Category: Political issues

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Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The lead story in the New York Times and elsewhere this morning is about how candidates backed by Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor, won their primaries for New York City congressional seats. This, the Times writes, “sent shock waves through the Democratic Party.”

Horse wash.

There are 535 members of the U.S. Congress, and we are talking only about voters in New York City, who are some of the most liberal voters in the country. I don’t see what is so shocking about the idea that members of Congress should represent their districts.

But the New York Times’ spin is much worse than that. The Times’ story reveals how hard the mainstream media work to marginalize common-sense liberal values as though they are radical. The Times felt obliged to include a quote like this one:

“Republicans will very quickly seek to elevate, as they always do, the most radical voices in the Democratic Party,” said Howard Wolfson, a former head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm and a top adviser to Michael R. Bloomberg. “And after tonight, they will have more radical Democrats to choose from.”

Radical, my foot. There is nothing radical about the political values of these supposedly far-left candidates. The media always write about political conflict and rarely about what “far left” Democrats actually want. If they did, they wouldn’t be able to pass it off as radical and far left. Even worse, if the media told people what these “far left” candidates actually want, then more people might vote for them. Here’s a list:

• Higher taxes on high incomes

• Higher taxes on corporations

• Expansion of federal funding for housing, health care, and child care

• Higher minimum wage

• Large-scale investment in renewable energy

• Opposition to fossil fuel expansion

• Stonger emphasis on human rights in foreign policy

• Restrictions on federal surveillance

• Stronger ethics rules in Congress

• Diplomatic rather than military-first foreign policy

Why is it so shocking that people in New York would vote for these things? Our political and media ecosystems regard these ideas as radical. These are the same political and media ecosystems that laundered, sane-washed, and normalized right-wing political values right up to the edge of overt fascism. Why is it radical to start undoing what right-wing government for and by the oligarchy has done to this country?

If we really have a national government, including Democrats, that regards values like those in the list above as dangerously radical, then Mamdani is right. Only the Guardian was brave enough to quote Mamdani:

“The old politics that got us into this crisis is not the politics that’s going to get us out of this crisis.”

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Source: Wikimedia Commons

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Ezra Klein triggered my snake-in-the-grass detector long ago. It was clear that he’d sold out to someone, but previously I thought that it was only New York Times management that he’d sold out to, because the New York Times requires both-sidesism in its progressive commentary, and of course Klein wants to keep his job and his elite perch.

But now we know that it’s much darker than that. Yesterday, Wired magazine came out with a horrifying piece about Peter Thiel’s secret “Dialog” society, in which the names of its secret members were leaked. Ezra Klein is on the list, along with other elite snakes such as Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, Jared Kushner, Elon Musk, and even some old snakes like Grover Norquist. The Wikipedia article includes some of the names.

The Wired piece is Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel’s Secretive ‘Dialog’ Society. It is an invitation-only group. They are all snake aristocracy, and they all know each other.

There is much about Ezra Klein that is irksome, starting with his attitude. Certainly he is smart, but his narcissistic belief that he is ever-so-much smarter than everyone else oozes like pus into everything he writes. His lofty insights, he thinks, are eminently elevated above anything the rest of us common folk can see. So he condescends to point it all out for us, rub our silly noses in it, and then reframe the dialogue.

His grand discovery of the “abundance” theme was one of the things he tried to sell us — Reagan-style supply-side economics warmed over. Too many people fell for it. His brand of liberalism is to save liberals by berating them and bamboozling them. Just think of the gall it takes to repackage anti-regulatory business agendas and right-wing abundance theology as just the thing to save the Democratic Party.

The next Dialog retreat, by the way, is scheduled for August in Ireland.

It will be interesting to see whether the New York Times will be bothered to be embarrassed by this. We stand to learn something about how New York Times management thinks these days.

According to Wired, it was a Swiss hacktivist, who, acting on a tip, found the data and leaked it. This emphasizes how important it is to use every means possible to surveil the global elite to try to track, and expose, what they are up to and how they coordinate their strategy. It’s no surprise that people like Peter Thiel, Jared Kushner, Rick Warren, Ted Cruz, and Tulsi Gabbard are on the list. That we now know that the likes of Ezra Klein and Jonathan Haidt are on the list is a huge breakthrough in open-source intelligence. Some of us saw through Klein’s and Haidt’s disguised agendas long ago. Now, it is to be hoped, nobody (other than Republicans) will ever again take seriously anything they say.

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Graphic by ChatGPT 5.5. Click here for high-resolution version.

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Hillary Clinton called it “the vast right-wing conspiracy.” That’s exactly what it is. I should hasten to add that it is not a conspiracy theory, though, because it’s all out in the open now where we can see it. Still, the right-wing elite are as secretive and covert as possible, so it’s a constant challenge to uncover as much as we can of what they’re up to and bring it out into the open.

