Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

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

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

No one could have predicted…

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickle?”

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

You cannot shame the shameless.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Small Town Life (Open Thread)

Small Town Life (Open Thread)

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While returning home from Alabama, I had lunch in a rural Florida Panhandle town. I was traveling alone and had spotty cell service, so I bought a local fish wrap to read while dining on scrumptious collards, field peas and fried cabbage.

The police report was the most amusing section. There was an account of the theft of a papillon doggie, which was dyed black (except for the face) by the thief and then returned otherwise unharmed to its yard. The police report noted that the owner said, “We know who done it.”

But there was no proof, so no charges were filed.

Please feel to discuss whatever.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  2. 2.

    BGinCHI

    It can’t be long until NPR asks you to replace Garrison Keillor.

    I look forward to the launch of A Cracker Home Companion.

  8. 8.

    BGinCHI

    @lonesomerobot: Charles C. Johnson, as Mnemosyne helpfully pointed out in the previous thread.

    And instead of pointing and laughing I’d like to punch his lights out.

  10. 10.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    “We know who done it.”

    So much of life is like that.

    I am reading the new Reacher novel in the doctor’s waiting room while my mother has her back looked at. Tennis and not Fox News is on the TVs. Thank you, Ceiling Cat.

  13. 13.

    Anoniminous

    Amused to discover a Dutch led co-venture has a monopoly on Indonesian nutmeg and mace. Now if they can just grab cloves the Dutch East India Company will rise again.

  22. 22.

    Bill Arnold

    @raven:
    An audio survey of people around the country repeating Fox News talking points on some Obama-related subject would be a treat.

  32. 32.

    gene108

    so I bought a local fish wrap to read while dining on scrumptious collards, field peas and fried cabbage.

    The police report was the most amusing section. There was an account of the theft of a papillon doggie, which was dyed black (except for the face) by the thief and then returned otherwise unharmed to its yard. The police report noted that the owner said, “We know who done it.”

    My sister-in-laws great-grandfather built a beach house on Long Beach Island, in NJ, back in the 1930’s.

    They still have some old newspaper clippings from the 1940’s about the news on the island.

    It pretty much read like “Mrs. John Smith had forgotten to buy sugar to bake a cake for her grandson’s birthday, but luckily Mrs. William Jones stopped by and let Mrs. Smith borrow some of hers. They had tea and discussed the hot weather we are currently experienced, and if it is responsible for the above average number of greenhead biting flies seen here.”

    Basically it was literally local gossip about who did what or who met who.

    Nice time portal into the past.

  34. 34.

    BGinCHI

    @Elizabelle: Hell no. The LGF guy is a grown-up.

    Cudlip Johnson is a wet behind the jug ears MS cracker narcissist who may actually be dumber than the Breitbarts.

  35. 35.

    Tommy

    LOL. I live in a small rural town. Grew up here but lived/worked in DC for almost two decades. Having the experience of living in a large metro area it is strange at times being back here. Having the Washington Post as my daily newspaper and then what I have now all I can say is wow. Oh and the crime section is pretty funny to read.

  38. 38.

    jl

    If this is a true accurate report wouldn’t it be ‘We know who done did it/’? Color me suspicious, BC. Blog scandal.

  40. 40.

    Betty Cracker

    @BGinCHI: I’m so glad the LGF dude recovered his senses. But whenever he’s invoked as a source or good example, I feel compelled to remind everyone that he was pals with Pam Geller and running a bigoted hate site just a few years ago. But kudos to him for renouncing the Dark Side.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    At one time lived in the boonies, where the local paper (well, it hailed from the next county over; our county had zero newspapers) proudly and prominently billed itself as “The Nation’s Largest Tri-weekly.”

  45. 45.

    Tommy

    Wow just read this:

    The latest details of the horrific accident with the 9 year old and the Uzi almost perfectly captures the term ‘tragicomic’. Not surprisingly, after the shooting, the 9 year old complained that the gun was too powerful for her and complained to her parents of shoulder pain. Her parents were so focused on her apparent injury that they did not at first notice that instructor Charles Vacca was lying on the ground with a mortal wound to the head.

