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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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Friday
Mar182011

The Commentariat -- March 18

President Obama addresses the situation in Libya:

New York Times: "In one of the most forceful statements he has issued from the White House Mr. Obama said that his demands were not negotiable: Colonel Qaddafi had to pull his forces back from major cities in Libya or the United States and its allies would stop him. The president said that he was forced to act because Colonel Qaddafi had turned on his own people and had shown, Mr. Obama said, 'no mercy on his own citizens'.”

A no-fly zone requires certain actions taken to protect the planes and the pilots, including bombing targets like the Libyan defense systems. -- Hillary Clinton

... Mark Thompson of Time on what the no-fly zone means: war against Libya. CW: Thompson wrote his post before Gaddafi announced a ceasefire. ...

... Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: Richard Lugar, "the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued against implementing a no-fly zone over Libya on Thursday, and also said that Congress must pass a formal declaration of war if the Obama administration decides to take that step.... Lugar's stance against imposing a no-fly zone puts him at odds with committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA)...." ...

... Also from Rogin: "Several administration officials held a classified briefing for all senators on Thursday afternoon in the bowels of the Capitol building, leaving lawmakers convinced President Barack Obama is ready to attack Libya but wondering if it isn't too late to help the rebels there." ...

... ** Josh Rogin again. He has a fascinating new piece on when & how President Obama changed his position on Libya.

Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "The New York Times introduced a plan on Thursday to begin charging the most frequent users of its Web site $15 for a four-week subscription in a bet that readers will pay for news they are accustomed to getting free." The plan goes into effect in Canada today....

... CW: Canadian Readers: after you've hit your 20-visit limit, if you try to link to a Times article via Reality Chex, I'd really appreciate knowing if it works as it supposed to. E-mail me via this link. Thanks.

CW: we do have to wonder why neither the Administration or the NRC is willing to be frank about U.S. nuclear facilities. See, for instance, M. J. Lee's Politico report on Joe Scarborough's scathing takedown of the Administration's nuclear facilities point man.

Paul Krugman: "But for a few notable political figures, most of Washington seems to have abandoned unemployed Americans."

Jia Lynn Yang of the Washington Post: "Democrats ratcheted up pressure on the country’s top nuclear regulators to ensure that U.S. plants can withstand disaster, even as watchdogs charged that the agency has a flawed record of monitoring this country’s aging fleet of reactors. On Thursday, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a study evaluating the NRC’s performance last year as a regulator, saying it has repeatedly found over the years that the agency’s enforcement of safety rules is 'not timely, consistent, or effective.' The UCS cited 14 'near-misses' at domestic plants last year."

Jeffrey Smith & Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "A surge of lobbyists has left K Street this year to fill jobs as high-ranking staffers on Capitol Hill, focusing new attention on the dearth of rules governing what paid advocates can do after moving into the legislative world.... New tallies indicate that nearly half of the roughly 150 former lobbyists working in top policy jobs for members of Congress or House committees have been hired in the past few months. And many are working on legislative issues of interest to their former employers.... More than four-fifths of the lobbyists hired this year for top jobs on personal staffs went to Republican offices...."

Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: "State attorneys general, who soon will enter settlement talks with the nation’s largest mortgage servicers after revelations of flawed foreclosure paperwork and other shoddy practices, will accept nothing less than wholesale changes to the way those companies treat troubled homeowners, the group’s leader [-- Iowa AG Tom Miller --] said Wednesday."

Spy Story. Chris Arsenault of Al Jazeera: "The case of Raymond Davis has all the trappings of a 21st century spy novel. It is a story of murder, prison and clandestine payments, starring a burly former US Special Forces soldier tangled in a murky web of intelligence agencies, competing diplomats and ... shady private military contractors.... The events in question transpired on January 27. Davis was driving his car through a poor section of Lahore. He stopped at a crowded intersection. Two Pakistani men jumped off motorcycles and came towards him, with weapons drawn, according to American accounts of the incident. Davis opened fire with his Glock, killing them. He said he fired in self-defence, assuming they were trying to rob him. Pakistani authorities disputed this claim, saying the men were shot in the back and Davis got out of his car to take photographs of the bodies. Pakistani security forces chased Davis to a traffic circle a short distance away from the crime scene and arrested him. Before being taken down, Davis called the US Consulate to extract him from the dicey situation. The US sent an unmarked SUV tearing through the streets of Lahore. It drove the wrong way down a one way street, killing a random motorcyclist, in a development that further infuriated Pakistanis."

Editors Leonard Downie, Jr., & Robert Kaiser, in a Washington Post op-ed, explain why NPR is a vital news medium both on the national & local levels, and why House Republicans are making a big mistake in cutting out funding for a network their own constituents rely on. ...

Right Wing World

Citizens United Is Not Bad Enough. Ken Vogel of Politico: "Not satisfied by the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates to corporate-sponsored election ads, conservative opponents of campaign finance regulations have opened up a series of new legal fronts in their effort to eliminate the remaining laws restricting the flow of money into politics. They have taken to Congress, state legislatures and the lower courts to target almost every type of regulation on the books: disclosure requirements, bans on foreign and corporate contributions and – in a pair of cases the Supreme Court will consider this month – party spending limits and public financing of campaigns."

Simon Maloy of Media Matters: provocateur James O'Keefe has come out with another "shocking" exposé of NPR: "NPR director admits to having received Soros money for years." Right. You can find that info by checking NPR's tax records. Or by reading their press releases. Or by Googling Soros & NPR. Big scoop, O'Keefe. You sniveling idiot. .....

... James Poniewozik, Time Magazine's media critic, does a hatchet job on O'Keefe for O''Keefe's hatchet job on NPR. ...