Once upon a time, so-called conservatives could lie to us about what they really want, mouthing noble-sounding lies about limited government, fiscal responsibility, and personal liberty. But only a tiny handful of them were actually serious about that. (Liz Cheney, please take a bow.)

Now they have revealed what they really want and have wanted all along — a cruel and Stalinist chief executive, a legal system that does not apply to elites but which can be brutally enforced against the little people by militarized police, extreme (and untaxed) wealth, the destruction of institutions that support democracy and expertise, and elite right-wing rule that cannot be challenged by the little people, whether through law, protest, or elections.

What a bunch of nasty people! Part of the work that must be done is helping those who have been deceived by them to see what they really are and what they really want. That’s much easier to see now than it used to be.

I was impressed at Simon Schama’s putdown of J.D. Vance’s outrageous remarks at a D-day ceremony in France. Schama called Vance’s speech “a special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self‑importance.” He called Vance “a comic book nobody.”

I’m also thinking of the DNC’s response to Stephen Miller’s vile insult of James Talarico: “Shut up you ugly fuck.”

We don’t have to choose between the high road and the low road. There are no noble terms with which to describe the lowest of the low — the comic book nobodies and ugly fucks who want to own the world and treat the rest of us like cattle.

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A palace in a Boeing 747 for free? Ha! Source: YouTube

The San Antonio Express-News reported last week that modifications are almost complete in the “flying palace” that Qatar gave to Trump last year: Trump’s Qatari dream jet sets course for Air Force One duty by July 4.

The ultra-rich who already own a big chunk of the planet and who intend to own and control the rest of it all fly around the world in private jets. Increasingly they are contriving to keep these flights secret, but to some degree they can still be tracked.

The Washington Post had a fascinating story last week on how someone built a system for tracking “business jets,” monitoring for a situation in which a large number of these jets converge in one place. The story is Want to track the apocalypse? One theory: Follow the billionaires’ jets.

That’s a brilliant idea. That apocalypse-watch system avoids intimidation by not tracking any oligarch in particular. You may remember the case of the young guy who was targeted by Elon Musk after the guy tracked Musk’s jet and reported the jet’s moves on social media.

All this gave me an idea. I have been using Claude Code to write programs for me, and it has done a fine job. For example, I now have a searchable database of the complete works of Sir Walter Scott, as well as a searchable database of Scott’s letters.

I asked Claude if it would be feasible to track a bunch of planes belonging to super-rich evildoers, log the data into a database, and use that database as a tool for open-source intelligence, which is the only kind of intelligence available to those of us who are poor but who crave to understand what is going on in the world. (I am hardly the only person doing this kind of thing.)

Claude said sure. The work took about two days of Claude time. Claude Code built the system for me in 14 steps — among them acquiring the “tail numbers” and other information about jets to track, creating a database schema, finding a free source of ADS-B tracking data, capturing the data and poking it into the database, and building interfaces to query the database using a web page and an RSS feed.

My system has been running now for only three days. It will take a while to build a strong database containing some very useful history. Most of those planes don’t fly every day. But even after three days, it’s getting interesting.

I don’t have any data yet on American tech billionaires. I’m not sure yet whether that’s because they haven’t flown in the past three days or they have a means of keeping their ADS-B tracking data out of public databases. (I won’t try to describe ADS-B here except to say that every plane of any size is required to constantly transmit a stream of data about its location, altitude, etc. Thousands of ground receivers collect this data. It’s perfectly legal. It’s how you can go on line to see whether the plane you have to meet at the airport is going to be on time. It’s how I know that an Air France flight from Atlanta to Paris often passes right over my house at 9 p.m.)

I am seeing, though, a great deal of flying about by foreign royalty and oligarchs — Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Russia in particular. For example, what does Qatar, a tiny but super-rich oil country ruled by a royal family, have to do with China? I have no idea, but a Qatari Airbus landed in Beijing on Monday, a couple of days before Trump arrives. Is that merely a coincidence? I don’t know, but one of the things to watch for is the sneaky ways global oligarchs meet up to coordinate their moves. The database that Claude built for me has some special logic to monitor for convergences. As for Qatar and Trump, it has long been obvious that they’re trading favors.

As much as I would like to, I can’t put this database on line, because it would attract the wrong kind of attention. But this is one of the ways I try to watch a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere.

A screen capture from my database built by Claude

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Update:

Source: Flightradar24

This morning my flight tracking database reported that a plane owned by the U.S. Department of Justice, and believed to be Kash Patel’s plane, was over the North Atlantic. I verified this with FlightRadar24, which says the plane is en route from Richmond, Virginia, to Ankara, Turkey. Why would Patel be going to Turkey? A Google search doesn’t find anything written about that. Patel was just dragged over the coals by a Senate committee for his promiscuous travel at taxpayer expense.

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The New York Times said that King Charles’ rebuke of Donald Trump was “subtle.” I don’t think it was subtle at all. Rather, it was a historic example of how the English language, in the hands of those who know that language well, can beat the living daylights out of fools and be perfectly civil about it.

