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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
May202011

The Commentariat -- May 21

What with the end of the world as we know it coming today, I've posted a Judgment Day Open Thread on Off Times Square. Write about anything. I've posted a couple of my Times comments there, even though I know all the good Christians probably won't have time to read them. Also, see posts from Karen Garcia & Kate Madison. ...

... Dana Milbank cites signs of the Apocalypse that Judgment Day calculator Harold Camping never thought of. "Camping points to traditional signs: the creation of the State of Israel and the spread of 'gay pride.'" Many of Milbank's signs involve Republicans, like "The Temptation of Huck" and "The False Prophet Trump." ...

... Update. Rapture-Fail. David Batty of the Guardian: "Christian doomsday prophet Harold Camping looks likely to be less than rapturous after his prediction that the world would end on Saturday failed to materialise. The 89-year-old Californian preacher had prophesied that the Rapture would begin at 6pm in each of the world's time zones, with those 'saved' by Jesus ascending to heaven and the non-believers being wiped out by an earthquake rolling from city to city across the planet. But as the deadline for the Apocalpyse passed in the Pacific islands, New Zealand and Australia, it became apparent that Camping's prediction of the end of the world was to end not with a bang but with a whimper."

President Obama's weekly address:

** Today's Math Lesson. Jon Chait of The New Republic. So Paul Ryan writes an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor defending his indefensible budget against President Obama's charge that the Ryan/Republican Tea Party budget would leave children with disabilities to "fend for themselves" and decimates the social safety net:

Paul Ryan: Mounting debt also threatens our poorest and most vulnerable citizens, because those who depend most on government would be hit hardest by a fiscal crisis. Harsh austerity would be the only course left. A broke government unable to finance its spending commitments would be forced to make indiscriminate cuts affecting current beneficiaries of government programs – without giving them time to prepare or adjust.

Chait Translation: ... if there was a fiscal crisis, it would entail huge and immediate cuts to programs that aid the poor. Therefore we must enact huge, immediate cuts in programs that aid the poor. Oh, and also preserve the Bush tax cuts for top-income earners and cut the rate another ten percentage points. For the sake of the poor.

     ... Chait adds, "... strangely for a man so prone to boasting of his wonkery and love of numbers -- [Ryan's op-ed] contains zero numbers attempting to substantiate his claim that his budget 'strengthens,' or even fails to shred, the safety net. If you want actual numbers, you need to go to places like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which lay them out.... $2.17 trillion in reductions from Medicaid and related health care.... $350 billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income Americans (other than Medicaid).... $400 billion in cuts in low-income discretionary programs." Here's a pie chart from the CBPP:

... What workers want is an independent labor movement that builds the power of working people — in the workplace and in political life.... We’ll be less inclined to support people in the future that aren’t standing up and actually supporting job creation and the type of things that we’re talking about. It doesn’t matter what party they come from. It will be a measuring stick. -- AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka at the National Press Club

... John Nichols of The Nation: Trumka's remarks "could turn out to be one of the most important speeches of the 2012 election cycle.... He is putting compromise-prone and all-talk-no-action Democrats on notice."

Howard Schneider & Mary Pat Flaherty of the Washington Post: "... the International Monetary Fund is still working to recover from Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s 2008 affair with a staff member — an incident that triggered reform of the agency’s ethics laws and new training programs for employees. On May 6, the agency put in place new rules ordering staff members to disclose relationships that develop among them so that any conflict of interest can be resolved."

Peter Stone of Yahoo News: "When George W. Bush declined President Barack Obama’s invitation to a ceremony at New York City’s Ground Zero after Osama bin Laden was killed, the former president cited his desire to keep a low public profile. But ... in the week after Obama’s Ground Zero event, the nation’s 43rd president made time for three separate speeches to hedge fund executives, a Swiss bank sanctioned for keeping secret bank accounts,and a pro golf event underwritten by the accounting firm involved in the Tyco International financial scandal.... Bush’s standard speaking fee is reportedly between $100,000 and $150,000. David Sherzer, a spokesman for the former president, told iWatch News that since Bush left office he has delivered almost 140 paid talks, at home and abroad. Those speeches have earned Bush about $15 million, a conservative estimate, following in the golden path blazed by his predecessor, Bill Clinton."

Matthew Mosk of ABC News: "Last month, late night comedian Stephen Colbert launched a 'super PAC,' the newest form of political fundraising committee, allowing him to reprise his previous efforts to lampoon the outsized role of corporate money in American elections. But over the past month, what started as a humorous dressing down of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark campaign finance ruling in the case of Citizens United has turned into a[n] unexpectedly serious look at the complexities of the way the government regulates political spending." Here's Colbert last month after meeting with the FEC:

Although Newt Gingrich has not held political office since the 20th century, he thinks of himself as a 21st-century man. He has more than a million followers on Twitter & 130,000 people on his Facebook page. He announced his presidential run on YouTube! Kathie Obradovich the the Des Moines Register's political columnist. She doesn't make stuff up:

Peter Catapano of the New York Times has a roundup of some of the right-wing horror show at the Audacity of 1967. I've avoided linking to any of this stuff, but Catapano tells you all you need to know, plus he links to some commentary that debunks the right-wing noisemakers' mock horror. (See also Orrin Hatch in Right Wing World.) ...

