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
Tuesday
Dec272011

The Commentariat -- December 28

My column in today's New York Times eXaminer is on Ross Douthat and the Seven Dwarfs. Douthat found something to like in all seven GOP presidential candidates. As you might suspect, I didn't. The NYTX front page is here.

Toddlers Can Be Heroes, Too. Many thanks to Lane Moore of Jezebel for the video & to Akhilleus (also a hero) for sending the link to the video of Riley, the Littlest Feminist:

** Stephen Marche of Esquire: "... a class system has arrived in America — a recent study of the thirty-four countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only Italy and Great Britain have less social mobility.... In the United States, the emerging aristocracy remains staunchly convinced that it is not an aristocracy, that it's the result of hard work and talent. The permanent working poor refuse to accept that their poverty is permanent. The class system is clandestine.... The majority of new college grads in the United States today are either unemployed or working jobs that don't require a degree. Roughly 85 percent of them moved back home in 2011, where they sit on an average debt of $27,200. The youth unemployment rate in general is 18.1 percent.... The Tea Partiers blame the government. The Occupiers blame the financial industry. Both are really mourning the arrival of a new social order, one not defined by opportunity but by preexisting structures of wealth." ...

... ** "Income Inequality Is a Symptom, Not the Disease." Charles Pierce on how Bill Clinton made you poor and the New York Times and University of Chicago say it isn't so.

Batocchio, the Vagabond Scholar, links the best blogger posts of the year, chosen by the bloggers themselves. I've read several, & they are indeed quite fine -- and many are funny.

Ron Klain, a former Obama administration official, writing in Bloomberg News, credits Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner & then-economic counsellor Gene Sperling with setting up the payroll tax extension face-off between the President & the Republican Tea Partiers in Congress.

Nate Silver explains why he "concurs with the conventional wisdom that Republicans are favorites to win control of the Senate next year." CW: I keep thinking, "Surely voters will come to their senses." But I trust Silver's stats a lot more than I trust my own wishful thinking.

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration’s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of al-Qaeda’s leadership. But ... in the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents. Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals."

Dana Milbank reveals "the cracks in his crystal ball." ...

... Steve Benen fesses up to some of his predictions gone awry.

Ben Nelson, Cornhusker Cowpie. Steve Benen: "Democratic leaders from the White House and Capitol Hill pleaded with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), asking him to run for re-election for one main reason: the party is desperate to keep its Senate majority and it has no one else to run in Nebraska. As is often the case, Nelson is letting his party down.... Nelson waited until after Democratic and allied groups had invested [more than $1MM] ... to strengthen his standing in Nebraska, and then decided to retire.... Nelson has voted with the right many times over the last couple of years — even on filibusters — offering Republicans cover on a wide range of issues. When pressed, Nelson would often tell his Democratic allies the votes were necessary to bolster his re-election bid."

Lee Spears of Bloomberg News: "With Facebook considering the largest Internet IPO on record and regulatory filings showing that at least 14 other Web-related companies are planning sales, the industry may raise $11 billion next year.... That would be the most since $18.5 billion of IPOs in 1999, just before the dot-com bubble burst."

Right Wing World

Dan Balz & Amy Gardner of the Washington Post: "The Republican presidential candidates opened an intensive week of campaigning in wide-open Iowa Tuesday with the embattled Newt Gingrich casting rival Mitt Romney as an establishment defender of big government and accusing Romney’s supporters of lying about his record." ...

... AND if you'd like to know what nasty things the GOP candidates are saying about each other in Iowa, Jeff Zeleny & Michael Shear of the New York Times provide a sampling. ...

... Oh, Here's a Sample. Alex Moe of NBC News: "The Strong America Now Super PAC is sending direct mail pieces to Iowans this week in support of Newt Gingrich while attacking Mitt Romney – something the Gingrich campaign has vowed not to tolerate. 'Romney is the second most dangerous man in America and will perpetuate Obama's slide into financial crisis,' one of at least two mailers from the Super PAC floating around the state reads." ...

... AND Here's Another. Ron Paul is "The One." The other guys are "serial hypocrites" and "flip-floppers":

Steve Benen sums up why Mitt Romney -- unlike every presidential candidate since Watergate -- won't release his tax returns:

1. Mitt Romney is worth $250 million.
2. He got rich by laying off American workers.
3. He pays a lower tax rate than you and the rest of the middle class.
4. He wants to be president so he can keep it this way.

America must decide who to trust: Al Gore’s Texas cheerleader, or the one who stood with Reagan. -- Ron Paul campaign ad

More Implicit Lies from Ron Paul. Josh Hicks of the Washington Post: "We pulled this comment [above] from an ad that accuses Rick Perry of trying to 'undo the Reagan Revolution' when he backed Al Gore for president in 1988.... Paul has little room to criticize politicians for changing their party affiliations. He campaigned for president as a Libertarian in 1988, after running for office seven times as a Republican and serving as a GOP member of the U.S. House for more than six years at that point. So why didn’t he vie for the Republican nomination? Because he’d renounced the party — along with Reagan’s presidential policies — a few years earlier, resigning from the GOP and forgoing a bid for reelection to Congress."

Charles Pierce: South Carolina's Gov. Nikki Haley is "outraged" that U.S. AG Eric Holder has gone all lawyery on her state & is enforcing the Voting Rights Act. Pierce suggests she move to Oshkosh, by gosh.

Jason Easley at Politicus USA: All those nice Christians over at Fox "News" are "outraged" that the Obama family has taken a Christmas vacation which will cost taxpayers $4MM, including "the cost of everything from transportation to accommodations for the First Family, the White House staff, and the White House press corps." But somehow they weren't outraged with President Dubya spent much, much more on his many trips to his Crawford ranch. "He was the most expensive vacation president in US history." Thanks to Kate M. for the link.

Here's an update on Worst Christmas Songs Ever. This is an actual campaign video, which should disabuse you of the notion there could ever be a President Newt:

     ... Update: Ha ha ha. "This video has been removed by the user" -- the "user" of course being the Newt. Luckily, somebody else captured it (Newt can probably take this down, too, so watch it while it lasts, but definitely before lunch -- and not while you're drinking a beverage to preclude the chance of a spit-take that might zap your keyboard):

News Ledes

New York Times: "Hosni Mubarak, the former president of Egypt ousted in the revolution last February, was wheeled back into a courtroom [in Cairo] on a hospital gurney on Wednesday to resume his trial amid reports from both supporters and opponents that the proceedings appeared to be going in his favor."

New York Times: "Italy’s short-term borrowing costs were halved Wednesday at an auction of government bills, easing the immediate pressure on the country’s economy."

Reuters: "Closing off the Gulf to oil tankers will be 'easier than drinking a glass of water' for Iran if the Islamic state deems it necessary, state television reported on Wednesday, ratcheting up fears over the world's most important oil chokepoint."

New York Times: Sergei Filippov, a high-ranking member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party "disrupt[ed] scheduled debates [at a meeting of a regional legislature] on forest fire prevention and a transportation tax, to make an appeal to his fellow party members: acknowledge and repair the fraud that many people here believe United Russia committed in recent parliamentary elections." Putin has dismissed criticisms of the elections.

Comments Off