Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

In my day, never was longer.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Let me file that under fuck it.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Saturday Morning Open Thread

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lol the state of the union is going to be a fucking tire fire this year

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) February 13, 2026 at 6:48 PM

To repeat myself: The Repubs don’t want a State of the Union speech this year, because a prime-time Airing of His Senile Majesty’s Many Grievances is liable to perturb even their beloved low-info voters. I personally suspect that some of the GOP defections on the shutdown vote were aimed at keeping Trump off the air on February 24th. Debate me!

The Cabinet this week
*RFK Jr. bragged about snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat
*Lutnick acknowledged taking his family to Epstein island
*Bondi “The Dow” / refuses to look at victims
*Noem blanket
*Hegseth loses to Kelly, tries to tweet through it
*Bessent “tariffs don’t cause inflation”

— Steven T. Dennis (@steventdennis.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 8:55 PM

Thank Murphy the Trickster God for Democrats who know who the enemy is.

Republicans are about to shut down FEMA, the Coast Guard and TSA in a few hours.
Instead of getting ICE under control this guy is having another meltdown online.
We will never let you steal the midterm election.

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— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 8:08 PM

Kristi Noem must resign or be fired immediately.

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— Rep. Lauren Underwood (@underwood.house.gov) February 13, 2026 at 2:00 PM

The economy couldn’t be better for the wealthy & well-connected—and Epstein-class billionaire donors are making more than ever.
But most of us are struggling to pay for groceries, rent, and healthcare. Thanks to this rigged economy, we’re getting screwed.

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— Rep. Jim McGovern (@repmcgovern.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 12:23 PM

Your eyes don’t lie. We’ve all seen the horrific videos of ICE in Minnesota. No matter what Republican lawmakers try to tell us or who they try to blame, Americans know the truth about what’s happening here. And it can’t be allowed to happen here — or anywhere else — ever again.

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— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar.com) February 12, 2026 at 7:57 PM

I think strategically there’s nothing Dems could do more powerful than banning masks. If ICE/CBP have to show their faces they will lose current agents & their recruitment will collapse.

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— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 10:23 PM

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Saturday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (3)

Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: To the Moon!… With *Catapults!*

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NUDE ELON MUSK: The invisible clothes I'm wearing are a product of xAthleisure, which will roll out self-dressing outfits within two years at the latest
THE CREDULOUS PRESS: Fully Clothed Tesla Innovator Does It Again

— alexis simpson (@amutepiggy.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 2:10 PM

Can we have Elon test it out personally?

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— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 2:41 PM

Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: <em>To the Moon!</em>... With *Catapults!*

… According to new reporting from the New York Times, Musk told employees at xAI — his AI company recently acquired by SpaceX — that it needs to construct a factory on the Moon to churn out AI satellites. And to launch the satellites into space, he says, it needs to build an enormous electromagnetic catapult.

Sci-fi readers already know where this is going: Musk is thinking about building a mass driver, which is essentially a coilgun for launching payloads instead of deadly projectiles. Paired with the lunar facility, Musk views it as a necessary step in building out computing power for his AI empire, which must not be bound by the finitude of terrestrial real estate…

The Moon may sound like a logical destination for a space company, but it actually represents an incredible about-face for Musk and SpaceX. Musk has spent years denigrating lunar missions, viewing them as a waste of time and a “distraction” from his ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars. His mantra has always been to “make life multiplanetary,” and “extend consciousness to the stars.” He has frequently provided optimistic timelines for achieving this, including promising in 2017 that the company’s first Mars mission would launch in 2022, and its first astronauts would arrive by 2025. He has consistently reiterated this mission, and presented SpaceX employees with a roadmap to reaching the Red Planet…

Gizmodo isn’t Serious Media, so they can afford more honest headlines — “‘We’ll Find the Remnants of Ancient Alien Civilizations’: Read Musk’s Gibberish Rant from His xAI All-Hands Meeting”:

At the risk of stating the obvious, Elon Musk doesn’t always make sense when he talks. But at a recent all-hands meeting at xAI that was posted in full online, he made less sense than usual. This isn’t investment advice, but anyone considering buying stock in the SpaceX/xAI conglomerate expected to make an initial public offering later this year might want to give some real thought to how the founder and CEO is sounding lately.

xAI has seen a rash of high-level resignations recently. Many of the company’s 11 original cofounders have left, and one of these resignations, Tony Wu’s, happened just yesterday…

A tech founder sent me an explanation of a meeting with Elon and asked for advice on what to do next. Here's how I replied, so everyone can benefit.

