As the title song bubbles up, Madge slips on a pair of fishnet gloves and writes the phrase "Good-Bye!" on her stationary before sliding the note into an envelope she signs with "amore." The video's caption reads" "Bedtime Stories Re-release and Vinyl coming soon!" At press time Madonna did not give any further information about when the album will be-released or if it will contain bonus material.
The Bedtime tease comes just a few days after Madonna revealed that she is in the studio working on new music. In some of the snaps posted on Feb. 13, she is recording vocals into a microphone, while in others she is behind a drum kit. Producer Stuart Price also makes a cameo while working in the studio and a few of Madonna's kids also pop in to check on the progress.
"My Valentine's Day gift to all my fans is to let you know I'm putting my heart and soul into my new music," Madonna captioned the snaps. "I can't wait to share it with you!!" Adding to the excitement, Madonna again teased that she's working on a follow-up to her Billboard 200-topping 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor; Price worked with her on that album.
D'Angelo will make his grand return to the stage at the upcoming 17th installment of Roots Picnic in Philadelphia.
On Monday (Feb. 17), the full Roots Picnic 2025 lineup was announced. Among the announced performers are Meek Mill , Lenny Kravitz , GloRilla and Tems. Jeezy is also slated to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his 2005 album Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101.
Kevin Costner got close to Cher at the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary show on Sunday, just days after he was caught gawking at her on stage.
To Costner’s fans dismay, the 78-year-old singer’s boyfriend, Alexander Edwards, whom she’s been officially dating for about two years now, was sat on the other side of her during Sunday’s taping.
However, people were still pleased to see Costner with Cher at the show.
Closing with C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
Tuesday, February 18, 2025. Oh, look, while the DSA attacks actual Democrats, they ignore reality and what we can actually accomplish right now, if we roll up our sleeves and get to work.
If you ever not grasped why the DSA should stick to Socialism and stop pretending that they're Democrats, look no further than political closet case Sam Seder. Maybe when Socialist Michael Brooks was alive, he could strategize? I have no idea. But Sam's just another worthless JACOBIN reading Socialist.
He's done yet another attack ad (segment) on THE MAJORITY REPORT attacking House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries because . . . Hakeem's a Democrat. Sam found time for the bad author "Media: OWNED finds Eoin Higgins owned by bad journalism" -- an author who is a Socialist but managed to write a book about US politics that labels MAGA, Republicans, Libertarians, The Tea Party and "the left."
No where in the book does the Socialist identify himself as that nor all of his circle-jerk friends who are also Socialists. It's just "the left." They fake ass you over and over. Not by accident. They get together and make Cenk and Kyle heroes and talk about "Justice Democrats" which are really "Justice Socialists." I'm hearing from people in Greg Casar's district who are very upset to learn that they thought they were voting for a Democrat when they weren't. Greg might want to get ahead of that before mid-terms.
Mike took on a Socialist front last night. COMMON DREAMS -- not a Democratic site -- and Socialist Jake Johnson were pimping Aaron Regunberg's attack on Democrats. Because that's what Socialists do and that's what Aaron is. (Though he did run as a Democrat last year -- after two previous failed election cycles where he didn't.) Aaron's DSA and yet Jake Johnson didn't think you needed to know that.
Why could that be?
Maybe the answer's to be found in Alex Seitz-Wald's NBC NEWS report from 2023? Let's see:
The tensions are familiar to any student of radical movements in history. And ideological movements often stagnate when their allied party wins the White House, and the unifying effect of a common enemy is replaced by the inherent messiness of governing.
Justice Democrats, the insurgent group that recruited progressives like Ocasio-Cortez, slashed its staff this year after a mixed record in Democratic congressional primaries, while prominent leftists have used words like “crisis” and “purgatory” as they debate their future. The problems facing far-left groups have led some to focus more on organizing among labor unions and tenants, rather than inside electoral politics.
The national DSA has criticized and even threatened to expel its own members elected to Congress for apostasy on issues like support for Israel and a 2022 vote to end a railroad strike.
In July, state Rep. Mike Connelly left his Massachusetts DSA chapter after he was threatened with expulsion for, among other things, endorsing Democratic Gov. Maura Healy’s re-election and appearing at an event with the Prince and Princess of Wales.
