Mediaboss Marketing

To the editor: After four years of sycophantic devotion to President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence followed the Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021, as he was required to do. We credit him for that. (Following the law on Jan. 6 was the least Pence could do. Why are we praising him? Opinion, March 14)

Two years later, Pence has expressed anger and assigned blame to Trump, but as columnist Jonah Goldberg points out, he has refused interviews by the Justice Department and the House Jan. 6 committee. Why would Pence want to protect Trump, who put his familys lives in danger on Jan. 6?

Goldberg knows that making political calculations is part of running for office. I believe that Pence anticipated succeeding Trump. He has been trying to position himself as the least antagonistic to pro- and anti-Trumpers, and favored by independents.

We are a divided nation that needs honest, transparent, non-discriminatory public servants. I dont see Pence like that.

Gilbert H. Skopp, Calabasas

..

To the editor: Goldberg is choosing not to see the obvious. Our country is divided into three voting factions, not two: the MAGA crowd, the Democrats and the undecideds, who these days seem to include voters we used to call Republicans.

No candidate can win the presidency with the votes of only one of these groups.

Republicans running for president must please both the MAGA crowd and some undecideds. This requires them to say things they dont really believe, as well as things they really do believe.

The guessing game, particularly for the undecideds, lies in figuring out which statements the candidates believe, and which ones they dont. There is no chance the candidates will actually tell them, or will be consistent in what they say, because that would mean winning some votes, but losing others.

June Ailin Sewell, Marina del Rey

..

To the editor: How is Goldberg sure that Pence wanted to do the right thing on Jan. 6?

I remember reading multiple stories about Pence asking conservative leaders if he had any power to throw the election to Trump. Former Vice President Dan Quayle was reported as responding that Pence didnt have the authority to change the election results.

A lifelong Democrat, I am shocked to find myself thankful for Quayle, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for standing up for the truth.

Only in the last two decades has the GOP devolved into a win-at-all-costs party. God help us all if it takes over the entire federal government again.

Cathy Gregory, Lompoc

..

To the editor: I was very relieved that Pence decided to do the right thing on Jan. 6. Since then, I have been disgusted by his cowardice.

No husband or father that I know, whose wife and child were put in danger on Jan. 6, would have so little to say starting Jan. 7. Pences reluctance to talk to the Justice Department or the House Jan. 6 committee has been very telling to me about his lack of character.

Donna Henley, Chino

More:
Letters to the Editor: Mike Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6, and ... - Los Angeles Times

Thirteen years ago today, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, a bill that has been called the most important piece of legislation since Medicare and Medicaid. Since 2010, The ACA has given more than 40 millionAmericans access to health care, expanded Medicaid to 40 states to cover 21 million low-income adults under 65, and protected as many as 133 million with pre-existing conditions from losing their health insurance.

To mark the anniversary of the ACA, were collecting stories of how the law has affected Americans lives share your story.

As proud as he is of the ACA, President Obama never intended for the law to remain as is. During a speech in the final months of his presidency, he called the ACA, a first step and compared it to buying a starter home.you hope that over time you make some improvements.

In the past year alone, the Affordable Care Act has been expanded at the federal and state levels, allowing for more Americans to access quality healthcare without worrying about going bankrupt. To mark the anniversary we took a look back at how the law has evolved over the past year, and a new report that shows how the ACA is continuing to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in care.

Affordable Care Act Subsidies Expanded Through 2025

For families living in or near the poverty threshold, the ACAs premium subsidies make quality care more affordable by reducing the cost of health insurance based on family size and household income. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has extended these premium subsidies to 2025, keeping out-of-pocket premium costs from rising for the nearly 13 million Americans who benefit from them.

Fix of the Affordable Care Acts family glitch makes millions more Americans eligible for premium subsidies

Last April, President Obama appeared with President Biden at the White House to talk about the family glitch that made health care more expensive for many people families with children. In the fall, the Internal Revenue Service updated their interpretation of an administrative rule in the Affordable Care Act. Since 2013, the rule had based a familys eligibility for premium subsidies on whether employer-sponsored insurance was affordable for just the employee, without factoring in costs for the whole family.

According to a KFF estimate, 5.1 million Americans, primarily children, fell into this regulatory loophole meaning they were either uninsured or their families were paying more than they could afford.

South Dakota votes to expand Medicaid through referendum

Last fall, South Dakotans approved a referendum that would allow more than 40,000 South Dakotans access to affordable and high-quality health care through Medicaid. This makes South Dakota one of seven states where voters, not legislators, have approved the expansion of Medicaid.

Bipartisan Agreement makes Medicaid expansion likely in North Carolina

Lawmakers of both parties came together this spring to support the expansion of Medicaid in North Carolina. Should the agreement become law, it will expand access to coverage to another 600,000 North Carolinians and make North Carolina the 41st state, including Washington, D.C. to have expanded Medicaid under The Affordable Care Act over the past decade.

