That’s Rosie. And probably the reason Cole calls her a Piglet.
6.
Suck It Up!
CNN is going to let YOU decide on Trump’s birth certificate lies.
“Donald Trump says Obama wasn’t born here,” CNN anchor Deborah Feyerick says, in a teaser for the segment. “We’ll show you the evidence, and let you decide.”
However just to be clear:
Todd takes over, and first assures the viewer that “CNN and other news outlets have investigated and so far have found no evidence that the President was not born in the U.S.”
7.
geg6
Aaaaaaaaaaack!
Jeebus. I scrolled down the page and fucking Jim Cramer was staring at me. At my age, I don’t need those kinds of frights. Especially since I will not, apparently, be getting my Medicare.
Put a “some” in front of dogs. Otherwise, I gotta say that no dog that I have ever personally known will actually lie in its doggie bed. I know for sure that neither of ours will, despite the lovely coziness of them compared to the hardwood and tile floors. It’s weird.
cat beds are great for bracing the serious discussion of where cats intend to sleep.
19.
debit
@WereBear: Chloe has three dog beds. Three. She sleeps in her chair, or on the couch, because there’s always a cat in each of the beds.
20.
bemused
Even more than the doggy bed, our older dog’s bestest, most favorite place to sleep is in the back seat of the pickup. After a ride, she refuses to come out and will sleep there for hours if we let her.
21.
Joseph Nobles
In other news, a big Glenn Beck special on Israel, something he’d been pumping for weeks according to @StopBeck, just got preempted by Bret Baier’s government shutdown coverage on Fox. As another wag tweeted, Glenn probably is in a heated conversation with Roger Ailes’ secretary as we speak.
22.
cckids
Our dog (a Pomeranian) and both our male cats will happily sleep on the huge “animal” bed we have, alone or sharing. However, when Hermione, our female cat, decides she wants it, she walks up & STARES at them. No matter how deeply asleep they are, within 20 seconds they wake up (with a guilty look) & leave the bed to her. Where she will curl up & enjoy her dominance for a few minutes, before moving on to actually sleep elsewhere.
She is SO the boss of all of them, despite being the smallest animal in the house. I love that about her.
@schrodinger’s cat: Tristan is doing wonderfully, thanks! He’s quite the clever kitteh; he sneaks out to our staircase (we have airlock doors to keep the warm in, he can’t get out) and then he rings our apartment door’s Temple Bells to ask to come back in.
Snoring dog is my favorite sound. The sound of a dog, for the moment, not causing trouble.
26.
eemom
in my experience doggies will accept doggie beds but prefer beds and couches.
27.
Overtaxed
So during the shutdown, the government will furlough “non-essential” employees. Question: why should the taxpayer be footing the bill for employees that are “non-essential”? I think we can all agree that the public treasury should be used only for truly essential things.
28.
JAHILL10
Our kitties WILL use the pet beds (probably because it gets so freakin’ cold in the apartment) and we have even had instances of the terrier Jake sharing his doggie bed with the biggest and dumbest of the cats. All our animals are snuggle bunnies.
29.
jl
My parents’ cat always heads for its comfy little kitty bed when, and only when, it is about to do something unpleasant.
You don’t know what, exactly. Usually to lick its butt. Less often to bring up a hairball. Once in awhile, to retch. For the hairball upchuck and retching, it very carefully makes sure that all the crud lands outside of its little kitty bed, and onto the carpet.
The cat looks around at people who look into what is going on with this very satisfied and offended look of “Shut of eff up, I am in my BED, dammit!”
Other than that, the cat never goes near it.
30.
kestral
Snoring dog is the best sound ever. My mixed-breed dog Nikita (don’t ask, long story) is more than happy to zonk out under the desk chair and snore all afternoon. Enjoy it, John. It means that Rosie trusts you implicitly.
31.
Svensker
I’ve looked and looked but I can’t for the life of me see any horns coming outta that little chubby goggie’s head. Not. One. Solitary. Horn.
Cole’s been lying to us, just like Sully.
32.
Uloborus
@Overtaxed:
…um, no. No, we can’t agree on that. Because ‘essential’ is a fantastically difficult word to define. How many janitors do you have to have? Do you NEED those congressional clerks? How many postal drivers can you afford to give up?
The idea here is not that these people are not needed, but that the government can scrape by without them *briefly*.
33.
Mary
That’s a cute, cute doggie bed and Andrew Sullivan is a bad, bad man.
And thank you John for pounding Ryan and Sullivan into the dirt. Sullivan fundamentally agrees with every thing Ryan wants, including further lowering the tax rates on the rich and drastically cutting and privatizing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. There is not a compassionate bone in his body except for himself (I would bet my right arm that he got and may still be getting extremely significant help worth millions from NIH for his HIV problem–everyone I know with HIV in this town that is still alive did that and some of those programs have been going on forever.)
Sullivan is also going against a major tenet of his religion with his stance and I would like to see how he squares his stance with that of the Catholic Church. Actually, someone should demand that he explain his break from church doctrine on these issues.
34.
Anne Laurie
In my experience, the best way to “break in” a new dog or cat bed is to tell them very very firmly that it’s not for them. The same animal who rejects the nicest, most expensive ergonomically-designed bed will expend an infinite amount of planning & energy to “claim” the one you’ve told them to stay away from.
