REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- September 11

The Ledes

Monday, June 30, 2025

It's summer in our hemisphere, and people across Guns America have nothing to do but shoot other people.

New York Times: “A gunman deliberately started a wildfire in a rugged mountain area of Idaho and then shot at the firefighters who responded, killing two and injuring another on Sunday afternoon in what the local sheriff described as a 'total ambush.' Law enforcement officers exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned, and officials later found the body of the male suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby, Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at a news conference on Sunday night. The authorities said they believed the suspect had acted alone but did not release any information about his identity or motives.” A KHQ-TV (Spokane) report is here.

New York Times: “The New York City police were investigating a shooting in Manhattan on Sunday night that left two people injured steps from the Stonewall Inn, an icon of the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. The shooting occurred outside a nearby building in Greenwich Village at 10:15 p.m., Sgt. Matthew Forsythe of the New York Police Department said. The New York City Pride March had been held in Manhattan earlier on Sunday, and Mayor Eric Adams said on social media that the shooting happened as Pride celebrations were ending. One victim who was shot in the head was in critical condition on Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said. A second victim was in stable condition after being shot in the leg, she said. No suspect had been identified. The police said it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the Pride march.”

New York Times: “A dangerous heat wave is gripping large swaths of Europe, driving temperatures far above seasonal norms and prompting widespread health and fire alerts. The extreme heat is forecast to persist into next week, with minimal relief expected overnight. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are among the nations experiencing the most severe conditions, as meteorologists warn that Europe can expect more and hotter heat waves in the future because of climate change.”

The Wires

Help!

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.

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.”

Page Links

Saturday

Sep102011

The Commentariat -- September 11

Maureen Dowd writes what we've all been saying: "When the president stays insulated with his little circle that doesn’t know how to push his messages, and he lets the nihilist Republicans go unchallenged in their crazy claims to be saving the country they’re hurting, he sets the stage for Rick Perry. It’s still impossible to sum up what Obama’s presidency is about right now, except saving his own job." ...

... I've posted a comments page on Dowd's column on Off Times Square. Write on this or something else.

Paul Krugman: "What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons."

President Bill Clinton on the heroes of Shanksville Flight 93. CW: try not to tear up:

... President Bush's speech is here. Vice President Biden's speech is here. ...

... Peter Kaplan of New York Magazine on New Yorkers, before and after 9/11.

Alexander Cockburn of Nation of Change: "You can find America's future in blueprints minted in business-funded think tanks 30 to 40 years ago at the dawn of the neo-liberal age: destruction of organized labor, attrition of the social safety net, erosion of government regulation and a war on the poor that will be fought without mercy at every level. Last year, the New York police stopped and questioned 601,055 people — predominantly blacks and Hispanics — and those numbers were up 13 percent for the first six months of this year.... Whoever the Republican presidential candidate may be, they face in Obama an opponent who agrees with at least half of what they say. In 40 years, I've not seen a gloomier political landscape."

Alexander Bolton of The Hill: Economists say President Obama's jobs plan could help the economy; Wall Street was unimpressed. ...

... Motoko Rich of the New York Times: "The dismal state of the economy is the main reason many companies are reluctant to hire workers, and few executives are saying that President Obama’s jobs plan — while welcome — will change their minds any time soon." ...

... Frank Rich and Adam Moss of New York Magazine assess President Obama's jobs speech. ...

... George Packer of the New Yorker: the night Obama faced off against the nihilists. ...

... Rick Hertzberg: "... Lincoln didn't have to deal with so many of the sort of people of the type we would today call 'Republicans.'”

Gory Videogame Producers Get Bog Tax Breaks. David Kocieniewski of the New York Times: "Those tax incentives — a collection of deductions, write-offs and credits mostly devised for other industries in other eras — now make video game production one of the most highly subsidized businesses in the United States.... Video game developers receive such a rich assortment of incentives that even oil companies have questioned why the government should subsidize such a mature and profitable industry."

Right Wing World

Andy Borowitz: "The Department of Homeland Security said today that it was studying several 'credible threats' made to the United States government in a two-hour broadcast Wednesday night from a location believed to be the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.... In reviewing the two-hour tape, Homeland Security officials said they found threats to some of the most essential functions of the US government, from Social Security to the Federal Reserve.... But the most terrifying moment in the tape came when [one] speaker received thunderous applause from the audience after threatening to execute people." For reference, see the Commentariat of September 8 and 9; thanks to reader Bonnie for the link. ...

... That was funny. This is not -- and as unbelievable as it seems, it's true. Judd Legum of Think Progress: on the eve of the September 11 anniversary, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced that in order to offset the costs of Hurricane Irene emergency relief, Republicans have written a bill that, as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) explains: "slashes funding for grants to equip and train first responders by 40 percent. This is on top of the 19 percent cut in FY 2011. The House defense appropriations bill provides $12.8 billion to train and equip troops and police in Afghanistan — yet the House provides only $2 billion for first responders here at home." CW: No, they have no shame.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: The wingnut blogosphere went nuts because PBS "edited" a transcript of President Obama's jobs speech -- yeah, they dild when the White House sent them an "as-delivered" update. AND PBS "edited" the speech to remove an embarrassing Obama "gaffe" about Abraham Lincoln 's founding of the GOP -- a remark which was not only accurate, it's a fact that Republicans have long embraced. Johnson writes, "The multi-level idiocy of this latest wingnut freakout is impressive. Not only did PBS have a perfectly good reason for changing their transcript, the wingnuts are completely wrong about Lincoln, too."

News Ledes

Al Jazeera: "The Taliban government in Afghanistan offered to present Osama bin Laden for a trial long before the attacks of September 11, 2001, but the US government showed no interest, according to a senior aide to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, Taliban’s last foreign minister, told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview that his government had made several proposals to the United States to present the al-Qaeda leader, considered the mastermind of the 2001 attacks, for trial for his involvement in plots targeting US facilities during the 1990s."

U.K. Telegraph: "A group of Muslim protesters set fire to an American flag outside the US embassy in London during a minute's silence to mark the moment that the first hijacked airliner hit the World Trade Center 10 years ago." With video.

NBC has a nice panoramic image of the September 11 Memorial in New York City.

See the Live Feeds above & the President's Calendar below for the public appearances of President Obama First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Biden & Dr. Jill Biden today.

The New York Times' September 11 memorials story is here. I expect it will be updated throughout the day. ...

... Here's a New York Times liveblog. ...

... New York Times: "Amid all the dignitaries who gather Sunday on the site of the World Trade Center to pay tribute to those who died there 10 years ago, two will inevitably stand out: President Obama and former President George W. Bush, whose terms in office are bookends for considering how America has changed since Sept. 11, 2001, particularly in its response to terrorism."

... The Washington Post story is here.

AP: "A decade after 9/11, the day that changed so much for so many people, the world's leaders and citizens paused to reflect Sunday. But there were also those — including a former Malaysian prime minister — who reiterated old claims that the U.S. government itself was behind the attacks."

Washington Post: "Two Afghans were killed and nearly 80 NATO soldiers were wounded after a truck packed with explosives hidden under firewood rammed into the entrance of a military base in eastern Afghanistan, military officials said Sunday. The Taliban took responsibility for the attack. In a statement on the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the militant group said Afghans became the biggest victims of response to the attacks."

New York Times: "Cliff Robertson, the ruggedly handsome actor who won an Oscar for 'Charly' but found himself frozen out of jobs for almost four years after he exposed a prominent Hollywood studio boss as a forger and embezzler, died Saturday on Long Island. He was 88 and lived in Water Mill, N.Y."

Comments Off

Permalink

Email Article