Cheetah cubs born yesterday! Carnivore keepers at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia, are celebrating a litter of five cheetah cubs born to 8-year-old adult female Echo Tuesday, Sept. 12. Viewers can enjoy watching the cubs grow via the Cheetah Cub Cam. Note that Echo may move her cubs out of the den and around her habitat so they may be out of view at times. Animal care staff will leave Echo to bond with and care for her cubs without interference, but as opportunities arise, staff will perform quick health checks. During a recent weight check, staff confirmed there are three males and two females. The cubs appear to be strong, active, vocal and eating well. About Echo and Her Cubs: Five surviving cubs were born Sept. 12 (a sixth cub did not survive). She is a second-time mom; Echo had a litter of four cubs in 2020. Echo was born at White Oak Conservation in Florida in 2015. There are two potential sires, either Asante or Flash; scientists will perform genetic testing to determine the sire when the cubs are old enough to have blood collected.
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Let’s not pretend otherwise 🚨 BREAKING: Our video has now been seen by over 1.8 million people. We must stop MAGA fascism. Share this and chip in to help this ad get on air at the next GOP debate: https://t.co/8dvjb4tsxC pic.twitter.com/yEC8WdL9pk — Mission: Democracy (@MissnDemocracy) September 20, 2023 Look what’s going on: A Republican candidate for Missouri governor on Monday vowed to burn books if elected after he was criticized for a video showing him burning cardboard boxes with a flamethrower. The video, which has gone viral on social media, shows state Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican who is running for governor in 2024, and state Sen. Nick Schroer, a St. Charles Republican, using flamethrowers to torch a stack of boxes at a fundraising event in Defiance in St. Charles County on Friday. “In the video, I am taking a flame thrower to cardboard boxes representing what I am going to do to the leftist policies and RINO corruption of the Jeff City swamp,” Eigel said in a statement to The Star on Monday.
Biden preps for a rematch with the GOP’s might-be candidate The New York Times informs readers that Team Biden is already assuming “Scranton Joe” Biden will face a rematch with Don “The Con” Trump. Cue the “Rocky” training music: The sharpened focus on Mr. Trump isn’t happening only behind the scenes. Facing waves of polls showing soft support for his re-election among Democrats, Mr. Biden and his advisers signaled this week that they were beginning to turn their full attention to his old rival, seeking to re-energize the party’s base and activate donors ahead of what is expected to be a long and grueling sequel. Team Biden wants to nudge Democrats past their handwringing phase, David Axelrod says, “into a shared sense of mission.” Because “We can’t live like this!” as Adrian told Rocky on the beach. “Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” the president said. “And I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy. That’s why I’m running.” Mr.
ProPublica is back with more The deck on ProPublica’s latest expose on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: Thomas has attended at least two Koch donor summits, putting him in the extraordinary position of having helped a political network that has brought multiple cases before the Supreme Court. Thomas flew into the weekend 2018 Koch summit in Palm Springs aboard a Gulfstream G200 jet. “A Koch network spokesperson said the network did not pay for the private jet.” Since Thomas never disclosed the trip, ProPublica cannot say who did. Pay. To. Play. https://t.co/6n9z1AHsHM — Dahlia Lithwick (@Dahlialithwick) September 22, 2023 “I can’t imagine — it takes my breath away, frankly — that he would go to a Koch network event for donors,” said John E. Jones III, a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush. Jones said that if he had gone to a Koch summit as a district court judge, “I’d have gotten a letter that would’ve commenced a disciplinary proceeding.” “What you’re seeing is a slow creep toward unethical behavior. Do it if you can get away with it,” Jones said.
Or can it? What’s the most important issue in all of Washington right now? You just won’t believe it: While the House struggles to fund the government, the Senate has spent the week bitterly debating John Fetterman’s cargo shorts. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to loosen the dress code, which allowed the Pennsylvania senator to preside over the chamber in a short-sleeved work shirt, has prompted a wave of criticism from Republicans, nonstop coverage at Fox News, and now internal caucus divisions as well. “I can’t understand exactly what he was thinking at that point,” Schumer’s top deputy Dick Durbin, D-Ill. said on SiriusXM. “I want to give him the benefit of the doubt until I speak to him, but I think the Senate needs to act on this.” They could get their chance soon: Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. is filing a bipartisan resolution next week to “ensure the Senate dress code remains consistent with previous expectations,” a spokesman told NBC News.
