The Ledes

Monday, June 30, 2025

It's summer in our hemisphere, and people across Guns America have nothing to do but shoot other people.

New York Times: “A gunman deliberately started a wildfire in a rugged mountain area of Idaho and then shot at the firefighters who responded, killing two and injuring another on Sunday afternoon in what the local sheriff described as a 'total ambush.' Law enforcement officers exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned, and officials later found the body of the male suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby, Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at a news conference on Sunday night. The authorities said they believed the suspect had acted alone but did not release any information about his identity or motives.” A KHQ-TV (Spokane) report is here.

New York Times: “The New York City police were investigating a shooting in Manhattan on Sunday night that left two people injured steps from the Stonewall Inn, an icon of the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. The shooting occurred outside a nearby building in Greenwich Village at 10:15 p.m., Sgt. Matthew Forsythe of the New York Police Department said. The New York City Pride March had been held in Manhattan earlier on Sunday, and Mayor Eric Adams said on social media that the shooting happened as Pride celebrations were ending. One victim who was shot in the head was in critical condition on Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said. A second victim was in stable condition after being shot in the leg, she said. No suspect had been identified. The police said it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the Pride march.”

New York Times: “A dangerous heat wave is gripping large swaths of Europe, driving temperatures far above seasonal norms and prompting widespread health and fire alerts. The extreme heat is forecast to persist into next week, with minimal relief expected overnight. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are among the nations experiencing the most severe conditions, as meteorologists warn that Europe can expect more and hotter heat waves in the future because of climate change.”

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Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

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

Friday
Jul052013

The Commentariat -- July 6, 2013

** Joe Stiglitz, in the Guardian: "... it now seems clear that the negotiations to create a free trade area between the US and Europe, and another between the US and much of the Pacific (except for China), are not about establishing a true free trade system. Instead, the goal is a managed trade regime – managed, that is, to serve the special interests that have long dominated trade policy in the west... We have a managed trade regime that puts corporate interests first, and a process of negotiations that is undemocratic and non-transparent. The likelihood that what emerges from the coming talks will serve ordinary Americans' interests is low. The outlook for ordinary citizens in other countries is even bleaker."

Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "Yes, the sequester is affecting the job market." Rampell explains, in part, how. ...

... ** Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge: "In June, the household survey reported that part-time jobs soared by 360,000 to 28,059,000 - an all time record high. Full time jobs? Down 240,000.  And looking back at the entire year, so far in 2013, just 130K Full-Time Jobs have been added, offset by a whopping 557K Part-Time jobs. And there is your jobs "quality" leading to today's market euphoria (if only for now)." (Emphasis original.) CW: why am I reading these figures for the first time? -- and not in the MSM? P.S. I don't get Durden's headline; I don't see what this has to do with Obamacare, unless means "Obama doesn't care." ...

     ... Update. Credit Annie Lowrey of the New York Times for (a) covering the rise in part-time jobs, & (b) clearing up Durden's ObamaCare dig: "The June jobs report saw a surge in part-time workers, and the health care law that starts coming into full effect next year might be in part responsible.... The Affordable Care Act gives employers an incentive to hire part-time workers rather than full-time workers, as they might be compelled to offer health coverage to the latter, but not the former. That’s why a number of big employers have started offering more temporary or part-time positions." The delay of the employer mandate may slow the shift from full- to part-time. ...

     ... CW: if we had Medicare-for-All or even a public option, corporations at least would have to come up with some other excuse to screw their workers. ...

... CW: maybe Obama doesn't care. In a White House blogpost, Alan Krueger, chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, is pretty happy about the great jobs numbers. No mention of part-time v. full-time. I wrote to Alan about that. I'm sure I'll be hearing back any day now.

Steve Coll of the New Yorker: "America’s post-September 11th national-security state has become so well financed, so divided into secret compartments, so technically capable, so self-perpetuating, and so captured by profit-seeking contractors bidding on the next big idea about big-data mining that intelligence leaders seem to have lost their facility to think independently. Who is deciding what spying projects matter most and why?" ...

... Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered asylum to Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower who is believed to have spent the past two weeks at a Moscow airport evading US attempts to extradite him. The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his Nicaraguan counterpart, Daneil Ortega, made the asylum offers on Friday, shortly after they and other Latin American leaders met to denounce the diversion of a plane carrying the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, due to suspicions that Snowden might have been on board." ...

... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "... Edward J. Snowden has applied for political asylum in six additional countries, according to his associates at WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy organization. But the names of those six countries are being kept, um, secret, the group said on Friday." CW: yes, a New York Times reporter wrote "um" in a straight news report.

A Coup by Any Other Name. Peter Baker of the New York Times: When is a coup not a coup? Hmm, apparently when the U.S. State Department would rather not say. ...

... Peter Hart of FAIR: OR, maybe when the New York Times would rather not say. "... it's interesting to note the similarity between the U.S. government's public position on this question and the Newspaper of Record." ...

... Ed Kilgore has an excellent takedown of David Brooks' "reasoning" on the Egyptian coup. Carrying Brooks' theory to its logical conclusion, Brooks seems to favor a coup against the Tea Party. CW: well, okay, Brooksie! Where do I sign up? ...

... Marty Kaplan, in the Huffington Post, goes there: "Writing about Middle Eastern fanatics, Brooks says 'Islamists ... lack the mental equipment to govern.' Does he really not get that this diagnosis nicely fits the Tea Partiers, enabled by simpering colleagues fearful of right-wing primary challenges, who have ground our own government to a halt?" ...

