Headline of the Day

The U.S. Press Loves To Pretend Widespread Corruption Doesn't Exist

—Karl Bode, describing how our mainstream media studiously ignores rampant corruption in the United States

Even before Donald Trump and his minions turned up corruption to 11, the United States was remarkably corrupt by the standards of "First World" nations.

I just want you to pause and notice something.

The next time you're reading a news story about a particular area of U.S. dysfunction – whether it's gun control, health care, or air travel – notice if the reporter mentions, at literally any point, if corruption and unchecked corporate power sits squarely and undeniably at the heart of the problem.

Here's an example. Earlier this month the New York Times, considered by some to be the pinnacle of U.S. journalism, wrote this story about how the Trump-stocked Supreme Court was preparing to neuter the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to battle climate change (spoiler: they succeeded). 

………

But when the article proceeds toward what we're supposed to do next, you hit this gargantuan turd in the road:

A more definitive way to address the issue would be for Congress to weigh in. Democrats could pass legislation that defined greenhouse gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, giving the E.P.A. the explicit authority to regulate them. Conversely, Republicans could enact legislation that said the opposite.

But in the half-century since Congress passed the Clean Air Act, it has never mustered the political will to decide this question. And it seems exceedingly unlikely to happen at a time when climate change has become such a polarizing topic.

Why this Congressional gridlock persists is left as an open question for the reader to puzzle through.

The reason we don't have effective protections for climate change (or functional gun control, or universal health care, or cheap broadband) is because the U.S. Congress is often too corrupt to function. Monied interests have polluted state and federal legislatures to the point they no longer serve the public interest.

(emphasis original)

It's all about the Benjamins. 

Crap

In a feat of corrupt and incompetent judging that is beyond the wildest imaginings of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's spleen, Federal Judge Eileen Cannon has sealed the records of the Donald Trump classified document case forever.

You have to admire one thing about Judge Aileen Cannon down by Florida way. There are sled dogs in the Arctic who don't have this kind of loyalty. From Reuters:

I love Charlie Pierce, but you do not have to admire what she did.

………

You have to go back to the Gilded Age, when the railroads and corporations ran the federal judiciary, to find a federal judge who was as round and complete a hack as Cannon has been in this case. She did everything to stall the proceedings until the unfortunate events of 2024 gave her the opening she needed. That July, she dismissed the documents case on the spurious grounds that Jack Smith's appointment was unconstitutional. An appeals court said that Cannon's handling of the case and her earlier appointment of a special master was "improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction." That is a very polite way of saying, "Get your damn thumb off the scale." By then, the process of burying the report was well underway and, officially, anyway, the last shovel of earth was turned on Monday.

It's time for unofficial solutions. Somebody should leak the daylights of this report. The truth about the Poolshed Papers belongs to all of us.

Please, for the love of God, someone leak this.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

pic.twitter.com/fOPnviJCVf

— Kevin May (@Yam_Nivek) February 23, 2026

Perfect.

No Do It World Wide

As a result of investigations into Elon Musk's lies regarding the autonomy of Tesla electric vehicles, has been forced to drop its Autopilot branding and add a disclaimer to its Full Self Driving branding.

I think that this is weak tea, but it should go nation wide, if not world wide. 

Tesla has complied with an order by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and stopped using the term "Autopilot" in its marketing of electric vehicles, having already modified use of "Full Self-Driving" to clarify that it requires driver supervision. 

………

This comes after Tesla was given 60 days from December 16, 2025 to fall in line with the agency's request. 

The requirement followed a lengthy case over Tesla's use of the words "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" in relation to its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), along with the sentence: "The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long-distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver's seat." 

………

The Administrative Law Judge proposed suspending Tesla's manufacturing and dealer licenses for 30 days. However, a later review gave Elon Musk's EV outfit 60 days to stop using the terms.

They should have thrown the book at him. 

This has been fraud, and it has been fraud for well over a decade. 

Today in Fascism

The police in Lenexa, Kansas used license plate reader technology in an attempt to retaliate against a critic.

The question has never been whether law enforcement will misuse technology to pursue vendettas and the like, it is only how.

Police in Lenexa, Kansas used automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the police department, according to reporting by Kansas public radio station KCUR. This is a rare public example of exactly the kind of abuse that we’ve long warned against when it comes to mass-surveillance systems like license plate readers. It also comes on the heels of reports about apparent misuse of license plate databases by ICE agents in Minnesota not for legitimate law enforcement purposes but to intimidate observers and protesters, and of a woman who was falsely accused of theft based on data from license plate readers.

The op-ed published by the Kansas man, Canyen Ashworth, was critical of local ICE operations and the role of Lenexa police in them. The same day that piece ran, Lenexa police began to investigate Ashworth, according to internal emails obtained by KCUR. They quickly tied him to an unidentified suspect the police were looking for who had several days earlier put four posters up around town showing a picture of an ICE agent and the words “remember when we killed fascists.” The police alleged that the unidentified “Paper Hanger” had violated an unspecified city ordinance, and the posters were removed.

The Paper Hanger’s arguably aggressive message was nonetheless speech protected by the First Amendment. And while government officials may regulate constitutionally protected speech through “time, place, and manner” restrictions, they can't do so selectively based on the content of the messages. KCUR reports that in Lenexa, “Posters about lost pets and community events were generally not removed.”

In fact, the town’s mayor later told KCUR that the town had no formal policy regarding posters on city property.

