CNBC: “Job growth proved better than expected in June, as the labor market showed surprising resilience and likely taking a July interest rate cut off the table. Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 147,000 for the month, higher than the estimate for 110,000 and just above the upwardly revised 144,000 in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. April’s tally also saw a small upward revision, now at 158,000 following an 11,000 increase.... Though the jobless rates fell [to 4.1%], it was due largely to a decrease in those working or looking for jobs.”
Washington Post: “A warehouse storing fireworks in Northern California exploded on Tuesday,leaving seven people missing and two injured as explosions continued intoWednesday evening, officials said. Dramatic video footage captured by KCRA 3 News, a Sacramento broadcaster, showed smoke pouring from the building’s roof before a massive explosion created a fireball that seemed to engulf much of the warehouse, accompanied by an echoing boom. Hundreds of fireworks appeared to be going off and were sparkling within the smoke. Photos of the aftermath showed multiple destroyed buildings and a large area covered in gray ash.” ~~~
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.
Karen Garcia aptly labeledPaul Ryan and his plan Cheez Whiz, but I have another Whiz in mind -- the Wizard of Oz. Ryan has somehow managed to wrap into his persona the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion & the Tin Man.
The Scarecrow may be a stretch, for you have to assume that Ryan doesn't have a brain. If you take him at his word -- that he really believes he has devised a great plan that will be good for the country -- then he is the Scarecrow. As Krugman and other analysts have illustrated these past few days, Ryan's numbers, especially those based on Heritage Foundation projections, are unbelievable. Ryan isn't above contradicting himself, either -- accepting some CBO numbers while rejecting others. So if you believe Paul Ryan is an honorable man, you have to assume he doesn't have a brain -- like Frank Baum's Scarecrow.
The Cowardly Lion is an easy one. Even in this newspaper, columnists have been calling Ryan "courageous" and "brave." If Ryan were courageous, he would have told the truth when he rolled out his plan. Instead, he concentrated only on the spending cuts in his roll-out video with its charts and graphs. Had he even mentioned the big ole tax cut part -- which the cowardly Mr. Ryan did not -- he would have completely undermined his argument that these humungous cuts in essential services were necessitated by the deficit. You just can't say in the same breath you are going to cut programs for the neediest Americans and cut taxes (to below the middle-class tax rate) for the richest Americans without somebody catching on. Ryan roars, all right, but he is a Cowardly Lion. He doesn't dare tell the truth about his own program.
And the Tin Man? The Tin Man -- just like Paul Ryan -- lacked a heart. I don't know what has made Mr. Ryan so craven, but perhaps he thinks of each of us as just a number. (Probably shouldn't be the Social Security number -- deep in his heart, Ryan wants to gut Social Security, too, but he's saving that part of his plan for another day.) If Ryan thought of us as living, breathing people rather than as abstract numbers, he would have to think of the people under age 55 whose retirements he plans to decimate. He would have to think of the disabled people he will leave to fend for themselves. He would have to think of the poor, sick people who would not be able to get medical help until it was perhaps too late. He'd have to think of the deserving students who couldn't get low-interest financial aid for college. If Ryan had a heart, he couldn't sleep at night. He couldn't look at himself in the mirror. So I can only conclude he isn't sleeping, doesn't have a mirror -- or, more than likely, he doesn't have a heart. He's the Tin Man.
In Baum's story, it turns out the Scarecrow really had a brain, the Cowardly Lion really had courage all along & the Tin Man did indeed have a heart. But real life isn't as neat as fiction. In real life, we got Paul Ryan, a man devoid of those characteristics that define us as honorable women and men.
Wunderkind? I'm not sure Ryan even qualifies as humankind.
This is no longer about the deficit. It’s about bumper stickers. -- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on why Republicans won't fund the government
... You heard it first from Anonymous. An anonymous aide says he heard Speaker Boehner tell an anonymous congressperson there would be a deal by the end of the day. Are you feeling optimistic? ...
... Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post has reproduced the memo from OMB Director Jack Lew that went out to agency heads giving them guidance on how to shut down their agencies. ...
** "A Problem on the Borderline of Ethics and Accounting." Conservative columnist Michael Gerson of the Washington Post: Republicans don't want to hear about the dire consequences of their budget cuts. They should listen. "And it should give any pro-life member pause to support minuscule budget savings that risk the death of children from malaria."
So who are these budget negotiators who are working late into the night to try to avoid a government shutdown? Two guys you probably never heard of, writes Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: Boehner aide Barry Jackson & Reid aide David Krone. ...
