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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.
I'll probably bring this post forward a few times as new analysis comes in. Today I've added the post by Shahien Nasiripour.
The main page for the commission's 633-page report is here.
The Republican members of the commission wrote a dissenting report, the summary of which is here (pdf).
Sewell Chan of the New York Times: "The blow-by-blow chronicle of regulatory negligence and Wall Street recklessness released Thursday by a Congressional commission amounts to a scathing warning to the government about ways to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 financial crisis. Drawing on millions of e-mails, testimony and other documents, the final report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission delves deeply into the actions — and negligence — of officials at regulatory agencies, investment banks, credit rating companies and mortgage lenders."
CW: his hour-&-10-min. press conference might bore you to tears, but I'm planning to watch a bit of it:
Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post: "Wall Street firms that sold mortgage-backed securities appear to have violated federal securities laws by misleading investors on the quality of the underlying mortgages, a bipartisan panel created by Congress to investigate the root causes of the financial crisis concluded. Banks that sold home loan bonds often didn't disclose key details that would have helped investors accurately judge the quality of the investments. For example, investors were rarely told whether the mortgages failed to meet the banks' own standards."
Darrell Issa Gets into It. Robert Schmidt & Phil Mattingly of Bloomberg: "Adding to the turmoil [of the divided Commission], Representative Darrell Issa this week demanded thousands of pages of documents from the FCIC as his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ramps up an investigation into allegations of overspending, partisanship and conflicts of interest. The California Republican’s staff also sent letters to former commission employees, asking them to preserve documents."
Sewell Chan of the New York Times, January 25: "The 2008 financial crisis was an 'avoidable' disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a Congressional inquiry. The government commission that investigated the financial crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations [Clinton & Bush II], the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors, and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. ...
"Backdoor Bailout." Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post: "Goldman Sachs collected $2.9 billion from the American International Group as payout on a speculative trade it placed for the benefit of its own account, receiving the bulk of those funds after AIG received an enormous taxpayer rescue, according to the final report of an investigative panel appointed by Congress. The fact that a significant slice of the proceeds secured by Goldman through the AIG bailout landed in its own account -- as opposed to those of its clients or business partners -- has not been previously disclosed. These details ... are among the more eye-catching revelations in the report to be released Thursday by the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission."
CW Note: the Commission's report isn't out yet. We'll have much more on it when it's released to the public. I think maybe Chan has an exclusive here (not sure about that).
President Obama answers questions on a wide range of issues submitted by and voted on by YouTube users in an interview moderated by YouTube’s Steve Grove:
NEW. Ryan Grim: "Drug legalization is an 'entirely legitimate topic for debate,' President Barack Obama said Thursday during his online YouTube town hall, in response to a question from a former deputy sheriff who has turned sour on the drug war. In endorsing such a debate, Obama went further than any president has since the start of the war on drugs, which can be traced back at least to President Richard Nixon, but more realistically to the early 20th century, when the federal government began criminalizing drugs that had long been legal."
Prior to the President's State of the Union Address, we asked some of the First Lady's State of the Union guests about their message for Americans:
Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, write a story for the Times Magazine about Times' reporters encounters will Julian Assange. Watch the video here. ...
... John Cook at Gawker has a pretty good take on Bill Keller's literary effort. It would be a fair guess that Cook is not hoping for a job at the Times.
Scott Wilson & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration is openly supporting the anti-government demonstrations shaking the Arab Middle East, a stance that is far less tempered than the one the president has taken during past unrest in the region." CW: this is more evidence that the Obama Administration was delighted with WikiLeaks. ...
... Related News. New York Times: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had executed more than 40 search warrants in the United States on Thursday as part of an investigation into an international group of computer hackers who attacked corporate Web sites last year in a show of support for WikiLeaks."
