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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
May272011

The Commentariat -- May 28

Vice President Biden delivers the Presidential Weekly Address, this week on the recovery of the American auto industry:

I've added an Open Thread on Off Times Square for today. ...

... Gail Collins continues her book tour of Republican presidential candidates, this time settling on Fed Up! by Texas governor Rick Perry. Kate Madison & I have posted our comments on Collins' column -- which is good, because once again, as they so often do on weekends, the Times trolls have held back our comments. ...

... AND in case you'd really like to know more about Gov. Perry, Peter Boyer, now of Newsweek/The Daily Beast, interviews Perry and opens with the same dead coyote featured in Collins' column. Perry is getting a lot of mileage out of that one dead canine. ...

... Not to diminish the importance of shooting coyotes, but Andrew Leonard reminds us that Rick Perry's claim he produced a "Texas miracle" proved to be a big fat lie; his tax-cutting mantra, which he & the Texas legislature are just now making worse, has left Texas in a spiraling state of crisis.

Demagoguery. def.: Making use of popular prejudices & false claims & promises in order to gain power. Karen Garcia realizes "demagogue" is the right's new word to describe Democrats who point out the fallacies of Republican policies: "... it seems like these overpaid pundits and columnists and hacks are all getting their marching orders from some centralized Reactionary Word Bank." Garcia plumbs Lexis-Nexis for some recent print examples. Of course, she couldn't leave out Brooks.

Marjorie Censer of the Washington Post: The Army's Comanche helicopter "is one of 22 major Army weapons programs canceled since 1995, ringing up a price tag of more than $32 billion for equipment that was never built. A new study, commissioned by the Army and obtained by The Washington Post, condemns the service’s efforts as 'unacceptable.'”

Earlier in the week, Ezra Klein sent Paul Ryan 8 questions about his budget. Ryan, or his office, responded here. Klein answers two of Ryan's responses here. This is all kind of wonkish & in the weeds (tho Klein is a very good explainer), but even a cursory reading shows you that Ryan has to bob, weave & mischaracterize relevant facts to formulate his answers. CW: Ryan is either stupid or deceptive; he can't be both. You decide.

Bloomberg: "Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking U.S. House Democratic leader, in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s 'Political Capital with Al Hunt,' airing this weekend, predicted that negotiators will agree on a plan to cut $3 trillion to $6 trillion in U.S. spending in time to raise the debt limit before an Aug. 2 deadline." During the interview, Clyburn also said -- contrary to rumors that Democrats in the Biden deficit negotiations will agree to Medicare cuts -- Democrats will not agree to reduced Medicare benefits at all. Transcript. ...

... Which is especially significant because ... David Kurtz of TPM: to save themselves from the Ryan Medicare debacle, "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) ... announced he will not support raising the debt ceiling unless big Medicare cuts are part of the deal. Translation: Unless Democrats get us off the hook by agreeing to deep Medicare cuts (meaning Democrats can no longer attack Republicans for wanting to eliminate Medicare), then we're going to force the federal government into default on its debt." More from Brian Beutler of TPM here. ...

... Steve Benen: "This is no small admission. The Senate’s leading Republican is saying, publicly and on the record, that without Medicare cuts, he’ll try to create an economic calamity on purpose."

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "You hear a lot about state officials trying to fight the Affordable Care Act, whether by challenging it in the federal courts or refusing to implement its provisions. But plenty of states officials are enthusiastic about the law. And perhaps none are moving as quickly, or effectively, to follow through on the law as Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley."

Clifford Krauss of the New York Times: There are "about 20 new onshore oil fields that advocates say could collectively increase the nation’s oil output by 25 percent within a decade — without the dangers of drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico or the delicate coastal areas off Alaska. There is only one catch: the oil ... can be extracted only by using hydraulic fracturing, a method that uses a high-pressure mix of water, sand and hazardous chemicals to blast through the rock.... The technique, also called fracking, has been widely used in the last decade to unlock vast new fields of natural gas, but drillers only recently figured out how to release large quantities of oil.... As evidence mounts that fracking poses risks to water supplies, the federal government and regulators in various states are considering tighter regulations on it."

New York Times Editors: "Pandering on Israel [by both Republicans and Democrats] in the hopes of winning Jewish support is hardly a new phenomenon in American politics, but there is something unusually dishonest about this fusillade." The editors particularly call out Mitt Romney: "It is one thing to make noise on the campaign trail. It is quite another to lead a quest for peace." ...

... Steve Benen adds, "There’s probably no point in even hoping Republicans will be responsible on this, since it’s likely many of them don’t even believe their own rhetoric. But congressional Democrats have to be more sensible — not for Obama’s sake, but for the sake of Israel’s future and that of the peace process."

Right Wing World *

Dana Milbank writes a largely positive column about Herman Cain, former Godfather's Pizza CEO, who is more popular among Republican voters than Pawlenty, Bachmann, Huntsman & Santorum. "Yet there is no escaping a sense that the Hermanator is not ready for his starring role. When he formally launched his campaign on May 21, he proclaimed, 'We need to reread the Constitution,' referring to 'a little section in there that talks about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ ” That’s from the Declaration of Independence."

* Where facts just don't matter.

News Ledes

New York Times: President Obama is expected to name Army Gen. Martin Dempsey as new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The article profiles Dempsey.

New York Times: "A Taliban suicide bomber on Saturday infiltrated a heavily guarded governor’s compound in northern Afghanistan where top NATO and Afghan officials from the region were meeting, killing several people there, including the highly regarded police commander Gen. Daoud Daoud, Afghan officials said."

New York Times: "A federal judge in Virginia has declared unconstitutional a century-old law banning political contributions from corporations, a ruling that, if upheld, could have major implications for the rules governing campaign fund-raising and spending."

Reuters: "NATO carried out a rare daytime air strike on Tripoli on Saturday after a fifth straight night of attacks, adding to military and diplomatic pressure on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to quit after 41 years of power."

Washington Post: "Egypt opens the Gaza border crossing, easing a four-year blockade. Hundreds of Palestinians headed to this desert border crossing Saturday morning to be the first to enter Egypt under newly eased restrictions for residents of the Gaza Strip. Some described the permanent opening of the gateway after four years of strict restrictions as the first step in regaining their dignity." Al Jazeera story here.

Washington Post: "U.S. officials say Iran is dispatching increasing numbers of trainers and advisers — including members of its elite Quds Force — into Syria to help crush anti-government demonstrations that are threatening to topple Iran’s most important ally in the region."

AP: "North Korea freed an American it held for a half year for reportedly proselytizing, handing him Saturday to a U.S. envoy who said Washington had not promised to provide aid in exchange for the man's release. The envoy, Robert King, accompanied Eddie Jun on a flight from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and told reporters after arriving in Beijing that Jun would be reunited with his family in the United States 'within a day or two.'"

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "The [Wisconsin] state Department of Justice asked the state Supreme Court on Friday to immediately vacate a judge's decision that voided a plan by Gov. Scott Walker to greatly limit collective bargaining for public workers. In its filing, the department said Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi made so many errors in a ruling Thursday that the Supreme Court should throw out her decision even before it hears oral arguments in the case June 6."

News You Can Use. AP: "The Kroger Co. is pumping up its fuel discount program, more than tripling the number of grocery stores where regular shoppers can get up to a $1-a-gallon discount on a tankful of gas." ...

... AND This. Reuters: "The Dutch government on Friday said it would start banning tourists from buying cannabis from 'coffee shops' and impose restrictions on Dutch customers by the end of the year."

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