Month: December 2021

A little endangered Sumatra Tiger Christmas cub!

Zookeepers at ZSL London Zoo have shared the first footage of an adorable Christmas arrival – a Critically Endangered Sumatran tiger cub, born at 02:19 on Sunday 12 December.  

Remarkable footage captured by the Zoo’s hidden ‘cubcam’ shows ten-year-old mum Gaysha cleaning and feeding the rare newborn just hours after the birth – before the determined youngster takes its first wobbly steps on the soft straw of their cosy behind-the-scenes den.  

ZSL London Zoo tiger keeper Lucy Reed said: “We knew Gaysha was nearing full-term as we’d seen her belly grow rapidly over the previous few weeks, so we made her a special cubbing den in anticipation, filling it with soft straw for added comfort – it was there she chose to give birth.” 

While Gaysha has periodically ventured outdoors alone to stretch her legs in the days since, the two-week-old cub will most likely remain tucked away in the family’s warm cubbing den until its first vaccinations – when vets and zookeepers will also be able to determine the cub’s sex. One of an original litter of three, the cub’s two siblings sadly did not survive labour. 

Lucy added: “The chunky little cub is doing really well in mum’s excellent care, and definitely takes after dad Asim in terms of size and strength. We’ve seen some key milestones already, with the little one taking its first steps almost immediately and – more recently – opening its eyes, which are always closed for the first few days after birth. 

“At the moment, while we’re still keeping a close eye via cubcam, we’re also taking care not to disturb the family so that they can bond together – we can’t wait to get to know the little one as it grows bigger and begins to explore more of its surroundings.”  

Born almost a year to the day since mum Gaysha’s arrival at London Zoo from Denmark (16 December 2020) the new boy or girl is being celebrated as a boost to the collaborative global breeding programme for Sumatran tigers, which sees zoos around the world work together to look after a healthy back-up population of the Critically Endangered species. 

Sumatran tigers are the rarest and smallest subspecies of tiger in the world, with the latest figures suggesting that only 300 remain in the wild. 

The charity zoo is now asking its Members, Fellow and Patrons to exclusively offer up suggestions for the cub’s name over the coming days, which will then be shortlisted by zookeepers before being voted on by the keen group of ZSL supporters.  

Happy New Year Everyone!

This classic moment doesn’t actually feature Betty personally but it’s so hilarious I wanted to include it:

I’m pretty sure that Betty White was one of the few human beings in America who crossed all the cultural, ideological and political boundaries. Everyone loved her. Including animals, all of whom seemed to know that she was one of their greatest advocates:

She was the greatest.

Can I just say how much I loathe the new Kewl Kidz at Politico Playbook? It’s hard to believe that it’s gotten worse, but it has:

MEET YOUR FUTURE HOUSE INTEL CHAIR — Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY named Rep. MIKE TURNER (R-Ohio) as new ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, a prominent national security post that ensures he’ll be the leading contender to replace Rep. ADAM SCHIFF as panel chair if the GOP flips the House. Turner replaces Rep. DEVIN NUNES, who’s leaving to become CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group.

[…]

WHAT INSIDERS WANT TO KNOW: CAN TURNER RESTORE INTEL’S REPUTATION? Once upon a time, the House Intel Committee was considered among the most bipartisan panels on the Hill. That has changed drastically in recent years, with Nunes and Schiff at the helm. Democrats routinely dismissed Nunes as blinded by MAGA groupthink and in Trump’s pocket, and Republicans roundly dismissed Schiff for claiming to have seen classified evidence that Trump colluded with Russia when the special counsel never produced those goods.

Can you see the problem with this both-sides bullshit? I knew that you could.

Mueller didn’t produce “those goods”? Really? I think they indicted a whole bunch of people, including Trump’s campaign chairman who handed over private campaign data to a Russian agent. He also didn’t conduct a real counterintelligence investigation but rather a criminal one which means that whatever they may have seen in the classified information they couldn’t have used. Moreover, we don’t know what classified evidence Schiff saw and neither do they. It’s a ridiculous comparison to Nunes’s behavior as Intelligence chair.

