While we would love to continue sharing our opinions on the Casey Means hearing for Surgeon General, we have day jobs we have to get back to! But we leave you with this statement from DPH:

Excellent.

The state of the uo!un is rotated

In competitive authoritarianism (US right now) there's often a "loyal opposition" that's essential to the regime. They are so wedded to "decorum," they go along with rites & rituals that help regime prop up veneer of normalcy, undermining clear view of regimes actions & aims.

Minutes into the State of the Union, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was escorted out by the Sergeant at Arms for holding up a sign, "Black People Aren't Apes" -- a reference to Trump posting a racist AI-generated video depicting the Obamas as apes.

I guess there won't be a documentary about the triumph of the U.S. men's hockey team since Leni Riefenstahl died in 2003

The imperial boomerang has arrived

Many know Machiavelli said it's better to be feared than loved. Fewer know he explained that the best position is to be both. Nazi Germany was feared. So was the USSR. America reached greater heights of power than either, because the US cultivated soft power and mutually beneficial partnerships.

NEW: Trump’s State of the Union is the ideal time for journalists to stop the normalizing presswatchers.org/2026/02/trum...

I knew in general that Paul Robeson was a civil rights activist, in addition to being an actor, but I never knew he created an organization against lynching. I was happy to see a small tidbit on him in an exhibit about Black Theater the other day for his appearance in "Showboat" on Broadway.

And the dogs💙

Meanwhile, New Yorkers are living their best life in this.

Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind. PS. - William Shakespeare,  King Lear

We must state this clearly. Our lawless regime is building a system of "human warehouses" that will function as concentration camps. Most Americans have no idea that this could quickly exceed Japanese-American internment. No national Democrats are calling for these camps to be stopped & closed.

RFK Jr explains why he’s a fraud.

“I don’t think Jay Bhattacharya can be trusted to lead either. But I think the size of both of these organizations and the missions are different, and I think it takes a specific type of person, a single person, to do each of these jobs,” 👏 @jimalwine.bsky.social

MAD Magazine Presents; SuperSpecial Fall 1980 (32) 👉🏻📲Tap Here For Bonus MADness Below👇🏻 #madmagazine #alfredeneuman #whatmeworry #theusualgangofidiots #insertattached #collection #collector

As you get ready to watch USA-Canada, remember that Russia's not at the Olympics because it invaded Ukraine with zero justification The U.S. is poised to attack Iran with zero justification

$500 billion a year is enough to guarantee a basic income via a negative income tax with a 50% phaseout rate for all Americans, ending poverty and significantly reducing inequality and insecurity.

Why do legacy media leaders choose not to cover the biggest story of their lifetimes: the President of the United States is unfit. Years of sanewashing have now led to democracy-washing: #Iran #TrumpIsUnfit

On the pod historian Nicole Hemmer nails it on Epstein and elite impunity. "Across the world, elites are going to jail or losing their positions. That’s not happening in the US. People want to understand: Why isn’t it happening here?" Hemmer is great all throughout: newrepublic.com/article/2068...

One tipster called after she went to Publix and the worker who helped her find the water didn't speak English. “And then she did help you find the water?" Palmer asked on the call, to which the woman responded, "Right, she walked me right to it." www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Not the key point, but all the 'Andrew Mountbatten Windsor' coverage shows how quickly and easily the entire UK media complex can switch to someone's new name/title, even after using their old one for decades, when it's an incredibly pampered white male deviant. So, you know, it's not *that* hard...

Les Wexner's attorney during the House Oversight Committee deposition on Epstein: "I will fucking kill you if you answer another question with more than five words."

Omnibus term 2 scandal thread

NEW: Jeffrey Epstein cultivated relationships with CBP officers at the airports he frequented. Epstein emailed and texted with six CBP officers, invited them to his island, visited with them at the airport, and frequently sought to determine who was going to be on duty when he was traveling

I've been saying it a lot, but these deaths line up with what happened in early concentration camps during other regimes: Deaths from poor conditions, disease, or abuse. These deaths are not accidental. They are the direct result of a camp system that is designed to harm those being imprisoned.

look at my country man, we’re getting out-No Kings’d by the fuckin’ british

so they can arrest a former prince while the US President is untouchable. what a world we live in.

They saw France bust down the doors of X for being pedophiles and immediately started developing the national sex crime VPN.

In this entire piece there is not a hint of even a semblance of a legal argument for how a war of this scale would be legal or authorized. There is quite simply no legal or constitutional authority for Trump to launch a war of choice against Iran. None. Zero. Nothing.

“There is no conceivable degree of institutional incompetence sufficient to explain the scale, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred —particularly where the sole task ordered by the Court and repeatedly emphasized by DOJ was simple: redact known victim names before publication,”

When an ICE agent hurts itself from its own incompetence do they get to go to the hospital or do the other agents just sit and watch them suffer and die like they do to the humans they detain?

This is the kind of thing white supremacists have been doing to Emmett Till’s memorial for decades. It’s wild to see them do this to a white woman who the entire world saw extrajudicially murdered.

4-5 years ago there were MDs like Lucy McBride crowing about the urgency of normal, getting kids back to school. There were PR hacks like David Zweig supporting them. Now kids are being sent to immigration detention, getting measles & these folks are nowhere to be found. It was never about the kids.

There's more: Is Trump dangerous? 43% of Republicans have no opinion. Honest? 44% have no opinion. Corrupt? 43% have no opinion. Out-of-touch? 49% have no opinion. They know who he is. They just don't want to admit it.

Historian of medicine here. Yes. Yes, they did.

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

“Not one third of the inhabitants, even of this province, are of English descent,” Thomas Paine noted in Common Sense, "This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe."

Americans bewildered as release of Epstein Files leads to resignations and criminal investigations in democracies around the world.

This is a really good piece by Aziz Huq and @vanessawilliamson.bsky.social. I've been highlighting similar themes in my recent power-of-the-purse scholarship. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/o...

This is a nice move in an interview www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/u...

Podiumgate x 1,000,000

gotta do investigations into DHS “waste, fraud and abuse” as pretext for killing the agency

“The government kidnaps children; spirits them away to concentration camps… hundreds of miles from home; detains them for months in disease-infested conditions; deprives them of adequate food, potable water, and medical attention…. This is a deliberate policy… to harm children.” -Atty Eric Lee

Utter decimation of a society due to participatory make-believe

In Uganda, I met people who went from earning $200 a month doing HIV prevention to just $60 because USAID went away—and who are still doing the work for a fraction of the pay. I met ppl who lost their jobs entirely and stiil do HIV work for free for food. Meanwhile theintercept.com/2026/02/09/t...

It was in fact a Police State bill.