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— Dustin Moskovitz (@moskov.goodventures.org) February 13, 2026 at 10:58 AM

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War for Ukraine Day 1,450: Looks Like Trump Had Another Phone Call with Putin

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It’s been a long week, everyone is fried, so I’m just going to run through the basics.

It seems that Trump has been talking to Putin again:

Trump: “Zelenskyy is gonna have to get moving. Russia wants to make a deal. Zelenskyy is gonna have to get moving.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 13, 2026 at 12:26 PM

Russia does not want to “make a deal,” russia wants Ukraine to surrender territory that russia cannot conquer by force. To achieve this, they use Trump to pressure Ukraine.

Ukraine is expected to surrender in a war it has not lost!

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 12:34 PM

🇺🇦👀 Zelensky on Putin: I am younger than Putin, this is important. He does not have too much time.

🇺🇸 Zelensky: Trump wants compromises.

We made a lot of compromises, Putin and his friends, they are not in prison. We accepted a ceasefire, Putin refused.

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— MAKS 25 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 4:58 PM

Trump:

“I ended 8 wars in just 10 months. 8 wars are ended, and we have a couple of more to go, but one in particular, Russia-Ukraine, it’s a mess, it’s a horrible thing. And I think we’ll get there. It takes two to tango, you have to remember that.”

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 3:51 PM

You aren’t getting anywhere because you’re pressuring the victim instead of the aggressor—Russia. What you’re doing only emboldens Putin and increases civilian casualties in Ukraine.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 3:51 PM

Rubio skipped a meeting with European leaders on Ukraine in Munich due to scheduling conflicts, according to the Financial Times.

One European official called it madness, while another politician remarked that without Rubio, the meeting was pointless.

🤔

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 2:06 PM

Trump, Rubio, Hegseth are very quickly making the US irrelevant. Trump is not leading, he is incapable of following, and he refuses to get out of his own and anyone else’s way.

Can someone tell me what this “beautiful” window of opportunity even looks like? What “deals” are we talking about here?
Seems like there’s no “deal”, only a demand for the Ukrainian people to surrender their territory and give up.

To me, this post looks like an example of information manipulation.

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— Maria Drutska (@mariadrutska.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 9:57 AM

This is the key question, but I’d change the framing a bit. The window of opportunity is not actually for Ukraine, it’s for Trump. And he keeps closing it on himself and then blaming it on President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians.

There is no address or press conference today from President Zelenskyy because he was traveling to Munich for this year’s Security Conference. He did meet with Ukrainian skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych, who the IOC disqualified yesterday, and presented him with the Ukrainian Order of Freedom.

The President Met with Ukrainian Skeleton Racer Vladyslav Heraskevych and Awarded Him the Order of Freedom

14 February 2026 – 00:20

In Munich, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Ukrainian skeleton racer and member of Ukraine’s National Olympic Team, Vladyslav Heraskevych, and with his father, the coach of Ukraine’s skeleton team, Mykhailo Heraskevych.

The Head of State thanked Vladyslav Heraskevych for his dignified stance and presented him with the Order of Freedom.

“With great respect to you, and certainly to all our Olympians who have stood by you and your position. Medals are important for Ukraine and for you, but what matters most, to my mind, is who you are. I consider you a remarkable person. And I am confident that all other achievements, which are so important to you, will surely come. And Ukraine will have both champions and Olympians. But above all, Ukraine’s greatest asset is Ukrainians. You embody that kind of person,” said the President.

