REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Commentariat -- October 18

The Ledes

Monday, July 21, 2025

New York Times: “William L. Clay, who became the first African-American elected to the House of Representatives from Missouri, co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus and forcefully promoted the interests of poor people in St. Louis and beyond in his 32 years on Capitol Hill, died on Thursday in Adelphi, Md. He was 94.”

New York Times: “Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the actor who rose to fame as a teenager playing Theo Huxtable on 'The Cosby Show' in the mid-1980s, died in Costa Rica on Sunday. He was 54. Warner drowned while swimming at a beach on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, The Associated Press reported, citing the country’s Judicial Investigation Department.”

The Wires

The Ledes

Sunday, July 20, 2025

New York Times: “The Cram fire in central Oregon, which is threatening 653 structures, most of them homes, has grown to more than 95,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire of the year so far in the United States.... Moister air and calmer winds are expected to blunt some of the fire’s growth over the weekend. It was 49 percent contained as of late Saturday night local time, according to InciWeb, a government site that tracks wildfires.”

New York Times: “Torrential rain in parts of the Washington, D.C., area on Saturday led to flash flooding and prompted water rescues in Maryland and Virginia, the authorities said. More than five inches of rain fell in some densely populated Washington suburbs like Silver Spring on Saturday. Several major roads in Montgomery, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties in Maryland, as well as in Fairfax County in Virginia, were impassable on Saturday evening. In northwest Washington, D.C., parked cars were inundated with floodwaters.”

AP: “A vehicle rammed into a crowd of people waiting to enter a performance venue along a busy boulevard in Los Angeles early Saturday, injuring 30 people and leading bystanders to attack the driver, authorities said. The driver was later found to have been shot, according to police, who were searching for a suspected gunman who fled the scene along Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood.... Twenty-three victims were taken to hospitals and trauma centers, according to police. Seven were in critical condition, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement.... The driver, whose gunshot wound was found by paramedics, was also taken to a hospital.”

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Hubris. One would think that a married man smart enough to start up and operate his own tech company was also smart enough to know that you don't take your girlfriend to a public concert where the equipment includes a jumbotron -- unless you want to get caught on the big camera with your arms around said girlfriend. Ah, but for Andy Bryon, CEO of A company called Astronomer, and also maybe his wife, Wednesday was a night that will live in infamy. New York Times link. ~~~

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

Monday

Oct172011

The Commentariat -- October 18

I've put up a comments page on Off Times Square. Write on anything you want.

"I Am Not Moving." Video by Corey Ogilvie, uploaded October 11. Thanks to reader Bonnie:

Greg Sargent: "Working America, the affiliate of the AFL-CIO that organizes workers from non-union workplaces, has signed up approximately 25,000 new recruits in the last week alone, thanks largely to the high visibility of the protests." Karen Nussbaum, the director of Working America, "acknowledges that conservatives might have some success discrediting the movement 'if they can change the subject to what the occupiers are wearing. But if we keep the subject on jobs and democracy, we’ll keep those working class moderates in this fight." CW: seriously, kids, if you want maximum effectiveness, show up for marches dressed as if you're going for a job interview in a red state.

... For more info on Playing for Change, go here.

Nate Silver on where the protesters are -- as it turns out, there are more on the West Coast than in New York and the East Coast.

Annie Lowrey of Slate: Why does Wall Street hate President Obama? While the reasons likely include his policies, his perceived ideology and their own psychological aberrations, Lowrey suggests the recent sudden turn from "cautious ingratitude" to "angry opposition" may be plain ole economics: Wall Street is not as profitable as it was even six months ago, and as many Americans do, the cats blame the President when they're not getting fatter. ...

... BUT Wall Street Loves Mitt (in case you can't read the legend, the big tall violet cylinders represent financial sector contributions to Romney, the blue are Obama & the little teeny red ones are Perry)"

... AND why not? After all, President Obama is not doing enough for Jeff Immelt, Obama's jobs-cutting jobs czar who is the CEO of the non-taxpaying GE. Scott Malone of Reuters: Immelt "held out Germany -- home to one of GE's biggest rivals, Siemens AG (SIEGn.DE) -- as an example of a wealthy country that has been successful in pushing exports. 'Chancellor (Angela) Merkel flies from Berlin to Beijing, there's 25 German CEOs that go on the plane right behind her. And they connect the dots. They play hard, they play to win,' Immelt said. President Barack Obama, he added, 'has been out driving and pushing to try to double exports in the next five years. I think we can compete very well. But we're not all-in the same way that the Germans are all-in.'" CW: This is the same whine Immelt made in his "60 Minutes" interview, which I posted last week. It's all about Jeff.

Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Democrats in the Senate will this week start to advance elements of President Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan piece-by-piece, challenging Republicans who have already nixed the package as a whole to likewise take vote after vote against its various planks."