Speaking of Leaking... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Two hours before President Obama delivered his State of the Union address on Tuesday..., a full-length draft of the speech was posted on a news Web site without White House knowledge. And for a moment, one of the most scripted acts of Washington stagecraft was thrown off balance. The leak of the speech ... appeared on NationalJournal.com at 7:14 p.m.... The National Journal was keeping tight-lipped about how it obtained the speech, saying only that it came from a Democrat." ...
... Ben Smith: "If there's one thing President Obama did go on about a bit about in the State of the Union, it was American exceptionalism -- as the National Journal's Ron Fournier noted at some length. Two who didn't entirely notice were Speaker John Boehner and Kathleen Parker.... It should also be noted that Obama called Boehner Speaker of 'The Greatest Nation on Earth.'" ...
... Here's is Parker interviewing Speaker Boehner. The exchange in which they bemoan the President's not acknowledging American exceptionalism begins 5 minutes in:
... Greg Sargent: "What's amusing about this ongoing assertion from the right is how easily debunked it is, and how casually its proponents simply pretend that the historical record doesn't exist." ...
... Hey, here's a new criticism of the President's SOTU speech, from Alvin Felzenberg, a Princeton historian & veteran of two Republican Administrations: plagiarism. "Had the president submitted the text of his second State of the Union Address in the form of a college term paper, he would have been sent forthwith to the nearest academic dean. Once again, our public affairs are such that we have one standard for presidents and another for undergraduates." Huf-fy! ...
"On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner talked to The Wall Street Journal's David Wessel about the [President's] initiative [to equalize & reduce the corporate tax rate]. Mr. Geithner emphasized the administration's insistence on offsetting the corporate rate, now 35%, by eliminating deductions, credits and incentives."
Amanda Terkel: "Although President Obama avoided talking about the contentious issue of gun control in Tuesday's State of the Union address, his top advisers say he will soon be jumping into the debate. In a discussion with a small group of bloggers and reporters on Wednesday at the White House, Senior Advisor David Axelrod said there was 'no doubt' the President will address the gun issue at a later date."
Raw Meat for Democrats. Frank Newport & Lydia Saad of Gallup: "Prior to the State of the Union address, a majority of Americans said they favor cutting U.S. foreign aid, but more than 6 in 10 opposed cuts to education, Social Security, and Medicare. Smaller majorities objected to cutting programs for the poor, national defense, homeland security, aid to farmers, and funding for the arts and sciences."
Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "President Obama vowed during his State of the Union address Tuesday to end enforcement of the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy this year, providing the clearest indication yet that the ban on gays openly serving in uniform will end in a matter of months, not years as some have feared."
I think it's absolutely wrong, and the public should understand that the president has enough power; he should back off and let us do what we do. -- Harry Reid, on President Obama's pledge to veto earmarks
Two posts on the Democrats' cave on filibuster reform:
Sam Stein: The window to change the Senate rules during this session through a simple majority vote ended without action ... as lawmakers in the chamber agreed to adjourn the first day of the 112th Congress." Unfortunately, Stein uses the passive voice to the point he doesn't really reveal why this happened.
Jon Walker of Firedoglake: "Senate Democrats had the ability to easily solve the problems they spent the last two years endlessly complaining about, but choose not to.... Every single procedural problem [Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell causes Democrats in the next two years is ultimately the fault of Senate Democrats because, despite knowing his modus operandi, they still choose to leave themselves at his mercy." ...
... Related News. New York Times: "... Senate ... leadership on Thursday promised to temper the procedural warfare that has consumed the chamber in recent years and increased partisan tension. The bipartisan agreement left intact the filibuster.... But the Senate approved other changes Thursday in rules intended to quicken the pace of action, including new limits on a single lawmaker’s ability to anonymously block legislation and nominations." ...
... Speaking of Stupid Senate Stuff, Ian Millhiser of Think Progress reports that the Republican leadership has put Mike Lee (R-UT) on the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is the guy, Millhiser quips, who defines a sentence as "a noun, a verb, and 'unconstitutional.'” "Lee has recently claimed that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution."
Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post: "It is the narrowly divided Democratic-led Senate -- not the Republican House -- that is most likely to tackle the bipartisan initiativesObama laid out Tuesday, including free-trade deals, border security and immigration reform, and an overhaul of the corporate tax code."
Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "By voting Wednesday to abolish public financing for presidential campaigns, House Republicans endorsed a policy that could cause serious problems for ... fellow Republicans hoping to run for the White House in 2012":
For the major candidates, the best-known candidates, the system is irrelevant at this point. The ones who are relying on it now are the more marginal candidates. . . . The question is whether the Republican leadership is happy not to finance those people. -- Lawrence Noble, former SEC counsel
Rick Pearson & David Kidwell of the Chicago Tribune assess the political leanings of members of the Illinois State Supreme Court & how their political affiliations may influence the justices' decision on the Rahm Emanuel petition to remain on the Chicago mayoral ballot.
Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: a "string of political miscalculations ... have left [Afghan President Hamid] Karzaia diminished and more isolated leader, members of Parliament, Western diplomats and analysts say. At the very least, they say, the outcome seems certain to signal the beginning of a potentially more precarious period in Mr. Karzai’s relations with Afghanistan’s power brokers."
Paul Farhi of the Washington Post: "A coalition of rabbis wants Fox News chief Roger Ailes and conservative host Glenn Beckto cut out all their talk about Nazis and the Holocaust.... The rabbis have called on ... Rupert Murdoch to sanction his two famous employees via a full-page ad in Thursday's editions of the Wall Street Journal -- one of many other media properties controlled by Murdoch's News Corp."
News Items
Washington Post: "Opposition activists in Egypt vowed to defy a government ban and turn out by the thousands for demonstrations Friday, prompting authorities to apparently cut access to the Internet in an attempt to limit their ability to organize."
Washington Post: "Sporadic anti-government protests continued across Egypt Thursday, with demonstrators facing off against police outside the lawyers' guild in central Cairo and activists reportedly setting fire to a police post in the eastern city of Suez."
New York Times: "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that the military could be ready this year to carry out the repeal of a ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the armed forces, and that he has accelerated efforts to revise training and regulations."
Chicago Tribune: "The Illinois Supreme Court ruled today that Rahm Emanuel can stay on the ballot for mayor of Chicago, saying in a unanimous decision that he meets the state's residency requirements despite spending most of the last year as White House chief of staff." ...
Politico: "President Barack Obama on Thursday namedJay Carney, communications director for Vice President Joe Biden and former Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, to replace Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary. Carney’s new posiition was announced in an email from chief of staff Bill Daley that detailed more than a dozen other personnel moves made as part of a broader White House staff reorganization." Here's the full text of Daley's e-mail.
New York Times: "Yemen, one of the Middle East’s most impoverished countries and a haven for Al Qaeda militants, became the latest Arab state to witness mass protests on Thursday, as thousands of Yemenis took to the streets in the capital and other regions to demand a change in government."
New York Times: David Kato, "an outspoken Ugandan gay activist whose picture recently appeared in an anti-gay newspaper under the headline 'Hang Them,' was beaten to death in his home, Ugandan police said on Thursday."
The President speaks in Wisconsin:
Here's the Los Angeles Times report of Obama's visit to Manitowoc, Wisconsin yesterday. AND here's the AP report. New York Timesreport on President Obama's trip to Wisconsin. Video above. ...
... Politico Related: "White House officials will travel across the country in the days after President Obama’s State of the Union speech in an effort to promote some of its key themes.... Obama [is] visiting Wisconsin and Vice President Biden [is] heading to Indiana." New York Times story here.
The main page for the commission's 633-page report is here.
Sewell Chan of the New York Times, January 25: "The 2008 financial crisis was an 'avoidable' disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a Congressional inquiry. The government commission that investigated the financial crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations [Clinton & Bush II], the and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors, and risky bets on securities backed by the loans. ...
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