There is no doubt that Nunes was blinded by MAGA. His midnight ride ruse, in which he snuck into the White House in the middle of the night to obtain classified information from Trump toadies and then held a press conference the next day announcing that he was urgently delivering it to the White House remains one of the most outrageous acts by a congressman ever. And the fact that he has now quit congress to become the CEO of Trump’s new media company should make them embarrassed to have written that “Democrats dismissed Nunes as being in Trump’s pocket” because it’s literally true.

They call Turner a “moderate” which is a meaningless term in today’s politics. He said some things against Trump once upon a time but was never there when it counted. Elevating him to the level of elder statesman simply because he isn’t frothing at the mouth like Paul Gosar is ridiculous.

But get ready. The Village 2.0 is preparing to welcome the “adults” back to the center of politics, by which I mean right wing Republicans. Just look at how they assume the GOP is going to win next year. It’s as if it’s already done.

Capitol insurrectionists. LA “wellness” anti-vaxxers. Iowans who still think Trump won. Jordan Klepper saw it all in 2021. #DailyShow #JordanKlepper

0:00 – JORDAN KLEPPER SEES IT ALL AT THE CAPITOL INSURRECTION
6:25 – ASKING TRUMP SUPPORTERS: IMPEACHMENT V1 OR V2?
12:21 – ARIZONA’S VOTE RECOUNT
18:03 – JORDAN KLEPPER VS. THE MYPILLOW GUY
24:48 – DEBATING ANTI-VAX MANDATE PROTESTERS IN NYC
30:49 – THE FIGHT OVER MASKS IN SCHOOLS
36:46 – JORDAN KLEPPER VS. IOWANS WHO THINK TRUMP WON
42:51 – JORDAN KLEPPER TAKES ON LA ANTI-VAXXERS & “WELLNESS” CULTURE
50:12 – JORDAN KLEPPER FINGERS THE PULSE: NEW VARIANTS EDITION

Nobody does it better.

This sounds like good news, with all the usual caveats:

South Africa appears to have passed the peak of its omicron variant-driven fourth coronavirus wave, the country’s cabinet announced Thursday, adding that there was only a “marginal increase” in fatalities, which remained low compared to previous spikes.Get the full experience.Choose your plan

The number of infections fell by roughly 30 percent to just under 90,000 for the week ending Dec. 25, down from some 127,000 in the prior corresponding period, government data show. The number of hospital admissions has also been significantly lower over the past 1½ weeks.

The country’s medical system has capacity to provide “routine health services,” authorities said in a statement Thursday, adding that the government would roll back certain pandemic control measures.Story continues below advertisement

The relatively swift passage of the latest South African wave is likely to be keenly watched in many other countries struggling with their own surges in omicron-driven infections. But at least one prominent South African infectious-disease expert has cautioned against extrapolating from the country’s data, given South Africa’s relatively young population. The country is also in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere summer, a time of the year when respiratory illnesses are relatively uncommon.

Nonetheless, the decline in hospital admissions that came “almost in real-time” with the dive in the infection count suggests omicron patients require less medical intervention than those infected with previous versions of the novel coronavirus, said Catherine Bennett, an epidemiologist at Deakin University in Australia.Omicron is the fifth coronavirus variant of concern and is spreading rapidly around the world. Here’s what we know. (Luis Velarde/The Washington Post)

Preliminary studies also have indicated that omicron tends to cause milder disease than the coronavirus wild type and other variants, although experts have warned that its high transmissibility still poses a risk to health-care systems globally.

With that said, all the scientists seem to think that we are in for rough 6-8 weeks in the US. Delta is still here, lots of people are still unvaccinated, it’s winter and people have been travelling and spreading like mad. But it seems pretty clear to me that however bad it is, considering how transmissible it is, we are lucky that Omicron has the milder characteristics it has and that the vaccines are working against it. Maybe that will make up for the other factors that make us more vulnerable.

