Elon, Epstein, Thiel, and pals banked on buying and bullying their way out of planetary collapse. The Epstein cohort’s anti-social inclinations rival the worst villainy of any dystopian fiction.

I saw this movie

O'Keefe to Homan: "2 agents now on leave bc video evidence shows sworn testimony appears to be untruthful. DHS initially said officer who shot the migrant was being ambushed. Combine that w/ 2 deadly shootings & a Chicago incident where evidence contradicted govt - does this undermine trust in ICE?"

“Presidents don’t name things after themselves, people name things after presidents — and there is a big difference between the two,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a communications professor at Texas A&M University and the author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.”

John Prideaux, our US editor, says the rollback of climate regulation reveals a deeper story about American governance

People who denied Corey Lewandowski an officially issued firearm were passed over for promotions. trib.al/qOWO62j

Worst of #BrokenTimes Baker. He stares the Führer in the face and sees merely an egotist. "But Mr. Trump does not seem concerned that he might be heading down a dangerous path." Trump’s Relentless Self-Promotion Fosters an American Cult of Personality www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/u...

WTAF.

Sen. Bill Hagerty says Republicans are looking at weakening the filibuster to ram the SAVE America Act through the Senate (Trump, who has called for "nationalizing" elections, has been pushing hard for the bill ahead of the midterms)

Commentary: Ohio GOP legislation threatens First Amendment ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/02/10/o...

Elon Musk, a pro-apartheid South African, may have come here believing the US was a bastion of English-Scots-Irish culture. (By the way, were the Irish welcomed by the English?) My grandparents and so many others came here because of the promise of freedom, tolerance, equal rights, and opportunity.

N of 1, but I think this is a good measure of the difference between X and Bluesky. Zucman has 120K followers on X and his post on wealth concentration got 87 reposts/182 likes. One Bluesky he has 24.5K followers and the same post 327 reposts and 938 likes.

We know Epstein was evil. He was also incredibly stupid.

Florida first lady Casey DeSantis said her Healthy First initiative found “triple-digit” levels of the weed killer glyphosate in popular bread brands. Should you be worried?

Just days after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was exposed for his complete lie about cutting off contact with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, yet another Trump official was discovered to be in the Epstein files. trib.al/Q6lCrD8

It’s a rough moment when you realize any “falling out” between Epstein and Trump was likely because they became competitors and then you have to think about who took over operations after Epstein was imprisoned and then that’s just…a sobering thing to consider.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick: "With immigration, it really is notable: the extent to which they just are no longer just winking at white nationalist tropes, but openly deploying them—and then calling anybody who says anything the real bigots." youtube.com/shorts/KgDn9...

DHS initially claimed that when the officers exited their vehicle, Martinez tried to run them over, “forcing the officers to fire defensively.” New bodycam footage shows otherwise. trib.al/4hyKz5H

Thom Tillis in on CBS still blaming everybody but Trump for the bad things Trump is doing

Tillis: "I think the president has some advisers around him -- you've heard me talk about Stephen Miller, you know my opinion about Kristi Noem -- these are people that don't look around corners and are not taking care of this president's legacy. And I intend to."

"What makes this alleged package particularly dangerous is the...logic in which the war does not end with justice but with a “deal.” A logic in which aggression is not punished but monetized." www.kyivpost.com/opinion/69653

And current MAGA meme that "English-Scots-Irish" bloc stands for "real" [ie, nearly as white as Swedes] Americans skips over oceans of blood shed by English, Scots, Irish in fights against one other. (MAGA could at least have watched Braveheart. Or Peaky Blinders.) I'm of that bloc, but: Jeesh.

"This is cynicism that no longer hides; it is presented as “realism.” But realism that ignores aggression is not realism – it is complicity in a crime." www.kyivpost.com/opinion/69653

Many people in South Africa, where Elon is from, died to create a genuinely multiracial polity. They were killed by people who thought like Elon. The people who thought like Elon also lost. Seems their “common culture” of white supremacy wasn’t enough. bsky.app/profile/alan...

