ICYMI: Our nine-banded armadillo Patsy gave birth to female identical quadruplets! Mom and babies are all doing well and bonding behind-the-scenes. #Funfact– Nine-banded armadillos (almost) always give birth to identical quadruplets! pic.twitter.com/QaojUO4A1h
All litters of this species derive from a single fertilized egg that divides into four. The same-sex pups arrive in the spring, and even as newborns look like miniature adults. Armadillo pups nurse for two to three months before switching to an adult diet.
When startled or scared, these armadillos can jump four to five feet high. Usually this surprises any creature trying to have it for lunch. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work so well when startled by a moving car, which is why they are common road kill.
A nine-banded armadilloPublic domain image by Gail Hampshire
These guys are insectivores. They mostly eat bugs, beetles, grubs, worms, spiders and termites. Once in a while they do eat fungus, fruits and seeds, as well as some carrion. But they love bugs the most.
These little armored mammals are actually good swimmers when they need to be. They can also hold their breath for up to six minutes and are really skilled at walking underwater to cross streams.
Greg Sargent reports that Marco Rubio, the alleged diplomat, has been speaking out of both sides of his mouth during peace talks as his state department helps the Russians evade responsibility for their war crimes:
The State Department has quietly terminated a contract that was in the process of transferring evidence of alleged Russian abductions of Ukrainian children—a potential war crime—to law enforcement officials in Europe, two people familiar with the situation tell The New Republic.
The nixed award could make it harder to continue tracking down the kidnapped Ukrainian kids and complicate efforts to seek accountability for the abductions, says one of the sources, who has direct knowledge of the ongoing operation.
One of Ukraine’s central demands for any peace deal is the return of Ukrainian children who have allegedly been the victims of a Russian program of coerced adoption. Russia has claimed this program is a humanitarian one that benevolently adopts Ukrainian kids and makes them citizens. But under President Biden, the State Department strongly condemned it as the “forcible transfer and deportation of Ukraine’s children to camps promoting indoctrination in Russia.”
Indeed, as The New York Timesreported, Russia has not just transferred children from Ukrainian orphanages to Russian camps; it has also taken kids whose relatives want them back. The Times noted that the abductees number in the “thousands,” and concluded: “This mass transfer of children is a potential war crime.”
The contract is with Yale School of Public Health which uses sophisticated technological analysis to identify and track these kids.
They were supposed to transfer the data to Europol, the EU’s police force, but this cancellation has interrupted it. It’s very hard to see why they would do this unless Russia demanded it which is entirely possible since the lab released an explosive report to the United Nations last December which resulted in a referral to the International Criminal Court.
There is much more at the link about the horror of these mass abductions and the response to it here in the US and around the world. Until recently, even under Rubio, this was considered to be a top issue in any peace deal. Rubio appears to have decided it doesn’t matter.
He has a place reserved in the VIP section of hell.
Pam Bondi: "If you're gonna touch a Tesla, go to a dealership, do anything, you better watch out, because we're coming after you." pic.twitter.com/lFuFbfu6il
The tolerance for Elon Musk inside of the White House is wearing thin, as they deal with the fallout of his calamitous interview with Larry Kudlow when he touched the third rail – entitlements. Even though Trump’s staffers are terrified of Musk, they know that if you try to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, you die, politically speaking.
“It’s no longer simmering resistance, people are fucking furious,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.
“Medicaid is not just for Black people in the ghetto, these are our voters,” said a Republican operative close to the White House.
I mean, if it was just for the Black people that would be one thing…
According to Palmieri, the White House pollster, Tony Fabrizio, says he isn’t polling on Musk but it’s clear from outside polls that he is extremely unpopular. The people in the White House hate him:
I can’t even begin to explain the anger I’m hearing from within the White House and agencies over Musk. If he’s telling the Polish Foreign minister Radosław Sikorski, “Be quiet, small man” and reminding Trump’s cabinet that he’s the billionaire in the room, then you can only imagine how he treats a White House official, even at the deputy chief of staff level, and there are many of them in this top-heavy White House.
“He’s demonstrably dismissive of people who have incredibly important jobs because he doesn’t understand the government,” said the source with knowledge of the matter.
I’ve been reporting for months that Musk has been disrespectful to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. .. “He treats [Wiles] like a secretary in front of people,” the source with knowledge of the matter said. “The second most powerful person in Washington, the first woman and someone who has done a good job of keeping the trains running on time.”