Good morning. Here’s a little chuckle to get you started:

pic.twitter.com/awC6d3kPKm

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 31, 2021

I think they believe that’s a bad thing.

They also had a list of things they didn’t achieve including convicting Donald Trump and failing to convene a January 6th Commission.

I’m not sure if they think that’s bad or good.

This is the sort of “coverage” that shows the difference between Fox and the other allegedly partisan networks. CNN and MSNBC were very hostile to Trump but you wouldn’t have seen that chyron on either of them. It’s the difference between trolling and criticism.

It could be a line out of “Why We Fight — 2022.”

“Trump supporters have waged a campaign of intimidation against the state and local officials who administer U.S. elections,” begins Reuters’ special graphic presentation, “Anatomy of a death threat.”

Reuters has documented more than 850 threatening and hostile messages aimed at election officials and staff related to the 2020 election. Virtually all expressed support for former President Donald Trump or echoed his debunked contention that the election was stolen. The messages spanned 30 jurisdictions in 16 states. They came via emails, voicemails, texts, letters and Internet posts.

Most messages, where gender could be determined, were from men. About 10 authors accounted for a fifth of the messages collected in this non-statistically representative sample.

Some are protected speech. Others, not so much.

There are more. Many more.

About 110 of the 850 messages Reuters collected appear to meet what law professors and attorneys say is the federal threshold for prosecution. That would make them so-called true threats, generally defined as those intended to put a person in fear of death or bodily harm or to inflict severe emotional distress. In many other messages, harassers call for violence without threatening to act themselves. Arrests for threatening election workers have been rare, even in cases of true threats.

Arrests are more numerous in the case of threats against federal officials, Reuters adds. The FBI has resources for tracking anonymous threats that state and local police departments lack.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced a task force to investigate and bring charges against people who threaten election workers in June after Reuters revealed the extent of the trend. So far, the task force has made no arrests. A Justice spokesperson said the department is committed to assessing reported threats of violence against election workers and officials, “and when a matter does rise to the level of a criminal threat, vigorously investigating the matter with all our criminal tools and aggressively prosecuting the matter where appropriate.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) told Reuters that it, too, is committed to pursuing any criminal, election-related threats.

Amid limited response from law enforcement, threats against election workers persist long after the contested 2020 election.

Quotations from the collected threats make up the rest of the Reuters presentation. You would not want to be on the receiving end.

During my last visit to our local board of elections, admittance was on demand once the single staff member in the office could size me up though the glass door. (She knew me.)

“When did they start putting a thousand days in a month?” one volunteer asked. “I’ve never seen an election like this,” is another frequent comment. Everybody wishes this election was over, I wrote in October 2016.

The New Year promises to be another trying one. Look at the 2012 video clip above. It’s not as if no one could have seen the right-wing freakout building to this.

Oh, hell. I was going to write this morning about red-baiters going all Red Queen. But then the first tweet I saw this morning was from Russel L. Honore’ from 4:21 AM. His message is more important.

“But the truth is that we are at the limit. … The people who draw blood. The people who work night shifts. The people who sit in rooms with patients who are delirious. They’re tired. We’re all tired,” Craig Daniels, a critical care physician at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic tells the Washington Post.

The report continues:

“Frankly, between postponing elective surgeries, delaying surgeries, transferring patients, EMS bypass, and now the National Guard coming in … it’s going to be approaching a breaking point if we don’t turn the tide on these hospitalizations very soon,” said John Palmer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Hospital Association.

“Our absences are through the roof,” said Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The nurse’s reminder Tuesday that hospitals are near or at capacity in many places as the Omicron surge rolls across the country has stayed with me ever since. So, when a plumbing emergency sent us out to a couple of home improvement stores on Thursday, I was ready with a retort should some belligerent get in my face about wearing a mask. I’m doing it for his family:

Why am I vaccinated?
Why am I wearing a mask?
So when you or someone you love has a heart attack or a stroke or a car accident, or when your kid gets pneumonia, there will be a hospital bed for them because I won’t be in it.

