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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
Nov152014

The Commentariat -- Nov. 16, 2014

Internal links, defunct videos removed.

Christi Parsons & Don Lee of the Los Angeles Times: "President Obama said Sunday that world leaders agree Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't following the 'letter or the spirit' of his commitment to peaceful actions in Ukraine but that the sanctions currently in place against his regime are 'biting plenty good.' After a closed-door meeting with European leaders on the subject, Obama said the current level of isolation of Russia will continue as long as the country violates the principle that 'you don't invade other countries or finance proxies' who do.... Putin left the summit early, citing the long flight home." ...

Amy Goldstein & Jason Millman of the Washington Post: "HealthCare.gov and online state insurance marketplaces in more than a dozen states opened Saturday morning for a second year of enrollment and a fresh test of whether the government can persuade millions of uninsured Americans to buy health plans. From anecdotal reports around the country, the early hours of the sign-up period appeared devoid of the computer troubles that frustrated both insurance-seekers and the Obama administration when the federal insurance exchange first debuted 13 months ago." ...

... OR ...

... Robert Pear & Amy Goodnough of the New York Times: "The health insurance marketplace opened for business on Saturday and performed much better than last year, but some consumers reported long, frustrating delays in trying to buy insurance and gain access to their own accounts at HealthCare.gov. Thousands of people attended hundreds of enrollment events around the country at public libraries, churches, shopping malls, community colleges, clinics, hospitals and other sites. Insurance counselors and federal, state and local officials said they were trying to juggle two tasks -- enrolling more of the uninsured and renewing coverage for those who already had it."

"Have You Met Joe Biden?" Cheryl Chumley of the Washington Times: "Republican bulldog Rep. Trey Gowdy put the kibosh on the idea of impeaching President Obama during a nationally television Fox News interview, telling his broadcast audience that booting the commander-in-chief from his office would open the doors to something even worse -- the ascension of Vice President Joseph R. Biden." ...

... Steve M. sees Gowdy's remark as scripted. "So GOP establishmentarians want maximum rage when Obama makes his announcement, but they don't watch impeachment. Can they hit the sweet spot? We'll see."

The Clinton Factor. Jamelle Bouie of Salon doesn't think Democrats can win the white working-class vote: "... for a new rhetoric of populism to work..., it needs to come with a commitment to universal policies that working-class whites like and support.... But the United States doesn't have a political party to support that kind of social democracy. Instead, it has the Democratic Party, a collection of disparate interests which -- at its best -- is nervous about economic liberalism and hesitant to push anything outside the mainstream. And worse, it has a presidential frontrunner who -- more than anyone else -- is connected to the kinds of elites and the kinds of policies that would push the party away from the muscular liberalism it needs."

Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: Based on a study that mined data from 1997 through 2010, "Stanford law professor John Donohue and his colleagues have ... concluded that ... more guns equal more crime. 'The totality of the evidence based on educated judgments about the best statistical models suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates' of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder, Donohue said in an interview with the Stanford Report. The evidence suggests that right-to-carry laws are associated with an 8 percent increase in the incidence of aggravated assault, according to Donohue. He says this number is likely a floor, and that some statistical methods show an increase of 33 percent in aggravated assaults involving a firearm after the passage of right-to-carry laws." Thanks to Nisky Guy for the link. AND, as Barbarossa notes, the comments from the NRA commentariat are a blast. Not only is the study flawed (an actual possibility), but high incidence of guns deaths are the fault of blacks & Hispanics. Several comments somehow associate Jonathan Gruber of MIT with the Stanford study.(All professors are liberals; all liberal professors make up shit. Or something.)

Today in Stupid. "Socialism on the Internet." Miranda Blue of Right Wing Watch gathers up a bunch of right-wing "explanations" of why net neutrality will ruin your life. Apparently, none of these geniuses understands what net neutrality is. Glenn Beck, ferinstance, "is outraged that President Obama wants to end 'the freedom of the internet' and ruin something that's 'working pretty well' because 'the government is not involved in it at all.' Apparently unaware that current FCC regulations allow his online network, The Blaze, to stream on an open internet, Beck claimed that regulations preserving net neutrality would end this supposedly government-free system in which he operates his business."

Roxane Gay, in the Washington Post on a Time magazine poll of readers asking them to choose which word, from among a list, to ban: "The list is supposed to be funny, but it is largely a policing of the vernacular of anyone who isn't a white, heterosexual man.... To include 'feminist' in this poll was irresponsible and lazy. It was a provocation without substance, designed to amuse. Women openly claiming feminism and a desire for equality? That's just silly." ...