35.
snarkypsice
Aw, I wish you loved her. She’s beautiful.
36.
Robert Sneddon
Folks, please say Hi! to Hana, a new arrival on this mudball of a planet. She disembarked from the tired but happy mothership in the radiation-swept post-apocalyptic hellhole we call Tokyo at 22:00 today local time, weighing in at a throughly respectable 3.5kg which isn’t bad for a prima. The mothership is living up to her office nickname of Nemui (sleepy), the fathership is quietly over the moon.
I plan to visit the aforementioned radiation-swept post-apocalyptic hellhole later this year bearing gifts from Bonnie Scotland — a kilt for the nipper (tabun) and a bottle of the cratur for the mother (variety TBD. Springbank, possibly. Rosebank would be nice but the remnants of a dark distillery never goes down in price). Father will get Heinz baked beans smuggled through enemy lines as comfort food.
Hana’s name in kanji will almost certainly be “花” (flower) rather than “鼻” (nose) unless her parents are more sadistic than I would ever give them credit for.
37.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m glad we have an Open Thread, because this is pretty amusing:
Screening of ‘Atlas’ film canceled Sunday
By the Herald staff
A showing of Atlas Shrugged sponsored by the Tri-Cities Tea Party and listed in today’s AT section of the Herald has been canceled. The movie was scheduled for Sunday at the Richland Public Library.
Organizers said the producer had withdrawn permission to show the film because of pressure from movie theaters not to allow private screenings of the independent film.
Hahahahahahahaha!
Almost as funny is this review:
“Atlas” flubbed in half-baked Ayn Rand adaptation
The ultra-capable heroine in “Atlas Shrugged” bemoaned that the talented men around her “were becoming rarer every year.”
Dagny Taggart’s complaint also applies to the botched partial screen adaptation of the mammoth Ayn Rand novel that has materialized 54 years after the book’s publication.
Although the recent surge in sales of the author’s fictional manifesto arguably testifies to its continuing relevance, the central battle between fearsomely independent corporate mavericks and hostile big government has been updated in a half-baked, unconvincing way.
Not helping are button-pushing TV-style direction, threadbare production values and blah performances except for that of Taylor Schilling in the central role. Set to bow in roughly 200 theaters on April 15, this independently made rendition of the book’s first third is unlikely to generate sufficient box office to inspire production of the final two installments.
@Overtaxed: So you don’t like national parks or museums? How about enforcing counterfeiting? I suspect the Secret Service considers the protection of officials “essential”, but investigating counterfeiting “non-essential”. NASA is saying that it may delay the next shuttle launch, but it will continue to support the astronauts already on the Space Station. The USGS will probably furlough researchers studying subsidence, which causes people to lose their homes and sometimes their lives. The FAA air traffic controllers will stay on the job, but the NTSB inspectors won’t be figuring out what went wrong when those planes came down where they weren’t supposed to.
@WereBear:
My cat will sleep in his kitty bed. The trick is to move the kitty bed to the place your cat likes to sleep rather than trying to do things the other way around.
Reminds me of as story one of my superiors told me about his time serving at the Pentagon. They’d broadcast over the local radio stations that only “non-mission essential” personnel needed to report for duty at the Pentagon on a snow day.
So just about everyone showed up anyways, as they didn’t want to be considered “non-mission essential”.
41.
Dee Loralei
@Robert Sneddon: Congrats and Mazel Tov, Robert! And yea Hana and mom!
42.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: Tristan is quite the kitteh! You must be proud.
43.
DFH no.6
Nice mix of doggie posts and righteous Ryan/Sully-blasting past few days. Me like.
Lot’s of great comments from the BJ community, too (including the reincarnation of matoko-chan, though the Harry Potter stuff’s a bit much).
And JC, I know you don’t, in fact, hate Rosie, but I’m totally with you on the frustration of dealing with “difficult” pooches no matter how much you care for them. Been there more than once.
44.
4jkb4ia
Red Sox win!
Listening to the vociferous cheers at AT&T Park is very cool.
Tiptoes away before getting the blog fight update. (I did send Andrew an email but he chose the version that did not sound as if it was from an angry Balloon Juice reader)
As is obvious to everyone who bothers to read me here, I express more persona here than person, and I generally tackle this issue in an obnoxious way rather than in a constructive way, but for me, this is THE critical political issue that I struggle with, and I struggle with it mightily.
It applies to all political races, but in the context of 2012, it boils down to this: Should I vote for Obama in 2012, even though he has very significantly failed on issues that personally matter very, very much to me.
Or, to put it more generally, the battle that rages inside me, like … uh … bad pizza … is the battle between Purity of Principle and Pragmatism, and I think Glenn’s take probably best represents mine, especially because Glenn and I probably lean more towards the Purity standard than others.
I thought it was particularly apt for him to draw the comparison between how the GOP demagogues terrorism and how the Democrats demagogue Palin, both in order to drum up fear and force people to vote against their best interest, because “OMG! Terrorists / Palin will win if we don’t!”
