Bixby watching the bison not far from our place.
Too good not to share:
LOUISVILLE, Neb. (Plattsmouth Fire Department) – A 120-pound Great Dane stuck about 20 feet up a tree in Louisville was rescued Saturday night by members of the Plattsmouth Volunteer Fire Department.
PVFD crews, along with Elmwood Rescue, were covering the Louisville area so its personnel could attend their annual banquet when the unusual call came in. The owner couldn’t find his dog, then heard a whining sound and noticed the dog in the tree.
With assistance from Cass County Sheriff’s Department deputies, Elmwood Rescue and the property owners, the plan was to get a harness on the dog and see if it would follow a friend of the owner back down the tree. When that didn’t work, the next option was to attach a long leash to the harness and lower the dog to the ground.
A team on the ground held a tarp to catch the dog. The second option worked and the dog was lowered into the tarp and was soon back on the ground, unharmed.
The owner believes the dog may have been chasing a raccoon.
There’s a photo at the link.
Non-big foot open thread.
SiubhanDuinne
IT’S A TARP!!!
P.S. Great pic of the Bixter.
NotMax
Kind of disappointed that the latest upgrade has resurrected the problem of the wrong video(s) showing just on the front page, correct one(s) on the comments page..
Arm The Homeless
It’s hard to tell whether you’re driving Bixby around, or you bought him a Power Wheels.
LAO
OMG. That’s the best story I’ve read today. Thanks TaMara.
PS Bixby looks quite majestic.
Ruckus
@Arm The Homeless:
Looks more like Bixby is in charge.
desertflower
Can you please tell me where you got his harness? I see him wearing it in many photos….I would like to get one like that for my Great Dane. Thanks! He’s a handsome guy…
scav
I’d think any post with Bixby would necessarily come with multiple big feet.
TaMara (HFG)
@desertflower: It’s a Hamilton – the largest one they make. You can get them at Petsmart, etc, but I only found the extra large on Amazon. I have before, gotten them at the local farm store – they have extra large ones in the sheep section.
Miss Bianca
A Great Dane…20 feet up a tree…even with a (possible) raccoon in the equation, this image…does not compute!
Elie
So what do people think bout Bernie’s latest shot across Hillary’s bow, continuing to question her fitness for office? My guess is he is losing badly in NY and trying to pump up his results through negative attacks, figuring he can take it with his negatives being so low till now…
Arm The Homeless
@Ruckus: Anyone with that much jowl to face ratio is obviously the Boss.
Miss Bianca
@Elie: You mean, what do I think besides, “Christ, what an asshole?” I’d like to believe in your scenario.
Eric U.
someone around here was walking their dog and it disappeared. It fell down a sinkhole, but was rescued the next day
Link
Major Major Major Major
What I wouldn’t give to have seen that dog-in-a-tree fiasco.
…Ten dollars. I would give ten dollars.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@TaMara (HFG): My answer was goo=ing to be Tractor Supply or Southern States.
Bixby is regal in his watching the bison pose. Thank you.
Elie
@Miss Bianca:
No, I think it is probably true. Its old school: attack ads work to drag down the opposition’s numbers even as they increase the attacker’s negatives. Bernie has had very low negatives, so he has room — no reason not to go negative and he knows she probably won’t since hers are already so high. It won’t work, but it shows you how much he wants this. Winning is no longer a symbolic thing for a guy with a reformist goal. He wants to be President and thinks he can do it and that he is worthy on being the President….
Arm The Homeless
So I finally broke down and started a damn twitter-twatter account. It seems this won’t last long. I spent at least half my time finding creative ways to tell trolls on the Planned Parenthood account to eat shit and die.
If anyone would like to have witty banter, or simply inflate their follower list, feel free to add me @Trump_Dildos
Elie
She needs to take Bill to an undisclosed location and stuff his mouth with — anything.. for the next two weeks or so. He needs to disappear in every way from her campaign. He has caused her (as I knew he would), to backtrack over his bullshit with BLM… so unnecessary! I think psychologically he may have real difficulty with the thought of her winning and may need to sabotage her in spite of himself. I recommend for him a tour of duty in Syria to broker those peace talks — some quality time with his granddaughter.
Ken
@Miss Bianca:
College pranksters?
