New York Times: “Twenty-seven workers made an improbable escape from a collapsed tunnel in Los Angeles on Wednesday night by climbing over a large mound of loose soil and emerging at the only entrance five miles away without major injury, officials said. Four other tunnel workers went inside the industrial tunnel after the collapse to help in the rescue efforts. All 31 workers emerged safely and without significant injuries, said Michael Chee, the spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. The Los Angeles Fire Department said that no one was missing after it had dispatched more than 100 rescue workers to the site in the city’s Wilmington neighborhood, about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.”
To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.
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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.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. — Anonymous
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. — Edward R. Murrow
Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns
I have a Bluesky account now. The URL ishttps://bsky.app/profile/marie-burns.bsky.social . When Reality Chex goes down, check my Bluesky page for whatever info I am able to report on the status of Reality Chex. If you can't access the URL, I found that I could Google Bluesky and ask for Marie Burns. Google will include links to accounts for people whose names are, at least in part, Maria Burns, so you'll have to tell Google you looking only for Marie.
Wednesday
Nov172010
President Obama awards the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House:
President Obama drops by a meeting with leading equal pay advocates in the Roosevelt Room of the White House:
... in the United States Senate ... the Paycheck Fairness Act died when a vote to move the bill forward failed by just that count -- 58 to 41, two votes short of the 60 votes required. It is the very same bill that passed in the House with bipartisan support in January 2009. Today, only Democratic senators voted to support Paycheck Fairness for women -- not a single Republican voted to allow the Senate to move forward. It is notable that the first vote after the election in which the American people sent a clear message that they want Washington to work better, the Republicans blocked a common sense measure aimed simply to help ensure that women get the pay they deserve. -- Valerie Jarrett
Sewell Chan of the New York Times: "The Federal Reserve, faced with more criticism than its leaders anticipated, stepped up its counteroffensive on Wednesday as leading Republican lawmakers continued to attack its plan to spur the recovery.... Ben S. Bernanke, met with 11 members of the Senate banking committee to explain the decision to inject $600 billion into the banking system.... In a speech on Wednesday, Eric S. Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston ... said the plan could reduce the unemployment rate by a little less than half a percentage point by the end of 2012." CW: Congressional Republicans refuse to do anything to create jobs; now they're criticizing the Fed for doing what it can to create jobs.
Robert Draperwrites a feature piece on Sarah Palin & her inner circle for the New York Times Magazine.
Greg Sargent: "... from Richard Wolffe's new book on the Obama White House... The President seemed to acknowledge that in pursuing bipartisan support for health reform, he and Democrats got snookered by a previously-thought-out GOP strategy to delay the process for as long as possible.... If Obama believes this ... you have to wonder why he keeps heaping blame on himself for failing to change the tone in Washington."
Politico reports on Robert Gibbs' off-camera morning gaggle. Gibbs comments on (1) Ailes, (2) Kyl (see below) & the postponed meeting with the GOP (see below).
Kyl wouldn't even give the White House the courtesy of a phone call to let them know he was betraying them and the nation's national security needs. Worse, the dimwitted Kyl, with the future of American foreign policy in his hands, couldn't even give a coherent rationale for why he'd made the decision -- his office would only say 'there doesn't appear to be enough time' in the lame-duck session. This is what happens when serious officials try to negotiate in good faith with Republicans -- they refuse to take 'yes' for an answer, they don't have intellectual capacity to explain why, and the entire country has to suffer the consequences.
... Max Fisher of The Atlantic on how Kyl's craven move could weaken U.S. foreign policy: "If New START fails then heads of state ... and negotiators from around the world will ... think twice before making a difficult deal with the U.S. They will have to consider the possibility that any political sacrifices they make in the course of negotiating could very well be wasted." ...
Dana Milbank: "Responding to [complaints by] junior Democratic members..., Majority Leader Harry Reid ... has given broad new authority over Senate Democrats' floor strategy to Chuck Schumer, with an eye toward making it a more politically savvy operation. Schumer's ... ascension is an indication that the Democrats are preparing for two years of hard-nosed politics.... Expect to see a Clintonian focus on popular (though not pathbreaking) middle-class issues and regular votes designed to split and embarrass Senate Republicans. Schumer's rise should come as a warning to the White House, as well: With 23 of their seats on the ballot in 2012, Senate Democrats are going to start looking out for themselves rather than for the president."
Glenn Thrush of Politico: "The roots of the partisan standoff that led to the postponement of the bipartisan White House summit scheduled for Thursday date back to January, when President Barack Obama dominated a GOP meeting in Baltimore to deliver a humiliating rebuke of House Republicans." Earlier Politico story here. CW: basically, Republicans don't want to meet with President Obama because he showed them up. Nobody wants to look dumb, corrupt & hypocritical. Can you blame them for postponing while they try to dream up cover stories for their insupportable policies? ...
... Washington Post backstory: President "Obama had summoned congressional leaders from both parties for a gathering Thursday to ... focus on economic concerns, particularly the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 that are set to expire at year's end. But the White House said in a statement Tuesday night that the meeting had been rescheduled 'at the request of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner due to scheduling conflicts in organizing their caucuses.' The meeting will instead be held on Nov. 30, the White House said." Politico backstory here....
... Josh Marshall of TPM with the way it really happened: the Republicans invited the President to their caucus so they would have the home court advantage. "Only it didn't work out according to plan. The president came, talked, took questions.... The Republicans came off looking kind of stupid, unable to make their arguments when the president was there to point out the holes in their arguments."
