Thank you. After one hour of reading news, I was soooo thirsty for a good gif, and you certainly delivered, and I laughed at the serendipity of it being others who were also thirsty!
Yes. I suppose a lion or lioness is a sublime creature -- one can only appreciate the sublimity of it from a tolerably safe distance. Like a looping video, for example. But they manage somehow to be both formidable and downright adorable, don't they?
Years ago, at an Outdoor Show and Exposition, one stage featured big cats and a bear. A black panther was eyeing someone's toddler who was amusing himself off to one side of the audience.
We had a similar experience at the Como Zoo when my son was not as young, but there was a toddler near us. The mountain lion enclosure at the time had cement up to about four and a half feet, and then interlaced large cabling for the upper portion. At one point one of the young lions honed in on the toddler and went so far as to leap across the enclosure and try to grab through the cabling.
A school shooting in Minneapolis. Gunman shot up a Catholic school as the students were celebrating mass (ie, praying). Clearly thoughts and prayers are not enough.
"During a White House Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump again accused Newsom of mishandling California’s wildfire response, launching into one of his trademark rants about water supplies. “We send hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day into the Pacific Ocean,” Trump claimed. “They turn a valve, and the valve heads out. And we turned the valve back. I actually had to do it using force. ... Gavin Newscum, turn the rest of the water on,” he added, using his nickname for the governor.
Newsom turned to X’s AI chatbot, Grok, to continue trolling Trump. “Do people with dementia repeat false things over and over again?” he asked the bot.
Grok responded: “Yes, people with dementia can repeat false statements or beliefs, a behavior often linked to memory impairments and cognitive changes. This can manifest as confabulation, where they create or repeat false memories to fill gaps in recollection, or perseveration, where they fixate on a particular idea or statement.”"
"A new report is shedding light on a possible reason President Donald Trump tapped singer Gloria Gaynor as a Kennedy Center Honors recipient. The singer has donated thousands of dollars to a range of Republicans in the past few years, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by MeidasTouch.
In 2023 and 2024, the entertainer shelled out modest sums totaling nearly $22,000 to a long list of MAGA allies and conservative organizations. The list of politicians includes House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.,) Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who was then a U.S. senator), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy (who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2023 and early 2024).
Gaynor, who made the donations under her given name Gloria Fowles, also gave money to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the New Journey PAC, a group that targets Black conservative voters."
"We’re in our third week of President Donald Trump’s takeover of public safety in the nation’s capital, and here’s what it’s like: mostly the same.
Since there was no “crime emergency” to start with — the usual bad crime, yes, but no crescendoing crisis — things are not much different. That’s why the National Guard soldiers started picking up trash over the weekend.
Federal law enforcement officers have been busy, though, tagging along with D.C. police on traffic stops and stuffing immigrants into unmarked vehicles. I watched a group of Drug Enforcement Administration agents back up D.C. police after they pulled over a drunken driver one night last week on H Street NE. On another night, I watched DEA agents and D.C. police peer into a parked car they said belonged to someone with some sort of gun record. They decided not to tow the car.
Scenes of D.C. residents watching and filming federal officers have become common, and feds have been aggressively arresting moped delivery drivers. As a result, the mopeds that were ubiquitous on city streets three weeks ago are now mostly gone."
I think the wheels are coming off of OPM. I retired 2.5 years ago from the Gummint and I get a FERS annuity supplement which changes based on yearly earnings. The new changes were to go into effect July 2025 which would be noted on my August 1st check date.
Well, on August 15th, I got a letter from OPM saying that the change hasn't happened yet and, "No action is required from you at this moment, OPM is working on the reconciliation of the accounts affected and will initiate the collection process later this year."
I mean, I don't know, but this sounds kinda bad and I can't find any information about it anywhere.
NYT, today: "The number of people being held at an immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades has decreased sharply and may soon be down to zero, despite the state’s recent insistence that the 2,000 beds at the facility were desperately needed as part of President Trump’s crackdown on unauthorized immigrants. Kevin Guthrie, the executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, wrote in an email on Friday that the detention center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, was “probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.”"
NYT today: "Denmark summoned the head of the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday after allegations emerged that three Americans with close ties to President Trump were running “covert influence operations” in Greenland. “We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland,” said Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Denmark’s foreign minister, in a statement on Wednesday. “Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom will of course be unacceptable.” Mr. Rasmussen called the summons a “preventive conversation.” The allegations followed reports this spring that American intelligence agencies were stepping up spying operations in Greenland, news that had also created a stir in Denmark."