Interesting.

LISTEN‼️‼️ ~15 mins gets you better informed WHILE you start your day than you could on your own reading an entire day's worth of news. Only a fool wouldn't take advantage of free knowledge with so little effort. Written & read by @hcrichardson.bsky.social

The Department of Homeland Security has had to correct information provided to at least five states after its SAVE voter tool misidentified some voters as noncitizens, according to correspondence between state and federal officials. With @texastribune.org

This is a crucial tool for stealing the election: Misidentify citizens as non-citizens and demand they be struck from the voter rolls. And, of course, if the USG gets state voter data, they will have party ID among other things to more carefully target their mis-identifications.

“despite many of them having U.S. court protections against such action and none of them hailing from that African nation”

Europe has become the abused spouse grateful just not to be beaten. Believing this jellyfish is a fool's errand. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

🇵🇱 Sikorski: “It is a complete falsehood to claim that mass migration was a left-wing project. For decades, it was supported by Republican businessmen who wanted cheap labor from Latin America in the United States.”

If the elections were rigged by Democrats, then Republicans wouldn’t control the White House and both chambers of Congress.

The problem for democracy is that it will not survive three more years of such a system. We cannot hold free and fair elections if judges blindly accept the word of Pam Bondi and Kash Patel’s minions. www.democracydocket.com/opinion/two-...

Given DOGE’s f#ckery at SSA, I am not thrilled that the “SAVE America Act” aims to compel states to purge voters via SSA’s Number Verification system & DHS’s SAVE program, which accesses the SSA system. I wish some election security experts would look at this & talk me down.

Novus ordo seclorum.

😵‍💫

9/11 trutherism here. Wayfair and Pizzagate resurgences. Stolen elections. Vaccines causing autism…people who believe those theories instrumentalizing them in policy. The mainstreaming and normalization of conspiracy theories has absolutely happened.

⚠️ PSA - don’t take health advice from people who snort cocaine off toilet seats. We are truly living in Idiocracy, and you can thank RFK Jr. for this outbreak.

12-year-old Ender wrote that when she felt sick at Dilley, the doctor would only say to drink more water. “The worst thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here,” she wrote in her letter. By @micarosenberg.bsky.social

Morons Morons are in charge www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/u...

American Gestapo

“…under the Trump administration, the Forest Service is even more understaffed. A spokesperson said while law enforcement staffing ‘has remained steady,’ roughly 5,000 non-fire employees ‘have either offboarded or are in the process of doing so’ through ‘multiple voluntary separation programs.’”

She should be disbarred. Actually, should’ve been when she took the $25,000 illegal campaign bribe from Trump when she was Florida Attorney General to quash the prosecution of the corrupt Trump University, which had defrauded and bilked thousands of Floridians

“Billionaires really like thinkers who see their exploitation of the weak as a good and natural thing” Not to be Debbie Downer on Valentine’s Day, but this is a sobering and worthwhile read. It delves into the mindset of the monsters we are dealing with. www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...

Even those Americans who reject Robert F. Kennedy’s cynicism will live in a country with fewer vaccine breakthroughs than it might have had, and more unvaccinated people

President Trump and his top environmental policy officer finalized a move Thursday to undo an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that laid the foundation for federal rules governing emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/02/13/r...

the FBI deleted this tweet might’ve hit a little close to home for the director

Polls confirm what our noses tell us: It’s the Trumpist right that’s living in its own cocoon. It’s true that not many middle Americans would identify themselves as leftists or even liberals. But they don’t want to live in a cruel country. trib.al/mka1m5z

UK government: “consistent, collaborative work has confirmed through laboratory testing that the deadly toxin found in the skin of Ecuador dart frogs (epibatidine) was found in samples from Alexei Navalny’s body and highly likely resulted in his death” www.gov.uk/government/n...