I think the biggest thing the Republicans have done so effectively is to make it socially acceptable to be totally selfish and self-serving. -- Valerie Long Tweedie, commenting on a post by Karen Garcia
What We Really Need Is Higher Taxes. Business writer Charles Morris in Politico: "If one listens to the din from new conservative governors, from the Pauls, père et fils, and from most Republicans in Congress, America is groaning under a unique burden of heartless taxation. In truth, however, we live in one of the most lightly taxed advanced nations in the world.... Federal taxes, at about 15 percent of GDP, are the lowest since 1950....America’s low taxes, compared with any of its competitors, make it nonsense to claim that we need tax cuts for the sake of 'competitiveness.'”
Your Next Tweet May Be a Terror Alert! Eileen Sullivan of the AP: "Terror alerts from the government will soon have just two levels of warnings — elevated and imminent — and those will be relayed to the public only under certain circumstances. Color codes are out; Facebook and Twitter will sometimes be in, according to a Homeland Security draft obtained by The Associated Press."
A. O. Sulzberger of the New York Times: as states and cities compete with each other & try to lure businesses with tax breaks and other incentives, the businesses are the big winners.
Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post: "Several previously undisclosed U.S. diplomatic cables, provided by ... WikiLeaks, show that influential Yemenis and U.S. allies repeatedly warned U.S. diplomats of [President Ali Abdullah] Saleh’s growing weakness in 2009 and 2010. But despite those warnings, the Obama administration continued to embrace Saleh and became increasingly dependent on him to combat an al-Qaeda affiliate that was plotting attacks against the United States from the Arabian peninsula.
Right Wing World *
If You Don't Like the Numbers, Just Flip Them. Travis Waldron of Think Progress: on the Senate floor, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) says 90 percent of Planned Parenthood's service are providing abortions. Uh, it's less than 10 percent. ...
... According to Planned Parenthood, the percentage of their services related to abortion is three percent, tho PolitiFact explains why the three-percent figure is squishy. PolitiFact rates Kyl's remark false. I think a "Pants-on-Fire" designation would be more appropriate. ...
... Here's a pie chart of Planned Parenthood's patient services, viaEzra Klein:
Obama's Long-standing Plot to Shut Down the Government. Conspiracy theorist, teabagger and all-around loon "Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) suggested Thursday that President Obama might have begun planning a government shutdown last year with 'malicious' intent," Josiah Ryan of The Hill reports. And Lee has evidence! CW: Utah elected this guy because their previous ultra-conservative Senator, Bob Bennett, just wasn't crazy enough.
Medicare is Sacrosanct Expendable. Greg Sargent: "... the 60 Plus Association, a shadowy, well-funded right wing group that purports to represent seniors’ interests..., ran an ad during the health care debate last cycle that may have been the single most reprehensible piece of Medicare-related demagoguery of the health reform wars.... And yet, wouldn’t you know it, the 60 Plus Association has now endorsedPaul Ryan’s proposal to end Medicare as we know it."
Tanya Somanader of Think Progress: House Republicans leaders rushed to the mics to criticize President Obama for threatening to veto a bill "to fund the troops" right after they voted down two continuing resolutions to ensure U.S. military troops get paid on time even if the government shuts down. ...
... ALSO from Somanader. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Idaho legislators figure rape and incest are part of God's plan, so they're not making exceptions for them in their latest anti-abortion bill.
* Where facts never intrude.
Local News
Good-government group One Wisconsin Now, noting that Dubya-appointed U.S. Attorney J. B. Van Hollen spent millions investigating alleged Democratic voter fraud without finding any, must now -- as co-head of the Election Integrity Task Force -- investigate Waukesha County ClerkKathy Nickolaus who suspiciously "found" more than 14,000 ballots, which changed the outcome of the state supreme court election. ...
... She's Done This Before. Ian Millhiser of Think Progress sums up the dubious history of Waukesha, Wisconsin, County ClerkKathy Nickolaus, who accidentally found 14,315 "lost" votes, giving the state supreme court election to her former boss, conservative Republican David Prosser. ...
... Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Brian Deschane..., the 27-year-old son of a prominent supporter of Gov. Scott Walker, resigned from his state job following public criticism over his appointment to an $81,500-per-year job in the Walker administration. He informed officials at the state Department of Commerce, where he had been named administrator of environmental and regulatory matters in February.... Agency spokesman Tony Hozeny ... said he didn't believe Deschane gave a reason for leaving the government job.... Earlier this week, Walker demoted Deschane from the post after No Quarter highlighted how Deschane -- who has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions -- had landed his plum assignment. Walker's team gave Deschane the cushy job despite the governor's repeated statements that the state is broke and government workers are overpaid."
