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new toon!
www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

We Need to Prepare for the Mammoth Task of De-Trumpification The damage he and his cronies have wrought could take decades to repair, particularly when it comes to science and public health.

The task of de-Trumpification of science and public health will take a generation and a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild. Without a bold, expansive vision to guide us, there is no coming back. Small-bore, poll-tested versions of the future will not help us. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

My succinct Strait of Hormuz synopsis:

“Ramble On” - Robert Plant with Saving Grace (LIVE on The Late Show) YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Goddamn y'all. Robert Plant is 77 years old. The song "Ramble On" is 56 years old.

And this sounds so fresh I wouldn't blink if I heard it on the radio today. One of the all-time greats.

Reason number 632 why #JayBhattacharya is not a serious scientist and is an ideological hack (and has been this way since at least 2020). His politics drives his thinking and his politics is now all in with MAGA.

The ol' "phillydilly"

8 Million protesters yesterday at #NoKings.

No police beaten with flag poles.
No fire extinguishers thrown at other humans.
No vandalism or theft.
No racist flags.
No zip ties.
No death threats.
No pipe bombs.
No poop smeared on walls.

That's what happens when mature, civilized people protest.

It was a long winter but No Kings Spring has arrived in Chicago. #NoKings

if nothing else, there is something to be said for spending time outside in the sun with thousands of people who share your anger at the state of things

Now get out and vote in the midterms like your life depends on it, because it does. #NoKings

The E Street Band is coming your way!

Enjoy the body bags, gas prices and well-protected child rapists, MAGA voters.

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Record deaths in US immigration custody expose systemic failures Families, advocates and lawmakers say poor care, opaque investigations and bureaucracy leave deaths unexplained

Concentration camps.

Use the term. Do not stop using the term until this current American regime falls and the camps are liberated. Then use the term in The Hague.

This is Trumpism. This is white nationalism. This is he moral gutter into which America has fallen.

Margaret Thatcher once declared that “there is no such thing” as society. She always insisted that what she meant was that “society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.“ Trump, however, and the Trumpified Republican Party, might actually subscribe to the way her critics understood her point—that society doesn’t exist, and that therefore none of us has any responsibilities or obligations to anyone else, other than the ones we choose to have. Life is more complicated than that, especially when you’re trying to make war on a state that can close a strategic waterway that is crucial to the world economy. The Trump administration seems to have neither anticipated nor planned properly for the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil is transported. Iran has begun firing at ships in the strait, dissuading commercial traffic from transiting it. Energy prices are almost certain to rise, but so are prices on other products—you need energy to transport goods to meet global market demand. The possibility that the war might destabilize the world economy either was not part of the Trump administration’s plans for this capricious, ill-advised, and arguably unconstitutional military venture, or was not taken seriously. American war planners seem to have not factored in that, despite being adversaries, the U.S. and Iran are interconnected in vital ways that waging war on Iran would disrupt.

Wrote about how MAGA is a rebellion against the reality of interdependence, and how that led the Trump administration to completely ignore the potential fallout of going to war with Iran. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The real problem with the New York Times op-ed page: it’s not honest about US conservatism It wants to challenge its readers, but not with the ugly truth.

So NYT is in this dilemma of its own making. Maintaining the noble-savage myth about MAGA requires ... never actually hearing directly from MAGA. Hearing directly from MAGA requires ... abandoning your own stated moral & journalistic principles. There's no solution to that equation, as I wrote:

The War Development(s) That Should Truly Scare Us How Iran could speed up de-dollarization and how Trump could put boots on the ground in Iran—sort of.

As I've posted, it's baffling the confidence with which establishment finance and political types dismiss me when I've expressed concern about the dollar being replaced as the global reserve currency.

People lack imagination I guess. But maybe not the Iranians: www.thebulwark.com/p/the-war-de...

"… food insecurity is a by-product of prevailing political and economic systems." - Christoph Müller, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

"The responsibility for food security must shift decisively toward social and economic systems … Agricultural research is needed to improve the sustainability and productivity of food production systems," writes Christoph Müller in a new #ScienceEditorial. https://scim.ag/3P6zC9Z

Stand Up for Science plans second rally on March 7 Public health chaos and research funding cuts are inspiring nationwide pro-science protests against the Trump administration

Happening today: public health chaos and research funding cuts are inspiring nationwide pro-science protests against the Trump administration

“Donald Trump’s White House is blocking top US intelligence agencies from warning law enforcement across the country about rising threats to the homeland tied to his war with Iran, the Daily Mail can reveal”

I’m baffled why there is so little talk of the actual worst case scenarios.

Trump obviously doesn’t get them.

But the guns of August started as an assassination in Sarajevo.

This war is already expanding countries by the day.

And the world is filled with flammable tinder.

How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account Our national project of elite impunity

After the arrests of powerful men across the world, you might be asking why the US has so much trouble holding its leaders accountable for lawbreaking. Since Nixon, all three branches of government have worked hard to ensure they can break the law with impunity www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

This is a top advisor — he was campaign manager — to RFK Jr, Trump’s Health Secretary.

We are living through a collective madness.

Seasonal temperature pattern measures amplitude (𝑎𝑎) and phase shift (∅) derived from a 10-year time series of satellite thermal data for all inland lakes larger than 10 hectares in Michigan’s lower peninsula. CREDIT: Michael Palace

Burial mounds constructed in today’s Michigan during 1200–1600 CE are disproportionately situated by lakes that cool late in the autumn, which would have meant a long maize growing season—showing the cultural importance of maize cultivation. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/2M4y50Ykepe

Oppose Politically-Motivated Public Health Funding Cuts ⭑ 5 Calls The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has instructed the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) to claw back $600 million in public …

5calls.org/issue/politi...

Oppose Politically-Motivated Public Health Funding Cuts
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has instructed the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) to claw back $600 million in public health funds.

Thanks for the earworm...

If someone had told me ten years ago that in 2026, there could be evidence of the president raping and threatening to kill children, and he would *still* be allowed to stay in office, I would have politely asked them to put down the meth pipe.

Vaccine Makers Curtail Research and Cut Jobs

Why would anyone want this??!?

That our president has caused medical researchers to pull back on trying to fight disease is madness.

Vaccine Makers Curtail Research and Cut Jobs www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/h...

My mission to make life more user friendly for the disability community Inventor Josh Miele says that accelerating change requires uprooting social attitudes about blindness and other disabilities.

Inventor Josh Miele says that accelerating change requires uprooting social attitudes about blindness and other disabilities

go.nature.com/4ahBfIM

No, no, the White House explained, the president isn't an egregious racist posting egregiously racist stuff. He just gives others control of his public communications, including egregiously racist staffers he chose to hire then not fire after they communicated egregiously racist stuff on his behalf.

And just like that, it’s out of the news. Go look at every major news outlet this morning and tell me if you see this story.

The most staggering corruption in U.S. history and poof.

I can’t find it in news or opinion in any.

Maybe we should check which email server they used for the bribe.