Regarding Anne Laurie’s comment on Chafee being dull, maybe dull is what the country needs for a change. We’ve had a great, inspiring visionary leader for near seven years who challenged us to be better than we are, and all we’ve done is shit the bed on that count. Half of us actually tried to be worse (looking at you, Republicans), and the rest of us tried to be better, but pretty much couldn’t get our shit together enough. Oh, well.
There’s also the fact that Chafee has no chance in hell to get elected. He’s SOOO dull I think his name is actually spelled Chaffee, but I can’t muster up the interest to stop typing and google it. That’s fucking dull. I’ll just go back and forth with each spelling until I see it on tv somewhere and survive being right 50% of the time until then. Chaffee, for the pedants who will count how many times I typed it. I know you are reading this chomping champing (I hate you people) at the bit to correct me.
Took these pics last night when I got up to go to the bathroom. It’s Where’s Waldo meets Pets:
What is that hiding back there? Why, It’s Thurston!
He was moving so much I couldn’t get a good picture. He likes to sleep back there and he curls his body around the left side of my head and puts his head and front paws on my chest. It’s goofy, but comforting and nice. He always looks like he is smiling, I think.
What’s this over here?
Let’s peel back a layer:
<
Lovey! She is such a sound sleeper. When I wake up in the morning I have to wake her up and she is groggy and has to rub the sleep out of her eyes. And if you look closely, you can see Lily underneath the covers underneath Lovey. Rosie was down by my feet under the covers grumping because people in bed were moving.
Getting sad every time I see Lovey because I know she is going to her forever home soon.
rikyrah
The pictures are wonderful. And congratulations on the new addition to the family.
jl
Thnx for petpixapalooza.
Isn’t a given that Rosie is grumping? Or the cause of grumping in others?
TaMara (BHF)
Scary night in IL tonight, hope all the BJ folk from there are ok.
I’ve never had an un-neutered male dog before…and you know, puppy. We were on a walk this afternoon and encountered the most adorable German Shepherd puppy, 5 months old, female. They did a quick nose to nose together and we went on our separate ways. Then the hormones hit and poor Bixby didn’t know what to do with them. He started spinning and leaping around. The female was long gone and it didn’t look like he connected the dots.
It was like having a 130 lb toddler on a sugar rush on a leash. I survived.
TaMara (BHF)
Oh and the pups are adorable. I can see why you had to keep Thurston Howl. He is adorable and you needed a little boy to balance out the pack.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@John Cole +1:
Champing at the bit. Correction delivered.
Chafee is too boring to look up.
Misterpuff
Well, if his name was Lincoln Coffee, I might be stimulated or at least caffeinated enough to get to the voting booth.
Hillary is snooze town.
Fortunately, just the thought of a Repug clown with keys to the SCOTUS gets my heart rate up to danger levels, more than enough to get me off the couch and out to the votery.
Lavocat
You’re obviously very much an animal person, John. You seem more doglike than catlike in your nature, which is why Steve seems much more doglike than catlike. Tunch would be laughing if he could see you now: “So, Fatboy, you’ve gone over to the dark side, huh?”
RaflW
Well, one of the great dullards of our era is Scott Walker. He’s a dull, hollow-eyed dud. But he’s also vicious.
Two stories this week from WI, first that a leading admin staffer can no longer say “climate change,” and more importantly, that the WI Dept. of Natural Resources, which regulates all sorts of things from mining to hunting to water quality, well of course they are facing a big budget cut. We knew that.
But now the WI DNR may well close it’s science bureau. Goodness, we can’t have science leading our environmental policy decisions, oh gosh no. Of course, his idol Reagan appointed James Watt and Anne Gorsuch to hack apart Interior and EPA, so this should be no surprise.
I cannot believe that what he is doing to WI is really what most Wisconsinites want. They have become pawns as Walker postures to make the biggest cuts and slashes to budgets and programs that are central to a decent quality of life and modestly safety. He just wants to prove his ultra-Reagan cred. He is a dull man set on anything but a dull course.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Misterpuff: every four years, I keep waiting for the USSC to become a big issue. Seems to me it really hasn’t been since ’92. Just bewilders me.
mclaren
LILY FOR PRESIDENT 2016
“Smarter than Ted Cruz, better foreign policy than Hillary”
Aleta
I’m just a pup, standing in front of a guy, asking him to love him — is what thurston brings to mind when I see these pictures of him looking at the camera.
srv
The soft bigotry of lowered expectations leads to Hitlary.
seaboogie
Clearly, John, Thurston has been whispering sweet puppy wishes into your ear all night long – so this was inevitable. And Lovey is staying the the BJ fam, so we get to watch her grow up too! There is a fella named Koda who is waiting to be alternately charmed and harassed by her – a match made in heaven I’m sure.