City and police officials claimed that they were targeting the Paper Hanger because the glue he used had the potential to damage city property. On the basis of this great crime, the police began using license plate readers to track Ashworth’s movements around town, and several weeks after his op-ed, the police chief emailed patrol officers to announce that “A suspect has been developed in the case of the City Center Posters” and announce a “be on the lookout for” (BOLO) alert for Ashworth.

Perhaps most ominously, when issuing the BOLO the chief declared “This is MYOC,” meaning “make your own case” — which in turn meant essentially, “there is no arrest warrant for him so look for any reason to stop him” and, as the deputy police chief at the time put it, “You need to build your own probable cause, your own reasonable suspicion.”

As my ACLU colleague and head of the Kansas ACLU Micah Kubic put it, issuing a BOLO on someone for putting up posters is “both a rejection of the First Amendment, and a really ridiculous misuse of resources.”

Compared to the blatant targeting of people for their speech and/or political opposition that we’ve been seeing lately from the Trump Administration, this case may look small. But it was scary enough for Ashworth. And it's a particularly clear example of the abusive dynamic that mass-surveillance systems always end up falling into:

1. Target someone who the authorities dislike but have no evidence has done anything wrong.
2. Fire up powerful surveillance technologies that have been sold to the public as a way to stop serious, dramatic crimes and keep the public safe.
3. Use those technologies to watch the disfavored person in the hopes of drumming up something that they can be charged with, even to the point of scraping the bottom of the barrel and going after something like “damaging glue use.”

We’ve seen plenty of this “show me the man, I’ll find you the crime” kind of abuse at the hands of the Trump Administration. But this story is a reminder that such abuse can rear its head in towns across the nation — small, medium, or large. And when it does, license plate reading programs are a natural tool for the authorities to turn to.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  Unless and until politicians are willing to fire police officers and try them criminally for this bullsh%$, it will continue. 

Every Accusation a Confession

Austin Smith, former Arizona state representative and former of the political wing of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, has pled guilty to election petition signature fraud.

Imagine that.  A voter fraud conspiracist engaging in voter fraud.

A former leader of the pro-Trump group Turning Point Action was sentenced on Tuesday to two years of probation and barred from running for office for five years for forging voters’ signatures on his petitions as part of his 2024 bid for re-election to the Arizona House.

The former state legislator, Austin Smith, pleaded guilty in November to two criminal counts and admitted that he had submitted fraudulent signatures to state election officials, including the name of a woman who had died.

The outcome was a striking twist for Mr. Smith, 30, a Republican who represented the Phoenix suburbs for one term and had repeatedly sought to sow doubt about the Arizona results in the 2020 election, when President Trump lost his re-election bid.

………

While trying to qualify for the Republican primary to run for re-election, Mr. Smith was accused in a court complaint in April 2024 of forging dozens of signatures on his nominating petitions. The complaint was filed by one of his constituents, James Ashurst, a Democrat, who said the signatures resembled Mr. Smith’s handwriting.

Three days after being named in the complaint, Mr. Smith resigned from his post as a senior director for Turning Point Action, the political arm of Turning Point USA, the grass-roots group founded by Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was assassinated last September. Mr. Smith also abandoned his bid for re-election, but denied any wrongdoing at the time.

Probation and a fine is all he got.  It's not enough.

There is an Advantage to Being Hated

It appears that is almost impossible to seat a jury in Elon Musk's Twitter stock manipulation trial because everyone hates him so much.

I think that this will be a strategy used by Donald Trump's defense team when (if) he ends up in the dock.

Jury selection kicked off Thursday in San Francisco federal court in a trial centered on Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter in 2022.

Musk is set to stand trial in early March in a class action brought by Twitter investors who claim Musk manipulated Twitter stock leading up to his multibillion-dollar purchase of the social media platform.

Investors, including lead plaintiffs Steve Garrett, Nancy Price, John Garrett and Brian Belgrave, sued Musk in October 2022 over claims they suffered major losses when Musk deliberately made misleading statements about the presence of spam bot accounts on Twitter to drive down the company’s stock, in hopes of backing out of the acquisition deal or renegotiating more favorably for himself.

The investors claim that Musk attempted to artificially lower Twitter’s stock price after agreeing to acquire the platform, while also failing to disclose when his Twitter stake exceeded 5% or that he had initially been invited to join Twitter’s board.

………

More than a third of the initial jury pool indicated they could not serve impartially and were dismissed by the judge. Others were questioned by the parties about the answers they provided to the court, indicating a strongly held negative opinion of Musk.

Stephen Broome of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, an attorney for Musk, raised concerns with Breyer following jury screening that the court was “desensitized” to how improper it would be to seat jurors who expressed extreme dislike for the defendant. He claimed that if Musk was any other defendant, a juror who said “I hate that guy and he has no moral compass” would be dismissed.

Breyer pushed back, saying that the case was not like any other because Musk is a well-known public figure akin to a United States president, and jurors are allowed to have personal views on public figures.

The judges is right.  It is ordinary when people of good will look at Elon Musk, and say, o quote the Dead Kennedys:

Immigrant Committed Voter Fraud

Spoiler, it was Elon Musk, who violated Georgia election law by mailing out thousands of prefilled absentee ballots applications, in violation of state law.

Can we lock him up at the El Paso camp? 