... Matt Duss of Middle East Progress: President Obama's remarks about the 1967 lines "really shouldn’t be as controversial as it probably will be. Treating the 1967 lines as a basis for negotiations in this way represents the overwhelming consensus of the international community, enshrined in multiple UN resolutions. That anyone should be confused or surprised about this probably goes to the success that Israeli leaders have had over the years in obscuring it, and the indulgence that American leaders have often shown toward those efforts." Read the whole post. ...

... Massimo Calabresi of Time: on "the icy relationship" between "Bibi and Barack:: "Unfortunately the florid and overheated reaction to Obama’s statement on Thursday is making progress ... even harder." Here are Bibi & Barack:

... Jake Tapper of ABC News: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to think he needed to educate President Obama on some issues today [Friday], so in the Oval Office he described in some detail to the president a history of the refugee problem in the region dating back 63 years, as well as his view on the need for Israel to be able to defend itself in the context of thousands of years of Jewish suffering."

... Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic: "Here is what Hillary Clinton said in 2009: 'We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.'" CW: Funny, the right didn't go nuts then. But then, Clinton is white. AND she was born in the U.S.A. AND she is not a Muslim. So, you, see there is a difference. Read another Goldberg post, in which he defends President Obama against PM Netanyahu's assault. ...

     ... CW: to put Goldberg's remarks in context, Steve Benen writes, "I think the right’s reaction to President Obama’s speech on the Middle East officially went off the rails this morning when a prominent right-wing blogger blasted Jeffrey Goldberg as a 'far-left Israel hater.' ... I’d note for context that he’s politically conservative, Jewish, and staunchly pro-Israel."

Right Wing World *

Israel is the United States' strongest friend and ally. By calling for a return to the pre-1967 borders, President Obama has directly undermined her. -- Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), in a statement titled "Hatch Condemns President's Demand that Israel Revert to Pre-1967 Borders" ...

... The Problem? It Isn't True. As Eric Kleefeld of TPM writes, "Obama did not call for a direct return to the 1967 borders for Israel, as Republicans and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have represented. Instead, he reiterated the longstanding conventional wisdom of the international diplomatic community, and indeed the position of previous U.S. administrations, that those lines should be the initial basis for talks, and with additional land swaps to be agreed upon in further adjusting those lines." Hatch plans to introduce a Senate resolution opposing the President's proposals. CW: Is Hatch (a) stupid or (b) is this just more political flim-flam, lying to please his Tea Party Likud base? ...

     ... Update: Steve Benen says (b): "Hatch isn’t some rookie backbencher who got elected on a fluke. He knows full well what he’s saying is ridiculous."

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

CNN: "A new poll released Saturday shows the Democratic candidate now has a slight lead – a four point advantage among likely voters – over the Republican in a special congressional election in Western New York that has attracted the national spotlight.... The Siena College poll indicates Erie County Clerk Kathy Hochul is now ahead with 42 percent in the poll, and the Republican, State Assemblywoman Jane Corwin, with 38 percent. The third party candidate, Jack Davis, the Tea Party candidate, has 12 percent. The lead for Hochul is within the poll’s 4-point margin of error."

Department of Defense: "The nation’s military is built and sustained on the strength of families, First Lady Michelle Obama told the U.S. Military Academy’s Class of 2011 and their families at a banquet last night in West Point, N.Y., on the eve of today’s graduation ceremonies."

New York Times: "Former Gov. David A. Paterson of New York will not be charged with perjury in connection with accusations that he lied to the State Commission on Public Integrity about taking free World Series tickets from the New York Yankees while he was in office."

Washington Post: "Defying a stern warning from President Obama, Syrian forces opened fire on protesters after Friday prayers, killing at least 32 people as the regime led by President Bashar al-Assad showed no sign of easing its military crackdown."

AP: "Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts took a close, detailed look at a small gash in the belly of their ship Saturday, to ensure their safety when they return to Earth in 1 1/2 weeks. NASA ordered the inspection during the next-to-last shuttle flight, even though managers said there was no reason to be alarmed by the damage generated by Monday's liftoff."

Al Jazeera: "At least six people have been killed and 23 injured in a suicide bombing at a surgery training session in a military hospital in the Afghan capital, Kabul. The Afghan defence ministry said a lone bomber was responsible for the attack on Saturday, after reports that a second bomber was still at large on hospital grounds." With video.

... AP: "Three Republican senators moved closer to recall elections Friday when state elections board staff suggested dismissing most of the challenges to recall efforts targeting the Wisconsin lawmakers. Government Accountability Board legal counsel and election specialists released memos that said the full board should reject most of the claims against petitions gathered to oust Sens. Dan Kapanke of La Crosse, Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac and Luther Olsen of Ripon. The memos said elections should be held July 12." ...

... Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "With the weeks-long recount complete, unofficial numbers confirm that state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser narrowly defeated Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in the April 5 election. But the battle may not be over yet, as Kloppenburg mulls whether to challenge the results in court. And if a legal contest goes on long enough, attorneys say it could delay efforts to swear Prosser in for a new term on Aug. 1, leading to a temporary vacancy on the closely divided high court."

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