*Koda is a male, yes?
srv
Always, always remember, it’s a few bad apples.
NotMax
Typed that on purpose, didn’t ya?
Anything, so long as it doesn’t devolve into yet another “HRC may suck, but any Republican really, really, really sucks” thread.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax: Wanna do a hero/traitor thing about Glenward Snowald? We could flip a coin to pick sides.
ETA: Or, since srv mentioned bad apples, Jackson 5 vs The Osmond Bros?
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oy vey.
Shall politely and hurriedly move on. ;)
Dull isn’t an automatic disqualification, for what it’s worth. Not in any way equating Chaffee’s politics with his, but Nixon exuded anti-charisma.
(Guilty of supporting the dull Paul Simon, back when. In the TV age, that he had a face made for radio certainly didn’t help advance his candidacy. And his insistence on bowties. But a mind as sharp as a tack, impressive political experience and credentials and progressive to his core.)
Hal
The Onion is so on point.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/gay-conversion-therapists-claim-most-patients-full,38406/?utm_source=Tumblr&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=Default:1:Default
MobiusKlein
Oh, are we now posting pet pics today?
here’s one I put on FB the other day: Eek, a dead mouse
Violet
Puppies! So cute! I hope geg6 supplies us with lots of pictures of Lovey. And Thurston Howl is totally adorable. What a ham.
Lincoln Chafing Dish–sorry, did I misspell his name?–is so dull I can’t even imagine him running. But why should the republicans have the own car with clowns?
Amir Khalid
No, a dull leader is not what you need, not when the forces of reaction against Obama and his legacy are more worked up than ever. You have gained the beach head, but not yet secured it. Now is not the time for a consolidator.
Puppehs is adorable.
NotMax
We all know what happened the last time the country elected as president someone named Lincoln…
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
A cogent argument against HRC.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Amir Khalid: I wouldn’t be too sure of that. It’s hard to get much duller than Mark Dayton, but we’re doing fine here in Minnesota.
Tommy
My gosh. We are not supposed to have weather like this. Fucked up shit.
NotMax
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Anyone would seem dull following that manic ball o’ fire Pawlenty.
(But I kid.)
Major Major Major Major
It’s “champing at the bit,” John.
Major Major Major Major
Would edit to add but can’t (fix the mobile edit button): oops, missed an earlier pedant correcting you on that.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Major Major Major Major: Morning, Major.
Hilfy
“…Lily underneath the covers underneath Lovey.”
Layers of dogs, sounds like a pet lover’s idea of heaven.
Do we have any idea how large Thurston will grow to be? Like, who’s his daddy?
Lucky man, lucky pets at Cole’s house.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Halfway through this stupid shift.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Man, no one comes around here any more.
NotMax
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Vladimir and Estragon were here, but they got tired of waiting.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@NotMax: Great. Even the fictional characters have left the building.
I hate this post. I did a bunch of edits on this computer, since they won’t let me use my laptop. I had to use Microsoft Online to directly edit the file in my Dropbox since I can’t download anything to this machine. Then IE crashed, losing all of the changes that I’d made.
So much for using this time to get work done.
LesGS
@Hal: Great satire for most folks. But actually a really, really painful reminder for those who have seen the “ex-gay” cure go so very wrong in real life.
geg6
@seaboogie:
Koda is a girl! A wonderful, loving, sweet, hilarious girl! And I can’t wait for her sister to get here!
geg6
And OMG, two Coles will be at my house tomorrow. John and Devin will be coming to bring me my new sweetie. I better tidy up to impress Devin.
Patricia Kayden
@geg6: It’s great that you are taking Lovey. I’m sure we’ll still see pics from time to time.
ThresherK
The idea of someone else named Lincoln running for president reminds me of an incredibly silly and cheesy movie with President Chet Roosevelt.
Americathon is a late-night, gotta-be-somewhat-tired-or-drunk movie.
satby
@TaMara (BHF): wow, if he’s that big already you may not want to wait much longer to get him neutered. Along with all that lust comes a lot of territorial aggression in unneutered males.