If Donald Trump’s administration really wants to find evidence of foreign interference in Georgia’s elections, then they need look no further than the president’s old friend Elon Musk and his shady super PAC.

Members of the Georgia State Elections Board voted Wednesday to issue a formal letter of reprimand to Musk’s America PAC over the billionaire technocrat’s illegal scheme to get Trump elected. Georgia, a key battleground state in 2024, was the target of aggressive campaigning by Trump’s team.

In October 2024, the Georgia secretary of state’s office launched an investigation after receiving numerous reports from residents across several counties saying they’d received partially prefilled absentee ballot applications from Musk’s America PAC, according to John Fervier, the State Elections Board’s chairman.

There was evidence to suggest America PAC had violated a state law that prohibits any person or entity, other than an authorized relative, to send an elector an absentee ballot application prefilled with the elector’s required information, according to Janice Johnston, the SEB’s vice chairman.

America PAC had also failed to display in a conspicuous location that this was not an official government publication, was not provided by the government, and was not a ballot, Johnston added.

Jail, bitch.  

Even better than El Paso, we could put him in Epstein's old cell in MDC New York, where he could party like Jeffrey, like he always wanted to. 

Thank You ……… Mitch McConnell?!?!?!?!?!

It appears that Senator Yertle the Turtle is blocking Donald Trumps attempt to disenfranchise a significant portion of the American electorate.

Color me confused.

Senator Mitch McConnell appears to be stalling the voting bill backed by President Trump, and fellow Republicans are not happy.

McConnell, who leads the Senate Rules Committee, is refusing to schedule a vote on the legislation, thus preventing it from moving forward. The bill would create barriers for voting, requiring specific forms of ID in order for Americans to exercise their constitutional right.

………

Last year, McConnell wrote in The Wall Street Journal that such a bill would give a future Democratic president and Congress the ability to “use more sweeping mandates to carry out a complete federal takeover of American elections.” 

“The current administration has better ways to spend its time than laying the groundwork for a leftwing election takeover,” McConnell wrote.

Well, I never thought that McConnel was stupid, I just thought that he was evil.

Drip, Drip, Drip

It's called a Wile E. Coyote moment We are beginning to see big players rolling out strategies to prevent a run on their assets.

Today, it was Blue Owl Capital, who just made it significantly more difficult for their clients to withdrawing funds from their accounts.

This will not end well.

Shares of Blue Owl Capital, the giant private lender, plunged on Thursday after the company announced that it was changing how investors can get their money out from one of its funds, raising fresh concerns about potential problems lurking in the private credit industry.

Blue Owl said investors would not be able to ask for a set amount of money back every quarter. Going forward, the firm will decide how much it will pay out quarterly.

On a conference call with investors, Blue Owl executives sought to portray the changes favorably, but the announcement had the opposite effect as some investors worried that the moves could lead to obstacles to redemptions.

The company’s stock ended Thursday down 6 percent, after falling as much 10 percent earlier in the day. Other companies with exposure to private credit, including Ares, Apollo and Blackstone, fell more than 5 percent.

This is what companies do when they realize that they living on borrowed time.

Mohamed El-Erian, a Wall Street veteran and former chief executive of PIMCO, wrote on social media that Blue Owl’s change in redemption terms reminded him of the beginnings of the financial crisis when banks sought to contain the damage from the souring mortgage loans on their books.

“Is this a ‘canary-in-the-coalmine’ moment, similar to August 2007?” Mr. El-Erian wrote.

In just a few years, private credit has extended trillions of dollars in loans to business, and Blue Owl, which was founded in 2016, has amassed nearly $300 billion in investor money. But the industry exists outside the traditional, highly regulated banking system, and investors can see only a limited amount of information about private credit borrowers and the terms of their loans.

All of this is going on as the Trump administration is going hell bent for leather to roll back even the meager reforms instituted after the 2008 financial crisis. 

 

Headline of the Day

It Looks Like The FBI Straight Up Lied To A Judge To Get Permission To Seize Georgia Voting Records

—Techdirt

How could I not invoke Herblock

The refers, of course, to the (non) evidence that the FBI provided to the judge to get a search warrant to seize voting records in Fulton county Georgia.

Will anyone go to jail over this? Probably not.

Should anyone go to jail over this?  Certainly. 

Earlier this month, the FBI decided it was going to help Donald Trump steal back the election he’s claimed for half-a-decade was stolen from him. The state whose Secretary of State was asked directly by the outgoing president in January 2021 to “find 11,780 votes” was raided by Trump 2.0, who still somehow thinks he can win the election he lost back in 2020.

It’s not just revenge Trump is seeking. He’s also hoping to find anything that will allow him to cast doubt on midterm election results now that it seems entirely possible the GOP might lose its majority in the legislature.

The FBI walked off with tons of stuff after its raid of the Fulton County election hub in Georgia. The raid — which was attended by the current DNI Tulsi Gabbard for no apparent reason — saw the Trump government seize as many 2020 ballots and voter records as possible. The stated reason for this raid was to collect evidence related to two alleged crimes: not retaining election records long enough and attempts to “intimidate voters or procure false votes/false voter registration.”

One of several glaring problems with this raid is the fact that some of the criminal acts alleged have already surpassed the five-year statute of limitations. The rest of the glaring problems are far less subtle. Like Trump using the FBI and DOJ to engage in vindictive prosecution. And the FBI appearing to have deliberately mislead the magistrate judge to get this search warrant approved.

