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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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Oct142017

The Commentariat -- October 15, 2017

Paul Krugman: "... the selling of tax cuts under Trump has taken [lying] to a whole new level, both in terms of the brazenness of the lies and their sheer number. Both the depth and the breadth of the dishonesty make it hard even for those of us who do this for a living to keep track.... Lie #1: America is the most highly-taxed country in the world.... Lie #2: The estate tax is destroying farmers and truckers.... Lie #3: Taxation of pass-through entities is a burden on small business.... Lie #4: Cutting profits taxes really benefits workers.... Lie #5: Repatriating overseas profits will create jobs.... Lie #6: This is not a tax cut for the rich.... Lie #7: It's a big tax cut for the middle class.... Lie #8: It won't increase the deficit.... Lie #9: Cutting taxes will jump-start rapid growth.... Lie #10: Tax cuts will pay for themselves." ...

... Trump talks about his tax plan & maybe some other stuff:

The Cheese Stands Alone. Stephen Castle & Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times: "Iran, Russia and European leaders roundly condemned President Trump's decision on Friday to disavow the Iran nuclear deal, saying that it reflected the growing isolation of the United States, threatened to destabilize the Middle East and could make it harder to resolve the growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.... Though they avoided direct criticism of Mr. Trump, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a rare joint statement that they 'stand committed' to the 2015 nuclear deal and that preserving it was 'in our shared national security interest.' 'The nuclear deal was the culmination of 13 years of diplomacy and was a major step towards ensuring that Iran's nuclear program is not diverted for military purposes,' they added." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Eric Levitz has "a rundown of Trump's most absurd arguments for decertifying the nuclear agreement with Iran." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Fred Kaplan of Slate: "President Trump’s statement Friday on the Iran nuclear deal may be the most dishonest speech he has ever given from the White House -- and, depending what happens next, it could be his most damaging. It flagrantly misrepresents what the deal was meant to do, the extent of Iran's compliance, and the need for corrective measures. If he gets his way, he will blow up one of the most striking diplomatic triumphs of recent years, aggravate tensions in the Middle East, make it even harder to settle the North Korean crisis peacefully, and make it all but impossible for allies and adversaries to trust anything the United States says for as long as Trump is in office." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Eliana Johnson of Politico (story linked yesterday) puts the onus on Nikki Haley -- with a shoutout to John Bolton -- for stage-crafting Trump's speech. But I want to know, inasmuch as the Iran pact is integral to Middle East peace -- WHERE'S JARED? Here Trump is fooling with with a delicately-crafted international accord, and the Trump's Designated Middle East Peace Guru must be off enjoying the fall colors or something. ...

... Heather Hurlburt of New York: "If the theatrics of [Friday's] speech reminds you more of a reality-show season premiere than high diplomacy, it's not accidental. Trump and his team are stage-managing Iran policy as if it were an episode of The Apprentice. He intentionally built drama for weeks -- from his September taunt to the United Kingdom, our closest ally, that he'd made a decision but wasn't willing to share it, to a steady drip of leaks and time changes in the lead-up to today's announcement. European ambassadors were called to the State Department days ahead of time, then told the State Department had nothing to tell them. Tune in for the season opener, right? But international diplomacy doesn't thrive on 'reveals' -- in fact, it tends to fall apart over them." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Evan Osnos of the New Yorker: "If hawks in Congress push through a law demanding further concessions, it could provoke Iran to abandon the deal, eject the inspectors, and accelerate its nuclear program. That might result in calls for Iran's facilities to be destroyed before they can produce enough weapons-grade material for a bomb. Such a chain of events could lead to a particularly perilous consequence: returning to the possibility of military conflict with Iran, at a time when the United States is already facing a nuclear standoff with North Korea, would court the prospect of a two-front war -- an act of self-sabotage more immediately damaging to American security than reviving the xenophobic slogan 'America First,' withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, or antagonizing our allies (Mexico, Australia, South Korea, and counting).... Indeed, in the past two weeks there have been a number of indicators of the President's growing political instability."

Steven Feldstein in Informed Comment: "At campaign rallies [Trump] pledged to 'bomb the hell' out of the Islamic State. He openly mused about killing the families of terrorists, a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits violence against noncombatants. Ten months into his presidency, a clearer picture is emerging. The data indicate several alarming trends. According to research from the nonprofit monitoring group Airwars, the first seven months of the Trump administration have already resulted in more civilian deaths than under the entirety of the Obama administration.... Researchers also point to another stunning trend -- the 'frequent killing of entire families in likely coalition airstrikes.'... The vast increase in civilian deaths is not limited to the anti-IS campaign. In Afghanistan, the U.N. reports a 67 percent increase in civilian deaths from U.S. airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 compared to the first half of 2016." Feldstein lays out possible reasons for the increases. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Amy Wang of the Washington Post: Larry Flynt, "best known as the publisher of the pornographic magazine Hustler," took out a full-page ad in today's Washington Post offering $10 million to "anyone who could provide a 'smoking gun' -- perhaps buried in Trump's tax returns or in some other investment records -- that would lead to his impeachment."

