“Social Security is drifting toward a cliff, and Congress keeps pretending the shortfall will fix itself. It won’t. Absent reform, benefits will be cut across the board by roughly 23 percent within six years. That outcome would harm retirees who depend on Social Security the most — while barely affecting the living standards of those who do not need financial support in old age. There is a better option: reduce distributions to the wealthiest retirees, preserving them for those most dependent on benefits.” (02/11/26)
“In a post on Bluesky, [Jamelle] Bouie mocked the addiction of the mother of Vice President JD Vance, saying that she should have sold her son for drugs. Bouie used Bluesky — a digital safe zone for viewpoint intolerance on the left — to post one of the most reprehensible attacks on Vance, [writing] that ‘this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway.’ That is hardly notable on today’s rage scale. However, he then decided to use the painful addiction history of Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, against her son: ‘No wonder his mom tried to sell him for Percocets. I can’t imagine a parent who wouldn’t sell little JD for Percocet if they knew he would turn out like this.'” [editor’s note: Not a very nice thing to say about Vance’s mom, but he certainly described Vance accurately – TLK] (02/11/25)
“Former CNN anchor Don Lemon has hired a federal prosecutor, who quit amid the White House’s immigration blitz on Minneapolis, to defend him from charges related to his coverage of a church protest. Lemon officially brought Joseph H Thompson on to his legal team, according to a Tuesday court filing. Thompson, who Donald Trump had appointed acting US attorney for Minnesota in June, reportedly resigned in January over the justice department’s treatment of immigration enforcement. A federal grand jury in Minnesota indicted Lemon, now an independent journalist, on charges of conspiracy and interfering with congregants’ constitutional rights to freely exercise their religion during an 18 January protest at the Cities church in St Paul.” (02/11/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Beryl Lipton & Sarah Hamid
“Surveillance technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement ‘free’ access to surveillance equipment that bypasses local oversight. The result is predictable: serious accountability gaps and data pipelines to other entities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that expose millions of people to harm.” (02/11/26)
“One of the biggest criticisms of those who opposed the JCPOA is that it did not meaningfully prevent Iran from supporting its regional proxies: the Yemeni Houthis, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Hamas. While these proxy groups threaten Israel, they do not constitute a threat to the United States. The second Trump administration must not make the same mistake as the Biden administration: prioritizing foreign nations over stopping nuclear proliferation. Reviving the JCPOA is not idealism; it is a pragmatic solution to the threat of nuclear proliferation.” (02/11/26)
“We have a group of men who are actively preparing themselves for a societal collapse. In fact, by their own writings, they invite it. They build bunkers to hurriedly protect themselves from the fallout of their own actions. They seem to only want enough humans around to serve them in ways that AI cannot and even that looks to be an infinitesimally small number. … In a nation flush with cash, but not for you, millions are cast off on Medicaid, in what can only be considered a premeditated murder of the masses. But you see, they don’t care. It’s not an unfortunate side effect or a required austerity measure in a time of crisis. It is a class of individuals who do not see themselves as one of us.” (02/11/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Our leaders are not going to fix the worst problems in our world. They couldn’t if they wanted to. And they don’t want to. [They] are not wise or insightful. They’re not even particularly intelligent. Our society is led by plutocrats who only know how to make more money, by unelected empire managers who only know how to dominate and control, and by elected politicians who only know how to say the right words and make the right bargains in order to get themselves elected. … Even if they weren’t a bunch of evil sociopaths who are only in the positions they’re in because of their willingness to collaborate with the agendas of oligarchy, war, militarism, imperialism, ecocide, exploitation, oppression and planetary domination, they don’t even have the personal characteristics necessary to do things like end poverty, rescue our biosphere, bring about world peace or give rise to human thriving.” (02/11/25)
