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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
Mar062011

The Commentariat -- March 7

Legalizing Voter Suppression. Peter Wallsten of the Washington Post: "New Hampshire House Republicans are pushing for new laws that would prohibit many college students from voting in the state - and effectively keep some from voting at all.... The measures in New Hampshire are among dozens of voting-related bills being pushed by newly empowered Republican state lawmakers across the country - prompting partisan clashes akin to those already roiling in some states over GOP moves to curb union power." CW: the video Wallsten mentions at the top of his story is of such poor quality I didn't bother to post it,

Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "... Wisconsin is about to embark on another wild ride into the political unknown -- a series of legislative recall campaigns on a scale the nation has rarely, if ever, seen.... Formal recall campaigns have now been launched against 16 state senators -- eight Republicans and eight Democrats. That's everyone in the 33-member Wisconsin Senate who is legally eligible to be recalled this year. Even though state law is designed to make recalls difficult and rare, some political insiders expect the petition drives now under way to succeed in forcing multiple lawmakers to face recall elections this summer."

Paul Krugman: "... since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by “hollowing out”: both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs — the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class — have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider...."

Elizabeth Drew, in the New York Review of Books, is playing the increasingly popular "Where's Barack?" Washington parlor game, this time in regard to Obama's silence on the budget battle. ...

... AND the New York Times Editorial Board opines: "After letting a highly destructive budget fight fester far too long, the White House finally stepped in late last week to negotiate with the House, which wants to eviscerate nondefense spending. Senate leaders still seem shell-shocked by that breathtaking ruthlessness, and have pleaded with the administration for help in pushing back.... Mr. Biden and the Senate should make it clear to the freshman House members who are really driving their chamber’s position that they will not permit reckless cuts this year. Then let the freshmen explain to an angry public why they closed the government’s doors to score ideological points."

** Josh Gerstein of Politico: "The Obama administration, which famously pledged to be the most transparent in American history, is pursuing an unexpectedly aggressive legal offensive against federal workers who leak secret information to expose wrongdoing, highlight national security threats or pursue a personal agenda.  In just over two years since President Barack Obama took office, prosecutors have filed criminal charges in five separate cases involving unauthorized distribution of classified national security information to the media. And the government is now mulling what would be the most high-profile case of them all -- prosecuting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. That’s a sharp break from recent history, when the U.S. government brought such cases on three occasions in roughly 40 years."

Eileen Sullivan of the AP: "The White House is pushing a message of religious tolerance ahead of this week's congressional hearing on Islamic radicalism [initiated & chaired by Rep. Peter King (R-NY)], which has sparked protests on grounds it unfairly singles out Muslims as potential terrorists." New York Times story by Sheryl Gay Stolberg here. ...

... Fox "News": "Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee hosting the hearing, said Monday that he's on the same page as the White House when it comes to addressing that threat and engaging moderates in the American Muslim community. 'I'm not going to give into political correctness. I'm going ahead,' King told Fox News." ...

... Robert Kolker of New York Magazine has a long article on "Peter King's Muslim Problem": "The New York congressman says the threat of homegrown terrorism is on the rise and American Muslims aren’t doing enough to stop it. His opponents say he’s on a witch hunt."

Infrastructure Fail. Shayne Henry & Samuel Sherraden of the New America Foundation: "According to various estimates from government institutions and non-profits organizations, the efficiency lost because of poor infrastructure is probably in excess of $195 billion per year...." The biggest loss is associated with auto transportation: "Americans wasted 4.8 billion hours in traffic in 2009. These delays resulted in the waste of 3.9 billion gallons of fuel."

Wendell Steavenson of the New Yorker: "After the euphoria of Tunisia and Egypt, Qaddafi’s defiance provides a reminder that revolutions are often bloody and uncertain for their duration, and that what comes after is even harder to divine." CW: also, listen to Steavenson & his colleagues discuss the Middle East in the podcast, which will be up in the right column for a few more days.

Our Fucked-up Foreign Policy. Stephen Braun of the AP: "In the months before Libyans revolted and President Barack Obama told leader Moammar Gadhafi to go, the U.S. government was moving to do business with his regime on an increasing scale by quietly approving a $77 million dollar deal to deliver at least 50 refurbished armored troop carriers to the dictator's military. Congress balked, concerned the deal would improve Libyan army mobility and questioning the Obama administration's support for the agreement, which would have benefited British defense company BAE. The congressional concerns effectively stalled the deal until the turmoil in the country scuttled the sale."

Britain's Fucked-up Prince. Cassandra Vinograd of the AP: "Less than two months before a fairytale wedding anticipated by much of the world, Britain's royal family finds itself fighting an inconvenient distraction: revelations that Prince Andrew, the queen's second son, is friends with a convicted sex offender, was photographed with a teenage prostitute, and has been accused of ties to Moammar Gadhafi's Libyan regime. The Duke of York also hosted the son of the Tunisian dictator shortly before a popular uprising drove him from power — and the buildup of embarrassment has sparked calls that he be stripped of his role as special U.K. trade representative." CW: I suppose this belongs in The Soaps, but it's so much fun. Oh, if only we had a monarchy, we could blame our decline on a profligate prince instead of on the rulers of our own bad choosing. ...

