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

Page Links
Saturday
Oct172015

The Commentariat -- October 18, 2015

Internal links removed.

Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Without a viable alternative to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), some centrist Republicans say they'd have little choice but to seek Democratic help in electing a new Speaker.... Such a scenario remains unlikely, even with the House GOP in apparent disarray.... There have been no formal discussions between the parties about the possibility of a coalition Speaker, and some Democrats have dismissed the notion out of hand."

Kevin Sack & Sheri Fink of the New York Times take a deep dive into the work of the Clinton Foundation & how its work intersected with Hillary Clinton's position as Secretary of State."

Maureen Dowd: "As enjoyable as it is seeing Sidney Blumenthal on the hot seat, Gowdy and Company should have left the email matter to another congressional committee and the Justice Department. They just couldn't stop themselves, any more than they could stop themselves from cutting Democrats out of witness interviews or from trumpeting that Clinton's aide Huma Abedin was going to testify on Friday.... Republicans are still savoring the idea of getting Hillary to raise her hand to take the oath.... But it's going to be less a showdown than a show trial. The verdict is already in. The Republicans are guilty. It's not that Hillary has gotten so much more trustable. It's just that the Republicans are so much less credible."

Elizabeth Drew, in the New York Review of Books, on the Congressional fight over the Iran nuclear deal. First of a two-part series: "The president's congressional victory on the nuclear agreement with Iran had many sources, not least of which were the nature and tactics of the opposition. It might have been more difficult to achieve if the Republicans as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allied American group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had given any sense that they had thoughtfully considered the deal that six nations reached with Iran, or if they had offered any alternative."

Presidential Race

Alec Baldwin is pretty funny & Larry David nails Bernie Sanders; hate the way the moderator gayifies Anderson Cooper:

Dave Weigel & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post examine Sanders-style socialism & distinguish it from other socialistic ideologies & policies.

AP: In Alabama, "Hillary Clinton on Saturday said she would champion voting rights from the White House, telling African American Alabama Democrats Republican state policies were 'a blast from the Jim Crow past'. Clinton said Republicans were dismantling the progress made by the civil rights movement, and blasted Alabama governor Robert Bentley for closing driver's license offices in 31 counties where most residents are African American. Alabama requires photo identification to vote. Clinton also mocked the Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush for their opposition to restoring Voting Rights Act provisions which the US supreme court struck down." (See related story linked in Beyond the Beltway.)

T. C. Sottek of the Verge: "Harvard professor and Democratic presidential candidate Larry Lessig had what sounded like a crazy plan: run for president, pass a single bill, then leave the White House. He got enough attention for that plan to raise more than $1 million, but Lessig has since faced a Sisyphean climb toward recognition; he was excluded from the first Democratic debate, and polls very low when his name is actually given to people for consideration. Now, Lessig's campaign just looks like the average sort of crazy. He's running to serve a full term as president, because people just didn't understand the complexity of his original plan. In an essay published at The Atlantic, Lessig announced the change and explained why he was making it." ...

... John Cole of Balloon Juice: Lessig has "also begun to discuss the other issues, although not on his website. He's not too bad on the issues, I will add, but appears to be completely clueless and indifferent regarding the entire political process. Personally, I would not mind him in the debates- yank Webb and Chaffee and put in Lessig."

Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump says he doesn't flat out blame former president George W. Bush that the Sept. 11 terror attacks happened on his watch. But he can think of three reasons why one could hold Bush responsible." CW: Number 1: Immigration policy. Natch. Trump's Reason No. 2 is unfair, too: he cites the fact, correctly, that the FBI, CIA & National Security Council weren't sharing information (and there is evidence they still are not adequately doing so). But the Bush administration could not reasonably have changed that dynamic in the few months Bush had been in office before the 9/11 attacks. If anything, the onus should be on the Clinton (& earlier) administrations -- and of course on the agencies themselves.

CW: Judd Legum of Think Progress does not take the latest Trump-Bush dust-up very seriously: "On Friday, Donald Trump generated substantial controversy when he asserted that George W. Bush was president at the time of the 9/11 attacks.... Calendars from that era indicate that January 20, the day Bush was sworn in as president, occurred some time before September 11."

Meghashyam Mali of the Hill: "The Secret Service is extending protection to GOP presidential contenders Donald Trump and Ben Carson, while beefing up Dem front-runner Hillary Clinton's security, according to a report from Newsmax on Saturday. Trump and Carson will receive agents as early as next week, with each candidate being assigned approximately two dozen agents. The report cites a source close to the agency's planning."

Beyond the Beltway

AP: "Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley on Friday asked a state agency to provide driving tests in all Alabama counties one day each month, reversing a decision to permanently shutter rural driver's license offices in the face of budget cuts. The announcement to partly restore the services came after weeks of backlash over a state decision to close 31 part-time driver's license offices in rural areas. While state officials argued it was necessary because of budget cut, critics said the closures saved little money while creating a hardship for people in rural and impoverished areas of the state."

Esther Lee of Think Progress: "A jury acquitted two former sheriff's deputies of involuntary manslaughter on Friday after the death of a black college student inside a Savannah, Georgia jail holding cell on New Year's Day. Matthew Ajibade, 22, died from blunt force trauma after he was tasered several times while strapped in a restraint chair. A Chatham County Superior Court jury did convict the former deputies of lesser charges: Jason Kenny was found guilty of cruelty to an inmate, while Maxine Evans was found guilty of public records fraud and three counts of perjury for lying in her grand jury testimony."

Way Beyond

Jeremy Keehn of the New Yorker discusses the Canadian parliamentary elections, which will be held tomorrow. Keehn focuses on Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal party. ...

... Jim Dwyer of the New York Times has more on the Canadian elections.

News Lede

New York Times: "A military airstrike in northwest Syria has killed the leader of a shadowy Qaeda cell that American officials say has been plotting attacks against the United States and Europe, the Pentagon announced on Sunday. The leader, Sanafi al-Nasr, a Saudi citizen, was the highest-ranking leader of a network of about two dozen veteran Qaeda operatives called the Khorasan Group, and the fifth senior member of the group to be killed in the past four months. His death was announced in a Pentagon statement describing Thursday's operation, which American officials said was a drone strike."

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