Vladyslav Heraskevych expressed gratitude for the tremendous support and emphasized that the Ukrainian people have united in the face of injustice.

“Most importantly, the whole world is now truly talking about the athletes depicted on this helmet. And despite their deaths, they are now drawing attention to Ukraine. They are rallying support for Ukraine. And that is truly something very special,” said the Ukrainian athlete.

On Vladyslav Heraskevych’s helmet are portraits of 22 Ukrainian athletes who were killed by Russia. He intended to start the skeleton race wearing it as a tribute and in memory of all Ukrainian athletes who will never compete again because of Russia’s aggression. However, a few hours before his first race, the International Olympic Committee disqualified Vladyslav Heraskevych.

“The most important thing is that we are not trying to break any rules or act as barbarians. We will continue to fight for our rights, despite everything,” the athlete added.

Mykhailo Heraskevych also noted the support the gesture received, not only from Ukrainians but also from friends of Ukraine around the world.

“Everything you did was right. What matters is how people reacted. We thank you for this,” emphasized the President.

🇺🇦 Zelensky: Remembrance is not a violation.

I met with Ukrainian skeleton racer and member of Ukraine’s National Olympic Team, Vladyslav Heraskevych, and his father, coach of Ukraine’s skeleton team, Mykhailo Heraskevych. I presented Vladyslav with the Order of Freedom.

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— MAKS 25 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 5:26 PM

Ukraine will always have champions and Olympians. But above all, Ukraine’s greatest asset is Ukrainians – those who cherish the truth and the memory of the athletes killed by Russia, athletes who will never compete again because of the Russian aggression.

— MAKS 25 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 5:26 PM

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Open Thread: Shutting Down ‘Homeland Security’

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DHS is shutting down because it refuses to obey the law. They are tear-gassing schools, killing American citizens, and disappearing legal immigrants. Democrats shouldn’t fund an out of control ICE.

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— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 11:53 AM

Probably should’ve saved this for tomorrow, but… I wanted to boost Sen. Murphy’s extremely correct stance.

BREAKING: No deal on ICE reforms, DHS shutdown is set to occur at midnight

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— MS NOW (@ms.now) February 13, 2026 at 10:13 AM

Another shutdown for parts of the federal government is expected this weekend as lawmakers debate new restrictions on President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Unlike last fall's record shutdown, the closures will be confined, as only agencies under DHS will be affected.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) February 13, 2026 at 12:00 PM

… Unlike the record 43-day shutdown last fall, the closures will be narrowly confined, as only agencies under the DHS umbrella — like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — will be affected. Still, depending on how long the shutdown lasts, some federal workers could begin to miss paychecks.

Services like airport screening could also suffer if the shutdown drags on for weeks.

At the Transportation Security Administration, about 95% of employees are deemed essential. They will continue to scan passengers and their bags at the nation’s commercial airports. But they will work without pay until the funding lapse is resolved, raising the possibility that workers will being calling out or taking unscheduled leave. Many TSA workers already faced financial stress last year…

Why is a Homeland Security shutdown happening?
Essentially, it’s because Trump acquiesced to Democrats’ request that Homeland Security funding be stripped from a broader spending package to allow more time for negotiation over demands for changes to immigration enforcement, like a code of conduct for federal agents and a requirement that officers show identification. Homeland Security was temporarily funded only through Feb. 13.

The rest of the federal government is funded through Sept. 30. That means most federal programs are unaffected by the latest shutdown, including food assistance, and pay for most federal workers and for service members will continue uninterrupted.

The funding lapse affects the Department of Homeland Security and its constellation of agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The vast majority of employees at the Secret Service and U.S. Coast Guard will continue their work, though they could also miss a paycheck depending upon the shutdown’s length.

