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You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Proposed Anthem for the GOP Convention (Open Thread)

Proposed Anthem for the GOP Convention (Open Thread)

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This song, right there:

Hey, at least a handful of wingnuts thought Colbert’s conservative persona was real, so why not?

In other news, a newish neighbor down the road has an indeterminate number of hound dogs of some sort — the yodeling kind. The dogs’ vocalizations don’t bother me; it amuses me to hear them most of the time, and they aren’t sustained barkers or howlers.

But sometimes they’ll make a sound that is unearthly and chilling. For a moment, I’ll wonder if a sinkhole has opened Hell Mouth in the neighborhood until I realize it’s just the neighbor dogs. I wish they’d stop that.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

65Comments

  1. 1.

    MattF

    Two anapests and a spondee. And yes, I evidently wasted my youth, but who doesn’t? And, I’m real good with crosswords.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    It’s just my guess so don’t take it too seriously, but could it be that The End is nigh, and your new neighbour is the Keeper of The Gates of Hell who has arrived at his post? Maybe you should go by the house and sniff the air, discreetly, to see if you can discern a faint sulphurous odour.

  5. 5.

    guachi

    Trump released his tax plan. It’s basically massive tax cuts for the rich. Not particularly surprising.

  6. 6.

    maurinsky

    I used to have a Basset Hound, he was a darling, but his vocalizations were occasionally terrifying. People would cross the street to avoid him, when all he would do when meeting new people is roll into his back to get belly rubs.

  9. 9.

    rikyrah

    Jeb Bush defends ‘free stuff’ comments
    September 27, 2015, 10:38 am

    Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Sunday said he did not mean to insinuate that black voters choose Democrats because they want “free stuff.”

    The GOP presidential hopeful said his comments were taken out of context.

    “They don’t want free stuff, that was my whole point,” Bush said on “Fox News Sunday.”

    Bush said he meant to say increased economic opportunity would allow African Americans to lift themselves out of poverty and off of welfare.

    “I think we need to make our case to African American voters and all voters an aspirational message fixing a few big things will allow people to rise up, that’s what people want,” he said.

    thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/255083-jeb-bush-defends-free-stuff-comments

  10. 10.

    LWA

    No, for pure unearthly yowling, its the sound of cats matin’/ fightin’/ makin’ up, which for some weird reason, Nature has dictated must only occur in the early morning hours.

  11. 11.

    Germy Shoemangler

    The Associated Press Stylebook 2015:

    AP will use “climate doubters” instead of “climate skeptics”

    The agency’s new stylebook entry advises against using “deniers” as well, but at least it acknowledges that the true skeptics are adherents to the scientific method.

    The change was made to “help our reporters and editors present the news accurately, concisely and clearly.”

    Though some public officials and laymen and only a few climate scientists disagree, the world’s scientific organizations say that the world’s climate is changing because of the buildup of heat-trapping gases, especially carbon dioxide, from the burning of coal, oil and gas. This is supported by more than 90 percent of the peer-reviewed scientific literature…

    …To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers.

  13. 13.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    Any number of songs from “Bob Roberts” work here.

    Presciently, Tim Robbins didn’t make a soundtrack recording of it for sale, worried that the same folks who would go on to not “get” Stephen Colbert would also not understand Bob.

  15. 15.

    jl

    My folks’ cat emits the weirdest most chilling howls from time to time. We can’t figure out why. Best theory is that sometimes it just likes to hear itself make noise. It goes into kitchen sometimes to do it where it can get the biggest bang for the buck in terms of echo and ear grating goodness. Just sits there for a few minutes and makes a racket, looks very pleased with itself, then walks out, tall and proud and happy, purring away, waving its tail.

  16. 16.

    shell

    Got the Great British Bake Off going in the background. Theyre making the contestants make their own Phyllo dough? Yikes!

  18. 18.

    Amir Khalid

    @shell:
    You mean, like Fluffy from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone? If so, and the new neighbour is very tall, then there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just Rubeus Hagrid.