Anyway, I am not trying to stir up a fight. I just wanted to say that this is something I really, really don’t know the answer to. I think it is very, very likely that I will vote for Obama, but at the same time, it really, really bugs me that my Guaranteed Vote basically gives him the ability to put forward policies that I strongly disagree in.
IN a way, I am enabling his bad behavior, but I am not sure how to counteract that in a responsible way that won’t put someone like OMG Palin in the White House.
If someone could throw me a ladder, I would appreciate it.
Congratulations seconded. Please, FYWP, do not eat this this time.
49.
Maude
@Robert Sneddon:
How wonderful, Robert.
Hello to Hana.
And it always good to see you.
50.
BC
@Overtaxed: Hopefully, you know that in US Governmentese “essential” means leading to protection of lives and property and “nonessential” means doing the work of the US Government that does not involve saving lives or property. In my day, we called them “emergency” and “nonemergency” employees. But I don’t think anyone except a dead-brained stupid person would make the point that we can do without “nonessential” employees in the US Government because they are the ones that make the government work over a broad range of areas.
51.
Overtaxed
The only legitimate function of government IS to protect lives and property.
Thanks for making my point.
52.
eco2geek
Cole: Why don’t you rename that dog “Andrea Sullivan”?
I thought it was particularly apt for him to draw the comparison between how the GOP demagogues terrorism and how the Democrats demagogue Palin, both in order to drum up fear and force people to vote against their best interest, because “OMG! Terrorists / Palin will win if we don’t!”
Except that it’s demonstrably true that a Republican will win if Obama doesn’t (might not be Palin, but it’ll still be a Republican, and everyone in the field is terrible). Most of the GOP’s fearmongering about terrorists/the global Caliphate/etc. is fantasy.
56.
Woodrowfan
no, the “legitimate” functions of government are what the people decide they want the government to do. A large majority of Americans for over a century have decided that they want the government to run parks and museums, to monitor food safety, to build roads, to monitor the weather, promote scientific research, to aid the poor, etc, etc. The fact that some sociopathic randoids who are emotionally stuck at about age 3 don’t like it is immaterial. The only thing “over-taxed” is the Randoid brain when asked to think about something other than their immediate selfishness and to think about the needs of someone else..
57.
Comrade Mary
Yay and welcome to little Hana!
So am I the only one who read the mouseover text on the first picture of Rosie? Nice one, John.
.
.
Oh, that digby is almost as bad as that Glenn Greenwald – always using facts, quotes, sincerity and honesty, noticing trends and inconsistencies, not caring whether the targets are rich or hold high office… or both.
.
.
Except that it’s demonstrably true that a Republican will win if Obama doesn’t (might not be Palin, but it’ll still be a Republican, and everyone in the field is terrible). Most of the GOP’s fearmongering about terrorists/the global Caliphate/etc. is fantasy.
Very good point.
I do think it’s true that Palin is cynically used by some Democrats to motivate the base without having to actually implement progressive policy, but there’s no doubt that the Republican’s terrorism demagoguery is based largely on fantasy.
62.
Yutsano
@Robert Sneddon: Sekai de yokusou Hana-chan mo omedeto gozaimasu Oto-san!!
The only legitimate function of government IS to protect lives and property.
So you’ve pulled your mailbox out of the ground and refuse to accept US mail delivery, right? After all, receiving mail doesn’t protect either your life or your property, so you shouldn’t be letting the government come right up to your house like that.
No, of course you haven’t. You want to enjoy the benefits of living in a nice neighborhood without having to pay your share. Typical libertarian leech, always expecting someone else to pick up the tab for the things he wants.
Ok then! You will now cease and desist from driving on publicly-funded roadways, sending your children to public school, receiving mail service, having your sewage disposed of, and visiting public parks. Also, there will be no controls over who owns the radio and a television bandwidth in your area, leading to constant static as pirate stations compete with corporate ones. Heavily polluting industries and industrial chicken farms will have the right to move in next to your property. And if your bank fails, too bad. I’m sure you didn’t need that money anyway.
Up until this past election, that might have been a rational view, but can Greenwald honestly look at the actions of the governors of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin (not to mention Florida, and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) and tell us that it was just fearmongering to say that letting Republicans take control would be disastrous?
For someone who claims to be all about civil liberties and government overreach, Greenwald sure seems unconcerned about the governor of Michigan giving himself the power to dissolve cities on a whim. In fact, I notice that he didn’t mention the recent actions by actual Republican governors who are actually in office and doing real stuff even once in his musing about how it’s just silly partisanship to stick with the Democrats.
Anyway, I am not trying to stir up a fight. I just wanted to say that this is something I really, really don’t know the answer to. I think it is very, very likely that I will vote for Obama, but at the same time, it really, really bugs me that my Guaranteed Vote basically gives him the ability to put forward policies that I strongly disagree in.
IN a way, I am enabling his bad behavior, but I am not sure how to counteract that in a responsible way that won’t put someone like OMG Palin in the White House.
The way I think of it is that in between voting for the least bad choice every couple of years, we have to continue to work to create the conditions where people will demand better policies. That means we have to work to counter the fearmongering, the racial division, the “class war” propaganda, and all the other strategies that the oligarchs use to persuade people to vote against their economic interests and to abridge civil liberties. We have a lot of communication and education to do. If people won’t demand better policies, our “leaders” sure as hell won’t volunteer them.