New Report Showcases How ACA continues to reduce disparities in health care

A new report released this week from the Commonwealth Fund has documented the role the ACA has played in reducing racial and ethnic disparities in health care. As the report notes, Since its passage in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped cut the U.S. uninsured rate nearly in half while significantly reducing racial and ethnic disparities in both insurance coverage and access to care particularly in states that expanded their Medicaid programs.

While the ACA has been responsible for much progress over the past 13 years, more work remains. Nearly 30 million Americans continue to lack health care coverage and 10 states have no plans to expand Medicaid. President Obama has always believed that access to health care is a right, not a privilege building on the progress of the ACA to expand care to all will require citizens to continue to pick up the baton and drive change forward.

Read more:
13 Years of the Affordable Care Act - Obama Foundation - the Obama Foundation

Former President Barack Obama speaks during a rally for Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock before the 2022 Georgia runoff. Brynn Anderson/AP

Former President Barack Obama wants states to spread the six-figure love to those without bachelor's degrees.

That's what the Harvard Law graduate suggested on Twitter this week, sharing an article by Vox reporter Rachel M. Cohen arguing that companies should end "degree inflation" a term that describes employers who instill education requirements for jobs that don't need them.

It's a practice that a number of state governments have eliminated recently. Pennsylvania's new governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, for instance, got rid of a four-year degree requirement this year for the vast majority of jobs in the state government. Over the last two months, both Alaska and Georgia states with Republican governors have taken similar steps, with an executive order in the former and pending legislation in the latter, representing an increasingly popular method of tackling the United States' persisting labor shortage with bipartisan appeal.

It's an example of "a smart policy that gets rid of unnecessary college degree requirements and reduces barriers to good paying jobs," Obama said on Twitter. "I hope other states follow suit!"

President Joe Biden shares Obama's enthusiasm for this type of policy, giving Ohio a shout-out during his State of the Union address last month. New factories in the state could offer thousands of "jobs paying $130,000 a year, and many don't require a college degree," he said.

Obama and Biden are taking aim at an enduring norm. College grads still earn more than workers with no university degree, even as Americans struggle under the weight of college debt and overall enrollment sinks across the country. Additionally, a 2017 report found that degree requirements were unnecessary for millions of jobs, and disproportionately impacted Black and Latino workers, who hold fewer degrees than their white peers.

The comments from Biden and Obama, as well as the new state laws cropping up, highlight that the country has had a difficult time addressing its labor shortage. Experts have argued that in many cases, people who have left the workforce don't want to return because their pay wouldn't be worth the amount of effort they'd have to give.

"If you were a low-wage worker, why aggressively attempt to go back to work at a lousy, low-paying job, when you can make more money collecting unemployment benefits," Daniel Alpert, a senior macroeconomics professor at Cornell University, wrote in The New York Times in 2021. "Businesses are paying tens of millions of workers too little money relative to the cost of living in this country."

Obama's comments come a few months after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed his first executive order in January 2023 removing four-year degree requirements for an estimated 65,000, or 92%, of state civil service positions.

As Cohen points out, Democrats have struggled in recent years to garner support from non-college-educated voters, especially men a group fleeing the workforce in droves.

In recent years, states have eliminated four-year degree requirements to shore up their understaffed governments, and Republican governors have led the way.

Up against some 8,600 vacancies in its executive branch in January 2022 more than any time since the Great Recession in 2008 Maryland's former Gov. Larry Hogan was the first to announce that the state would open up thousands of state government roles to workers who didn't have degrees. Alongside their college-credentialed counterparts, the state would consider candidates who obtained training through community college, military service, boot camps, and working. There are more than 70 million such Americans nationwide.

The state, which has seen an increase in vacancies amongst executive state government roles, estimated that these workers without degrees could substitute for nearly half of the state's 38,000-person workforce, according to The Bay Net.

Other states have followed suit. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced in December 2022 a "skills-first" hiring initiative eliminating a bachelor's degree requirement on 98% of the state's 1,080 government jobs, according to ABC4. Days later, Democratic Gov. Jarid Polis of Colorado ordered state agencies to transition to skills-based hiring. Arizona and Oregon have temporarily loosened degree requirements to address a teacher shortage. Georgia and Alaska are considering dropping degree requirements to fill government vacancies as well.

Correction March 20, 2023.The article has been corrected to clarify that Alaska's move was an executive order.

Loading...

Original post:
Jobs that don't require college degrees should be norm: Obama - Business Insider

Everyone is buzzing about Swarm.

In Amazon Prime Videos horror comedy (all seven episodes now streaming), Judas and the Black Messiah breakout Dominique Fishback plays Dre, a crazed fan of a Beyonc-like pop star named NiJah (Nirine S. Brown) who takes her obsession to murderous extremes. The series was co-created by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover, making his return to TV after FXs Emmy-winning Atlanta.

The dark and surreal new show has received, well, swarms of attention for its characters similarities to Beyonc and her fans, who call themselves the Beyhive.

