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
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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.

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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

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Tuesday
Apr262011

The Commentariat -- April 27

By popular request, I'm running an open thread comments page in Off Times Square today. Comments on Brooks yesterday were, well, lively.

A Bizarro Moment in American History. President Obama releases his long-form birth certificate:

... Okay, Birthers, here it is.

     ... Click on the certificate to see a slightly larger image. To examine the certificate in any size you want, go to this White House page. A pdf of the President's & his counsel's correspondence with the Hawaii Department of Health is here. ...

... Trump responds in Trump fashion: "Today I am very proud of myself...."

     ... "An Embarrassment to the Country." Adam Serwer in the Washington Post: "... those who fostered doubts about the president’s citizenship are unlikely to relent in the face of factual proof, because birtherism was never about the facts. For its most ardent proponents, it was and is about the inability to accept the legitimacy of a black man in the White House. Nothing about the decision to release the president’s birth certificate can change that." ...

     ... Ali Weinberg of NBC News has some more blogger reactions, many of which are predictably ridiculous. For instance, winger-blogger & CNN contributing correspondent (or whatever the hell CNN calls him) Erick Erickson now demands to see the President's college transcripts. Loons!

** New York Times Editors: "Less than a year before the 2012 presidential voting begins, Republican legislatures and governors across the country are rewriting voting laws to make it much harder for the young, the poor and African-Americans — groups that typically vote Democratic — to cast a ballot. Spreading fear of a nonexistent flood of voter fraud, they are demanding that citizens be required to show a government-issued identification before they are allowed to vote. Republicans have been pushing these changes for years, but now more than two-thirds of the states have adopted or are considering such laws. The Advancement Project, an advocacy group of civil rights lawyers, correctly describes the push as 'the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century.'”

Michael Shear of the New York Times offers five reasons Republicans are opting out of the 2012 presidential race. CW: my reason -- why work so hard only to be an also-ran?

David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "Ben Bernanke ... will hold a news conference" at 2:15 pm ET. In the spirit of democratic accountability, [the media] should ask hard questions — and we shouldn’t let him get away with the evasions and half-answers that members of Congress too often allow Fed chairmen during their appearances on Capitol Hill. One question more than any than other is crying out for an answer: Why has Mr. Bernanke decided to accept widespread unemployment for years on end, even though he believes he has the power to reduce it?" Washington Post story by Neil Irwin here. ...

... Annie Lowrey in Slate: "... the press conferences hardly imply the bank is headed for Oprah-type revelations. It remains an opaque, tealeaf-manufacturing institution. In fact, the press conference itself seems designed to not make news. It is mostly a symbolic gesture.... Expect non-answers, for the most part...." CW: ironically (or on purpose), at the moment Ben Bernanke poses as the Non-Oprah, President Obama & First Lady Michelle Obama wil be sitting on Oprah's couch. (see today's President's Calendar near the bottom of the right column). ...

     ... Paul Krugman Update: "Bernanke wimps out."

... "Private Gains, Public Losses." Economist Simon Johnson: "... the banks blew themselves up at great cost to the American people, with major negative global implications. Most of the public-debt increase in the US and elsewhere is not due to any kind of discretionary fiscal stimulus; it’s all about the loss of tax revenue that comes with a deep recession. (And the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthiest, unfunded Medicare prescription benefit, and debt-financed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have severely weakened the long-term fiscal outlook.) Finally, the cost of the crisis is millions of homes lost and lives damaged, some permanently."

Jennifer Steinhauer & Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "After 10 days of trying to sell constituents on their plan to overhaul Medicare, House Republicans in multiple districts appear to be increasingly on the defensive, facing worried and angry questions from voters and a barrage of new attacks from Democrats and their allies." ...

... A Preview of the Summer of 2011. Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico: "Record crowds of supporters and opponents flooded town hall meetings throughout southeastern Wisconsin on Tuesday to hear Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) defend his plan to trim government spending — including controversial changes to the Medicare program. In the district’s Democratic stronghold of Kenosha, at least 200 people were left outside once the 300-seat auditorium filled to capacity. The people in the crowd largely opposed the Ryan plan, holding signs such as 'RyanCare = Dying Bare,' 'Leave Medicare Alone' or simply, 'Save Medicare!'" Here's a brief video from the Kenosha meeting:

... Mark Schlueb of the Orlando Sentinel: "A town hall meeting held in Orlando by U.S. Rep. Dan Webster degenerated into bedlam Tuesday, with members of the crowd shouting down the freshman Republican congressman and yelling at one another.... Webster beat Democrat U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson last year. But the 8th Congressional District has a Democrat majority, and the party hopes to take the seat back in 2012." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. Here's video that is part of a related article by Scott Keyes of Think Progress:

     ... WFTV 9 Orlando has more video here.

