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.” ~~~

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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.

 

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Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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The Commentariat -- December 22

** Historian Rick Perlstein, in a Salon essay, tells how race relations really played out in Haley Barbour's Yazoo City, Mississippi. This is a chilling must-read for anyone who thinks, as Barbour claims, that maybe it wasn't all that bad.

Glenn Greenwald: the New York Times again published classified secrets on their front page yesterday. If Julian Assange & Bradley Manning are going to be prosecuted for some unspecified crimes, then Times personnel & their high-level sources should be prosecuted, too.

Here's the new 2010 Census map that shows gains & losses of Congressional seats. For more detail, click on the map to go to the interactive New York Times map.Sabrina Tavernise & Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "The Census Bureau rearranged the country’s political map on Tuesday, giving more Congressional seats to the South and the West at the expense of the Northeast and the Midwest — changes that will have far-reaching implications for elections over the next decade." ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The conventional political wisdom is that the results of the 2010 census, announced Tuesday, are a big win for Republicans, who are largely dominant in the states where population increased. But Democratic officials in Washington are cautiously optimistic that the population shifts will still give them the opportunity to win new seats in Congress, especially in places where minority populations have exploded." CW: I agree with Shear on this. The more libruls who move to traditionally Republican states, the better the chance to dilute the conservative pools. ...

... Ezra Klein: "A lot of these changes are driven by Hispanic immigrants." This isn't going to help Republicans in the long run, but the redistricting would still hurt Obama in 2010. "If he gets 46 percent of the vote in Texas rather than 43 percent, he still gets exactly none of Texas's electoral votes. In total, this census takes six electoral votes from Barack Obama's 2008 haul." ...

... Shannon Travis of CNN: in the new Census numbers, experts see a short-term downside & long-term upside for Hispanics.

Here's some of Sen. Arlen Specter's spectacular swan song. He lays into both the Supreme Court & right-wing extremists:

     ... The CNN print story is here.

Legislating "Under the Cover of Christmas." Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: despite a likelihood that the Senate will ratify the New START Treaty, Republican Senators continue to rail against the treaty & turncoat Republicans who voted in favor of world peace at Christmas-time. ...

... "Playing the Christmas Card." Dana Milbank: "Eight founding fathers of the [new Petulant Party] took the stage Tuesday morning in the Senate TV studio to provide an update on their latest cause: The defeat of the nuclear arms treaty with Russia.... They defied the recommendation of Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates (a Bush administration holdover) in their unsuccessful defense on Saturday of the 'don't ask, don't tell' ban on openly gay service members. And ... the Petulants' efforts to prevent the Sept. 11 bill from coming to the floor earned labels such as 'disgrace' and 'national shame' from the usually friendly hosts at Fox News."

Too many of our high school students are not graduating ready to begin college or a career — and many are not eligible to serve in our armed forces. I am deeply troubled by the national security burden created by America's underperforming education system.
-- Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education ...

... Education Fail. AP: "Nearly one-fourth of the students who try to join the U.S. Army fail its entrance exam, painting a grim picture of an education system that produces graduates who can't answer basic math, science and reading questions, according to a new study released Tuesday. The report by The Education Trust bolsters a growing worry among military and education leaders that the pool of young people qualified for military service will grow too small." Here's a pdf of the overview report by the Education Trust.

Rachel Maddow takes down Sen. Tom Coburn, catching him in a huge lie about the "reason" for his opposition to the 9/11 responders bill:

... Michael Shear: "... Republican lawmakers find themselves the target of ire and scorn from the most unlikely of adversaries: the firefighters and police officers who rushed into the burning twin towers on Sept. 11 nearly a decade ago and worked at the site for months afterward. That predicament crystallized Tuesday when Rudy Giuliani ... condemned his fellow Republicans as being on the wrong side of 'morality' and 'obligation' for failing to support legislation to provide medical benefits for the first responders." Includes video. ...

... Update. Alex Pareene of Salon: "Tom Coburn is finally dropping his threat to single-handedly obstruct the 9/11 first responders healthcare bill in the Senate ... because he won: The bill, which already went from $7.4 to $6.2 billion in benefits and compensation, is now down to $1.5 for benefits and $2.7 for compensation.... Coburn's ... real objection was that rich people were going to have to pay for non-rich people to have their illnesses treated."

Erika Bolstad of the Anchorage Daily News: "As Congress brings to a close its lame-duck session, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has emerged from her historic write-in campaign as a key swing vote in the Senate on issues backed by the Obama administration."

David Catanese of Politico: "After embracing him in his 2006 upset win over GOP Sen. Conrad Burns, progressives turned on Montana Sen. Jon Tester in response to his vote against the DREAM Act on Saturday, complicating his prospects for reelection next year."

CW: just in case you think the conservatives on the Supreme Court are not "activist judges," Prof. Pauline Maier in a New York Times op-ed explains the intent of the Second Amendment:  James Madison, the author of the Second Amendment, wrote it & other amendments "to 'parry' the call for a second federal convention.... One of his proposed amendments promised that the people would never be subject to federal military rule because their 'right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well-armed, and well-regulated militia being the best security of a free country.'” In fact, Maier says, the militias are now defunct, but "one thing is clear: to justify such rulings [as District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago] by citing Madison and the other founders and framers would not honor their 'original intent.' It would be an abuse of history."

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "The CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks. Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F."

David Sanger of the New York Times: "... while [President] Obama is savoring another major victory..., his own aides acknowledge that the lesson of the battle over the [New START] treaty is that the political divide on national security is widening. The next steps on Mr. Obama’s nuclear agenda now appear harder than ever."

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "President Obama’s advisers have been drafting an executive order that would set up a system for periodically reviewing the cases of Guantánamo prisoners whom courts have approved for detention without trial, officials said.... In broad strokes, it would establish something like a parole board to evaluate whether each detainee poses a continued threat, or whether he can be safely transferred to another country."

Bankers as Common Thieves. Andrew Martin of the New York Times: "In an era when millions of homes have received foreclosure notices nationwide, lawsuits detailing bank break-ins ... keep surfacing. And in the wake of the scandal involving shoddy, sometimes illegal paperwork that has buffeted the nation’s biggest banks in recent months, critics say these situations reinforce their claims that the foreclosure process is fundamentally flawed."

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