Sunday, February 22, 2026

Davids Daily Dose - Sunday February 22


1/. This year is an El Nino year, with extreme high temperatures this summer......oh boy......

America’s abandonment of the “endangerment finding” undergirding national climate policy is not the most important thing that happened last week. That decision was an act of gross stupidity, but it was also perfectly predictable given the people making it, and since America’s not doing anything good on climate anyway it won’t have deep immediate effect. (As is often the case, humorist Alexandra Petri had the best response). What will matter more, I think, for America and for policy going forward, is the news that we’re likely to see another El Niño soon; take this as your first warning that not only the temperature but the politics of the planet are likely to change dramatically, and soon. 

We’re still in a La Niña phase in the Pacific right now—the cooler part of the cycle that meant that 2025’s global temperature was “only” the second or third highest ever, trailing 2023, the last big El Niño year. But that hot phase seems to be returning, and somewhat faster than expected.


2/. The "Housing Crisis" in a nutshell....




3/. Love the title - "The President Of the 000001%".....
No one cares, Matt Yglesias argues. And I get it. I’ve never been one of those journalists — like, say, Josh Marshall — who focuses on corruption in politics. Those stories can get complicated/boring very quickly, involve lots of opaque financial jargon and know-how that I’ll never understand; and in America, they rarely take politicians down these days unless the grift is truly epic.

But still. 

What’s going on now in Washington is on a wholly new scale — an open, shameless exercise by those in power to benefit personally and massively from the leverage that comes with public office. In the words of Ann Coulter: “This is the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history. I mean, it is so blatant it’s right in front of our eyes.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-president-of-the-000001-percent?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61371&post_id=187147056&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email



4/. Maureen Dowd in the Times on the threat of AI.....

When President Trump vitiated scientific facts on Thursday, helping fossil fuel fat cats by eliminating the government’s ability to regulate treacherous gases, a reporter asked what he says to people worried about the very real hazards of a hotter planet.

“I tell them don’t worry about it,” he shot back.

The administration has even coined a word to denigrate those who push back on Trump’s rash policies: “panican,” as in one who panics.

In a world steeped in violence and menace, we are constantly being told by the people in charge not to worry.

Don’t worry about a sweltering Earth. Don’t worry about all those powerful creeps getting away with abusing young women exploited by Jeffrey Epstein; instead, just behold the beauty of the rising Dow, as the abrasive, evasive Pam Bondi suggested at a congressional hearing Wednesday.



5/. Politics Girl makes a sandwich.....and let's us have it! Four minutes.....



6/. This is coming.....going to get yours?
President Trump announced today that beginning in 2027, all American citizens and legal residents will be entitled to a mandatory tattoo and trackable embedded chip to authenticate residency status and other information.

The President unveiled the plan in a social media post at 3 a.m. Eastern Time.

“ THE TRUMPMARK IS COMING. It’s going to be Fantastic. No other country has anything like it. Everyone in the United States will get a Trumpmark, which they tell me will be a chip in the forehead or on the hand that ICE and other federal agencies can scan to check out if they’re legal, or left-wing terrorists, or whatever. And it gets better. If you’re ever lost, you don’t have to worry because the FBI and DHS will know exactly where you are. You’ll also scan your Trumpmark to pay at the grocery store or gas station, so you never have to pull out your wallet. It’s really Incredible. People will love it.”



7/. Trump has a plan!


8/. I know, I know, another story on trans.....but this is good. Andrew Sullivan on how the Democrats can put this issue, 
which helped Trump get elected again, behind them.
I had dinner this week with a young gay man who was castrated and had his endocrine system permanently wrecked as a result of “gender-affirming care” for minors. He was super girly as a kid and had an undiagnosed testosterone deficiency which delayed his male development. He liked playing with girls, seemed to act like one, and when he socially transitioned as a teen, he passed easily. Suddenly all the sneers of “faggot” he’d endured as a boy went away. In today’s “gender-affirming care” environment, that was enough. 