... "We just feel like sitting ducks."Zaid Jilani of Think Progress: In New Hampshire, constituents are polite to Republican Rep. Charles Bass, but they're not favorably impressed with the Ryan/Republican budget. With video. ...

... Rachel Maddow has a great segment on citizen reaction to the Ryan/ Republican budget:

... Say What? David Nather of Politico: "Speaker John Boehner has given an interview in which he said Ryan’s plan was an idea 'worthy of consideration' and that he wasn’t 'wedded to it.' Democrats and liberal groups said Boehner’s comments to ABC News, in an interview posted Tuesday afternoon, make it sound like he’s backpedaling from the House vote two weeks ago in which all but four Republicans voted for Ryan’s budget plan [emphasis added] — including the Medicare overhaul that’s raising so many questions at their town hall meetings. Here's the interview:

      ... The whole interview is interesting. The part where Boehner backs off the Ryan budget he got his Caucus to vote for en masse comes about 2:45 min. in. ...

... AND as Brian Beutler of TPM points out, in the ABC News interview, Boehner "admitted what few members of his own party will admit...: that the GOP's Medicare privatization plan is similar in many key respects to the health care law they have spent the last two years demonizing." ...

... Economist Mark Thoma, in the Fiscal Times, explains why the voucher system, which the Ryan plan mandates to replace Medicare, would lead to rising, not falling, healthcare costs. ...

... Economist Dean Baker in TPM: "Twenty five million people are unemployed, underemployed or out of the workforce altogether..., millions of homeowners are underwater in their mortgage and facing the loss of their homes..., tens of millions of baby boomers are at the edge of retirement and have just lost their life savings," but all Washington is talking about is the deficit. And they're not serious about that; if they were, the Congressional Progressive Caucus's budget proposal "would be very much at the center of the debate." Thanks to Trish R. for the link.

Steve Benen: "It's important to appreciate the evolution of House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) rhetoric when it comes to raising the debt ceiling. This matters because, as we get closer to a crisis of Republicans' own making, Boehner is become more reckless and irresponsible, not less."

New York Times Editors: "If there was any lingering doubt, the latest data confirm that housing is still in a deep and broad recession. In the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price report for 20 large cities, house prices in February fell to a level last seen in April 2009 — their lowest point in the bust. In a Census Bureau report, new home sales in March remained near their lowest levels since records were first kept in 1963.... How much worse they will need to get before regulators, lawmakers and the Obama administration make an all-out effort to fix the problem."

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "The nation’s main firefighters’ union, long a strong supporter of Democratic candidates, announced on Tuesday that it would indefinitely suspend all contributions to federal candidates out of frustration with Congressional Democrats who, union officials say, have not fought harder against budget cuts and antiunion legislation. The union, the International Association of Fire Fighters, said it would focus its contributions and energies on state and local races because many legislatures have sought to curtail collective bargaining or otherwise weaken public-sector unions." CW: this is what happens when Democrats act like Republicans.

** CW: As Karen Garcia and I have been say for months, President Obama is a moderate Republican. Now Ezra Klein has taken note: "... the position that Obama and the Democrats have staked out is the very position that moderate Republicans staked out in the early ’90s — and often, well into the 2000s.... It appears that as Democrats moved to the right to pick up Republican votes, Republicans moved to the right to oppose Democratic proposals." Klein gives numerous examples of Obama policies that mirror those of Republican leaders.

Make Medicare Itself a "Death Panel." Ezra Klein: one way to substantially cut Medicare costs -- require every recipient to sign a living will mandating that doctors not prolong our lives by extraordinary (and very costly) measures. CW: I have a living will, my husband has a living will, but I don't think a single politician in today's political climate would make Medicare benefits contingent on living wills. ...

     ... Update: What Klein really says is that the Medicare-required living will could include any instructions. Klein is betting that most people would choose not to ask for extraordinary measures. It was Andrew Sullivan, whom Klein quotes, who suggested, "If everyone aged 40 or over simply made sure we appointed someone to be our power-of-attorney and instructed that person not to prolong our lives by extraordinary measures if we lost consciousness in a long, fatal illness or simply old age." Sullivan suggests the living will be completely voluntary. Thanks to reader Trish R. for catching my error.

