I have the most worthless dogs on the planet. They will bark all day long at anything and everything (well, not Lily, but the other two assholes). I just got a text from my friend Amy, who has hens and we trade veggies and eggs and the like, stopped by my house and put some chicken poop for my compost pile and some eggs on my back deck.
The dogs didn’t make a sound. So to recap: anything they imagine and they raise a god damned ruckus and rouse the entire neighborhood. A strange woman throwing a literal bucket of shit on my back yard and they do nothing.
Awesome.
Shana
FYI: my daughter is heading to downtown DC as a legal observer for the rally. If I get any updates from her I’ll pass them along. She was also an observer in Charlottesville last year – an is a UVA law school alum.
EBT
Dogs smelled the shit, and figured they might get to eat, or roll in, it.
TaMara (HFG)
There was seriously NOTHING posted when I posted the open thread on Meeca – I’ve pulled it and it will repost in about 45 minutes. :-)
MagdaInBlack
So basically its just an act for when “the boss” is around?
gene108
@TaMara (HFG):
Booo… I wanted to say “How dare you Bigfoot John Cole! Bigfooting FP’s is his job!”
OMG! My name and e-mail is already loaded. Best day ever!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
can’t find a transcript on line, but MSNBC just played a clip of Kelly firing Omarosa, maybe in the Situation Room, and he talks about ‘some legal issues’ which ‘we think we can control’
IANAL but that sounds like a combination of blackmail and/or obstruction of justice
also, she’s a fraud and a grifter and a crackpot, but she’s not wrong here, and demonstrates that she’s far from the worst person in that White House, even making exceptions for people named trump
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Don’t forget how the movie ‘The Grifters’ ended. These are people (as my departed dad would say) who one enjoys staying away from.
chris
Went down to the seekrit swimmin hole the other day and took a few pics. This panorama came out well. Bert was there too of course.
HinTN
@gene108:
Nope, not mine.
OTOH, dogs do what dogs gotta do.
opiejeanne
I was going to ask if they ate the eggs, but I’m guessing they were inside the house when this all happened.
Calouste
@EBT: I think this post and your comment are just a metaphor for the Republican party and the Russian interference.
With if course my excuses to our esteemed blog host for comparing his dogs to the Republican party.
Mnemosyne
I need to continue decluttering my craft room so I can hang out in there while I recover from my knee surgery at the end of this month, and the moving boxes with handles that I bought to facilitate that are WAY too big. Argh.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Here you go. I’ve got it set up to play at the recording.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MattF: I love that movie, in the way you can love dark, dark shit.
Bobo Justice is one of the scariest villains ever.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well Omarosa, Rob Porter is a white man and you are a black woman and in John Kelly’s mind it is crystal clear who of those two has integrity and who hasn’t.
HRA
After more years that I will admit to, I have a like barker dog in my life, too. Yet, he did not bark when that helicopter kept coming back over my house as we were in shelter in place.
I think I was being somewhat too pleased at not being among the others having problems with retaining my name and email. (sigh!)
BruceFromOhio
@Shana Safety first, daughter of Shana, and updates are welcome.
FlipYrWhig
@Calouste: Maybe Kelly can have a press conference where he compares her to an empty barrel.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: She’s good on TV. If I didn’t know anything else about her, I might think she was credible.
I like the way she pretty much stops the show to hammer the point that Kelly claims to control the WH staff. The Audience of One won’t like that.
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Despite the fact that that’s what you want the Chief of Staff to do.
Lapassionara
@Adam L Silverman: the Twitterverse is focused on “how did she get a cell phone in the Situation Room, and how likely it is that a host of spies listened in on that conversation.” To which I say, “but her emails ….”
Mike J
Gonna go race this afternoon. Usually our beer can races are Tuesday nights, but we’re doing bonus races today for people who can’t make it right after work (although I still wish we had it on Saturday instead of a school night.) Tuesday I’m race committee so this is my racing this week. At least I’ll be able to post pics.
Yesterday I was out in a RS Vision when the Newport Shores race came through the south part of Lake Washington. Pulled up alongside the Juneau 44 and hailed our friends who were crewing, then turned around and popped our chute to see if we could hang with the Etchells. (Narrator voice: they couldn’t.) One brush with broaching (I had one leg over the side ready to stand on the centerboard) but no swimming needed. Still drove home soaked after our beat back to the dock put waves over the bow every 30 seconds, but the lake is as warm as it’s going to get all year, so not too bad.
Baud
Kelly should have used Hillary’s server to fire Omarosa. That’s impregnable.
