Baby foxes! We are so excited to feature the two newest members of the Cincinnati Zoo fam…bat-eared fox kits! These 2 little boys were born on April 6th to first-time parents Frankie and Otis. While Otis prefers to live out of the public eye, you may have seen their mom, Frankie, during a program at the zoo! Through ultrasounds, radiographs and even thermal imaging, we were able to stay on top of how the babies and mom were doing during the entirety of her pregnancy and beyond. The kits are strong and full of personality already. These kits are not yet available to be viewed by the public.
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Who offers more spectacle, DeSantis or Trump? I studied Chinese history at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. Somewhere I have some artifacts from the period’s inescapable propaganda. Even without that background, it was clear without squinting where this column on “Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution” by Tania Branigan would go by about one and a half sentences in (New York Times): It would seem impossible to forget or minimize the Cultural Revolution in China, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, resulted in an estimated 1.6 million to two million deaths and scarred a generation and its descendants. The movement, which under Mao Zedong’s leadership sought to purge Chinese society of all remaining non-Communist elements, upended nearly every hallowed institution and custom. Teachers and schools long held in esteem were denounced. Books were burned and banned, museums ransacked, private art collections destroyed. Intellectuals were tortured. Subtle. Or maybe not.
Gotta keep the Irresponsibles in line If you ever changed your name … ↑ think of the doors it would open ↑. Think of the insurance bullshit you could avoid: Tallie Rose follows up with, “I called and they can’t even find the claim and had to kick it up to a manager because they can’t figure out WHAT they’re denying. Good stuff.” This thread by Amy Faith Ho may be unrelated. But it’s related.* When Tallie Rose’s kid ends up in the ER with peritonitis, voila, no pre-authorization required.** B/c not a shift goes by where a patient doesn’t land in the ER as a last resort when #priorauth denied or delayed them the outpatient care they needed. Need your gallbladder taken out electively? Too late (waiting for auth), now you’re in the ED with cholecystitis. Had a “nodule” seen on a CT, but couldn’t get a repeat scan authorized…ever? Now it’s metastatic and you’re in the ED for crippling pain. DVT? No problem, started you on blood thinners. Oh, but your insurance wouldn’t cover it? Wait for it…now you’re hypoxic with submassive PEs.
Now that one of the most outrageous state legislative sessions in US history has mercifully concluded, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is finally set to formally announce his candidacy for president. He has quite a record to run on. In a very short time he’s built a multi-dimensional legacy of repression, abuse of power and intolerance rarely seen in modern politics. Now he wants to take that agenda to the whole country. Some highlights from the last few weeks include a law to ban abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, a law granting permitless concealed carry, a ban on diversity programs in state colleges, a law to prevent teachers from using pronouns they don’t believe are appropriate, easier access to the death penalty and an expansion of the “Don’t Say Gay” law to block teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity through the 12th grade. That’s just for starters.
You may have heard the harrowing story of homeless veterans being thrown out of housing to make room for the foreign invaders. It was very sad. It was also a lie: Seven homeless men have come forward to say they were part of a group of men recruited at a Poughkeepsie homeless shelter to act as veterans that had been displaced from a Newburgh hotel in order for a non-profit organization to perpetrate a fraud on the public. The men told Mid-Hudson News on Thursday night that they were part of a group of 15 men that were supposed to pretend they were veterans that had been kicked out of the Crossroads Hotel in the Town of Newburgh last Friday, in advance of the arrival of migrants brought up from New York City. The saga of the displaced veterans received national attention when Assemblyman Brian Maher stepped in to denounce the hotel’s actions and grabbed headlines along with an appearance on a conservative tv network to raise money for the YIT Foundation, which claims had housed the homeless veterans at the hotel.
Plenty to go around Former law enforcement officer, Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana (R-of course). A Republican state representative from North Carolina: No wonder they are so desperate to change the subject: Dave knows his right-wing taxonomy:
Of brown shirts and Charles Bronsons Charlie Sykes writes at The Bulwark, “A few months ago, in a particularly dark mood, I wrote a column suggesting that cruelty was no longer the point in MAGA World…. Trump has already pivoted to brutality, and there is nothing subtle about it.” “As it turns out, I may have understated the case,” Sykes quips: They are not alone, you are not surprised to know. Stephen Crowder of “Louder with Crowder” weighed in on the killing of homeless Jordan Neely on a New York Subway, declaring, “The second that you are engaging in an activity where someone else is forced to make a decision to save their life or a life of their loved one, completely, by the way, not of their own volition, you’ve put them in that scenario, you forfeit your right to live.” In essence: When in doubt, take them out. Trump, Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis have all rushed to celebrate Daniel Perry, the man charged with killing Jordan Neely. But DeSantis raised the ante, by calling him a “Good Samaritan,” and raising money for his defense.
Following up on Tom’s post below: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a horrifying bill Wednesday that will let the state take transgender minors away from their families if they are receiving gender-affirming care. The new law will allow the state to take custody of a child if they have been “subjected to or [are] threatened with being subjected to” gender-affirming care, which includes puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. Florida courts could modify custody agreements from a different state if the minor is likely to receive gender-affirming care in that second state. The text refers to gender-affirming care as “sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures” and qualifies this care as a form of “physical harm.” Medical facilities would have to give the state Department of Health a signed attestation that they neither provide gender-affirming care to any patients under the age of 18 nor refer people to providers that do. Their medical license renewal is contingent upon sending in this attestation.
Look at this nonsense: Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says the results of voting in all 50 states should be announced on Election Night. Haley spoke to a crowd in Ankeny tonight and was asked if she feels elections are fair. “I don’t mind absentee voting and I don’t mind early voting, but you have to prove you are who you say you are and when those ballots come in, they need to verify signatures and count them as they come in,” Haley said. “There’s no reason any state can’t produce the results on Election Night. There’s no reason whatsoever.” Haley suggested “a lot of states” are doing things right and she urged the crowd to “keep the faith” about election integrity. “The good thing from COVID is we had a lot of election integrity laws that passed in multiple states,” Haley said.
If you’ve been observing politics for a while I’m sure many of you caught House Oversight Chairman James Comer’s not-so-subtle implications that Joe Biden and his “crime family” are killing off his political enemies over the weekend. It’s redolent of the old Clinton Kill List that was an article of faith on the right back in the 1990s. Tim Miller has the details: JAMES COMER, THE REPUBLICAN WHO CHAIRS the House Oversight Committee, has been widely mocked for claiming during a Sunday interview with not-yet-fired Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo that the “informant” in his committee’s investigation of the Biden family’s business dealings went “missing,” hampering Republicans’ ability to drop the long-promised “bombshell” evidence. While this dung-faced performance merited all the mockery it has received, those of us whose sonar is more closely calibrated to the fainter sound waves of the conservative media world caught something more sinister in the congressman’s subtext.