Twenty years on… "In the 20 years since terrorist hijackers crashed commercial jets into the twin towers and the Pentagon and heroic passengers downed a fourth plane in a field in western Pennsylvania, America has been engaged in a boundless battle on that score — a fight President George W. Bush termed the 'Global War on Terror.'… It led the U.S. to deploy hundreds of thousands of troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries; build juggernaut foreign and domestic surveillance operations; re-imagine how war is waged; militarize domestic law enforcement, especially along the southern border with Mexico; flout international humanitarian norms and impinge on civil liberties at home; and spend trillions of taxpayer dollars in service of the idea that such an assault will never happen again." As most of you know, I have some feelings about this, but the end result comes down to some essential questions: are we safer, are we afraid, have we given up what we cherish, are we the same nation? The answers to those questions will answer the question, have we won?
"Over the past few weeks, the Biden administration has launched drone strikes against suspected terrorist targets in Somalia and Afghanistan, based on congressional authority dating to September 2001. This week, five terror suspects have been in court for pre-trial hearings now entering their ninth year in Guantánamo Bay, which opened its prison gates in January 2002."
"Scientists briefly estimated that Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, as it's now known, was the largest such icy body identified to date, perhaps more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) across. Additional observations have cast that into doubt, but given the 'megacomet' a new distinction: it sprouted a tail remarkably far from the sun, suggesting more revelations to come. All told, the object offers astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to watch the antics of a comet."
"The hidden scars left on the landscape during ice ages thousands to millions of years ago have now been imaged in spectacular detail… Using a technique called reflection seismology, a team of scientists has imaged enormous gouges carved by subglacial rivers, buried hundreds of meters below the floor of the North Sea. Called 'tunnel valleys', these features can help us understand how frozen landscapes change in response to a warming climate."
"In English, ducks say 'quack quack,' while they say 'cua cua' in Spanish. French ducks say 'coin coin.'… But an Australian duck named Ripper is a little different: He calls you a 'bloody fool.'"
The Last Week Tonight with "John Oliver explains how emergency medical services function in the U.S., why they can be so expensive, and what we can do to fix things."
"President Biden on Thursday unveiled a series of steps to combat the newly surging pandemic, including the announcement of a forthcoming federal rule that all businesses with 100 or more employees have to ensure that every worker is either vaccinated for COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing for the coronavirus."
"In response to Biden trying to end the pandemic, Republicans were very upset. Very, very upset. Here were some of their freedom-loving responses." Whackaloon quotient goes up.
Meanwhile, on Bullshit Mountain… "President Biden announced a sweeping plan that could force millions of unvaccinated Americans to get the COVID-19 shot but left out mandating the vaccine for illegal immigrants crossing the border… Biden announced Thursday that all employers with more than 100 employees will be forced to either require their employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 or mandate weekly testing for the virus."
"Now at least four possible COVID-19 deaths from January 2020 have survived Anderson’s vetting. Spread out across four states, they have become part of a scattershot collection of clues about the virus’s early spread beyond China — some of them trustworthy, others less so — that have begun drawing more attention as scientists and intelligence officials try to unravel how the pandemic began."
"Prices that producers get for final demand goods and services surged in August at their highest annual rate since at least 2010, the Labor Department reported Friday… The producer price index rose 0.7% for the month, above the 0.6% Dow Jones estimate, though below the 1% increase in July… On a year-over-year basis, the gauge rose 8.3%, which is the biggest annual increase since records have been kept going back to November 2010. That came following a 7.8% move higher in July, which also set a record."
"Though surveys from the Institute for Supply Management this month showed measures of prices paid by manufacturers and services industries fell significantly in August, they remained elevated. Factories and services providers still struggled to secure labor and raw materials, and faced logistics delays."
"A second Qatar Airways passenger flight, which arrived in Afghanistan on Friday, has now departed from Kabul airport, a day after more than 100 foreign nationals left on another plane with the Taliban's approval… It is currently unclear how many passengers are on board the plane and what their nationalities are."
"The arguments that the Justice Department is presenting on the merits -- that the law violates Supreme Court constitutional precedent on abortion rights -- are on solid ground. But the question is whether its lawsuit can get around the same procedural issues that doomed the earlier federal lawsuit brought by abortion clinics."
"With the September 14 recall Election Day fast approaching, Trump and other right-wing figures, including top Newsom replacement candidate Larry Elder, have started to lay the groundwork to baselessly dismiss a potential Newsom victory as a product of Democratic cheating." Same playbook.
"One benefit of never admitting you lost a presidential election -- even though, of course, you did -- is that you can just keep on acting like the president… That's exactly what Donald Trump is trying to do these days, overseeing a sort of shadow presidency for the base of the Republican Party in which Covid-19 isn't that big of a problem, the 2020 election was stolen and he was right about, well, everything else too."
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