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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
Mar242011

The Commentariat -- March 25

Grassley Gaffe. Sometimes Republicans step out of Right Wing World & tell the truth. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, offered a blunt, no-nonsense assessment of the potential Republican field of candidates for president. He said only two or three of them would be qualified to hold the highest office in the land. And then he refused to say which ones they were." CW: whadda ya bet newbie Sen. & self-certified opthamologist Rand Paul is not on Chuck's shortlist? Now, Sen. Grassley, time to get back to those "death panel" stories.

News to Enrage You. David Kocieniewski of the New York Times: "General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.... The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.... President Obama ...has designated G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, as ... chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.... One of the most striking advantages of General Electric is its ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks." CW: I've been boycotting GE for awhile now; I'm sure going to keep it up.

Prof. William Cronon. Via TPM.McCarthyism 2.0. CW: the Wisconsin union story will not die, & Wisconsin Republicans are doing their bit to keep it going. A few days ago, I linked a New York Times op-ed by UW-Madison history Prof. Bill Cronon, which details how Republicans in the state had veered from a long tradition of Republican progressivism. Josh Marshall of TPM reports that Cronon's op-ed riled the state GOP, which responded with an open-records request to UW for Cronon's personal e-mails. As Marshall points out, Cronon is a state employee, but he is not in any sense a public official. Cronon argues in a long blogpost that the GOP request is an attempt to intimidate him & is a direct attack on academic freedom. I agree. It's the same sort of crap Joe "No Decency" McCarthy pulled in the 1950s.

Impeachment is a process. That’s not going happen.
-- Dennis Kucinich, slightly walking back his earlier call for President Obama's impeachment

Steven Myers & David Kirkpatrick of New York Times: "... the inchoate coalition attacking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces remains divided over the ultimate goal — and exit strategy — of what officials acknowledged Thursday would be a military campaign that could last for weeks. The United States has all but called for Colonel Qaddafi’s overthrow from within — with American commanders on Thursday openly calling on the Libyan military to stop following orders — even as administration officials insist that is not the explicit objective of the bombing, and that their immediate goal is more narrowly defined. France has gone further, recognizing the Libyan rebels as the country’s legitimate representatives, but other allies, even those opposed to Colonel Qaddafi’s erratic and authoritarian rule, have balked." ...

... Speaking of the French, I missed this post by Karen Garcia on an intriguing ménage à trois: Hillary, Nick & Carla. Garcia's photo "proofs" are excellent, too. Here's Carla Bruni commenting on l'amour:

     ... (An English translation of Bruni's lyrics, which I haven't take the time to verify, is here.)

... Tim Egan of the New York Times: "... despite a largely incoherent chorus of second-guessers, [President] Obama has settled into a groove of reflective dithering before making his decisions. For the most part, it has served him well." With video. ...

... Gene Robinson: "... the goal must be to prevent the bloodbath, not just reschedule it. Even after his forces have been pummeled by U.S., French and British airstrikes, Gaddafi has his ragtag opponents outmanned and outgunned. Unless we explicitly take the side of the rebels — providing air support for their advances, for example — it is hard to imagine how they will ever be able to take much ground."

... Juan Cole lists the top ten accomplishments of the U.N. no-fly zone. ...

... Glenn Greenwald discovers the leak & publication of a "classified secret"; he doesn't think the Obama Administration will pursue & prosecute the leaker. ...

... Jamison Foser of Media Matters: CNN contributor Erick Erickson claims that President Obama "manufactured" the Libyan crisis to help his re-election bid; in addition, Erickson makes extended comments denigrating women. Foser asks, "I wonder how long someone who claimed in March of 2003 that President Bush had manufactured the Iraq war in order to win re-election would have remained employed as a CNN contributor?" and adds, "Remember: CNN hired this third-rate Limbaugh-wannabe to be a contributor, and used him as an analyst for its State of the Union coverage." Am I going to have to move CNN to Right Wing World?

** New Rules. Evan Perez of the Wall Street Journal: "New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades. The move is one of the Obama administration's most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. And it potentially opens a new political tussle over national security policy, as the administration marks another step back from pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods." Charlie Savage of the New York Times has more. AND here's the text of the memorandum. ...

     ... Marcy Wheeler weighs in: "It was bad enough for the Obama Administration, headed by the supposed and so called 'Constitutional scholar' Barack Obama, to propose inappropriate and unconstitutional legislation to restrict criminal suspects’ Constitution based Miranda rights, but it is an egregious step beyond to simply arrogate to themselves the unitary and unilateral power to do it by DOJ memorandum fiat.... Miranda is a Constitutional based rule, and confirmed by Supreme Court precedent, and it cannot be amended or overruled by act of Congress. And it sure as heck cannot be overruled or amended by administrative fiat via a FBI memorandum." ...

     ... Bill Otis of Crime & Consequences with a little history. Let's see: first AG Eric Holder was against Miranda, then he was for it, now he's against it -- none of which should matter, because it's not his prerogative to rewrite the damned law.

Paul Krugman: "These days, you’re not considered serious in Washington unless you profess allegiance to the same doctrine that’s failing so dismally in Europe."

Julian Assange Is a Bad Houseguest. Since this is a true story, I'm not relegating it to Infotainment, where I realize it belongs. The creator of the video and one of the narrators, Allison Silverman, is a former "Colbert Report" writer:

Right Wing World *

If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions. -- Carlos Lam, Indiana Deputy Prosector, in an e-mail to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker ...