Adam L Silverman
@Lapassionara: I started a post on that on the night the news of her making recordings in the White House broke. I deleted the post as I wasn’t happy with it. This White House has a very, very serious operational security problem. Every building I’ve ever been in/worked in that’s classified as a SCIF has a sensor system in it that detects cellphone signals, pinpoints them, and sounds an alarm if one is detected. I find it very hard to believe that the temporary, offsite converted bank building just off base from MacDill’s Dale Mabry Gate that Joint Special Ops University was using until the new building on base was completed had one and the White House doesn’t. Which means that someone way, way up the chain of authorization has ordered it disabled. I’m sure the Special Security Office is thrilled.
Kelly
@chris: I’ll be heading down to my swimming hole soon with this mornings last cup of coffee
https://imgur.com/a/HIOvP6u
Shell
Somebody posted that recording anything in the Situation Room, or having any kind of electronics there is a no-no, even a crime. Did anyone mention that to Omarosa yet?
MattF
@Adam L Silverman: So, IOW, the alarm went off every time Trump walked in. And so, they disabled the alarm. What about the “Do Not Push The Big Red Button” signs?
schrodingers_cat
@Calouste: Has the racist bastard been questioned about the implementation of the policy he advocated for as DHS secretary, of separating children from their parents at the border.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Adam L Silverman: so either …. 1) she set her phone to airplane mode to make this recording? or 2) she’s lying about it happening in the Situation Room? I’m inclined toward that latter explanation, but since this firing was pretty much Kelly’s only achievement as COS, I’m sure he remembers where this happened, and you would think he had somebody a rung or two down leak a denial by now.
Aleta
You’ll never know how many lions and bears changed plans and did not stop by because of the barking all day long.
Adam L Silverman
@MattF: Most likely the system was ordered disabled. Based on the reporting, it seems the President just brings his private/personal phones with him everywhere. Including the Oval Office and the Situation Room.
JoeyJoeJoe
I don’t understand why Omarosa would have even been brought back to another season of the Apprentice, much less the WH. On apprentice season 1, she pretended to have a concussion from being hit by falling plaster, fought with her team to the point where one of them called her a lunatic on camera, and hid Jessica Simpson from DT at one point. The show made it clear that she wasn’t credible. It doesn’t say anything good about DT that he hired her
Adam L Silverman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: At all these facilities turning your phone to airplane mode is not sufficient. It has to be secured in a locker because having devices that can take pictures and make both audio and video recordings is not allowed in a facility classified as a SCIF.
A Ghost To Most
@Adam L Silverman:
With Very Russian Agent Orange at the top, it’s a given.
Hungry Joe
Finally finished Nathaniel Rich’s long, long Aug. 1 NY Times piece “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.” It’s one of the most important, and most depressing things I’ve ever read. In short, we are, at this moment, completely, utterly fucked. It’s as if we had a long approach to a sharp curve in the road with multiple signs saying REDUCE SPEED TO 35MPH and instead we pushed it to 70. Now, even as we’re too far into the curve to avoid smashing into the guardrail and totaling the car, we have passengers urging us to floor it — which will send us over the guardrail and off the cliff.
Things are so dire, so far along the highway to real-life hell, that even if a 1950’s sci-fi plot were somehow to come true — all the forces of Earth unite and sacrifice to defeat a common threat — it’s too damn late. Large-scale, ever-cascading catastrophe is inevitable.
Still, we have to fight to save what we can. But for a long time I’ve thought — and I’m now convinced — that everything else we do, work for, preach, contribute to, must exist in the context of this hard truth. Racism, voter suppression, and every other outrage you can think of won’t mean shit in the dystopian future we’re barreling toward.
And a happy weekend to all of you. Sorry. But I just finished the piece, and this stuff is REAL.
Gelfling 545
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She has credibility where Trump is concerned simply because nothing is too outrageous to be believable when it comes to his behavior.
Doug R
@MattF:
I worked as a summer student at a medium security penitentiary which I guess I shouldn’t name. Since they had gone through a riot a few years back, they were up to date with cameras and ground motion detectors. But the sector with the main gate had so much activity, they shut the ground motion detectors in that sector off.
chris
@Kelly: That looks like a good one.
Adam L Silverman
@Hungry Joe: If you thought the migration issues that are freaking Stephen Miller out now are a problem, give it a few more years as a result of climate change effects really start to kick in hard.
Steeplejack
My brother’s (rescue) greyhound is so happy to be around humans—any humans—that the running joke is that she would hold the burglars’ flashlight in her mouth while they ransacked the place.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Condolences. Years ago books taught me to get smaller boxes than you think you need or can use. Possible exception is “We’re so far behind I’m just going to throw these loose clothes/bedlinens in this big box!”
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: really? You’re surprised? How else is trump gonna be able to use his unsecured phones whenever he wants without being interrupted by agents coming to secure unsecured phones? Gotta shut that shit down! There’s tweeting to do and Russians to talk to.
Steeplejack
@Aleta:
Heh, good one.