“The ‘charges’ were, essentially, that I demonstrated a willingness to work with and support elected leaders and activists who are delivering results for working class and marginalized communities. I am guilty as charged, and proudly so,” Connelly said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
[. . .]
Renée Paradis, a member of the party's National Political Committee said opinion inside the DSA ranges widely, including those who want the group to be more active inside the Democratic Party.
But the consensus coming out of the convention, she said, remains that DSA should keep running candidates in Democratic primaries while building its own outside campaign infrastructure.
"Most working-class voters still heavily identify with the Democratic Party," said Paradis. "Bernie’s campaigns and DSA’s own electoral campaigns have shown that we can build socialist power while tactically using the Democratic Party’s ballot line.”
See, it's planned. They plan to rat f**k the Democratic Party.
We are not on the same page. They want to run Democrats out of Congress and replace them with Socialists posing as Democrats. They want to run Democrats in Congress out of leadership and replace them with Socialists.
Remember that when they're attacking Hakeem.
Remember that and remember what they're not doing as they try to get you to join their attack on Hakeem to take him out of Democratic Party leadership. You might need to read THIRD's "Editorial: Congress needs to do its job and we need to do our job" first. When you do, grasp that they have refused to tell you to target Republicans.
They have refused to talk to, for example, Texas voters and remind them that John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are not "Republicans" as much as they are US senators. Their party identification shouldn't matter, they are there to represent all of Texas. And campaigns should have been mobilized to bombard them with the message "NO" on Donald Chump's nominees.
You have to drop back to 1992 for when my state had a Republican in the US Senate. But that's not the case for most states. Equally true, you don't have to do an e-mail saying, "Teddy, you're handsome and I love that fat belly even though I'm a Democrat" -- you don't have to mention your party identification. You are a constituent and if enough constituents raise hell -- regardless of party i.d., a senator will be prompted to listen.
The Sodalists hiding in their political closets are a lot like closeted actors -- constrained and unconvincing. Which is why they can't really participate in a worthy manner or make any real contributions.
But Democrats? We've been here before and we've pushed back and we've won. We did it when Reagan was in the White House, we did it when Bully Boy Bush was in the White House.
Socialists are the reason Chump gets away with so much. They threw everything at him including the kitchen sink in his first term. Everything was the worst, every Tweet the most offensive thing in the world. It didn't look good to swing voters. It looked like everything got attacked. Our problems are policy differences and vision differences. Senator Chuck Schumer rightly realizes that and that's why he makes the statements he does that send Socialist into a tizzy.
This version of Donald Chump is even more outrageous and unmoored than the previous one.
And we need to convey that to the American people.
But instead, we have Kyle and Sam and the other Socialists posing as Democrats and urging us to 'fight back' against Democrat Hakeem Jeffries.
DSA doesn't even have 100,000 members in this country. There's a reason for that: They don't know what the f**k they're doing.
Democrats know what they're doing.
As noted in the video, Chump's has a 46% approval rating and a 48% disapproval rating.
Chump is in his first 100 days .
What does that mean?
The Socialist closet cases can't or won't tell you. (To repeat SEP and PSL are Socialists and, unlike DSA, they don't hide in political closets. My beef is with the posers trying to pass themselves off as Democrats while they rat f**k the party.)
No president of the United States gets a bigger pass from the press and the people than they do at any other time. We're not even at day 30 right now.
Republicans in the Senate can do whatever they want right now because they're under the mistaken belief that Chump is so popular. They can skirt their legal obligations -- and have -- because they're too stupid to grasp that this is the high point. They're apparently also scared from violent threats that MAGA is making against them. They better be reporting those threats.
They are craven and they are letting Chump boss them around. Because they think he's so damn popular and that the MAGAs contacting their offices represent America. MAGAs do not represent America and that's why Democrats especially need to be contacting any Republican in the Senate that is from their state. It needs to be made clear that -- beyond the echo chamber -- people are outraged.
I'm arguing -- and have been for some time -- that we focus on the Senate. The reason being it's a statewide office. Susan Collins, for example, can't afford to lose the Democrats who've voted for her in the past. If you want to focus on the House, have at it. I think it's easier to build resistance in the Senate because the House exists as it does due to gerrymandering.
