What politics can do, other than enriching the rich

What the hell were all the previous New York mayors doing?

I’ve been to New York several times, and found it wonderful. Has Mamdami made it even better?

The message that hits hardest is the conclusion.

Mayor Mamdani is proof that if your political representatives don’t fix stuff, strengthen your community and make people’s lives better it is simply and only because
THEY DO NOT WANT TO

Look at Mamdami. Look at Trump. Look at Mamdami. Look at Trump again. You ought to wonder what the President is doing.

We’re safe right now

You should find this image of the location of rich people’s planes soothing and reassuring.

It’s part of an Apocalypse Early Warning Tracker. The idea is that if trouble is coming, you should look at what the rich people — you know, the ones who practice insider trading and have tentacles in the government — are doing.

The site isn’t your run-of-the-mill private plane tracker. The system pulls from publicly available aviation data, specifically ADS-B signals, which broadcast an aircraft’s position, speed, and altitude in real time. By tracking around 11,000 private and business jets and comparing the number airborne at any given moment against historical norms, the site assigns an alert level from 1 to 5. A normal day hovers at 1. A sudden spike, five standard deviations above the baseline, suggests some s—t is going down.

The alert level is at 1 right now. Good news: Elon Musk isn’t scrambling to get to his secret, skull-shaped lair right now.

This is where we’re at

A scientist has been denied access to his lab…because he supported his Chinese students.

A faculty member at Indiana University (IU), who has sharply criticized the government’s recent prosecution of several Chinese scientists accused of smuggling biological materials into the United States, has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders.

IU plant microbiologist Roger Innes says the move Thursday evening is the latest instance of retaliation for a letter he wrote last fall on behalf of Yunqing Jian, a plant scientist postdoc at the University of Michigan who had pled guilty to smuggling biological material and making false statements. The letter to Jian’s attorney, intended to be used at her sentencing, argued that what the Chinese postdoc had transported was not dangerous, but she was still ultimately deported. Her conviction triggered an investigation of Youhuang Xiang, a Chinese postdoc in Innes’ lab, that led to Xiang also pleading guilty last month to smuggling loops of DNA known as plasmids. He was also deported.

Oh no, never criticize the US government.

This sounds like overreach by government agents trying desperately to find excuses to deport Chinese scientists, and taking out an American scientist as collateral damage. If I had foreign students, I would defend them without question, but apparently that will get you shut down in America.

I would love to know the rationale for excluding the PI from the lab, even if his post-docs were guilty of importing nefarious plants. Do they suspect him of plotting to attack the US from his lab in Indiana with evil weeds from China?

Interesting touch: the chair of Innes department is Armin Moczek, an eco-evo-devo guy I know of. He’s going to be watering Innes’ plants while he’s locked out.

Free speech…unless you criticize the Gaza genocide

Derek R. Peterson, a professor of East African history at the University of Michigan, delivered a speech to the graduating class. It was a nice speech. He praised the activists on campus, and the students cheered.

Sing for the students of the Black Action Movement, whose members demanded a curriculum that would reflect the experience and identity of black people in this country.

Sing for the pro-Palestinian student activities who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The greatness of this institution does not only rest on the shoulders and on the accomplishments of our student athletes who deserve all the congratulations we can offer them.

It was honest, accurate, acknowledged student activists, and didn’t demean any of the people in the crowd. Except…hoo boy, it enraged Zionists and Republicans and Israeli donors to the university. The response was ridiculously over the top.

The same day, the university’s president, Domenico Grasso, issued a public apology, saying the comments were inappropriate and do not represent our institutional position.

We regret the pain this has caused on a day devoted to celebration and accomplishment, Grasso said, adding that Peterson’s speech deviated from the remarks he had shared before the ceremony.

The swift apology did not stop some Republican officials, including Florida Sen. Rick Scott, from calling for the school to be stripped of federal funding. A Republican member of the Board of Regents, which governs the public university, also hinted at possible discipline for the professor. The prominent Israeli-American investor Adam Milstein urged Jewish people to halt any donations to the school.

This is madness. Are they claiming that there is no unjust and inhumane war in Gaza? It’s ongoing. People are starving, they’re being shot by the IDF, their homes are being bombed and bulldozed. Professor Peterson said no lie. Is the institutional position pro genocide? Peterson has made an excellent reply to the hysterical nonsense.

I have respect for Regent Hubbard and her colleagues: theirs is not an easy job, and we here at Michigan benefit from their leadership.

I would however urge Regent Hubbard to review the comments I actually made at yesterday’s commencement. It should not be controversial to have one’s “heart opened to the inhumanity and injustice of Israel’s war in Gaza”, which is what I credited activists with doing. Having an open heart to other people’s suffering is a fundamental human virtue. It is a quality that I hope we teach our students, whatever their political posture might be.

So I am mystified about what I have done to earn Regent Hubbard’s ire. I have – like many of us here in Michigan – been convicted by the evidence of human suffering in Gaza; and I credit my awareness of that to pro-Palestinian activists. That is why I gave the speech that I did. On a day meant to honor students for their accomplishments, I thought it important that we would honor the student activists who have, over the course of time, pushed the institution toward justice.

The University has taken down the commencement video. But here is my talk, if you’d like to hear the whole of it. As you will see, it is a talk about the salience of student activism in this institution’s long history.

