Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Let’s finish the job.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

When we show up, we win.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

This blog will pay for itself.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

“woke” is the new caravan.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

We won’t go back.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Late Night Open Thread: Beagles Are Not Low-Maintenance

Late Night Open Thread: Beagles Are Not Low-Maintenance

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Back before Lily, our esteemed blog host John Cole mentioned he’d be open to adopting any dog “as long as it’s not a beagle“. Despite the contrary opinion of a certain much more widely read blogger, the video demonstrates just one reason why this is a wise restriction.
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Also (h/t freelancer), as targetted marketing, this is kinda cool.

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    And he’s off to take on the Red Baron!

    On edit: Oh, the irony….the banner ad for me, anyways, is “Click here to learn the secrets behind training your beagle”

  7. 7.

    freelancer

    Last fall, my best friend’s parents rescued a ditched Beagle out by their country home. She was severely emaciated, but by Christmas she was running with the rest of their labrador pack, cutest thing you ever did see. Everyone who stayed over for the Holidays wanted to adopt Lady the pretty Beagle.

  8. 8.

    Joey Maloney

    o/t for the open thread: Here’s the REAL meaning of “regretsy”:

    http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/03/etsy-users-irked-after-buyers-purchases-exposed-to-the-world.ars

    What would you do if you registered on a site to buy something, only to find months later that your user account was searchable and your purchases were exposed? That scenario is currently playing out for Etsy users, who are dealing with the fallout from Etsy’s decision to roll out a new People Search tool. The site, dedicated to enabling crafters and artisans to sell their work online, has yet to notify its user base of the change that exposes users’ real names and, via their profile pages, anything they have purchased and left feedback on.
    __
    The problem is that, aside from a thread in Etsy’s forums (which is almost entirely used by sellers, not buyers), Etsy has not notified users of the change in privacy settings or policy. Previously, users could search Etsy for seller names, but the names of buyers were not exposed as part of the search. Not only are buyers searchable now, they’re even searchable by real name if that info is in their account profiles—this is not a required element of the registration process, but there’s nothing to indicate that it’s optional. Most users enter it to enable a smooth transaction when they make a purchase.
    __
    Even if users haven’t entered their full names, their profiles are still searchable by username. Even better, people’s Etsy profiles and their purchase histories (via the feedback they leave) are beginning to show up under Google results for their names. Even if the buyer didn’t leave feedback, a seller could leave feedback for the buyer and still expose what that person purchased.
    __
    Why does this matter? Not everyone wants their purchases to be made public – and some purchases are definitely more private than others. “I just found a woman who’s Etsy profile comes up on Google as the 5th link. I was expecting 6 or 7 pages down, but it’s on the very first page, right after her online resumes,” wrote one concerned user on the Penny Arcade forums. “She signed up a year ago, under the old privacy policy, and hasn’t logged in since 2010. And now I know what dildo she uses. Right down to the curvature and coloring.”

  9. 9.

    Triassic Sands

    That’s why it’s safer to have a Basset Hound — I can’t picture one of TBogg’s hounds pulling this off.

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    @Linkmeister: Check out the logo for ‘The Daily Dish’.

    As JSF suggests, you can’t teach a beagle much, but their creativity in achieving new levels of annoying-ness is limitless…

  11. 11.

    Suffern ACE

    My old dog, may her memory live forever, ended up in a pen like that. We even had bricks on the roof. So hard to build a cage without corners or doors.

  12. 12.

    Mnemosyne

    @Joey Maloney:

    I am once again glad for my obsessive reluctance to put personal information anywhere on the internet, because I checked my Etsy account and I never put any identifying information in my profile.

  16. 16.

    GregB

    Breaking news:

    “A computer system that forecasts the spread of radioactivity has not been working due to malfunctioning monitoring posts around a troubled nuclear power plant in quake-hit Fukushima Prefecture.”

    Nothing to see here.

  19. 19.

