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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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Page Links
Saturday
May072011

The Commentariat -- May 8

Maureen Dowd, on reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden: "I want memory, and justice, and revenge.... When college kids spontaneously streamed out Sunday night to the White House, ground zero and elsewhere, they were the opposite of bloodthirsty: they were happy that one of the most certifiably evil figures of our time was no more." ...

     ... I've opened a comments page on Off Times Square. Comment on Dowd or on anything related to Bullets to the Brain, the post immediately below this one. ...

... Elizabeth Bumiller, et al., of the New York Times: "The world’s most wanted terrorist lived his last five years imprisoned behind the barbed wire and high walls of his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, his days consumed by dark arts and domesticity. American officials believe that Osama bin Laden spent many hours on the computer, relying on couriers to bring him thumb drives packed with information from the outside world."

... Noam Chomsky in Guernica: "It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law." ...

... Peter Bergen in the Washington Post debunks "five myths about Osama bin Laden." Bergen is non-partisan & a well-regarded expert on Al Qaeda. ...

On Conspiracy Theories: "Barack Obama -- the first black man ever to have to prove he killed someone":

Karen Garcia on Unemployment: President Obama just doesn't get it. He is still talking about Winning the Future when the Problem is Now.

Low Road. New York Times Editors: "... several prominent Democrats are abandoning the high ground and have decided to raise millions of their own secret dollars.... Bill Burton, who until February was Mr. Obama’s deputy press secretary, said last week that he would help lead a group ... which will raise unlimited money from undisclosed sources to aid in the president’s re-election campaign.The White House says the president has not changed his view, but somehow he no longer seems to recognize Burton.... If the president stood up and publicly told Mr. Burton to end his effort, that would probably be the end of it. But he has not done so." ...

Meanwhile in Low Country, Fox "News" Hosts the 2012 Undeclared Candidates Debate:

Tom Zeller, Jr. of the New York Times: "Critics have long painted the [Nuclear Regulatory] Commission as well-intentioned but weak and compliant, and incapable of keeping close tabs on an industry to which it remains closely tied.... Safety experts, Congressional critics and even the agency’s own internal monitors say the N.R.C. is prone to dither when companies complain that its proposed actions would cost time or money. The promise of lucrative industry work after officials leave the commission probably doesn’t help, critics say, pointing to dozens over the years who have taken jobs with nuclear power companies and lobbying firms."

Roy Gutman of McClatchy News: "In Shiite villages across [Bahrain]..., the Sunni Muslim government has bulldozed dozens of mosques as part of a crackdown on Shiite dissidents, an assault on human rights that is breathtaking in its expansiveness. Authorities have held secret trials where protesters have been sentenced to death, arrested prominent mainstream opposition politicians, jailed nurses and doctors who treated injured protesters, seized the health care system that had been run primarily by Shiites, fired 1,000 Shiite professionals and canceled their pensions, detained students and teachers who took part in the protests, beat and arrested journalists, and forced the closure of the only opposition newspaper.... The Obama administration has said nothing in public about the destruction [of the mosques]."

Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post: President Obama will fold the killing of Osama bin Laden into his "doing big things" re-election campaign message.

Backfire! Peter Schroeder of The Hill: "A promise by Senate Republicans to block anyone President Obama nominates to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has increased the likelihood that Elizabeth Warren will get the job. The president has little choice but to use his recess powers given the position of Senate Republicans, said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), one of the Wall Street reform bill’s chief architects."

Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic & Policy Research on the brilliance of the Washington Post edtorial board: "The Post once again showed why it is known as 'Fox on 15th Street,' running an editorial with the subhead, 'tackling the spector of structural unemployment,' which essentially offers nothing to address the problem. The piece got off to a bad start.... But, as usual, it gets worse.... Can someone get these people an intro econ textbook?" ...

... Fellow economist Mark Thoma agrees with Baker & highlights the Post editors' stupidest "solution" of all:

The costs, human and economic, of high unemployment are heartbreaking. But it will take a measure of patience as well as a sense of urgency to prevent it from becoming a permanent feature of the U.S. economic landscape. [emphasis added]

     ... That's right, folks. Hurry up and be patient!

William Yardley of the New York Times: "As some states seek to increase regulation but also further protect and institutionalize medical marijuana, federal prosecutors are suddenly asserting themselves, authorizing raids and sending strongly worded letters that have cast new uncertainty on an issue that has long brimmed with tension between federal and state law." CW: no time to crack down on Wall Street banksters when we have these wanton potheads to bring to justice.

Right Wing World *

Roll Over, John Lennon:

Antidote: 1969 Recording Session:


...the only reason that taxing the rich has to be 'on the table' is pure jealousy. Is jealousy really a good public policy? -- Douglas Holtz-Eakin, hired hand of the rich (via Blue Texan of Firedoglake) ...

... "Federal Tax Chutzpah." Paul Krugman: "The hired hands of the rich" are now arguing that because the rich have gotten richer, they now have to pay more tax on their additional wealth, and that's not fair.

* Where facts never intrude.

Local News

Michael Bender of the Saint Petersburg Times: "Out-of-work Floridians would receive fewer state benefits while businesses pay less tax under a controversial proposal approved Friday by a divided Legislature. The deal, which Gov. Rick Scott is expected to sign into law, immediately cuts unemployment benefits by 11.5 percent. Jobless Floridians would continue to receive a maximum payment of $275 per week, among the lowest of any state in the country. But they would be paid for no more than 23 weeks, instead of 26." CW: Florida has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.

News Ledes

Reuters: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) "on Sunday called for a 'no-ride list' for Amtrak trains after intelligence gleaned from the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound pointed to potential attacks on the nation's train system. Sen. ... Schumer said he would push as well for added funding for rail security and commuter and passenger train track inspections and more monitoring of stations nationwide."

AP: U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said on "Meet the Press" today that "the United States wants access to Osama bin Laden's three widows and any intelligence material its commandos left behind at the al-Qaida leader's compound.... Information from the women, who remained in the house after the commandos killed bin Laden, might answer questions about whether Pakistan harbored the al-Qaida chief as many American officials are speculating. It could also reveal details about the day-to-day life of bin Laden, his actions since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the inner workings of al-Qaida." New York Times story here. ...

... AP: National security adviser Tom Donilon "says the material seized from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan amounts to the largest cache of intelligence ever gathered from any single terrorist."

Al Jazeera: "At least 10 people have been killed and 186 others wounded in clashes between Muslims and Christians in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. Egypt's prime minister called an emergency cabinet meeting on Sunday to discuss the violence, a day after witnesses said a mob of people from the conservative Salafi trend of Islam marched on a Coptic church in the northwestern neighbourhood of Imbaba. The march began over an apparent relationship between a Coptic Christian woman and a Muslim man, amid reports that the woman was being held inside against her will and prevented from converting to Islam."

Al Jazeera: "The most senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been shot dead during clashes between officers and prisoners inside a jail in Baghdad, officials say. Abu Huzaifa Al Batawi, the leader of the Islamic state of Iraq - the most powerful al-Qaeda faction in the country - was killed along with up to 15 others after detainees tried to overpower their guards on Sunday.... Officials say Al Batawi grabbed the gun of a prison guard as he was being moved through the prison compound. He managed to kill several police officers before he was shot dead."

Al Jazeera: "Italian police and coastguard officials rescued some 400 African migrants coming from Libya after their boat was tossed against rocks off the tiny island of Lampedusa. Images of the rescue showed people jumping in panick or falling into the choppy waters as their boat heaved in the waves on Sunday."

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