To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.
Link Code: <a href="URL">text</a>
OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.
OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.
Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.
Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.
Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:
~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.
CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~
~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play.
New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.
Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts.
New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”
No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~
~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”
NPR lists all of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners. Poynter lists the prizes awarded in journalism as well as the finalists in these categories.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. — Anonymous
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. — Edward R. Murrow
Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns
I have a Bluesky account now. The URL ishttps://bsky.app/profile/marie-burns.bsky.social . When Reality Chex goes down, check my Bluesky page for whatever info I am able to report on the status of Reality Chex. If you can't access the URL, I found that I could Google Bluesky and ask for Marie Burns. Google will include links to accounts for people whose names are, at least in part, Maria Burns, so you'll have to tell Google you looking only for Marie.
As always, what's going on with the Times is a matter of speculation, and I still await a definitive answer from them on links to content via Reality Chex. However, based on feedback from many readers, I am guessing what may be happening is this: the Times counts each time a non-subscriber links through Reality Chex, but after the non-subscriber has reached 20 hits for the month, the Times allows her to continue to link through. That, at least, seems to be what is happening.
Here are a few helpful hints on other Times-sanctioned ways to jumpt the paywall:
Reader Bill C. writes, "If you subscribe to NYT e-mail updates, then you can use those links for free (i.e. they do count toward the 20, but there's zero penalty for going over 20). So, if you get 'Today's Headlines' and 'Opinion Today,' you've got all the top stories already." This seems to be an excellent way to jump the paywall without raising the hackles of Mr. Sulzberger. It is, after all, his own program.
You can customize & subscribe to Times e-mail alerts. Log-in to the Times site (or register) at the link which appears at the top right of the home page (and other pages). Once you're logged in, click on your name at the top right corner of the page, where it says "Welcome: [Your Name]." This should bring up the "My Account" page. Scroll down & click on "Sign up for E-mail newsletter." This will bring up a page titled "E-mail Subscription." Scroll down to "Today's Headlines" and check off the types of stories that interest you. then click on "Subscribe." Easy, right?
I tried this several times, & each time the prompts seemed to move me through a slightly different sequence, so you may have to noodle around a little to get to that "E-mail Subscription" page. And you'll have to enter your password a number of times. I haven't received my first Times e-mail newsletter yet, so I don't know what kind of lagtime there is between the time a story goes up online and the e-mail arrives. But it may be worth a try.
Bill also writes, "Krugman has an RSS feed (feed://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/feed/) that gives you free (in the same sense as above) access to all his blog posts. (Also, Krugman himself noted that his Twitter feed will do the same thing.)" Here's Krugman's post on the Twitter feed. Links to the RSS & Twitter feeds are in the right column of his blogpost page.
Thanks to everyone for your input, & especially to Bill C. I hope this helps. I'll update you if & when I have any new info. -- Constant Weader
Update: I got my first Times headlines e-mail at 7:06 am ET, & it's pretty comprehensive, so this looks like a very good way for non-subscribers to go as long as the Times continues to allow unlimited links via these e-mails.
The Attorney General should resign if he can't bring this case [against Goldman Sachs executives]. -- Elliot Spitzer
Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi & Anderson Cooper discuss Goldman Sachs banksters. ViaSusie Madrak at Crooks & Liars, who has a good comment to accompany the video:
... ** "Too Big to Prosecute." Madrak also recommends this article by William Greider in The Nation on "how Wall Street crooks get out of jail free." CW: so do I.
Paul Krugman offers a defense of Democratic values as expressed in President Obama's budget speech. In so doing, he eviscerates the Heritage Foundation, which provided Paul Ryan with his fake budget numbers. Krugman also takes down Republican claims that the 2010 election was a mandate:
But last year the G.O.P. ran against what it called the 'massive Medicare cuts' contained in the health reform law. How, then, can the election have provided a mandate for a plan that not only would preserve all of those cuts, but would go on, over time, to dismantle Medicare completely?
... Krugman's most important point is his disdain for what is being hyped as a "bipartisan solution":
... right now 'bipartisan' is usually code for assembling some conservative Democrats and ultraconservative Republicans — all of them with close ties to the wealthy, and many who are wealthy themselves — and having them proclaim that low taxes on high incomes and drastic cuts in social insurance are the only possible solution. ...
... Steve Benen on the same subject: "By all appearances, Democrats in [the Gang of Six] are prepared to effective[ly] give up any hopes of progressive governance for a generationand give in to entitlement cuts, in exchange for tax increases that sane Republicans should consider a no-brainer anyway." ...
George Packer of the New Yorker on a few reasons Republicans win all the battles with President Obama: "... they’re willing to deploy legislative terrorism — threatening to shut down the government and to allow the United States to default on its debt — to get their way. In politics, the side with a fixed notion of ends and an unscrupulous approach to means always has the advantage."