Travis Waldron of Think Progress: "Democrats and labor activists are ready to file another recall petition in Wisconsin, as they are expected to submit nearly 24,000 signatures against state Sen. Randy Hopper (R). Only about 15,000 signatures are needed to successfully trigger a recall. It will mark the second time in less than a week that a recall petition has been successfully filed against a Wisconsin Senate Republican...." Hopper, who is reportedly having an affair with a staffer, has moved outside the district. His wife says she'll vote for his opponent. ...
... David Dayan of Firedoglake: "It turns out that Hopper was estranged from his wife and living with a mistress in an apartment in Madison. That called into question residency requirements. And further investigation revealed that the mistress received a state job from Gov. Walker’s administration, despite a late application."
News Ledes
Budget Deal!
Washington Post: "Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have reached an agreement that would avert a federal government shutdown, yielding more spending cuts for Republicans while giving Democrats a key win on an issue related to abortion rights, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office announced Friday night." New York Times story here. Politico story here. ...
Al Jazeera: "Hundreds of army soldiers and Central Security officers stormed Cairo's Tahrir Square in the early morning hours on Saturday, firing shots into the air and beating protesters with cattle prods and batons to disperse a crowd of thousands, witnesses said."
Tens of thousands of people had flooded into the square in one of the largest demonstrations since former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11.
New York Times: "Dozens of communities across Syria erupted in protest on Friday in what activists said were by far the largest and bloodiest demonstrations against the iron rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Opposition leaders said the protesters numbered in the hundreds of thousands. While that number could not be independently confirmed, the size of the protests and their level of coordination suggest that Syria’s fragmented opposition movement is reaching new levels of coherence and organization."
New York Times: "More than 100,000 people converged on Yemen’s capital for a second Friday of dueling demonstrations over the fate of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who faces a rising tide of international sentiment in favor of his departure."
Milwaukee Journel Sentinel: "The state's top elections official said Friday he is sending state staff to examine results in Waukesha County, where thousands of previously uncounted votes were revealed Thursday in a bombshell that upended the tight Supreme Court race."
Washington Post: "The Justice Department approved a controversial deal by Google on Friday that would allow the firm to acquire a powerful travel search software firm, though with some strings attached."
Harry Reid on Title X. Republicans want to shut down the government because Democrats won't let them remove legislation that provides cancer-screening for women:
>
Washington Post: "Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Friday that negotiators came very close to a budget agreement overnight, but the deal broke up in a dispute over funding to a group that provides abortions. House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio), the lead Republican in the budget impasse that has transfixed Washington and brought the nation to the brink of a government shutdown, immediately disputed Reid’s account." Story has been updated to reflect that negotiators are still working. ...
... National JournalUpdate: "The likelihood of a war-time federal government shutdown — the first in American history — diminished dramatically on Friday night as all parties began reviewing, with the goal of approving, a broad array of cuts and a short-term bill to keep the government operating while the details are put into legislative language for full congressional action next week."
New York Times: "NATO said on Friday that it would not apologize for the killing of at least four people in what Libyan rebels said was “likely” a mistaken attack on them by allied warplanes in the east of the country — the second case of friendly-fire deaths in a week....At a news conference in Naples..., Rear Adm. Russell Harding, the deputy commander of the NATO operation, said the alliance had not been informed that the rebels were using tanks at the time the attack took place."
AP: "'... Suspected terrorists are still being held [by the U.S./NATO forces] under hazy circumstances with uncertain rights in secret, military-run jails across Afghanistan, where they can be interrogated for weeks without charge. The Pentagon has previously denied operating secret jails in Afghanistan, although human rights groups and former detainees have described the facilities."
Madison, Wisconsin State Journal: "The Walker administration went directly to the state Supreme Court on Thursday to get it to lift an order blocking implementation of a controversial measure that sharply curtails public employee bargaining rights, telling the high court that a Dane County judge unconstitutionally overstepped her authority."
A post that starts like this, especially when it appears in an MSM periodical, can only cheer you up: Michael Scherer in Time: "I have been to a lot of U.S. Senate hearings, and I can tell you without a doubt that the best U.S. Senate hearings are the ones where U.S. Senators talk about masturbation."
Amy Sullivan of Time: "The folks behind the National Day of Prayer observances have ... produced a slick movie-like trailer to promote the upcoming (May 5) event. As a roiling storm gathers over -- surprise! -- San Francisco and Washington, DC, an intrepid band of believers gathers somewhere in the Real America heartland to battle the forces of evil with prayer":
... This particular version of the video is better inasmuch at it relates back to Scherer's post above:
... CW: to my readers: I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.
The Wunderkind Wizard of Washington
Share Article 