But I’ve heard that it’s even become too much for Wiles, who for the most part has been delivering on what matters most to Trump—producing the Presidency with a daily event featuring co-star Musk and a cast of cabinet members for the press. She’s a professional and a survivor, but she’s being bombarded with calls from cabinet secretaries furious over cuts and members worried about state programs…
“He treats cabinet secretaries like they’re messenger boys,” the source with knowledge of the matter said.
Apparently, Trump is fine with it even though Musk is wrapped around him like a hungry anaconda:
For now, Trump likes having Musk around, even though Musk is extremely clingy and Trump likes his space. (It’s clearly a quality he appreciates in his wife Melania.) So their love affair seems to be lasting. Perhaps the only thing that might break them up is Musk’s clinginess.
Trump is thrilled that the richest man in the world licks his boots. It’s one of the main reasons he believes he is invincible. With the power of the presidency back in his hands, Supreme Court immunity and the wealthiest people on earth sucking up to him he believes he can literally do anything he wants. And maybe he can.
As Americans increasingly get their news from online shows and streamers, the influence of this media ecosystem becomes more prominent — and Media Matters has found that the most popular of this content is overwhelmingly right-leaning.
In a new study, Media Matters assessed the audience size of popular online shows — podcasts, streams, and other long-form audio and video content regularly posted online. To do so, we gathered data on the number of followers, subscribers, and views across streaming platforms (YouTube, Spotify, Rumble, Twitch, and Kick) and social media platforms that are used to amplify and promote these shows (Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok). Apple Podcasts does not publicly provide follower counts on its platform, so it was not included in the audience data.
This analysis was based on 320 online shows with a right-leaning or left-leaning ideological bent. We found that right-leaning online shows dominate the ecosystem, with substantially larger audiences on both politics/news shows and supposedly nonpolitical shows that we determined often platformed ideological content or guests.
Key findings:
We found 320 online shows — 191 right-leaning and 129 left-leaning — that were active in 2024 and covered news and politics and/or had related guests. These shows had at least 584.6 million total followers and subscribers.
We found substantial asymmetry in total following across platforms: Right-leaning online shows had at least 480.6 million total followers and subscribers — nearly five times as many as left-leaning.
Across platforms — YouTube, Rumble, Twitch, Kick, Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok — right-leaning online shows accounted for roughly 82% of the total following of the online shows we assessed.
Comparatively, left-leaning online shows had nearly 104 million followers and subscribers across the eight platforms — nearly five times less.
Nine out of the 10 online shows with the largest followings across platforms were right-leaning, with a total following of more than 197 million. The only left-leaning show among the top 10 was What Now? with Trevor Noah, which had 21.1 million total followers and subscribers across platforms.
Our analysis — which looked entirely at shows with an ideological bent — found over a third self-identify as nonpolitical, even though 72% of those shows were determined to be right-leaning. Instead, these shows describe themselves as comedy, entertainment, sports, or put themselves in other supposedly nonpolitical categories.
Out of 320 online shows, right-leaning programs categorized as comedy — 15 shows in all — had 117.5 million followers and subscribers, or 20% of the total following of all programs we assessed. This category included The Joe Rogan Experience, This Past Weekend with Theo Von, and Full Send Podcast.
Right-leaning shows accounted for two-thirds of the total YouTube views on videos from channels affiliated with the shows we assessed — 65 billion views in total. Comparatively, left-leaning online shows totaled 31.5 billion total views.
Right-leaning shows use Rumble to expand their audience— gaining millions of subscribers and billions of views for their content.
This is a chronic problem for Democrats mainly because their alternative media are under funded probably because the people who do it read the NY Times and watch CNN and figure there’s plenty of media out there for liberals. This is very, very short-sided these days because this media is where a whole lot of people get their information and they are being flooded with bullshit.
And no, that doesn’t mean you have to do what Gavin Newsom is inexplicably doing and kiss up to Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk on a podcast. There has to be a better way. Maybe Trevor Noah has the right formula. (And by the way, there is big money it if someone can do it right.)
It’s bad enough that they are behaving like the economy was worse than 1932 when they took over so they can run roughshod over the law in the name of saving the country from collapse. Now they’re ginning up the rationale for the invasion of Canada. You think I’m exaggerating?
Meanwhile Trump says he wants to take over their country and subjugate their citizens against their will. But ok.
