On today’s date in 1977, it snowed in Tampa, Florida:
It’s nearly 70 degrees in Tampa today. This has been the warmest winter I can ever remember, and I’m old enough to remember the snow.
Please talk amongst yourselves.
This post is in: Open Threads
On today’s date in 1977, it snowed in Tampa, Florida:
It’s nearly 70 degrees in Tampa today. This has been the warmest winter I can ever remember, and I’m old enough to remember the snow.
Please talk amongst yourselves.
by John Cole| 85 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Pet Rescue
Happy MLK Day!
Spent an hour this morning watching Thurston Howl the First and his sister Lovey squirm, and it was maybe the best hour I’ve spent in ages. They are in the awkward trying to walk phase, and are stumbling around like a bunch of Irish drunks on St. Patty’s Day. Couple sideways steps forward, fall. Coouple awkward lurches forward, face plant. They are really a lot more vocal than they were yesterday, too.
Mama is doing quite well, and ate 2/3 of a big can of dog food. She hadn’t been eating much, my sister said, so when she basically chased me into the kitchen this morning, on a hunch I gave her a ton of food, and she ate it all up. I put a bowl of dry food in her room so she can nibble as necessary.
More pet pics coming soon.
by Zandar| 50 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Stuff About Black People Written By a Black Person
America’s civil rights journey in two sentences:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Letter From a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
“It isn’t hard to find injustice around us, but we must not let injustice smear the good deeds that do occur everyday.”
–Sen. Rand Paul, Break Down The Wall That Separates Us From The ‘Other America’, January 19, 2015
Sage nodding from CHORUS.
Exeunt, FIN.
Open thread.
This post is in: Open Threads, Post-racial America, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All
The editor of UVA's conservative paper—a 3rd year in college—rails against @tanehisicoates as an advocate of violence http://t.co/FcnNwzhPfg
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) January 19, 2015
From the article:
… “The Case for Reparations,” which the University delicately describes as “one of the most talked-about pieces of nonfiction in recent memory,” is a serious argument for something more radical than mere preferential treatment or quotas or financial assistance for past wrongs. Rather, Coates is seeking a coordinated government policy that would not only provide retribution for black Americans, but also severely punish white Americans in the form of active discrimination and taxation…
Yet, what is most confusing and downright revolting about the University’s selection of Coates for the keynote address is his public and active support of a violent resolution to America’s racial problems. Regardless of your opinion of the Ferguson events, the fact of the matter is that Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and gave his acceptance speech on nonviolence during an exponentially more violent and hostile time in the history of America’s race relations. To the disbelief of a society that was moving towards extremes on both ends of the issue, Dr. King expressed an unwavering conviction in the rectitude and efficacy of nonviolent solutions…
And look how well Dr. King was treated, in response!
My general take on campus ideologues is I hope they can use the resources of university to broaden their knowledge and deepen their views.
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) January 19, 2015
…. or then again, they — the RWNJ ones, at least — can just perfect their I’M THE REAL VICTIM whinging, and start on a prosperous career of Kochsucking aboard the Wingnut Wurlitzer (see: PJ O’Rourke, Dinesh D’Souza, Ross Doubtthat, et al).
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Apart from considering how far “we” have come — and how much further we have to go — what’s on the agenda for the day?
Open Thread: Squid-Clouds of Butt-Hurt, MLK Day EditionPost + Comments (62)
by John Cole| 87 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Pet Rescue
Really wanted to let Ginger have some time to settle in, so gave her a few hours and then Holly and Kim came over to soak up puppy adorableness. First, Lovey (and I have only one pic of her because she was really squirmy. She’s the littler of the two and more vocal:
Thurston, on the other hand, is quite the little tank:
Too cute.
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Open Threads, Pet Rescue
If anything will wake Cole from his puppy-admiring torpor, it’s the chance to bigfoot. Soo… Tom Ley, at Deadspin:
Hank the dog, the very good dog that was adopted by the Milwaukee Brewers last spring after stumbling, half-dead, into the team’s spring training facility, was named Dog of the Year at last night’s World Dog Awards. Yes, shut up, that’s a real thing. It aired on network TV and everything.
Hank triumphed over some stiff competition. The other nominees in the Dog of the Year category included a dog that is the mayor of Cormorant, Minn., the world’s ugliest dog, and the dog that won Best in Show at the Westminster Dog Show. But Mayor Dog, Ugly Dog, and Show Dog don’t have shit on Hank!…
Video, and a chronology of Hank the Dog posts, at the link. Hank really did look like “a diseased sewer rat” only a year ago, and now he’s an advocate (advertisement) for dog rescue.
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What’s on the agenda, apart from hitting refresh every five minutes?
Open While-Waiting-for-Puppy-Pics ThreadPost + Comments (17)
This post is in: Election 2016, Open Threads, Post-racial America, Republican Stupidity
Via Dave Weigel’s twitter feed, Bill “Reliably Wrong” Kristol has anointed Dr. Ben Carson as his new cover idol, so it is now guaranteed that the poor man will never get closer to the Oval Office than the guided tour. Kristol assigned Fred Barnes to write up a long beat-sweetener that ends:
… If nominated, can Carson beat Hillary Clinton or another Democrat? Yes he can. Giles thinks Carson can win 25 percent to 40 percent of the black vote. Williams is doubtful. But Robinson, the draft-Ben leader, says he has “run the numbers” and found that Carson would easily win with 17 percent of the black vote in swing states. “At 17 percent, Hillary loses every swing state in the union, and the Roosevelt coalition is effectively destroyed.” That’s an outcome worth thinking about.
So — remembering it was Kristol who first introduced the national Republican Party to a certain firebrand he met while cruising near Wasilla — it looks like Dr. Carson is officially the new Sarah Palin, a comparison that has to be infuriating to both Carson and Palin. And pretty well confirms my theory that the “Tea Patriots” hope to use Carson as a stalking horse to pull the “centrist RINO squishes” of the permanent-party GOP closer to their end of the very-far-right spectrum.
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Apart from bootless speculation, what’s on the agenda for this Sunday evening?
Sunday Evening Open Thread: Well, It Was Nice While It LastedPost + Comments (102)