I think it was subtle, though, how Charles signaled in his opening joke that that’s what he intended to do. He referred to Oscar Wilde’s line, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.” I can’t decide whether the Republicans in the chamber realized that they were being horse-whipped or whether they figured out that the politeness of Charles’ diplomatic language gave them plausible deniability.

Democrats were quick to rise to their feet and applaud when Charles upbraided the Trump administration. Charles upbraided even the Republicans in Congress, for not restraining executive power. Republicans, though, stood and applauded slowly and reluctantly. They had no choice, politically. How could they, as mere tyrant-enabling boot-scraping lickspittles, stonewall Charles the Third, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His other Realms and Territories, King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith?

Charles took a lot of heat in Britain for even coming to Washington, out of concern that it could be interpreted as some degree of approval of Trump. But that’s not how it went.

I wonder who wrote that speech. Charles, no doubt, was very much involved in deciding what he would say, not least because of his emphasis on the environment. If you have not watched the speech, it’s very much worth the time. It’s on YouTube.

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Here you can see what Charles really thinks of Trump’s coarseness, as Charles almost wrestles with Trump to try to pull his hand away.

https://x.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/2048860957993001251/video/1

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It has happened over and over. A population of fools falls for the lies and promises of a charismatic right-wing authoritarian. Slowly and painfully the slow learners realize that they’ve been had, but by then getting rid of a corrupted, criminalized government may not be an easy matter. Just ask Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, Spain under Franco, Portugal under Salazar and Caetano, Greece under the Colonels, Argentina under the military junta, Chile under Pinochet. Now Hungary under Orbán is history. Still to fully learn their lesson and throw off a criminal government: Russia under Putin and America under Trump.

It looks to me like an iron rule with no real exceptions: Right-wingery always leads to ruin, remorse, and revolution. Hungary is incredibly fortunate to be able to have their revolution with a lawful election. It remains to be seen whether the United States will be able to do that. Orbán was able to stay in power through institutional capture, patronage, propaganda, legal harassment, and intimidation. Orbán was not very violent. Trump, on the other hand (like Putin), is entirely willing to use violence to get what he wants.

The extreme right is often good at producing spectacle, enemies, and temporary, triumphal euphoria for those who are susceptible. But the extreme right cannot, anywhere under any circumstances, produce anything that is durable and decent.

Hungary’s Péter Magyar is troublingly conservative. But at least he promises to restore democracy, turn Hungary away from Putin, and rejoin Europe. If he doesn’t do that, I suspect that, given what they’ve so recently learned, the people of Hungary will catch on pretty quick.

At least we’re getting better and better laughs out of the blunders of the Trump regime. Their cluelessness in not comprehending that a visit by Vance would help Orbán lose the election was hilarious, as were the stories about Vance and Jared Kushner stomping out of Pakistan after the Iranians made fools of them. And then there was Melania’s press conference, which Saturday Night Live had a lot of fun with.

And then there’s this (⬇︎), apparently intended to keep evangelicals on board. I shudder to think what it must be like to be so stupid.

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Pete Hegseth. Source: Wikimedia Commons

I had a nice email this morning asking if everything is OK since I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks. Yup… Here in the woods everything is fine. But some days it’s an effort to manage the rage at what’s happening in the world. Rage doesn’t make good commentary, nor is it good for mental health. So back to the garden with me, or the kitchen, or the computer.

Plus there’s not much I can add when I think that the media and our public intellectuals are getting things right. Heather Cox Richardson and Paul Krugman, in their daily Substack posts, are doing a fantastic job of writing the first draft of history. That should be the New York Times’ job. The Times, though, can’t just come right out and say plainly that what we are dealing with not only is fascism, but also complete idiots and psychopaths. Still, reading between the lines, it’s obvious that the New York Times staff now understand perfectly well what we’re up against, though they were a year or two (or more) late, and they continue to do a lot of sanewashing.

Part of the rage — you probably feel it too — is that we as civilized people have no choice but to stand back and watch as this pig circus of pluperfect idiots, who understand nothing other than domination and destruction, blunder around the world destroying things and killing people at enormous taxpayer expense. And because stupid people don’t know they’re stupid, they believe themselves chosen to instruct the rest of us on moral excellence. Just listen to this prayer by by the odious Pete Hegseth:

“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter for their day has come, the time of their punishment. Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind.

“Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield, protect the innocent and blameless in their midst. Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse that evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them. For the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, King over all kings and amen.”

I have to believe that eventually we not only will remove these people from power, we’ll also hold them accountable. But it isn’t just them. It’s also the 77 million idiot Americans who voted for them. Fixing that kind of dumb will take generations.

What was it he said? I’m tempted to quote him, even at the risk of indulging my rage:

Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind.

That level of depravity and the blind projection of what he is onto others is almost incomprehensible. But here we are.