    You think that story can’t get even worse and then it does …..

  48. 48.

    Eric U.

    @jl: there are over 20 major southern dialects, and many more variations of each of those. I grew up in an area that has a dialect that is so ridiculous that people simply don’t believe anyone talks that way. To my eternal regret, they don’t say “ya’ll”

  50. 50.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    Speaking of small towns.

    According to my phone; the city I grew up in, which was a small town then but rapidly during my childhood, seems to have an albino cobra on the loose. It’s apparently bit a dog, who responded well to treatment. The address of it’s sighting seemed familiar, so I looked the handy Google Maps and yup it’s about a block from my jr. high school. They’re transporting anti-venom up from San Diego(kinda surprised they don’t have any in LA).

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @BGinCHI:

    Amen!

    @Betty Cracker:

    I look at LGF Johnson the same way I look at David Brock — I’m glad that he’s on our side now and doing good work, but I’m still in Trust But Verify mode, because backsliding happens (I’m looking at you, Arianna Huffington.)

  53. 53.

    Tommy

    @Violet: I didn’t see/hear that. But it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. As I’ve said here guns are not my cup of tea. But many of my family members were at a range or outside shooting guns at her age. But not a freaking uzi. I just can’t wrap my mind around the parents that would do something like that. Again guns are not my thing but my father taught me a gun is a tool, but a powerful and dangerous one. It has to be treated with respect or you could hurt and/or kill yourself or somebody else. And clearly that is the last thing you would want happen.

  58. 58.

    Violet

    @Tommy: Yes, here it is:

    Staff at an Arizona gun range reportedly told investigators that the release forms signed by the family of a 9-year-old girl who accidentally killed her instructor with an Uzi last week were unavailable because they had been “blown away by the wind.”

    WTF? How are there not originals or copies back at the check in desk in the office?

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @Botsplainer:

    That was one of the first things I thought about when the whole Michael Brown had a juvenile record! thing started being bandied about. It sounds like just about every teenager and adult in the whole damn town has at least two warrants or summonses out for them because that’s how the town (and the county?) raises money.

  61. 61.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m looking at you, Arianna Huffington.

    Arianna Huffington hasn’t backslid. She’s always cared first about which side her bread was buttered on and everything else a distant second. She started siding with Democrats when it was obvious the Republicans had no future in California, but I never got the impression she had any real ideological affinity. She just wants to be on the winning team.

  66. 66.

    Trollhattan

    @kc:
    Feeling so out of it since I know fewer than half the targets of NudeSelfieApplecloudGate. Who are you people?

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    @kc: Surely the could just submit as evidence the last million release forms that were signed, and show there was a one-to-one correspondence between shooters and releases? And that this release form is the exception?

  70. 70.

    Tommy

    @Botsplainer: Let me see if I can explain the point about all the municipalities mentioned in the story. There is a difference between St. Louis the city and St. Louis County. Best I can tell, and I live in the St. Louis metro area, the local towns didn’t want to pay taxes to the city. So they just pulled away and every town kind of rolls their own thing. I don’t know if there is a direct correlation but I am sure you have read each household in Ferguson was issued three tickets and/or arrest warrants last year. IMHO that is a staggering number. I think they are making up their tax base by fines and tickets.

  71. 71.

    Botsplainer

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m picturing all the floppy-jowled, pasty-faced beneficiaries of all this fine money and duplicative offices. Judges and chiefs, prosecutors and cops, callously ruining lives while patting themselves on the back.

  72. 72.

    kc

    @Trollhattan:

    Jill Scott is a singer and actress, and also sometime plus-size model. I just looked on Twitter and saw a bunch of tweets about Jill Scott. Most of them pretty nasty.

  77. 77.

    Schlemizel

    @Violet:
    I wondered if that left the family free to sue for emotional distress?

    Also too: “I’d love to show you my drivers license officer but it blew away in the wind & is unavailable.”

  78. 78.

    Tommy

    @kc: Yeah I had to read the article more then once cause I couldn’t believe that was possible. How do you not notice a man is laying on the ground bleeding from a gun shoot wound to this head.

  82. 82.

