On Wednesday, February 11, 2026, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee for what should normally be a routine oversight hearing. This is the AG for the most corrupt administration ever seen in all of US history, hence the session became one of the most contentious congressional confrontations of the year and centered largely on the Department of Justice’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
The most powerful moment came not in a shouting exchange between lawmakers, but in silence.
Epstein survivors sitting in the room were asked whether they had been contacted by the Justice Department regarding the document release. They raised their hands to indicate they had not.
In that moment, the issue stopped being procedural. It became human.
What is also very clear and was on open show is the degree to which the the Justice Department does not serve the people, but instead has been bent and corrupted, and now exclusively serves the interests of the orange tyrant. They strive to prosecute the innocent and defend Pedophiles.
This is how she opted to play it …
What do you do when you have very limited time and she refuses to actually address any questions?
Rep Garcia figured out that she was never going to say anything meaningful, so instead of asking her questions he used his time to get the facts out …
Mat Wuerker – It’s Bondi, Pam Bondi…
Climate of Stupidity
The core claims of anthropogenic climate change are supported by overwhelming consensus across climate science bodies. You know it and I know it, but apparently the oligarchs, who also know it, pretend they don’t and get him to roll back regulations to simply earn a few more dollars.
Epstein Update
Trump’s name over and over and over again …
- Link to article here.
- Quote: “Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told Axios in an interview Tuesday that when he searched President Trump’s name in the unredacted Epstein files the previous day, it came up “more than a million times.”“
Wow, someone really did not think this through. “I can ‘exonerate’ you for a price“—made as a public offer—is essentially an acknowledgment that the person being offered the bribe is in fact… …a criminal who did exactly what they have been accused of.
Bannon knows too much about Trump and Epstein, so Blanche is taking very good care of him to keep him quiet just like with Maxwell. Blanche is the lynchpin- he has assumed full authority given to him by Trump to protect the worst of the worst.
- What happened to all those pizzagate Qanon types who were rabidly passionate about protecting kids from pedophiles? Turns out they just want to protect Dear Leader from his pedo files.
Canada Update
He is back to blackmailing Canada again …
- The Maroun family in Detroit who owns the old Ambassador bridge have been extorting Americans and Canadians for decades, and fought the new bridge tooth and nail.
- Link to NPR article is here
- This new bridge will take toll money away from the Maroun family. They are big Trump donors. On Monday, they had a meeting with Howard. Lutnick. Immediately following that meeting, poof, we no longer want this new bridge.
Trump, in the middle of his latest unhinged Truth Social screed, claims that if Canada makes a trade deal with China, “the first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup.“
- This is insane even by insane trumpian standards. Canada is building a bridge on land Canada owns both sides of, and he’s like “nice project you have there, I want half. And also, no ice hockey for you because China.” How the MSM media isn’t yelling questions about his mental health is a travesty.
- What we also learn here is that he thinks Canadians are as stupid as republicans.
- Meanwhile, for those who tend to forget, here is a CBC news story from 2017 when Trump was last in office: Trudeau-Trump joint statement affirms confidence in Gordie Howe bridge project
Graham MacKay has a cartoon of a troll under a bridge
Market Update
Dave Whamond – How are you doing in the market?
Multiple layers of Lunacy and utter incompetence
Trump surrounds himself with white nationalists, fraudsters, grifters, and sex abusers. Some are all four, including him.
Literally everything he touches turns to shit, and so here he is cranking up more division …
- He only excluded two: One who is black and one who is gay.
- The response: “The National Governors Association said it will no longer hold a formal meeting with Trump when governors are scheduled to convene in Washington later this month, after the White House planned to invite only Republican governors.” – This is their stance: “Because NGA’s mission is to represent all 55 governors, the Association is no longer serving as the facilitator for that event, and it is no longer included in our official program,“
Every day for 10 years these MFers have been telling us how surprised they are about the latest reprehensible thing Trump did that day. They each own it all because they all enable it and cheer it on.
You can more or less guarantee that when the administration explains something, it is a lie. For example the claim that El Paso airspace was closed due to cartel balloons shipping drugs …
Word of the day – Pisstified. This is where you are simultaneously pissed off and also mystified at their continuous stream of constant stupidity. In a normal world, if something like this happened under Biden, it would be a 24/7 5-alarm emergency for months on Fox. These days, it’s simply another normal day.
What should perhaps terrify us is that Hegseth has apparently given the guys shooting citizens in the streets, anti aircraft lasers. According to multiple NYT sources, it wasn’t even military personnel at Fort Bliss that fired an anti-drone laser at alleged cartel drones. It was CBP who used the weapon on loan from DoD against a child’s party balloon they mistook for a drone. The Pentagon gave CBP an anti-aircraft weapon.