... Hélène Mulholland & Nicholas Watt of the Guardian: "Pressure is mounting on Prince Andrew over his trade envoy role for Britain amid claims he has become "a national embarrassment". ...

... AND Nicholas Watt: "Prince Andrew's role as Britain's special trade representative is to be downgraded as ministers seek to distance themselves from his controversial dealings with discredited business figures." ...

Andrew, who is 51, with 17-year-old Virginia Roberts, a witness in a child sex-offender case against U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein. Via the Daily Mail.... Here's some of the backstory from Owen Bowcott & Polly Curtis of the Guardian: "The sight of Prince Andrew with his arm around the bare waist of a 17-year-old masseuse at the centre of a US sex scandal has transformed royal embarrassment over tainted foreign regimes into a political firestorm." ...

... More titillating stuff from the ever-reliable Daily Mail in a story by Sarah Churcher titled, "Prince Andrew and the 17-year-old girl his sex offender friend flew to Britain to meet him."

 

"High Fascism." In a New York Times op-ed, professor & Chanel biographer Rhonda Garelick finds a deeper -- and disturbing -- undercurrent in John Galliano's disgusting anti-Semitic remarks: "... beyond the spectacle of one man’s abhorrent politics, the episode invites consideration of the curious relationship between French fashion and fascism."

Rebecca Stewart of CNN: "GOP Sen. John McCain is in need of a tech lesson. In an appearance on ABC's 'This Week,' the senator from Arizona said that iPads and iPhones are 'built in the United States of America.' But every techie knows that they are, in fact, built in China.

News Ledes

New York Times: "President Obama plans to nominate Gary F. Locke, the commerce secretary and one of the highest-ranking Chinese-Americans in the administration, as the next American ambassador to China, administration officials said Monday. Mr. Locke, 61, would succeed Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who is stepping down next month to explore a bid for the Republican nomination for president." ...

... New York Times: "Members of Congress, including Democrats, have urged the Obama administration to search for another Medicare chief after concluding that the Senate is unlikely to confirm President Obama’s temporary appointee, Dr. Donald M. Berwick. Dr. Berwick’s principal deputy, Marilyn B. Tavenner, has emerged as a candidate to succeed him. Lawmakers of both parties said Monday that Ms. Tavenner, a former Virginia secretary of health and human resources with extensive management experience, could probably be confirmed."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The leader of Senate Democrats hiding out in Illinois Monday sought a face-to-face meeting with Gov. Scott Walker but Republicans responded with a barrage of criticism, saying the Democratic leader was holding up a compromise on Walker's union bargaining bill."

Washington Post: "The Supreme Court opened a legal avenue Monday for prisoners to try to gain access to DNA evidence that might prove their innocence but noted that their chances at success might be slim."

Washington Post: "Nevada Sen. John Ensign (R) will retire rather than seek reelection in 2012, he announced Monday afternoon. The decision brings to an end a tumultuous several years that saw him go from one of the party's rising stars to persona non grata." Las Vegas Sun story here.

Washington Post: "The conservative legal group Judicial Watch announced Monday that it has filed a lawsuit against Rep. Alcee Hastings, accusing the 10-term Florida Democrat of sexually harassing a policy adviser who worked on a commission that Hastings once chaired."

AP: "President Barack Obama reversed course Monday and ordered a resumption of military trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, making his once ironclad promise to close the isolated prison look even more distant."

President Obama & Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia make statements to the press this morning:

Washington Post: "President Obama addressed comments directly to Moammar Gaddafi's inner circle Monday in an attempt to pressure those helping prop up the embattled Libyan dictator with a tacit threat of future criminal prosecution.... 'I want to send a very clear message to those who are around Colonel Gaddafi,' Obama said during an Oval Office appearance with visiting Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. 'It is their choice to make, how they operate moving forward, and they will be held accountable for whatever violence continues to take place there.'" ...

... AP: "Libyan warplanes launched a fresh airstrike on rebel positions around a key oil port Monday, trying to block the opposition fighters from advancing toward Moammar Gadhafi's stronghold in the capital, Tripoli." ...

... Washington Post: "Congressional leaders prodded the Obama administration on Sunday for a more aggressive U.S. response to Libya's increasingly brutal attacks on opposition groups - calling for a no-fly zone and other military measures - but White House officials cautioned against being drawn into a potentially protracted and costly military campaign."

AP: "U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday that both the U.S. and Afghan governments agree the American military should remain involved in Afghanistan after the planned 2014 end of combat operations to help train and advise Afghan forces."

Washington Post: the U.S. Navy has prepared training material, including a Power Point presentation, to inform sailors & officers of what will happen when President Obama declares an end to Don't Ask Don't Tell.

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