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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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Wednesday
Nov172010

The Commentariat -- November 18

The President Gets a Scolding, Scolds Back. Glenn Thrush of Politico: "After joining Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democratic congressional leaders at the White House this morning, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats that she informed Obama 'our caucus feels strongly about the $250,000 tax cut threshhold ... and the president is very much aware of the Democratic caucus's position.' ... In turn, Obama told Reid ... that he is willing to let them pursue their own compromise ideas, provided they secure enough votes to pass.... Reid and Pelosi ... both pressed Obama ... to adopt a tough bargaining stance with the GOP and avoid the muddled messaging that has characterized some administration pronouncements. Obama ... responded by reminding the leaders that they bore the burden of passing any compromise." CW Note: this story has been modified & expanded. Also see Thrush story on the meeting linked in November 19 Commentariat.

President Obama on New START treaty:

     ... Here's a transcript of the President's remarks.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: some Democrats say the President must change strategies &, in the face of the same old Republican obstruction -- only more so -- rely more on his executive powers to get things done. ...

... Here's a Strategy Change. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "President Barack Obama took steps on Wednesday to force a Senate vote on legislation that would begin to dismantle the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy banning openly gay service members during the ongoing lame-duck legislative session, hosting a second White House strategy session with gay rights advocates and personally lobbying a key lawmaker who favors repeal of the ban." ...

... Maybe This Is Why. Sam Stein: "At a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, George Soros, a longtime supporter of progressive causes, voiced blunt criticism of the Obama administration, going so far as to suggest that Democratic donors direct their support somewhere other than the president":

We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line. And if this president can't do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else. -- George Soros

Glenn Greenwald cuts through the hyper-rhetoric on the verdict in the Ahmed Ghailani terrorism "show trial." A jury convicted Ghailani "on one count of conspiracy to blow up a government building, a crime which entails a sentence of 20 years to life, but acquitted him on more than 280 charges of murder and conspiracy relating to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expects to play more of a role as lobbyist for American foreign policy "as the White House girds for a more hostile Congress bent on challenging or even blocking the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda, whether arms control, the Middle East peace process, the war in Afghanistan or the tentative outreach to Cuba." ...

... Sen. Jon Kyl -- Friend of Rogue Nuclear Nations. New York Times Editorial Board: "After months of negotiations with the White House, [Kyl] has decided to try to block the lame-duck Senate from ratifying the New Start arms control treaty. The treaty is so central to this country’s national security, and the objections from Mr. Kyl — and apparently the whole Republican leadership — are so absurd that the only explanation is their limitless desire to deny President Obama any legislative success.... We can only hope that other senators in the party will decide that the nation’s security interests must trump political maneuvering."

Worse than a Banana Republic. Nicholas Kristof. "The top 1 percent of Americans owns 34 percent of America’s private net worth... The bottom 90 percent owns just 29 percent. That also means that the top 10 percent controls more than 70 percent of Americans’ total net worth."

CNN: "Only a third of all Americans think Bush-era tax cuts should be extended for families regardless of how much money they make, according to a new national poll." CW: and that one-third is stupid as shit.

Even with the help of what was presumably a pricey speechwriting team, [Sarah] Palin’s ignorance of monetary policy is difficult to repress. -- Noam Scheiber ...

... Noam Scheiber of The New Republic on the dangerous marriage of the rich & populists: "... the Tea Party is generating a formidable attack on the Fed’s monetary-policy prerogatives by fusing longstanding critics of easy money (the Pauls) with the people who just want to rail against elites." CW: Scheiber is talking principally about monetary policy, but this trend is more pervasive than that, as the midterm results illustrate.

Dear Mitch & John, If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk. You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don't happen to be Members of Congress. Love, Four Liberal Democratic Congressmembers

Art from Oleg Volk.Jordy Yager of The Hill: John Pistole, "the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), offered on Wednesday to have airport screeners come to Capitol Hill to give senators a pat-down so they could fully understand the mechanics of the newly deployed, controversial technique.... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has gotten a pat-down," as his Pistole. ...

 

... There is no evidence these new body scanners make us more secure. But there is evidence that former [Bush] Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff made money hawking these full body scanners.... These body scanners are a violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. -- Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas)

Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post profiles the conservative Federalist Society. ...

... Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "In decisions on questions great and small, the [Supreme] Court often provides only limited or ambiguous guidance to lower courts. And it increasingly does so at enormous length."

Brian Stelter of the New York Times: Sen. Jay Rockefeller wants the FCC to "end" Fox News & MSNBC because they're not letting him conduct business-as-usual in the corridors of power. Stelter points out the FCC has little or no power over cable station content because cable doesn't use the public airwaves. CW translation: I'm a fucking Rockefeller & a U.S. Senator, I'm the creme de la creme, & these loudmouthed peons from Nowhere, U.S.A., are not showing proper respect. Surely the First Amendment doesn't apply to those people. Here's Sen. Superior now:

... Speaking of Really Rich Senators ... The Poor Get Poorer, and the Congress Gets Richer. Open Secrets: "Despite a stubbornly sour national economy congressional members’ personal wealth collectively increased by more than 16 percent between 2008 and 2009, according to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics of federal financial disclosures released earlier this year." The Center's full report begins here.

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