But that's what we need to be talking about. We don't need to be signing off on DSA's efforts to take out Democrat Hakeem Jeffries.
And that's not, "Don't you criticize him!" Call him out all you want. But grasp that he's not going anywhere and that this effort is about trying to take him out of leadership to replace him with a Socialist. Yet again, while Democrats fight to save the country, Socialists hiding in political closets are working overtime to take out Democrats.
By the way, everyone's e-mailing the public account about this or that takedown of TYT's Ana. I'm not interested. Not until the YOUTUBER tells the truth. Ana's a Socialist who hid in a political closet. Again, her end goal was destruction of the US system. That's why, when Chump offered that, it was so easy for her to join MAGA. It's not an accident. And if, at this late date, you're calling out Ana and not noting that she was a Socialist, that she was part of JACOBIN, etc, etc, I don't see you as brave. I don't see you as a truth teller. I see you as a trickster.
Chump is outrageous and he is destroying our government. That's reality. And it's the reality that Americans are seeing and that reality is going to destroy him.
Farmers are in an uproar. Ben Palen (KANSAS REFLECTOR) reports:
Back in November, I wrote a column for Kansas Reflector that discussed the likely adverse effects of President Trump’s proposed tariffs on U.S. farmers.
Many farmers voted for Trump because he promised less regulation and greater prosperity for America’s farmers. The hard truth is that, like most of the folks who voted for Trump, farmers failed to do their homework about the reality of the new administration. All of this has occurred in the context of higher input costs and tight margins for virtually all crops.
We are now living and working in an environment where the only constant is chaos. Chaos produces uncertainty, and that leads to loss of trust. The buyers of U.S. farm products are not going to deal with nations that cannot be trusted. There are plenty of options in today’s world for those buyers to bypass the United States. Why on God’s green earth would they put up with the insanity that we have in Washington now?
Really?
Donald Trump has leaned into his unofficial role as the "crypto president " in ways that can both help the crypto industry and enrich himself and his family.
He's also attached the Trump name to a crypto token and other crypto-themed products. The cryptocurrency industry, which spent heavily to help Trump win last year's election, has expressed mixed feelings about some of his crypto ventures.
He detailed how meme coins like LIBRA were rigged from the start, how insiders had pre-launch access to tokens, and how every major launch was nothing more than a calculated financial game. “This is an insiders’ game. It’s an unregulated casino,” Hayden said, confirming that early buyers at a private dinner in Washington, D.C., were given access to Trump’s token before the public.
“They gave people special access to buy in before it launched,” Hayden said. “That’s what I was told.” When pressed on where this happened, he named Washington, D.C., as the location where the deal allegedly took place.
Melania’s token, Hayden admitted, followed the same playbook. He was directly involved in the launch and confirmed that his team sniped it. The goal, according to him, was to counteract external snipers, but in reality, it meant insiders once again took the best entry positions before the public.
Identifying potential violations of strict data protection laws, senators demand information on DOGE’s infiltration of IRS systems
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to acting IRS Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell warning that personnel affiliated with Elon Musk infiltrating the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) systems could be in violation of strict taxpayer data protection laws that prohibit both the improper disclosure and inspection of Americans’ tax returns. The senators demanded copies of any memorandum granting IRS system access to any Musk-affiliated personnel, as well as justifications and records related to the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) inspections of taxpayer data. The senators also sought to learn whether DOGE personnel have accessed or interfered with any work by the IRS Criminal Investigation division or moved any IRS data, including tax return information, from IRS systems to external servers or recipients.
According to public reports, the White House is pressuring the IRS to agree to give software engineers working for Elon Musk at DOGE broad access to IRS systems, property, and datasets which include the private tax return information of hundreds of millions of American citizens and businesses. Potential access includes the IRS’ Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), which would give Elon Musk and his associates access to private bank records and other confidential, legally protected information belonging to American taxpayers.
“Even if individuals affiliated with DOGE are employed by Treasury, their access to tax information may not be legal,” wrote the senators. “For inspection of taxpayer information to be lawful, it must be made to or by an authorized person for an authorized purpose … To date, no information on DOGE employees or any others executing orders on Musk’s behalf have revealed any clear, stated purpose as to why they need access to return information, whether they have followed all required laws to gain access to IRS systems, and what steps the IRS has taken to ensure that inspection of tax return is contained to authorized personnel and not disclosed to any unauthorized parties.”
