Atectonic shift has occurred in American politics over the last month, beginning with Chris Rabb’s victory in Pennsylvania and now culminating in New York. The Democratic party has been hit by a leftward tidal wave.
Rabb’s win was a warning shot – a socialist winning in a seat that had been an establishment stronghold. Two weeks later, the left won across Los Angeles. Two weeks after that, the left swept the elections in the District of Columbia. And on Tuesday night, the left dominated New York City in an overwhelming display of force: progressive Brad Lander took out incumbent centrist Dan Goldman, socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier shocked incumbent Adriano Espaillat, and socialist Claire Valdez easily dispatched Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso.
“I’ve got some breaking news: We’re winning,” the Florida gubernatorial candidate David Jolly observed at a recent Democratic picnic near Fort Lauderdale. Though Mr. Jolly is a mild-mannered lawyer with suburban-dad vibes, the crowd erupted as if a rock star had just screamed that his biggest hit was coming next. “I know, that’s crazy,” he continued. “But this is a blue wave!”
It does sound a bit crazy, when Florida Republicans have won seven consecutive governor’s races, and now hold every statewide office along with supermajorities in both houses of the State Legislature. But it’s true that state Democrats are on a roll. With the costs of living soaring and President Trump’s approval rating slumping, they’ve flipped the Miami mayor’s office, a long-shot State Senate seat and even the State House district covering Mar-a-Lago.
3/. Do you recycle? Oh the trauma......
The Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren has warned that corporate mergers approved by the Trump administration – including a pending deal that would put two of America’s largest news outlets under the control of a family sympathetic to the president – could be undone by a future administration.
“After 2028, we’ll have new players in Washington, and everyone who’s engaged in this merger frenzy right now is aware of that,” Warren said in an interview.
“The deals that are being cut today are occurring in the shadow of a coming political tsunami of anger against these giant corporations that think they can mow through one industry after another and run up prices and suck out profits and never be held accountable.”
“By 2028” – the year of the next presidential election – “they may find out they have badly miscalculated,” Warren said.
At the moment, of course, a resurgent fossil-funded right wing has killed off that landmark legislation, and done all it can to destroy clean energy in the U.S.; America is out of the global climate talks; around the world various strongmen have made protest far more difficult. The new authoritarians have managed to intimidate many of the centrist pols in much of the world who are no longer willing to talk much about “climate;” indeed, there’s a closet industry of pundits and consultants advising them not to.
Noelle McEntee wants you to know that wills and trusts are not just for old, rich people.
“You don’t need a butler and a wrought iron fence to need an estate plan,” she says. “If you have anything and you have people you love, even if what you have is very small, it still matters.”
McEntee is the co-founder of Legado, an online platform where you can set up a will or trust and detail other end-of-life wishes. The marketing maven-turned entrepreneur started the company in 2023 after her uncle died without a will, leaving his longtime partner unsure whether she still owned their shared assets – or even if she could stay in their home.
“That made me realize how backwards this process can be,” McEntee said. She wanted to build an inclusive estate planning business in step with the evolving nature of family: more people are forgoing marriage, fewer are having children and more relationships don’t fit traditional molds.
https://www.theguardian.com/
When the pandemic came to an end, many people who had been working from home assumed they would be allowed to maintain that habit at least a few days a week. But today in the U.S., a third of companies have forced everyone back to the office full time and have banned remote and hybrid work.
Some leaders say they insist on full-time in-person work because it boosts productivity, despite clear evidence that it does not. Others claim it’s about collaboration, creativity or culture. Our new research reveals that the objection to any work from home is more likely to be driven by something else entirely: ego.
I was a few months shy of my seventh birthday the first time I saw looting up close. We were living in Nairobi, Kenya, in an apartment complex near the downtown shopping district. All of a sudden, people started streaming back to our building with armloads of brand-new stuff. I watched in awe as a man balanced a small refrigerator on his head, blood pouring out of a gash above his eyes.
“All the shops are open and everything is free,” I declared to my mother. “Can we go?”
