The United States is currently experiencing a historic resurgence of measles, reaching a 35-year high in 2026. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that measles cases have surpassed the record-breaking numbers of 2025, fueled by a multi-year decline in childhood vaccination rates and growing vaccine skepticism. Because measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases on Earth, it acts as a “canary in the coal mine” for public health, rapidly finding and spreading through pockets of under-vaccinated communities.
Someday someone will produce a study that will try to quantify how many people died as a result of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.‘s war on vaccines, medicine and science. Tens of thousands? Millions? It is hard to predict.
Donald Trump, implementing the Project 2025 plan to destroy the federal government, has appointed the worst possible people to run the executive agencies. It is hard to select the most deplorable of the deplorables. But RFK, Jr. is certainly in the top group.
Kennedy is a former heroin addict who as a youth was expelled from two schools, dumped a dead bear in Central Park, has no medical or science degree, and was labeled a “predator” by his own family. He made a career out of being an anti-vaxxer, spreading false information about vaccines. In return for his political support in 2024, Trump named Kennedy Secretary of Health and Human Services. At his own confirmation hearing Kennedy himself stated that Trump had “offered him control of the public health agencies,” including HHS, CDC, FDA, NIH, and USDA.
There is no sugar-coating it. President Joe Biden had a train wreck in his first 2024 debate with Former President Donald Trump. Fifty-one million watched. I wrote that I had concerns because Biden had seemed physically feeble during some appearances in the last year. Right as he walked out on the debate stage, I saw those signs, Biden walking slowly and speaking slowly and in a soft scratchy voice. I did not expect to see him ramble and become incoherent, but he did that more than once. At other times he was clear, combative, and effective, defending his administration and listing his accomplishments. But you could not fail to notice the other moments.
If you are voting for Democrats, you can leave now. This isn’t for you.
If you are voting for Republicans, or not voting at all. Stick around. I have a question for you.
What the hell are you thinking?
Do you hear the words, “Democracy is on the line” and chuckle? Don’t. It is.
There are more than three hundred people running for election who believe the Big Lie that Donnie Trump won in 2020. He didn’t. Sixty judges and scores of election officials, many of them Republican, said he didn’t. There is hard physical evidence that HE knows he didn’t. NO evidence of improper voting that changed the outcome of the election was discovered anywhere.
More than one million Americans have died of complications of Covid-19. Can you wrap your arms around that number? Does it seem possible? Everyone I know has been touched by Covid one way or another. I lost my mother-in-law. And it didn’t have to be this way.
American is in many ways like Australia. As reported by the New York Times (the link is probably behind the Times’ paywall, but it is excellent and worthy of credit), both countries are English-speaking democracies with similar demographic profiles. In Australia and in the United States, the median age is thirty-eight. Roughly 86 percent of Australians live in urban areas, compared with 83 percent of Americans. Yet Australia’s Covid death rate sits at one-tenth of America’s, putting the nation of twenty-five million people (with around 7,500 deaths) near the top of global rankings in the protection of life.
Soldier. Diplomat. Politician. America’s First African American Secretary of State. America’s First African American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Colin Powell spent a lifetime setting “firsts.”
President Biden ordered flags flown at half-staff until October 22 in remembrance of Powell, calling him “a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity.”
“Colin embodied the highest ideals of both warrior and diplomat. He was committed to our nation’s strength and security above all,” Mr. Biden added. “Time and again, he put country before self, before party, before all else — in uniform and out — and it earned him the universal respect of the American people.”
There appears to be hope for the Internet. Perhaps that means there is hope for us all.
Coming off the challenging year 2020, and considering the crisis of January 6, 2021, it is often hard to find hope anywhere. But take a look at this. The picture above is a picture of Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who runs as an independent but caucuses with the Democrats, ran for president as a Democrat and is one of the leaders of that party’s progressive wing.
Sanders is pictured at the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States. He is alone in his folding chair, socially distanced due to the Covid pandemic, dressed in a heavy coat and oversized mittens due to the cold of the January day in Washington D.C.
Funny as the picture is by itself, what is amazing is what has been derived from it. For the few readers who might not know, a “meme,” pronounced “MEEM,” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.”
Many memes rocket around the world on the Internet in the form of a composite photograph, taking the image of a person or thing and dropping it into another photograph where it is clearly out of place.
And so we arrive at the Bernie meme. Proof that there is hope that our sense of humor has survived the trying times. Even Senator Sanders has noted his approval and plans to make use of the phenomenon to raise funds for charitable causes.
Update– CNBC is reporting that “Sen. Bernie Sanders said sales of merchandise featuring a viral image of the Vermont independent wearing mittens at the inauguration of President Biden raised a whopping $1.8 million for charities in just five days.”
And so, without further ado, a gallery of Bernie Memes, with thanks to the unknown creators.
