How the Kakistocracy Became a Quackistocracy Corruption is a germ’s best friend

@paulkrugman.skystack.xyz on the links between quackery in medicine and fascism

And: Dear Trumpublicans, we can only heal when you stop choosing him over America.

This made my week, thank you!

Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted child sex trafficker, gets gardening time, sports, therapy dogs, and spa products in prison.

Migrant children in custody are sleeping on concrete floors without enough food or clean water.

Our priorities are so fucked.

Trump Official Who Helped Kill USAID Now Using Its Funds for Himself Russ Vought, White House Office of Management and Budget director, has decided what is happening with USAID funds.

The historical term for this is "looting." The Project 2025 architect who promised to put federal employees “in trauma” is spending $15 million of former USAID funding—money that would have gone toward fighting HIV, polio, malaria, and other diseases—to bankroll his security detail. trib.al/TSV3cmb

Grok and other ‘nudification’ apps offered by Google and Apple put Silicon Valley at center of global outrage Apps that allow women and girls to be digitally stripped have sparked investigations from California to Europe.

“AI has reinvented misogyny.” with the Epstein Class fully in charge of all major tech companies, does this surprise anyone?

(around an image of a masked ICE agent holding a gun) Republicans "One Big Beautiful Bill' nearly tripled funding for ICE. That money came from your benefits: paid for by cuts to reproductive health care paid for by cuts to Medicare & Medicaid paid for by cuts to SNAP paid for by cuts to clean energy projects paid for by cuts to obesity prevention paid for by cuts to disaster response paid for by cuts to energy tax credits

Priorities need changing

“The plan's $38 billion budget is more than the total annual spending for 22 states, according to state budget data."

“I’ve never protested before - but I just watched 4th & 5th grade kids run away from our own government.” 😕🇺🇸💔

(From @crindivisible.bsky.social )

CBP Signs Clearview AI Deal to Use Face Recognition for ‘Tactical Targeting’ US Border Patrol intelligence units will gain access to a face recognition tool built on billions of images scraped from the internet.

What could possibly go wrong?

"Clearview’s business model has drawn scrutiny because it relies on scraping photos from public websites at scale. Those images are converted into biometric templates without the knowledge or consent of the people photographed."

Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped. The decisions amount to a huge legal rebuke, one the administration has ignored.

Out of control. Sure seems gestapo-like to me.

Thanks Kristi for letting us know. I sure do trust a lyin', cheatin' climber like you to select "the right people" to elect "the right leaders" for us all.

Inside the Debacle That Led to the Closure of El Paso’s Airspace

"The FAA’s top lawyer warned a Pentagon official that deploying the laser system without restricting flights created “a grave risk of fatalities or permanent injuries” to Americans traveling through that airspace." Human life sure is cheap for the Trumpistas.

Kennedy Allies Target States to Overturn Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren

This is on you Sen Bill Cassidy

The ICE Expansion Won’t Happen in the Dark People have a right to know who their neighbors are, especially when it’s ICE.

ICE has more than $75 billion at its disposal, and has designs on every major US city. Its occupation of Minneapolis is not an anomaly; it’s a blueprint. Communities deserve to know that they might be next.

What a ridiculous headline. We've regressed, very quickly.

Just a reminder that the Trump admin calls immigrants who’ve fallen into drug addiction “the worst of the worst” criminals, no matter how long ago their addiction problems.

Climate leaders condemn Trump EPA’s biggest rollback yet: ‘This is corruption’ Leaders promise to fight back with court challenges as Trump rescinds finding foundational to US climate rules

“This is ...old-fashioned, dirty political corruption,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, senator for Rhode Island. “This is an agency that has been so infiltrated by the corrupt fossil fuel industry that it has turned an agency of government into the weapon of the fossil fuel polluters.”

Chart of coal mining employment since 1985 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES1021210001

Literally lighting cash on fire to own the libs because coal can't compete.

*TRUMP: HOPEFULLY WON'T DO WIND FARMS FOR FOUR YEARS

*TRUMP: ENERGY DEPT. ISSUING FUNDS TO KEEP MORE COAL PLANTS OPEN

*GRECH: WORKING ON POTENTIAL NEW COAL-FUEL POWER PLANTS

Here's how he recognized his Coal Cadre: "Lee Zeldin, he's our secret weapon. He's getting those approvals done in record-setting time... Great Senators, John Barrasso and Jim Justice. Thank you very much for being here. Shelley Moore Capito. Thank you, Shelley. Thank you very much, darling." Nuts.

In a normal government, this results in the resignation of multiple cabinet officials (Transportation, Defense, and Homeland Security), and the closure or (at least!) radical reorg of the cartoonishly incompetent agency at the center of it: CBP.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/u...

Ukrainian Olympian disqualified over images of war dead on his helmet The International Olympic Committee has disqualified a Ukrainian sled athlete over his refusal to remove images of war dead from his helmet in competition.

"Rules is rules"--unless you're Putin ...shameful. #slavaUkraini

Agree--as the US sees growing corruption and a broken political system, money is the heart of it. Overturn Citizens United!

The students are coming Across the nation, young people are walking out of classes to protest ICE

Well this is kind of exciting: The students are coming!
Across the nation, young people are walking out of classes to protest ICE. From my Heads Up News newsletter. www.headsupnews.org/p/the-studen...

Dystopian--buying candidates that are "friendly to AI" while the American people suffer through the whims of this corrupt, violent, regressive administration....

FACT 👇........

MAKE IT STOP!

Insane levels of corruption.

www.wsj.com/finance/curr...