We did not go. The shops weren’t open, exactly. A group of disgruntled military officers had attempted to overthrow the Kenyan government, then led by a budding kleptocratic autocrat named Daniel arap Moi. Amid the chaos, some of the Kenyan underclass had decided to pry open the gates of shops across the country and help themselves to the goods inside. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/
Ah yes, House of the Dragon! Unlikely as it is that a megabucks Game of Thrones prequel with a blue-chip cast could be forgettable, in its first two seasons HotD did not help itself, with the first either killing off its best characters too soon or recasting them to accommodate bewildering time jumps, and the second building and building to nothing. It returns for a third run without much wind in its dragon wings.
Breathe a fiery sigh of relief, then, at the news that this show has found its focus. The start of season three is a fine epic, balancing big battles with sharp two-hander scenes where dominance shifts and fatal personality flaws are forced out. Add the odd new face and a blast of comic relief here and there and you have proper Thrones.
May you be reunited in the world to come with your ancestors, who were all socialist garment workers.
May you have a large store, and have it all dismantled by vulture capitalists.
May you grow so rich that your widow’s second husband is thrilled they repealed the estate tax.
May you feast every day on chopped liver with onions, chicken soup with dumplings, baked carp with horseradish, braised meat with vegetable stew, latkes, and may every bite of it be contaminated with E. Coli, because the government gutted the E.P.A.
May you sell everything and retire to Florida just as global warming makes it uninhabitable.
May you have a rare disease and need an operation that only one surgeon in the world, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, is able to perform. And may he be unable to perform it because he doesn’t take your insurance. And may that Nobel Laureate be your son.
May you live to a ripe old age, and may the only people who come visit you be Mormon missionaries.
May your state outlaw the morning-after pill the day before your
daughter comes home from the NFTY (North American Federation of Temple Youth) convention.
May your son be elected President, and may you have no idea what you did with his goddamn birth certificate
May the state of Arizona expand their definition of "suspected illegal immigrants" to "anyone who doesn't hunt.”
May you live to a hundred and twenty without Social Security or Medicare.
May you grow like an onion with your head in the ground, and then may the ground be fracked.
May you make a fortune, and lose it all in one of Sheldon Adelson's casinos.
May your child give his Bar Mitzvah speech on the genius of Ayn Rand.
May your insurance company decide constipation is a pre-existing condition.
May God give you a daughter-in-law who is as kind as she is beautiful, as patient as she is rich, as wise as she is devoted, a virtuous woma in every way. And then may a ballot initiative invalidate her marriage to your Rebecca.
May the secretary your husband is schtupping depend on Planned Parenthood for her birth control.
It's tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won't drink from my glass!
Last night my wife met me at the front door. She was wearing a sexy negligee. The only trouble was, she was coming home.
A girl phoned me and said, 'Come on over. There's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was home!
A hooker once told me she had a headache.
If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all.
I was making love to this girl and she started crying. I said, 'Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?' She said, 'No, I hate myself now.'
I knew a girl so ugly... they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders.
My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.
I'm so ugly I stuck my head out the window and got arrested for mooning.
The other day I came home and a guy was jogging, naked. I asked him, 'Why?' He said, 'Because you came home early.'
My wife's such a bad cook, the dog begs for Alka-Seltzer.
I know I'm not sexy. When I put my underwear on I can hear the Fruit-of-the- Loom guys giggling.
My wife is such a bad cook, in my house we pray after the meal.
My wife likes to talk to me during sex; last night she called me from a hotel.
My family was so poor that if I hadn't been born a boy, I wouldn't have had anything to play with.
It's been a rough day. I got up this morning ... put a shirt on and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom.
I was such an ugly kid! ...When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.
I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and radio.
I was such an ugly baby that my mother never breastfed me. She told me that she only liked me as a friend.
I'm so ugly my father carried around a picture of the kid who came with his wallet.
When I was born, the doctor came into the waiting room and said to my father, "I'm sorry. We did everything we could, but he pulled through anyway."