... Kate Golden of Wisconsin Watch: Carlos Lam, "an Indiana deputy prosecutor and Republican activist, resigned Thursday after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism uncovered an email to Gov. Scott Walker in which he suggested a fake attack on the governor to discredit union protesters." His resignation came after telling a reporter, "I am flabbergasted and would never advocate for something like this, and would like everyone to be sure that that’s just not me." Golden adds, "Lam is the second Indiana prosecutor to resign over suggestions to use violence in Wisconsin. He sent this email the same Saturday on which another Indiana law-enforcement figure, state Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Cox, tweeted that riot police should 'use live ammunition' to clear the Capitol of protesters. Cox was fired Feb. 23 after Mother Jones magazine published the suggestion from his private Twitter account."

Steve Benen on Michele Bachmann's likely plans to form a presidential exploratory committtee: "It's probably fair to say that most reasonable political observers, regardless of party or ideology, would agree that Michele Bachmann is stark raving mad.... But that doesn't mean her candidacy, if it exists, won't matter.... Bachmann could prove competitive in Iowa, where radically-conservative activists tend to dominate.... If Bachmann runs, she'll be a sad, cringe-worthy sideshow, making a circus of the entire nominating process. But much to her competitors' chagrin, that's unlikely to stop her." ...

... Adam Sorenson of Time on Bachmann 2012: "It is pure gold for the writers' room at Saturday Night Live. But for the Republican party? A headache, pure and simple." ...

... Benen cites this article by Ed Kilgore of The New Republic, who compares Bachmann to Sarah Palin. "... when you put Palin and Bachmann side by side, it is striking how much broader and deeper—in a word, more seriously committed—the Minnesotan’s involvement with right-wing causes has actually been.... Even if Bachmann doesn’t win a state outright, she could wreak havoc on the field." A good, scary read. ...

... Alex Pareene of Salon: "While [Bachmann's] every idiotic statement shoots across the Internet at lightning speed, no one has seriously examined her gradual shift from anti-gay small-town bigot evangelical Christian social-con to national Tea Partying Constitution-studying Ron Paul acolyte. And maybe someone at a debate (Newt?) will bring up the fact that Bachmann once belonged to a church that literally considers the pope to be the Antichrist. That'd be good for a laugh."

Igor Volsky of Think Progress: Mitt Romney's repeated claim that the Affordable Care Act is a one-size-fits-all program is "self-serving and dead wrong.... While the ACA lays out a certain framework states have to follow..., it still provides governors with a great deal of flexibility in how they implement reform, allowing each state an opportunity to develop a somewhat unique solution."

CW: if, like me, you didn't know Bill Clinton's Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick was "tied to 9/11," it's because (a) you don't follow Fox "News" and associates, and (b) oh, because she wasn't. Media Matters has the story. NPR reports President Obama is considering Gorelick to replace Robert Mueller as FBI director.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact welcomes Tim Pawlenty to the almost-presidential candidate race with three ratings on their truth-o-meter: Pants on Fire, False & Full Flipflop. Nice work, Tim! ...

... Ed Kilgore of The New Republic on why Pawlenty is a longshot.

* The parallel world which Republicans and teabaggers reinvent daily. It bears little relation to the factual world.

News Ledes

Ottawa Citizen: "Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit the Governor General on Saturday to dissolve Parliament, setting the stage for a federal election in early May. The Harper government was defeated in the House of Commons on Friday on a non-confidence motion declaring the government in contempt of Parliament. It is the first time in Canadian history that a government has been found in contempt."

Politico: "President Barack Obama told congressional leaders there are no plans to use the U.S. military to assassinate Libyan strongman Muammar Qadhafi — despite the administration’s policy of seeking regime change in the North African country — according to sources familiar with a Friday White House Situation Room briefing." ...

... New York Times: "President Obama plans to talk about the military operation in Libya on Monday evening in a nationally televised speech at the National Defense University, the White House said, offering his first formal explanation of the goals of this increasingly complex and dangerous mission. Mr. Obama has come under criticism from Republicans in Congress for failing to provide a coherent explanation of the operation...." ...

... AP: "France declared Libya's airspace 'under control' on Friday, after NATO agreed to take command of the no-fly zone in a compromise that appeared to set up dual command centers. Moammar Gadhafi drew a rare rebuke from the African Union, which called for a transitional government and elections. Coalition warplanes struck Gadhafi's forces outside the strategic city of Ajdabiya, the gateway to the rebel-held east, hitting an artillery battery and armored vehicles."

Washington Post: "Pressure is building, seemingly from every corner of Yemen, for [President Ali Abdullah] Saleh to step down immediately, even as the United States and its allies appear to favor a more gradual transition of power in a fragile nation beset by multiple emergencies, including a potent al-Qaeda presence."

AP: "Thousands of Syrians took to the streets [of Daraa] Friday demanding reforms and mourning dozens of protesters who were killed during a violent, weeklong crackdown that has brought extraordinary pressure on the country's autocratic regime. There were no immediate reports of serious violence."

New York Times: "Japanese officials on Friday began quietly encouraging people to evacuate a larger swath of territory around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a sign that they hold little hope that the crippled facility will soon be brought under control." AP story here. Related Washington Post story here.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The fight over a new collective bargaining law now sits squarely before the state Supreme Court.... An appeals panel said Thursday that the high court should take up the case because of conflicting past decisions."

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