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Created
Sat, 08/04/2023 - 10:30
Sand kittens! Three sand cat kittens were born on Monday, February 6th, 2023 early in the morning at Binghamton, NY’s Ross Park Zoo. Kaya (mom) and Amal (dad) are a recommended breeding pair as per the sand cat Species Survival Plan. Kaya has been doing a great job taking care of the offspring!  Here are some sand cats in their native habitat: It doesn’t look like a highly skilled killer, but that’s exactly what it is; the sand cat, which is the only felid found primarily in true desert. The sand cat (Felis margarita harrisoni) has a wide but apparently disjunct distribution through the deserts of northern Africa and southwest and central Asia. These gorgeous creatures are highly elusive and people rarely get to see them in the wild. If you’d like to meet them, though, go out in the desert when the temperature is between 11 and 28 °C — that’s an ideal range for the sand cat. These felines also prefer a very dry, arid habitat with little vegetation, as well as flat or rolling terrains. If it gets too hot outside, the sand cat will retreat to burrows.
Created
Fri, 07/04/2023 - 23:00
You’re under attack. Get busy fighting. Gotta go do a thing this morning. Courage for America’s bus stop is up the road: Americans count on Social Security for retirement and rely on Medicare and Medicaid for prescription drugs and essential care. After a lifetime of hard work and paying in, these programs allow Americans to live and age with dignity and respect. Some in Congress want to end these guarantees by refusing to pay bills they already owe. They would rather default on our debt obligations or make extreme cuts to hard-earned benefits than protect the seniors, veterans, teachers, health care workers, small business owners, and millions of Americans they swore to serve. That’s why we’re on the road to demand Congress promises to back off our benefits. We started in Speaker McCarthy’s district and will finish up in D.C. to mark the MAGA House agenda’s 100th day. Join us on tour and add your name to the Back Off Our Benefits petition. My health care hero Laura Packard is on that bus. She’s alive today because the ACA was there for her. Is the ACA enough? No. But it’s something to build on.
Created
Sat, 08/04/2023 - 00:30
Despite Tennessee saying, Hold my beer While the world’s attention focused on Tennessee yesterday, the NC GOP took advantage of its new House majority (that’s another story) to pull draft bills out of drawers meant to attack disfavored minorities the way Tennessee legislators expelled two Black members on Thursday. ABC 11 Raleigh: North Carolina Republican lawmakers filed several bills aimed at regulating transgender youth especially when it comes to participation in sports. These bills are similar to ones GOP lawmakers pushed a couple years ago. While those bills failed, Republicans are hopeful their new supermajority — achieved by getting Mecklenburg Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham to switch parties — will be able to force the bills through. There are two bills in the legislatures that would ban transgender athletes in some way. Legislation in the house and senate would require all sports teams be designated as male, female or co-ed based on their biological sex at birth. It’s what the NC GOP does when attention is diverted or when SCOTUS lets them.
Created
Sat, 08/04/2023 - 02:00
For as long as I can remember, Democrats have been on the defensive about enacting their agenda because it was assumed that it would engender a backlash among “the silent majority,” as former president Richard Nixon called it, or what modern Republicans call “Real America.” Reacting to the counter-culture of the 1960s and the massive social changes it engendered, the left wing of the Democratic Party was always admonished by the centrist and conservative wings not to go too far or too fast. The media even blithely asserted that “America is a conservative country” as if it were an act of God. This article of faith hobbled progress for a very long time and empowered the Reagan Revolution through the Tea Party and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. Nobody ever seemed to consider that enabling the right wing to become more and more extreme over the course of many years might engender a backlash of its own. It appears as if that time may have finally come — and it’s clear the Republican establishment doesn’t know what to do about it. The question is whether the Democratic establishment does either.
Created
Sat, 08/04/2023 - 03:30
The DeSantis-Disney battle continues Desantis’ swagger is so exaggerated it’s a wonder he doesn’t fall over on his stacked heel boots: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday promised a new round of action against Disney in his ongoing dispute with the entertainment giant, including looking at the taxes on Disney’s hotels and imposing tolls on roads that serve its theme parks. The DeSantis administration is also examining if a recent agreement approved between a Central Florida board that had been controlled by Disney and the company runs afoul of the state’s growth laws, according to senior administration officials. One of those laws explicitly states that development agreements must be modified or revoked to comply with laws even if the law is passed after the agreement was executed. “They are not superior to the people of Florida,” DeSantis said during an evening appearance at Hillsdale College, the conservative liberal arts college in Michigan. “So come hell or high water we’re going to make sure that policy of Florida carries the day. And so they can keep trying to do things.
Created
Sat, 08/04/2023 - 05:00
It isn’t the first time the right has denied elected representatives their seat. When they have the power they have no compunction about doing it. And it looks like we’re going to see more of it. Jeff Greenfield writes:  In the fevered nationalism of World War I, Congress refused to seat Socialist Victor Berger after he won a seat in 1918. He ran again in 1919 and won again, and Congress again refused to seat him. At the same time, the New York State Assembly expelled all five Socialists on general grounds of “disloyalty.” The mood of the time was captured by the Assembly speaker, who thundered: “We are building by our action today a granite bulwark against all traitors within the boundaries of our republic. Our flag of the republic is whipping the breeze in defiance of enemies from without.” A few decades later, a similar attempt to ban an elected legislator was rebuffed. Julian Bond, a key civil rights leader, had been elected to the Georgia House; but in 1966, the legislature voted by an overwhelming margin not to seat him on the grounds that he had opposed the war in Vietnam and expressed sympathy for draft resisters.
Created
Thu, 06/04/2023 - 01:46

The threat of imprisonment for contempt of court again looms over me if I tell you (again) too much of the truth about the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell. But I can make a few observations. As I stated on twitter on March 19 (I am not going to repeat all my tweets […]

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