Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

T R E 4 5 O N

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

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

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

In after Baud. Damn.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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Reader Interactions

121Comments

  2. 2.

    Punchy

    After reading the crappiness below I think I might take off work a bit early, and someone is getting peanut butter in a Kong toy.

    I bet your dog would like some of that as well.

  4. 4.

    beth

    When I got my dog, the vet told me to take a Kong, put in a treat or two, pack with peanut butter and freeze. When I was going to be gone for a while give it to the pup to amuse herself with while I was gone. Great idea only he didn’t mention that when I got home every surface in my house would be covered with peanut butter! What did I know about puppies? Why did I think she would sit in one spot and delicately lick the peanut butter out?

  5. 5.

    Trollhattan

    @beth:
    Confess to being disturbed by the “skreeeek” noise of a Kong being squeezed in a dog’s jaws. Nails-on-a-chalkboard territory. Of couse, a be-slimed Kong placed on the lap is so much better.

  7. 7.

    Trollhattan

    Shorter Tim Donnelly: Stooopid Mexicans, Respect the 2nd Amendment!”

    Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto wraps up his two-day tour of California in Sacramento today, where he’ll attend a noon luncheon at the Stanford Mansion hosted by Gov. Jerry Brown and address a joint session of the Legislature at 2:45 p.m. in the Assembly chamber.

    The visit won’t be without at least some drama, tied to the March arrest of Marine reservist Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, who crossed into Mexico carrying three firearms and is now being held in a Tijuana prison on weapons charges.

    Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who rallied for Tahmooressi during his unsuccessful run for governor this spring, plans to lead a protest outside the Stanford Mansion during Peña Nieto’s luncheon, demanding the jailed Marine’s release.

    Last week, the Twin Peaks Republican wrote Brown a letter expressing “my deep disappointment that you would entertain the President of a nation that is holding an active-duty US Marine captive.” He also slammed Brown for not visiting Tahmooressi during a July trade trip to Mexico. “Instead of negotiating the release of an American Marine, you negotiated the terms of the surrender of our sovereignty,” Donnelly wrote.

    http://www.sacbee.com/capitol-alert/#storylink=cpy

  8. 8.

    shelley

    Thanks, Tim, I think we all needed that. What a great pic of Max; he looks like he could be in an Old Master’s painting.

  9. 9.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    ruemara, if you read this, I’d like your thoughts on making a promo video for my book. I have some ideas but I a) don’t know if they’re good or b) how to implement them.

  13. 13.

    Trollhattan

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
    Nobody could have anticipated WIND, clearly blowing from east to west. Really hard. Nothing to see here now give them back, or we’ll be forced to send over a buncha tanks to retrieve them, capisce? (Am imagining a Russian equivalent of capisce.)

  15. 15.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    I can’t quite describe how much I hate the term “overqualified.” The next time some businessman tells you that they can’t find skilled workers, tell him he’s full of shit.

  17. 17.

    Trollhattan

    @SatanicPanic:
    That Marine was just standin’ his ground. “Ground” in this case being the place he “accidently” drove to with absolutely no way of knowing just outside California’s second largest city where that international border could possibly be. Two tours and navigation still eludes him.

  18. 18.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bob In Portland: From your link: “The fact is that Russia as constantly been assisting the Novorussians covertly.”

    I’m glad you’re finally admitting that this is Russia’s war against Ukraine. Quite a bit of progress since the good old days, when it was just peace-loving “federalists.”

  20. 20.

    burnspbesq

    To be completely fair, California doesn’t have a water problem. We have a cattle, almonds, and golf problem.

  21. 21.

    PurpleGirl

    MAX puppeh!!!!! Love that goggie.

    My friends Dobi (Hugo) loved buttered bread. I’d spread the butter on bread, fold the slice in half and give it to him. He’d open the bread, lick off the butter and then eat the bread. Loved bacon fat too, poured over his dry kibble.

  23. 23.

    Trollhattan

    @burnspbesq:
    Lest we ignore the water politics being currently played, here’s what Westlands et al are up to (which always, always=no good).