This declaration [PDF] by Ryan Macias, a project manager for the voting system used in Fulton County who also served as the Acting Director of the Voting System Program during the 2020 election, points out multiple flaws in the FBI’s warrant affidavit — all of which it would be safe to assume were deliberate “errors.”

Trump and his minions are a clear and present danger to the United States of America.

Why Not Here?

Former RoK President Yoon Suk Yeol has been sentenced to life in prison for his attempted insurrection in South Korea.

This needs to happen here.

A South Korean court has sentenced the former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in December 2024, finding him guilty of leading an insurrection and making him the first elected head of state in the country’s democratic era to receive the maximum custodial sentence.

The Seoul central district court found that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 December 2024 constituted insurrection, carried out with the intent to disrupt the constitutional order.

Judge Jee Kui-youn said the purpose was “to send troops to the national assembly to blockade the assembly hall and arrest key figures, including the assembly speaker and party leaders, thereby preventing lawmakers from gathering to deliberate or vote”.

In sentencing Yoon on Thursday, the court pointed to his lack of apology throughout the proceedings, his unjustified refusal to attend hearings, and the massive social costs his actions inflicted on South Korean society.

………

In a historical digression, the judge traced the history of insurrection law and cited the 1649 execution of England’s Charles I, who led troops into parliament, to establish that even heads of state can commit insurrection by attacking the legislature.

………

Under South Korean law, the charge of leading an insurrection carries three possible penalties: death, life imprisonment with labour, or life imprisonment without labour.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, arguing that Yoon committed “a grave destruction of constitutional order” by mobilising troops to surround parliament and attempting to arrest political opponents during the six-hour crisis.

Not a fan of the death penalty, but I do approve that he got hard labor.

I Went to the Farmers Market Today

 And I picked up a button. 

Even Using the Trump Administration's Figures

The U.S. economy was pretty week in the 4th quarter of 2025, even as Trump's Treasury Secretary, and poster child for smug assholes, Scott Bessant was suggesting robust growth

The number is even worse when you realize that a huge portion of economic activity are AI fraudsters setting money on fire. 

The U.S. economy slowed sharply at the end of 2025 to cap a volatile year in which consumer spending and an A.I. investment boom helped keep growth on track despite tariffs, uncertainty and the longest government shutdown in history.

Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, grew at a 1.4 percent annual rate in the final three months of the year, the Commerce Department said on Friday. That was down from a 4.4 percent rate in the third quarter, partly because of the prolonged shutdown.

It was a fittingly messy end to a year in which the economy proved more resilient than many forecasters feared, but fell far short of the revival that President Trump promised on the campaign trail.

Inflation, which Mr. Trump promised to end “on day one,” picked up in 2025. The trade deficit in goods, which Mr. Trump promised to shrink, hit a record high. The manufacturing sector, which Mr. Trump promised to restore, shed jobs.

Not good. 

Tariff-Ic!

You've probably heard the news already, but in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump does not have the power to unilaterally enact taxes, in particular tariffs.

Trump is saying that he will be using alternate laws to continue this, but given the Supreme Court ruling, it is likely that federal courts will enjoin this, and the Supreme Court is far less likely use the shadow docket to allow those policies to continue until a full court decision is made.

Any further efforts by the Trump administration to do this is likely to run afoul of the , "Bull Durham Rule," which states that the quickest way to get thrown out of a game is to call the umpire a c%$#-sucker.

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on imports from nearly every U.S. trading partner, a major setback for his administration’s second-term agenda.

The court’s 6-3 decision has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers and the president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers.

The three dissenters, Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh, had to bend themselves into knots to ignore Congress' plenary powers over taxation, but that is the norm for those corrupt bastards.

Mr. Trump is the first president to claim that a 1970s emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval.

He is the first, because his legal justification is complete bullsh%$.

………

The decision on Friday left uncertain the extent to which those who paid tariffs might be able to obtain refunds, with Justice Kavanaugh warning that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”

The United States “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid” the tariffs, he wrote, “even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.”

That is an issue that falls firmly in the category of, "Not the Supreme Court's problem."

It will be interesting to see what cockamamie legal argument the Trump administration will put out next. 

^*Not my bon mot. DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS came up with it.

I Hope That Someone Makes a Movie About This

For various reasons, the water infrastructure in Osaka, Japan is relatively old, and as such is in need of maintenance.

Someone donated ¥560,000,000 ($3.6 million) to the city to support these repairs.\

Nice story, but the interesting bit was that this anonymous donation was made in the form of 21kg of gold bars.

I want to know the rest of the story.

Osaka has received a hefty gift of gold bars worth 560m yen (£2.7m) from an anonymous donor and a request for its specific use: to fix the Japanese city’s dilapidated water pipes.

The gold bars, weighing a total of 21kg (46lb), were given to the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau in November by the donor who wants to help improve ageing water pipes, the mayor, Hideyuki Yokoyama, told reporters on Thursday.

“It’s a staggering amount and I was speechless,” Yokoyama said. “Tackling ageing water pipes requires a huge investment, and I cannot thank enough for the donation.”

The mayor said the city –Japan’s third largest, with 2.8 million people – would respect the donor’s wishes and use the gift to improve waterworks projects.

Most of Japan’s main public infrastructure was built during the rapid postwar economic growth, but urban development in Osaka, a regional commercial hub, started earlier than many and its water pipes and other infrastructure are ageing earlier, the city’s waterworks official, Eiji Kotani, said.