If you read this article in the New York Times, by Trip Gabriel, you will be left with the impression that Jeb Bush is a marvelous advocate for education reform. Well, he isn't. Jeb Bush is a marvelous advocate for taking public money out of public schools & putting it into private education. He's into teaching to the test, too. And his very favorite cause of all is to break teachers unions, something he tried to do while Governor of Florida, & tried to do again after he left office. The article tells you that Bill Gates is among the Bush foundation donors. It doesn't mention that his biggest backers are for-profit schools. Jennie Smith of the Miami Examiner has some of the story here and here.

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "On Monday, hours after ... WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing the documents online, the Justice Department informed Guantánamo defense lawyers that the documents remained legally classified.... Because the lawyers have security clearances, they are obligated to treat the readily available files 'in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards' — handling them, for example, only in secure government facilities, said the notice from the department’s Court Security Office. It is only the latest absurdist challenge posed by the flood of classified material obtained by WikiLeaks over the past year...."

Roy Barnes of the AP: "Being against a president over his policies is one thing, but being petty over everything Obama says and does reflects the mean-spiritedness of many in the conservative movement."

Right Wing World *

I went to work at 11 years old. I became governor. It’s not a big deal. Work doesn’t hurt anybody. -- Gov. Paul LePage, Maine, on why child labor laws should be rolled back

Putting Kids to Work! Here's Maine Republican/Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage trying to justify his plan to gut child labor laws, a plan which is probably the most oppressive idea I've heard among all the oppressive ideas state Republicans have dreamed up this year:

     ... One problem with LePage's argument: it ain't true. Daily Kos: "He describes the bill affecting 14 and 15 year olds, when in fact it lowers wages for people up to 20 years old and eliminates the limit on hours a 16 year old can work on a school day."

(... Missed this one from April 23: Tom Bell of Maine Today (okay, Maine a Few Days Ago) "A federal judge ruled Friday that Gov. Paul LePage did not violate the free speech clause of the First Amendment when he ordered a mural removed from the headquarters of the Maine Department of Labor.")

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Fatah and Hamas, the rival Palestinian movements, announced an agreement in principle on Wednesday to end a years-long internal Palestinian schism." Haaretz story here.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will hold a press conference at 2:15 pm ET. Related stories in today's Commentariat. Post-presser New York Times story: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, defended his management of the nation’s economy on Wednesday, arguing that the central bank was doing all it could to increase employment without unduly risking higher inflation." Update: what Bernanke said, via Reuters:

NBC News: "Eight American troops and a U.S. contractor died Wednesday after an Afghan military pilot opened fire during a meeting at Kabul airport — the deadliest episode to date of an Afghan turning against his coalition partners, officials said. The Afghan officer, who was a veteran military pilot, fired on the Americans after an argument, the Afghan Defense Ministry said."

In a letter to Congressional leaders yesterday, President Obama wrote, "I ... urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil." Here's the Washington Post's story on the President's letter.

National Journal: "Vermont is on the fast track to becoming the first state with universal health care with the passage of a single-payer health care bill on Tuesday. The Vermont Senate approved the bill 21-9 to offer government-funded health insurance to all state residents. The bill will now go to a conference committee, where the House and Senate will hash out the differences in the bill before sending it to Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat. Shumlin will have to obtain approval from the Obama administration before he could begin to implement the single-payer system, which would begin in 2013."

Washington Post: "President Obama is expected to announce long-anticipated changes in his national security team this week, including a new ambassador to Afghanistan.... The officials said that Ryan C. Crocker, a five-time ambassador who retired in 2009 after wartime service in Iraq, is likely to be named to take over the U.S. Embassy in Kabul...." AP story here.

     Politico Update: "... President Barack Obama has chosen a consummate Washington insider, CIA director Leon Panetta, to guide the Pentagon through what promises to be a turbulent period of transition and given Panetta’s old job to Gen. David Petraeus.... Talking to reporters this morning, White House press secretary Jay Carney would not discuss the appointments, which were confirmed by a source familiar with the decision, and said the White House will have be no personnel announcements until Thursday." Update: New York times story here.

AP: "The Syrian army sent more tanks and reinforcements into Daraa on Wednesday as part of a widening crackdown against opponents of President Bashar Assad's authoritarian regime, and gunfire and sporadic explosions were heard in the tense southern city.... Security forces conducted sweeping arrests and raids elsewhere in the country, witnesses said."

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