    Botsplainer

    @Tommy:

    I read somewhere that the police boards in the St Louis area are controlled by the wingnut-heavy legislature as a remnant of the time shortly before the War of Whiny Assed Titty Babies Slaver Treason.

  84. 84.

    raven

    I would love to kick the fucking dogshit out of Tweety. This is the second night he is railing about “how can Obama sleep at night with these beheadings”.

  85. 85.

    Schlemizel

    @BGinCHI:
    You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.

  87. 87.

    shelley

    An item in my sister’s small town paper police blotter, “Homeowner reports garden ornaments crushed by persons unknown.”

  88. 88.

    srv

    TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate race in Kansas had ended his campaign.

    Democrat Chad Taylor had been running against three-term Republican incumbent Pat Roberts. Taylor sent a letter Wednesday to the Kansas secretary of state, withdrawing from the race.

  90. 90.

    Tommy

    @kc: There is that. I don’t have any kids myself but close with my niece. She is 6. Anytime I am with her. My brother or his wife. We never take our eyes off her when in public. Not because we don’t trust her but because she is freaking six. Isn’t it our role as adults to take care of her? How do you take your nine year old to a gun range and not have your eyes on her 24/7?

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne

    @kc:

    Also the star of the HBO miniseries of “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.” She and Anika Noni Rose were terrific, but I think they had a hard time convincing Scott to go back to Botswana with a toddler (she was pregnant while making the series).

  92. 92.

    Schlemizel

    @raven:
    I strongly suggest we air drop tweety into ISIS territory on a rescue mission. I’d gladly volunteer to send BillO and Manity to go with him

  94. 94.

    jl

    @raven: How can Tweety sleep at night with some of the dreck he pumps out, in front of the whole country. Indeed, how can Obama sleep at night? Why does Obama not follow Paul’s sage advice and convene a joint session of Congress and ‘militarily destroy’ ISIS. Brilliant minds like Paul and Perry let Obama in on The One Weird Trick that defeats terrorist groups, and Obama does nothing.

    I’m sure Tweety will explain how it could be very simply done after he calms down.

  95. 95.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: I’m with you on that raven. What is it, if one or Americans overseas get’s wacked, we invade? Didn’t we try that, absent the Americans getting wacked beforehand?

  97. 97.

    cckids

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Tennis and not Fox News is on the TVs.

    As a caretaker for my son, who has sooooo many doctor’s appointments, I’ve noticed that over the past 2-3 years, more & more doctors have switched their TVs to cooking, travel, or the History channel, rather than Fox/CNN as they were before.

    The receptionist at one of them said she did it because the seniors who are their main clients were just too angry all the time & she couldn’t take it anymore. She says the difference is almost shocking.

  98. 98.

    Botsplainer

    Like a Reason commenter, I’m having major issues on this concept.

    Quinn describes one homeless girl who had been written up for violating an occupancy permit restriction. To simply reside in St. Louis County, you have to register your residence with the local government. What that entails varies from town to town. In the town of Berkeley, for example, new tenants must obtain an occupancy permit from the Inspections Department of the City of Berkeley. A permit costs $20, and requires a valid driver’s license or identification card. If your license has been suspended due to an outstanding warrant, you can’t move in. A permit includes the names of the people legally allowed to live at the residence. If you want to add additional names or change a name, it’s an additional $25 and a signed authorization from the landlord. And again, you’ll need an ID.

  101. 101.

    srv

    WASHINGTON — The nation’s respite from troublesome health care inflation is ending, the government said Wednesday in a report that renews a crucial budget challenge for lawmakers, taxpayers, businesses and patients.

    Economic recovery, an aging society, and more people insured under the new health care law are driving the long-term trend.

    Projections by nonpartisan experts with the Health and Human Services department indicate the pace of health care spending will pick up starting this year and beyond. The introduction of expensive new drugs for the liver-wasting disease hepatitis C also contributes to the speed-up in the short run.

    The report from the Office of the Actuary projects that spending will grow by an average of 6 percent a year from 2015-2023. That’s a notable acceleration after five consecutive years, through 2013, of annual growth below 4 percent.