"Federal prosecutors on Tuesday were unable to persuade a grand jury to approve a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of Washington this month, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The grand jury’s rejection of the felony charge was a remarkable failure by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and the second time in recent days that a majority of grand jurors refused to vote to indict a person accused of felony assault on a federal agent. It also amounted to a sharp rebuke by a panel of ordinary citizens against the prosecutors assigned to bring charges against people arrested after President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents to fight crime and patrol the city’s streets."
Pundits are wrong about crime. Big surprise, they're wrong about almost everything, because as a class they're even more out of touch than politicians.
But MoDo has one valuable point. It's a mistake for Dems to downplay "crime." Because while we don't have a real crime problem problem, we do have a vibes problem. Crime isn't bad hasn't been on the rise, but homelessness is. And it's freaking people out. Waldman gets closer to that than anyone else I've read, but sad to say, Donald Fucking Trump gets it better than anyone on our side. Y'all remember how he IMMEDIATELY pivoted to rousting the homeless at the very same time he announced that he was sending goons into D.C.?
I don't have a political solution here. The only real solution is to build more housing so it becomes more affordable, but that does not resolve the political problem in any kind of reasonable timeframe.
But yelling "THERE IS NO CRIME PROBLEM!" is only gonna make us look clueless. Or worse, dishonest. People feel unsafe because their eyes tell them they have reason to feel unsafe. It's not really an accurate assessment, but human beings are hardwired to perceive the weird and disorderly as a threat. And don't go yelling at me that faster ways to "solve" this problem are monstrous. I'm fully aware of that, it's why I'm stumped.
My point is that yelling “NUH UH!” at the top of our lungs has not, does not and will not work. Which should be FUCKING OBVIOUS by this point. And personally, I’d rather win back my country than be catty about Maureen Dowd.
No. Your point is that you've never read a platform by either Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, nor listened to one word said by AOC or Jasmine Crockett, nor bothered to learn anything else that's FUCKING BEYOND OBVIOUS at this point.
And personally, I'd rather win back my country than eat out Maureen Dowd's decaying fascist cloaca, but you be YOU, dude.
I've schooled, mortified, and blocked you with the greatest pleasure.
“When Donald Trump isn't president, when he's merely running for president, he benefits from public concern about all kinds of issues, from immigration to inflation, because he has no responsibility for them”
Because Trump is just a used car salesman convincing you to buy a POS car. Then once you actually own it you’re like “I’ve been ripped off”
The part I don’t get is how many times people are willing to get ripped off and still not realize he’s going to keep doing it.
The only way anyone can say we aren't experiencing a fascist power-grab here in the States is to shield oneself with absolute historical ignorance. Orange Hitler is making all the moves necessary to qualify his MAGA and Project-2025-based actions as fascistic. Intimidation; militarization; groundless attacks against political "enemies"; pervasive and programmatic racism; disrespect for women as anything other than baby-makers for the state; determined attacks against intellectual and academic freedom; ham-handed attempts to reshape the nation's culture in the direction of official ideology and the leader's whims; ham-handed shakedowns and quid pro quo arrangements with corporate and foreign leaders seeking favors; belligerence in foreign policy and siding with other dictators instead of with democratic allies who have stood by us, and more. But hey, so long as you ignore ALL THAT, everything's cool!
Your thirsty hed gif info: https://martiniambassador.substack.com/p/lioness-and-cubs-at-the-ol-waterin
And a meme chat: https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/64e1ccbd-2d37-48ed-b531-862e9c832345?utm_source=share
Very watchful mama. Don't fuck with her.
Thank you. After one hour of reading news, I was soooo thirsty for a good gif, and you certainly delivered, and I laughed at the serendipity of it being others who were also thirsty!
When that second kitten appeared, I was all "Awwww!"
Awwwww, that babby is lying on its little belleh lapping up water. So cute. Mom is fearsome.
Mommy and babby have a drink....very nice....
🎵 Its the slurple of life....
Beautiful.
Big cats are fascinating and gorgeous creatures
"Did you notice that there are two cubs?"
I did 𝘯𝘰𝘵! Until I was prompted. Even chillin' with the young over liquid refreshment, momma lion looks formidable.
Yes. I suppose a lion or lioness is a sublime creature -- one can only appreciate the sublimity of it from a tolerably safe distance. Like a looping video, for example. But they manage somehow to be both formidable and downright adorable, don't they?
I just did a little homework...cubs stay with Mom for up to two years. I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't see cub Number 2 until now.