    The San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority and the Westlands Water District has filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court against Reclamation’s release of water for the Klamath salmon.

    The legal memorandum spells out the details of their case. All spring and summer, San Joaquin Valley farmers have pleaded with Reclamation for water and have been told that there is no water to spare. “They have been told that it cannot be helped, that their trees and crops, their livelihoods, their communities, cannot be spared from the consequences of a terrible drought, that sending them even 10,000 acre-feet would be “irresponsible.” Even Reclamation’s mandatory obligations to exchange contractors and wildlife refuges are going unfulfilled,” the memorandum states. “But it turns out there is stored CVP water available for release this year after all, just not for them.”

    On Friday, August 22nd, Reclamation reversed their previous decision and announced it would release 30,000 AF of water or more to increase flows in the lower Klamath River to protect against possibility of a fish die-off, an event that has only happened once in recorded history, the memorandum points out. “The risk to endangered salmon in the Sacramento River that for months has been cited by Reclamation as the primary bar to using any more water form storage for farmers is somehow no impediment at all for this speculative use,” the memorandum states.

    The plaintiffs are seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to stop the releases. The memorandum states that while the Court ultimately allowed similar releases to proceed last year, there are key differences this year. The projected run size of the salmon returning to the river is about a third of what was projected last year, and new data collected within the last weeks shows that there is enough water currently to disrupt the spread of disease, they say. With the continued drought, CVP carryover storage will be even lower than it was last year, threatening the cold water pool needed for listed salmon species, the memorandum points out.

    http://mavensnotebook.com/2014/08/26/this-just-in-san-luis-delta-mendota-water-authority-westlands-file-for-temporary-restraining-order-against-releases-of-water-for-klamath-salmon/

  24. 24.

    James E. Powell

    @burnspbesq:

    California doesn’t have a water problem. We have a cattle, almonds, and golf problem.

    And cotton. Don’t forget the cotton.

  28. 28.

    El Caganer

    @burnspbesq: Cattle, almonds and golf? Friend, you’ve got an Agenda 21 problem, and you’ve probably been brainwashed by the Kenyan into thinking “Gee, if only we weren’t consuming so much water” and similar islamomarxist stuff.

  31. 31.

    shelley

    Is anybody else’s pooch crazy about tuna? The second I put opener to can, her eyes literally start to glow. Leave some in the can, put it down, and she’ll spend the next half hour chasing that can around the kitchen floor.

  35. 35.

    Trollhattan

    In which the stuck clock, represented by Megyn Kelly, actually pushes back against O’Reilly re. how conditions in Ferguson may actually be for black folks.

  36. 36.

    Juju

    @shelley: Martha, my dog, loves canned chicken. I have a fish allergy and can’t touch tuna, but she would probably like tuna as well.

  37. 37.

    beth

    @Trollhattan: But notice how at the end she manages to blame Obama because he made promises to black people that he didn’t keep (no mention of what these promises might be – ponies? unicorns?). She’s still a good little Foxbot.

  38. 38.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Paul in KY: eeyore1968 [at] melancholy [dash] donkey [dot] com.

    And as long as I’m posting that again, anyone who wants to read the first chapter of a novel should feel free to email me for it.

  39. 39.

    Suffern ACE

    @Trollhattan: Yeah. They fail to mention that the Marine had tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition in his truck. I’m sure he was innocent an just kept that ammo in the truck in case he desired to go to the shooting range on the spur of the moment. But if you don’t want to look like you’re running guns to Mexico, perhaps not looking so much like someone who is in that line of work would help.

  40. 40.

    beth

    @Juju: I have discovered that the only thing my dog won’t eat is cockroaches. It figures. She won’t even play with them – she takes one sniff and runs away. They must really stink.

  43. 43.

    Trollhattan

    Along with the Max pics, this video of the president and vice president greeting America’s oldest woman veteran plastered a big smile on my mug.

  47. 47.