David Crary of the AP: "As of Oct. 31, according to the U.N. Population Fund, there will be 7 billion people sharing Earth's land and resources.... Experts say most of Africa — and other high-growth developing nations such as Afghanistan and Pakistan — will be hard-pressed to furnish enough food, water and jobs for their people, especially without major new family-planning initiatives. 'Extreme poverty and large families tend to reinforce each other,' says Lester Brown, the environmental analyst who heads the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. 'The challenge is to intervene in that cycle and accelerate the shift to smaller families.'"

You probably should not miss this -- Herman Cain, then CEO of Godfather's Pizza, at a 1991 Omaha Press Club meeting. Dave Weigel has the lyrics:

Right Wing World *

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: Chris Wallace of Fox "News" forgot where he worked Sunday & repeatedly pressed House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) about the economic analyses for the Republicans' so-called jobs plan. "Cantor kept dodging the question. He has no answer. Republican leaders in the House and Senate have each put out job plans. But the plans have slogans, not specifics: Less regulation, repeal Obamacare, cut taxes, and so on. Professional forecasters can't make serious estimates without more information." With video. ...

... Really, this is from Politico, not from The Onion. Jake Sherman: "Friday: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor ... is heading to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania to talk about income disparity and how Republicans believe the government could help fix it." CW: probable suggested "fixes": cut taxes on the rich & eliminate regulation of Wall Street. Oh, Eric Cantor feels your pain.

Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine: Herman "Cain himself does, in fact, invoke race constantly. The context is almost always to absolve conservatives of racism, to assure them that they are less racist than the left. He ... [refers] to the "Democratic plantation." He ... [says] that, 'A lot of these liberal, leftist folk in this country, that are black, they're more racist than the white people that they're claiming to be racist.' He ... [announces] that 'most people have gotten past color, especially the Republican party.' Even if Cain decided midstream to switch from business plan pseudo-candidate to actual candidate, it is difficult to believe that many of his putative supporters would actually pull the lever for him."

Sick "Jokes" Have Consequences

We'll have a real fence, 20 ft. high with barbed wire, electrified, with a sign on the other side that says, 'It can kill you.' What do you mean insensitive? What is insensitive is when they come to the United States across our border and kill our citizens and kill our border-patrol people. -- Herman Cain, Saturday, to raucous applause

That is not a serious plan. I've also said America needs to get a sense of humor. That is a joke, O.K.? -- Herman Cain, Sunday, on "Meet the Press"

How can you joke about killing poor people who are searching for a better life? Jaime Carrillo, an accountant

Ioan Grillo of Time: "... when Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain joked about a killer electric fence to keep migrants out, political electric shocks surged rapidly south of the Rio Grande. From pulpits by the border to editorial offices in the capital [Mexico City], priests and editors vented their anger at comments they called 'stupid,' 'barbaric' and 'shameful.'"

CW: Playing "Can You Top This?" when it comes to identifying instances of Republican hypocrisy is a never-ending game in which the answer is always "Yes." Here's Alec MacGillis of The New Republic on Newt Gingrich & "death panels." Newt's duplicity is stunning, even for Newt.

* Where an interview is defined as saying something unrel ated to every question asked.

News Ledes

President Obama spoke at Greensville County High School in Emporia, Virginia this afternoon:

President Obama spoke at Guilford Technical College in Jamestown, North Carolina this morning. The video is here.

President Obama held a roundtable with educators in in Jamestown, North Carolina this morning. AP: "For President Barack Obama, the bus is back. That's the sleek, million-dollar, Secret Service-approved bus that's been carrying Obama along North Carolina's winding mountain roads, giving the president a chance to take in the fall foliage and bask in some small-town Southern hospitality."

New York Times: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton landed [in Tripoli] on Tuesday to demonstrate support for Libya’s new transitional government even as a senior administration official expressed concern that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi remained a 'lethal nuisance.' Mrs. Clinton, the administration’s most ardent champion of the NATO-led intervention year, arrived here from Malta at noon to meet with the country’s new leaders, including the chairman of the Transitional National Council, Mustafa Mohammed Abdul Jalil."

New York Times: "An Israeli soldier held for more than five years by the militant Palestinian group Hamas was traded on Tuesday for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in an elaborate exchange that could shake up regional politics.... The soldier, Sergeant First Class Gilad Shalit, was taken from Gaza, where he had been held since being abducted in a cross-border raid in 2006, into Egypt and from there to Israel, where he was given a quick medical check and declared in good health."

New York Times: "Just before the American-led strikes against Libya in March, the Obama administration intensely debated whether to open the mission with a new kind of warfare: a cyberoffensive to disrupt and even disable the Qaddafi government’s air-defense system, which threatened allied warplanes.... But administration officials and even some military officers balked, fearing that it might set a precedent for other nations, in particular Russia or China...."

AP: "Bank of America says it earned $6.2 billion in the third quarter, largely from accounting gains and the sale of a stake in a Chinese bank."

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