The effective rate for the top 400 taxpayers has gone from 30 cents on the dollar in 1993 to 22 cents at the end of the Clinton years to 16.6 cents under Bush. So their effective rate has gone down more than 40 percent [CW: since 1993!]. The overarching drive right now is to push the burden of government, of taxes, down the income ladder. -- David Cay Johnston, tax expert ...
... Adieu, Noblesse Oblige. E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: "If the ruling class were as worried about the deficit as it claims to be, it would accept that the wealthiest people in society have a duty to pony up more for the very government whose police power and military protect them, their property and their wealth."
Zachary Goldfarb & Perry Bacon, Jr., of the Washington Post: "President Obama will hit the road this week and forcibly deliver his message that a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes on the rich is necessary to rein in the nation’s rocketing debt — a high-stakes effort to rally public support ahead of a series of contentious budget battles in Congress.
From Yesterday's Ledes: The Hill: "Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boldly predicted that Congress will vote to raise the debt ceiling next month, warning that failure to do so would bring 'catastrophic' consequences for the U.S. and global economies. Geithner, appearing on ABC's 'This Week,' said that if House Republicans were to push the vote to the brink or fail to raise the limit, it would 'make the last [financial] crisis look like a tame, modest crisis.'" ...
... Greg Sargent points out the money quote (literally) from Geithner's ABC News "This Week" interview:
They [the Republican leadership] recognize it, and they told the president that on Wednesday in the White House. And I sat there with them, and they said, we recognize we have to do this. And we’re not going to play around with it. -- Tim Geithner. Here's the video:
... Sargent supplies a response from Speaker Boehner's spokesman:
Boehner has been very clear: the American people demand that any increase in the debt ceiling be accompanied by spending cuts, and real reforms so we can keep cutting. They won’t accept another increase in the federal government’s credit card limit without action to address the underlying problem of runaway government spending. ...
... Meanwhile, Philip Rucker of the Washington Post reports that "Financial industry executives, business leaders and Treasury Department officials are visiting the [Tea Party] freshmen in their offices, briefing them in small groups and even cornering them at dinner parties. It’s all part of a behind-the-scenes campaign to school congressional newcomers in the economic stakes of Washington’s next big fiscal fight: over the debt ceiling.
On my watch, controllers will not be paid to take naps. We're not going to allow that. -- Ray LaHood, Transportation Secretary ...
... Joan Lowy of the AP: "Air traffic controllers will get an extra hour off between shifts so they don't doze off at work, but officials have rejected another proposed remedy: on-the-job napping....That's exactly the opposite of what scientists and the Federal Aviation Administration's own fatigue working group said was needed even before the five cases of sleeping controllers that have been disclosed since late March." CW: Ray LaHood is a Republican. Did you really expect him to believe scientists?
Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "For the past four years, the foreign companies that control the global Internet poker industry have helped bankroll an elaborate lobbying campaign here, seeking to keep the United States from shutting their American operations down. Former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, Republican of New York, has been the public face of the effort, which has included ... hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to a disparate assortment of lawmakers, including Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada.... But late last week, the United States Department of Justice ... indicted top executives at PokerStars, FullTilt Poker and Absolute Poker, accusing them of fraud and money laundering. In doing so the government has taken on a politically powerful industry that for a while seemed like it might transform gambling around the world."
Right Wing World *
When Republicans are so fact-free that even Fred Hiatt -- the right-wing, warmongering editor of the Washington Post -- turns against them: Hiatt writes, " The Republican self-deception that draws the most attention is the refusal to believe that Barack Obama is American-born. But there are Republican doctrinal fantasies that may be more dangerous: the conviction that taxes can always go down, but never up, for example, and the gathering consensus among Republican leaders that human-caused climate change does not exist."
In Right Wing World, Double-Talk Is Best, but Stonewalling Works, too. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: at a Tea Party event in New Hampshire, "exploring" Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty says he "generally" supports the Ryan budget plan, but he won't say whether he supports the Medicare cuts -- which are a central, defining element to the Ryan plan. Here's video of the Q & Not-A:
"Paul Ryan Shrugged." Karen Garcia examines the hypocrisies of Ayn Rand & of her political acolytes who have turned her inane novels into disastrous government policies & proposals: "Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan, the Brangelina of nihilistic free market capitalism, are both having career surges this weekend -- she with a movie premiere and he with another gala performance of 'Killing Medicare' on the Sunday morning talk show circuit. So what if one of them is physically dead, and the other is an intellectual flat-liner?" ...