Obama’s disappointed me severely on civil liberties and state secrets. But not enough people care about that to demand better, apparently. There hasn’t been a president who was actually good on civil liberties for as long as I can remember. So the work has to be done among the electorate first, and only then can we realistically expect the politicians to follow.
I know. I just love reminding libertarians that they’re leeches on society who refuse to pay their fair share and expect everyone else to take care of them.
It’s all about the projection for conservatives, isn’t it?
Agreed. I just get weary of wasting pixels on the super-dense and the fake. Ol’ B.O.B. used to teeter down that line like a professional drunk driver on his two-hundredth field sobriety test.
73.
Robert Sneddon
@Yutsano: Oka-san doesn’t get any of the credit, huh? I understand Oto-san’s own Oka-san is also overjoyed at the new arrival.
I’m pleased for them both, or all three it is now, I suppose. Oto-san moved out to Japan from the UK a couple of years ago as an academic on the rise in a fast-growing niche field and met his wife-to-be (and now Oka-san) there. I don’t know what she ever saw in him myself but I’m not of the appropriate gender in that respect. Anyway the world gets another half-breed mongrel (just like the current POTUS) and takes another step towards a future where that don’t mean shit to folks outside Mississippi.
74.
nancy
Overtaxed: Oh my – you capitalized is.
How very serious.
@Robert Sneddon: Welcome, sweet Hana! My little three year old grandson (whose mom is Japanese) taught me the multiple meanings of that word, and I love them.
77.
Uloborus
@BombIranForChrist:
I can’t help you. I’m really quite pleased with Obama. There’s almost nothing that I’ve seen him accused of that I felt actually held up to any kind of scrutiny. At worst there’s a couple of things I’d rather he did differently, but think his attitude towards was pretty reasonable. I don’t feel like I’m voting for the lesser of two evils!
78.
socialissimo
Good attempt John. I’ve tried the same thing myself and it worked for about a month. Now the dog bed sits empty on the end of the sectional as Juneau slowly shifts his ass in 2 inch increments onto my side of the couch.
79.
SIA
@Josie: I love that picture. Two sweet babies you have there.
ETA @ Josie, does Teddi have some Great Pyrenees?
80.
Anne Laurie
@Robert Sneddon: Welcome Hana, and congratulations to her proud parents & grandpa! Sounds like an occasion for ‘hanabi’, fire-flowers… always loved the poetry of the Japanese word for fireworks…
81.
Hal
Up until this past election, that might have been a rational view, but can Greenwald honestly look at the actions of the governors of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin (not to mention Florida, and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) and tell us that it was just fearmongering to say that letting Republicans take control would be disastrous?
When purity party Liberal/Progressives come up with a winning strategy/candidate, call me. In the meantime, reading that GG comments sections is like a Liberal fantasy land. Vote Nader! Third party! And of course, my favorite; The avowed Liberal who sacrificed his first born to elect Obama is now going to vote Republican because it all the same.
Dem party Leaders don’t have to raise the specter of President Palin. The average American can do that all by themselves without any pushing.
82.
Robert Sneddon
@Anne Laurie: Here’s Oto-san’s explanation of Hana’s name and the kanji they chose for it (name kanji are a complete minefield in Japan, with meanings and pronunciations bearing no resemblance to the vocabulary meanings):
“Hana’s name in Japanese is 英. Although phonetically the word hana in Japanese means flower and is a common girl’s name, this kanji means elegant and is the Japanese country name for England: 英国 (国 is just koku or country and 英国 is pronounced eikoku). Hana is a variant pronunciation for this kanji, only used for names. There are around 15 pronunciations of the character for names. The process of deciding on a name included various constraints. We wanted something that sounded like a normal name in both English/England and Japan/Japanese. I also did not want any “r” or “l” sounds in it as these cause confusion. We wanted a name that had a kanji and this added extra restrictions as the character had to avoid any negative connotations – after we decided on Hana as a sound we looked at various characters for it, but many of the others had some negative connotation, including the usual kanji for flower: 花. But when Oka-san looked up the name kanji that could be used for the sound hana, the obvious one to choose was the one that is used for England. It turns out to be a good sound-name for the day she was born as well. Yesterday was 花祭 (Hanamatsuri) or flower festival (it’s cherry blossom season in Tokyo) which is also Buddha’s birthday. Nice coincidences.”
83.
Josie
@SIA: Thanks. She is Akbash, which is Turkey’s version of the Great Pyrenees. They are a little taller and thinner.
The Dangerman
Which reminds me of this photo that’s made the rounds (no Tunch pun intended).
Woodrowfan
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww sweetie!
joes527
Damn. Is it the camera angle, or has Lily gotten a bit … Tunch-esque?
schrodinger's cat
@joes527: Its not Lily it is Rosie
geg6
@joes527:
That’s Rosie. And probably the reason Cole calls her a Piglet.
Suck It Up!
CNN is going to let YOU decide on Trump’s birth certificate lies.
However just to be clear:
geg6
Aaaaaaaaaaack!