  20. 20.

    Redshift

    @Germy Shoemangler: Yeah, they’re not using “skeptics” because it lumps them in with people who aren’t impervious to reality, and they’re not using “deniers” because it’s accurate but hurts their fee-fees. Because that’s how journalism works, right?

  21. 21.

    WereBear

    Our Siamese mix doesn’t howl, but he gets a lot of vowels and Mandarin inflections in his frequent verbal communication.

  22. 22.

    Belafon

    @rikyrah: As Sanders had to learn and Warren spoke of yesterday, improving the overall economy is not going to fix the issues blacks face.

  23. 23.

    jl

    @ThresherK (GPad): Don’t know. It’s a mutt abandoned cat that showed up at the door one day. Had an ID collar, but info was out of date and could not find its human boss people, never found out the history of the cat.

  24. 24.

    goblue72

    @Redshift: That was my reaction as well. Good they don’t use “skeptics” anymore – as that suggests a hint of rationality in their beliefs. Not sure “deniers” is any better. How about we just call them “wrong”? Or “climate change ignorati”? That would be the factually accurate description.

  27. 27.

    Steeplejack

    @Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim:

    Ha, just thinking the same thing.

    Don’t know if you (or anyone reading) only saw the movie (A Christmas Story), but Jean Shepherd’s book from which it is taken, Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters, is hilarious. More about the Bumpuses in there.

  28. 28.

    HRA

    @shell:

    As someone who watched her mother making phyllo every weekend, I feel sorry for those contestants. I tried making it 3 times and never won unless looking like a lace tablecloth could be called successful. .

  29. 29.

    jl

    Listening to clip on TPM of 60 minutes Pelley interview of Trump. An idiot interviewing a buffoon.
    Pelley is trying to give impression that he has even the slightest bit of knowledge about anything in his idiot balloon head.

    Pelley, Todd, Stahl, Dick(as in ‘dick’)erson, all noxious fraudulent idiots. Who is the superannuated teen male model running his evening news as a social media show and tell? I forget. Gawd, what a worthless national news media.

    No link, so as not to waste anyone’s time who might thoughtlessly click through.

  30. 30.

    maurinsky

    @LWA:

    This summer, there was a small flock of birds that decided to nest around our air conditioner. They made horrible noises to rival the velociraptors in Jurassic Park at 4am every day. Worse than cats!

    Have you ever heard a rabbit scream? That’s also a terrible sound!

  32. 32.

    Ruckus

    @jl:
    If your talking head sounds or actually is smarter than the guest, the guest won’t come back. Fewer eyeballs.
    And yes, it really is that simple.

    ETA Also if your guest is really, really a lot smarter than the audience (and the talking head)…. Fewer eyeballs.

  33. 33.

    catclub

    On the Trump tax plan: WAPO says it is a populist plan – takes all Trump claims a t face value. Useless. Plus wrong.
    washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/09/28/heres-whats-in-donald-trumps-tax-plan/

    NYT ( Josh Barro) does real analysis, and says it is basically Jeb Bush’s plan on steroids and nowhere near revenue neutral.
    Huuuge tax breaks all around. No real revenue increases.

    nytimes.com/2015/09/29/upshot/trump-plan-is-tax-cut-for-the-rich-even-hedge-fund-managers.html

  34. 34.

    philpm

    @maurinsky: The only thing people have to avoid with my Bassett is the flying slobber. He’s met only a couple of people that he wouldn’t go near, otherwise it’s “be my new best friend” time.

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    @maurinsky: I have heard a rabbit scream exactly once, and you’re right — it is a bone-chilling sound. I still remember it, even though I was a kindergartener (I think) when I heard it. The story has a happy ending: The rabbit was just startled by a dog behind a fence and wasn’t injured. But it jumped straight up into the air and emitted the most blood-curdling shriek I’ve ever heard. Scarred the shit outta me.

