BREAKING: Kamala Snubs Shapiro, Picks Walz

Thoughts on My Governor Tim Walz

As technological capabilities grow we can use different methods to learn more about the world around us, including the secret lives of the animal kingdom. In Minnesota, USA, a sassy lynx has been recorded on a camera trap, and boy does it look good. The Voyageurs Wolf Project studies the summer ecology of the wolves of the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem in Minnesota. The team have placed 350 camera traps that, as well as the wolves, record a whole host of other woodland species. The team shared the footage on their Facebook page of a lynx seemingly posing for the camera on the Kabetogama Peninsula within the park.     “A lot of fortuitous things have to happen, not only for the lynx to sit there, but for the lighting to be nice, and for there to be that pretty, North Woods background. Those are the things that make it really cool,” Tom Gable of the Voyageurs Wolf Project, who reviewed the footage, told the Star Tribune.There are four species of lynx across the world: the bobcat (Lynx rufus); the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx); the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus); and the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), which is the species posing in the video. Canada lynx are fierce predators feeding almost exclusively on snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus), though they will take smaller mammals and birds depending on conditions. They are smaller than their European counterparts and can be told apart from the bobcat by their tails, which look to have been dipped completely in ink.Lynx are typically shy solitary creatures, which is why seeing them like this on a camera trap is so special. They are typically more active at night, hunting under cover of darkness with eyesight that can spot prey from over 75 meters (246 feet) away, explains the National Wildlife Federation. Camera traps have been used to spot elusive and, in some cases, thought-to-be-extinct creatures such as clouded leopards and Attenborough's long-beaked echidna. This provides a non-invasive way for conservationists and researchers to monitor populations. 

One of the oldest dinosaurs ever discovered may have just been delivered by torrential downpours in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Palaeontologists made the discovery after heavy rain sped up the process of erosion next to a reservoir dating back to the Triassic, meaning it’s estimated to be around 233 million years old.If the dating is accurate, this puts the animal right at the very beginning of dinosaurs. The prehistoric animals are thought to have first emerged during the Triassic at a time when all the continents were connected in one giant landmass called Pangea.The fossil find is awaiting further investigation and publication, but a fact sheet about the discovery was shared with The Associated Press. What’s being reported so far is that it was an apex predator from the Herrerasauridae, a family of carnivorous dinosaurs that walked on two legs, and may represent the most complete of its kind ever found.When heavy rains disrupted the environment, a team of palaeontologists including Rodrigo Temp Müller from the Federal University of Santa Maria discovered several bones. As they dug a bit further, they realized that most of the skeleton was present, revealing an ancient animal that was around 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long.While being gifted such a monumental fossil find by rain could be seen as a stroke of good luck, the reality is that extreme weather can be damaging to palaeontological discoveries. Elsewhere, the team found a pelvis and leg bone being destroyed by the severe rains, making reading an already scant fossil record all the more difficult.Such an ancient find marks an exciting opportunity to learn more about the earliest days of the dinosaurs. Whether the animal is a new-to-science species or a member of an existing one remains to be seen, but the team are “very excited and surprised” by what they’ve discovered so far.