“Compassion” and “science” took a gay boy, flooded his young male body with estrogen, and removed his genitals — because the docs and the shrinks determined he was too effeminate to be a “real man.” Only when he personally figured this out as an adult and got himself off estrogen and onto testosterone did everything change. He felt energy and mental clarity for the first time. And his life as a man could finally begin — although his body will never be fully repaired.           https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/what-the-dems-should-say-on-trans?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61371&post_id=187932987&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email



9/. Tom Tomorrow and Epstein's ghost!




10/. The Prince Andrew arrest, and some background on this flawed Royal......from the Atlantic.....
He sounds like an arrogant dick.....

On Tuesday, November 30, 2010, at 2:57 p.m., Prince Andrew—as he then was—received details of his upcoming trips as Britain’s official trade envoy: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Vietnam, Singapore. At 3:02 p.m., he forwarded the entire email to Jeffrey Epstein.

At dawn today, that stupid and unethical decision—and many others like it—finally caught up with him. Police arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on the morning of his 66th birthday, on suspicion of misconduct in public office, and are now searching his homes. Prosecutors have not yet released specific charges, which are thought to relate to Andrew passing on sensitive government information to Epstein. The offense carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. His brother, King Charles III, was not officially informed in advance, but had signaled that the royal family would cooperate with any police inquiry.



11/. We now have concentration camps....for immigrants....for now....

Writing about a recent ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that affirmed the Trump administration’s policy of mandatory and indefinite detention for immigrants held by either ICE or Customs and Border Protection, my colleague David French makes a point that bears repeating:

There are thousands upon thousands of immigrants facing brutal conditions who’ve been convicted of no crime and haven’t even been accused of a crime beyond their initial alleged illegal entry.

People who have lost legal status because they have overstayed their visas, he also notes, “aren’t guilty of any crime at all, since their original entry is lawful.” And even illegal entry is “a misdemeanor for a first offense.”



12/. The "SAVE" act......coming soon to a precinct near you......


13/. Sarah Sherman as the Weather Girl.....a little rude and amusing....3 minutes.....



14/. The inside story on why El Paso airport was closed....
Incompetence, arrogance and power struggles.....

Last spring, in the early months of Steve Feinberg’s tenure as deputy defense secretary, Pentagon staff members briefed him on plans to employ new high-energy laser weapons to take out drones being used by Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs across the southern U.S. border.

But their use was conditioned on getting a green light from aviation safety officials.

The law, the staff members at the Pentagon explained to him, required extensive coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Department, which could slow the testing of the system. Transportation officials could even block the system’s use if they determined that it posed risks to aviation safety.



15/. SNL skit about a Trump conversion -- takes a while but quite good......five minutes....



16/. This scientific newsletter is getting more and more dire....but from other sources some of their timelines are very conservative. 
The unravelling process is accelerating.....

Our “economy and society will cease to function as we know it,” scientists warned, discussing the possibility of crossing devastarting tipping points that could doom earth into 3 or 4 °C temperature rise before the year 2100. A study in One Earth warns of a not-too-distant “hothouse earth” scenario, and that “We are leaving the stable conditions of the Holocene, and entering a period of unprecedented climate change beyond the natural interglacial envelope, with outcomes that are difficult to predict.” There’ll be no coming back from this.



17/. Do you read books? Here's what you missed - the NYT best books of 2025.....

The envelope, please: After a full year spent reading hundreds of books and meeting regularly to bicker — er, converse — about their merits and flaws, the editors of the Book Review have chosen the 10 Best Books of 2025.

In novels that transport us from the battlefields of World War I to contemporary Swedish dance clubs to the halls of a convent in rural Australia, and from Nazi movie studios to New York art galleries where immigrants look for a sense of connection, our fiction picks offer sweeping stories about timely and timeless topics with a sense of verve and style.

In nonfiction, we chose immersive journalistic accounts of the housing crisis and a historic Black church, along with a riveting biography of a misunderstood painter, a fraught mother-daughter memoir and an enthralling shipwreck story that is as much a meditation on marriage as it is a seafaring adventure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/books/review/best-books-2025.html



18/. Definitely gets the prize for the best title of a TV series:
"How To Get To Heaven From Belfast"......rave review from the Guardian....

