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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
Jan052011

The Commentariat -- January 6

This is a strong appointment. Bill Daley is a man of stature and extraordinary experience in government, business, trade negotiations and global affairs. -- Thomas Donohue, President of the Chamber of Commerce

As the chief of staff, he is the gatekeeper, and that means real power in Washington. Just about any way you look at it, it creates a huge potential for a conflict of interest. -- Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation

This was a real mistake by the White House. Bill Daley consistently urges the Democratic Party to pursue a corporate agenda that alienates both Independent and Democratic voters. If President Obama listens to that kind of political advice from Bill Daley, Democrats will suffer a disastrous 2012. -- Adam Green, Progressive Change Campaign

President Obama names William Daley his new chief of staff:

... Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "The recruitment of Mr. Daley ... is seen as a savvy step by some in Washington.... But the choice is causing alarm among some in Mr. Obama’s liberal base, who argue that bringing Mr. Daley to the White House violates a commitment by the president to curtail the sway of special interests in Washington." ...

... Howard Fineman: "Bill Daley is double Rahm, double calm. Daley, not his protégé Rahm Emanuel, is the preeminent Chicago Democratic insider -- with twice the history and contacts, and twice the serenity, confidence and maturity in wielding power." ...

... Greg Sargent: "The Daley pick will inevitably reinforce a faulty interpretation of Obama's first two years: That Obama governed from the far left.

Quote of the Week: No. -- Harry Reid, in response to a reporter who asked if he will bring the repeal to the Senate floor if and when it passes the House

As a result of changes in direct spending and revenues, CBO expects that enacting H.R. 2 [-- repeal of the Affordable Care Law --] would probably increase federal budget deficits over the 2012–2019 period by a total of roughly $145 billion (on the basis of the original estimate), plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. Adding two more years (through 2021) brings the projected increase in deficits to something in the vicinity of $230 billion. -- Doug Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office (emphasis added) ...

... Update. Brian Montopoli of CBS News: "House Speaker John Boehner said today that the Congressional Budget Office is 'entitled to their own opinion' -- a striking statement in light of the deference usually shown information from the nonpartisan CBO from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Boehner was objecting to a preliminary CBO finding that repealing the health care reform legislation ... would cost the government roughly $230 billion over ten years.... In a report (PDF) Boehner's office released to buttress that argument, Republicans argued the health care law 'relies on accounting gimmicks,' double-counts cost savings from Medicare and requires additional government spending for implementation." ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic sums up the results of the CBO analysis: "repealing the Affordable Care Act would mean higher deficits plus insurance that is less comprehensive, less available, and in many cases more expensive." ...

... Jonathan Bernstein, also of TNR, on Boehner's double-talk response to the CBO report: "How do the supposedly deficit-opposing Republicans deal with it? Two ways: by simply refusing to believe it, and by trotting out misdirection and long-disproved junk from the original debate." ...

... Update. Point-by-point, Ezra Klein rebuts Boehner's claim the CBO "relie[d] on accounting gimmicks." ...

... Update. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Democratic leaders in Washington plan to spend the next week doing what they all but refused to do in the 2010 midterm elections: mount a vigorous defense of President Obama’s health care legislation."

... Kate Pickert has a long, fact-filled article in Time on the status of the Affordable Care Act. She doesn't say so directly, but it's mostly about Republican Hypocrites on Parade. ...

"Huck-Finning the Constitution." Adam Serwer: "Earlier this week, there was an uproar over a publisher's plans to release an edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that would replace the N-word with the word "slave" in order to make the book more 'appropriate' for schoolchildren.... Republicans, intending to make a big symbolic show of their reading of the Constitution, have now taken a similarly sanitized approach to our founding document. Yesterday they announced that they will be leaving out the superceded text in their reading of the Constitution on the House floor this morning, avoiding the awkwardness of having to read aloud the 'three fifths compromise,' which counted slaves as only three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and apportionment." ...

[... FYI, here's Michiko Kakutani's review: "A new effort to sanitize 'Huckleberry Finn' comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Ala., who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word 'nigger' with 'slave.' ... Authors’ original texts should be sacrosanct intellectual property....”] ...

... Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal: "In doing the reading..., when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) got to the passage on how to count the U.S. population ('adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons') he skipped it.

When Congressmen-elect Pete Sessions and Mike Fitzpatrick participated in reading parts of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor, Speaker Boehner should have given them Article 6 which requires Members of Congress to be sworn in.  -- Jennifer Crider, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ...

... Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post: "Two House Republicans have cast votes as members of the 112th Congress, but were not sworn in on Wednesday, a violation of the Constitution on the same day that the GOP had the document read from the podium.... Pete Sessions of Texas and freshman Mike Fitzpatrick missed the swearing in because they were at a fundraiser." CW: Fitzpatrick defeated Democrat Patrick Murphy, whom we love, in November. ...

... Same Story, Different Angle. Jonathan Allen of Politico: "Two Republicans, including a member of the GOP leadership, voted on the House floor several times despite not having been sworn in, throwing the House into parliamentary turmoil Thursday — the same day the Constitution was read aloud on the floor." ...

... More on the Same. Matthew Jaffe & John Parkinson of ABC News: "Sessions helped preside over a hearing of the House Rules Committee on the GOP’s push to repeal the health care law. But once GOP leaders learned that two of their members weren’t yet legitimate members of Congress, they abruptly stopped the Rules hearing on the health care law."

