Colbert strikes back; middle class selling their blood; gravity hole growing; curling scandal; a chicken part by any other name
It's Eat Ice Cream For Breakfast Day!
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—Kevin G. Barkes
February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 316 days remain until the end of the year. Unfortunately, as of this writing, 1,066 days remain in Trump’s term of office.
Knee-deep in the hoopla:
‘I don’t even know what to do with this crap’: Colbert rebukes CBS on-air: Colbert goes on the record about his interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico, the FCC's "equal time" rule, and today's statement from CBS. (Video)
Colbert’s upcoming Jon Ossoff interview appears safe from FCC scrutiny.
“Corporate Capitulation”: FCC Commissioner criticizes CBS decision to ban broadcast of Stephen Colbert interview with U.S. Senate candidate.
Censorship comes for Stephen Colbert. The latest dustup between the talk-show host and CBS should be concerning for people of any political leaning.
Four indicted after Minneapolis clashes, including a woman accused of biting off an officer’s fingertip.
‘The court can conceive of no circumstance’: Judge bars ‘warrantless’ immigration enforcement raids at churches to protect ‘religious freedom’. The Trump administration has been barred from carrying out "warrantless" immigration enforcement operations in or "within 100 feet of the entrance" to various churches across the country.
Noem’s use of Coast Guard resources strains her relationship with the military branch. Some early decisions by the homeland security secretary, including to divert Coast Guard resources from a search-and-rescue mission to the deportation of immigrants, set the tone early.
Trump used the death of civil right activist Jesse Jackson to take a cheap shot at former President Barack Obama—and to pat himself on the back for not being racist.
Middle-class Americans are selling their plasma to make ends meet. Last year, people in the U.S. made an estimated $4.7 billion selling their plasma. Donation centers are popping up in middle-class neighborhoods, including suburban strip malls and college towns.
A curling scandal rocks Olympic ice. "You don't touch 20kg of granite with your fingertips without feeling it, it's completely impossible."
Antarctica’s ‘gravity hole’ has been quietly growing stronger. Scientists aren't fully sure what this means for Antarctica's future, however.
A ‘boneless wing’ needn’t come from wing meat, judge rules. “A reasonable consumer would not think that BWW’s boneless wings were truly deboned chicken wings, reconstituted into some sort of Franken-wing.”
“The Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre”: 2026’s most unhinged crime thriller is all about Florida, cocaine and bloodthirsty hippos.
Florida man busted for spicy chicken domestic battery.
Late Night:
Stephen Colbert:
Several major holidays including Lunar New Year, Ramadan and Mardi Gras converged today, Americans are less hopeful than ever, several business leaders and European politicians have been ousted over their ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and Stephen reads some titillating poetry written by California gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell. (Video)
Bookmark KGB Report Notes and check periodically for cartoons, memes, news, commentary and other stuff that didn’t fit or broke between e-mail newsletter issues. It’s also a great place to comment and chat.
Keep scrolling down. Lots of interesting stuff in Quote of the Day, Holidays, On This Day, Birthdays, and Deaths. I can pretty much guarantee you’ll learn something new.
History highlight:
1930 – Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
Quote of the day:
Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
--Toni Morrison (Wikipedia link)
(More Toni Morrison quotes from the KGB Quotations Database)
Today’s holidays:
Ash Wednesday, Cow Milked While Flying in an Airplane Day, Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day, Eat Ice Cream For Breakfast Day, National Battery Day, National Drink Wine Day, Pluto Day, The Start of Ramadan, and Thumb Appreciation Day.
On This Day:
2021 – Perseverance, a Mars rover designed to explore Jezero crater on Mars, landed successfully.
2013 – Armed robbers stole a haul of diamonds worth $50 million during a raid at Brussels Airport in Belgium.
2010 – WikiLeaks published the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents disclosed by Chelsea Manning.
2003 – 192 people died when an arsonist sets fire to a subway train in Daegu, South Korea.
2001 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
1977 – The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle was carried on its maiden “flight” on top of a Boeing 747.
1972 – The California Supreme Court in the case of People v. Anderson, (6 Cal.3d 628) invalidated the state’s death penalty and commuted the sentences of all death row inmates to life imprisonment.
1970 – The Chicago Seven were found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
1954 – The first Church of Scientology was established in Los Angeles.
1930 – Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
1930 – While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.
1915 – U-boat Campaign: The Imperial German Navy instituted unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters around Great Britain and Ireland.
1885 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was published in the United States.
1861 – Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
(For comprehensive lists of the day’s historical events, check here, here, and here.)
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Some Birthdays:
1988 – Sarah Sutherland, American actress
1977 – Ike Barinholtz, American actor and comedian
1968 – Molly Ringwald, American actress
1966 – Ryan Wesley Routh, American attempted assassin of Donald Trump
1965 – Dr. Dre, American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur
1964 – Matt Dillon, American actor
1960 – Greta Scacchi, Italian-Australian actress
1957 – Vanna White, American television personality
1954 – John Travolta, American actor, singer and producer
1952 – Juice Newton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Video)
1950 – Cybill Shepherd, American actress
1950 – John Hughes, American director, producer, and screenwriter (died 2009)
1933 – Yoko Ono, Japanese-American multimedia artist and musician (Video)
1932 – Miloš Forman, Czech-American actor, director, and screenwriter (died 2018)
1931 – Johnny Hart, American cartoonist, co-created The Wizard of Id (died 2007)
1931 – Toni Morrison, American novelist and editor, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2019).
1925 – George Kennedy, American actor (died 2016)
1922 – Helen Gurley Brown, American journalist and author (died 2012)
1919 – Jack Palance, American boxer and actor (died 2006)
1914 – Pee Wee King, American singer-songwriter and fiddler (died 2000)
1906 – Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician and academic (died 1980)
1892 – Wendell Willkie, American captain, lawyer, and politician (died 1944)
1838 – Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (died 1916)
1745 – Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, invented the battery (died 1827)
(A more complete list of today’s birthdays.)
Some Deaths:
2025 – Gene Hackman, award-winning American actor (born 1930)
2014 – Maria Franziska von Trapp, Austrian-American singer (born 1914)
2001 – Dale Earnhardt, American racer and seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion (born 1951)
1981 – Jack Northrop, American engineer and businessman, founded the Northrop Corporation (born 1895)
1977 – Andy Devine, American actor (born 1905)
1967 – J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist and academic (born 1904)
1902 – Charles Lewis Tiffany, American businessman, founded Tiffany & Co. (born 1812)
1654 – Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, French author (born 1594)
(A more complete list of today’s deaths.)
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I’m giving up Lent for Lent
Colbert’s putting the spotlight back on the disappearing middle class — not just as rhetoric, but as a political fault line that’s been ignored while elites and tech platforms jockey for attention. When the very voters who used to define American prosperity feel left behind, that’s not satire — that’s a warning sign.
We can’t laugh our way past wage stagnation, rising costs, and shrinking opportunity. When comedy becomes commentary on survival, the joke isn’t funny anymore — it’s reality.