Mother lions are very protective of their own, but when my son was young we went to a zoo
and the mother lion locked on him with her eyes and followed him as he walked around, having immediately sorted out the weakest of my little herd.
Years ago, at an Outdoor Show and Exposition, one stage featured big cats and a bear. A black panther was eyeing someone's toddler who was amusing himself off to one side of the audience.
We had a similar experience at the Como Zoo when my son was not as young, but there was a toddler near us. The mountain lion enclosure at the time had cement up to about four and a half feet, and then interlaced large cabling for the upper portion. At one point one of the young lions honed in on the toddler and went so far as to leap across the enclosure and try to grab through the cabling.
It was lightning fast!
Yummy!
That is one lean Momma cat.
I'm thinking it might be
1. Because she's nursing.
2. Because she's afraid of leaving them in order to hunt, so it's the Mama diet.
3. They couldn't eat a kill yet anyway.
4. That's one special Mom.
Babby kitties and their protective Mama!
A school shooting in Minneapolis. Gunman shot up a Catholic school as the students were celebrating mass (ie, praying). Clearly thoughts and prayers are not enough.
ka$h says the shooter was trans. Can't imagine the right wing making a big deal out of that.
"During a White House Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump again accused Newsom of mishandling California’s wildfire response, launching into one of his trademark rants about water supplies. “We send hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day into the Pacific Ocean,” Trump claimed. “They turn a valve, and the valve heads out. And we turned the valve back. I actually had to do it using force. ... Gavin Newscum, turn the rest of the water on,” he added, using his nickname for the governor.
Newsom turned to X’s AI chatbot, Grok, to continue trolling Trump. “Do people with dementia repeat false things over and over again?” he asked the bot.
Grok responded: “Yes, people with dementia can repeat false statements or beliefs, a behavior often linked to memory impairments and cognitive changes. This can manifest as confabulation, where they create or repeat false memories to fill gaps in recollection, or perseveration, where they fixate on a particular idea or statement.”"
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gavin-newsom-donald-trump-grok-dementia_n_68af32eae4b0bbcc3f8d831d
I got it! Make America Grown-up Again!
"A new report is shedding light on a possible reason President Donald Trump tapped singer Gloria Gaynor as a Kennedy Center Honors recipient. The singer has donated thousands of dollars to a range of Republicans in the past few years, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by MeidasTouch.
In 2023 and 2024, the entertainer shelled out modest sums totaling nearly $22,000 to a long list of MAGA allies and conservative organizations. The list of politicians includes House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.,) Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who was then a U.S. senator), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy (who ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2023 and early 2024).
Gaynor, who made the donations under her given name Gloria Fowles, also gave money to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the New Journey PAC, a group that targets Black conservative voters."
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gloria-gaynor-republican-donations-kennedy-center-honors_n_68af229de4b0d087ed3e0ff8
This illustrates the simple fact that the money is in the hands of the wrong people.
"We’re in our third week of President Donald Trump’s takeover of public safety in the nation’s capital, and here’s what it’s like: mostly the same.
Since there was no “crime emergency” to start with — the usual bad crime, yes, but no crescendoing crisis — things are not much different. That’s why the National Guard soldiers started picking up trash over the weekend.
Federal law enforcement officers have been busy, though, tagging along with D.C. police on traffic stops and stuffing immigrants into unmarked vehicles. I watched a group of Drug Enforcement Administration agents back up D.C. police after they pulled over a drunken driver one night last week on H Street NE. On another night, I watched DEA agents and D.C. police peer into a parked car they said belonged to someone with some sort of gun record. They decided not to tow the car.
Scenes of D.C. residents watching and filming federal officers have become common, and feds have been aggressively arresting moped delivery drivers. As a result, the mopeds that were ubiquitous on city streets three weeks ago are now mostly gone."
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/donald-trumps-d-c-takeover-152905561.html
I think the wheels are coming off of OPM. I retired 2.5 years ago from the Gummint and I get a FERS annuity supplement which changes based on yearly earnings. The new changes were to go into effect July 2025 which would be noted on my August 1st check date.
Well, on August 15th, I got a letter from OPM saying that the change hasn't happened yet and, "No action is required from you at this moment, OPM is working on the reconciliation of the accounts affected and will initiate the collection process later this year."
I mean, I don't know, but this sounds kinda bad and I can't find any information about it anywhere.