    Mary G

    Why is there no real West Coast late night news? I’ve been in the hospital all day and am trying to find out what’s going out with Japan and Anderson Cooper’s show from four hours ago is running.

  22. 22.

    jnfr

    @Mary G:

    I was thinking the same thing, because I continue to hang out worrying. Though now I am worrying in bed, so I’ll crash soon I’m sure.

  24. 24.

    shecky

    Fucking beagles… I have a beagle/Jack Russell… Little fucker demands an iron fist or there’s no living with him. Give him an inch, and he’ll take a mile, along with the credit cards, car keys, and all the passwords stored on your computer.

  26. 26.

    Mary G

    Tried to say thank you to BR and Joey Maloney but comment went into moderation for some reason, so thank you.

    Also, This chart cheered me up. If Orange County is losing Republicans, their end must be near.

  27. 27.

    Anne Laurie

    I have a beagle/Jack Russell…

    Whoa, that’s almost as bad as our rescue Gloria, who is probably half papillon… and half border collie.

    Yeah, I didn’t think it was likely either, but my Midwestern Dog Guru says that people arrange for it to happen on purpose. As she describes the results, “It’s like building a loaded pistol into a pretty pink ipod case.”

  28. 28.

    JenJen

    @Gina:

    I love the admiring looks the other dogs are giving the one that got out.

    Totally made the video. The yearning paw toward the cool-dog jailbird. I pretty much love it.

    Beagles are quite wily, but they’re not the only ones. Gosh, I sure do love dogs.

  29. 29.

    Quiddity

    Sarah Palin, “energy expert”:

    Palin, or whoever writes for her, penned the following:

    According to one industry study, allowing Royal Dutch Shell to tap these reserves in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort seas would create an annual average of 54,700 jobs nationwide with a $145 billion total payroll and generate an additional $193 billion a year in total revenues to local, state, and federal governments for 50 years.

    But if you look at the study linked to, you read:

    Development of resources in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska’s Arctic coast would create an average 54,700 jobs/year nationwide with a $145 billion total payroll and generate $193 billion in federal, state, and local revenue over 50 years, according to a study by Northern Economics Inc., Alaska’s largest private economic consulting firm, and the University of Alaska at Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.

    It’s obvious that the totals are cumulative over 50 years. If it was per year, then the $145billion-payroll/54,700 comes to $2.6 million per worker per year, but $145billion/(54,700*50years) is $57K per worker per year.

    I anticipate that the mistake will be corrected soon, so gather your screenshots!

  30. 30.

    Auguste

    Like Shecky, I own a Beagle/Jack Russell mix, and all I can say is, where the fuck was this video 12 years ago to warn me off?

    Mine never was as ingenious as the one in the video, but she did figure out how to make stairs out of a set of drawers (pulled the bottom drawer out the furthest, second from bottom a little less, etc.) and has survived chicken bones, cocoa-powder covered chocolates, rat poison, and an entire corncob (swallowed basically whole, mind you.)

    When she is hungry, which oh by the way is all the goddamn time, she throws things at you – she’ll pick up a sock or a plastic bag or, a few times, a playstation controller in her mouth and flip it at you.

    For awhile she figured out a method by which she was invariably able to escape from a leash while on a walk. As soon as you moved in a direction she wasn’t anxious to go (which, btw, was never in a straight line) she’d go into a downward-dog position and pull against – would be out of the collar in about 1.5 seconds before you even knew what was going on. And once that happened, she’d be a mile away before you even got up to running speed.

    Also, she keeps getting shot down over France.

  31. 31.

    Mark S.

    @Quiddity:

    I doubt she’ll bother correcting it.


    If the Tea Party Went Downtown    : I thought they already did. Some Harvard economist thinks teabaggers will be down with ending the mortgage deduction and more toll roads. I doubt it. But there’s plenty of horseshit analysis, such as:

    Vast public infrastructure projects, like high-speed rail, helped create Spain’s current fiscal morass and did little to revitalize Japan during its lost decade.