    ? Martin

    @burnspbesq: The problem is how water rights are grandfathered in, so that many of those industries don’t actually need to pay for usage at the same level as other industries or consumers, so they have no real incentive to conserve.

    That California is the 4th largest cattle state doesn’t help, I agree.

  49. 49.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Trollhattan: My sympathy for SGT Tahmooressi is extremely limited.

    My sympathy for Tim Donnelly is but a very small fraction of my sympathy for SGT Tahmooressi.

    Which means you’d need an electron microscope to find it.

    The sooner a 16 ton weight accidentally drops on Tim Donnelly, the better.

  51. 51.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Trollhattan: But notice that she disses President Obama and Democratic Governor Nixon. She had to slip in an anti-Dem jab somehow, I guess.

  52. 52.

    Anoniminous

    @burnspbesq:

    With the entire Pacific Ocean sitting off coast California doesn’t have a water problem. It has a stupid fucking idiot problem.

    Which to be fair is shared by the rest of the country and, indeed, the entire world.

  58. 58.

    GxB

    Here’s something to send along to John for his next gamer dork post. Some GOP genius hacked together crappy right wing philosophy with a crappy flash Super Mario Bros knockoff. The results are hi-larious:

    Super (Koch) Bros???

    Anyone is welcome to send the link directly to JC’s email – he can’t miss this! I tried myself but the drop down email thingie just tries to go through some MS mail garbage – I’m on a new Win8 machine and I don’t have the patience to slog through it.

  59. 59.

    JPL

    My mutt is getting ready for his weekly training exercise. haha.. The neighborhood boy comes over and plays with him. The boy is eight. Finch does listen and follow his commands, which include walking on a retaining wall and rolling in the grass.
    Since my stomach is still in knots over the video down below, it will be nice to watch a dog and a boy play.

  60. 60.

    another Holocene human

    @Trollhattan: GOP translator: US sovereignty = treating other nations like US protectorates.

    This guy and his accidentally on purpose border crossing REALLY animates some people, I’ve found out. There are like free da Marine troofers.

  61. 61.

    chopper

    @beth:

    every time my 16 month old grabs the kong off the ground to give to the dog, i shudder. god knows how nasty that thing is.

  62. 62.

    Trollhattan

    @another Holocene human:
    We get little waves of letters to the editor about him in our local dead-tree paper at odd intervals. Some kind of bat signal goes up and the folks at the home all get out their Bics and umbrage. Same people who said Berghdal is a traitor, I’m sure.

  63. 63.

    Citizen_X

    @Anoniminous:

    With the entire Pacific Ocean sitting off coast California doesn’t have a water problem. It has a stupid fucking idiot problem.

    Um, a coupla lil’ problems, that cost money: desalinization, pushing water uphill, and salt wastes. So it’s used in a few dry places, mostly the Middle East & Australia. Oh, and Wikipedia sez California has 17 desalinization plants.

  64. 64.

    Trollhattan

    Holy crap.

    A 9-year-old girl shot and killed her shooting instructor Monday in northwest Arizona.

    The Associated Press reported that the accident took place around 10 a.m. at a shooting range in Dolan Springs.
    The 39-year-old instructor, identified as Charles Vacca, was airlifted to a hospital in Las Vegas, where he later died. The outdoor Bullets and Burgers shooting range attracts tourists along U.S. 93 between Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

    “Our guests have the opportunity to fire a wide range of fully automatic machine guns and specialty weapons,” the website claims. “At our range, you can shoot FULL auto on our machine guns.

    “Let ‘em Rip!”

    The girl, who was vacationing with her parents, fired an automatic 9-mm Uzi as she stood near the instructor. Investigators said the girl held on to the gun as it recoiled, causing the weapon to lift above her head. At least one bullet struck Vacca in the head.

    The shooting remains under investigation.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/26/9-year-old-arizona-girl-accidentally-shoots-gun-instructor-in-head/

    A nine-year-old. Handling a fully automatic rifle. At a place called Bullets and Burgers. We are a sick, sick people.

  66. 66.

