51 thoughts on “Political Paws”

  1. Know the candidates and exercise your right to vote. 

    Fat Bear Week 2024 – Katmai National Park & Preserve (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

     

    What is Fat Bear Week?

    Fat Bear Week is a celebration of success and survival. It is a way to celebrate the resilience, adaptability and strength of Katmai’s brown bears. Bears are matched against each other in a tournament style competition where online visitors vote on which bear is ultimately crowned the Fat Bear Week champion. Over the course of the week, visitors learn more about the lives and histories of individual bears while also gaining a greater understanding of Katmai’s ecosystem through a series of live events hosted on explore.org. Join us this Fat Bear Week October 2-8 and vote daily from 8 am – 5 pm AKDT at fatbearweek.org!

    You can see more pictures of the bears in this year’s competition on Katmai’s Flickr page.

     

    Meet the Bears of Fat Bear Week 2024

    [continues with [pics and bios]

  2. more news of the competitors

    Fat Bear Week Reveals Contestants In Wake Of Bear-On-Bear Tragedy (forbes.com) by Amanda Kooser:

    Fat Bear Week is a celebration of the brown bears of Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. It’s typically a time of joy and friendly rivalry among humans cheering on their favorite ursine competitors. Fat Bear Week didn’t start as planned this year. The park and its livestream partner Explore.org delayed the announcement of contestants after a shocking bear-on-bear battle in the Brooks River left one bear dead.
    Horrified bear fans watched the battle unfold on a livestream. The fight occurred on Sept. 30, the scheduled day for the Fat Bear Week bracket reveal. The competition is designed a bit like March Madness in NCAA basketball. There’s a lot of hype around the reveal of the contestants, which are the pudgiest bears in the park. Fans pore over the bears’ biographies and choose which ones they’ll vote for during the single-elimination tournament. The voting continues until a final fat bear emerges triumphant.
    Explore.org naturalist Mike Fitz addressed the fight during what was supposed to have been a bracket reveal event for the Fat Bear Week contestants. “The situation that we dealt with today was difficult to witness,” Fitz said. “We love to celebrate the success of bears with full stomachs and ample body fat, but the ferocity of bears is real. The risks that they face are real. Their lives are hard and their deaths can be painful.”
    The feud began as two bears met out in the river and engaged. An older female known as 402 fought with an older male known as 469. The male bear killed 402. “I don’t know why a bear would want to expend so much energy trying to kill another bear,” said Katmai ranger Sarah Bruce, saying it’s uncommon to see a bear predating another bear.
    Caution, the video includes disturbing footage and analysis of the bear attack.
    The Fat Bear Week bracket reveal was moved to Tuesday evening. The 12 contestants include some familiar faces. Last year’s winner, 128 Grazer, is back to defend her crown. Heavyweight 32 Chunk, a dominant bear on the river, has been a top competitor in recent years, but has never won Fat Bear Week. “He excelled this summer in a place where conflict among bears is necessary to maintain rank and access to the most productive fishing spots,” Explore.org said in Chunk’s bio. The 2022 champion 747, known as “Bear Force One,” is also in the mix.
    There’s an added edge of intrigue this year since Chunk killed one of Grazer’s cubs earlier in the year. “Her story this year demonstrates that even the most skilled and formidable mother bears experience hardship and loss,” Explore.org said. While Fat Bear Week is fun, the bear fight and the death of Grazer’s cub highlight the harsh reality of life in the wild. There’s room for both delight and sorrow when engaging with Fat Bear Week.
    Voting kicks off on Wednesday, Oct. 2, and the final round takes place on Tuesday, Oct. 8. Grazer rolls in as a favorite, and her backstory might sway bear fans into her camp. But nothing is certain. There could be upsets. It’s all down to the human voters now.

  3. back to the other world of fighting tooth, fang and claw

    The 165 page filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith details the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and cites evidence, including conversations with Trump’s family members, that shows his actions were not covered by the Supreme Court’s ridiculous presidential immunity ruling.

  4. and here’s kimmel’s take

    A new bill was signed into law this week by Governor Newsom that will allow marijuana dispensaries to serve food and non-alcoholic drinks, Trump hit Truth Social hard last night to complain about the 165 pages of incriminating evidence the judge released detailing every step of his attempt to overthrow the election, he visited Michigan to rave and rant about windmills before his teleprompter went out, Republicans who were very worked up about Joe Biden’s age don’t seem to have the same problem with Trump, the MAGA faithful are still showing up and buying merch, Melania came out to promote her book and to reveal that unlike her husband she is pro-choice, RFK Jr. has reportedly had affairs with at least three women over the past year, Americans are panic buying rolls of toilet paper in response to the port strike, Trump loves America a lot, and This Week in Unnecessary Censorship.