... In an op-ed comment (#7), Garcia noted that "Ryan" is an anagram for "Ayn R." But for a real Rand (not named for Ayn, which he can't even pronounce [see video in the April 13 Commentariat]), you might want to check out Rand Paul's appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" where he says a budget compromise is necessary. Here's Paul's idea of a compromise:
But the compromise is not to raise taxes.... The compromise is for conservatives to admit that the military budget’s going to have to be cut.... Liberals will have to compromise and will have to cut domestic welfare.... The compromise is where we cut, not where we raise taxes. The problem is if you give them more money in Washington, they're not to be trusted.
Donald Trump's Humility Tour, Con'd.:
I'm a much bigger business man and have (a) much, much bigger net worth. I mean, my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney. I built a very big net worth and I’d like to put that ability ... to work for this country. -- Donald Trump, on CNN, the new go-to network for Republicans. With video.
... Andrew Leonard of Salon: How rich isDonald Trump, really? But "The more interesting question is just how good a businessman Trump is. His career has been full of wild swings and bankruptcies and desperate corporate restructurings." ...
** Wow! Tucson Sentinel: "Arizona Gov. Jan Brewervetoed a bill Monday that would have required presidential candidates to provide their birth certificates to appear on the ballot, and another that would have allowed guns to be carried on school grounds. Brewer also vetoed a bill that would have directed the governor to set up an alliance with other states to regulate health care, in a challenge to the federal government."
Washington Post: President "Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported a gross income of $1,728,096 in 2010, according to their federal tax returns, which the White House released Monday. President Obama collects a $400,000 salary as commander in chief, but received the vast majority of his income from sales of his three non-fiction books: 'The Audacity of Hope,' 'Dreams From My Father' and 'Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.' The Obamas paid $453,770 in federal taxes. The First Family donated $245,075, about 14 percent of their income, to 36 different charities. The largest gift was a $131,075 donation to Fisher House Foundation, a nonprofit that builds homes near military hospitals where family members can temporarily stay free of charge while a wounded service member recovers." You can link to pdfs of the Obamas' and Bidens' tax returns & tax receipts here (pdf's).
Washington Post: "A Cleveland air traffic controller and a manager were suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration this week after a movie soundtrack was heard playing over a radio frequency by the pilot of a military aircraft, the FAA said Monday night."
Wall Street Journal: "A blunt warning Monday from a credit rating firm about the U.S. government's mounting debt pushed stock markets lower and intensified political divisions in Washington about how best to tackle growing deficits. Both the Obama administration and House Republicans scrambled to gain leverage from Standard & Poor's changing its outlook on U.S. Treasury securities to 'negative' from 'stable.'" New York Times story here.
Dear Readers: I am trying to get clarification from the New York Times on the terms of access to their content through Reality Chex. After I wrote to them saying a non-subscriber to the Times had received a warning pop-up when she linked through Reality Chex, this is the e-mailed response I got:
Dear Marie Burns,
Thank you for contacting NYTimes.com.
All non-subscribers to the New York Times (either a digital subscription or a print subscription) are limited to twenty articles per month.
The behavior described by one of your readers when accessing that editorial is consistent with how we designed our new metered model for access to NYTimes.com.
In other words, a non-subscriber to the Times cannot link through Reality Chex once she has used up her 20 hits. Following is my response to Smith. I copied publisher A. O. Sulzberger:
Mr. Andrew Smith
New York Times Customer Service
Dear Mr. Smith:
Thank you for your prompt reply. As you know, I was inquiring about non-subscribers who linked to Times content via my noncommercial Website www.RealityChex.com As I explained, I have been linking to Times articles since I started my Website/blog in 2008 and have not changed my policy or the frequency of links to Times content since the Times paywall went up.
According to a March 18, 2011, letter to Times readers from publisher A. O. Sulzberger, Jr.,
"Readers who come to Times articles through links from search, blogs and social media like Facebook and Twitter will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit."
(1) Has Mr. Sulzberger changed his policy, or (2) have you decided unilaterally to contravene his policy?
Please advise as soon as possible.
cc: A. O. Sulzberger
So there's where we stand: in limbo. The publisher of the Times has said non-subscribers can link through Reality Chex; his programmers reportedly designed the system so they cannot. We'll see how this all shakes out. In the meantime, I will continue to link to Times content, but I will attempt to find other sources for news items. If you're having a specific problem, write to me at this link to let me know, & perhaps I can be of help.
Update: several readers have written to say they have used up their 20 free hits but are still able to link through Reality Chex to Times content. A few more readers have written to say they are getting pop-up notifications that they're on their last or nearly-last freebie.
Update 2: I have not heard back from the Times, but this morning -- Monday -- several readers who were having trouble accessing the Times through Reality Chex say they are now able to link through.
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