The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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."

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Saturday
May212011

The Commentariat -- May 22

Maureen Dowd writes Queen Elizabeth's wildly successful visit and President Obama's upcoming trip to Ireland. I've added a comments page in Off Times Square for Dowd & have posted my comment on her column. If you want to write about something else, please do. ...

... The Irish Times has a page of stories on Elizabeth's visit to Ireland.

Commenter P. D. Pepe recommends Jon Stewart's take on the defenders of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid at the Sofitel in New York City:

Chris Hawley of the AP: hotel chambermaids are often the targets of unwanted and unprovoked sexual assaults and advances, and those who may appear to be in the U.S. illegally are the victims of preference.

Steven Erlanger & Maia de la Baume of the New York Times profile Anne Sinclair, the wealthy, famous beauty who is standing by her man, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Prof. Juliet Williams in a Washington Post op-ed: "One was accused of a crime, and one pleaded guilty to being a cad, but those quick minds in the infotainment business soon got Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger into the same story line: Sex and politicians! ... Uh, no. One of these things is not like the other.... When a term such as 'sex scandal' is used to describe behaviors running the gamut from politically irrelevant to legally actionable, I’d say we’ve got a problem. And the weird accident of timing here reveals how badly we still confuse consensual if illicit sex with violence against women." CW: this is exactly what I said last week in a New York Times comment that was decidedly unpopular.

"Apocalypse Not." Christopher Goffard of the Los Angeles Times reports on the Rapture that wasn't. ...

... "The Great Disappointment." Stephanie Pappas of Live Science provides a brief history of what happens to believers when doomsday predictions fail. Here's an interesting one: "After Baptist preacher William Miller predicted the end of the world on Oct. 22, 1844 — a date thereafter known as 'The Great Disappointment' when nothing happened — his followers struggled to explain their mistake. One subset decided that on that date, Jesus had shifted his location in heaven in preparation to return to Earth. This group later became the Seventh-Day Adventist church."

Nicholas Kristof's quiz on the Biblical wrtings on sex is kind of fun. I would quibble with a couple of the specific answers, which Kristof bases on a book by Jennifer Wright Knust, but the general tenor of the Q&A is accurate, and Kristof's point is exactly right: "the Bible’s teachings about sexuality are murky and inconsistent and prone to being hijacked by ideologues."

Herman Cain, another Republican who will never be POTUS, formally announces he'll run anyway. Fox "News": "In 2006, Cain was diagnosed with liver and colon cancer. He says he's been cancer-free since 2007 and credits the nation's health care system with keeping him alive. He says it's one reason he's so opposed to the health overhaul championed by President Barack Obama." CW: Right. And as soon as all Americans are multimillionaires like Cain, I'll agree with him that we don't need a public healthcare system.

Mitch Daniels is not going to run for the job he is not going to get. (Also see today's Ledes.)...

Mitch Daniels is a friend of mine and one of the best governors in the country. While he may not be running, he is an intellectual powerhouse and will continue to play a leading role in the Party's politics and the Nation's policies. Mitch and I agree that America's out-of-control national debt is a threat to our nation's future, and that the next president must restore fiscal responsibility in Washington, DC. Mary and I wish Cheri and Mitch all the best. -- Tim Pawlenty

Ben Smith Translation: Whew!

Right Wing World *

CW: I missed this post by Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress, but you do have a right to know, however belatedly, that Sen. Rand Paul is stark-staring mad, & doesn't mind proving it during a Senate committee hearing, where he said, in part,

With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies.... It means you believe in slavery.... I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care. You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

Rachel Stassen-Berger & Bob von Sternberg of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Bradlee Dean, a Christian minister, delivers an invocation in the Minnesota State House in which he implies President Obama is not a Christian. The prayer caused an outcry on both sides of the aisle & may derail a vote on a state constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage. Dean said later he favored enforcement of sodomy laws. CW: here's a surprise: "U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann ... has fund-raised for Dean's group and is scheduled to share a stage with him at a Tea Party event ... September." With video.

News Ledes

President Obama speaks at the AIPAC policy conference:

     ... Here's the text of the speech.

New York Post: "Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn attempted to lure two attractive hotel employees to his $3,000-a-night hotel suite -- and later put the moves on an Air France flight attendant following his alleged sexual assault on a maid, The Post has learned."

Haaretz: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must accept U.S. President Obama's vision for Mideast peace if talks with the Palestinian Authority are to resume, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Sunday." ...

ABC News: "King Abdullah II of Jordan, a key American ally and advocate of the Middle East peace process, says he does not have much hope for progress on negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in the coming months.... Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who resigned this month as President Obama's envoy to the Middle East after serving two years, said that while President Obama's comments on the 1967 borders were "a significant statement," they do not signal a major shift in policy, especially when land swaps are taken into consideration." With videos of interviews.

President Obama spoke at an AIPAC conference this morning. AP story here. New York Times Update: "President Obama, speaking on Sunday to the nation’s foremost pro-Israel lobbying group, repeated his call for Palestinian statehood based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders adjusted for land swaps, issuing a challenge to the Israeli government to 'make the hard choices that are necessary to protect a Jewish and democratic state for which so many generations have sacrificed.'”

New York Times: "Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana said early Sunday that he would not become a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, telling supporters in an e-mail message that concerns from his family were the overriding factor in deciding to stay out of the race." Washington Post story here. ...

... Don't worry, Republicans; you still have Herman Cain who made a formal announcement yesterday and Tim Pawlenty who will make an announcement tomorrow.

AP: "A spacewalking astronaut ran into trouble Sunday while trying to lubricate a joint in the life-sustaining solar power system of the International Space Station, losing one bolt and getting a washer stuck in a crevice."

Comments Off