    Belafon

    @Trollhattan: Someone around here drive a car with a bumper sticker that says “Gun control won’t fix stupid.” Looks like lack of gun control will.

  68. 68.

    JCT

    @Trollhattan:

    Well there’s some good judgement exercised by all of the adults – really, a fully auto weapon. Insane. Lucky she didn’t spray her parents as well. Jesus.

    Not too dissimilar to that tragedy in Massachusetts a few years ago where an 8-yr-old boy got to shoot an Uzi at a fair. He lost control with the recoil (not surprising) and shot himself in the head. Right in front of his dad who ended up with a horrific video souvenir.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    @Trollhattan:

    We can put height and weight restrictions on roller coasters, but, hey, let’s hand an Uzi to a nine-year-old. What could go wrong?

    (FWIW, I was handling a gun at that age. A .22 rifle. In a class at a shooting range with actual adults in charge. I was a pretty good shot, too.)

  71. 71.

    Suffern ACE

    @Trollhattan: wow. I would think that with a child that small, one would want to avoid weapons with recoil like that. I think I would have a difficult time holding that.

  72. 72.

    Gin & Tonic

    @burnspbesq: The last phoneme is like an American “sh”. And it’s not as slangy as capisce is in American English. At 00:15 here, and obviously throughout the song.

  73. 73.

    SatanicPanic

    @JCT: I remember that one. That’s terrible. I missed the part about this latest one being an Uzi too. Do these people not have industry publications that suggest that this is a bad idea?

  74. 74.

    JCT

    @Mnemosyne: Yup, when my 8 and 11 yr old nieces asked to go to the range with me I brought along a .22 rifle and that is all they were allowed to shoot. With me standing over them.

    The stupidity in this story is awe-inspriring.

    @SatanicPanic: Yup, an UZI. What I cannot get over is what the parents were thinking. Really, that sounds like a fun thing to do – hand a powerful fully automatic weapon to a 9-yr-old ? WTF

  75. 75.

    cckids

    @shelley:

    Is anybody else’s pooch crazy about tuna?

    My Pomeranian is crazy for ALL kinds of fish, salmon being #1 on his list. We have to sequester the cats’ food because it is salmon flavor (I’ve never found dog food in fish flavor).

    Maybe it is because Poms were bred down from sled dogs?

  76. 76.

    Citizen_X

    @JCT: I remember that incident. You would think that would have put an end to such an idiotic practice, but no.

    At least this time, one of the “responsible” adults paid the price, not the kid.

  77. 77.

    Trollhattan

    @Suffern ACE: @JCT:
    I missed the whole basic training thing, but don’t they teach our troops to fire in short bursts, even set on full auto, for just this reason? Doesn’t the barrel inevitably lift skyward?

    As much as I feel for all involved, there can’t have been more than a sliver of grown-up decisionmaking among any of the folks involved. And that poor girl gets free lifelong nightmares.

  79. 79.

    Gindy51

    @beth: That’s why you crate train them. Our deaf dog is crate trained and she loves it. The older dogs are not and since they can hear we let them have the run of the house. We’d never done crate training before Dany, but with our old dogs be ancient, we had to make sure they were safe from the tri colored tornado.

  82. 82.

    Amir Khalid

    @Bob In Portland:
    This amounts to an admission that Russia is sending materiel and troops to aid insurgents in the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Between that and the annexation of Ukrainian territory, it looks a lot like Russia is engaging in a war of conquest against Ukraine.

  83. 83.

    cckids

    @Trollhattan: Yep, right here in my neck of the woods/desert. The shooting ranges have proliferated like crazy since the insane 27%-ers broke their leash after Obama’s election. It is even kind of scary to go on some of the hikes around Lake Mead, because these asshats go out among the red rocks to “target” shoot.

    The lack of common sense is so depressing.

  85. 85.

    cckids

    @Trollhattan: Nevada, close to the border.

    ETA: Not quite as crazy as AZ; Vegas is a little bluer. Still way too libertarian/don’t mess with my freedoms BS.

  86. 86.