Do you wonder how it is that they are supposedly killing Americans? Well, here’s yet another of the dumbest economic advisers the world has ever known:
Kevin Hassett suggests Canadian authorities are covering up major fentanyl operations: "I can tell you that in the situation room I've seen photographs of fentanyl labs in Canada that the law enforcement folks were leaving alone. Canada's got a big drug problem." pic.twitter.com/zCGdIG9MUl
I know it sounds ridiculous to think that America would ever take over Canada. Whenever anyone brings it up, as Chris Hayes did on his show this week, the person responding always says “that will never happen.” But picture this. What if a Canadian, perhaps someone with an ax to grind over one of Trump’s egregious foreign policies, launches a terrorist attack in the U.S.? Can you imagine Trump responding militarily? I can…
I agree this is very unlikely, obviously. It certainly won’t happen because Canada decides to “join” the U.S.
BREAKING: New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is very clear to Trump moments ago:
“I’ve been clear, that we will never, ever, in any way, shape or form, be part of the United States. America is not Canada!” pic.twitter.com/1QSbBYABhf
But the way Trump is constantly pumping this idea it seems clear that he is serious and that he believes the more he says it the more Americans will support him. He’s very crazy these days so I don’t think we can just dismiss this.
It’s pretty clear that Pelosi thinks Dems should filibuster the CR. Of course they should if for no other reason than to prove to their voters that they are alive.
Donald Trump held a press availability with the NATO Secretary the former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte on Thursday which was anticipated to be a bit contentious considering Trump’s hostility to the alliance. After all he has made it very clear that he has nothing but contempt for the organization and could be expected to pull the U.S. out of it with the smallest provocation. And he was already very angry that Europe was retaliating against the tariffs he had enacted for no reason, writing on Truth Social that the EU is “one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States.” His fuse was short.
But Rutte was deferential to Trump, laughing excitedly at his “jokes” and making sure to let him know how much he appreciated him and it seemed to loosen the president up. He regaled the press with anecdotes about how he “invaded Los Angeles” and reiterated his plan to seize Greenland saying “Denmark is very far away. A boat landed there 200 years ago or something and they say they have rights to it. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think it is, actually” before declaring that there may have to be more soldiers there. He called the EU “nasty” and again made it clear that he is dead serious about annexing Canada:
Trump: "To be honest with you, Canada only works as a state. We don't need anything they have. As a state it would be one of the great states. This would be the most incredible country visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it." pic.twitter.com/oxzF3jzLOC
He seemed, as he often does lately, more than a little bit off his rocker. But the demands for obeisance from everyone around him, foreign and domestic, aren’t new. It’s just that now that he believes that he’s achieved vindication for his Big Lie about the 2020 election and all the criminal and civil investigations from which he escaped, he’s demonstrating that he’ll use the power of the United States government to punish any offender if they look at him sideways.
In the last administration Vice President Mike Pence set the standard for adoring toadyism but Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has taken it to a whole new level in this term:
Lutnick: "He thought he'd be the big man and tackle Donald Trump, but you know you can't tackle Donald Trump. He's the most important, the smartest, the most capable leader in the world." pic.twitter.com/DsIn6iKbCS
Lutnick says Europe and Canada are being disrespectful and Trump is growing tired of it. “If you make him unhappy, he responds unhappy,” Lutnick said of Trump’s threat to put a 200% tariff on wine, champagne and other alcoholic beverages from France and elsewhere in the EU.
It’s been clear since the campaign that he was serious about exacting revenge on his enemies and he’s doing just that, every day. (He’s even going after the law firms that defended them.) But never let it be said that Trump doesn’t also do favors for his friends. Just this week it was reported that his DOJ (and it is “his”) fired a pardon attorney for balking at restoring his friend Mel Gibson’s gun rights without any vetting. (He was convicted of very serious domestic violence.)
And everyone knows that if you want an exemption from Trump’s tariffs, you have to ask very nicely and even then he might or might not agree. The same holds true for the DOGE billionaire Elon Musk who is in charge of destroying the federal government. CNN reported that he met with Republican lawmakers and gave them his phone number if they wanted to make the case to him directly to reverse a cut that hurts their constituents. (Needless to say, Democrats have not been offered the same privilege.)
I think everyone has struggled to perfectly define what’s going on here. Is this autocracy, oligarchy, kakistocracy? Is Trump simply out of control, behaving like a Mad King, even worse than the one this country rebelled against in the first place? A widely read Atlantic article from last month by Jonathan Rauch gives a definition to the process that makes the most sense to me. He reaches back to German sociologist Max Weber who defined this as something called “patrimonialism.”