So how exactly can a weapon system that I am sure you have to have some serious security clearances to use and operate was loaned out to the Border Patrol idiots whose only criteria for the job these days is that they are breathing and willing to kill citizens.
In that context, the FAA guy who shut down the El Paso airspace was the only sane guy in the room after it became clear that they were randomly shooting at stuff.
Blatant Corruption
TEXAS — A father shoots and kills his British daughter LUCY HARRISON who was visiting… after arguing about Trump’s sexual assault allegations… and no charges? Because he says he was just showing her his gun and it went off? 🤔 local12.com/news/nation-…
- She hated that he had a gun. They fought about it. So why would she follow him into another room to check out his gun? She wouldn’t. Also, guns don’t just randomly go off. His defense makes zero sense, but the Texas jury sided with the MAGA white man anyway.
Deeply Darker stuff looms over the horizon – Vast Concentration camps are being built
You know you live in Orwell’s 1984 when you find that you have to translate even the CBS news headlines …
ICE Gestapo updates
The Department of Justice is these days simply the “Department of Just ICE”.
No remorse at all for murdering people …
ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken. Hundreds of kids are still detained. Here are a few of the many samples …
- You can find many more by following this thread on BlueSky
- A ring of pedophiles runs the government and those same people are illegally locking up children. The outrage should be lighting this county on fire.
MAHA – Alternative “Science”
Of course they did …
MAGA Christian Cranks
The nuttier right-wing religious fanatics within the MAGA cult are as always doing their thing, and so here are this week’s samples.
- Oh FFS, Nazi Germany was not a “Christian nation” in any meaningful ethical sense. The Nazi regime perpetrated industrial-scale genocide, aggressive war, mass repression, and crimes against humanity. While some Germans were Christian, the regime’s ideology was fundamentally racialist, authoritarian, and often hostile to traditional Christianity when it conflicted with Nazi doctrine. Calling Nazi Germany a “Christian nation” is propaganda-style historical distortion.
- Complaining that the U.S. sided with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany ignores that the Allies’ goal was to defeat a regime responsible for the Holocaust and tens of millions of deaths. Framing this as a moral error is effectively expressing sympathy for one of the most murderous regimes in history.
- What he is doing isn’t just a bad take; it’s extremist rhetoric that distorts history, abuses theology, and normalizes sympathy for fascist genocide.
- Public officials thanking God or speaking about their faith is common in a pluralistic democracy. That by itself isn’t problematic.
- So what is the problem here? – Praying for “godly people” to be placed in power—and for those “not godly” to be removed—implicitly suggests that political legitimacy should be tied to religious identity or belief. Also, referring to a president’s “servant’s heart” is less a theological statement than a partisan one. It frames a political figure as morally divinely endorsed, which can discourage critical accountability and elevate loyalty to near-religious status.
- Framing political power as something God should allocate to the “right” religious people blurs the line between personal faith and democratic governance.
- The thing that truly is deeply offensive is what Meckler is demonstrating.
- In a pluralistic society, people of different religions (and none) are free to express their beliefs, especially in public life. Saying it’s “revolting” to hear a Muslim discuss their faith isn’t a policy disagreement, it’s a statement of religious hostility.
- Rhetoric that casts minority religions as alien or offensive has historically been used to justify discrimination and exclusion, from anti-Catholicism in the 19th century to anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim prejudice today. Disagreeing with a politician’s policies is fair game. Being “revolted” by their religious identity is not, it’s a form of religious intolerance that contradicts the very freedoms many Christian nationalists claim to defend.
Far-right Christian nationalist Joshua Haymes is confident that “Pizzagate is real.”
- For those of you at the back of the room unfamiliar with “Pizzagate”, it was a 2016 conspiracy theory alleging that Democratic politicians were running a child-trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. It made a splash because a nut fired a rifle inside the restaurant trying to “rescue” imagined victims.
- Joshua Haymes saying “Pizzagate is real” isn’t just eccentric, it’s a clear embrace of a widely debunked conspiracy theory that has already led to violence. It places him firmly in the conspiratorial extremist fringe, not in serious political or religious discourse.
We also this past week learned how the mother of Brook Potteiger, the far-right pastor who was recently tapped to serve at the Washington DC church founded by Christian nationalist Doug Wilson, recounts how Potteiger became psychically abusive and domineering after falling under Wilson’s influence, so much so that she filed a report with child protective services against him.
- They may indeed use religion to claim the high moral ground, but the reality of it all is that extremist religious networks can and do often enable abusive behavior. Leadership within far-right fascist religious settings will often intersect with real-world abuse.