    Jebediah, RBG

    @SatanicPanic:

    Too big an assault on precious freedumbs, and slippery slope, etc. Whatsoever you do the least of my automatic weapons, that you do unto me. That’s in the Bible, our country’s founding document, dammit!

    ETA: And yes, it is depressing as hell.

  87. 87.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    I missed the whole basic training thing, but don’t they teach our troops to fire in short bursts, even set on full auto, for just this reason? Doesn’t the barrel inevitably lift skyward?

    @Trollhattan: It sure does, and it takes a very large/strong person to be able to hold it under control. I have no problem with kids firing single-shot/semiauto guns under proper supervision – that’s how I learned to shoot – but I’d have some serious qualms about giving even a regular-sized adult a full automatic weapon as they are just about as easy to control as a firehose. A nine-year old girl? Instructor must have been out of his head. As his brains were a few tenths of a second later.

  88. 88.

    Skerry

    My local police put out a statement regarding one of the police-involved shootings from last week. 2 officers, aged 22 and 25, shot dead a 61 year old man armed with a knife. They did use the taser once, but then were “compelled” to use deadly force when he would not drop the knife. The statement did not say how many shots were fired.

    They have yet to release more info about the first shooting last week of another knife welding man.

    I don’t feel safer after this.

  89. 89.

    Mike J

    @Trollhattan:

    I missed the whole basic training thing, but don’t they teach our troops to fire in short bursts, even set on full auto, for just this reason?

    Actually I don’t think standard issue M-16s even do full full auto at all. They’ll do full auto for three rounds and stop until you pull the trigger again.

  90. 90.

    Amir Khalid

    @JCT:
    I would once have been surprised at this kind of stupidity, handing loaded Uzis to small children. But I know now that such people are of an ilk with those who advocate guns for the blind.

  91. 91.

    Suffern ACE

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    but I’d have some serious qualms about giving even a regular-sized adult a full automatic weapon as they are just about as easy to control as a firehose.

    But it looks so EASY in the MOVIES.

  92. 92.

    JCT

    @Amir Khalid: I think cckids put it well, since Obama was elected these rabid “guns everywhere” nutjobs have migrated from the fringe to the norm. Their goal is to “normalize” guns as part of everyday life and the first step is to convince others that they can easily be handled by anyone and we shouldn’t be “afraid” of guns. I think incidents such as this are the outcome.

    I own firearms, I’m an avid target shooter and have been for years. Every time I handle one I am vigilant and fully aware of how dangerous they can be – this nonsense of having folks (and their kids) just drive up to any old range in the middle of nowhere or walk up to a booth at a freaking county fair and get to handle an UZI in full auto mode with just a few minutes of instruction (as in “hold it like this and pull the trigger”) is sheer insanity.

  93. 93.

    Trollhattan

    Now for something completely different, read about Judge Posner kicking the Indiana and Wisconsin lawyers in the balls as they try to argue before the court to continue marriage inequality.

    At one point, Posner ran through a list of psychological strains of unmarried same-sex couples, including having to struggle to grasp why their schoolmates’ parents were married and theirs weren’t. “What horrible stuff,” Posner said. What benefits to society in barring gay marriage, he asked, “outweighs that kind of damage to children?”

  94. 94.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    But it looks so EASY in the MOVIES.

    @Suffern ACE: Yeah.

    What is especially rash about giving someone with zero experience a full-auto weapon is that when that barrel starts climbing towards the sky, they panic and grab on harder. What are they grabbing onto? The trigger, of course. I’m actually astonished that only one person was killed. I could easily see that fucking gun just whipping around in that poor girl’s hands, spraying bullets everywhere.

    Guns are not meant for everyone, NRA bullshit to the contrary. They just aren’t. You need to be big/strong enough to control them, and you need to be able to focus totally on the task at hand and never make a mistake. Of all the people I know who own them, maybe 10% of them have what it takes to be a good and safe shooter.

    ETA: do not even get me started on the insanity of the idiots promoting guns for blind people. There are, unfortunately, disabilities that preclude people from doing things, much as we as a society would like to pretend otherwise.

