The Ledes

Thursday, July 3, 2025

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 into Wednesday 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.” ~~~

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
The Ledes

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

New York Times: “The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.” ~~~

     ~~~ For another sort of obituary, see Akhilleus' commentary near the end of yesterday's thread.

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.

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.

INAUGURATION 2029

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.

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

Page Links
Wednesday
Nov232011

Thanksgiving Day

"Guernica," U.C. Davis Edition.... CW: I debated about posting this link, but the "reviewers" make some good points. For several reasons, this appears to be is a genuine amazon.com page, but I can't be sure. If it is the real deal, by the time you get to it, the page may have changed, causing you to wonder why I posted the link. ...

... Also, the reader who sent me the link said she found it on Brilliant at Breakfast. Jill of BoB has more on the science of pepper spray. plus video of Rachel Maddow's segment on the same.

President Obama's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here.

CW: When he was an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama had a reputation as a pretty good poker player. It occurred to me a long while back that maybe he knew how to play a lousy hand when he let John Boehner back out of the debt ceiling deal. Ezra Klein, who's making a different point, also makes mine: "Imagine if the Democrats offered Republicans a deficit deal that had more than $3 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts, assigned most of those spending cuts to the Pentagon, and didn't take a dime from Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare beneficiaries. Republicans would laugh at them. But without quite realizing it, that's the deal Republicans have now offered to the Democrats." ...

... Matt Yglesias of Slate agrees with Klein's analysis: "It's possible that by refusing to agree to a relatively modest tax increase relative to current policy (i.e., relative to full extension of the Bush tax cuts) the congressional Republicans have locked into place a much more left-wing deal in which the majority of deficit reduction is done by tax hikes and a majority of spending cuts come on the national security side.... if Obama gets re-elected, [the Republicans will] have fumbled the policy substance in a catastrophic way and put in place a budget framework that's much more left-wing than the one Obama was begging them to agree to a few months ago." CW: this is why the 2012 election is so important, as Yglesias says.

The U.S. Financial Crisis, Explained in Irish (via Charles Pierce):

Mark Viera of the New York Times: "Local judges have recused themselves from handling the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse case, and lawyers for two Penn State officials who were indicted for perjury have begun to raise questions about the background of the prosecution’s chief witness, himself a Penn State assistant coach." There's a related AP story here. The Times also has an in-depth report on incidents involving Victim 1.

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Less than a week before U.N. negotiators convene in South Africa for a new round of talks aimed at forging a global climate pact, a hacker has released an apparent second round of e-mails from the University of East Anglia in Britain that seek to portray climate scientists in a negative light. ...

     ... Bryan Walsh of Time: "They've apparently got bupkis."

Nontheists. Kimberly Winston in the Washington Post: "... scores of ... atheists, young and old, have made ... videos for a new campaign designed to build community and support among nontheists around the world. Dubbed 'We Are Atheism,' the campaign was launched this fall by three students at the University of Kansas." ...

... Supertheists. Elizabeth Tenety in the Washington Post: this weekend, the Roman Catholic Church will begin using a new English translation of the liturgy. The article includes the Church's guide for the changes to the people's parts in the liturgy.

On the front page of the New York Times is a six-part video by food writer Melissa Clark with helpful advice on how to cook a turkey. For classic hints on fowl preparation, we turn to this old chestnut from "Julia Child":

... AND here's hoping your Thanksgiving goes better than Loudon Wainwright III's. "Thanksgiving" begins 3 minutes in. Another classic (P.S. If all does not go well, consider your family "normal"):


Right Wing World

"In His Own Words." Mitt Romney Endorses Obama in 2012. From Buzzfeed. For the backstory, see yesterday's Right Wing World. Plus, more from CBS News on Romney's "intentionally" deceitful ad. You can see the PolitiFact rating to the left.

Marc Ambinder of the National Journal: "During [Tuesday] night's debate, Newt Gingrich moved in a direction that is decidedly orthogonal to the party's conservative base on immigration. Whether Newt stays in his new position is to-be-determined. But if he does, it might produce from the probable Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, the type of reaction that President Obama's campaign advisers would relish." The post includes the text of the Gingrich-Romney exchange. And here's a DNC video on topic:

From last Thursday, Jon Stewart sums of the Republican race for president:

... AND Steve Stromberg of the Washington Post sums up Tuesday night's debate: "Romney and Gingrich won. Romney because he is still the putative frontrunner and the likely nominee, and he did not mess up tonight. Gingrich because he held his own in the spotlight, unlike some of the previous anti-Romneys in this primary campaign. Otherwise, Perry still looked tired, Bachmann still sounded kooky, Huntsman was still too moderate, Ron Paul was still Ron Paul, and Cain still gave no sense he belonged on stage, even among this cast of characters.

If you want to know how bad guys look when they dress up in suits to have their portraits made, the photo that accompanies Ezra Klein's post (linked above) answers that burning question:

The GOP Congressional leadership, in April. Bloomberg photo.

News Ledes

AP: "Los Angeles and San Francisco are seeking long-term solutions to the entrenched encampments by anti-Wall Street protesters, hoping to end the drain on resources and the frayed nerves among police and politicians. Officials in both cities have considered providing protesters with indoor space that would allow the movement to carry out its work in more sanitary, less public facilities." ...

     ... Oops! Missed this one: Yahoo! News: "More than a dozen news organizations are demanding a meeting with the NYPD after as many as 10 journalists were arrested--and dozens of others harassed -- while trying to cover last week's raid on Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park. The New York Times is helping coordinate the news organizations' complaints with the NYPD."

New York Times: "Two Egyptian generals offered an unusual apology on Thursday for the killings of protesters in Tahrir Square, the iconic landmark of the country’s revolution, as violence around the huge plaza eased decisively after five days of intense clashes between security forces and protesters demanding an end to military rule. On what had been the front line of the confrontation, army troops in black helmets and visors replaced the police — reviled by many protesters...." Al Jazeera story here, with video. ...

     ... AP Update: "Egypt's military rulers said Thursday that parliamentary elections starting next week will he held on schedule despite spreading unrest. The military also rejected protesters' demands that it im mediately step down...."

Reuters: "France pressed Germany on Thursday to let the European Central Bank act decisively to halt a stampede out of euro zone government bond markets that has raised doubts about the survival of the single currency. French President Nicolas Sarkozy met German Chancellor Angela Merkel and new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti in Strasbourg, seeking a trade-off between EU treaty change to impose greater fiscal discipline on euro zone states, demanded by Germany, and more emergency help from the central bank."

It isn't Thanksgiving in the country from which the pilgrims fled, so the Leveson inquiry into tabloid hacking goes on. The Guardian's liveblog is here, and it has star power.

Reuters: "Prospects for the $39 billion sale of Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile USA unit to AT&T darkened after the U.S. telecoms giant said it would take a $4 billion charge in case of failure and the pair gave up on one avenue of regulatory approval. The companies have not given up hope of sealing the deal but analysts said it now looks less likely than ever."

Comments Off