REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Cash-Stuffed Clown Car

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

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.

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To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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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.

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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.”

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Wednesday

Jan312018

The Cash-Stuffed Clown Car

By Safari

I recommend perusing the totality of just today's linked articles and take it all in as a whole, to get a real idea of the SOTU: where we are and where we're going one year in of the GOP's pursuit of their version of a "more perfect union".

None of these swamp episodes or ratfucking machinations are done by accident: Maybe some go in worse directions than planned, but few if any are held accountable, most if not all are boosted and abetted by a network of corrupt enablers, all leeches sucking power and prestige from the federal government vessel that they all collectively demean to their deplorable base, while frantically stepping on and over each other to board the Mother Ship, plain giddy from their elevated perches.

What I see from below is a complete abdication and perversion of governance, in a "post-truth" world. The modern GOP has radicalized to such an extent that not only has it renounced from any bipartisan measures, they've actively promoted legislation and/or executive orders to intentionally target Democratic-leaning constituents (raising taxes, offshore oil drilling, "sanctuary cities", sabotaging the census preparations, etc.). The GOP is so duty-bound to their fever swamps (see Rick Wilson's piece linked today for a primer) that they've completely lost their ability to hold a national vision of policy-making, moving us forward together as a nation.

Whether for gerrymandering, ideological purity, utter ignorance, spinelessness.... Holding all the levers, they can't govern the nation. This is now established fact. They're reduced to pandering to their pockets of power, and everyone else is written off and overlooked, as worthy and useful as that fictitious Cadillac-cruising welfare queen.

It's not Trump, it's the Republican Party, all aboard the cash-stuffed clown car canvassing any way forward.

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Thanks for this brilliant analysis, Safari -- I guess. As I have said previously, I have been in a "mood" regarding our current political environment. So naturally I have turned to youtube to distract myself. I started watching "Cities at War" and watched Berlin fall to the Russians. What was most interesting, however, was not the "fire and fury" of the deaths of about a million people. It was Goebbels, who was there propagandizing to the very end. There are long shots of the enraptured emaciated berliners, listening to the propaganda minister, and jumping up excitedly to shout their enthusiasm for the upcoming battle to the death.
THIS is what I noticed about the ecstatic shouts and jumps by the republicans: sie sint auch berliners. This can't be just about the money. There's too much glassy eyed excitement. My thought had been something like, "it isn't just the money - Trump's got something on every republican." But maybe, after all that Fox, they've given themselves away to the propaganda. I guess it could happen to anybody.

January 31, 2018 |

Victoria

There are more GOP horror stories in a day than there are Trump lies and "misleading statements." And Trump is up to 5.something/day, on average, lies in public. No doubt the SOTU speech upped the average.

And of course there are so many horror stories that most don't make the press, either because the media -- so we -- don't find out about them, or because there's only so much we & the press can absorb.

In today's thread, PD Pepe pointed to something I didn't see make the media cut. To avoid watching the Trumpathon, PD tuned into a re-run of a Senate hearing with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on the hot seat:

"Tammy Duckworth wanted a complete run-down of Pruitt's four day trip to Morocco.... She asked him why he needed to go on that trip (he had said it was to discuss oil and energy issues). 'Oil and energy are not in your purview, that falls to Energy itself, so I'd like an explanation as to why this trip was necessary.' He replied––'I'll get back to you on that.' She couldn't resist saying––'I hope you had a fun time in that shit-hole country.' This put a sour puss on Mr. Climate Change denier."

"I'll get back to you on that"??? Wait a minute. Pruitt (and entourage, one presumes) took a four-day official trip to Morocco, on the pretext of meeting about a topic that falls into Rick Perry's bailiwick, & he doesn't know why? Was it to go to the bazaar? Was it to take a camel ride? Or maybe it was more official -- like he needed to find out if the Sahara was hot in winter. He'll get back to us Duckworth (if she presses) after his staff cooks up a flimsy excuse.

We're dancing as fast as we can, but it's not fast enough.

January 31, 2018 |

Marie Burns

Safari,

There's a scene in the gangster movie "Goodfellas" in which a restaurateur is forced to go to the mob for help with his business. The gangsters buy in and proceed to bleed the guy dry. Then, when there's nothing left to steal, they burn the place down to collect the insurance money.

This is the GOP. They don't give a shit about running the business but they do care about what they can make off with. They don't really care about the future of this guy they're "helping". They use him for their own ends.

Republicans don't give a shit about the government or the country or rule of law or good behavior in public or being kind to small animals. They care about their own well being, their own power and their access to money. That's it. They don't worry about governing, and just a casual glance at their cavalier approach to letting an idiot run the show demonstrates that they don't really care about the future of the country either.

They're gangsters. Criminals in $2,000 suits who wave the flag in one hand and pick your pocket with the other.

You want something from them? "Fuck you. Pay me."

Most of them know that Trump is a dangerous moron who has no business running a country, but they don't care. They're getting what they want and if the joint ends up burned to the ground, so what? And like the mob, anyone who stands in their way, they send their hit men and thugs after them. And don't kid yourself, these people are just as lethal as actual hit men. Destroying the ACA and Medicaid kills Americans.

But so what?

January 31, 2018 |

Akhilleus

It's no joke: the republicans really are a slow moving train wreck: Amtrak is reporting that the train carrying the republicans on their way to a retreat has hit a dumptruck. One fatality, 2 injured. No republican casualties.

January 31, 2018 |

Victoria

I think part of the problem is that so many people let their personal relationships shape how they report on these people. I saw Michael Hayden talking the other day about the Nunes memo. He said that he'd checked the members of the committee and knew some of them and assumed they'd do the right thing. The other day I saw Don Lemon declare Nikki Haley "one of the most respected women in the world" because she was nice to him when they met. Many reporters or panelists on these show go out of their way to say how much they like all these trump apologists when they are off camera. Just because Republicans can act like a regular people in private doesn't excuse all they do and say in public.

January 31, 2018 |

RAS

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