... The poll, which is noxious with or without including the word "feminism," is here. Now, at the top, Time editor Nancy Gibbs writes, "Time apologizes for the execution of this poll; the word 'feminist' should not have been included in a list of words to ban. While we meant to invite debate about some ways the word was used this year, that nuance was lost, and we regret that its inclusion has become a distraction from the important debate over equality and justice." CW: Yes, because a poll about choosing words & phrases to ban is usually a work of intricate nuance. ...

... CW: What about the central assumption of the poll? Here we have a publication, whose only product is words, suggesting that it's quite okay to "ban" some words or phrases, not because they are boorish, hateful & oppressive, but because they are popular among the kids & some people find that annoying. This poll isn't just sexist; it's also ageist. I hope this is the last such poll Time finds "amusing" enough to publish. ...

... Now let's hear from an aggrieved white guy about all this silliness. Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit Tea party guy & a bonafide law professor, in a USA Today op-ed, is appalled that women were disgusted that a lead scientist on the European Space Agency's Philae project wore to a press conference a T-shirt adorned with scantily-clad women: "Yes, feminists have been telling us for years that women can wear whatever they want, and for men to comment in any way is sexism. But that's obviously a double standard, since they evidently feel no compunction whatsoever in criticizing what men wear.... With this sort of behavior in mind, it's no surprise that so many people feel that feminism has passed its sell-by date.... The [Time] poll captures a truth. Whatever feminists say, their true priorities are revealed in what they do, and what they do is, mostly, man-bashing and special pleading." Thanks, USA Today, for disseminating this garbage.

God News

Religious Freedom for Me But Not for Thee. Pamela Constable of the Washington Post: "In a corner of Washington National Cathedral, several hundred Muslim worshipers and other invited guests gathered Friday afternoon for a first-ever recitation of weekly Muslim prayers at the iconic Christian sanctuary and to hear leaders of both faiths call for religious unity in the face of extremist violence and hate.... The carefully scripted ceremony was marred once when one well-dressed, middle-age woman in the audience suddenly rose and began shouting that 'America was founded on Christian principles.... Leave our church alone!'"

AP: "A Mormon bishop in Los Angeles is under fire for his assertion that Sen. Harry Reid is unworthy to enter the faith's temples because of his support of Democratic Party positions. Mark Paredes, in a Wednesday blog titled 'Good Riddance to Harry Reid, the Mormon Senate Leader,' expressed his belief that Democrats' support of same-sex marriage, abortion rights and gambling runs contrary to church stances.... Church spokesman Dale Jones said Mormons are entitled to express their political opinions, but publishing their views while using a church title is 'entirely inappropriate.'" Via Steve Benen.

Josephine McKenna of Religion News Service: "In his latest bid to ease the suffering of the poor -- and upend the expectations of the papacy -- Pope Francis plans to build showers for the homeless under the sweeping white colonnade of St. Peter's Square. Three showers are to be built into refurbished public restrooms provided for Catholic pilgrims along the marble columns leading into the historic basilica...." Also via Benen.

David Gibson of Religion News Service: "The nation's Catholic bishops have chosen a mixed slate of delegates for next year's high-level Vatican summit on the family, including outspoken culture warriors who are sometimes viewed as out of step with Pope Francis' priorities."

** Lauren Markoe of Religion News Service interviews Karen Armstrong on religion & the history of violence.

Beyond the Beltway

Robert Patrick of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "The Aug. 9 fatal shooting here that sparked three months of protests and calls for change from around the world happened in less than 90 seconds, interviews and an analysis of police and EMS records shows. The records, obtained by the Post-Dispatch via Missouri's Sunshine Law, provide the best timeline yet for the events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown Jr., 18." ...

... Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "A call for backup that a police officer claims to have made seconds before he killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, reportedly cannot be found in police recordings. The officer blames the problem on his radio." CW: Uh-huh. ...

... Jason Sickles of Yahoo! News: "The Ferguson police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown will be 'immediately' returned to active duty if he is not indicted, Chief Tom Jackson told Yahoo News on Friday. Officer Darren Wilson has been on paid leave since the controversial shooting in early August. He would come back to a 'not yet determined assignment,' the chief writes in an email."

