Michael Salerno
@mikenjd.bsky.social
550 followers 160 following 3.7K posts
Broadway lawyer. Lover of entertainment, politics, and woefully, the New York Mets.
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Reposted by Michael Salerno
mpgphd.bsky.social
which is why the universities came down on them so hard
melanienewport.bsky.social
the students at the encampments were right
Reposted by Michael Salerno
jrobin.bsky.social
This story should not be presented by the news media as just another government action.

Reporters should point out clearly and loudly that this type of gerrymandering misrepresents and ignores the interests of millions of citizens in this purple state. www.newsobserver.com/news/politic...
NC Republicans announce plan to redraw congressional map to pick up GOP seat
North Carolina’s current congressional map already heavily favors Republicans and is being challenged in court for alleged racial gerrymandering.
www.newsobserver.com
Reposted by Michael Salerno
anamariecox.bsky.social
It's so strange to think of how much less suffering there would be in the world if a certain slice of America gave just a tiny bit more of a shit about keeping a white supremacist out of the White House.
mikenjd.bsky.social
Didn’t same over the weekend. As well as switched my clothes in my dresser
mikenjd.bsky.social
That Thing You Do! is on TCM. I really don’t know how to feel about that.
Reposted by Michael Salerno
bleary.off-the-records.com
If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.
Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?
Reposted by Michael Salerno
ziibiing.com
lol “find your own instead of stealing” in defense of columbus day
AJ West • 1h
Find your own holiday instead of stealing. Today is Columbus Day as designated by the federal government
Reply
6
Reposted by Michael Salerno
meninblazers.bsky.social
CAPE VERDE, POPULATION 560,000, QUALIFY FOR A FIRST-EVER WORLD CUP 🇨🇻

The second-smallest nation ever to achieve that feat. Every US state has a bigger population, yet the Blue Sharks are on their way to football's big dance. Astonishing and inspiring 🦈
Reposted by Michael Salerno
benjaminkabak.com
The thing that Republicans worked themselves into a lather claiming, without proof, the Biden family did
atrupar.com
Trump's conversation with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is caught on a hot mic. Hard to tell exactly what they are talking about, but Subianto asks Trump about meeting Eric Trump and Don Jr, who supposedly have nothing to do with government while they run the family business.
Reposted by Michael Salerno
atrupar.com
if anybody is good at lip reading or can isolate the audio, I'd be very curious to learn more about what these two were talking about here. it certainly didn't sound on the level.
atrupar.com
Trump's conversation with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is caught on a hot mic. Hard to tell exactly what they are talking about, but Subianto asks Trump about meeting Eric Trump and Don Jr, who supposedly have nothing to do with government while they run the family business.
Reposted by Michael Salerno
thorbenson.bsky.social
It's like when Dr. Evil had the button that sent you into the fiery pit
atrupar.com
MARCO RUBIO: This is probably one of the most important days for world peace in 50 years. That's not an exaggeration

TRUMP: Only 50?

RUBIO: Maybe 100
Reposted by Michael Salerno
charlesgaba.com
So basically this is Iranian Hostage Crisis 2.0, just with a 9-month delay in the payoff for no particular reason.
dabenner.bsky.social
This seems like confirmation
Then Mr. Trump won the presidency back, and the Biden administration was determined to get a cease-fire in place by January, before it left office. It drafted a peace plan, much of which was quite similar to the “20 point plan” Mr. Trump recently issued. There was slow progress: More than 130 hostages had been released by the time the January cease-fire took place.

“We handed over a cease-fire that silenced the guns, had hostages coming out and aid going in, along with a day-after plan to make it permanent,” Mr. Blinken said. But when the new administration took over, “the moment was squandered,” he added. “Israel and Hamas went back to war for eight months.”

Israeli officials tell a different story. Mr. Biden was a lame duck, they noted, and disengaged. Mr. Trump was a known entity, less likely to lecture Mr. Netanyahu in private or public. They put their money on a new president, and a new negotiating team
mikenjd.bsky.social
This literally doesn't make any sense.
atrupar.com
Bessent: "No Kings means no paychecks. No paychecks and no government."
mikenjd.bsky.social
Nice!

Wordle 1,577 2/6

⬛🟨🟩⬛🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Reposted by Michael Salerno
katz.theracket.news
I wrote about the centrality of and contradictions surrounding the Israeli hostages last year. In short, Netanyahu and the war cabinet saw them as a useful initial pretext, but many Israelis believed that freeing then was the actual goal of the war.

theracket.news/p/uses-hosta...
The uses of hostages
For Israelis, the hostages aren't just a graphic detail of the Oct 7 war. They ARE the war: casus belli, justification and primary war aim, all rolled into one.
theracket.news
mikenjd.bsky.social
News programs, you really didn’t have to take the entire Netanyahu/Trump speech. Lots of untruths going on here and you’re just broadcasting it directly and uncritically. Shame on you.
mikenjd.bsky.social
I’m sorry, I just can’t watch this Bibi speech anymore. Note that he’s doing it in English. This is for an American audience, not an Israeli one
Reposted by Michael Salerno
jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)
For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from). 

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky. Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation. 
Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy. 
A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.
Reposted by Michael Salerno
notalawyer.bsky.social
the actual story here, which the media never talks about, is that police in this country have become a discrete right-wing political operation. the story isn't about cops leaving (they're lying about that), it's about the police trying to exert influence over elections.
misoshnik.bsky.social
Lmao is this supposed to be a bad thing?
A tweet from Bari Weiss that says “"It's shaken me to my core," a lieutenant said of Mamdani's unexpected victory in June. "The absolute dread I feel is palpable.
"
Today in @TheFP our @Olivia_Reingold talks to the cops who say they will walk if Zohran Mamdani is elected in November:”
Reposted by Michael Salerno
msbtterswrth.altgov.info
Hot off the presses! If you need a bigger size to print your stickers let me know!
The Portland frog as a founding father, surround by the words "give me ribberty or give me death"
Reposted by Michael Salerno
paulcope.land
I walked from Uptown through Edgewater up to Devon this afternoon and there was someone with a whistle every few blocks. Cyclists with whistles were patrolling alleys.
thatguywasfly.bsky.social
One thing I want you to take from videos like this is the absolute cacophony of whistles and screams of "GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD" from people in the streets and in buildings. And more and more people are at that point every day.
royalpratt.bsky.social
ICE/Border Patrol held a weapon on a guy who was demanding they show him their face in Rogers Park today