- It is all classical cult behavior. Historically, tightly controlled religious movements tend to operate with hierarchical obedience being strongly emphasized over personal boundaries and also are run with leaders being shielded from all scrutiny. Mr Potteiger’s alleged behavior fits a known pattern of abuse being amplified by authoritarian religious structures.
- That whooshing sound you just listened to was the noise that church-state separation makes when it is being tossed out the window and is replaced with government sponsored religion being promoted by religious fraudsters like Feucht.
- For a bit of context on him, via a Christian Magazine (June 2025): “A former Bethel Church worship leader turned political activist Sean Feucht is facing allegations of spiritual, emotional, and psychological abuse, as well as financial impropriety.“. Side note: The accusations come from many of his former staff members, insiders.
- There is even a Christian run website dedicated to calling out his abuse – https://www.truthandfreedomstories.com
- It’s the old story, big donations are rolling in and he lives a rather lavish lifestyle. For example his second “parsonage” was bought tax free California for $3.4m last year. In other words, very much the type of preacher that is aligned with Trump’s “values”.
Ed Rush insists that everyone benefits when Christian nationalists are in control: “When Christians are in charge, it’s better.“
- This is a testable claim: Some of the world’s highest-performing countries on measures like life expectancy, happiness, corruption control, and economic stability (e.g., Nordic countries) are historically Christian but highly secular in governance.
- Meanwhile, countries that constitutionally privilege Christianity do not consistently outperform secular democracies.
- Facts matter.
- Vaughn’s equating the exposure of names in the Epstein files with child sexual abuse is an extreme false equivalence. Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes involved the exploitation and trafficking of minors. That was actual, documented harm to real victims. To compare the exposure of six abusers and claim that is abuse is absurd. It trivializes the gravity of Epstein’s crimes while inflaming partisan outrage.
- As for “raped the Constitution”, this is a phrase designed to shift the Overton window. Inside the window is what is normal to discuss, the stuff outside it is considered extreme. The window can and does shift over time. Deploying phrases like this might at first shock, but the shock fades and so it widens the window. Think of it as part of a rhetorical arms race. If people start to feel the constitution really is being violently violated then it makes extraordinary responses feel justified – that’s the key problem with rhetoric like this.
- OK, so when I used the phrase “designed to shift the Overton window” above, it suggests Vaughn is smart and devious. As a previously convicted felon who went to jail for fraud he is devious, but he is not smart, and simply tosses out rhetoric like this to harvest views for $$$ on YouTube without understanding the impact of what he does.
Joshua Haymes declares that non-Christian religions should not be allowed in America: “We should absolutely ban public displays of demon worship, and require our political leaders to be Christian.“
- Well yes, the obvious, the Constitution explicitly prohibits religious tests for public office and protects the free exercise of religion. Banning non-Christian religious expression and requiring leaders to be Christian would violate foundational constitutional principles and undermine religious liberty for all Americans, including Christians themselves.
- Under his view, if the Constitution protects what he sees as evil (e.g., non-Christian religions), then the Constitution is wrong. Extreme proposals like this are attempts to normalize the idea that pluralism is negotiable. It is also posture that has been extremified to gain better reach and punch through the artificial barrier erected by social media algorithms that tend to only reward extremism.
- Ironically, what he is blind to is the real consequence of the road he walks upon . Religious liberty protects Christians precisely because it protects everyone. If the state can ban one religion, it can also ban his.
Deeper Dive: It’s Worth Unpacking Grubber’s claim and explaining why it is BS
Seth Gruber says that “if you’re a pro-choice Christian, you need to repent because to be a pro-choice Christian is to commit a Christological heresy.“
His position: By calling pro-choice Christianity a “Christological heresy,” he’s claiming that supporting legal abortion rights fundamentally contradicts who Christ is and what Christianity teaches. That’s a totally insane position to take and here is why. In Christian theology, “Christological heresy” is usually reserved for beliefs that deny core doctrines about Jesus (e.g., his divinity or incarnation), not policy positions.
What is fundamentally wrong about this stance?
Christianity has never had a single, uniform view on abortion. The Christian positions on abortion have varied across history, denominations, and cultures. He might indeed attempt to claim an exclusive grasp of “truth” and assert that all others are heretics, but others can and do also adopt that exact same stance against him. (Yes, Theology can indeed be fun like that)
From the outside looking in you will find that many mainstream Christian traditions (including parts of Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Methodism, and Catholic moral theology in practice) have nuanced views, especially concerning legal policy vs personal morality. Calling a policy stance “heresy” is not how historical Christian theology classifies disagreement.