    Glaeser doesn’t want to spend any money on infrastructure but wants everyone to move to metropolitan areas:

    High marginal tax rates don’t just discourage people from working hard, they discourage people from paying the commuting and housing costs needed to earn high wages by working in the large, highly productive metropolitan areas that surround cities.

    He also wants to discourage home ownership (by eliminating the mortgage deduction) and commuting (by not building any roads or infrastructure). We can’t all live on Manhattan.

    I admit sprawl’s a problem, but Fonzi of Freedom solutions leave a lot to be desired.

  32. 32.

    freelancer (itouch)

    Hey, thanks AL for the hat tip. Much better to do what that guy did, if you’re gonna go Poe, than what this girl did. Fake or not, my first impulse is to want to break her smug nose with my fist. She makes a parallel point about theism in the face of natural disasters, but she’s not helping.

    http://www.atheistmedia.com/2011/03/god-is-punishing-japan-for-atheism.html

    Nevermind that there are actual Christian missionaries who see Japan as a ripe opportunity to spread the word to those most ruined by this event. It’s the Shock Doctrine applied to critical thinking and one’s worldview.

  33. 33.

    Joey Maloney

    @Quiddity: I anticipate that the mistake will be corrected soon, so gather your screenshots!

    Really? I anticipate it will be repeated about thirty times in the coming week on Fox News, show up on the Washington Post op-ed page before April Fools’, and be settled conventional wisdom before May Day.

  34. 34.

    DBrown

    So, just like the blog world at large and even here at BJ, false propaganda that all is well and the Japanese nuclear circus … I mean crisis is just fine – this pile of stupid has been running wild. This utter lie and bull is being fueled and powered by real idiots: An utter lying asswipe and total piece of shit Oehmen who claimed that all was well because no radiation to speak of had escaped the plant, and this human pile of waste wrote a long essay on why no one need be concerned and since he work at MIT and was an expert it burned across the internet and was seized upon by pro-nuke sites and … well, look here (taken from Salon):

    “Oehmen, it turns out, does work at MIT but has no special expertise in nuclear power. And his key claim — that “there was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors” — appears to have already been proven false.

    “So does Oehmen actually work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? Yes. But not in the nuclear engineering department. He works at an entity called the Lean Advancement Initiative, which focuses on business management issues”

    Of course, mean while, the plant has been (temporarily) evacuated due to high radiation levels from (they think) the burning fuel in the storage pool in reactor #4 (or just steam) but all efforts are focused – you’d think this was amistake in the report – rather reactor #3. Gee, I wonder why? Oh, that’s right its fueled with both enriched uranium and weapons grade Plutonium!

    The major news of currently running concerning the horror of the Japanese quake and what major concern of BJ? Well lets post a video of cute dogs… what, BJ is now a fluffer of Andrew Sullivan and his approach to journalism, in spades?
    So Cole, what gives? Burned out or just giving up trying to fight the long battle.

  35. 35.

    DBrown

    So, it gets darker as the NYT reports:

    “Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified dramatically on Wednesday after the authorities announced that a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam. ”

    This speaks for itself – Cole, you need both a Japanese thread and a nuclear thread every morning – for god’s sake, there must be some good news in Japan as people dig out and restore their lives … the nuke situation justs goes from worst possible to … well, events that make the worse look not so bad … shit.

    As AGW bites, we will need nuclear but this just proves that american know-not is the worst possible solution – can we please have a Candu reactor, sir?

  37. 37.

    JPL

    DBrown, Cole is fast asleep. It’s an open thread so you can remind us of the devastation in Japan. When I awake, the first thing I do is go to the live feed at BBC to see if the reactors blew.

    Watching the dog video was a welcome relief. I have seen cats scale before but never a dog.

  39. 39.