  95. 95.

    Talentless Hack

    Beautiful dog. A friend of ours has a mini-pin. Take the energy of a full-sized pincer and compress it to a size smaller than a Jack Russell terrier, and you have a mini-pin. It took YEARS for that dog to chill out. Now she’s the sweetest thing you ever want to meet, but we’re still afraid of that little beastie.

  96. 96.

    Anoniminous

    @Citizen_X:

    California real estate was estimated to be $44 trillion in 2010. How much is it worth if there isn’t any water?

    Yes, making seawater potable costs money. That’s a price people are going to have to pay if they want to continue live in a desert.

  98. 98.

    burnspbesq

    @Trollhattan:

    If Posner writes the opinion, it’s going to be the judicial equivalent of a double-barrel 12-gauge shoved into Alito’s mouth. I can’t wait.

  99. 99.

    Mnemosyne

    @Anoniminous:

    “California” is not a desert. There are deserts within California, but it’s pretty hard to argue that, say, the Napa Valley can be characterized as a desert in any way, and that’s before you even get to the northern parts of the state. The Central and Southern coasts have a Mediterranean climate — the deserts don’t start until 30 or 40 miles inland.

    Frankly, if Big Agriculture wasn’t getting discounted water, we’d probably have less of a problem with shortages, though a drought can happen anywhere, even in non-desert states.

  100. 100.

    scav

    Wonder what sort of souvenirs the Bullets & Burgers place provides for the accomplishment. Plush toys like the funfair? Possibly reminiscent of the brush, mask and paws or yore or maybe the equivalent in a faux fur rug for those that favor western style? Photos of the blooding? Logo gear reading “We went on Vacation and I all I got was this bloody tee-shirt and a scalp” ?

  101. 101.

    Cacti

    Well knock me over with a feather, the mainstream media takes a break from discussing the music preferences of the dead teenager, to take a look at the nice officer who gunned him down:

    From WaPo

    The small city of Jennings, Mo., had a police department so troubled, and with so much tension between white officers and black residents, that the city council finally decided to disband it. Everyone in the Jennings police department was fired. New officers were brought in to create a credible department from scratch.

    That was three years ago. One of the officers who worked in that department, and lost his job along with everyone else, was a young man named Darren Wilson.

  102. 102.

    D58826

    Moving on to the equally depressing middle east There is a long article on the daily beast about what has to be done about ISIS. The first part of the article is what we have to do:

    Counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman says the Islamic State has become a terror army that can only be defeated through a full-scale war with serious fighting in both Iraq and Syria. He argues it “will actually require years, direct military action on both sides of the Iraq/Syria border, tens (if not hundreds) of billions of dollars, and many more than 15,000 troops.” “No one has offered a plausible strategy to defeat IS that does not include a major U.S. commitment on the ground and the renewal of functional governance on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border,” says Fishman.

    Mideast expert Schanzer also sees the fight required as a huge undertaking. Even airstrikes extended across Iraq and deep into Syria will not be sufficient without a more comprehensive approach that includes sanctioning jihadist financiers in the Gulf and targeting the Islamic State’s financial and logistical networks in Turkey

    So we somehow manage to get all of the pieces in placer, fight the long war and what will be the result? From the article

    However, it is still unclear to me if the U.S. and its allies are prepared to undertake such a comprehensive approach,” he says. “It would create diplomatic tensions with our allies, like Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait. It would also mean entering into the Syrian theater. These are two things the Obama administration has sought to avoid at all costs.”

    Even that may not be enough. Syria expert Joshua Landis maintains that military action will fail if the “deep grievances of the Sunni communities in Syria and Iraq, where they are shut out from real power, representation, and basic justice by the sectarian governments of both countries,” aren’t addressed. He maintains the time has come for the countries to be allowed to split formally along sectarian lines

    So we invest trillions in treasure and untold amounts of blood only the get to the point we are at now – unless the Sunni’s have a stake in the Shia dominated Iraq and Syria victory is impossible. And the odds of the Shia voluntarily sharing power after 1500 years of religious warfare range between none and negative infinity. There really isn’t enough booze to dull the pain

    I actually have a solution for Obama. He and Biden should resign, hand the Presidency over to the Orangeman and McNuts and say your guy Bush broke this thing now YOU figure out how to fix it. It has been easy carping from the cheap seats, now lets see you produce results.

