Bi-coastal sea otters! Those eyes will charm you! Two adorable female southern sea otters, rescued off the coast of California, have made their New York City debut and will likely steal your heart. Pumpkin and Clover were rescued at young ages, deemed non-releasable, and cared for as pups by caregivers at other accredited aquariums prior to arriving at the New York Aquarium. They’re now settling in at the Sea Cliffs exhibit, where visitors can also enjoy exhibits featuring sea lions, harbor seals and penguins. “We are happy to provide a home for these rescued southern sea otters,” said Dr. Leigh Ann Clayton, director of the New York Aquarium, located in Coney Island, Brooklyn. “These two otters have incredible stories, and we are pleased to see how well they are settling into their new home.” The New York Aquarium has provided a home for 11 rescued sea otters since 1991. Southern sea otters (Enhydra lutris nereis), also known as California sea otters, live on the coast of California. Like all wildlife, they have an important role in the ecological health of the environment, according to the New York Aquarium.
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Tyler Perry’s analogy We are a quilt in this country, Tyler Perry told a Kamala Harris rally in Atlanta on Thursday. A nation of immigrants. “We are all shapes, sizes and colors, but we are one.” Look, unless you are a Native American, you and your people came from somewhere else. And even indigenous people on this continent came from somewhere else. Just over 20,000 years before Donald Trump and his America Firsters arrived. I mean, if we’re claiming privilege based on who was here first? But no. MAGA wants it all. Perry launched a pointed barb against Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, saying he voted for a candidate who understands that America is a quilt. “And I could never stand with a candidate who wants America to be a sheet.” Perry paused to let the dual meaning sink in. The crowd didn’t miss it in Atlanta, Georgia.
That;s all well and good. But here’s a CNN piece from last month: “She’s a Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist,” Trump said at an Arizona rally on Thursday. “This is a radical-left, Marxist, communist, fascist,” Trump said while attacking Harris at a news conference on Friday. This wasn’t new rhetoric. “We have a fascist person running who’s incompetent,” Trump told Virginia residents during a campaign stop in August; at an Arizona rally in August, Trump said the true divide in American politics is between patriots with traditional values and “these far-left fascists led by Harris and her group.” And Trump has gone beyond saying that electing Harris would mean an end to American democracy. He has said this summer that electing Harris would mean “you’re not going to have a country anymore” and that “we’re not going to have a country left.” Not to mention him calling his political enemies vermin and saying they’re poisoning the blood of the country as well as a thousand other demeaning insults.
Trump had a “town hall” with a bunch of rightwing Christians today. He’s been doing a lot of those lately. They must be concerned about the evangelical turnout: I don’t know about you but I find it very concerning that he’s talking to Netanyahu every day, no doubt telling him to keep that war going to hurt the Democrats and promising that as soon as he wins he’ll give the green light for Bibi to go wild. How can this be legal? I know it violates the Logan Act but that’s a toothless law that’s been violated many times. But we’ve never seen anything like this before. Trump is running a shadow government from Mar-a-lago. Oh well, I guess that’s no big deal… Sure, he’s fine. By the way, there’s a rumor all over twitter that there’s a video of Trump groping the young daughter of a wealthy donor that’s about to break. The Trumpers are all saying it’s a deep fake. I have no idea if it’s true. But I also doubt that it would make any difference because the right will convince themselves that it’s a Democratic deep fake election interference ploy and who knows, it might even help him.
Good God: The crowd started chanting “Daddy’s Home.” Make it stop. Please.
Don’t vote with them “The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary,” wrote Robert Paxton, 92, in Jan. 11, 2021 Newsweek article. Previously reluctant to use a loaded term like fascism to describe the Trump presidency, Trump’s “open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election,” was the breaking point for the retired Columbia University historian of fascism. Elisabeth Zerofsky writes in The New York Times (gift article): Calling someone or something “fascist” is the supreme expression of moral revulsion, an emotional impulse that is difficult to resist. “The temptation to draw parallels between Trump and the fascist leaders of the 20th century is understandable,” the British historian Richard J. Evans wrote in 2021. “How better to express the fear, loathing, and contempt that Trump arouses in liberals than by comparing him to the ultimate political evil?” The word gets lobbed at the left too, including by Trump at Democrats. But fascism does have a specific meaning, and in the last few years the debate has turned on two questions: Is it an accurate description of Trump?
Republicans in glass houses Republicans who complain about weaponization of government shouldn’t throw stones in their glass house. But they shamelessly do. Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby at Popular Information: Three Republican state senators in North Carolina have demanded an investigation of state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. The state senators, Buck Newton (R), Amy Galey (R), and Danny Britt (R), claim that Riggs has “blatantly violated” the North Carolina Code of Judicial Conduct. They called for an investigation into Riggs’ conduct by the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission. What was Riggs’ transgression? She mentioned reproductive rights in a campaign ad. Riggs was appointed to fill a vacancy in the North Carolina Supreme Court in September 2023. It is an elected position, and now Riggs is running for a full eight-year term.
Of course he will. And he’ll do this too: Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that, if elected to a second term in November, he would immediately fire special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against Trump. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump if he plans to pardon himself or fire Smith on the day he would take the oath of office. “It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” said Trump, who added that he got “immunity at the Supreme Court” and called Smith a “crooked person.” Last year, Trump warned that Smith and other Justice Department officials would wind up in a mental institution if he’s re-elected. He’s going to be a dictator on day one. He’s made that clear.
There’s a lot of chatter about the early vote with Donald Trump changing his tune and suggesting that the GOP is breaking all early vote records. (“Nobody’s ever seen anything like it!) It does appear that the early vote is going well but it’s worth taking a look at some analysis as to what it means. Tom Bonier is the early vote data guy and he wrote this on his substack today, discussing why this year is different: Well, for one, we’re not in the peak of a deadly pandemic. The 2020 election saw the biggest liberalization of access to early voting as states adapted to the realities of the pandemic. And it was a great success, with over 100 million Americans safely casting their vote before Election Day. Of course, there was an asymmetry here. Democrats were more covid-conscious, and therefore more likely to cast an early vote (take Pennsylvania, where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the early vote by an almost 3 to 1 margin). And at the same time, Republicans largely abandoned voting by mail, due to Donald Trump claiming that mail voting was fraudulent.
Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, experts on democratic systems and authors of “Tyranny of the Minority” have a great essay in today’s NY Times today about the various ways a society can protect itself from anti-democratic forces. I am including a gift link so that you can read the whole thing. Here’s the intro: Democratic self-rule contains a paradox. It is a system premised on openness and competition. Any ambitious party or politician should have a shot at running for office and winning. But what if a major candidate seeks to dismantle that very system? America confronts this problem today. Donald Trump poses a clear threat to American democracy. He was the first president in U.S. history to refuse to accept defeat, and he illegally attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Now, on the brink of returning to the White House, Mr. Trump is forthrightly telling Americans that if he wins, he plans to bend, if not break, our democracy. Mr. Trump tells us he plans to prosecute his political rivals, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney and other members of the Jan.