Allow me to add, if I may:

The idea that graduations should be apolitical is ridiculous. Michigan is not a finishing school for polite young men and women. Our students are not wilting flowers. They have just finished their degrees at the foremost public university in the country. They can handle controversy.

They do not need sentimental, cloying nostalgia. They need encouragement to face a flawed and unjust world head on, using the tools we’ve given them: critical reasoning, careful research, sympathy for the oppressed.

That is why I spoke as I did. If parents want sentimental graduation ceremonies, perhaps they should send their kids to a different institution. Here at UM we teach our students to face controversies, not run away from them. That’s what being the leaders and the best is about.”

There are a lot of people pushing the idea that a university should be apolitical; they are typically the kind of craven cowards who want to maintain the status quo, no matter how intolerable it might be. Alternatively, they have a political agenda which they want to promote by silencing critics, and they are backed by wealthy and influential supporters who do not question the vicious militants who want to carry out an ethnic cleansing in Israel.

I am shocked by the authoritarian, anti-free-speech actions taken by the University of Michigan and others (what the hell does Rick Scott have to do with Michigan?) who are loudly screeching about their intent to persecute Derek Peterson and the faculty and students of the University of Michigan.

We really need to kick these weird Zionist fanatics out of power.

A handful of students at U.S. universities also faced discipline in 2025 for seeking to highlight pro-Palestinian issues at graduation ceremonies, including a graduate of New York University whose diploma was withheld for criticizing Israel in a speech.

Expressing criticism in a speech is pretty much the definition of free speech, and those creepy zealots are the real opponents of freedom.

NO KINGS.

This photo is disgusting. Trump is no king, even if he has royal delusions.

I thought that was bad, but then I read the speech Trump gave to welcome King Charles. It’s a lot of florid nonsense written by a very bad speechwriter.

Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed. Before we ever proclaimed our independence, Americans carried within us the rarest of gifts: moral courage, and it came from a small but mighty kingdom from across the sea. For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men, women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride, and that’s what it is: glory, destiny, and pride.

The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.

Notice the white nationalist theme; America is a nation of British, Anglo-Saxon people, and that’s what makes us great. Never mind all those other people who built the country, it was English destiny that forged this nation. Never mind the principles of representative democracy.

Yuck.

Anyone want to bet that Stephen Miller was the author? Total Nazi shit.

Suspicious!

We have a president who is notorious for openly despising journalists. For years, he has been shunning the White House Correspondents Dinner, where, in the past, some speakers have mocked him, and where he would be surrounded by people who write rude things about him. He finally plans to attend. Gunshots ring out, secret service agents rush in, quickly bundle the politicians out, and the whole event was cancelled.

Dog help me, I’m suspicious that the police-led shutdown of the event was the whole point. I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist, but it was all too pat — the establishment was looking for a pretext, and they found one. No one was hurt, they had a fun kerfuffle, and this year’s WHCD was silenced while the administration gets to claim persecution.

Afterwards, the president said nothing about how there are too many guns too freely available — instead, he spoke to the press about how this justifies his ballroom, which would be more secure and safe.

I hate thinking this way, but this country feels like it’s built on money, lies, and cheap stagecraft right now.

What a waste of an evening

The White House Correspondents Dinner is happening tonight, featuring remarks by the president himself. I won’t bother listening, because not only do I despise Trump, but it’s a room full of sycophants who have, with rare exceptions, enabled him.

I think Michelle Wolf had the perfect comment:


Comedian Michelle Wolf’s joke at the 2018 WHCD
resonates more today: “I think what no one in this
room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of
you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or
college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s
helped you sell your papers and your books and your
TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re
profiting off of him.”

Revealing photos

Two presidential photo ops:

The photographer who caught that one will be shot later today.

The subject for that one is the Georgia women’s tennis team. Can you tell? They’re the ones tucked away in back, behind the old white men in suits with garish red ties.

You now know everything you need to know about the current administration.

Failing upward

Remember Devin Nunes? He’s the guy who sued a parody account, Devin Nunes Cow for $250 million (I’ve seen that number before — it seems to be a standard ridiculous number used in lawsuits by members of the Trump administration.) He lost. As a member of the Trump coven, though, he couldn’t really lose, and he was appointed to be CEO of Truth Social, the absurd far right social media platform our president uses to broadcast “Truths”.

Alas, the poor man is now stepping down from his lofty position. Don’t feel sorry for him, though, because despite the catastrophic financial losses behind Truth Social, Nunes has been cleaning up.

After soaring shortly before Trump’s re-election in November 2024, stock in the company plunged 67%, wiping out more than $6 billion in investor wealth.
…
Since it went public two years ago, Trump Media has lost more than $1.1 billion. Nunes got total compensation of $47 million in 2024, the last year for which figures are available.

$47 million! In one year! For running a non-viable social media platform!

You know, I’m retiring one year from now, and my wife and I are both concerned about the dramatic drop in our income starting in May 2027. My plan right now is to get a cushy sinecure with some large failing company — a job I’m not qualified to handle, but that therefore cannot demand much work from me — and then retire again after a year or so, once I’ve got a few million dollars. I would never ever have any money worries if I had a $47 million nest egg, which would keep me in grand style from now until my inevitable demise.

Does anyone know of any job openings in the overpaid-with-minimal-duties category?

Or do I need to be Republican with connections to the most corrupt administration in American history?