Osaka needed to renew 160 miles (260km) of water pipes, he said. Renewing a 1.2 mile segment would cost about 500m yen, Kotani said.

If I had to venture a guess, I would think that this might be someone from the Yakusa, as making such a donation in gold does seem to imply that some sort of money laundering was involved, and doing this is very much a Yakusa sort of thing.

I'll Bet Someone Said the Name of The Scottish Play in the Theater

During a performance of Shakespeare's Richard III in Berlin, an actor lost his grip on a sword during a fighting scene, and an audience member was struck in the head.

Luckily, the audience member was struck by the grip, and not the blade, and she left the theater after some minor treatment.

I'm wondering if other bad stuff has been going on in this production? Sometimes productions just have bad mojo.

Sometimes a front-row seat can be a little too close to the action.

On Thursday evening, during the final scene of a performance of “Richard III” at the Schaubühne theater in Berlin, a sword slipped out the cursed king’s hand and struck an audience member in the head.

Luckily for the woman it hit, she was whacked by the sword’s grip, not its blade. Although she sustained a light injury, she walked out of the theater after being treated on site.

The accident occurred when the actor playing the title role, Lars Eidinger, was battling his demons during the production’s sweaty, physical conclusion.

………

According to the Berlin Zeitung, a daily, which was the first to report on the accident, Eidinger immediately interrupted the performance, apologized to the woman and then asked for the house lights to be turned on.

The theater’s doctor treated the woman, and no ambulance was needed, according to Johanna Lühr, a spokeswoman for the theater. She added that Eidinger had a phone call with the woman on Friday to make sure she was on the mend.

Lühr said that the scene had been designed with a stunt coordinator and was practiced regularly. Despite the slip-up, the theater plans to continue with its regular schedule of shows, she said.

I do hope that she got to keep the sword though.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And we have the latest unemployment numbers.

Initial claims fell sharply, but continuing claims continue to rise.

I find the latter number more significant than the latter.

Applications for US unemployment benefits fell by the most since November, adding to evidence of stabilization in the labor market.

Initial claims decreased by 23,000 to 206,000 in the week ended Feb. 14, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. That was lower than all but one estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

In the past year, new applications have fallen below the 210,000 mark only a handful of times. That level of weekly filings is a sign that layoffs widely remain low. The data also suggest that people who were temporarily unable to work due to a severe winter storm that spanned the country in late January have returned to their jobs.

However, continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, rose to 1.87 million in the previous week, the highest since early January. 

………

Separate data out Thursday showed the US trade deficit widened in December, capping a year marked by erratic tariff policy. 

 I think that we are already in a recession, and that it will get much worse, but what the hell do I know.

Well, this is a first for me

Nearly 2 years ago, around the time of Charles' coronation, I add the whole British Royal Family to my list of, "They who must not be named."

For the first time ever, I have to bring someone back, specifically, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew, who has been arrested for allegedly transmitting insider information to Jeffrey Epstein. 

I think that this is significant enough for me to comment on this.

King Charles has insisted “the law must take its course” after detectives took the unprecedented step of arresting his brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

Police took him to Aylsham police station in Norfolk on Thursday morning for questioning about allegations he shared confidential material with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In the evening he was pictured in the back of a car being driven away from the police station shortly after 7pm.

Thames Valley police said he was released under investigation, and searches at a property in Norfolk, Andrew’s home on the Sandringham estate, had concluded. Searches at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, Berkshire, his former address, were continuing.

On an extraordinary day that could have profound effects for the royal family, unmarked police cars and plainclothes officers from the Thames Valley force were seen at Mountbatten-Windsor’s residence at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate at about 8am. They searched the Norfolk property as well as his former home in the Royal Lodge in Great Windsor Park.

Hours later Charles gave his unqualified backing to the police investigation into his brother, who was arrested on his 66th birthday. The king said the “law must take its course”.

One of the things that people have missed about the whole Epstein affair is that even if one does not consider his child sex trafficking, (Apart from that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?) Epstein was a crook, who hung out with crooks, all of whom saw their wealth as a shield against accountability.

Accountability?  How quaint.

Good Lawyering

Les Wexner’s attorney did not like his answers to the questions during the House Oversight Committee deposition.

He told Wexner: “I’ll fucking kill you if you answer another question with more than five words, ok?” pic.twitter.com/XZQqzl7hMu

— Reese Gorman (@reesejgorman) February 19, 2026

Seriously good lawyering 

Also, funny as hell.

Sometimes, microphones capture something that they shouldn't.

When pedophile co-conspirator Les Wexner was testifying before Congress about Jeffrey Epstein.

His lawyer, who had clearly wanted Wexner to keep it short and sweet in his testimony, was less than pleased with his performance, and when his client became excessively loquacious he had (whispered) words with his client.

BTW, except for speaking a bit loudly, I think that Wexner's attorney, Michael Levy, did a pretty good job there. 

 

Today in Democratic Party Psychopaths

I am referring, of course to Washington State Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. (Ecch/Twitter link here, the comments are ……… interesting.)

To be fair Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, in addition to being a psychopath, she is also a f%$#ing moron.

Even a cursory study of of the state of the salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest show where the problems are, agricultural runoff, real estate development driven pollution, pollution and genetic contamination from aquaculture in Puget Sound, hydro-power, and (of course) over-fishing.

For Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, all that matters is that power companies, big agriculture, real estate developers, and other polluters can write a campaign donation check, and sea lions cannot.

For the love of God, someone primary her. 

Adding to My List

I reserve the right to continue this GIF though Specifically, I am adding Shia LaBeouf to my list of They Who Must Not Be Named.

I really hope that he does not get elected to a federal office, or even less likely gets an Oscar, which would require me to drop him from the list. 

Invite Ted Cruz on Your Show, Stephen

Streisand Effect Applies 

So, the FCC Chairman sent a threat to CBS regarding Stephen Colbert's interview with US Senate candidate James Talarico, saying that he might change the rules to  on interview shows to require equal time.

Stephen Colbert should call the bluff, and announce an invitation for the Republican candidate, Ted Cruz, to appear on his show. 

It's a win-win for the late night host: Ted Cruz refuses, and Colbert gets to taunt him until May, or Ted Cruz accepts, and then Stephen Colbert gets to fillet him like an overfed catfish.

I would pay good money to see Colbert taking down Cruz. 

My One Regret During Our Little Snow Storm

We got about 8 inches of snow in late January, and it was followed immediately some freezing rain, so we had about 3 inches of frozen snow atop about 5 inches of powdery snow.

It would have been perfect snow for an igloo.

I could have cut blocks of ice out with a knife, and used the powder as a mortar and insulation.

I wish that I had thought of this earlier.

I have been in an igloo, when I was 6 in Anchorage at some sort of a winter fair.  I recall it being much warmer than the outside. (I also saw the start of a sled dog race that was not the Iditarod, and went on my first roller coaster.) 

I do not expect to see a similar sort of snow in the next few years.

I Have Not Written About This Because I Just Can't

Refusing to make eye contact with Epstein victimsI am referring, of course, to Pam Bondi's  epic meltdown in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

Let me be clear, this is not because it is too emotionally painful for me, I have watched various videos with no small amount of amusement.

This is because this sh%$ is so  meshugana that I lack the communication skills to address this.

Coming from a people who have as many words for crazy as almost any other people, (meshugana, furshlugginer, verklempt, farmisht, farblunjet, etc.) this is a rather telling admission.

Here's one video, there are many, many, others: 

I Would Have Paid to Hear Him Read a Phone Book

Actor Robert Duvall has died at the age of 85.

A marvelous and elegant actor who could convey with his eyes what might take another actor a soliloquy to convey.

He is my favorite John Watson, having played against Nicol Williamson's paranoid drug-addicted Sherlock Holmes in  The Seven Percent Solution.  (I always hated Nigel Bruce's buffoonish portrayal)

Also, go and watch The Judge, it's a great film.

Robert Duvall, who drew from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of acting craftsmanship to transform himself into a business-focused Mafia lawyer, a faded country singer, a cynical police detective, a bullying Marine pilot, a surfing-obsessed Vietnam commander, a mysterious Southern recluse and scores of other film, stage and television characters, died on Sunday. He was 95.

His death was announced in a statement by his wife, Luciana Duvall, who said he had died at home. She gave no other details. He had long lived on a sprawling horse farm in The Plains, in Fauquier County, Va., west of Washington.

There is a void in the theater world.

Today in Gay Bashing

Trump administration officials pulled down the Gay Pride Flag from the Stonewall National Monument, since (of course) we cannot have any LGBTQ symbolism at the birthplace of the gay liberation movement.

Orwell and Kafka are spinning in their graves right now.

Some local officials are pledging to restore the Stonewall National Monument’s large Pride flag after a Trump administration directive this week removed it from the only national park site dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.

Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal shared a photo of the bare flagpole at the West Village park on social media Monday evening, along with a screenshot of the U.S. Department of the Interior memo to the National Park Service that led to its removal.

The federal directive states that in most cases, the National Park Service can only fly the U.S. flag, the Department of the Interior flag and the Prisoners of War flag in the public spaces it maintains. The policy makes limited exemptions, such as when a flag would “provide historical context” to a site, or when a site is co-managed with another entity “that may fly that state’s or city’s relevant flag.” But the parks service said in a statement that “changes to flag displays are made to ensure consistency with that guidance.”

In an interview on WNYC’s "Morning Edition," Hoylman-Sigal said protests are being organized for Tuesday, with plans to fly the flag again as soon as Thursday.

I'd also suggest that it might be a good idea for the local LGBTQ community to organize s 24 hour watch on the flag pole to ensure that anyone trying to take down the flag is confronted. 

 

About El Paso

It turns out that the 10 day (rescinded after a few hours) airspace shut-down over El Paso was a party balloon, not any real sort of security threat.

Don't worry though, they shot it down with a laser. 

The abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.

The episode led the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly declare that the nearby airspace would be shut down for 10 days, an extraordinary pause that was quickly lifted Wednesday morning at the direction of the White House.

Top administration officials quickly claimed that the closure was in response to a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels that required a military response, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declaring in a social media post that “the threat has been neutralized.”

But that assertion was undercut by multiple people familiar with the situation, who said that the F.A.A.’s extreme move came after immigration officials earlier this week used an anti-drone laser shared by the Pentagon without coordination with the F.A.A. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

C.B.P. officials thought they were firing on a cartel drone, the people said, but it turned out to be a party balloon. Defense Department officials were present during the incident, one person said. 