Heres everything you need to know about the series, which co-stars Billie Eilish and is co-written by Malia Obama:

Each episode of Swarm begins with a title card that reads, Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is intentional. The show is inspired in part by an urban legend that circulated online following the release of Beyoncs 2016 album Lemonade, which hints at husband Jay-Zs alleged infidelity.

Janine Nabers (from left). Billie Eilish and Donald Glover attend the Swarm premiere Tuesday in Los Angeles.

In April 2016, when a certain visual album dropped, there was a rumor that a girl named Marissa Jackson killed herself because she realized that a certain pop star was being cheated on by her husband, Nabers said last week during a Q&A at South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, according to IndieWire. I was on a text thread with some of my Houstonian friends, and for two days we thought this was a real event.

The story was quickly debunked, but it stuck with Nabers.

When Donald pitched this idea about a Black woman whos obsessed with a pop star, I said, I know what the pilot is and ran with it.

Other online rumors and true crimes also made their way into Swarm, Nabers told Entertainment Tonight: After you see the show and you go to the internet, you will see that a lot of it holds up.

Along with Fishback, the series features a hot young cast of stars: Dres sister, Marissa, is played by Chloe Bailey, who is half of R&B duo Chloe x Halle with her sister, future The Little Mermaid star Halle Bailey. Singer/model Paris Jackson, daughter of the late Michael Jackson, portrays a stripper who befriends Dre. And seven-time Grammy winner Billie Eilish makes her acting debut as a hypnotic cult leader who interrogates Dre in a pair of teaser clips.

Eilish, who walked the red carpet at the Swarm premiere in Los Angeles, is a longtime fan of Glover. She called him one of her all-time favorite creators on her Apple Music podcast in 2020. She also brought out Glover, who goes by the stage name Childish Gambino, to perform at her concert in Inglewood, California, last December.

You may spot a notable name among the shows creative team: Malia Obama, daughter of Barack and Michelle Obama. The former presidents daughter landed her first full-time writing gig on Swarm after interning for HBOs Girls and working as a production assistant on CBS Extant.

Shes an incredible writer and artist, Nabers told People. We really wanted to give her the opportunity to get her feet wet in TV and see if this is something she wants to continue doing.

Speaking to Nerdist, Nabers called Obama a little bit of a Wikipedia page when it comes to movies, adding that she had some really wild, incredible pitches.

Glover echoed praise for Obama in an interview with Vanity Fair.

Shes really focused, and shes working really hard, Glover said. I feel like shes just somebody whos going to have really good things coming soon.

Swarm in no way tries to hide its Beyonc influences, with fictional pop star NiJah recreating almost exact images from Queen Bs Renaissance and Everything is Love eras. NiJah also hails from Beys hometown of Houston. But Nabers has played coy about whether the superstar signed off on the series.

Asked at SXSW whether Beyonc has seen the show, Nabers answered, Of course, but declined to elaborate. Reviews for Swarm have mostly been positive, and Glover told The Hollywood Reporter that he hopes Beyoncs fans are willing to go on the ride.

Beyhive, dont kill us, Glover joked. Its not that bad, its actually pretty cool!

Read the original post:
Swarm creative team includes co-writer Malia Obama - Chicago Sun-Times

Artist 'Julian Al Art' posted AI-generated images of the former politicians

Creating surreal images using artificial intelligence (AI) has become a popular trend on social media. In the past few months, diverse images of imagined people and places created using AI, have been making rounds on the internet.

Now, the latest addition to the fleet is a bunch of delightful pictures of Former American President Barak Obama and Ex German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In an Instagram post, artist 'Julian Al Art' posted AI-generated images of the two former politicians enjoying their time together on a beach after their retirement. The caption of the post reads, "Angela and Barack having an amazing beach day!"

The delightful pictures of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel after their retirement spending a day at the beach frolicking and having fun are going viral on the internet.

Take a look:

The post was shared 3 days ago and so far it has collected nearly 3,000 likes on Instagram. A user commented, "This is not only funny, but just so lovely. Two wonderfully gifted former world leaders."

Another user wrote, "This technology is getting scary by the day , deep fakes are getting perfect , we have also now ai that can create practically perfect copies of famous people voices, very soon we won't be able to trust our eyes or hears anymore because everything fake will as be as realistic as the real thing."

"Too funny! But also too good, I actually do think it would be good to put a little watermark that indicates it's a generated image mostly because people take photos from others all the time and re-post them without the original descriptions or context. Of course people can also remove watermarks but the majority of folks won't go through that effort and just want to have something to show on their social media."

"These are so fun!!! love it! with a tiny bit of faceapp a few of these might pass 99% of the public's sniff test if they weren't so hilarious," the fourth user expressed.

Waiting for response to load...

Go here to read the rest:
AI-Generated Images Of Barack Obama And Angela Merkel Enjoying Vacation On A Beach Amazes Internet - NDTV.com