In a popular New York Times op-ed, billionaire Warren Buffettthanks the federal government for saving Americans from "economic meltdown." He gives kudos to Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Sheila Bair & George W. Bush."
The New York Times Editorial Board on the tea party's "Earmarks Victory": "More transparency. Less corruption. And fewer bridges to nowhere. Those are all laudable goals to embrace. But they won’t fix the country’s economic problems. Representative Boehner, Senator McConnell and President Obama need to stop posturing and tell the voters their real plans for getting the economy growing again and then cutting the deficit." ...
... Isn't it great that the tea party, which by and large opposes the President, has unwittingly (and so much of what the tea party proposes is wit-free) forced Republican hypocrites to turn over their earmark pork to the Obama Administration? Thank you, Dick Armey & the Brothers Koch. Maybe the OED will add you as a footnote to their definition of 'Pyrrhic victory.' -- Constant Weader ...
... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "... the renewed push against earmarks highlighted a potential conflict between the calls to eliminate the spending items and demands by many Tea Party supporters for greater fidelity to the Constitution. It is the Constitution, after all, that put Congress in charge of deciding how to spend the taxpayers’ money. In pledging not to let individual lawmakers designate federal money for local purposes, the anti-earmark contingent is in effect ceding more power to the executive branch over how taxpayer dollars are spent, presumably not the outcome desired by the new crop of grass-roots conservatives."
Stupidest. Plan. Ever. Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: a deficit reduction plan, proposed by a bipartisan group headed up by former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) & Alice Rivlin, President Clinton's budget director, "calls for a one-year holiday from Social Security payroll taxes to encourage hiring and for a national sales tax to reduce deficits." Wait'll you read the details. CW: Paul Krugman, of all people, recently embraced the VAT tax, a regressive tax that will eat up a huge chunk of the incomes of the poor & lower-middle-class, while simply annoying the rich. Everything about this idea sucks. ...
... Domenici & Rivlintout their plan in a Washington Post op-ed.
Washington Post: "Airline passengers who object to any type of physical screening are not going to fly anywhere, the head of the Transportation Security Administration told a congressional committee Tuesday." ...
... "See You Soon." Joel Johnson of Gizmodo: "At the heart of the controversy over 'body scanners' is a promise: The images of our naked bodies will never be public. U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. These are those images.... Fortunately for those who walked through the scanner in Florida last year, this mismanaged machine used the less embarrassing imaging technique.... That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future":
... Jane Hamsher on the new TSA "porno scanners" & "groping techniques," which "the Airline Pilots Association describes as 'sexual molestation'": "... constant threats of 'terror' are used to create new markets for products nobody needs. The public is then intimidated into compliance in the name of 'national security,' when in reality they’re sacrificing their dignity, their civil liberties and their tax dollars for the sake of enormous profits." Hamsher links to passenger John Tyner's site, which includes videos of his experience at San Diego International Airport. Tyner is now the subject of a TSA investigation; Hamsher is urging readers to petition Congress to investigate the TSA instead....
... The San Diego Tribunehas more on Tyner's TSA encounter & the ensuing events. ...
Tom Friedmancongratulates CNN's Anderson Cooper on popping the $200 million/day Obama Asia trip myth perpetuated by Rep. Michele Bachmann, Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh & Glenn Beck:
When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, we have a problem. It becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues ... let alone act on them.... But the carnival barkers that so dominate our public debate today are not going away — and neither is the Internet. All you can hope is that more people will do what Cooper did — so when the next crazy lie races around the world, people’s first instinct will be to doubt it, not repeat it.
Drew Armstrong of Bloomberg: "Health insurers last year gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $86.2 million that was used to oppose the health-care overhaul law.... The expenditures reflect the insurers’ attempts to influence the bill after Democrats in Congress and the White House put more focus on regulation of the insurance industry."
New York Times: "The first former Guantánamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court was acquitted on Wednesday of all but one of more than 280 charges of conspiracy and murder in the 1998 terrorist bombings of the United States Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.... The defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, 36, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to destroy government buildings and property. He was acquitted of six counts of conspiracy, including conspiring to kill Americans and use weapons of mass destruction.... Mr. Ghailani faces a sentence of 20 years to life in prison."
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "I read 'Decision Points,' and it turns out that [George W.] Bush is the Edith Piaf of fiscal policy: He regrets nothing." ...
... Even Sinatra had a few regrets:
Evidently the Palin family will not be cutting an anti-bullying video anytime soon. TMZ has caught 16-year-old Willow Palinrepeatedly using homophobic slurs to discredit a fellow student who gave a bad review to "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on Facebook. According to TMZ, a "source close to the Palin family ... [said] it was the baby bear defending Mama Grizzly." Includes link to pdf of Facebook pages. CW: the real Sarah Palin's Alaska appears to be downright disgusting.
Forgot to post this yesterday. "Republicans miss the feel-good 90s when a universally respected President Clinton reigned over an eight-year bipartisan love fest" :
Tina Fey accepts the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (sorry, this really belongs in Infotainment, but I can't resize the video):
... Hollywood Reporter: here's the Sarah Palinjoke PBS cut:
And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women - except, of course --those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape 'kit 'n' stuff, But for everybody else, it's a win-win. Unless you're a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years - whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know - actually, I take it back. The whole thing's a disaster. -- Tina Fey
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