I'm going to give these incompetent idiots the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that it was one of the shiny silver Mylar balloons, which, because of their aluminum coating, are readily picked up on radar.

The level of incompetence here is stunning. 

 

Would That This Were True

Over at Gizmodo, they have an article titled, "Dems Want to Ban Surveillance Pricing at Big Grocery Stores," which discusses a bill submitted by Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to ban personalized digital price gouging by grocery stores.

Call me a cynic, but I think that this is more about extorting campaign donations to water down or kill the proposal than anything else.

Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico, and Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced legislation Thursday that would ban so-called surveillance and surge pricing in grocery stores. Officially known as the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act of 2026, the Senate legislation is modeled on a 2025 bill in the House.

The new bill would require stores to disclose their use of facial recognition technology and would ban electronic shelf labels (ESL) in large grocery stores. ESLs are controversial because they allow retailers to change the price of a given item remotely, opening up the possibility that they could be tied to algorithms which raise and lower prices based on conditions in the store or who’s trying to buy something. 

Hypothetically, stores can charge different prices at different times of day or rely on different inputs, right down to personalizing the price based on an individual who was looking at a given item, spotted with facial recognition tech. The concern is that factors like race, gender, and income level could be used to determine how much people are charged. A 2025 study found that Instacart was charging customers different prices for the same products, sometimes as much as 23% more. A few weeks after the study received negative press coverage, Instacart announced it was pulling the plug on its AI-powered pricing.

………

The Biden administration launched an investigation into surveillance pricing in 2024 with FTC chair Lina Khan initiating a study on the ways it may harm U.S. consumers. But after President Donald Trump took power in 2025, his administration killed the study. 

I am not suggesting that either Senator Luján or Merkley are doing this solely to extract campaign donations from large retailers.  For all I know, they are completely sincere about this.

What I am suggesting is that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is planning to use this proposal as a way to extort campaign donations from the industry., and once they get their vigorish, they will kill or emasculate the legislation.

There Is Bad Food, and Then There Is………

Scottish food, which may qualify as a crime against humanity, at least in the case of, "Pizza Crunch," which appears to be an affront to all that is holy.

I bet you thought that I was going to diss English food, but not this time.

Bring on the jellied eel, bubble and squeak, stargazy pie, frogspawn pudding, or mushy peas before I eat that Scottish abomination.

So, It Was Jared Kushner, Huh?

We now know who the, "Senior Trump Administration Official," who was mentioned in an intelligence intercept between two foreign officials.

You know, the one subject to a whistleblower complaint after DNI Tulsi Gabbard sat on this information rather than passing it up the chain as required by law. 

According to the WSJ, it was Jared Kushner, whose primary role in the Trump administration is arranging foreign bribes for Donald Trump.

Not a surprise.

The highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

It couldn’t be determined which country the foreign nationals are from or what they discussed about Kushner. But the connection to Kushner sheds further light on the top-secret whistleblower complaint that bureaucratically stalled within Gabbard’s agency for eight months and was kept locked in a safe until it reached Congress in heavily redacted form last week.

………

The Wall Street Journal and others reported last week that the complaint was based on a foreign-intelligence conversation collected by the National Security Agency. The conversation included a discussion about a person close to Trump and at least in part concerned issues related to Iran, the Journal reported. 

………

A heavily redacted version of the complaint was seen by select lawmakers in Congress last week after the Journal first reported on its existence and that it had stalled within Gabbard’s office. Democrats have questioned why the complaint was held up for eight months and indicated it raises national-security concerns that deserve more investigation. Republicans have defended Gabbard and said the attention on the complaint has been orchestrated to undermine the Trump administration.

This is a significant story only because Gabbard suppressed this. 

Had it been sent to the White House, it would never have been an issue.

It's always the politics that get you. 

Headline of the Day

Unable to Reach Mars, Musk Does the Most Musk Thing Possible

— Gizmodo on the announcement from the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ that he is abandoning Mars for the moon

Musk is giving up on Mars because his claims of saving humanity by creating a Martian city have become so transparently laughable that even his normal fanbois are losing interest. 

The old grift has gotten stale, so he creates a new one.

Elon Musk built SpaceX on his dream of colonizing Mars. For decades, he kept the company on a strict path toward achieving that goal, arguing just last year that using the Moon as a stepping stone to the Red Planet would be a “distraction.” Now, he’s singing a very different tune.

In an X post on Sunday, Musk said SpaceX has “shifted focus toward building a self-growing city on the Moon.” Achieving this new goal, he said, will potentially take less than a decade, whereas colonizing Mars would take more than 20 years.

As usual, it's rally all about getting government money to further enrich himself.

………

This pivot comes as SpaceX is racing against Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to deliver a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which will be the first to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon in over 50 years. NASA awarded SpaceX the contract in 2021, but that never stopped Musk from criticizing the agency’s Moon-to-Mars trajectory. 

NASA originally planned to launch Artemis 3 in 2024 but has since pushed the mission to 2028, partly due to uncertainty over when a crew lander will be ready. SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) has faced significant developmental delays in recent years, prompting the agency to reopen the contract in October. Now, Musk has apparently gotten on board with the whole Moon-to-Mars thing.

Considering the basic architecture of Musk's moon lander, it's no wonder that Bezos is nipping at his heels.

The lander weighs 6 times that of the Apollo LEM and requires multiple in orbit refuelings, and his rockets are still blowing up and their payload capacity seems to be shrinking with each new test.