Pogonip
@Adam L Silverman: I know a guy who works in a somewhat less secure facility; he can bring his phone on base but not in the building, has to leave it in the car. If anyone’s caught with a phone they’re in BIG trouble.
Not sure what the policy is if the president’s the one caught with the phone!
Gelfling 545
@sukabi: Doesn’t make much difference anyway. He’s always going to blabber the secret stuff to show how important and clued-in he is.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
I’m putting purses and yarn in the too-big boxes and saving the smaller boxes for books, magazines, and office supplies. I suppose I could have returned the damn things, but shipping them back to Amazon would have cost more than I paid for them.
I needed boxes that are slightly bigger than the banker’s boxes I normally use, but this is ridiculous.
Aleta
The night before yesterday the sky was extra clear after fog for a month, so we decided better not wait for peak meteor night. Took the three neighbor kids and their mom out late to lie on blankets in the old cemetery at the top of the hill. It has the most open space and sky. We saw a couple of big meteors and around 20 small streaks.
The best part always is listening to the kids open up as they lie looking at the sky. At one point the 8 year old said “According to my calculations…” and launched into a lecture covering galaxies, Tibetan reincarnation, why some stars are brighter, examples of human sounds that pre-date language, and the baby raccoon she’d found dead in the maze of her homemade castle in the barn.
sukabi
@Gelfling 545: I know. The only silver lining is that he’s such an incompetent know-nothing that the secrets he’s spilling have gone through his “info in-garbage-out filter” and trying to decipher his nonsense wastes a bunch of time and resources…plus he’s so stupid he wouldn’t know if the seekrit info he’s receiving in his briefings is true or not…and I’m betting that all info passed from agencies to anyone in Trump’s orbit has been rendered harmless if it gets out.
lollipopguild
@Adam L Silverman: There are going to be more and more areas of the planet where people cannot live with out special protection(a/c etc). If the southern half of Florida floods on a some what permanent basis where do all of the people move to?
A Ghost To Most
I see that fucking vampire Carl Paladino is going to run for Chris Collin’s seat, as well as a Shitler clone from Erie County. I hope they cancel each other out.
MagdaInBlack
@Aleta:
Wow ? There is a lecture I would have enjoyed ✨
JPL
@A Ghost To Most: They would have to run as write-in candidates, since Collins is still on the ballot.
Pogonip
@lollipopguild: Bethany, WV, of course! Cole LOVES people!
I kinda sorta remember reading that if current trends continue much of the Southern U.S. will be uninhabitable in 100 years. Of course, before a/c became common, it wasn’t very habitable to begin with. From 1961-1965 my dad was stationed at Fort Hood, TX, and even though I was a small child I still remember the miserable heat, and the heat rashes.
Pogonip
@Aleta: 8-year-olds know about Tibetan reincarnation these days?!?!
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
It begins and ends with Trump. I imagine that staff try to work around him, but the bottom line is that Trump is a rigid old man who doesn’t understand how being president works, and who cannot change his ways.
He thinks you just hire family or people who will be loyal to you, sprinkle a few NDAs, an occasional firing, and you are good to go.
And of course he must be free to leak info as he wishes and to use Twitter whenever he likes.
I don’t think he knows how to select competent people or to delegate properly.
There is a certain inertia at play as people in place follow old rules as they understand them, but Trump probably undermines people all the time.
People assume a certain level of competence in the president and his staff. With Trump, they are wrong. But maybe we will get lucky and he won’t pull a catastrophic boner.
sukabi
catastrophic boner
Pretty sure that’s what Ivanka and any other female that’s come in contact with it has said.
Brachiator
@Hungry Joe:
We will have to find a way to take care of everything, or life won’t be worth living.
D58826
STOP THE PRESSES -VERY IMPORTANT NEWSAccording to the little video box that shows up on the right hand side of the comments Kylie Jenner is going to come clean about her lip implants. The entire world holds its breath. SNARK SNARK
opiejeanne
@Kelly: Oh man, that looks nice. Where is that?
Aleta
@Pogonip: She’d read a book and was fascinated, especially as an alternative to boring heaven. The way she saw it, the opportunity to live anywhere throughout millions of galaxies was much more interesting.
She’s funny the way she brings things up conversationally. Her brain automatically colors in details, like when she told us about the discovery of the man who’d been preserved under ice in the Alps. He was limping, had flowers or grass in his stomach and “he . was . still . wearing . his . overalls.” It’s like a glimpse of the picture she formed as she read the facts.
opiejeanne
@Adam L Silverman: Yes. These Nazis and white supremacists will be unable to stem the tide; they will be trampled by the move northward of masses of people; many, many people are going to die in the migration. The west is burning and we’ve getting smoke from fires in Canada. There was lots of rain in the winter and spring but we haven’t gotten the rain this summer like we used to.