At the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the shutdown will disrupt the agency’s ability to reimburse states for disaster relief costs. Some workers will be furloughed, limiting the agency’s ability to coordinate with state and local partners, and training for first responders at the National Disaster and Emergency Management University in Maryland will be disrupted…

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Open Thread: Shutting Down ‘Homeland Security’Post + Comments (29)

Friday Night Open Thread

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Auto Draft 160

I was listening to JFA this morning and that made me think of the picture above. I have been listening to a lot of old punk lately- Clash, Dead Kennedies, aformentioned JFA, Black Flag, Bad Brains, etc. Not sure if that is the right thing for me to be listening to in my current frame of mind or exactly what I need to be fucking listening to right now. Regardless, let’s start in on today’s offense to decency and other bullshit:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend $38.3 billion on new detention facilities to meet the agency’s growing demand for bedspace and to streamline the removal process for people living in the country illegally.

All I know is they better spend every penny and make those detention centers cozy as hell because if I have any say in things in 2029 a lot of motherfuckers working for ice are going to be living there for an extended amount of time and some of them FOREVER. I know I have said this before, but the winning candidate for me an many other people is going to be the Democrat who will jumped over the table and bite the ear off the Republican candidate.

I have heard my sister and my mother say things I never in a million years thought I would hear them say, and they keep getting angrier and angrier. And while I feel bad for them and also a little “welcome to my hellhole,” I am also so fucking happy and proud and relieved I am because I know a lot of you have lost people to the dark lord.

In other news, this is at least happening:

Federal authorities have opened a criminal probe into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about a shooting in Minneapolis last month, as all charges were dropped against two Venezuelan men.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons said Friday that his agency opened a joint probe with the Justice Department after video evidence revealed “sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements” about the shooting of one of the Venezuelan men during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

The officers, whose names were not disclosed, are on administrative leave while the investigation is carried out, he said. Lyons said the two ICE officers could be fired and face criminal prosecution.

Once again, I must remind everyone of this quote from Gore Vidal: “It is no secret that American police rarely observe the laws of the land when out wilding with each other, and as any candid criminal judge will tell you, perjury is often their native tongue in court.”

Seriously, hoocoodanode?

***

A lot of this country has lost their fucking minds, and you need to understand that it is not just the olds, but we are really starting to get the results of our 20 year experiment of cooking kid’s brains in social media’s fetid brew, and let me tell you, it ain’t good:

Clavicular is 6-foot-2, weighs 180 pounds and has a 31-inch waist. His biacromial width — basically the span of the clavicle, from which the 20-year-old streamer gets his name — is 19.5 inches. He has a midface ratio, which is derived by dividing the distance from the pupil to the mouth by the distance between the pupils, of 1.07. His chin to philtrum ratio is 2.6.

According to Clavicular, these calculations make him handsome. Just not as handsome as the actor Matt Bomer.

Clavicular is a Looksmaxxer, the first star from an online community that holds male attractiveness as the key to worldly achievement. He considers Mr. Bomer to possess the most harmonious man’s face in existence, beyond even his own. That’s where the bimaxillary osteotomy, also known as double jaw surgery, comes in. The streamer wants one.

Because, like all Looksmaxxers, he believes any step toward increasing his beauty to be virtuous. But it’s a certain kind of beauty. The Looksmaxxing community prefers people who look like Mr. Bomer: lantern-jawed, symmetrical, white. (A Black man who attempted to make looksmaxxing content was racially harassed, Wired reported last year.)

Clavicular dismisses concerns that the subculture is racist as “dumb.” Since the age of 14, Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, has injected and ingested dozens of controlled substances to “ascend” — Looksmaxxer lingo for becoming more handsome. He has a single goal in mind, and his philosophy requires him to get there as fast as possible. If most people regard self-improvement as a pleasant hike to a more attractive destination, Clavicular’s version of it resembles a grim speed test on a salt flat.

Read the whole thing-it is insane, and yes it is a deeply racist subculture. These guys are all interwoven with the insane kids involved in the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

Again, maybe this is more indicative of my frame of mind, but it sure feels like the American paradox right now is that we have astronomical levels of gun violence, yet there appear to be millions of people high school age and above who need to be punched in the neck. Have these clowns never gone to a bar and tried this shit and no one has punched them? What is going on? Are people doing this shit on the streets of Chicago, NY, and Philly and leaving unscathed?