NYT, today: "The number of people being held at an immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades has decreased sharply and may soon be down to zero, despite the state’s recent insistence that the 2,000 beds at the facility were desperately needed as part of President Trump’s crackdown on unauthorized immigrants. Kevin Guthrie, the executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, wrote in an email on Friday that the detention center, known as Alligator Alcatraz, was “probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.”"
OT!
ICE agent assaulted police officer.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/border-agent-charged-assaulting-police-officer-dies-days-court-appeara-rcna227396
Clitzilla is nearly as moronic as Pussy Ass Bitch.
Fran Lebowitz may need to reconsider her immortal utterance...
NYT today: "Denmark summoned the head of the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday after allegations emerged that three Americans with close ties to President Trump were running “covert influence operations” in Greenland. “We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland,” said Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Denmark’s foreign minister, in a statement on Wednesday. “Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom will of course be unacceptable.” Mr. Rasmussen called the summons a “preventive conversation.” The allegations followed reports this spring that American intelligence agencies were stepping up spying operations in Greenland, news that had also created a stir in Denmark."
NYT, today:
"Federal prosecutors on Tuesday were unable to persuade a grand jury to approve a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of Washington this month, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The grand jury’s rejection of the felony charge was a remarkable failure by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and the second time in recent days that a majority of grand jurors refused to vote to indict a person accused of felony assault on a federal agent. It also amounted to a sharp rebuke by a panel of ordinary citizens against the prosecutors assigned to bring charges against people arrested after President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents to fight crime and patrol the city’s streets."
Pundits are wrong about crime. Big surprise, they're wrong about almost everything, because as a class they're even more out of touch than politicians.
But MoDo has one valuable point. It's a mistake for Dems to downplay "crime." Because while we don't have a real crime problem problem, we do have a vibes problem. Crime isn't bad hasn't been on the rise, but homelessness is. And it's freaking people out. Waldman gets closer to that than anyone else I've read, but sad to say, Donald Fucking Trump gets it better than anyone on our side. Y'all remember how he IMMEDIATELY pivoted to rousting the homeless at the very same time he announced that he was sending goons into D.C.?
I don't have a political solution here. The only real solution is to build more housing so it becomes more affordable, but that does not resolve the political problem in any kind of reasonable timeframe.
But yelling "THERE IS NO CRIME PROBLEM!" is only gonna make us look clueless. Or worse, dishonest. People feel unsafe because their eyes tell them they have reason to feel unsafe. It's not really an accurate assessment, but human beings are hardwired to perceive the weird and disorderly as a threat. And don't go yelling at me that faster ways to "solve" this problem are monstrous. I'm fully aware of that, it's why I'm stumped.
She has no point, ever. Soulless Nazi whore and hack.
Apparently your point is that sparkling fascism is 'more successful' than the truth.
My point is that yelling “NUH UH!” at the top of our lungs has not, does not and will not work. Which should be FUCKING OBVIOUS by this point. And personally, I’d rather win back my country than be catty about Maureen Dowd.
No. Your point is that you've never read a platform by either Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, nor listened to one word said by AOC or Jasmine Crockett, nor bothered to learn anything else that's FUCKING BEYOND OBVIOUS at this point.
And personally, I'd rather win back my country than eat out Maureen Dowd's decaying fascist cloaca, but you be YOU, dude.
I've schooled, mortified, and blocked you with the greatest pleasure.
Tab's with Bagels and coffee in the Morning ☕💯👍
From the Finding Gravity article
“When Donald Trump isn't president, when he's merely running for president, he benefits from public concern about all kinds of issues, from immigration to inflation, because he has no responsibility for them”
Because Trump is just a used car salesman convincing you to buy a POS car. Then once you actually own it you’re like “I’ve been ripped off”
The part I don’t get is how many times people are willing to get ripped off and still not realize he’s going to keep doing it.
The only way anyone can say we aren't experiencing a fascist power-grab here in the States is to shield oneself with absolute historical ignorance. Orange Hitler is making all the moves necessary to qualify his MAGA and Project-2025-based actions as fascistic. Intimidation; militarization; groundless attacks against political "enemies"; pervasive and programmatic racism; disrespect for women as anything other than baby-makers for the state; determined attacks against intellectual and academic freedom; ham-handed attempts to reshape the nation's culture in the direction of official ideology and the leader's whims; ham-handed shakedowns and quid pro quo arrangements with corporate and foreign leaders seeking favors; belligerence in foreign policy and siding with other dictators instead of with democratic allies who have stood by us, and more. But hey, so long as you ignore ALL THAT, everything's cool!