Jeebus. I scrolled down the page and fucking Jim Cramer was staring at me. At my age, I don’t need those kinds of frights. Especially since I will not, apparently, be getting my Medicare.
WereBear
That’s the difference between cats and dogs. Dogs will actually lie on a doggie bed.
jl
Cole continues his hate campaign against Rosie.
That sweet quiet dear delicate well mannered little Rosie, snore?
I can’t believe it.
Have you no shame, Mr. Cole?
Uloborus
@geg6:
My reaction was ‘Wow, that is one lard-ass JRT.’
Joseph Nobles
@joes527: Rosie came Tunchesque.
In other news, Bachmann blinked. The link is to Red State, but that’s where she published.
geg6
@WereBear:
Put a “some” in front of dogs. Otherwise, I gotta say that no dog that I have ever personally known will actually lie in its doggie bed. I know for sure that neither of ours will, despite the lovely coziness of them compared to the hardwood and tile floors. It’s weird.
geg6
@Uloborus:
You owe me a new monitor. Just sayin’.
Overtaxed
So, only seven hours left until the government shutdown.
WereBear
@geg6: It’s a territorial persepctive. Some dogs love to “den,” while other dogs say to themselves… if I sleep on the floor, I then own the floor.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: How is Tristan?
Josie
@The Dangerman: Which reminds me of my Teddi and my son’s Emma dividing up the bed exactly in half, regardless of size.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49146863@N03/5601582962/in/photostream/
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@WereBear:
cat beds are great for bracing the serious discussion of where cats intend to sleep.
debit
@WereBear: Chloe has three dog beds. Three. She sleeps in her chair, or on the couch, because there’s always a cat in each of the beds.
bemused
Even more than the doggy bed, our older dog’s bestest, most favorite place to sleep is in the back seat of the pickup. After a ride, she refuses to come out and will sleep there for hours if we let her.
Joseph Nobles
In other news, a big Glenn Beck special on Israel, something he’d been pumping for weeks according to @StopBeck, just got preempted by Bret Baier’s government shutdown coverage on Fox. As another wag tweeted, Glenn probably is in a heated conversation with Roger Ailes’ secretary as we speak.
cckids
Our dog (a Pomeranian) and both our male cats will happily sleep on the huge “animal” bed we have, alone or sharing. However, when Hermione, our female cat, decides she wants it, she walks up & STARES at them. No matter how deeply asleep they are, within 20 seconds they wake up (with a guilty look) & leave the bed to her. Where she will curl up & enjoy her dominance for a few minutes, before moving on to actually sleep elsewhere.
She is SO the boss of all of them, despite being the smallest animal in the house. I love that about her.
WereBear
@schrodinger’s cat: Tristan is doing wonderfully, thanks! He’s quite the clever kitteh; he sneaks out to our staircase (we have airlock doors to keep the warm in, he can’t get out) and then he rings our apartment door’s Temple Bells to ask to come back in.
Tristan outwits Olwyn.
My comment was in reference to cats sleeping in cat beds. Taking over the goggie’s bed… priceless.
Kristine
@Josie: OMG, that is hilarious!
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Snoring dog is my favorite sound. The sound of a dog, for the moment, not causing trouble.
eemom
in my experience doggies will accept doggie beds but prefer beds and couches.
Overtaxed
So during the shutdown, the government will furlough “non-essential” employees. Question: why should the taxpayer be footing the bill for employees that are “non-essential”? I think we can all agree that the public treasury should be used only for truly essential things.
JAHILL10
Our kitties WILL use the pet beds (probably because it gets so freakin’ cold in the apartment) and we have even had instances of the terrier Jake sharing his doggie bed with the biggest and dumbest of the cats. All our animals are snuggle bunnies.
jl
My parents’ cat always heads for its comfy little kitty bed when, and only when, it is about to do something unpleasant.
You don’t know what, exactly. Usually to lick its butt. Less often to bring up a hairball. Once in awhile, to retch. For the hairball upchuck and retching, it very carefully makes sure that all the crud lands outside of its little kitty bed, and onto the carpet.
The cat looks around at people who look into what is going on with this very satisfied and offended look of “Shut of eff up, I am in my BED, dammit!”
Other than that, the cat never goes near it.
kestral
Snoring dog is the best sound ever. My mixed-breed dog Nikita (don’t ask, long story) is more than happy to zonk out under the desk chair and snore all afternoon. Enjoy it, John. It means that Rosie trusts you implicitly.
Svensker
I’ve looked and looked but I can’t for the life of me see any horns coming outta that little chubby goggie’s head. Not. One. Solitary. Horn.
Cole’s been lying to us, just like Sully.
Uloborus
@Overtaxed:
…um, no. No, we can’t agree on that. Because ‘essential’ is a fantastically difficult word to define. How many janitors do you have to have? Do you NEED those congressional clerks? How many postal drivers can you afford to give up?
The idea here is not that these people are not needed, but that the government can scrape by without them *briefly*.
Mary
That’s a cute, cute doggie bed and Andrew Sullivan is a bad, bad man.