Weber believed that rulers gain legitimacy from two one of two systems, the first being what Rausch calls “rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms.” That would be the system we have been operating under since the founding of our country under the Constitution. Patrimonialism is the system under which nearly everyone on earth lived until pretty recently in human history. Quoting a book called The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future, by Stephen E. Hanson, a government professor at the College of William & Mary, and Jeffrey S. Kopstein, a political scientist at UC Irvine, this is defined as the state being “little more than the extended ‘household’ of the ruler. Rausch writes:
Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing. It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones. Based on individual loyalty and connections, and on rewarding friends and punishing enemies (real or perceived), it can be found not just in states but also among tribes, street gangs, and criminal organizations.In its governmental guise, patrimonialism is distinguished by running the state as if it were the leader’s personal property or family business.
That’s what Trump and Musk are in the process of creating — a pre-modern patrimonial government where everything is decided through them on a personal basis.
Rausch makes the case that this is not necessarily authoritarian since authoritarian systems like Hitler’s Germany or the Soviet Union were heavily bureaucratized. It can even begin as a democracy. But over time it almost always devolves into autocracy.
Rausch says that patrimonialism has two inherent weaknesses that make it vulnerable: incompetence and corruption. Once you chase out all the people who know how to make things run (bureaucrats) and allow corruption to supercede the needs of the people it breaks down.
Rausch says, “corruption is patrimonialism’s Achilles’ heel because the public understands it and doesn’t like it. It is not an abstraction like “democracy” or “Constitution” or “rule of law.” It conveys that the government is being run for them, not for you.” It’s the most potent argument against this patrimonial presidency, that’s for sure.
I’ve never understood why more wasn’t made of Trump’s outright corruption in his first term. Now they are just waving it in our faces and it’s a thousand times more blatant. Musk waving around a chainsaw and Trump hawking Teslas on the White House driveway last week says it all. Let’s hope the opposition can get it together enough to pound that message home this time.
Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) ignores advice not to meet voters
Veteran escorted out after standing and hurling epithets.
Credit NC-11 Rep. Chuck Edwards for actually holding a town hall meeting Thursday evening in Asheville. And for staying 90 minutes.
Beyond that, few of the 400 people who got into the tech school auditorium came away with much more than the satisfaction of heckling him. Local news reports that 2,000 outside Ferguson Auditorium [that number feels inflated] had to content themselves with holding an ad hoc rally.
In a preview earlier in the day in Canton, N.C., the former paper mill town flooded twice in recent years, Edwards dodged a shouted question about cuts to Medicaid harming local schoolchildren.
“I agree with a lot of what’s going on in Washington,” Edwards said early in his Asheville presentation. The comment elicited loud boos, as did criticisms of FEMA and mentions of Donald Trump, bureaucracy, etc.
Edwards was reading a prepared speech including a checklist of facts on what’s been accomplished with Helene relief efforts. The impatient crowd didn’t want to hear it, some shouting, “We know all that. We lived it. Listen to us now!”
After each outburst, Edwards returned to his speech. but at mention of Trump seeking American economic dominance and Edwards’ vote for the the Republican budget resolution, the crowd exploded. A veteran stood up and started cursing that Edwards didn’t “give a f@ck about me.” Edwards waved at sheriff’s deputies to have him escorted out.
Edwards hadn’t gotten to the Q&A part yet.
As the Associated Press reported it, the town hall got “rowdy”:
For about an hour and half, Edwards endured a constant barrage of jeers, expletives and searing questions on Trump administration policies. About 300 people crammed inside a college auditorium for the town hall, while the boos from more than a thousand people outside the building rumbled throughout the event.
Edwards attempted to answer submitted questions drawn randomly from a bin and for the most part gave answers expected from a Republican congressman.
What about plans to eliminate the Department of Education? The answer is block grants. And again later, block grants.
What about plans to cut Social Security benefits? Edwards won’t vote to abolish the system, which didn’t exactly answer the question.
“Are you willing to cut 25% of your staff like DOGE is doing with other agencies? Edwards praised his staff, then read off a familiar list of small contracts DOGE characterized as frivolous and waste, some from Trump’s speech to Congress. The audience jeered, calling them debunked.