“No executive order requiring agency heads to provide DOGE personnel access to IRS records or information technology systems supersedes the federal tax code,” the lawmakers continued. “Software engineers working for Musk seeking to gain access to tax return information have no right to hoover up taxpayer data and send that data back to any other part of the federal government and may be breaking the law if they are doing so.”
“We are also extremely concerned that DOGE personnel meddling with IRS systems in the middle of tax filing season could, inadvertently or otherwise, cause breakdowns that may delay the issuance of tax refunds indefinitely. Any delay in refunds could be financially devastating to millions of Americans who plan their budgets around timely refunds every spring,” the senators concluded.
The senators requested the IRS provide clarity, including copies of memorandums, on the decision to grant Musk and DOGE access to IRS systems and a list of specific people who would have access to these systems, by February 21, 2025.
Senator Warren’s leadership has been instrumental in Democrats’ fight against Elon Musk’s takeover of government agencies:
- On February 14, 2025, the Treasury and federal government watchdogs announced, following pressure from Sen. Warren, that they would open an investigation into Treasury Secretary Bessent granting Elon Musk and DOGE access to critical government payment systems.
- On February 13, 2025, after reports revealed Elon Musk would take advantage of loopholes in federal ethics laws to avoid publicly disclosing his financial conflicts of interest, Sen. Warren led several Democrats in a letter demanding Musk publicly reveal how he could stand to profit from his role in the Trump administration.
- On February 10, 2025, following Elon Musk and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought attempting to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Sen. Warren spoke at the CFPB headquarters and vowed to fight back, saying “Congress built (the CFPB), and no one other than Congress — not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, no one – can fire the financial cops.
- On February 7, 2025, following Elon Musk and DOGE forcing their way into the Department of Education, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Minority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.) led a coalition of Democrats in demanding the Department of Education launch an investigation into Musk and DOGE’s access to federal student loan data.
- On February 5, 2025, as part of Senate Democrats 30-hour hold on Russ Vought’s nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke out against the serious consequences of Mr. Vought’s leadership and underscored the danger of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s power grab.
- On February 5, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren joined Democrats’ demand for the Senate Committees on Finance and Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to hold hearings into how Elon Musk and DOGe gained access to systems that control payments to millions of American citizens.
- On February 4, 2025, following Treasury Secretary Bessent’s inadequate response to his role in Musk and DOGE accessing critical government payment systems, Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed him to provide the American public with answers.
- On February 4, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren called on the Government Accountability Office to urgently investigate Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s decision to grant access to sensitive government payment systems to Elon Musk and other DOGE employees.
- On February 4, 2025, at a rally in front of the Department of the Treasury, Senator Elizabeth Warren called Elon Musk’s government power grab an attempt to “seiz(e) power away from the American people.”
- On February 3, 2025, at a press conference with Senate Democrats, Senator Elizabeth Warren sounded the alarm on the danger of Elon Musk having access to millions of Americans’ sensitive personal information, calling it an attempt to “take over this government to make it work better for themselves and worse for everyone else.”
- On February 3, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted Secretary Bessent for allowing Musk and DOGE access to the critical Treasury systems and the sensitive personal information in them.
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New content at THIRD:
- Truest statement of the week
- A note to our readers
- Editorial: Congress needs to do its job and we nee...
- Media: Thrillers and Spoilers
- Books (Stan, Ava and C.I.)
- A united front?
- Book List
- 2025 passings
- Chump and his side-piece Alien
- Mike apologizes to Senator Ted Cruz
- BLUESKY note of the week
- Disgusting transphobes
- This edition's playlist
- Highlights
The following sites updated:
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Making Microbes Great Again1 hour ago
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Bartees Strange: Tiny Desk Concert3 hours ago
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Fake asses7 hours ago
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Ryan Walters crashes and burns7 hours ago
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Weekend box office7 hours ago
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Donald Chump's side piece8 hours ago
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Alien Musk cries in his pillow8 hours ago
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