***

One real downsides of living in Tempe with a variety of ethnicities is that if the weather is nice the smell from all the different types of meats grilling around the neighborhood will drive you insane with hunger. I am typed out. Time for some Olympics.

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A Tale of Two Articles

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First up:  a report in Nature Medicine on cancers caused by “modifiable risk factors”–as in cancers that could have been prevented by some change in behavior, environmental change, or some intervention. The global numbers are impressive: more than one third, 7.1 million of 18.7 million total cases of cancer, could possibly be prevented.

This is a kind of good news. High tech, cutting edge medicine is one front in the campaign against cancer. But a cancer that can be stopped before it begins is a hell of a lot easier to treat…and it turns out that there are a lot of them.

But flipping around such (genuinely plausible) optimism…That so many cancers world wide could be prevented leads directly to the question: why haven’t we?

Well, sometimes knowing about a risk isn’t enough to stop one from chancing it.  Unsurprisingly, it was smoking that “emerged as the dominant risk factor,” with alcohol use adding its own tithe of misery. Most people know by now that smoking can kill you, but the hold that drug exerts on its addicts makes beating that death toll down a slow, hard process.

A Tale of Two Articles

But what struck me most in the Nature report was the most pervasive avoidable risk for women: cervical cancer, over 66o,000 cases worldwide in 2022, 91% of them caused by infection by Human Papilloma Viruses (HPV).

As a world phenomenon, that burden of loss falls more on “low resource settings, particularly sub-Saharan Africa.”

Why “low resource”?

Because HPV infections that lead to cervical cancer are preventable, not perfectly so, but with high effectiveness…by a vaccine. In those parts of the world that lack robust public health and medical infrastructure, HPV vaccine coverage suffers.

So…no problem for those of us fortunate enough to live in places that do possess such institutional support, right?

I bet you can guess what comes next.

Here’s what the second article I read today tells us. This is what CIDRAP, a University of Minnesota center focusing on infectious diseases and policy responses to them, has to say:

The vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV, has reduced cervical cancer by nearly 90% in women vaccinated as adolescents. It has been studied in more than 50 randomized controlled trials. Over 135 million doses have been administered in the United States.

And last month, a newly formed working group under the reconstituted Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which helps guide vaccine decisions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced plans to conduct a multi-year “comprehensive review” of the vaccine’s efficacy, effectiveness, and safety.

The working group’s charter, finalized in December 2025, does not limit itself to the one genuinely open question in HPV vaccine science, whether a single dose provides adequate long-term protection. It calls for a sweeping reexamination that includes adjuvant toxicity, potential contaminants, possible HPV type replacement, and a full reassessment of safety data. It lists neurology and toxicology among the disciplines to be represented on the working group.

…Periodic review of vaccine recommendations is normal and necessary. What this charter describes is something else entirely. It is the construction of uncertainty around a vaccine whose benefits have been demonstrated more conclusively than almost any medical intervention in modern history. [Links in the original]

I don’t think I need belabor the obvious. What Robert F. Kennedy and his henchmen are doing here is an old trick. There’s no actual uncertainty about the HPV vaccine, beyond the question of dosing schedules. It works; it’s safe; and it saves lives–globally, it could prevent around 600,000 new diagnoses of cervical cancer each year.

A Tale of Two Articles 1

In the face of those established facts, what should you do if you are ideologically opposed to vaccination, or simply make your living or gain your clout by demonizing vaccines? Exactly what Kennedy is doing here. He’s sealioning; “just asking questions;” throwing enough shit at the wall to create the appearance of a controversy where none exists.

Normies, busy people with actual daily lives to lead don’t generally have the time or tools to dig through the literature to see what’s going on. They hear that the Department of Health and Human Services is concerned enough about risks to launch a comprehensive study…and, perfectly reasonably, they may hesitate when a doctor offers their kid the shot.