Comedy Central’s weekly temp host of The Daily Show, Michael Kosta, reacted to the outrage that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is  allowed to compete in the women’s Olympic boxing tournament on Monday by spreading fake news about pro-life laws in America in an attempt to argue conservatives are being hypocritical. He also conveniently never said the words “failed gender test.” For the International Olympic Committee, Khelif is a woman because her passport identifies her as such, and that is good enough for Kosta, “Because, again, this female boxer is female. Can we stop this before America turns it into a presidential campaign issue?”     Just like CNN, The Daily Show wants to claim conservatives are overreacting and trying to make a controversy where none exists by projecting domestic arguments over transgenderism onto Khelif. However, none of the criticism directed towards conservatives addresses the possibility that Khelif has Differences of Sexual Development which can lead a woman to have male levels of testosterone and would explain the failed gender test. Instead, Kosta tried to argue conservative concerns are hypocritical, “By the way, if conservatives are so concerned with women's safety, maybe consider caring about it outside of sports? There are women in America who are like, ‘Help me, I'm having an ectopic pregnancy,’ and conservatives are like, ‘Shut up! We're trying to protect women over here.’" Of course, there is nothing in any pro-life law that prohibits treatment for ectopic pregnancies, but Kosta rolled right along and claimed conservatives simply cannot believe that Khelif could be so talented, “Look, I'm sorry this elite athlete does not look like the way you think a woman should look, but a woman is allowed to be dominating and powerful at a sport without you questioning her gender. Because, don't forget, these guys—don't forget, these guys dragged her, an Algerian female boxer, into their American conservative culture war. And if they are going to use her as a metaphorical punching bag, the least they can do is step into the ring and let her use them as a literal punching bag.” Khelif’s case raises serious questions about fairness in women’s sports that deserve to be discussed, but such discussions will never happen if people like Kosta insist there’s nothing to see here by omitting key information from their stories and deflect by repeating easily debunked talking points about ectopic pregnancies. Here is a transcript for the August 5 show: Comedy Central The Daily Show 8/6/2024 11:05 PM ET MICHAEL KOSTA: Because, again, this female boxer is female. Can we stop this before America turns it into a presidential campaign issue? JD VANCE: The far left wants to allow biological males to beat the living crap out of women in boxing. KOSTA: Is that really what this race is going to be about? J.D. Vance is going to be out on the campaign trail like, "You know, when I was growing up in the holler, the one thing we cared about was international women's boxing regulations."  By the way, if conservatives are so concerned with women's safety, maybe consider caring about it outside of sports? There are women in America who are like, "Help me, I'm having an ectopic pregnancy," and conservatives are like, "Shut up! We're trying to protect women over here."  Look, I'm sorry this elite athlete does not look like the way you think a woman should look, but a woman is allowed to be dominating and powerful at a sport without you questioning her gender. Because, don't forget, these guys -- don't forget, these guys dragged her, an Algerian female boxer, into their American conservative culture war. And if they are going to use her as a metaphorical punching bag, the least they can do is step into the ring and let her use them as a literal punching bag. 