His rockets are unlikely to make it to either the Moon or Mars. 

Has the NRA Tried to Make Hay Out of This Yet?

As you know, there was a mass school shooting in Canada, a country which has what could be described as sane gun laws.

I am waiting for the ammosexual lobby to exploit the tragedy to argue against gun regulations.

They will argue that it happens in Canada, gun control does not work.

Truth be told, if one looks at the numbers, this is the first mass shooting in Canada this year, and the 8th since January 2025. 

By comparison, there have been 37 mass shootings in the United States this year, and 462 since January 2025.

God Bless America. 

 

Birnam Wood Comes to Dunsinane

I did not watch the Superb Owl this year.

I've never watched the half time show, except to see the ads.

That being said, the right wing melt down over Bad Bunny's half time show.

Specifically about how this show, particularly the walking bushes, parallel a quote from Shakespeare's Scottish Play. (We don't say the name of the play in our family, too many superstitious theater people.)

You know the quote, "……… shall never vanquish’d be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him."

I'm wondering if there is a modern analogue to the downfall of what is arguably theater's greatest villain.

Maybe Great Birnam wood is coming for Donald Trump. 

No Posting Tonight

 Funerals are exhausting.

On the Way to Manhattan

Stopped at Waffle House (breakfast for dinner) and blogging. 

I love going to New York, but not for a funeral.

Light Posting for a While

 Heading to New York tomorrow afternoon for the funeral of my Wife's uncle, who died today.

Chickens Finally Come Home to Roost.

A jury just found the Gypsy Cab ride sharing company liable for a woman's rape by one of their drivers 

Their business model has always been to take the money and offset the costs on their drivers and passengers, and that includes safety.

The jury decided that it was worth $8-½ million.

Hopefully, this is the first of many such verdicts.

A federal jury in Phoenix on Thursday ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to a passenger who said one of its drivers had raped her, setting the stage for thousands of similar cases around the country.

The ride-hailing giant has long maintained that it is not liable for the misconduct of drivers on its platform, whom it classifies as independent contractors, not employees. But the jury rejected that defense, providing a road map for more than 3,000 pending sexual assault and sexual misconduct lawsuits that accuse the company of systemic safety failures.

The lawsuit was brought by Jaylynn Dean, who said her Uber driver raped her in November 2023 during a ride to her hotel from her boyfriend’s apartment in Tempe, Ariz.

………

Uber fended off other claims in the case, including that it was negligent in its safety practices and that its app was defective.

The jury’s award fell far short of the $144 million that Ms. Dean’s lawyers had requested in damages. The jury did not dish out heavier penalties in part because it did not find that the company’s actions were “outrageous, oppressive or intolerable” or that they created substantial risk or significant harm.Uber fended off other claims in the case, including that it was negligent in its safety practices and that its app was defective.

………

Uber faces increasing scrutiny across the country as lawmakers, investors and others move to hold the company accountable for a pervasive pattern of sexual violence during rides.

Ms. Dean’s case is a bellwether in federal court proceedings that have consolidated thousands of the sexual assault lawsuits against Uber, allowing for certain procedural matters to be presented before the same judge while each case is tried individually. The verdict is not binding on the other cases, but it offered a “real-world test” of the arguments in front of a jury, said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School.

………

Over three weeks, jurors weighed the harrowing personal account of Ms. Dean as well as testimony from Uber executives and thousands of pages of internal company documents, including some showing that Uber had flagged her ride as a higher risk for a serious safety incident moments before she was picked up. Uber never warned her, with an executive testifying that it would have been “impractical” to do so.

"Impractical," huh?  More like unprofitable.

Lawyers for Ms. Dean introduced documents suggesting that Uber resisted introducing safety features such as in-car cameras because it believed these measures would slow corporate growth. 

There really needs to be a concerted effort to criminally prosecute executives who blithely approve policies which endanger the general public.

Once they start getting frog marched out of their offices in handcuffs, they and their fellow sociopaths will think twice about continuing their behavior.

Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. 

Go China

At least on car safety, where China has announced a ban on hidden car door handles.

This is not a surprise.

They make it difficult for first responders to make a rescue, and, in the case of Teslas at least, they do not function if electrical power is lost.

There is talk about similar regulations in the United States, but I'm not holding my breath, since they have allowed the pedestrian box grater known as the Cybertruck on the roads.

China will soon ban concealed door handles on electric vehicles (EVs), becoming the first country to do so after several deadly incidents triggered global scrutiny of the controversial design first popularised by Tesla.

According to regulations announced on Monday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, cars sold in China will now be required to have a mechanical release on both the inside and outside of every door except the boot.

The new regulations will “improve the level of automotive safety design”, it said.

Due to take effect on 1 January next year, the regulations stipulate every car should provide hand-operable space measuring at least 6cm by 2cm by 2.5cm in order to manually release the door. Within the vehicle, there must also be signs showing occupants how to open the door.

The flush-mounted pop-out door handle was first popularised by Elon Musk’s Tesla Model S, released in 2012. The design integrates the handle into the door and uses electrical signals to activate the latch. Such door handles provide a slight boost to efficiency by reducing drag.

 

Snark of the Day

According to a new puff profile in Politico, the senator has “main character energy.” Of course, so did Gilligan and Mr. Ed.

—The Indispensable Charlie Pierce in Esquire about the soft ball piece from Tiger Beat on the Potomac.

Oh, Wilbur!