After the past three summers we’re starting to think we didn’t move far enough north. We’re only 100 miles from the Canadian border and we’ve had what feels like a terribly hot summer for the area. Dave’s 71, I’m 68, I thought we’d have another 25+ years but now I’m starting to wonder. I think we have another 8 at this house, before we won’t want the work of the garden or to climb the stairs.
We went to a political meet and greet in Kirkland two weeks ago, in a gorgeous condo that I would move into in a heartbeat. Only problem is that it’s worth $2million. Haven’t got that kind of money in my pocket. We’ll be looking into a condo costing considerably less, like less than a quarter of that, maybe in Vancouver. Meanwhile we grow almost all of our own veggies every summer here.
FlyingToaster
@D58826: I hope they pay well. Jeebus.
Mnemosyne
@Hungry Joe:
If we don’t fix voter suppression, we’ll continue to be ruled by oligarchs and oil company shills who think that climate change will only affect the little people.
It’s all tied together. In the US, there is no road to fixing global warming that doesn’t go through fixing voter suppression and racism.
2liberal
test keeping email and nym
edit: it works !
xjmuellerlurks
It appears that Thurston and Rosie might be Trump supporters. Their behavior suggests that conclusion. They bark at the unknown/unseen no matter how benign but are OK with having poop dumped in their yard by a friend of the big guy.
Aleta
@sukabi: Early on he implemented this, a better system that his ‘very good brain’ suggested when he was ‘speaking with himself,’ who of course is his ‘primary consultant.’
The Lodger
@opiejeanne: Which Vancouver? The one in Canada or the affordable one?
opiejeanne
@The Lodger: The one in Canada. It’s north of us, the other one is farther south of us and isn’t likely to provide much relief from the heat.
Dan b
@Hungry Joe: Thanks for writing this. No need to apologize. The fuse is lit for the Climate Bomb. We are entering a new energy economy which needs to be goosed. Instead our government of Fossil fuel billionaires is pouring gas on the fuse.
The massive heat wave across the entire northern hemisphere should be front page news and screaming editorials but media doesn’t “get” science and scientists don’t “get” media. With some notable exceptions.
Dan b
I’m pondering how the Kochs and Mercers will blame climate refugees on enviro-nazis. Walled communitues are hard to work on a country scale. See Italy / Mediterranean.
Aleta
@xjmuellerlurks: They may be Cheney/Giulliani/Rove disciples too: “Zero attacks on Cole soil on our watch.”
“This chicken byproduct delivery is on Lily; happened before we got here.”
“Just buy our book Keep Coleland Safe.”
Dan b
I’m pondering how the Kochs and Mercers will blame climate refugees on enviro-nazis. Walled communitues are hard to work on a country scale. See Italy / Mediterranean.@opiejeanne: Vancouver USA is 5 to 8 dgrees hotter than Seattle. Wherever there’s wind from the nirth off Puget Sound it’s cooler. We’re in south Beacon Hill (affordable, lowest crime in the city, near downtown and interesting neighborhoods) and 3 miles west in West Seattle its 3 to 5 degrees cooler.
Vancouver BC is pricey but just south of there Bellingham is not. Near the Sound in Fairhaven are lots of nice condos and they get cool breezes off the Sound. There are other ootions like Anacortes and the lesser San Juans. Chin up!
opiejeanne
@Dan b: Ok, you’ve sold me. I’d rather live in Seattle anyway but I was looking at the exchange rate and seeing stuff for about $400USD that looked pretty decent. Not sure how I’ll feel about living in less than 500 square feet, though.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
For the last 7 yrs I’ve lived in less than 1/2 that. But room mates make that less than fun. And that sq footage is not counting their part. If there were two of me/us I’d bet 500 would be about minimum. Notice though that in many parts of the world 500 sq ft is considered a fair amount. In some places a family of 4 or 5 gets by with less. When I move I’d be perfectly happy in a single of 250 sq ft.
Robert Sneddon
@Dan b: Fossil fuel sells because it’s cheap and everybody around the world wants cheap energy. It’s concentrated energy, easy to dig up and pump and transport to where it’s burned. Renewables aren’t concentrated, they take a lot of infrastructure and land and concrete and wiring and other hardware to build out and that takes a lot of effort and investment that people aren’t willing to put in. They also don’t produce enough energy consistently enough to meet the “the light comes on when we flip the switch” requirement Westerners expect unless they are massively overbuilt compared to demand and expensive storage is included in the mix.
There’s a solution to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, it only costs a few tens of trillion bucks but it would take about 40 years or so to get up and running to reverse the accelerating upward trend. The other benefit of doing this would be an end to energy poverty everywhere on the planet, the main driver of increasing cheap fossil fuel consumption. The downside is that it involves building a lot of nuclear reactors (and when I say a lot, I mean over 4,000 modern PWRs and BWRs) and people are a lot more scared of provably-safe nuclear power than they are of global warming.