     

  5. Donald Trump’s foul-mouthed migrant rant captured in private pitch to donors | Donald Trump | The Guardian

    Donald Trump unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade about undocumented immigrants and predicted that this “could be the last election we ever have” if Kamala Harris wins during a private fundraising dinner this summer.
    The Guardian obtained a 12-minute recording of a speech that the Republican presidential nominee gave at a dinner on 10 August in Aspen, Colorado, where attendees were required to donate anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000 a couple.
    Trump devoted most of his address to border security and immigration, recycling xenophobic claims now familiar from his rallies. “Radical leftwing lunatics” want people to come in from prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums, he asserted without evidence, adding that the US was harbouring “a record number of terrorists”.
    […]
    Trump cited a false example of 22 people he claimed had come to the US after being released from prison in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “We said, ‘Where do you come from?’ They said, ‘Prison’. ‘What did you do?’ ‘None of your fucking business what we did.’ You know why? Because they’re murderers.”
    The candidate added, “I hate to use that foul language”, apparently recognising that his use of the F-word went further than his campaign rallies. The Congolese government has said there is no truth to Trump’s statements.
    The candidate went on: “These are the toughest people. These people are coming in from Africa, from the Middle East. They’re coming in from all parts of Asia, the bad parts, the parts where they’re rough, and the only thing good is they make our criminals look extremely nice. They make our Hell’s Angels look like the nicest people on earth.”
    Studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans.
    Trump flew to Aspen on a Gulfstream G-550 jet once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, after his own private plane – a Boeing 757 known colloquially as Trump Force One – encountered engine trouble.
    The dinner was held at the $38m home of the investors and art collectors John and Amy Phelan. Guests included the casino mogul Steve Wynn, billionaire businessman Thomas Peterffy, Texas governor Greg Abbott, Florida congressman Byron Donalds, Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert and former Colorado senator Cory Gardner.
    […]
    Trump also reflected on surviving an assassination attempt at a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire from a rooftop, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, and injuring two other Trump supporters.
    Trump told how members of his Florida golf club, Mar-a-Lago, asked to make a contribution to Comperatore’s family. “I said absolutely and they gave me a cheque for a million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Maybe even more impressively we put out a GoFundMe and we raised more than $6m for the group that got hurt, which is essentially three people.”
    Then, recalling a meeting with Comperatore’s widow, Helen, he made a risky attempt to find humour in the tragedy. “So they’re going to get millions of dollars but the woman, the wife, this beautiful woman, I handed her the cheque – we handed her the cheque – and she said, ‘This is so nice, and I appreciate it, but I’d much rather have my husband.’ Now, I know some of the women in this room wouldn’t say the same.”
    As dinner guests erupted in laughter, Trump quipped: “I know at least four couples. There are four couples, Governor [Abbott], that I know and you’re not one of them. At least four couples here would have been thrilled, actually.”
    The event is understood to have raised $12m for Trump’s campaign but was not enough to prevent Harris raising more than four times as much as her opponent in August, the first full month of her bid for the White House.

  6. Olbermann
    THE MEDIA IS IN THE TANK FOR TRIMP
     
    A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Go and look for Jack Smith’s evidence against Trump on the front pages of America’s newspapers and the top of America’s newscasts. Go and look for the stories about the evidence he produced that there were not TWO coup attempts by Trump and his whores on January 6th, but three. Go. I’ll wait.
    Not even 48 hours since the most damning document ever composed about an American president, makes the Watergate testimony look like the comedian’s script at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and it’s already virtually disappeared from our American media because whether its leaders know it or not American media is not just in the tank for Trump but its leaders have already drowned there and there are only a few journalists left.
    But her emails.
    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/countdown-with-keith-olbermann/id1633301179?i=1000671740154
     
     

  7. Olberman is right. I had to Google “Smith filing” to get a .pdf of his motion. I think the first paragraph is worth reading if you haven’t. 

    The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct. Not so. Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one. Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted—a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role. In Trump v. United States, 144 S. Ct. 2312 (2024), the Supreme Court held that presidents are immune from prosecution for certain official conduct— including the defendant’s use of the Justice Department in furtherance of his scheme, as was alleged in the original indictment—and remanded to this Court to determine whether the remaining allegations against the defendant are immunized. The answer to that question is no. This motion provides a comprehensive account of the defendant’s private criminal conduct; sets forth the legal framework created by Trump for resolving immunity claims; applies that framework to establish that none of the defendant’s charged conduct is immunized because it either was unofficial or any presumptive immunity is rebutted; and requests the relief the Government seeks, which is, at bottom, this: that the Court determine that the defendant must stand trial for his private crimes as would any other citizen.
     

    That is one great lead in to another 164 pages of recitations of Dumbass’ private crimes. BTW, I found that posting of Smith’s Motion at Faux Snooze. 

  8. pogo, you must have missed last thread.  it (courtesy of PBS) was the first comment posted yesterday morning.