Until this week, the R-rated film with the biggest box office in America was "The Passion of the Christ." In a damning indication of where the culture has gone in 20 years when Mel Gibson’s magnum opus debuted, the new record holder is the latest and greatest exercise in intellectual property exploitation known as "Deadpool & Wolverine" — a movie panned and reviled for its shamelessly irony-poisoned fan service, which happens to lean almost entirely on trashy juvenile humor. For these reasons, most critics — from the trad right as well as the intersectional left — have rushed toward moral condemnation of the film. But they’re vastly outnumbered by the film’s paying audience, increasingly protected by a dissident-ish media sphere of Rogan-esque righties and disgruntled liberals who’d just as soon hold fire on a Hollywood stinker that at least avoids wokeness. But the bankruptcy of the culture lit up by "Deadpool & Wolverine" isn’t reducible to ethics or ideology. There are lessons to this film’s success that should be clocked by anyone with a serious interest in pumping up America’s aesthetic and artistic vitality. Once upon a time, that kind of heroic calling inspired even the more morally compromised of Hollywood’s executives to take big swings — and, often, to take big profits. Unfortunately, the spiritual message behind so much of our once-great cinema was too warmed-over of a new age trip to survive the pressures placed on us by the digital revolution.The first is shockingly simple: Marketing doesn’t just work, it’s mission-critical. A movie as annoying and vacuous as this has done extraordinarily well because its stars and its studio insisted on putting it in front of the target audience. Today, most of media culture is captive to a FUD-driven (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) obsession with organic virality. Corporations, brands, and news organizations resist big marketing spending or simply don’t know how to effectively market their products, pinning their hopes on the belief that throwing content at the wall and seeing what “blows up” is a viable business model. Alas! Meanwhile, ad agencies have consolidated their power into a handful of cartelized entities — flexing their market power to impose across the internet of content news “safety” standards that conform to their hyper-woke principles. The kind of good content that millions and millions ostensibly crave simply cannot make a dent in a culture controlled by propaganda cartels ... unless that content is effectively marketed. It feels miserable to be in a place where we have to speak of having the courage to market, but here we are.That’s not the only lesson our vulgar superheroes are teaching us. Vince Vaughn recently went off on why the R-rated comedies finding big audiences are IP retreads like "Deadpool" and not the kind of fare he rose to fame with — original narratives about timelessly relatable human predicaments and situations. It’s a risk-averse double bind. Not only do the consolidated media corporations want to extract every last drop of value from the properties they already own, they also want to avoid placing costly bets on talent that don't pay off. There are important exceptions to that rule: tech companies in the entertainment business. Amazon spent huge amounts on its "Lord of the Rings" project and considered its very mixed success an essential first step in continuing to use its market advantages to find or unearth bankable new talent that can deliver fresher, more meaningful entertainment. Netflix and Apple, the other major tech firms in the content game, also have the war chest to make similar gambles. But by and large, media executives know they’re quite replaceable if the projects they’re responsible for don’t work out. That leads to a strange kind of content bottleneck: Cautious execs converge on mediocre projects that are also “safely” woke — ideally, woke enough to attract each stripe of the woke flag but not so woke that the normies are scared off. The result is an arts and entertainment culture dominated by corporate content that’s too ideological and formulaic to serve the primary purpose of film and television in America, which is to help people make spiritual or psychological sense of the present world they’re in personally and socially. This is a strange kind of cultural bankruptcy, masked by an equally uncanny kind of cultural inflation — debasing the value of our cultural currency and creating a bubble that must pop. Hopefully, it pops before our ability to make sense of our shared world in the present moment breaks down completely.In the meantime, there’s one more harsh lesson about our aesthetic and artistic poverty to learn from the dysfunctional Marvel duo. The deepest reason why Hollywood isn’t making the kind of richly human R-rated comedies Vaughn and many others fondly remember is because writers and auteurs need to create them — and this requires from writers and auteurs a profound understanding of not the past or the future but the present. Today, our present place and time is a scandal in the old sense: a stumbling block that sends away many — even the smartest and most creative — to retreat into nostalgia, futurism, or fantasy, places in alternate times where one doesn’t have to deal with our present reality, where our personal and shared spiritual fates are busy being decided. The only way our culture will artistically and aesthetically restructure out of bankruptcy is for a lot of money to be reallocated toward identifying, developing, supporting, and rewarding the very few writers and auteurs spiritually strong and attuned enough to face the reality of our present place and time. These precious artists meet us with love and suffering amid our miseries and hopes and put soulful visions to screen that let wide audiences join creators in joyfully and painfully communing through images that measure up to our real lives. Once upon a time, that kind of heroic calling inspired even the more morally compromised of Hollywood’s executives to take big swings — and, often, to take big profits. Unfortunately, the spiritual message behind so much of our once-great cinema was too warmed-over of a new age trip to survive the pressures placed on us by the digital revolution. Now is the time for artistic visionaries who see the truth of our spiritual condition, and for the deep-pocketed companies and individuals that can bring their visions to life, to summon some fresh courage of their own and get to work.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has evidently spent a great deal of time contemplating unseemly ways to keep Democrats in power. Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision regarding President Donald Trump's immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, Raskin was among the Democrats who campaigned to neutralize conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on the high court. Christopher Bedford, senior editor for politics and Washington correspondent for Blaze Media, indicated at the time that the broader purpose of that campaign was "to try to combat virtually the only check remaining on the Democrat Party's political power." Keen for a ruling favorable to the Democratic agenda, Raskin not only denigrated the conservative justices but recommended that the Harris-Biden Department of Justice pressure the court to "require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law." Raskin ultimately failed in his efforts to cure the Supreme Court's decisions; however, he apparently still has other designs on delivering Democrats the 2024 election. Troubling footage from a Feb. 17 panel discussion at a D.C. book store has resurfaced in which Raskin details how Congress could prevent Trump from taking office following his election by the American people. Raskin correctly and begrudgingly predicted that the Supreme Court would rule that Trump could not be disqualified from Colorado's presidential primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, calling the imminent decision an "abdication of [the court's] very clear duty to disqualify Donald Trump." The Supreme Court noted in its unanimous March 4 ruling, "The Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates." Raskin said, "[The justices on the Supreme Court] want to kick it to Congress, so it's going to be up to us on Jan. 6, 2025, to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he's disqualified." According to the Democratic congressman, this repeal of the people's will would take place "at the counting of the electoral college votes, which really could lead to something akin to civil war." 'I thought the Left was the party of 'protecting democracy.'' Raskin indicated that after lawmakers disqualify the would-be president-elect, "We need bodyguards for everybody in civil war conditions all because the nine justices — not all of them but these justices who have not many cases to look at every year, not that much work to do, a huge staff, great protection — simply do not want to do their job and interpret what the great 14th Amendment means." While taking Trump off the board appears to be Democrats' short-term plan, Raskin alluded to their greater aspiration of amending the Constitution more to their liking. The resurfaced footage has gone viral, prompting a great deal of controversy. Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller noted, "I believe this is called a criminal conspiracy to commit election interference." Elon Musk responded, "That's a crazy thing for him to say." "I thought the Left was the party of 'protecting democracy,'" wrote Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) suggested that Raskin was not only conceding the election but fomenting civil war and "threatening to defy the will of voters." Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk wrote, "Jamie Raskin is saying that congress will STOP Trump from taking office even if he's chosen by the voters. This is extremely dangerous. Every Democrat needs to be on the record about this immediately." "This is what an actual threat to Democracy looks like," tweeted Donald Trump Jr. "Can't he be immediately indicted by the AG of whatever red state he ever stepped foot in for the past 25 years right now as we speak[?]" wrote Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. "Isn't that the lesson we learned this year[?]" Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tweeted, "These arrogant elitist globalists hate the half of America that still loves America." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