Chris Riotta of Newsweek: "Jared Kushner 'enriched himself' by not revealing his ownership of a real estate tech business that raised millions of dollars while he served in the government, said a member of the House Judiciary Committee, calling it part of a pattern of unethical behavior that he believes should cause the White House Senior Adviser to be stripped of his security clearance. Congressman Ted Lieu told Newsweek that Kushner's failure to list a company called Cadre on his initial financial disclosure forms -- man oversight that could mean millions for the president's son-in-law -- is an ethical lapse that should have severe ramifications." You'll have to read on to understand how the stunt worked in Jared's favor. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Natasha Brand of Business Insider: "An intern at the data mining and analysis firm Cambridge Analytica left online for nearly a year what appears to be programming instructions for the voter targeting tools the company used around the time of the election, raising questions about who could have accessed the tools and to what end. Social media analyst and data scientist Jonathan Albright discovered the election data processing scripts -- or programming instructions -- on what he said was the intern's personal GitHub account. GitHub, a 'Facebook for programmers,' is an internet hosting service mostly used for code." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This looks like a "get out of jail free" card for Trump, the Trump campaign, & the Mercers: "The intern did it!"

Michael Wines of the New York Times: "State election officials, worried about the integrity of their voting systems, are pressing to make them more secure ahead of next year's midterm elections. Reacting in large part to Russian efforts to hack the presidential election last year, a growing number of states are upgrading electoral databases and voting machines, and even adding cybersecurity experts to their election teams. The efforts -- from both Democrats and Republicans -- amount to the largest overhaul of the nation's voting infrastructure since the contested presidential election in 2000 spelled an end to punch-card ballots and voting machines with mechanical levers.... The effort to make the vote more secure is notably bipartisan and relatively rancor-free."

Oracle for Hire -- Will Say Whatever the Hell You Want to Hear. Josh Delk of the Hill: "Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon said Saturday .... during a speech at the Values Voter Summit ... that President Trump will 'win with 400 electoral votes in 2020,' following reports that he had lost faith in the president's ability to complete his current term.... [That's funny because] Bannon reportedly said several months ago that Trump only has a 30 percent chance of finishing his current term, a source told Vanity Fair, who said the president also did not know the function of the 25th Amendment, which allows a majority of the Cabinet to vote for the president to be removed from office." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So to "Values Voters," Trump's in like Flynn (no, not that Flynn); to Vanity Fair, Trump will be deposed. Apparently Bannon has reason to believe that "know thy audience" can be monetized. ...

... Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "Steve Bannon taunted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday and vowed to challenge any Senate Republican who doesn't publicly condemn attacks on ... Donald Trump.... Bannon, now the executive chairman of Breitbart News, bashed Senate Republicans by name for not publicly distancing themselves from Sen. Bob Corker's criticism of Trump, reserving particular animus for Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Dean Heller (Nev.) and Deb Fischer (Neb.).... 'There's time for a mea culpa,' Bannon declared. 'You can come to a stick and condemn Sen. Corker and you can come to a stick, a microphone, and say I'm not going to vote for Mitch McConnell as majority leader.'"

Mrs. McCrabbie: If you don't read the article linked next, at least read the entire summary. There's a punch line. ...

** Scott Higham & Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post: "In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation's streets.... The new law makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments.... A handful of members of Congress, allied with the nation's major drug distributors, prevailed upon the DEA and the Justice Department to agree to a more industry-friendly law, undermining efforts to stanch the flow of pain pills, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and '60 Minutes.' The industry worked behind the scenes with lobbyists and key members of Congress, pouring more than a million dollars into their election campaigns. The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump's nominee to become the nation's next drug czar.... It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Let's see if Trump withdraws Marino's nomination, now that the WashPo & "60 Minutes" have exposed the plot. For some reason, I'm not betting on this to happen.

The Fake, Failing New York Times Foils Trump. Haeyoun Park answers questions about getting health insurance converage under ObamaCare. Mrs. McC: I hope all news media & some popular shows & television sites act accordingly. And health insurance companies, who run zillions of ads for supplemental Medicare insurance, should have the sense to do the same for Healthcare.gov ...

... The number of state attorneys generals who are suing the Trump administration for stopping payments of the healthcare subsidies has grown to 18 plus the District of Columbia, according to a press release by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. The states are California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Oregon, North Carolina, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico, Washington, Iowa, and the District of Columbia."