    Obama’s gimme is over

  102. 102.

    kc

    @Tommy:

    It sounds like they were SO focussed on the little princess they totally didn’t notice that dude with his brains blown out.

    Here’s another story. As soon as it happened she ran over to her parents complaining that her shoulder hurt, according to this story.

    I’m not understanding any of this.

  104. 104.

    Schlemizel

    @cckids:
    I find that any TV on in a place I am forced to listen to it, airports, Dr. offices, bars, really any place if I do not have a choice. That said Fox would be the worst.

  106. 106.

    LAC

    @raven: can I join you? I cannot stand that asshat. He should go back to reminiscing about the time he and tip o’neil drank and fell down and har har har

  107. 107.

    Violet

    @Tommy: They did have their eyes on their nine-year-old daughter. She freaked out, dropped the gun and ran over to her parents. They were paying attention to her and didn’t realize the instructor had been hit.

    I can imagine if they were inexperienced with guns they were overwhelmed when their daughter freaked out and complained her shoulder hurt. It probably didn’t even occur to them that the instructor could even get hit. They market those places like Six Flags–exciting but safe. How could the instructor of all people get shot? Probably never even crossed their minds.

    And that’s yet another reason why kids shouldn’t be allowed at places like that and in general they should not advertise themselves like Six Flags.

  109. 109.

    kc

    @Mnemosyne:

    I heard that was a good series, though I never saw it.

    I feel bad for Ms. Scott. People are really raking her over the coals on Twitter.

  110. 110.

    PurpleGirl

    @Tommy: This reinforces my idea that this was a gun-crazies’ idea on the par with the pictures of a baby holding a beer bottle or on a bear skin rug. Probably couldn’t take the video at a range in NJ so they planned the vacation to be able to go to this range. And in our modern age the equivalent of a brownie photo is the cell phone video.

  111. 111.

    Roger Moore

    @Botsplainer:
    The impression I get is of a town with a declining tax base and high unemployment from the Great Recession that’s turned to petty fines to make up the budget shortfall. Put that together with racially biased policing, and you have a real toxic stew.

  112. 112.

    skerry

    @cckids: I was at an imaging facility today and “Golden Girls” was on the TV. I laughed to myself, but your explanation makes sense.

  113. 113.

    Schlemizel

    @LAC:
    Another Clinton screw up!! If only Bill had chosen Tweety to be his press sec (tweety campaigned like a mad man & whined loudly when passed over) none of this would be happening today. With the added benefit that one of the great cock hunters of the late 90’s would not have been at the head of a snuffling pack of crazed dogs on the hunt.

  114. 114.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    One of my unfixed Tom cats just sat on my lap, gave me all sorts of love, scritched me, and gave me nose kisses, and then proceeded to piss all over me. I am doomed.

  116. 116.

    Elizabelle

    There was an account of the theft of a papillon doggie, which was dyed black (except for the face) by the thief and then returned otherwise unharmed to its yard. The police report noted that the owner said, “We know who done it.”

    It’s like the Coen Brothers meet Carl Hiassen.

  117. 117.

    Trollhattan

    @PurpleGirl: They clearly had a (armored) bucket list drawn up for her and after notching “drive monster truck” earlier that day, simply had to make a small modification: Shoot machine gunsome guy.

  118. 118.

    Tommy

    @PurpleGirl: I don’t have a problem with her at a gun range. I have a problem with letting her have an uzi. Give her a small gun. Don’t give her a semi-automatic weapon.

  120. 120.

    Tommy

    @Tommy: Oh I should add this. I am a 5’4 128 pound dude. I would wonder if I could handle the recoil of an A-47 or an Uzi. Looking at the pics I’ve seen she is a pretty “small” young lady. A fraction of my size.

  122. 122.

    Gene108

    @kc:

    I can see parents so locked into their kids that they do not notice any one else’s injury.

    I think at that point people are not acting consciously and some impulse kicks in that their kid needs protection.

  123. 123.

    Jebediah, RBG

    @Gene108:
    Yeah – I am recalling times out with my young nieces. There were plenty of times that my attention was so focused on them that I could easily have not seen all kinds of things – especially things that would never have entered my mind as possibilities.

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