Three middle-aged women may be all you need for anything. To run a business, raise a village, end a war, retool a civilisation, empty the loft. Even more usefully, you can make a great murder-mystery caper with them, as Lisa McGee (a fourth woman! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it) has done with her new series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast.

McGee made her name, of course, with Derry Girls – a nigh-on perfect sitcom that followed the trials and tribulations of a group of Northern Irish Catholic schoolgirls (and a beleaguered English cousin) as they went about the chaotic business of growing up in the mid-90s at the tail end of the Troubles. The main characters of the new offering don’t map precisely on to the previous one but the DNA of Derry Girls as an entity remains gloriously alive (is DNA alive? I feel a curious urge to consult Sister Michael). How to Get to Heaven has all of the verve, acuity and havoc dancing on top of the immaculate plotting that you find in McGee’s masterwork. The only difference is that one of the schoolgirls is dead. Probably. Maybe. Perhaps not.                                                                               https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/feb/12/how-to-get-to-heaven-from-belfast-review-if-you-see-nothing-else-this-year-watch-this?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other





Today's golf joke
Tiger Woods & Stevie Wonder are in a bar...
Tiger says to Stevie, "How's the singing career going?"
Stevie replies, "Not too bad. How's the golf?"
Woods replies, "I've had some problems with my swing,
but I think I've got that right, now."
Stevie: "I always find that when my swing goes wrong,
I need to stop playing for a while and not think about it.
Then, the next time I play, it seems to be all right."
Incredulous, Tiger says, "You play GOLF?"
Stevie: "Yes, I've been playing for years."
Tiger: "But -- you're blind! How can you play golf if you can't see?"
Stevie: "Well, I get my caddy to stand in the middle of the fairway and call to me. I listen for the sound of his voice and play the ball towards him. Then, when I get to where the ball lands, the caddy moves to the green or farther down the fairway and again I play the ball towards his voice."
"But, how do you putt" asks Tiger.
"Well", says Stevie, "I get my caddy to lean down in front of the hole and call to me with his head on the ground and I just play the ball towards his voice."
Tiger: "What's your handicap?"
Stevie: "Well, actually -- I'm a scratch golfer."
Woods says to Stevie, "We've got to play a round sometime."
Stevie: "Well, people don't take me seriously, so I only play for money, and never play for less than $10,000 a hole. Is that a problem?"
Woods thinks about it and says, "I can afford that; OK,
I'm game for that . . . $10,000 a hole is fine with me.
When would you like to play?"
Stevie:     "Pick a night."


Today's blond jokes
As the crowded elevator descended, Mrs. Simpson became too furious with her husband, who was delighted to be pressed against a gorgeous blonde. As the elevator stopped at the main floor, the blonde suddenly whirled, slapped Mr. Simpson, and said, "That will teach you to pinch!" Bewildered, Mr. Simpson was halfway to the parking lot with his wife when he choked, "I...I...didn't pinch that girl." "Of course you didn't," said his wife, consolingly. "I did."
A blonde is overweight, so her doctor puts her on a diet. “I want you to eat regularly for two days, then skip a day, and repeat the procedure for two weeks. The next time I see you, you’ll have lost at least five pounds.” When the blonde returns, she’s lost nearly 20 pounds. “Wow, that’s amazing!” the doctor says. “Did you follow my instructions?” The blonde nods… “I’ll tell you, though, I thought I was going to drop dead that third day." “From hunger, you mean?” said the doctor. “No, from skipping,” replied the blonde.

One day a blond walks into a doctors office with both of her ears burnt. The doctor asks her what had happened. She says, "well... when I was ironing my work suit the phone rang and I mistakenly picked up the iron instead of the phone. "Well that explains one ear, but what about the other." "The bastard called again"


Today's college football jokes
Ohio State's Urban Meyer on one of his players: "He doesn't know the meaning of the word fear. In fact, I just saw his grades and he doesn't know the meaning of a lot of words."
________________________________________

Why do Tennessee fans wear orange?
So they can dress that way for the game on Saturday, go hunting on Sunday, and pick up trash on Monday.
___________________________________________

What does the average Alabama player get on his SATs?
Drool.
___________________________________________