  38. 38.

    jl

    @Ruckus: I have no doubt that Turmp is smarter than most of the national media news celebrities. But that is like digging a hole in the ground for the low bar.

  39. 39.

    tom

    Talking about eerie sounds, woke up last night to a pack of coyotes chasing and I presume catching something in the woods near my house. A few minutes of howling and yelping from what sounded like half a dozen, if not more, as they ran through the neighborhood. It would’t bother me so much but visions of them chasing my cat (who was safely inside) were hard to dispell.

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    Marco handles Trump PERFECTLY

    talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/marco-rubio-donald-trump-freak-show

    “I’m not interested in the back and forth to be a member or part of his freak show,” Rubio told NPR. “He is a very sensitive person. He doesn’t like to be criticized. He responds to criticism very poorly. He had a speech in South Carolina to an empty crowd. He got booed on Friday at that Values Voters Summit. His poll numbers have taken a beating, and he was embarrassed on national television at the debate by Carly Fiorina and others.”

    “But this election is not going to be about Donald Trump,” Rubio continued. “He thinks it is, but it’s not about him. It has to be about the issues confronting our country. And my sense of it is that every time issues become prominent, he will say something outrageous or do something outrageous so that he doesn’t have to talk about the issues.”

    I mean, I hate to give a clown like Rubio any props, but that is about eleventy billion times better than any other GOP clown has put it so far.

  42. 42.

    01jack

    @Betty Cracker: I heard one just this summer. Dog chased rabbit across the yard (ordinarily just harmless sport), rabbit goes for gap in chain-link fence, and gets stuck halfway through. I presume a gap he used before but had now outgrown. Screams repeatedly while dog sniffs.

    I had to pull him back through out of the fence. Seemed uninjured but lost his new blue jacket.

  43. 43.

    Brachiator

    @guachi:

    Trump released his tax plan

    Hmmm. Let’s see, now.

    Golly, gee, a rich guy advocating for the elimination of the estate tax. Who would have thunk it?

    @catclub

    NYT ( Josh Barro) does real analysis, and says it is basically Jeb Bush’s plan on steroids and nowhere near revenue neutral. Huuuge tax breaks all around. No real revenue increases.

    Thank for the link and reference. I will take a longer look later on.

    Trump’s continued rise in GOP polls is amazing, especially as some voters start hissing him for dissing Rubio, not being a “real” conservative, or not being sincere in his faith, etc. It will be interesting to see how his tax plan is viewed by average folk.

  44. 44.

    jl

    All GOP the presidential candidates for 2016 are clowns, only question is what kind of make-up an costume each one prefers.

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jeffro: You’re right — that is actually an excellent response from Rubio. If he came up with that himself and on the spot, I’ll be forced to revise my low opinion of his political instincts.

    @01jack: Poor bunny!

  46. 46.

    Humboldtblue

    But sometimes they’ll make a sound that is unearthly and chilling. For a moment, I’ll wonder if a sinkhole has opened Hell Mouth in the neighborhood until I realize it’s just the neighbor dogs. I wish they’d stop that.

    Baskerville, Homeslice, Baskerville.

    Unless we are talking about the wonderfully named and tragically gone far too soon former Memphis State basketball star, Baskerville Holmes.

  48. 48.

    Matt McIrvin

    @goblue72: “Deniers” really pisses people off because the word evokes Holocaust denial, and therefore has emotional connotations of neo-Nazism. I think some organizations avoid it as too inflammatory for that reason.

    I say “contrarians” when I’m not trying to irritate people. It sounds neutral without the positive connotations of “skeptic”. Maybe too neutral.

  53. 53.

    rikyrah

    GOP To Launch New Assault On Obamacare, Planned Parenthood

    House Republicans have a plan to get their bills past the Senate.

    Michael McAuliff
    Senior Congressional Reporter, The Huffington Post

    WASHINGTON — Planned Parenthood and Obamacare are probably the two things the GOP hates most. House Republicans are targeting both this week with an obscure procedural move that could finally advance opposition bills to President Barack Obama’s desk.

