Over in the UK Andy Burnham, who had been the mayor of Greater Manchester, won a byelection in the nearby constituency of Makerfield yesterday. This means that he is now an MP and thus in a position to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour party leadership and, if he wins, become the next prime minister. Indeed, that clearly has been his goal all along and the MP who had represented Makerfield resigned his seat just so as to create an opening for Burnham.

There had been some concerns that the candidate of the surging right wing Reform UK party led by Nigel Farage might take the seat away from what had once been thought to be a safe Labour seat, held by them for more than 120 years but that did not happen. Burnham won comfortably by 55% to 35%, even increasing the party’s majority from the 2024 election, which they won 45% to 32%. The new more extreme right wing party Restore Britain won just 7%, while the Conservatives, Greens, and Liberal Democrats continued their slide with 2.2%, 0.7%, and 0.4% respectively.
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Trump may have a lot of money, though for him and his greedy family it is never enough and they keep using the government to enrich themselves, but he is the textbook example of a parvenu, defined as “one that has recently or suddenly risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it.” People who have what used to be called ‘old money’ grew up with a sense that it was gauche to talk about it and especially not flamboyantly flaunt it. It was a given that everyone knew you were wealthy and you were expected to demonstrate it discreetly in understated ways, by being philanthropic, cultured, and patronizing the arts, so that the ugly origins of your wealth was obscured. Trump is the opposite, using every opportunity to tell people how rich he is, and even exaggerating so it is no surprise that old money people despise him.

While his father made a lot of money in the construction business and gave Trump a start on his his own ventures, they were from the outer boroughs of New York City, and Trump was always aware that he was not of the Manhattan elite and felt that they looked down on him. You can see this in the way that he bristles at what he perceives as even the mildest slight, and rages and insults anyone whom he thinks does not respect him. That is not how old money behaves. They feel superior to others and thus can afford to be condescending towards those they consider their social inferiors, mostly ignoring them.

But Trump craves to be accepted by the old money elites and as part of that push he moved his construction business to Manhattan and put his name in gaudy gold lettering on a building there, no doubt seeing that as his entree to the old money elites. But those snobby elites tend to look down even further at those who try too hard to join their ranks and so Trump ended up consorting with other parvenus like the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
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He was on a tear with his opening monologue. The AI-generated clip he showed at the beginning was scaringly good in how realistic it was. Not the content of course, which was hilarious, but how the video seemed so seamlessly genuine.

Kimmel seems to be really getting under the skin of Trump and his cult members in right wing media.

When I wrote about ‘looksmaxxing’ about two weeks ago, I thought that the various types of maxxing described were weird enough. But in this clip, I learn from Black that the trend takes even more extreme forms.

After summit meetings of the kind we just had with Trump and Xi Jinping, sometimes there is a joint communique and signing ceremony outlining what the two sides agreed upon. That did not happen, leaving observers scratching their heads as to what the point of the meeting was. Immediately afterwards, Russian president Vladimir Putin also went to China and the contrast between that and the barrenness of the Xi-Trump meeting was quite stark. They not only issued a joint communique, they also had a joint signing ceremony of all the agreements arrived at.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin issued a joint condemnation of “irresponsible” US foreign policy on Wednesday, warning of “a drift back to the law of the jungle”.
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The exchanges between Xi and Putin were notably warm and Wednesday’s summit appeared to be more substantive than Xi’s meetings with the US president.

In their joint statement, Xi and Putin said they looked forward to further bilateral cooperation ranging from artificial intelligence to the protection of rare tigers, leopards and pandas. 
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The spectacle of the leaders of the cold war superpowers – each weakened by conflicts of their own making – flying thousands of miles to sit down with Xi in the Great Hall of the People underlined the Chinese president’s status on the global stage.

Xi and Putin went into their summit with a long record of close cooperation. They had already met more than 40 times, and Xi has described the bilateral relation as “without limits”.

The two leaders scolded the US for undermining global stability, in particular for seeking to develop a “golden dome” missile defence system, and for allowing a nuclear arms treaty to lapse in February.
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Xi and Putin then attended a signing ceremony for numerous documents spanning technology, trade, scientific research and intellectual property.

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As usual, on his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver nicely explains how these rapidly growing online betting markets like Kalshi and Polymarket (that I have previously discussed here) work and why they are such a menace.

Warnings are being issued that gambling in the US is getting out of control because of the ease with which the new apps can be used to make bets on pretty much anything at any time.

Gambling addiction is spiraling “out of control” in the US, a leading campaigner for stricter guardrails has warned, as experts from around the world are set to gather in Boston to push for more regulation of the industry.

The rapid expansion of online gambling, prediction markets and sports betting platforms, “demands a public health response”, according to Harry Levant, director of gambling policy at the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI), urging policymakers to intervene.

“You regulate the distribution, the speed, the type, the access to the product, because the product is what’s dangerous,” he said, calling for gambling to be treated like alcohol or tobacco. “The problem is the product, not the people,” said Levant. “We have a crisis here.”
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Sports betting has been legalized in 39 states and Washington DC since the landmark 2018 supreme court ruling.
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On both the federal level and in numerous states, legislation has been introduced to regulate online gambling. One of the bills that will be talked about on Friday is the Safe Bet Act, introduced in Congress by Tonko and Blumenthal, which seeks to establish “minimum federal standards” for legal sports betting and seeks to impose limits on marketing, introduce affordability checks and restrictions on apps using artificial intelligence to track players and create bets.

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