  9. patd, I know it was here – it was me testing Olberman’s comment.  He’s still right – 3 days after the filing and it isn’t on (at least) WaPo’s front page.  But there is an article there about the estrangement between Kamala and her dad.  There is a link from an article yesterday appearing in the “More News” section of NYT that has a link to the Motion filing, and is entitled “Filing in Trump Election Case Fleshes Out Roles of a Sprawling Cast”, so I’ll amend my comment to Keith’s kinda right.

    Breaking news – WaPo posted an article 17 minutes ago “Who’s who in Jack Smith’s massive Trump election interference filing” with a link to the Motion in their “Latest From the Post” section. Keith might have been mostly right when he did his podcast, but it’s not a problem getting to the Motion now – if you subscribe to the electronic versions of the Post and Times. If you get your news at GoMart, I suspect you’re screwed.

  10. I agree with Keith’s urgent call for lots of coverage, but there was more of it than he says. I actually monitored how much attention the DOJ filing got, and there was quite a bit. Every major network nightly newscast led with it, as did CNN and MSNBC at the top of each hour that night. Frontpages in battleground newspapers also covered the story.

    Sometimes I think Olbermann’s bitterness over the trajectory of his career clouds his thinking about what they do or don’t do, but often he hits the target. This time, not so much. Given the competition from mideast war, hurricane aftermath, dock strike, VP debate etc. I was actually surprised this story broke through as well as it did.

  11. I liked this bullet pointing of the key quotes from Jack Smith’s motion making the rounds online:

    • Aide: There will be violence if we keep doing this
    • Trump: “Make them riot. Do it.”
    • Aide: We don’t have evidence of voter fraud
    • Trump: “The details don’t matter.”
    • Aide: VP Pence has been moved to a secure location
    • Trump: “So what?”
  12. Old Berman exaggerates and side-eye views  stuff here and there from time to time—but he exaggerates and side-eyes  stuff in my direction.  I appreciate some one who carries the fight to them in whatever means are at his disposal and doesn’t mince words about it. He ain’t always right but he’s always damned funny about it. 

    And he KNOWS some shit about baseball and MSNBC.

    Furthermore, the whole point of his comment is that the media SHOULD BE SCREAMING ABOUT THIS, so to speak.

    Seems to me that highliting and turning J6 behavior into irrefutable fact throws a lot of light onto election and steal 2024.

  13. This tells me his internal polls show Project 2025 is killing him (he’s also having trouble finding a nickname that sticks, “Comrade” wasn’t working)…
    Donald J. Trump
    @realDonaldTrump

    Lyin’ Kamal Harris, who refuses to do interviews or press conferences because she has no idea how to answer the questions, and is now losing in the polls, continues to make a thing called Project 2025 the central theme of her campaign, advertising and all. Lyin’ Kamala has been informed, legally, that I have, and had, nothing to do with it, NEVER READ IT, NEVER SAW IT, but her ads continue, full blast. When you see them talking about Project 2025, remember, Kamala is lying, just like she lied about working at McDonalds (she didn’t!), or added 818,000 new jobs that didn’t exist (a fraud!), and sooo many other lies. Just like San Francisco and California, itself, she would, if given the chance, COMPLETELY DESTROY OUR COUNTRY!

    Oct 04, 2024, 9:41 AM

  14. Can we enter MTG in a Stupid Bear contest? Trump’s top surrogate Marjorie Taylor Greene actually goes there, fueling the QAnon conspiracy theory that Biden caused the hurricane.

  15. That girl ain’t right, common as pig tracks, a real hog on ice.  

    Bless her heart.

    Why is it only democrats who know this secret of manipulating the weather? Are the republicans just all stupid?

  16. Craig – seems a few more media types, Michael Steele newest, are getting close to your 320.  The entertainment media “news”, WashPo and NYTimes are still holding with a nek-n-nek deadheat, toss up race.
     
    I am holding my breath.  Ballot in drop box today!

  17. BlueB, I do think it is tight but winnable if election held today. My 320 projection is based on bottom dropping out for Trump around 2 to 3 weeks out when all these soft leaners, undecideds and unaffiliateds wake up and realize they really don’t want another four years of Mr Chaos.

    I’ve actually marked Sunday October 20 on my calendar for when that starts happening.  Polls in the field beginning then should show movement by end of that week. Unless of course we have some sort of unpredictable earthquake that turns it the other direction.

  18. Looked up some Wisconsin numbers. Biden won by 25,000 in 2020. Last May after she had dropped out Nikki Haley got 76,000 votes in the Republican primary. Hello Liz! 

  19. What strikes me about conservative Republicans like Liz, Kinzinger, the former White House aides etc. who are endorsing Kamala: They’re not asking for anything at all on the policy front, no concessions to move to the center. They just want Trump defeated. I’ll take it. 