The situation never arose, but there it is in case you need it.

If you still want to read about the antidemocratic hard-right’s efforts to drag the Republican party kicking and screaming into a dark, reactionary future, here’s the link.

Ron Filipkowski catches a whole lot of them every day and post it on twitter. He’ll be putting up the top tweets tomorrow. Here’s a taste:

As a sneak preview of tomorrow’s Top 25 tweets of 2021, we thought we would do a thread today on the first 10 that didn’t make the cut. Here is #35, painter Scott Brady, who showed up to a school board meeting in a HazMat suit to say, “Hitler wins” when we wear masks.

#34 – Roger Stone is doing a live radio interview when a process server knocks on his door and serves him with a J6 lawsuit.

#33 – Michael Flynn said covid was created and intentionally released into the world by global elites so they can control us.

#32 – Mehmet Oz says he is being “silenced” and “canceled” by the Philadelphia Inquirer because they won’t use “Dr. Oz” in articles about his Senate campaign.

#31 – Guy screaming that if the LA City Council doesn’t lift their mask mandate “get your guns” because it’s going to be “civil war.”

#30 – Couy Griffin, founder of ‘Cowboys for Trump,’ complains that Trump sold them out by promising he was going to lock up Hillary, but the only people who ended up in jail were his own supporters.

Originally tweeted by Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) on December 30, 2021.

I know it’s kind of cheap outrage of the day stuff. But I do think it’s important to keep abreast of what these people are up to around the country. Their numbers are higher than we think…

Note the threat to go after Biden and his son (who is not part of the administration, btw) after he leaves office. He really didn’t have to say it. Everyone knows that’s what they will do if they can. As for the request for documents, here’s what actually happened:

The House select committee investigating January 6 has stood down on its requests for some documents from the Trump White House after negotiations with the Biden administration.The White House said some of the records the House asked for potentially could concern state secrets or executive privilege because they were part of high-level national security deliberations, according to a letter from the White House counsel’s office released Tuesday. The House said it would “defer” its requests for those records.

Meanwhile, Trump’s D-list legal team really want to keep Trump’s records from the January 6th Committee and they are still throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks:

Former President Trump’s legal team on Wednesday accused the House committee investigating the Capitol riot of seeking to uncover evidence that would support a criminal referral against him.

The brief asked the Supreme Court to consider committee chair Bennie Thompson’s (D-Miss.) interview with the Washington Post as part of its effort to block the release of records to the committee, WashPost reported.

Last week, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to block the release of documents and records from his administration, arguing that their release would undermine certain presidential special privileges.

In an interview published that same day, Thompson said the select committee was examining Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 as it considers to recommend that the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into Trump.

The select committee is acting as “an inquisitorial tribunal seeking evidence of criminal activity,” Trump lawyer Jesse R. Binnall wrote in the brief, adding that such action is “outside of any of Congress’s legislative powers.”

“The Washington Post has confirmed what was already apparent — the Committee is indeed seeking any excuse to refer a political rival for criminal charges, and they are using this investigation to do so,” Binnall added.

The select committee is expected to file a response to the request to the Supreme Court on Thursday, per the Post.

The idea that the congress can’t investigate something that could end up exposing criminal behavior is just daft. But I guess they believe they can make this argument and Trump’s supreme court will agree and then when House Speaker Marjorie Taylor Green wants to “lock up” Jill Biden, they’ll reinstate congressional prerogatives.

This is Trump’s MO. Just delay, delay, delay, counter-sue, and flood the zone with bullshit. It tends to work politically but I don’t think it will deter the 1/6 Committee from doing its job. Whether the Supremes buy into Trump’s shrill, shrieking arguments remains to be seen.