Kendall Taggart & Jessica Garrison of BuzzFeed: "For all the women who have cheered as accusations against the producer Harvey Weinstein force a public conversation about sexual misconduct, one small group of women has watched with frustration. They are some of the dozen women who publicly accused Donald Trump of groping or kissing them -- accusations that Trump has denied. In a sharp contrast to the women who accused Weinstein, Trump's accusers did not see the public turn against him, the board of his company fire him, or the police launch an investigation. Instead, these women watched the man they say humiliated and abused them get elected president of the United States." ...

... Gregg Kilday of the Hollywood Reporter: "The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has expelled disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein from its ranks. The Academy's 54-member board of governors -- which includes such Hollywood luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Whoopi Goldberg and Kathleen Kennedy -- held an emergency meeting at the organization's Beverly Hills headquarters today and voted to strip away Weinstein's lifetime membership. Following the meeting, the Academy issued a statement saying the board had voted 'to immediately expel him from the Academy. We do so not simply to separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.'"

Comments Off

Reader Comments (6)

Sarah Polley––writer, director, & actor (her film, "Away from Her" based on an Alice Monroe story is excellent) tells us about the men you meet making movies. She hopes that the ways women are degraded, both obvious and subtle begin to seem like a thing of the past but we women need to take responsibility––we need to speak out and refuse to succumb or laugh off inappropriate behavior.

"When you're famous, they let you do it to them–-you can do anything..." NOT ANY MORE MORON!!!!!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/opinion/sunday/harvey-weinstein-sarah-polley.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=RelatedCoverage&region=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article

October 15, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

Again, the wrong word. Krugman: Lie #1: America is the most highly-taxed country in the world....
Trump: Fake news. I said we are number one so it must be true.

Trump never checked the data. He doesn't need to. He said, issue done.
The fact that Trump has no problem saying things that are easily disproven is no problem for him. A seriously delusional mental illness.

October 15, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterMarvin Schwalb

I think I might be totally in the dark, but I simply don't "get" Bannon's war on "regular" repugnantcans-- they have certainly been offensive enough to fit with the people Breitbart embraces, in my mind! 45's behavior is off-the-charts miserable and pathetic, but the people he is/they are rejecting do their work equally as senselessly and nastily! I don't know why they hate Barasso-- it's his ugly mug every time you see (urp--) that group of suited miscreants posed behind the Tortoise-- must we now gather this horde of horribles to our bosums as the lesser-of-evils? Good god--

October 15, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterJeanne

@Bea: If you can, ought to grab the SNL video of "Anderson Cooper & Kellyanne Conway" a la Stephen King to insert above.

October 15, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterMAG

Jeanne,

Very brave of you to attempt to make sense of the Repugnants on this fine Sunday morning, but if sense and logic are allied it's an attempt doomed to failure.

As a political force only, the Repugnants are subject to analysis, but when it comes to actual governance, logic and reason are both AWOL That's because the source of their strength has nothing to do with reason. Their party is powered by raw, negative emotions: fear, envy, resentment and even hate, all unthinking responses to a changing world and all deplorable. The Pretender' foreign "policy," some of which is a clear extension of his anti-Obama rampage, is the natural outcome of government by uninformed emotion, and to the extent that his "explanations" of what he is up to are directed to his supporters, making sense or telling the truth is not required. His base is not interested in reality and are hence the very definition of gullible.

What I see happening to the Repugnants is another natural consequence of their long dalliance with unreason. Bannon and Breitbart have successfully staked a claim to the darkest elements of the party's id: the hunker down protectionist, racist, paranoid tendencies that see enemies everywhere from immigrant workers to Wall Street.

It will be fun to watch (I'll take fun anywhere I can get it these days) but I don't see Bannon's Bunch winning the war he has declared. Many reasons for that, which I'll give more thought to, but the main one is that the big money is on the other side, and it has been money that has for year held the Repugnant mess together.

Protectionism and outright racism, only a couple of the Bannon movement's planks, are not good for business.

(With that in mind the NAFTA negotiations are of great interest to me...see the Reuters' story above)

October 15, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

I'm late to this conversation as I've been isolated from internet use, but a thought about the Weinstein case. Listening to the tape of Weinstein begging and pleading with Gutierrez, I was struck by how needy, whiny and pathetic he sounded. HW and others of his ilk should be so humiliated listening to this tape - this is how you sound, guys, this is what you are. As Bill Maher would say, "whiny little bitches", not the macho alpha males you imagine yourselves to be. I am referring only to HW, DiJiT and their kind. I guess these guys have no self respect or awareness, because if they did, listening to this would shut their foul little mouths forever. When you have to use money/power/force to assault and belittle others, you are admitting to the world that you are a failure in every respect.

October 15, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterGloria
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