    DBrown

    Just wondering – Japan made the worlds first female robot that is fully capable of having sex … so where are robots for nuclear power plants that can make repairs inside the deadly radioactive buildings and allow cooling water to be feed into the cores? Sex but no repair bots …

  40. 40.

    A Humble Lurker

    @DBrown:

    Just wondering – Japan made the worlds first female robot that is fully capable of having sex … so where are robots for nuclear power plants that can make repairs inside the deadly radioactive buildings and allow cooling water to be feed into the cores? Sex but no repair bots …

    What the hell is wrong with you?

  42. 42.

    James Hare

    Sullivan ran that video a few years back and thought it was cute. I don’t think he has any illusions about beagles. Of course, one of his dogs is an impostor.

  43. 43.

    Southern Beale

    Billionaire car dealer leads recall of Miami Dade County Mayor… the issue, as always, was property taxes, which the mayor increased to fund necessary city services. The billionaire car dealer, former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, spouted claptrap about “empowering the people” and “taking the community back from the politicians” and fiscal austerity and blabbedy blah.

    This is a billionaire telling people this. And they bought it.

    People are fucking morons.

  44. 44.

    Xenos

    @Southern Beale:

    People are fucking morons.

    They have gone from shirtsleeves to bourgeoisie to lumpen-proletariat in three generations. That has got to be some sort of record.

  46. 46.

    DKF

    Steer clear of Schipperkes, as well. Mine will find a way to get at any food that isn’t locked in a bank vault. There’s no table she can’t get on top of, and she’ll snatch a sandwich right out of the hand of a large adult male without hesitation. When it comes to food, she never stops looking for the main chance. Oh, and she also escapes through the real and electronic fences and returns with disgusting bones from Lord knows where. Good mouser, though.

  48. 48.

    MikeJ

    @Southern Beale: I believe that it was the “higher property taxes and a simultaneous salary increase for many county employees” that did it.

    I’m not saying the county employees didn’t deserve a pay raise, but when the story is “they raised your taxes and it all went straight in their pocket” it’s hard to mount a rational defense that anybody will pay attention to.

  49. 49.

    JCT

    Beagles! Great video. I love the reactions of the other beagles.

    We have 2 beagles and the youngest one turns 8 tomorrow but still behaves like a human toddler. Every evening around 8:30 she starts to misbehave to get attention. She then acts abashed and sad (even if the scolding is half-hearted) and then “begs for forgiveness” by crawling into our lap. Then she falls asleep like a big baby. Every night we fall for this. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body and is one of the sweetest dogs I have ever had. But she is naughty. A friend of ours breeds beagles and refers to all of this as “beagle drama”, so apt.

  51. 51.

    Jinx

    This is a great video of a young horse playing with an oversize ball:

    It appears in this case that the ball bests the horse but it’s very entertaining none the less.

  53. 53.

    jcgrim

    I have a mixed breed about 40 lbs who can scale any fence, wood and chain link, broke out of 2 kennel cages, and learned to unlock and open the house windows to escape. After many long days and nights trying to entice her back, only to have her turn tail and run, she would return filthy, tired, and nourished by garbage. We had private dog trainers come to the home. They had excellent strategies but we were unable to be consistent enough to stop her darting out of the door every time we left for work, etc.

    After $3,000 surgery to remove the popsicle stick that preforated her intestine, we installed an invisible fence. Trained her to the perimeter and she’s been contained in our house and yard ever since.

    I know some folks don’t approve of the shock collar that is the critical component on the invisible fence. I wasn’t happy about doing it. But this dog was a danger to herself. We were worried sick for nights on end when she ran away. Now we are all happy, content, and she is a perfect house dog.

  54. 54.

    quaint irene

    And he’s off to take on the Red Baron!

    Hee. When Shulz’ comic “Peanuts” first became wildly popular in the ’60’s, there was a run on beagles at pet stores. And subsequently, a lot of buyers remorse when people found out how much effort they needed.

