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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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Saturday
Apr302011

The Commentariat -- May 1

President Obama speaks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner:

Here's a handy graph to whip out when your Republican friends (& certain stupid members of Congress) say the national debt is all Obama's fault. Washington Post graphic.Those Irresponsible Republicans. Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post explains in simple terms with straightforward numbers how the federal government got in the fiscal mess it's in. "The biggest culprit, by far, has been an erosion of tax revenue triggered largely by two recessions and multiple rounds of tax cuts.... Federal tax collections now stand at their lowest level as a percentage of the economy in 60 years.... All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate." Oh yeah, and do blame Alan Greenspan. Thanks to Doug R. for the link.

New York Times Editors: "In an announcement on Friday afternoon — the time slot favored by officials eager to avoid scrutiny — the Treasury Department said it intends to exempt certain foreign exchange derivatives from key new regulations under the Dodd-Frank law. These derivatives represent a $4 trillion-a-day market, one that is very lucrative for the big banks that trade them." CW: also entirely coincidental that Geithner made that announcement right after Obama went to Wall Street hat-in-hand. You see how campaign money comes out of your pocket: bankers contribute to Obama, Obama gives bankers a deal, bankers trade with abandon & get in trouble, taxpayers bail out bankers. If you pay federal taxes, you just made a campaign contribution to BaracK Obama.

New York Times Editors: "President Obama should take the court up on its transparency blessing forthwith and sign a proposed executive order that would require government contractors to disclose their donations to groups that support or oppose federal candidates.

Dave Eggers & Ninive Calagari in a New York Times op-ed: "... the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years." The authors compare the way the U.S. & countries with more successful educational results recruit & hire teachers."

Maureen Dowd ruminates on the British royal wedding, the Grimms' version of "Cinderella," and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Pretty cheerless stuff....

... I've put up a comments page for Dowd on Off Times Square. You can comment on other political matters there, too. I've posted my own comment, too. Update: PLUS I've added a little challenge for readers on Off Times Square -- an opportunity to tell Democrats what to do in 2012. Be creative!

Dream On. Karen Garcia: "Presente.Org, one of the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy groups, is asking its members for input on a formal plan to withdraw active support for the president's re-election, in light of his continued failure to executive power to defer the deportation of a million DREAM Act candidates."

George Zornick of The Nation: Republican Congressmembers & right-wing front groups play defense at townhall meetings, screening questions & bussing in supporters.

ProPublica has a whole page of stories about the dangers of fracking, a method used to extract natural gas. I've sent the link to the page along to the New York Times' Fracking' Joe Nocera, friend of Boone Pickens.

Right Wing World *

Right Wing World Hypes a New Round of Birther Conspiracy Theores. Media Matters: the long-form certificate is "an obvious forgery"; the pdf of the birth certificate has been altered; delivery doctor is dead & his wife didn't know he had delivered Obama -- how curious. Oh, there will be more.

The Hatch Identity. Justin Elliott of Salon: "Around noon [Thursday], I posted a piece looking back at Sen. Orrin Hatch's sponsorship of a 2003 measure to allow foreign-born citizens to run for president. Less than 24 hours after the piece went up, a tech blogger discovered that the section of Hatch's website that mentioned the 'Presidential Eligibility Amendment' had mysteriously disappeared." A spokesperson for Hatch told Elliott that the section had disappeared because the Senator has a "brand new website," but Elliott writes that "the design of Hatch's website looks the exact same as it did yesterday. The only thing that has changed is that the archive of Hatch's bills now ends at 2008. Everything before that, including the 2003 Presidential Eligibility Amendment, is gone." CW: Hatch has been in the Senate since 1976. But in Right Wing World, if some of your past votes & bill sponsorships don't comport with your new fake persona, you just erase them & establish a brand new Website identity.

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

** New York Times: "Osama bin Laden has been killed, two United States officials said. President Obama was expected to make an announcement on Sunday night, almost ten years after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One of the officials said that American forces, acting on intelligence, launched a 'targeted assault' that killed Mr. Bin Laden, whose ability to elude capture for so long deeply frustrated the Bush administration." Story has been updated. Here's the AP story....

     ... Update: Here's the Al Jazeera story, with video report. Al Jazeera also has a liveblog of developments related to Osama's killing.

AP: "Pope Benedict XVI beatified Pope John Paul II before more than a million faithful in St. Peter's Square and surrounding streets Sunday, moving the beloved former pontiff one step closer to possible sainthood."

AP: "Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting Saturday was dominated by somber topics as CEO Warren Buffett explained to about 40,000 shareholders how the company had been battered by a trusted former employee’s misdeeds and a string of natural disasters. Buffett assured the crowd at an Omaha convention center that Berkshire is strong enough to withstand both the David Sokol scandal and the estimated $1.7 billion in insurance losses that drove profits down 58 percent in the first quarter." Here's the New York Times story. AND here's the Times' liveblog of the meeting.

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