... Michael Gerson, a former Dubya speechwriter & current Washington Post columnist, lambastes O'Keefe for his unjustified subterfuge. "... there can be no moral duty to deceive in order to entrap a political opponent with a hidden camera."

... Speaking of NPR, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is glad Republicans know what's important to the American people -- get rid of Click & Clack:

     ... Careful, Anthony. Click & Clack might sic their lawyers -- Dewey, Cheatham & Howe -- on you.

How to Boggle an Ideologue: Present the Facts. Pat Garofalo: Republican House budget czar Paul Ryan says he is "boggled" that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he won't touch Social Security, even though Ryan admitted, when questioned, that the Social Security fund is solvent for the next two decades & doesn't "drive the deficit." In other words, there's no compelling reason to reduce Social Security benefits; Ryan's whole purpose is to privatize it, not "fix" it.

News Ledes

AP: "A new assessment of President Barack Obama's budget released Friday says the White House underestimates future budget deficits by more than $2 trillion over the upcoming decade. The estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that if Obama's February budget submission is enacted into law it would produce deficits totaling $9.5 trillion over 10 years — an average of almost $1 trillion a year."

Washington Post: "The United States and its allies prepared Friday to launch military attacks on Libya as forces led by Moammar Gaddafi continued to bombard rebel-held towns despite government promises of a cease-fire."

Wisconsin State Journal: "A Dane County judge Friday ordered a temporary halt to Gov. Scott Walker's controversial measure curbing collective bargaining for public employees, saying a legislative committee likely violated the state Open Meetings Law when it rushed passage of the bill earlier this month. Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi ruled that a joint Assembly-Senate conference committee did not provide the public with adequate notice before approving the bill March 9.... Assistant Attorney General Steven Means said afterward that the state plans a quick appeal."

New York Times: "Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former priest who rose to become [Haiti’s] first democratically elected president before being forced into exile twice, returned home to an uncertain political climate on Friday, only days before a presidential runoff intended to settle months of discord in this rattled nation."

Washington Post: "Veteran political reporter Shailagh Murray is leaving the Washington Post to serve as communications director for Vice President Joe Biden...."

"Married to the Mess." Fortune: "The FDIC today ... [sued] three of [Washington Mutual's] senior executives for gross negligence and breach of fiduciary duty. The complaint seeks $900 million in relief, and claims that the trio 'focused on short term gains to increase their own compensation, with reckless disregard for WaMu's longer term safety and soundness.' The former WaMu executives are: CEO Kerry Killinger, president and COO Stephen Rotella and home loans boss David Schneider.... The FDIC kept it interesting by expanding the defendant rolls to include the wives of both Killinger and Rotella." Here's the New York Times story. And here's a pdf of the complaint.

New York Times: "Japanese engineers battled on Friday to cool spent fuel rods and restore electric power to pumps at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station as new challenges seemed to accumulate by the hour.... As the crisis seemed to deepen, Japan’s nuclear safety agency raised the assessment of its severity from 4 to 5 on a 7-level international scale." ...

... Los Angeles Times: "U.S. government nuclear experts believe a spent fuel pool at Japan's crippled Fukushima reactor complex has a breach in the wall or floor, a situation that creates a major obstacle to refilling the pool with cooling water and keeping dangerous levels of radiation from escaping. That assessment by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials is based on the sequence of events since the earthquake and information provided by key American contractors who were in the plant at the time...." ...

... Los Angeles Times: "A top Japanese official acknowledged Friday that the government was overwhelmed by the scale of last week's twin disasters, slowing its response to the earthquake and tsunami that left at least 10,000 people dead and led to a major nuclear crisis. The admission by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano came as Japan reached out Friday to the U.S. for help in stabilizing its overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear complex...."

New York Times: Bahrain takes the pearl out of Pearl Square, tearing down the huge sculpture because it had become symbolic of the resistence to the government.

New York Times: "Security forces and government supporters opened fire on demonstrators on Friday as the largest protest so far in Yemen came under violent and sustained attack in the center of the capital, Sana. At least 10 people were killed and more than 100 injured, according to a doctor at a makeshift hospital near the protest." Story has been updated: at least 40 protesters killed.

Reuters: "Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Friday ordered the handout of billions of dollars in benefits to Saudi citizens and created more domestic security jobs in an attempt to insulate the top oil exporter from regional unrest."

Washington Post: "The Securities & Exchange Commission is moving toward charging former and current Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives with violations related to the financial crisis, setting up a clash with the housing regulator that oversees the companies.... The SEC ... is alleging that at least four senior executives failed to provide necessary information to investors about the companies’ mortgage holdings as the U.S. housing market collapsed. But the agency that most closely regulates Fannie and Freddie, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, disagrees with that assessment...."

Washington Post: "A Pentagon audit has found that the federal government overpaid a billionaire oilman by as much as $200 million on several military contracts worth nearly $2.7 billion.... The study also reported that the three contracts were awarded under conditions that effectively eliminated the other bidders. Harry Sargeant III, a well-connected Florida businessman and once-prominent Republican donor, first faced scrutiny over his defense work in October 2008, when he was accused in a congressional probe of using his close relationship with Jordan’s royal family to secure exclusive rights over supply routes to U.S. bases in western Iraq."

Wall Street Journal: "The House voted 228-192 ... to block public-radio stations from spending federal funds on programming.... The measure would ban NPR's local affiliates from spending any federal money on radio programming, limiting them to using taxpayer dollars only for administrative costs. The proposal, advanced by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.), does not cut government expenditures.... No Democrats voted for the bill Thursday, and seven Republicans opposed it.... The bill faces dim prospects in the Senate and is opposed by the White House."

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