Hudson Hongo of Gawker: "On Saturday, Weekend Edition host Scott Simon ended an interview with Bill and Camille Cosby by asking the comedian point-blank for comment on the accusations by more than a dozen women of sexual assault. In response, Cosby only shook his head." Audio & transcript of the interview here. ...

... The transcript of Hannibal Burgess's stand-up riff on the rape allegations (which Hongo says started renewed interest in Cosby's actions) is here. The video is here. As Burgess himself says, "It's not funny."

November Elections

Bill Clinton Is Still a Twerp. Ken Thomas of the AP: "Former President Bill Clinton said Saturday that Democrats lacked a 'national advertising campaign' in the recent midterm elections and that he's surprised many Senate races were not closer. Clinton said in an interview with Politico that Republicans were helped by a larger bloc of voters who felt more strongly about the elections than members of his party. Democrats could have benefited from a national message that reinforced the party's positions on refinancing student loans and promoting equal pay for women, he said." ...

... CW: Student loans & equal pay? Really? What about school uniforms? If this is going to be Hillary's radical message in 2016, well, hello, President Jeb/Paul/Christie. ...

... Two Twerps Talking. Maggie Haberman of Politico: "Clinton made the remarks in an interview with Politico's Mike Allen at an event held during the 10-year anniversary weekend of the opening of his presidential library in Little Rock."

News Ledes

New York Times: "President Obama on Sunday confirmed the death of the American aid worker Peter Kassig, a former Army Ranger who disappeared over a year ago at a checkpoint in northeastern Syria while delivering medical supplies. The president's midafternoon statement came hours after the Islamic State released a video showing a black-clad executioner standing over the severed head of a man it identified as Mr. Kassig." ...

... Guardian: "Islamic State (Isis) has released a video appearing to show the British terrorist known as 'Jihadi John' standing over the severed head of US aid worker Peter Kassig." The Washington Post story is here.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (2)

When reading about the renewal sign-ups for ACA, remember what Mencken, talking about the practice of journalism. said: "Everyone likes to read about abuse."

My source is a long interview he had at the Library of Congress shortly before his death. The interview is available on a Folkways CD from the Smithsonian.

November 15, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer

Just wanted to take a moment to guffaw over the "...well-dressed, middle-age woman in the audience" at the National Cathedral whose panties were so bunched she couldn't see straight because MUSLIMS, and who interrupted whatever bullshit was going on to yell that this is a country founded on Christian principles.

Ha!

Ha-fucking-ha! And two or three more ensuing ha-ha's.

Clearly, another brainwashed conservative religio-zombie watcher of Fox news and reader of imbecilic opinions written by ignorant booger eaters who wouldn't know history if Thucydides appeared at her bedside and read her his own first hand accounts of the fucking Peloponnesian War ("Are you sure Jesus wasn't there?")

So....the creation of the US by the founders was based on Christian principles?

Well, Mrs. Well Dressed Christian Moron has clearly not consulted with other Christianists, some of whom seem to have read some actual history, but who are roundly PISSED about what they discovered:

The site Jesus is savior, spends an ungodly amount of space ripping the founders because they don't measure up to modern fundy standards for imminent salvation. Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, John Adams, James Madison, are all in hell right this minute because....why, religion! of course.

Some personal faves (favorites because they're true):

Jefferson: "Christianity...(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man."

Jefferson, again, in his "Notes on the State of Virginia", "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites"

But the best I can find is from the pen of John Adams, embedded into the Treaty of Tripoli (1797--can't get too much closer to the creation of the country since this treaty was signed six years after the passage of the Bill of Rights. A pretty long time before the adoption, by conservatives, of the Bill of O'Reilly):

"...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion"

Nuff said?

Most founders were deists, but many did not believe a word of the Bible and didn't believe in Jesus. How many of these guys, do you think, would be offered a position as guests on Fox shows if they were alive today? Do you think James Madison, after Fox producers realized that he once said "Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together" would be invited on to talk about why godless Democrats are horrible traitors for not allowing (ONLY) christian prayer in schools? But the fact that neither O'Reilly, nor Palin, nor Beck, nor any of the other "We're a Christian country" crowd has ever read a word of what the founders had to say about religion, means that they can continue on with their illegitimate claims about why all the rest of us should kowtow to their beliefs.

As Marie says, religious freedom applies only to them.

It's funny, but what the bug-eyed Christianists on the right want more than anything, is a right-wing Islamist-styled theocracy where the believers can behead unbelievers and make everyone else toe the line.

The founders would be so pleased...

November 16, 2014 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus
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