Why do Pro-choice Christians believe what they believe?
Many pro-choice Christians argue that moral theology should consider women’s autonomy, health, and social justice. Beyond that there is also the reality that the Bible does not explicitly address modern abortion. Let’s also not forget that Jesus emphasised compassion, humility, and resisting coercive religious law.
One more key insight: You can both oppose abortion morally, and yet at the exact same time also support legal choice. This is what many Christians do.
What is really going on with Mr Gruber?
What Gruber is attempting to do is to merge conservative politics with religious identity. That bait and switch then enables him to frame political disagreement as spiritual rebellion. The goal is to pressure believers into confirming to his specific extremist far-right religious beliefs.
The bottom line is this: what we actually have here is religious fascism, not Christianity.
Even More Political Cartoons from the past week
As always, there are many more excellent cartoons.
Graham MacKay – America is more than just Ted Nugent loving folk #badbunny #superbowlLV #theunitedstatesofpartofAmerica
Clay Jones – Worst Cupid Ever #Trump #Racism #ValentinesDay
Rob Rogers – I am not surprised by recent polls that show that 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump, but I am puzzled by the 40% who think he’s doing a good job. What do they like? #racism #Trump #ValentinesDay2026 #valentine #ICE #grift #hate #tariffs #lies #dictator #greed
Bad Bunny Love
It feels like forever ago, but it really was just one week ago. Apparently there was a ball game before the Bad Bunny concert.
What we also got to watch was the seething contempt Republicans have for Latino-American culture, it has been on full display. But hey, let’s focus on the good bits …
Rob Rogers – Trump slammed Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show calling it the “worst ever” and saying “nobody understands a word.” It was a performance about love and acceptance. No wonder Trump didn’t understand it. #Trump #BadBunny #SuperBowlHalftime #Latinos #ICE #Jesus
Clay Jones – Trump loves hate #Trump #BadBunny #SuperBowlHalftimeShow
Nick Anderson – Bad Bunny
Media Madness
Adam Zyglis – Authoritarian’s best friend…
Rob Rogers – Why does Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the world, feel he must pay fealty to Trump in so many unsavory ways? Is he really that scared and powerless or is it only about greed? #JeffBezos #WashingtonPost #WashPo #Trump #fealty
Finally
Jon Stewart – Trump Defends Racist Obama Meme & MAGA Rages Over Bad Bunny’s Spanish Halftime Show | The Daily Show
7,815,471 views Feb 10, 2026 #DailyShow#JonStewart#SuperBowl
Jon Stewart digs into MAGA’s hair-trigger outrage at anything that doesn’t align with their narrow set of values, from boycotting Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show with TPUSA’s own “English”-language mediocrity fest, to the president setting a new racism high score with a social media post dehumanizing the Obamas, to dressing down a U.S. Olympic skier for expressing less than a fraction of the disdain for America that Trump himself has doled out. #DailyShow#JonStewart#SuperBowl#BadBunny
- 0:00 – Jon Stewart’s TDS Welcome
- 0:20 – Jon Recaps The Patriots’ Loss in the Super Bowl
- 1:09 – RFK Jr. Shares His Carnivore Diet
- 3:46 – MAGA Critiques Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show
- 7:38 – Kid Rock Headlines the Turning Point USA Alternate Halftime Show
- 12:17 – MAGA Says NFL Halftime Show Should “Unite the Country”
- 14:41 – Trump Posts Racist Video of Barack and Michelle Obama
- 20:28 – MAGA Slams Olympic Athletes for “Anti-American Rhetoric”
.Jimmy Kimmel – Trump’s Desperate to Destroy the Planet, Pam Bondi’s Epstein Karen-Thon & Dems Want ICE Reform
3,426,064 views Feb 13, 2026 #Kimmel
The NBA All-Star Game will be in LA on Sunday, Trump sent out a fundraising email that seems to show he might be a little lonely this Valentine’s Day, earlier this week we learned that Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took a boat to Epstein’s Island despite claiming he had cut ties, Dr. and Mrs. Oz invited Epstein to a Valentine’s Day Party in 2016, Attorney General Pam Bondi put on a nearly five-hour Karen-thon in front of the House Judiciary Committee, the Department of Justice only set up four computers for the 535 members of Congress to look through files, Donald Trump is heading toward being just like the Iron Sheik, Trump repealed and rejected a 2009 finding by the EPA that says carbon dioxide is bad for our planet, RFK Jr. dropped a nugget of nuts on a podcast today, a government shutdown is looming, a ten-point plan to reforming ICE and the Border Patrol, and This Week in Unnecessary Censorship.