And thank you John for pounding Ryan and Sullivan into the dirt. Sullivan fundamentally agrees with every thing Ryan wants, including further lowering the tax rates on the rich and drastically cutting and privatizing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. There is not a compassionate bone in his body except for himself (I would bet my right arm that he got and may still be getting extremely significant help worth millions from NIH for his HIV problem–everyone I know with HIV in this town that is still alive did that and some of those programs have been going on forever.)
Sullivan is also going against a major tenet of his religion with his stance and I would like to see how he squares his stance with that of the Catholic Church. Actually, someone should demand that he explain his break from church doctrine on these issues.
Anne Laurie
In my experience, the best way to “break in” a new dog or cat bed is to tell them very very firmly that it’s not for them. The same animal who rejects the nicest, most expensive ergonomically-designed bed will expend an infinite amount of planning & energy to “claim” the one you’ve told them to stay away from.
snarkypsice
Aw, I wish you loved her. She’s beautiful.
Robert Sneddon
Folks, please say Hi! to Hana, a new arrival on this mudball of a planet. She disembarked from the tired but happy mothership in the radiation-swept post-apocalyptic hellhole we call Tokyo at 22:00 today local time, weighing in at a throughly respectable 3.5kg which isn’t bad for a prima. The mothership is living up to her office nickname of Nemui (sleepy), the fathership is quietly over the moon.
I plan to visit the aforementioned radiation-swept post-apocalyptic hellhole later this year bearing gifts from Bonnie Scotland — a kilt for the nipper (tabun) and a bottle of the cratur for the mother (variety TBD. Springbank, possibly. Rosebank would be nice but the remnants of a dark distillery never goes down in price). Father will get Heinz baked beans smuggled through enemy lines as comfort food.
Hana’s name in kanji will almost certainly be “花” (flower) rather than “鼻” (nose) unless her parents are more sadistic than I would ever give them credit for.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m glad we have an Open Thread, because this is pretty amusing:
Hahahahahahahaha!
Almost as funny is this review:
The whole thing is worth a squint: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/07/us-film-atlas-idUSTRE73689L20110407
Origuy
@Overtaxed: So you don’t like national parks or museums? How about enforcing counterfeiting? I suspect the Secret Service considers the protection of officials “essential”, but investigating counterfeiting “non-essential”. NASA is saying that it may delay the next shuttle launch, but it will continue to support the astronauts already on the Space Station. The USGS will probably furlough researchers studying subsidence, which causes people to lose their homes and sometimes their lives. The FAA air traffic controllers will stay on the job, but the NTSB inspectors won’t be figuring out what went wrong when those planes came down where they weren’t supposed to.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
My cat will sleep in his kitty bed. The trick is to move the kitty bed to the place your cat likes to sleep rather than trying to do things the other way around.
Villago Delenda Est
@Overtaxed:
Reminds me of as story one of my superiors told me about his time serving at the Pentagon. They’d broadcast over the local radio stations that only “non-mission essential” personnel needed to report for duty at the Pentagon on a snow day.
So just about everyone showed up anyways, as they didn’t want to be considered “non-mission essential”.
Dee Loralei
@Robert Sneddon: Congrats and Mazel Tov, Robert! And yea Hana and mom!
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: Tristan is quite the kitteh! You must be proud.
DFH no.6
Nice mix of doggie posts and righteous Ryan/Sully-blasting past few days. Me like.
Lot’s of great comments from the BJ community, too (including the reincarnation of matoko-chan, though the Harry Potter stuff’s a bit much).
And JC, I know you don’t, in fact, hate Rosie, but I’m totally with you on the frustration of dealing with “difficult” pooches no matter how much you care for them. Been there more than once.
4jkb4ia
Red Sox win!
Listening to the vociferous cheers at AT&T Park is very cool.
Tiptoes away before getting the blog fight update. (I did send Andrew an email but he chose the version that did not sound as if it was from an angry Balloon Juice reader)
Svensker
@Robert Sneddon:
Congratulations!
Southern Beale
Sad day for Nashville. Today the state department of transporation, without any warning, came in and bulldozed our best known community garden.
Hippie punching, Nashville style.
BombIranForChrist
Hey, my apologies if you guys have already gone over this, but has anyone here read Glennzilla’s discussion of the “impotence of the loyal partisan”?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/05/democrats/index.html
As is obvious to everyone who bothers to read me here, I express more persona here than person, and I generally tackle this issue in an obnoxious way rather than in a constructive way, but for me, this is THE critical political issue that I struggle with, and I struggle with it mightily.
It applies to all political races, but in the context of 2012, it boils down to this: Should I vote for Obama in 2012, even though he has very significantly failed on issues that personally matter very, very much to me.
Or, to put it more generally, the battle that rages inside me, like … uh … bad pizza … is the battle between Purity of Principle and Pragmatism, and I think Glenn’s take probably best represents mine, especially because Glenn and I probably lean more towards the Purity standard than others.
I thought it was particularly apt for him to draw the comparison between how the GOP demagogues terrorism and how the Democrats demagogue Palin, both in order to drum up fear and force people to vote against their best interest, because “OMG! Terrorists / Palin will win if we don’t!”
Anyway, I am not trying to stir up a fight. I just wanted to say that this is something I really, really don’t know the answer to. I think it is very, very likely that I will vote for Obama, but at the same time, it really, really bugs me that my Guaranteed Vote basically gives him the ability to put forward policies that I strongly disagree in.