Filibuster Reform. Greg Sargent runs down the main elements of the Democratic proposal to reform the filibuster: (1) Clear Path to Debate: Eliminate the Filibuster on Motions to Proceed; (2) Eliminates Secret Holds; (3) Right to Amend: Guarantees Consideration of Amendments for both Majority and Minority; (4) Talking Filibuster: Ensures Real Debate; (5) Expedite Nominations: Reduce Post-Cloture Time. Sargent includes some brief explanations of each of the points. A pdf of the resolution is here. ...

... Sargent has more information -- and speculation -- about how Harry Reid is likely to proceed with the resolution. Needless to say, it's complicated.

It’s the first day, and they’ve violated everything they said they were going to do. -- Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY)

Backpedaling as Fast as They Can. Jake Sherman of Politico: "Just hours after taking control of the House, Republicans passed a sweeping set of rules promising transparency and reform.... After calling for bills to go through a regular committee process, the bill that would repeal the health care law will not go through a single committee. Despite promising a more open amendment process for bills, amendments for the health care repeal will be all but shut down. After calling for a strict committee attendance list to be posted online, Republicans backpedaled and ditched that from the rules. They promised constitutional citations for every bill but have yet to add that language to early bills."

Where the Jobs Are. Andrew Cutraro writes the Time cover story: "... this job recovery ... will be cruelly uneven. It will favor, more than ever, the college educated over blue collar workers. It will favor cities that have developed industry clusters in which skills match demand. It will favor the Dakotas over states such as Florida, Nevada and California. It will favor those who work in the private sector over those who work in the public ector."

Budget! Taxes!

 E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: Republican "rhetoric is nearly devoid of talk about solving practical problems.... Instead, we hear about ... highly general principles divorced from their impact on everyday life..... During the campaign, they put out a nice round $100 billion in spending cuts from which they're now backing away. It is far easier to float a big number than to describe reductions for student loans, bridges, national parks or medical research." ...

... John McKinnon & Elizabeth Williamson of the Wall Street Journal: "Specific proposals for retooling the complex corporate-tax system aren't on the table and the debate over the issue is sure to be lengthy and difficult. But President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders are separately sounding the same broad theme that corporate tax rates should be lower." ...

... David Kocieniewski of the New York Times: Nina E. Olson, the national tax advocate who acts as an ombudsman for the I.R.S., issued a sweeping criticism of federal tax policy in her annual report to Congress. Ms. Olson found that the volume of the tax code had nearly tripled in size during the last decade.... The byzantine tax regulations also deprived the government of revenue by causing accidental underpayments and encouraging cheating, the report concluded, stating that the most practical remedy would be for Congress to scrap the existing code, which was last overhauled in 1986."

Rick Hertzberg loves Ron Chernow's 900-page George Washington: A Life. Based on some of Chernow's evidence, Hertzberg writes, "Nobody today is the exact equivalent of anybody in 1789, of course, but Tea Party Republicans more closely resemble those who denounced the Constitution than those who advocated it." ...

... AND if you missed it the first time around, read Caleb Crain's New Yorker essay/book review on the original Boston tea party, with its unmistakable parallels to today's mob of ignoramuses & their smuggler-merchant puppeteers.

Whither Democrats? Jeffrey M. Jones of Gallup: "In 2010, 31% of Americans identified as Democrats, down five percentage points from just two years ago and tied for the lowest annual average Gallup has measured in the last 22 years. While Democrats still outnumber Republicans by two points, the percentage identifying as independents increased to 38%, on the high end of what Gallup has measured in the last two decades."

Whither Compassion? Lawrence O'Donnell blames President Clinton for the recent dearth of presidential pardons:

Bethany McLean, the co-author of a well-reviewed book on the financial crisis, explains in a New York Times op-ed why the government is not going to get out of the home mortgage-guarantee business -- the main reason: no politician is going to demand a remake of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac that further depresses the depressed housing market.

... Duke Helfand of the Los Angeles Times: "Blue Shield of California [is] seeking cumulative hikes [in healthinsurance premiums] of as much as 59% for tens of thousands of [individual] customers March 1. Blue Shield's action comes less than a year after Anthem Blue Cross tried and failed to raise rates as much as 39% for about 700,000 California customers."

Robert Reich: the right is attacking public-sector employees with lies. The facts: "Matched by education, public sector workers actually earn less than their private-sector counterparts.... Most public employees don’t have generous pensions.... There’s no relationship between states whose employees have bargaining rights and states with big deficits.... Isn’t it curious that when it comes to sacrifice, Republicans don’t include the richest people in America?"

John Cassidy of the New Yorker reviews opinions of whether or not the Goldman Sachs-Facebook deal is legal. One thing observers agree on: the SEC will certainly look into it.

Lew Sichelman of the Los Angeles Times: "The White House..., like many of the country's houses, it's not worth what it was once. Over the last three years the president's home and home office has lost nearly a quarter of its value. In the last month alone the value dropped almost $4 million."

Update: Ted Williams, the homeless man with the golden voice, opens the NBC "Today" show:

     ... Alison Schwartz of People has the story & the "Today" show interview of Williams.

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