The Supreme Court of the United States declined a request by the attorney general of Missouri to delay sentencing and lift the gag order imposed on former President Donald Trump in connection with the so-called hush-money trial in New York.In early July, Missouri AG Andrew Bailey, a Republican appointee currently running for a full term, effectively sued the state of New York for allegedly attempting to prevent Missourians from hearing from the Republican candidate for president in 2024 on account of the gag order that remains in place even after a New York jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts related to payments meant to keep the story of his alleged affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels out of the tabloids in 2016.'I will continue to prosecute our lawsuit against @KamalaHarris @JoeBiden’s DOJ for coordinating the illicit prosecutions against President Trump.'"New York is working to hijack our national election and jail President Trump," Bailey tweeted on Monday. "Missourians absolutely have an interest in ensuring that does not happen."Acting Judge Juan Merchan eased the gag order some after Trump was convicted, permitting Trump to criticize jurors and witnesses in the case. However, Trump is still forbidden from speaking about prosecutors and their family members.Last week, a New York appeals court denied a motion from Trump — who was recently shot and nearly killed in an assassination attempt — to lift all remaining remnants of the gag order, citing ongoing alleged "threats received by District Attorney staff after the jury verdict continued." There have been no reports of court staff members enduring physical harm on account of the trial.Though Republican attorneys general from Alaska, Florida, Iowa, and Montana all joined Bailey and Missouri in the SCOTUS filing, NBC News still described it as a "longshot" and Politico a "legal Hail Mary."Thus, it came as no surprise that on Monday, SCOTUS issued a one-page statement declining Bailey's motion."Missouri’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied, and its motion for preliminary relief or a stay is dismissed as moot," the statement said.The statement added that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would have granted Bailey the opportunity to file the complaint but would not have granted any "other relief" he sought.Following the statement from SCOTUS, Bailey expressed disappointment as well as resolve to hold the Biden-Harris administration accountable for apparent election interference via "lawfare.""It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court refused to exercise its constitutional responsibility to resolve state v. state disputes," Bailey wrote. "I will continue to prosecute our lawsuit against @KamalaHarris @JoeBiden’s DOJ for coordinating the illicit prosecutions against President Trump.""The fight is not over."New York Attorney General Letitia James, who campaigned for office on the promise of targeting Trump, declined NBC News' request for comment on the SCOTUS statement.Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has ties to billionaire financier George Soros and also made going after Trump a central focus of his campaign, declined Politico's request for comment. Following his conviction, Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced in July, but the sentencing hearing has since been pushed back until September.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

When Roseanne Barr aired the first lesbian kiss on television in the 90s, she thought she was using her show to give “a voice to the voiceless.” Now, things have changed a bit too much.“You know, the problem with giving a voice to the voiceless, they never shut the f*** up,” she tells Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report.” “You got equal rights and blah blah, okay? So now, you’re going to take it too far like you always do.” “They can’t ever be happy with what they got, even though it’s a miracle they got it. Because they’ve got to please their masters, which require them to be a fod for fundraising,” Barr explains. “And all that fundraising, it don’t go to none of the people. It goes to the master’s pocket. They’re slaves and they’re idiots and I’m tired of them.” “When did you realize that — that they never stop?” Rubin asks Barr, adding, “We got equality, we’re good, but then overnight, it flipped into lets chop genitals off kids.” Barr recalls that once upon a time, she had friends who were university professors when she noticed this trend. “They were the F-word; feminists who taught women’s history in basically Jesuit universities. That was the first chop,” she explains. “They had to deny them tenure and kick them off the universities because they refused to include trans theory in their classes. And so they got rid of all the women.” Barr notes that she realized who was doing this and why they were doing it. “They’re positioning groups of people against their own better interests. They’re dividing everybody to have two groups, an internal enemy and the regular dumbass people that are too busy to, you know, not listen to CNN,” Barr says. “It’s incremental steps to destroy a nation and a people’s laws of self protection,” she adds. Want more from Dave Rubin? To enjoy more honest conversations, free speech, and big ideas with Dave Rubin, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.