Amnesty’s new report accusing Eritrea’s government of gruesome war crimes relies heavily on anonymous testimony, grainy satellite images, and zero field investigation. It is the latest salvo in the West’s campaign to topple the country’s independent government. Eritrea is a small country with a geostrategically significant coast on the Red Sea. Fiercely independent, it is one of only two African nations that refuse to collaborate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command. Committed to an incremental, self-reliant development strategy, it has […]
The post Amnesty International pushes regime change in Eritrea with dubious, unverifiable report first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Amnesty International pushes regime change in Eritrea with dubious, unverifiable report appeared first on The Grayzone.
Remember the “red tsunami”? If you’re like me, you don’t answer the phone if you don’t recognize the number or, lately, the spoofed names. Which begs the question: Who does? People willing to speak with pollsters, I’d wager. Pollsters themselves will explain how they control for this bias, to be sure, but polling itself seems more and more a sucker’s game. Remember predictions last fall of a “red tsunami”? Chris Hayes made that point on Wednesday that the only polls that really matter are the ones voters participate in when they vote. Last night, people voted in elections in two different states. “Those results tell us way more about the state of our democracy and the political strength of the pro-democracy forces in this country than all of today’s other political headlines put together,” says @chrislhayes. pic.twitter.com/SVUPFJ3q1L — All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 21, 2023 What special elections around the country tell us is that the GOP is in a hole. And they’re still digging.
Here’s the latest on maneuverings to out-maneuver the MAGA crazies: The long-shot idea that Democrats could bail out the beleaguered Speaker Kevin McCarthy is suddenly getting real. Small groups of centrist Democrats are holding secret talks with several of McCarthy’s close GOP allies about a last-ditch deal to fund the government, according to more than a half-dozen people familiar with the discussions. The McCarthy allies engaging in those conversations are doing so out of serious concern that their party can’t stop an impending shutdown on its own, given the intransigence of a handful of conservatives. Lawmakers involved in the talks — who mostly belong to the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, the Republican Governance Group or the centrist New Democrat Coalition — have labored to keep their work quiet. Many Republicans involved are incredibly worried about revealing their backup plan, wanting to wait until every other tool in McCarthy’s arsenal has failed. That moment may not be until next week, just ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.
It sure looks like they’re going to shutdown the government. What comes next should be very fun: President Biden has steered clear of the chaos in the lower chamber, but his aides have instead urged McCarthy to stick to the spending deal he struck with Biden back in May. One such aide said, “We agreed to the budget deal…House GOP should abide by it,” and added that their “chaos is making the case that they are responsible if there is a shutdown.” Gaetz was all too ready to lay the blame at McCarthy’s feet should a shutdown occur. On Wednesday afternoon, he said, “We will have a government shutdown and it is absolutely Speaker McCarthy’s fault. We cannot blame Joe Biden for not having moved our individual spending bills. We cannot blame House Democrats. We can’t even blame Chuck Schumer in the Senate.” Does Gaetz think he’s going to be the speaker? I’m beginning to think he does. Which is ridiculous. What does Gaetz want McCarthy to do? He wants him to defund the Jack Smith Special Counsel. He is only following orders: I think there’s a typo.
It’s been years since I raged at Joe Klein, mostly because I blessedly never come across anything by him anymore. Unfortunately, he has a substack and it came to my attention today. Nothing has changed. He’s still the hippie bashing piece of work he always was. Get a load of this: A metaphor that applies to my current political dismay: I am annoyed by Joe Biden but I am appalled by Donald Trump. Why is that a metaphor? Because I am annoyed, chronically, by the Democratic Party but appalled, mortally, by the Republicans. Which raises a question: I haven’t toted up the word count, but I suspect that I spend a lot more space criticizing Dems than GOPs. Why is that? Well, because it seems in these DysTrumpian times, the Democrats are the only hope of saving our democracy, despite their idiot array of indulgences. They are misguided, but not fundamentally irrational. They believe in our institutions, even those—like the Supreme Court and the electoral college—that are weighted against them; even those—like the military—that they really don’t believe in.