... Another good argument by Max Read of Gawker. After illustrating why Brooks doesn't make sense -- at least if you care about democracy -- Read adds, "Shall we note here, the day after Independence Day, that it took the United States of America 13 years after rejecting monarchy to settle on a stable constitutional form of government?" ...

... David Sirota of Salon says what has to be said about Brooks: he has written, and the Times has published a column that makes an "argument that reads like a[n] unhinged manifesto from a 19th century eugenicist.... Once you get into deriding entire populations as intrinsically lacking the cognitive capacity for self-governance, you’ve jumped into the ugliest, most discredited and vile kind of invective of all — the kind of bigotry that insinuates whole populations are genetically, culturally or otherwise inherently deficient."

The Re-emergence of Dubya? Dianne Solis of the Dallas Morning News: "George W. Bush ... will deliver opening remarks at an citizenship ceremony and immigration forum at the Dallas presidential center bearing his name, where it’s expected he will talk about how immigration reform will be good for America.... It’s unclear whether the ex-president will stick to generalities during his remarks at the citizenship ceremony, or elevate the conversation with details about the super-sized immigration bill now being debated in Congress." ...

... Gail Collins: "Illegal immigration across the Mexican border is ... hardly the worst threat we’ve got out there. Last month, Rolling Stone had a long and terrifying article about how rising sea levels could begin to overwhelm Miami within the next couple of decades. Next time you see Senator Rubio [R-Fla.], be sure to ask him about this. If we can afford to pay border agents to catch three people a year [which is about the average per agent now], shouldn’t we at least be looking at getting the Miami nuclear reactors onto higher ground?" ...

... CW: in case you can't wait to find out what a discharge petition is (Collins teases it at the end of her column), Max Ehrenfreund of the Washington Post explains: "The discharge petition allows an absolute majority of the House of Representatives (218 lawmakers) to force a floor vote on a bill, even if the leadership, who usually controls what legislation makes it to the floor, is opposed. The opposition party can, in theory, use the technique to hijack the legislative agenda on an issue that divides the majority." Sounds like a plan, but it's only happened twice since 1986.

New York Times Editors: "The three Republicans on the [Federal Elections] Commission appear ready to take advantage of a temporary vacancy on the three-member Democratic side to push through 3-to-2 votes for a wholesale retreat from existing regulations.... The proposals are being pushed by Donald McGahn, the Republican vice chairman of the commission who has engineered repeated 3-to-3 standoff votes to stymie approval of staff recommendations for penalties against campaigners found in violation of the law. Mr. McGahn, a former ethics adviser to Tom Delay...." CW: Oh, let's just stop there.

Francis v. the Old Beanies Club. Hans-Jürgen Schlamp of Der Spiegel: "It appears Pope Francis truly wants to change the Catholic Church. He's reforming the Vatican Bank first, but he's also circumventing the old guard wherever he can. The establishment is up in arms."

Reader Comments (5)

You say coup, I say phew! Here's an exchange between the Egyptian Ambassador yesterday on PBS News Hour:

MARGARET WARNER: Nancy Youssef, thank you so much. We just lost our connection with you, but thank you for being with us.

So, Mr. Ambassador, let's go back to what happened. Was this a coup, as, in fact, the Muslim Brotherhood says it was?

MOHAMED TAWFIK: Absolutely not.

This was a situation in which the vast majority of Egyptians took to the streets; 22 million petitions were filled in. And all they asked for was early elections. They didn't ask for the military to take over. They asked for early elections.

Now, President Morsi and his supporters, what they did is they mobilized. They stirred people's feelings up. And basically they encouraged their supporters to face the other demonstrators. So there was no option for the military and for the rest of Egyptian society but to intervene, before terrible clashes and escalation would run out of control.

July 6, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

Re the ACA and temp jobs:

It's handy for the Right to blame the ACA for the rise in temp, part-time and seasonal employment, but while the ACA's requirement that the employer provide health insurance or pay a small fine may be a small tributary of a very large river, the temp trend arose from other sources years ago.

See: http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/05/the-rise-of-the-permanentl

among many others.

It's really very simple: an oversupply of non-unionized workers in the global economy makes for lower wages and non-existent benefits, and corporate profits in turn skyrocket. U.S. workers' portion of the economic pie is the lowest it has been since the 1930's. Workers are at the mercy of employers, not the ACA.

If the ACA's teeth were strong enough to cause all the economic mayhem for which the Right likes to blame it, retrospectively at that, it would be a hell of a law. Unfortunately, it's not.

July 6, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

".....that say Obama––and it's always Obama, not Kerry or anyone else––should be intervening more in Syria, China, Africa, Israel, Egypt, Turkey ... as though the US is the big papa of the world". (PD Pepe from 7/5)

Please see every stinking column that Maureen Dowd writes for explanation of patriarchal neurosis.

July 6, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterDiane

Looks as if Snowden has multiple counries willing to grant him asylum. So, Eddie where ya goin'? Venezuela? Nicaraugua? Bolivia?

In my opinion, the Patriot Act must be destroyed.

July 6, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterBarbarossa

To those who want Washington to intervene in Syria or Egypt, I say tell Washington that's where Waldo is hiding.

July 6, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer
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