The Ledes

Monday, July 21, 2025

New York Times: “William L. Clay, who became the first African-American elected to the House of Representatives from Missouri, co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus and forcefully promoted the interests of poor people in St. Louis and beyond in his 32 years on Capitol Hill, died on Thursday in Adelphi, Md. He was 94.” 

New York Times: “Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the actor who rose to fame as a teenager playing Theo Huxtable on 'The Cosby Show' in the mid-1980s, died in Costa Rica on Sunday. He was 54. Warner drowned while swimming at a beach on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, The Associated Press reported, citing the country’s Judicial Investigation Department.” 

The Wires
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The Ledes

Sunday, July 20, 2025

New York Times: “The Cram fire in central Oregon, which is threatening 653 structures, most of them homes, has grown to more than 95,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire of the year so far in the United States.... Moister air and calmer winds are expected to blunt some of the fire’s growth over the weekend. It was 49 percent contained as of late Saturday night local time, according to InciWeb, a government site that tracks wildfires.” 

New York Times: “Torrential rain in parts of the Washington, D.C., area on Saturday led to flash flooding and prompted water rescues in Maryland and Virginia, the authorities said. More than five inches of rain fell in some densely populated Washington suburbs like Silver Spring on Saturday. Several major roads in Montgomery, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties in Maryland, as well as in Fairfax County in Virginia, were impassable on Saturday evening. In northwest Washington, D.C., parked cars were inundated with floodwaters.”

AP: “A vehicle rammed into a crowd of people waiting to enter a performance venue along a busy boulevard in Los Angeles early Saturday, injuring 30 people and leading bystanders to attack the driver, authorities said. The driver was later found to have been shot, according to police, who were searching for a suspected gunman who fled the scene along Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood.... Twenty-three victims were taken to hospitals and trauma centers, according to police. Seven were in critical condition, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement.... The driver, whose gunshot wound was found by paramedics, was also taken to a hospital.”

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INAUGURATION 2029

Marie: I don't know why this video came up on my YouTube recommendations, but it did. I watched it on a large-ish teevee, and I found it fascinating. ~~~

 

Hubris. One would think that a married man smart enough to start up and operate his own tech company was also smart enough to know that you don't take your girlfriend to a public concert where the equipment includes a jumbotron -- unless you want to get caught on the big camera with your arms around said girlfriend. Ah, but for Andy Bryon, CEO of A company called Astronomer, and also maybe his wife, Wednesday was a night that will live in infamy. New York Times link. ~~~

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.”

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Tuesday
Oct262010

The Commentariat -- October 27

Vice President Biden & President Obama speak about unprecedented efforts across the Federal Government to protect victims of domestic and sexual violence in an event marking Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Somebody should make Rand Paul & his goons watch this:

The smile, affable and empty, could be that of a small-town gas-station attendant or a hired assassin. -- Robert Draper, describing White House Communications Director Robert Gibbs in a profile for GQ

"Thoughts vs. Actions." David Leonhardt of the New York Times: President Obama & members of his economic team indicated they knew all along what to do to reduce unemployment, but they evidently didn't have the will to actually do it. Leonhardt concludes, "... given what the polls are showing now, it’s a safe bet that Democrats would choose a different strategy if they had a second chance." ... In a more expansive article, Leonhardt demonstrates when & why the Administration dropped the ball on jobs recovery; as usual, the Senate is implicated, too.

With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages. -- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in Citizens United v. FEC

... David Savage in the Los Angeles Times: "Kennedy and the high court majority were wrong. Because of loopholes in tax laws and a weak enforcement policy at the Federal Election Commission, corporations and wealthy donors have been able to spend huge sums on campaign ads, confident the public will not know who they are, election law experts say. Corporate donors have been able to hide their contributions despite the opposition of shareholders and customers — the very groups cited by Kennedy." ...

... Really? Michael Luo & Griff Palmer of the New York Times: "Even with a recent surge in fund-raising for Republican candidates, Democratic candidates have outraised their opponents over all by more than 30 percent in the 109 House races The New York Times has identified as in play. And Democratic candidates have significantly outspent their Republican counterparts over the last few months in those contests, $119 million to $79 million." Ah, Here's the Catch: "Republican-leaning third-party groups, however, many of them financed by large, unrestricted donations that are not publicly disclosed, have ... pour[ed] more than $60 million into competitive races since July, about 80 percent more than the Democratic-leaning groups have reported spending."

CW: It's impossible this year to come up with a "Worst Congressional Candidate in the Nation," but Michael Crowley of Time points to one tea party favorite from North Carolina named Ilario Pantano. Pantano is running a tight race against seven-term Blue Dog Mike McIntyre, who has previously won his races by wide margins. Among Pantano's qualities: (1) "a Manhattan-born former Goldman-Sachs trader"; (2) "he's only lived in the district six years"; (3) "in 2005, Pantano, a former U.S. Marine, emptied two M-16 clips -- or up to 60 rounds  --at two unarmed Iraqis in his custody. He was charged with murder and faced the death penalty, but the charges were dismissed. The investigating officer did call the episode 'a disgrace to the armed forces.'" Don't quit here. Crowley has more on Pantano.

So Not Ready for Primetime. Chris Carl of WDEL Radio, Delaware: "The Christine O'Donnell campaign is apologizing to WDEL after it demanded that video of an O'Donnell appearance on "The Rick Jensen Show" be destroyed and threatened a lawsuit if it wasn't.... O'Donnell also told show host Rick Jensen that she would sue the radio station if the video was released.... O'Donnell's campaign manager, Matt Moran, called WDEL and demanded that the video be immediately turned over to the campaign and destroyed. Moran threatened to 'crush WDEL' with a lawsuit if the station didn't comply." Here's the AP story.

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman endorses her opponent, former California Governor Jerry Brown:

... Elsewhere in California, a Republican Candidate Sends a Stinkbomb. Jeremy Jacobs of the National Journal: "Republican Van Tran, the upstart challenger to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), is betting on voters sniffing out his opponent's struggles -- literally. Tran is sending out a scratch-and-sniff direct mail piece attacking Sanchez that features a hideous odor emanating from it."

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: "Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller lied to his former employer several times about using others’ computers for political purposes in 2008 before he finally told the truth, according to documents released Tuesday by the Fairbanks North Star Borough in response to a court order in lawsuits brought by two media outlets." The article links to related documents. The Anchorage Daily News story, which is extensive, is here. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's statement pretty well sums up the whole story:

The bottom line is Joe cheated, he lied, tried to cover it up, lied again, then finally got caught and had to admit it, just as he lied to Alaskans when he initially denied any problems with his employment at the Borough, claiming his record was 'exceptional' and 'second to none.'

American Exceptionalism. If you don't vote for me for President Senator, the U.S. will become a poor, communist dictatorship. This could be the warmest, fuzziest ad in the history of scare tactics. Way to go, Marco!

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president. -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

... CW: perhaps, like me, you didn't notice that there's nuance to Sen. Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Party of "No." Michael Crowley of Time finds nuance, but it doesn't make much difference. ...

... Paul Kane of the Washington Post profiles Minority Leader John Boehner. CW: I am linking this only because it is being described throughout the blogosphere as a "must-read." Still, I will not be reading it.

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "An intense military campaign aimed at crippling the Taliban has so far failed to inflict more than fleeting setbacks on the insurgency or put meaningful pressure on its leaders to seek peace, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials citing the latest assessments of the war in Afghanistan."

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