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.

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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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Wednesday
Nov172010

The Commentariat -- November 18

The President Gets a Scolding, Scolds Back. Glenn Thrush of Politico: "After joining Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democratic congressional leaders at the White House this morning, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi told a closed-door meeting of House Democrats that she informed Obama 'our caucus feels strongly about the $250,000 tax cut threshhold ... and the president is very much aware of the Democratic caucus's position.' ... In turn, Obama told Reid ... that he is willing to let them pursue their own compromise ideas, provided they secure enough votes to pass.... Reid and Pelosi ... both pressed Obama ... to adopt a tough bargaining stance with the GOP and avoid the muddled messaging that has characterized some administration pronouncements. Obama ... responded by reminding the leaders that they bore the burden of passing any compromise." CW Note: this story has been modified & expanded. Also see Thrush story on the meeting linked in November 19 Commentariat.

President Obama on New START treaty:

     ... Here's a transcript of the President's remarks.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Helene Cooper of the New York Times: some Democrats say the President must change strategies &, in the face of the same old Republican obstruction -- only more so -- rely more on his executive powers to get things done. ...

... Here's a Strategy Change. Josh Gerstein of Politico: "President Barack Obama took steps on Wednesday to force a Senate vote on legislation that would begin to dismantle the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy banning openly gay service members during the ongoing lame-duck legislative session, hosting a second White House strategy session with gay rights advocates and personally lobbying a key lawmaker who favors repeal of the ban." ...

... Maybe This Is Why. Sam Stein: "At a private meeting on Tuesday afternoon, George Soros, a longtime supporter of progressive causes, voiced blunt criticism of the Obama administration, going so far as to suggest that Democratic donors direct their support somewhere other than the president":

We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line. And if this president can't do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else. -- George Soros

Glenn Greenwald cuts through the hyper-rhetoric on the verdict in the Ahmed Ghailani terrorism "show trial." A jury convicted Ghailani "on one count of conspiracy to blow up a government building, a crime which entails a sentence of 20 years to life, but acquitted him on more than 280 charges of murder and conspiracy relating to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expects to play more of a role as lobbyist for American foreign policy "as the White House girds for a more hostile Congress bent on challenging or even blocking the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda, whether arms control, the Middle East peace process, the war in Afghanistan or the tentative outreach to Cuba." ...

... Sen. Jon Kyl -- Friend of Rogue Nuclear Nations. New York Times Editorial Board: "After months of negotiations with the White House, [Kyl] has decided to try to block the lame-duck Senate from ratifying the New Start arms control treaty. The treaty is so central to this country’s national security, and the objections from Mr. Kyl — and apparently the whole Republican leadership — are so absurd that the only explanation is their limitless desire to deny President Obama any legislative success.... We can only hope that other senators in the party will decide that the nation’s security interests must trump political maneuvering."

Worse than a Banana Republic. Nicholas Kristof. "The top 1 percent of Americans owns 34 percent of America’s private net worth... The bottom 90 percent owns just 29 percent. That also means that the top 10 percent controls more than 70 percent of Americans’ total net worth."

CNN: "Only a third of all Americans think Bush-era tax cuts should be extended for families regardless of how much money they make, according to a new national poll." CW: and that one-third is stupid as shit.

Even with the help of what was presumably a pricey speechwriting team, [Sarah] Palin’s ignorance of monetary policy is difficult to repress. -- Noam Scheiber ...

... Noam Scheiber of The New Republic on the dangerous marriage of the rich & populists: "... the Tea Party is generating a formidable attack on the Fed’s monetary-policy prerogatives by fusing longstanding critics of easy money (the Pauls) with the people who just want to rail against elites." CW: Scheiber is talking principally about monetary policy, but this trend is more pervasive than that, as the midterm results illustrate.

Dear Mitch & John, If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk. You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don't happen to be Members of Congress. Love, Four Liberal Democratic Congressmembers

Art from Oleg Volk.Jordy Yager of The Hill: John Pistole, "the head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), offered on Wednesday to have airport screeners come to Capitol Hill to give senators a pat-down so they could fully understand the mechanics of the newly deployed, controversial technique.... Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has gotten a pat-down," as his Pistole. ...

 

... There is no evidence these new body scanners make us more secure. But there is evidence that former [Bush] Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff made money hawking these full body scanners.... These body scanners are a violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. -- Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas)

Amanda Terkel of the Huffington Post profiles the conservative Federalist Society. ...

... Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "In decisions on questions great and small, the [Supreme] Court often provides only limited or ambiguous guidance to lower courts. And it increasingly does so at enormous length."

Brian Stelter of the New York Times: Sen. Jay Rockefeller wants the FCC to "end" Fox News & MSNBC because they're not letting him conduct business-as-usual in the corridors of power. Stelter points out the FCC has little or no power over cable station content because cable doesn't use the public airwaves. CW translation: I'm a fucking Rockefeller & a U.S. Senator, I'm the creme de la creme, & these loudmouthed peons from Nowhere, U.S.A., are not showing proper respect. Surely the First Amendment doesn't apply to those people. Here's Sen. Superior now:

... Speaking of Really Rich Senators ... The Poor Get Poorer, and the Congress Gets Richer. Open Secrets: "Despite a stubbornly sour national economy congressional members’ personal wealth collectively increased by more than 16 percent between 2008 and 2009, according to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics of federal financial disclosures released earlier this year." The Center's full report begins here.

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