    Same thing happened when the live remake of ‘1001 Dalmations.’ came out.

  55. 55.

    JCT

    @quaint irene: True — but the funny thing is just how “right” Schultz got the beagle persona. Mine performs Snoopy’s “supper dance” perfectly. It’s hilarious.

    They are not effortless dogs, but they are stellar companions. When they’re not hunting for snacks…

  56. 56.

    Don

    @MikeJ: I’m sure that granting city employees a raise didn’t help him but the big issues were more reckless choices. Supporting a new baseball stadium with millions of dollars (when Miami has been burned by bad deals in the past, like the Miami Arena which didn’t even get a decade of use before they built the new bayfront arena) and giving a raise to his chief, bringing him over 200k/yr. Then he’s tarnished by his police buddy spending millions in polluter-chasing money on tvs and weapons. Then he gets criticized for spending his $800/mo car allowance on a new BMW – and says he won’t give it up, despite being provided vehicles for transport by the city.

    Then, after all that, he asks for a 12% property tax increase.

    Personally I’m fine with paying city employees a living wage and if the CoS duties require a person who could be making 200k out in the private sector then I don’t think we should be low-balling and ending up with the candidates of last resort.

    But this guy is too fucking stupid to be in office. You can’t live a public life of excess and pal around with embezzlers and THEN ask your populace to sacrifice.

    Having grown up in South Florida I feel confident they’ll replace this clown with a different clown. But putting this off on a billionaire with an axe to grind is just wrong. The mayor spent 1M fighting this off – he’s no poor victim of a vendetta or being punished for making hard decisions.

  57. 57.

    Paul in KY

    Anne, could you get Bootlegger to put up a link to our Balloon Juice NCAA Group? Thanks!

  58. 58.

    Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)

    Um, is anyone else worried about that beagle? It leaps out of the frame and the video ends shortly thereafter. That’s quite a height for a dog, much less one jumping awkwardly.

  60. 60.

    Elizabelle

    @Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):

    I think Andrew Sullivan put this video up months ago, and assured that the beagle was fine.

    Love me some beagles.

    Allegedly, girl beagles roam less than the boys. Whatever, they are great pets, Mr. Cole’s views notwithstanding.

  65. 65.

    Geeno

    I love Beagles. Their determination, or as I call it cement-headedness, to bring whatever comes into their minds to fruition is unparalleled. This beagle decided he was gonna try to get out through that space above the door (notice the boards nailed there – he’s done this before), and he just kept at it no matter what until he made it happen. I just wish it was possible to direct this ability, but it only seems to work for ideas the beagle has on its own.

    CRY FREEDOM, LITTLE BEAGLE!

  66. 66.

    Gus

    My wife was sold on the idea of a beagle until we talked to a couple beagle owners. Not that they didn’t love their dogs, but they were a lot more work than we, as a couple of first time dog owners were looking for. They sure are cute little bastards, though.

  67. 67.

    CaelanAegana

    @58: Beagles are surprisingly tough, agile, and well-coordinated jumpers, in addition to being Houdini-dogs. I have seen my guys jump from that height no problem. That’s one thing with beagles that an owner has to watch for: unlike most dogs they have zero fear of heights. The snoopy-on-the-doghouse thing? Yes. Constantly.

    My cousin calls them “circus dogs” because they’re so hyper and agile and clever, but unfortunately they absolutely do not respond to cattle prods. I had to latch every cabinet and can never ever leave edible things lying around (including underwear, books, neclace pendants, DVDs, remote controls, cell phones…) I also had to convert my downstairs “office” to a dog kennel because the neighbors were complaining about the barking.

    What makes beagles so redeemable is that they’re extremely sweet, social and upbeat. They’re also an excellent cat substitute if you need a mouser: they are rodent-hunting dogs by breeding. They’re way less cranky than their cousins the basset hounds, and have fewer health problems. Definitely not a breed for everyone though.

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