The Ledes

Thursday, July 3, 2025

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
Sunday
May122013

The Commentariat -- May 12, 2013

See also commentary from MAG & safari in yesterday's Commentariat that got spammed & is now despamified.

Obama 2.Zero. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Just days after Republicans used Senate rules to block two nominees from moving to the next step in the confirmation process despite the fact that both have the support of a majority of senators, Democrats are planning to force committee votes without Republican consent. If Democrats do push the nominees through to the full Senate, they would almost certainly set off a Republican filibuster, which would jeopardize the confirmations and, for now, leave vacancies at the top of two federal agencies."

** What Republicans Are Doing While We're Not Looking. Teresa Tritch of the New York Times: "There are two good things to say about the Working Families Flexibility Act, which passed the House this week with 220 Republican and three Democratic votes. One, the bill is bound to go nowhere in the Senate and, two, even if it did advance, the White House has threatened to veto it. The bill, in brief, is worse than meritless; it is a fraud.... The bill would amend long-standing labor law by allowing private-sector employers to offer compensatory time off in lieu of time-and-a-half pay for overtime.... There is nothing to stop an employer from discriminating against those who prefer payment by cutting back on their overtime hours. Nor would employers face any real deterrent against forcing unpaid overtime on workers who fear losing their jobs if they object. The recourse for coerced workers would be to sue, a far-fetched and unaffordable option for most people." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the heads-up. ...

... Judith Warner of Time has more.

Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "Republican members of Congress raised no objections when they first saw internal emails detailing the evolution of the administration's talking points on Benghazi almost two months ago, senior administration officials said..., and House Speaker John Boehner declined to attend or send a representative to that briefing." ...

... CW: I wish I had time to watch this discussion among Bill Maher, Joy Reid, Glenn Greenwald & Charlie Cooke on Benghazzzzzzi. I hope you do.

Lauren French of Politico: "Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew employees were singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny as early as 2011, according to a watchdog agency's report set to be released next week, POLITICO has confirmed from a congressional source. The disclosure that senior officials knew agents were flagging applications containing the words 'patriot' or 'tea party' contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. He repeatedly denied that his agency was targeting conservative groups when asked by Congress last year." CW: Keep in mind this little factoid French doesn't mention: Shulman is a Dubya appointee. But she does write this: "The disclosures are guaranteed to heighten Republican fears that the agency is targeting the administration's political enemies and hands the GOP a fresh issue to use in attacking President Barack Obama's administration." ...

... Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP writes a more balanced report.

Aqua Buddha Is Still Crazy. Ezra Klein: Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.) claims in a fundraiser e-mail that President Obama "is working with 'anti-American globalists plot[ting] against our Constitution.' This [U.N. Small Arms] treaty, [which is the subject of Paul's scary e-mail] at least as described here, is total fantasy. The hoax-busters at Snopes.com will catch you up, and just for good measure, PolitiFact gave similar claims the old pants-on-fire. This is black helicopter stuff from Paul."

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog summarizes the shocking scandals and "the dangerous Satanic power of Barack Obama." Such a quick read I have a sneaking suspicion Steve is not sufficiently scandalized.

This post by Evan McMurry of Mediate about a Koch-BuzzFeed immigration forum is mostly inside-baseball stuff, but McMurry ends with a lovely knock at the Heritage Foundation: "If you classify everything to the left of 'immigrants are inherently dumb' as amnesty, the world will indeed look like a conspiracy in favor of it."

Judge John d'Amico, writing in Salon, notes that the Tea Party doesn't seem to understand our founding documents.

Gail Collins on corrupt state legislatures. Pathetic &, as usual, funny.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

Regarding yesterday's piece on college financial aid: Last night it occurred to me that I never see articles excoriating, say, oil companies for charging the same price for fuel to the rich and poor alike. I understand that colleges are sitting on record profits and many oil companies are barely getting by, but still, one would think that basic tenets of journalism would dictate that rich colleges and poor oil companies be judged by the same yardstick.

May 12, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJack Mahoney

My comment on the Ohlemacher article:

A too typical tempest in (dare one say?) a right wing teapot.

Because many so-called apolitical groups seek tax exempt status they do not deserve, the IRS would have been flat dumb not to have flagged groups with transparently political buzz words in their names. Considered in the wider context the the entire tax exempt scam, this tea tempest is minor, but super-sizing the minuscule is (Benghazi anyone?) all the Right has in an arsenal so empty of real policy.

If we wished to get excited about some real abuse, I'd suggest the thousands of churches that indulge in what is clearly political activities lose their exempt status forthwith. Only if that were done, could we say there is some honest basis to tax-exempt status....and we would have solved our tax revenue problem at the same time.

May 12, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

The Bill Maher, Joy Reid, Glenn Greenwald & Charlie Cooke confab: Greenwald is not as smart as I'd given credit, Cooke is just as smugly dumb as the rest at National Review, and Reid had trouble hurtling the male egos to get a word in edgewise. Maher? As always amusing but irrelevant.

May 12, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterJames Singer
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.