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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.'”

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Sunday

Dec122010

Stephen Colbert has topped himself here. This is a brilliant segment:

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Sunday

Dec122010

"Don't Submit to the Blackmail." Rep. Jerry Nadler & former Gov. Howard Dean explain why they oppose the Obama tax deal:

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Sunday

Dec122010

The Commentariat -- December 12

One Explanation (see also Frank Rich, December 5):

** CW: James K. Galbraith, in a Harvard speech, the transcript published on AlterNet, makes a devastating, and I think accurate, assessment of President Obama's economic policy. Obama, Galbraith says, surrounded "himself with holdover appointments from the Bush and even the Clinton administrations: ... Geithner..., Bernanke, and ... Summers. These men have no commitment to the base, no commitment to the Democratic Party as a whole, no particular commitment to Barack Obama, and none to the broad objective of national economic recovery.... The President also chose to cover up economic crime.... On the larger economic policy front, the White House gave away the game from the beginning." Read it all.

CW: if you're interested in knowing why the government doesn't work for you, Tom Hamburger & Matea Gold, writing in the Los Angeles Times, have the answer: Washington politicians are all already working their asses off to raise campaign funds for the next election. Like any good employee, they work for the guys who pay them.

"A Tale of Two Christmases." Ylan Miu of the Washington Post: "At Tiffany's, executives report that sales of their most expensive merchandise have grown by double digits. At Wal-Mart, executives point to shoppers flooding the stores at midnight every two weeks to buy baby formula the minute their unemployment checks hit their accounts."

I'll go next year; I've gone every year. I think it's very, very, very important -- very important -- for us to show up at that State of the Union, because people today are more and more visual. What [people] see in front of them at the State of the Union is that federal government. And I would like them to see the judges too, because federal judges are also a part of that government. -- Justice Stephen Breyer

Louise Story of the New York Times writes a fascinating mystery/horror story of how nine big banks secretly control the derivatives market, won't tell what they're up, won't reveal how much money they make on derivatives or how much the actual cost is to consumers & won't let other financial institutions participate. To help us understand how they "work," Story makes this analogy:

It would be like a real estate agent selling a house, but the buyer knowing only what he paid and the seller knowing only what he received. The agent would pocket the difference as his fee, rather than disclose it. Moreover, only the real estate agent — and neither buyer nor seller — would have easy access to the prices paid recently for other homes on the same block.

Ian Shapira & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "Since releasing a vast cache of diplomatic cables this month..., WikiLeaks has been the focus of intense criticism.... But it has also engendered the frenzied support of an expanding and loosely defined global collective that seems intent on speaking out -- and in some cases waging war on WikiLeaks' behalf. The most prominent of those groups is known as Anonymous, which this past week sought to disable the Web sites of several U.S. companies as part of what it called Operation Payback.WikiLeaks has also drawn the support of traditional civil rights organizations and advocacy groups, which see the controversy surrounding WikiLeaks as an important test of U.S. commitment to freedom of the Internet."

Katie Zezima of the New York Times: Sen. Bernie "Sanders’s monologue, a marathon riff against the Obama administration’s plan to continue the tax policies of George W. Bush administration’s plan to continue the tax policies of , stirred Twitter users to a roar over the course of eight-plus hours, putting his name atop the social network’s 'trending topics' by Friday night. It garnered even more attention than when he was elected to the Senate in 2006 and was considered the first senator ever to identify himself as a socialist." ...

... Olbermann does a good job of highlighting Sanders' 8-hour floor speech:

Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP: "President Barack Obama's plan to cut payroll taxes for a year would provide big savings for many workers, but makes Social Security advocates nervous that it could jeopardize the retirement program's finances. The plan is part of a package of tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers' share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011."

Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "... at the halfway point of a first term in which Mr. Obama has mostly relied on the counsel of a tightly closed inner circle, Mr. Biden is taking a more prominent and influential role. With the departure of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff and Mr. Obama’s need to negotiate with Congressional Republicans if he is to advance his agenda, the president is increasingly using Mr. Biden as a multipurpose emissary while continuing to seek his counsel behind the scenes.

Sam Roberts of the New York Times: "After World War II, American counterintelligence recruited former Gestapo officers, SS veterans and Nazi collaborators to an even greater extent than had been previously disclosed and helped many of them avoid prosecution or looked the other way when they escaped, according to thousands of newly declassified documents."

Robert Pear of the New York Times: in January Rep. Joe Pitts, (R-Penn.) will become chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, a move that "presages a major shift on abortion and family planning, according to opponents and supporters of abortion rights. Opponents of abortion gained about 45 seats in the midterm elections, and they count the next speaker, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, as a staunch ally, virtually guaranteeing more conflicts with the White House on the issue."

Andy Borowitz: "... twenty-four hours after former President Bill Clinton appeared at the White House to endorse President Obama’s tax plan, Mr. Obama is 'still looking for the right way to ask him to leave,' an aide confirmed today."

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