  20. I don’t think the media is “in the bag for trump”….  I think they need to say the race is close so they can sell more newspapers.  Rick and I (BTW, today is our 49th anniversary) usually watch David Muir…  he’s starting his news program with the negatives about trump.   But as Craig said… there’s so much else happening in the world that is competing at the moment for news space. 

  21. 254,000 September new jobs, 4.1% unemployment is great Harris news.  Dockworkers at least postponing their walk-off… also, great news.  62% raise in pay over 6 years? To die for , for a worker.  In my UAW days, we had to fight like hell for 2% over 3 years, or give the company concessions.  
    Sherrod Brown is sustaining a barrage of a multi-million dollar attack on his record and reliability. Also my Congresswoman, Marcy Kaptur is being attacked by blatant lies by these rich MAGA people with deep pockets…even on YouTube, and every TV station and cable network. The two MAGA candidates, Bernie Moreno (vs. Brown) and Derek Merrin running for Congress, are both rotten republican policy followers, all the way, check every box.  More and more yard signs for Harris/Walz along the mighty Maumee River Road, 12-1 on Wednesday.   Trump gained the advantage as I got into the rural fields.

  22. If the media covered stump’s age and the evidence of his crimes like they covered Biden’s age and his verbal gaffes or “But her emails” it’d be a lot different, wouldn’t it.

  23. Yesterday in Saginaw we saw how Trump advance teams create illusion of big crowds. They concentrate a few hundred in a portion of the building and RightSide, Newsmax, FOX cameras only show that as Trump claims “50-60,000”. Of course CNN. MSNBC panned the whole room 

  24. Ugh. Biden just popped into the briefing room for an impromptu press conference on economic numbers while Kamala was still giving her speech in Detroit!!! 

    No thank you Joe. A bit more coordination please.

  25. big effing deal for Joe’s legacy and the planet. hope they also let CO2 rules live so we can too. 

    Supreme Court declines to block Biden rules on planet-warming methane and toxic mercury emissions (msn.com)

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday left in place Biden administration regulations aimed at curbing oil and gas facility emissions of methane, a major contributor to climate change.
    In a separate action, the court also rejected a bid to block a regulation aimed at curbing emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants.
    In both cases, the court rejected emergency applications without comment, with no noted dissents. Litigation against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will continue in lower courts.
    A separate emergency application seeking to block Biden regulations concerning carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants remains pending.
    “The Supreme Court has sensibly rejected two efforts by industry to halt critical safeguards,” said David Doniger, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “The court should do the same with the effort to block EPA’s power plant carbon pollution standards.”
    A spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who led the challenge to the methane regulation, expressed disappointment in the decision. “But we respect the court’s decision,” he added.
    The court’s decision in the methane case means that an EPA regulation that was finalized in March and is intended to cut methane emissions by up to 80 percent over the next 14 years will remain in effect.
    Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat once emitted into the atmosphere, hence contributing to global warming.
    […]
    The regulation tightens existing regulations on mercury and other metals, such as arsenic and chromium.
    In announcing the rule, the EPA said in April that the earlier 2012 regulation introduced by the Obama administration “has driven sharp reductions in harmful air toxic pollutants.” The new regulation would further limit emissions of mercury and other pollutants, providing health benefits of $300 million by reducing exposure to carcinogens, it said.
    This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

  26. Media outlets don’t just want a close race, they want trump-influenced ratings AFTER the election because wtf are do-nothings like Joe and Mika and Jesse and going to talk about without trump
     
    US legacy “print” media is no different, eyeballs needed for scam products

  27. I’m attending a wedding, it is my niece. It is her second go around. Her first did his best to isolate her from her family and other spouse from hell stuff.  I would say this one seems much better, except that is a very low bar. Actually he is a lot better, I think she got a good one this time around. 
    I running late and haven’t got Sundays post done yet. Will try to get it done this evening or Saturday mornin , if internet access is working
    If not somebody will have to cover for me.
    Later, Jack

  28. the ads on cnn.con and nbcnews. com are almost exclusively snake-oil ads, the business model is kaput, god help anyone with a love for the written word trying to read the actual content, i can tell the recent-grad writers are trying to submit anything so they can go out drinking

  29. i’m going to give you Kamala merch to hand out at the wedding and a list of pro-lib talking points to persuade potential voters, Jack

    JUST KIDDING, have fun 🕺

  30. Wow a bunch of evil people at the trump rally

    Trump live from Mordor, special guest speaker Witch-King of Angmar

    “Better Off With Trump” is a loser slogan, i like it 👍

    Could they fill the audience with more obvious plants asking campaign-composed questions

  31. That wasn’t a town hall, that was a Klan rally

    trump has obvious neuro-cognitive issues

    we got HEADLINES when Biden would misspeak or slur a word, MSM has nothing to say about trump’s mush-mouth

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