And with that, fewer children here will gain protection against a preventable disease. Those who encounter the virus can pass it on; chains of infection will follow, and women (mostly-there are cancers men get associated with HPV) will die before their time, wholly unnecesarily.

Right now, Rubio (and Musk) have the highest body count of Trump 2. But don’t count Kennedy out.

Dyspeptically open thread.

Images: Adriaen van Ostade, A Man Smoking, c. 1670

Louis Boilly, La vaccine, 1807

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Kristi Noem’s Blankie

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The second Trump administration is a more faithful reflection of the malignant narcissist at its center than the first was. All noblesse and no oblige, Piggy’s first principle is and always has been personal impunity.

Maybe in an administration that more accurately reflects Trump’s bad character, it was inevitable that some trickle-down impunity would accrue to the toadies who staff the regime. At Piggy’s pleasure and subject to his abrupt withdrawal of the privilege, of course.

Just ask formerly strutting bantam Gruppenführer Bovino about the conditional nature of borrowed impunity. Was Bovino’s abrupt “rehoming” to a farm out in the country where he can run free the first dent in Trump 2.0’s “no scalps” rule?

There are so many bad actors and so many scandals that would have resulted in firings, resignations or cannon shots into the sun in “normal” administrations. It’s hard to keep it all straight.

And it’s difficult to know what constitutes a bridge too far in an administration populated entirely by psychopaths. The usual rules, such as “don’t make the boss look bad,” aren’t evenly enforced or enforced at all — Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr. still have jobs, despite their manifest incompetence.

So maybe a super long and detailed WSJ article on Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski’s tumultuous tenure at DHS doesn’t mean anything except that some of their fellow pit vipers are anonymously venting to journalists. Or maybe it means Noem and Lewandowsky will be led to a gravel pit soon, who knows. WSJ gift link, plus excerpts:

A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS
Secretary, with close adviser Corey Lewandowski, faces fire for confrontational immigration crackdown and self-promotional style; White House to wind down Minnesota operations

White House officials have grown angry that Noem and Lewandowski have declined to take guidance on events, messaging and management of the agency. Several senior administration officials described DHS as the biggest headache thus far of the second term…

Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski have cut employees or put them on administrative leave. The pair have fired or demoted roughly 80% of the career ICE field leadership that was in place when they started.

In the blanket incident, Noem had to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered, but her blanket wasn’t moved to the second plane, according to the people familiar with the incident. The Coast Guard pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination. They eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them home.

The DHS spokeswoman didn’t address the episode but said the secretary has “made personnel decisions to deliver excellence.”

Excellence at blanket tracking? I’ll outsource further commentary on the blanket incident to Popehat:

OK everyone who is making fun of Kristi Noem over the blanket thing has OBVIOUSLY never had a toddler who was elevated to a Cabinet position

— Popehat Ways Could Often Be Different (@kenwhite.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 10:14 AM

But seriously, I went to high school with a few violent sociopaths like that, including couples I would mentally classify as “most likely to perish in a murder-suicide.” Their names still pop up in the crime section of the local paper from time to time. Middle age doesn’t mellow that type.

In an incident last year that rankled some senior staff at the agency, Lewandowski made it known to top ICE officials that he wanted to be issued a law-enforcement badge and a federally issued gun, according to people familiar with his push. Officials are typically only issued a badge and a gun after undergoing law-enforcement training…

Efforts to issue Lewandowski a gun stalled after The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations inquired about the incident last year, the people said. Still, Lewandowski has been spotted by DHS staff sporting a badge, emblazoned with the words “Homeland Security.”

It’s awful to say because domestic violence is horrible no matter whom it happens to, but if the senior staff would just give Lewandowski the damn gun, the DHS leadership problem might take care of itself.

There’s no moral to this story of a pair of amoral creeps, but it is stress-testing the “heighten the contradictions” theory. Trump’s trickle-down impunity is seeing to that.

Open thread.

Kristi Noem’s BlankiePost + Comments (184)