Ask me how I know.
Baud
I don’t remember that I’ve ever agreed with you more.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
It was too crowded.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’ve said for years that O-man is the best President of my lifetime(Ike – Obama).
sm*t cl*de
Abnego ran for president on the slogan “Back to Normal with the Normal Man!”
BruceFromOhio
Balance it with the knowledge that she goes healthy, with good grace and proper upbringing, and that she will be loved and cared for as you would have it. Would it be that all such partings were blessed in these ways!
Well done, sir.
ETA @geg6: And a big congratulations to you and yours! Expect calls for updates, pix. ;)
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I agree. But what I liked about John’s post is that it acknowledges how we squandered the opportunity we had starting in 2009. I’ve been saying that for a while, but the dominant meme, as we all know, is to blame Obama.
Mustang Bobby
@BillinGlendaleCA: I am about the same age (born two months before Ike was elected in ’52) and I concur, at least as far as my own self-interests are concerned.
And isn’t that why we vote anyway?
Cervantes
If it makes you feel any better, “chomping at the bit” is these days accepted as “chiefly” a “North American variant” (e.g., in the OED).
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Don’t fret. When all is said and done, if we elect a Democrat, then, whoever it is, Republicans will complain (on even-numbered days) about a cross between Ivan the Terrible, Eva Peron, and Adolf Hitler. (On odd-numbered days it will be Neville Chamberlain.)
And if we elect a Republican, dull will be the least of our problems.
sm*t cl*de
No lesser an authority than S. J. Perelman wrote “Chafing at the bit” but that’s just wrong.
satby
@Baud: Yep. One of the truest (of many) things John’s written.
Elizabelle
Such great little pets.
Look forward to following Lovey’s progress with geg, and sort of hope Thurston does not get too big.
I think Lily and Thurston are going to be looking for Lovey. Maybe the pups can Skype in the future.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
We’re only about an hour away from each other, so possible play dates!
Elizabelle
@geg6: That’s excellent news.
MomSense
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Can you take up knitting? You could put secret messages in the stitches about how much that security/reception (too not great things that don’t go together!) gig sucks. Seriously sharp sticks can be therapeutic, not that I would ever have any kind of irritations to process. A friend told me.
MomSense
@geg6:
Yes please and VIDEO!
cmorenc
@RaflW:
Y’know, it’s worth seriously pondering how a Koch sock-puppet like Walker has successfully managed to attract small majorities of the electorate who bothered to show up in three elections, while the dems have failed to get enough of the supposedly latent majority who didn’t bother to show up, to show up – in a state which previously had a longstanding progressive lean. A frequently cited answer to this conundrum: that all three elections Walker won by two or three percent were off-year rather than Presidential elections is far more an evasion of this fundamental question than answer. Even though true, it leaves unanswered the question of what exactly has happened in Wisconsin society and government over the past decade or two that: a) a sizable enough minority of the electorate to be a majority in off-year elections willingly turn out to vote for what they think Walker stands for; b) where is the portion of the electorate that presumably is (or at least used to be) enough to win Wisconsin for at least the moderately progressive side? Did we lose some to the dark side, and as for the rest, why are they so uninformed and/or unmotivated to not bother to turn out, against the likelihood that their doing so facilitates Walker and his fellow Koch-backed wingnuts winning?
Why are progressives narrowly losing the message / perception war within the Wisconsin electorate – in elections that are so consequential to the quality of Wisconsin life? What sort of resentments is Walker successfully stoking that he can propose such outrageous things as effectively dismantling the hitherto excellent public university system (particularly the flagship U. of Wisconsin) via radical de-funding, while at the same time supporting public-assisted financing of ONE pro sports stadium at a cost roughly comparable to the cuts to the university system?
Y’all better figure this one out, Wisconsin progressives.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack (tablet): I thought it was “chomping”, too, so I looked it up.
Also, it’s one F in Chafee.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Devon will have to drive because Cole won’t be able to see because his eyes will be watering on the way home.
shell
Those puppies have grown, specially Lovey. She is looooong, she seems to go on forever. Swore at first that that was Lily. Looks like another grey, grey, grey, drizzly day. That sums up my mood completely.
WaterGirl
@shell: I had the same thought about Lovey. She has grown so much that I found myself wondering if she has caught up with or possibly surpassed Thurston Howl. (possibly the best dog name, ever)
LanceThruster
Champing at the bit vs. chomping at the bit.