  104. 104.

    Mike in NC

    @Mike J: I thought about this, too. Apparently soldiers in Vietnam often fired off magazines so erratically the ‘full auto’ feature was deleted in later models of the M-16.

  105. 105.

    gelfling545

    @cckids: Blue Buffalo makes a fish & sweet potato dog food that my pug is quite fond of. Of course, she’s a pug so anything goes food-wise. She decides if she likes it after she eats it.

  106. 106.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne:

    We can put height and weight restrictions on roller coasters, but, hey, let’s hand an Uzi to a nine-year-old. What could go wrong?

    Roller coasters, you know, are not covered by the sacred 2nd Amendment.

  107. 107.

    bemused

    Since this is a open/pet thread, this is what one of our two cats, neither with opposable thumbs, managed to do while we were on vacay. Our kitty minder was horrified to walk in to discover that the middle burner on our gas top stove was on low flame but still ticking. I don’t know the culprit managed to push in knob and slightly turn it but it couldn’t have any other critter, human or otherwise. Luckily our cat minder comes in twice a day. Our options are to remove the knobs till we want to cook or buy child safety covers which we have no experience with.

  108. 108.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mike in NC: Was wasting ammo for no good reason.

    A banana clip (30 rounds) won’t last long when you’ve got an M16A1 on rock and roll. The M16A2 just did away with the full auto option, you could only fire three rounds at a time.

  110. 110.

    Mnemosyne

    @SatanicPanic:

    Yep — even here in the San Fernando Valley, we’re temperate grasslands, not desert.

    The “desert” argument annoys me because it ignores the genuine problem we have her with Big Ag wasting water and refusing to adopt more efficient irrigation methods because they don’t want to spend the money. We would have a lot more leeway during droughts if Big Ag would stop being ginormous assholes about water.

  111. 111.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mnemosyne:

    We would have a lot more leeway during droughts if Big Ag would stop being ginormous assholes about water.

    Not going to happen without major emotional events affecting the executives and boards of directors of Big Ag companies.

    I suggest staking them near fire ant colonies and then pouring honey on them.

  112. 112.

    Anne Laurie

    @cckids:

    My Pomeranian is crazy for ALL kinds of fish, salmon being #1 on his list. We have to sequester the cats’ food because it is salmon flavor (I’ve never found dog food in fish flavor).

    Fish stinks, and anything that stinks is dog nirvana.

    If you don’t mind the expense, there’s a considerable niche market for fish-based dog foods available in the “sensitive skin” or “allergy free” aisles.

  115. 115.

    tybee

    damn, i miss my dober doggie.

    it’s just ol’ Luke and Luke’s waitin’ on the Judgment Day
    “Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?”
    He said, “Do me a favor, son, won’t you stay and keep Anna Lee company?”

  117. 117.

    Jebediah, RBG

    @Mnemosyne:
    First time I went up the 5 I remember seeing all these big, whiny billboards about how the noble, put-upon farmers who grow YOUR FOOD, YOU INGRATES were having their water rights threatened by INGRATES WHO APPARENTLY DON’T KNOW WHO GROWS THEIR FOOD!!!!
    Didn’t give me a whole lot of sympathy, since I had already read about their refusal to employ more efficient irrigation methods.

  120. 120.

    Paul in KY

    @beth: I’ve had cats that eat them. They make a crunching sound when being chewed up. The cats will not eat ants or moles.

  121. 121.

    Paul in KY

    @Trollhattan: It was the short barreled version of the Uzi. Basically a full auto pistol. The poor idiot was crouched right beside her when it rose up & to side & capped him.

    Sorta Darwin Awardy (IMO).

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