IN a way, I am enabling his bad behavior, but I am not sure how to counteract that in a responsible way that won’t put someone like OMG Palin in the White House.
If someone could throw me a ladder, I would appreciate it.
4jkb4ia
@Robert Sneddon:
Congratulations seconded. Please, FYWP, do not eat this this time.
Maude
@Robert Sneddon:
How wonderful, Robert.
Hello to Hana.
And it always good to see you.
BC
@Overtaxed: Hopefully, you know that in US Governmentese “essential” means leading to protection of lives and property and “nonessential” means doing the work of the US Government that does not involve saving lives or property. In my day, we called them “emergency” and “nonemergency” employees. But I don’t think anyone except a dead-brained stupid person would make the point that we can do without “nonessential” employees in the US Government because they are the ones that make the government work over a broad range of areas.
Overtaxed
The only legitimate function of government IS to protect lives and property.
Thanks for making my point.
eco2geek
Cole: Why don’t you rename that dog “Andrea Sullivan”?
Origuy
@Overtaxed:
Look boys and girls, a Randite!
Litlebritdifrnt
@Southern Beale:
Damn that is awful. Dog forbid that some people be allowed to grow their own food. The elites can’t be having that. Assholes.
TooManyJens
@BombIranForChrist:
Except that it’s demonstrably true that a Republican will win if Obama doesn’t (might not be Palin, but it’ll still be a Republican, and everyone in the field is terrible). Most of the GOP’s fearmongering about terrorists/the global Caliphate/etc. is fantasy.
Woodrowfan
no, the “legitimate” functions of government are what the people decide they want the government to do. A large majority of Americans for over a century have decided that they want the government to run parks and museums, to monitor food safety, to build roads, to monitor the weather, promote scientific research, to aid the poor, etc, etc. The fact that some sociopathic randoids who are emotionally stuck at about age 3 don’t like it is immaterial. The only thing “over-taxed” is the Randoid brain when asked to think about something other than their immediate selfishness and to think about the needs of someone else..
Comrade Mary
Yay and welcome to little Hana!
So am I the only one who read the mouseover text on the first picture of Rosie? Nice one, John.
Julie Raffety
@Origuy:
I just heard on PBS market report that Wall Street “policing” as it were, will probably not happen now.
We tax preparers are being told that refunds will be slowed.
Elia Isquire
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/04/08/multimedia/100000000766197/two-explanations-for-the-stalemate.html
boehner really looks like he’s lying there to me.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Oh, that digby is almost as bad as that Glenn Greenwald – always using facts, quotes, sincerity and honesty, noticing trends and inconsistencies, not caring whether the targets are rich or hold high office… or both.
.
.
BombIranForChrist
@TooManyJens:
Very good point.
I do think it’s true that Palin is cynically used by some Democrats to motivate the base without having to actually implement progressive policy, but there’s no doubt that the Republican’s terrorism demagoguery is based largely on fantasy.
Yutsano
@Robert Sneddon: Sekai de yokusou Hana-chan mo omedeto gozaimasu Oto-san!!
trollhattan
I kan haz a new congressional crush?
Donna Edwards (D awesome)
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/04/effect-and-cause/
(and she’s wearing white stripes)
Mnemosyne
@Overtaxed:
So you’ve pulled your mailbox out of the ground and refuse to accept US mail delivery, right? After all, receiving mail doesn’t protect either your life or your property, so you shouldn’t be letting the government come right up to your house like that.
No, of course you haven’t. You want to enjoy the benefits of living in a nice neighborhood without having to pay your share. Typical libertarian leech, always expecting someone else to pick up the tab for the things he wants.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
If “Overtaxed” isn’t astroturf my name is Toro Scott Weedwacker. Too tidy and prepackaged, namsayn?
Luthe
@Overtaxed:
Ok then! You will now cease and desist from driving on publicly-funded roadways, sending your children to public school, receiving mail service, having your sewage disposed of, and visiting public parks. Also, there will be no controls over who owns the radio and a television bandwidth in your area, leading to constant static as pirate stations compete with corporate ones. Heavily polluting industries and industrial chicken farms will have the right to move in next to your property. And if your bank fails, too bad. I’m sure you didn’t need that money anyway.
Mnemosyne
@BombIranForChrist:
Up until this past election, that might have been a rational view, but can Greenwald honestly look at the actions of the governors of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin (not to mention Florida, and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) and tell us that it was just fearmongering to say that letting Republicans take control would be disastrous?
For someone who claims to be all about civil liberties and government overreach, Greenwald sure seems unconcerned about the governor of Michigan giving himself the power to dissolve cities on a whim. In fact, I notice that he didn’t mention the recent actions by actual Republican governors who are actually in office and doing real stuff even once in his musing about how it’s just silly partisanship to stick with the Democrats.
TooManyJens
@BombIranForChrist:
The way I think of it is that in between voting for the least bad choice every couple of years, we have to continue to work to create the conditions where people will demand better policies. That means we have to work to counter the fearmongering, the racial division, the “class war” propaganda, and all the other strategies that the oligarchs use to persuade people to vote against their economic interests and to abridge civil liberties. We have a lot of communication and education to do. If people won’t demand better policies, our “leaders” sure as hell won’t volunteer them.