    The procedure is called budget reconciliation, and legislation advanced that way cannot be filibustered in the Senate, is subject only to limited amendments and needs only simple majority votes to pass, according to House and Senate rules.

    It would then be up to Obama to veto the measures, which he would be all but certain to do. But the process would move two cherished GOP goals through the Senate, pushing them further than they’ve ever gotten before.

    “Obamacare remains as unpopular as ever, and this package gives us our best shot to put a repeal bill on the president’s desk,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who is leading the Obamacare attack and rolled out his plans Monday.

    Congress set up the moves last spring when it passed a budget plan that included reconciliation provisions — essentially instructions for various committees to draw up legislation targeting the Affordable Care Act and other unspecified issues. Senate committees are expected to take similar steps to those in the House.

    huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-republicans-obamacare-planned-parenthood_560965d2e4b0768126fe3f35

  55. 55.

    rikyrah

    @goblue72:

    @rikyrah: Fixing a few big things means “fixing” it so that only a few rich people benefit from the system.

    I know…

    but, he talks in those Frank Luntz approved dogwhistles that the MSM love so that they can pretend and not ask challenging questions.

  57. 57.

    Elizabelle

    James Fallows has a good roundup on false equivalence. Do click the link within; it will give you other stories he’s called the “both sides” crowd on.

    As chronicled over the years in posts collected here, the “both sides make their claims, who are we to judge?” reflex is very powerful in our business. That is largely because we’re most comfortable when acting in the role of a referee at a sporting event, a judge at a trial, a moderator at a debate, or some similar figure letting presumptively legitimate contenders fight it out on their own. To intervene directly and say “There are two sides here, but one of them is bunk” is uncomfortable, because it seems “partisan.” It is also risky, because it requires the reporter to learn enough about an issue to judge claims of relative truth.

    He thinks AP’s decision to go with “climate change doubters” over “cc deniers” is ridiculous too. Also his take on debate moderators (aka spectators) and a reader’s take Stephen Colbert’s differing treatment of Ted Cruz (demolished) vs. Donald Trump (passed, pretty much).

  58. 58.

    Elizabelle

    @01jack: Glad that one had a happy ending. That is a wiser bunny.

    I know nature is red in tooth and claw, but I cannot bear to hear or see it.

  59. 59.

    trollhattan

    @Germy Shoemangler:
    Highly recommend yesterday’s “On the Media” broadcast where Bob Garfield absolutely raked the AP editor (lead science editor IIRC) in charge of the policy change, over the coals. Worth a listen to hear the rationale and said rationale skewered with gusto. I thought they were going to come to blows.

  61. 61.

    Yatsuno

    @shell:

    Theyre making the contestants make their own Phyllo dough?

    That’s not competition, that’s torture. I half-expect The Hague to intervene.

  63. 63.

    Ruckus

    @jl:
    He’s not stupid. You don’t spend all those years making a small estate into something that most any mutual fund manager has managed to do, if you are stupid.
    He is however a gigantic ego with 2 feet and a very bad comb over.
    What I was trying to say is that a talking head is rarely allowed to make the guest look stupid, unless just talking to them shows the stupidity. Then that guest should never have been on air. They also can’t talk up to the guest a lot, that shows the talking head to be stupid. That’s why Colbert worked so well. He did exactly the opposite of what a talking head does. There aren’t many examples of people going against the talking head standard profile and getting away with it. Because they have to be smart, quick and funny in a certain way and most of us just aren’t.

  64. 64.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Yatsuno: I’ve never tied to make phyllo pastry. I did once investigate how to make puff pastry, which I imagine is similar. The procedure seems roughly equivalent in complexity to the technique used by feudal Japanese smiths in forging sword steel. Pie crusts, I make. Puff pastry & phyllo pastry come in a box.

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