on closed-circuit television throughout the ship. Captain Honors at the time was the carrier’s executive officer..., but he later became its commanding officer." Here's the Virginia-Pilot story & video.

Local News

Noah Kristula-Green of the Frum Forum: Christine O’Donnell is responsible "for destroying and cannibalizing the Republican Party in Delaware. Despite the media’s continuing fascination with O’Donnell ... less attention has been paid to O’Donnell’s negative effect on the down-ticket races in Delaware, or to the fact that the damage she did will last for several election cycles. There has also been no attempt to hold accountable the conservative media figures who endorsed O’Donnell." Kristula-Green bashes Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin & Jim DeMint.

David Catanese of Politico reports that my Republican Congressman Connie Mack the Umpteenth, who is the son & grandson of senators of the same name,  husband of Mary Bono & otherwise a dimwitted cipher who seldom gets near Southwest Florida, will run for Sen. Bill Nelson's seat. I'm not that big a fan of Nelson's, but Mack isn't qualified to wipe Nelson's boots. Still, he could win. Here's an uncritical (Fort Myers) News-Press story about him.

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