Obama’s disappointed me severely on civil liberties and state secrets. But not enough people care about that to demand better, apparently. There hasn’t been a president who was actually good on civil liberties for as long as I can remember. So the work has to be done among the electorate first, and only then can we realistically expect the politicians to follow.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
I know. I just love reminding libertarians that they’re leeches on society who refuse to pay their fair share and expect everyone else to take care of them.
It’s all about the projection for conservatives, isn’t it?
asiangrrlMN
Cole, with those two pics of sweet Rosie, you have demolished your professions of, “ohmigodworsedogeverIhateher!” She’s so cute.
@Josie: Bwahahhahahahaha! Great pic.
@WereBear: Tristan is so big! And, so clever.
chamois
Okay, Rosie appears to be sweet, but don’t we all when we are sleeping?
I had this inspiration today:
John: Put Rosie in a basket, set it on Sully’s doorstep, ring the bell, and run.
Yes, I know. An evil thought.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
Agreed. I just get weary of wasting pixels on the super-dense and the fake. Ol’ B.O.B. used to teeter down that line like a professional drunk driver on his two-hundredth field sobriety test.
Robert Sneddon
@Yutsano: Oka-san doesn’t get any of the credit, huh? I understand Oto-san’s own Oka-san is also overjoyed at the new arrival.
I’m pleased for them both, or all three it is now, I suppose. Oto-san moved out to Japan from the UK a couple of years ago as an academic on the rise in a fast-growing niche field and met his wife-to-be (and now Oka-san) there. I don’t know what she ever saw in him myself but I’m not of the appropriate gender in that respect. Anyway the world gets another half-breed mongrel (just like the current POTUS) and takes another step towards a future where that don’t mean shit to folks outside Mississippi.
nancy
Overtaxed: Oh my – you capitalized is.
How very serious.
Elia Isquire
Boehner probably really, really doesn’t appreciate the advice, guys.
Jim, Once
@Robert Sneddon: Welcome, sweet Hana! My little three year old grandson (whose mom is Japanese) taught me the multiple meanings of that word, and I love them.
Uloborus
@BombIranForChrist:
I can’t help you. I’m really quite pleased with Obama. There’s almost nothing that I’ve seen him accused of that I felt actually held up to any kind of scrutiny. At worst there’s a couple of things I’d rather he did differently, but think his attitude towards was pretty reasonable. I don’t feel like I’m voting for the lesser of two evils!
socialissimo
Good attempt John. I’ve tried the same thing myself and it worked for about a month. Now the dog bed sits empty on the end of the sectional as Juneau slowly shifts his ass in 2 inch increments onto my side of the couch.
SIA
@Josie: I love that picture. Two sweet babies you have there.
ETA @ Josie, does Teddi have some Great Pyrenees?
Anne Laurie
@Robert Sneddon: Welcome Hana, and congratulations to her proud parents & grandpa! Sounds like an occasion for ‘hanabi’, fire-flowers… always loved the poetry of the Japanese word for fireworks…
Hal
When purity party Liberal/Progressives come up with a winning strategy/candidate, call me. In the meantime, reading that GG comments sections is like a Liberal fantasy land. Vote Nader! Third party! And of course, my favorite; The avowed Liberal who sacrificed his first born to elect Obama is now going to vote Republican because it all the same.
Dem party Leaders don’t have to raise the specter of President Palin. The average American can do that all by themselves without any pushing.
Robert Sneddon
@Anne Laurie: Here’s Oto-san’s explanation of Hana’s name and the kanji they chose for it (name kanji are a complete minefield in Japan, with meanings and pronunciations bearing no resemblance to the vocabulary meanings):
“Hana’s name in Japanese is 英. Although phonetically the word hana in Japanese means flower and is a common girl’s name, this kanji means elegant and is the Japanese country name for England: 英国 (国 is just koku or country and 英国 is pronounced eikoku). Hana is a variant pronunciation for this kanji, only used for names. There are around 15 pronunciations of the character for names. The process of deciding on a name included various constraints. We wanted something that sounded like a normal name in both English/England and Japan/Japanese. I also did not want any “r” or “l” sounds in it as these cause confusion. We wanted a name that had a kanji and this added extra restrictions as the character had to avoid any negative connotations – after we decided on Hana as a sound we looked at various characters for it, but many of the others had some negative connotation, including the usual kanji for flower: 花. But when Oka-san looked up the name kanji that could be used for the sound hana, the obvious one to choose was the one that is used for England. It turns out to be a good sound-name for the day she was born as well. Yesterday was 花祭 (Hanamatsuri) or flower festival (it’s cherry blossom season in Tokyo) which is also Buddha’s birthday. Nice coincidences.”
Josie
@SIA: Thanks. She is Akbash, which is Turkey’s version of the Great Pyrenees. They are a little taller and thinner.
WereBear
@schrodinger’s cat: I am proud; we’d have loved him no matter what, but he’s turned out to be quite the kitteh.
@Robert Sneddon: Beautiful name; flower of the future.