A woman stood and shouted, all those things are great, but what do they have to do with people losing their jobs? Edwards replied with something about DOGE looking for efficiencies.
At some point it seemed Edwards was simply trolling the crowd by mentioning Trump and “the art of the deal,” knowing it would elicit an angry response.
In one answer that stood out as nonsensical, Edwards said (emphasis mine), “What my job is is to listen to the information that I hear coming out of the administration and then to look at how that might be affecting our district. And then go back to that administration and make a case for why some of those changes might not be in the best interest of NC-11.”
Seriously? Edwards is a legislator in the arm of Congress that sets the budget, but speaks as if he must go to Trump on his knees to beg for crumbs.
Asked how Trump can legally impound funds appropriated by Congress, cancel contracts, and fire workers, Edwards replies that there’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president has to spend every single dollar Congress appropriates. [Because that’s in statute, IIRC.]
The crowd outside is shouting and can be head through the exit door.
And so it went. Full video here for those interested.
The Trump administration is slashing long-standing areas of research funded by the National Institutes of Health, claiming they no longer align with the agency’s priorities.
The latest target?
Millions of dollars in NIH grants for studying vaccine hesitancy and how to improve immunization levels. It’s work that’s particularly relevant as a measles outbreak grips the Southwest amidst diminishing vaccination rates.
In recent weeks, scientists around the country have begun receiving letters stating their existing grants — money already awarded to them in a competitive process — were being cut.
At first, the cuts appeared to primarily target research on LGBTQ+ health and other areas that were deemed in conflict with President Trump’s executive orders on gender and “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Now, more than 40 grants related to vaccine hesitancy have been cancelled, and there are mounting concerns that research on mRNA vaccines could be on the chopping block next.
[…]
In what some at the agency view as an ominous sign, the NIH’s acting director Dr. Matthew Memoli also requested information last week about the funding that supports mRNA vaccine research, technology that underpins the COVID-19 shots from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, according to an email reviewed by NPR. A similar call for data preceded the termination of the other vaccine grants.
“NIH staff internally are very worried that the mRNA grants will follow the outcome of the vaccine hesitancy grants and be terminated,” according to one of the NIH employees who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. “There are widespread concerns that this will limit the ability to combat pandemics and halt promising lifesaving cancer treatments.”
NPR reviewed the NIH list of 130 of these awards issued by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, which funds the most mRNA research. This includes efforts to develop vaccines for a variety of diseases, including Lyme disease, dengue and a sometimes life-threatening gastrointestinal infection known as Clostridium difficile.
Other parts of the NIH like the National Cancer Institute also fund this work, because mRNA technology holds promise for targeted cancer treatment.
Researchers racing to develop bird flu vaccines for humans have turned to a cutting-edge technology that enabled the rapid development of lifesaving covid shots.
There’s a catch: The mRNA technology faces growing doubts among Republicans, including people around President Donald Trump.
Legislation aimed to ban or limit mRNA vaccines was introduced this year by GOP lawmakers in at least seven states. In some cases, the measures would hit doctors who give the injections with criminal penalties, fines, and possible revocation of their licenses.
Some congressional Republicans are also pressing regulators to revoke federal approval for mRNA-based covid shots, which President Donald Trump touted as one of the signature achievements of his first term.
The opposition comes at a critical juncture because vaccines using mRNA have applications well beyond avian flu and covid. They hold the promise of lifesaving breakthroughs to treat many diseases, from melanomato HIVto Zika, according to clinical trials. The proposed bans could block access to these advances.
MRNA is found naturally in human cells. It is a molecule that carries genetic material and, in a vaccine, trains the body’s immune system to fight viruses, cancer cells, and other conditions. An advantage of mRNA technology is that it can be developed more quickly to target specific variants and is safer than developing a vaccine made from inactivated virus.
“Right now, if we had a bird flu pandemic, we would have a shortage of the vaccine we need,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “The one thing that could save us is mRNA vaccine. The challenge would be if mRNA is banned. This is truly dangerous policy.”
I’m pretty sure we know what Bobby Jr will advise.
This comes from bs conspiracy theories that it was the COVID vaccine that killed everyone, not the virus itself. It’s completely ridiculous. But it has quite a bit of currency on the right.
mRNA shows great, great promise for treating a whole lot of diseases, most especially cancer. I won’t be surprised if they defund the research because they are very stupid people but it will be yet another crime against humanity if they do it.