How many Michigan freshmen football players does it take to change a light bulb?
None. That's a sophomore course.
___________________________________________

How did the Georgia football player die from drinking milk?
The cow fell on him.
___________________________________________

Two West Virginia football players were walking in the woods.
One of them said, "Look, a dead bird."
The other looked up in the sky and said, "Where?"
___________________________________________

A University of Cincinnati football player was almost killed yesterday in a tragic horseback-riding accident.
He fell from a horse and was nearly trampled to death.
Luckily, the manager of the Wal-Mart came out and unplugged the horse. ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________

What do you say to a University of Miami Hurricane football player dressed in a three-piece suit? "
"Will the defendant please rise."
___________________________________________

If three Florida State football players are in the same car, who is driving?
The police officer.
___________________________________________

How can you tell if an Auburn football player has a girlfriend?
There's tobacco juice on both sides of the pickup truck.
___________________________________________

What do you get when you put 32 Arkansas cheerleaders in one room?
A full set of teeth.
___________________________________________

University of Michigan Coach Brady Hoke is only going to dress half of his players for the game this week;
the other half will have to dress themselves.
___________________________________________

How is the Indiana football team like an opossum?
They play dead at home and get killed on the road.
___________________________________________

Why did the Nebraska linebacker steal a police car?
He saw "911" on the side and thought it was a Porsche.
___________________________________________

How do you get a former Illinois football player off your porch?
Pay him for the pizza.
___________________________________________


Today's scammer joke
I had a call from a scammer the other day.
Me: “Hello.”
Scammer: (Heavy Foreign Accent) “Hello. This is Tom Smith from Microsoft Support. 
We are seeing a lot of virus activity coming from your device.”
Me: “Oh no. My device? Are you sure?”
Scammer: “Oh yes, Madam. We have many reports.”
Me: “Oh, jeez. How can I fix it?”
Scammer: “It’s okay, Madam. We can help you right now. Are you in front of your device?”
Me: “Yes. I was just about to use it. I’m glad you called.”
Scammer: “Good, Madam. Please push the Start button.”
Me: “I think it’s already on.”
Scammer: “Okay, Madam. Now click on Control Panel.”
Me: “I don’t see that.”
Scammer: “Do you see a bunch of information above the Start button?”
Me: “Yes.”
Scammer: “That is your Control Panel.”
Me: “Wow. I didn’t realize it had a name.”
Scammer: “Yes, Madam. Now press Internet Options.”
Me: “I don’t see any Internet options. I don’t think I bought that feature. This is just a cheap one.”
Scammer: “All devices have Internet, Madam. Press the Start button again.”
Me: “Okay. Same as before.”
Scammer: “That’s fine, Madam. We will restart your device. Please turn it off.”
Me: “Um… I don’t know how. I’ve never turned it off. It kind of just stays on.”
Scammer: “There must be an off button. How do you stop it when it’s running?”
Me: “I usually press the big button.”
Scammer: “Okay, Madam. Press that button.”
Me: “Okay.”
Scammer: “Is your device off?”
Me: “No. The door popped open.”
Scammer: “Door? Is there a disc inside?”
Me: “No. There’s a burrito.” 🌯
Scammer: “Why is there a burrito in your computer?”
Me: “Computer? I thought you said this was microwave support.” 🙆🏻‍♂️😂
Click.



Today's Taxi joke....
I got cut off by a taxi driver last week.
I was walking through town today and | saw him at the back of the queue at the taxi rank.
I got in the first taxi in the queue and said
"How much to the station?"
"$5" said the driver. "And how much for a blow job ?" I asked him.
"That's disgusting" he said "Get out of my cab"
I got in the second taxi and said "How much to the station?"
"$5" said the driver. "And how much for a blow job ?" I asked him.
"I'm not having any of that" he said "Get out of my cab"
I worked my way down the line, getting thrown out of each taxi in turn, until | came to my target at the back of the queue.
"How much to the station?". "$5" said the driver.
"Ок" I said "Let's go"
As we pulled out and overtook the other taxis I wound the window down and gave all the other drivers a thumbs up with a big grin on my face!!..


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