Demonic possession?
Trump supporters?
UFOs?
Miss Bianca
@Elie:
And this is what pisses me off personally: that someone who is saying at least *some* of what I’d really like to hear – someone who is obviously striking an economic-populist nerve – strikes me, finally, as so *not* worthy of being the President, compared to his primary opponent. Of course, it’s almost hard to say that with a straight face when you look at the bunch of howler monkeys on the Republican side, but still…I would love to see someone talk Sen. Sanders’s line with a bit more of a *clue*. It’s not enough to rail against Corporatist America: how are you going to get people in line to change the paradigm? Not by being the kind of guy who does his best to piss off and belittle his political allies.
Miss Bianca
@Ken: Could it be…SATAN?
SiubhanDuinne
@TaMara (HFG):
Don’t tell Mnemosyne!
schrodinger's cat
@Ruckus: Large and in charge!
redshirt
@Arm The Homeless: So you hate Planned Parenthood but trolling them for a day was not enough?
PhoenixRising
12:47am: The Dane made coughing noises. Spat a chunk of bark into the Mrs’ outstretched hand. She examined this submission and replied: Okay, Scooby, how did you know that the carnival owners were haunting it themselves? Did someone bark at you?
Sometimes when I tend toward the grumpy, she understands that we’re supposed to follow the big dog to the Mystery Machine.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
I guess I’m the only one not surprised by the direction Sanders has gone. Back early in this race, I read several pieces talking to people active in Vermont politics, including other elected officials, civil servants, and journalists, and the picture that emerged was not in any way an appealing one. The man depicted in those pieces is precisely the vindictive, narcissistic, humorless, unprepared asshole that has emerged the last few weeks.
Elie
@Miss Bianca:
More than anything, is a lack of real fundamental understanding of how our “jobs” work — we are not a centralized command and control economy. Corporations and businesses are the source of our employment. Thus, taking on changes in their power needs to be done with a mind that you can’t just blow it up! If he revealed any knowledge that disrupting that source would mean disrupting our jobs and maybe at the expense of other citizens in other countries — that we have not just a national reality but an international reality to support our economy and the income to our citizens — all of them — those who work for corporations, for small business for themselves, for government! This is pretty complex and there is no way we are gonna have a mass trade war! We are not some third string banana republic and I am not sure Bernie actually knows that. I think he may not even CARE! He may actually, in his calmer, more seemingly rational way, be AS potentially destructive as Trump, if we take him at his word.
schrodinger's cat
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I am not surprised either, I have followed Sanders since his vote against the Bush era immigration reform. He talks a good good game, that’s all.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: I was going to go there with that joke, too!
rikyrah
all by design.
……………………
Reviving a Hollowed-Out High School
Thanks to Chicago’s school-choice system, many local campuses are struggling to survive, burdened with too few students, poor funding, and bad reputations.
KATE N. GROSSMAN
APR 8, 2016
Austin High School on Chicago’s struggling West Side is a proud school with a bad reputation and too few students. It likely has just one more shot at survival.
Austin has hollowed out in recent years, as have dozens of similar schools across Chicago’s poor and mostly Latino and black neighborhoods. With 391 students, including just 57 freshmen across three academies in a building meant for nearly 1,700, Austin is one of 35 Chicago public high schools that are well under half full. Ten schools aren’t even a quarter full.
These schools face a set of woes that make a turnaround all but impossible. A citywide school-choice system leaves these mostly open-enrollment schools with some of Chicago’s most challenging and low-achieving students. Deeply strained budgets fueled by declining enrollment hurt staffing levels, teacher retention, and programming. Mix in a stubborn reputation for violence at many schools—unwarranted in the case of Austin and some others—and these schools are in a death spiral.
In a high-school universe defined by choice, these schools and students are the clear losers. Chicago’s neediest students are clustered at the bottom of the pecking order of the district, in the most under-resourced and embattled schools.
Chicago has a poor track record of delivering for its weakest students but this latest chapter, arguably an inevitable and predictable consequence of school choice, may be a new low. Students who need the healthiest and most stable schools are segregated in the most unstable institutions, often with the most troubled classmates. Victims of a set of powerful and destructive forces that have undermined their schools and neighborhoods, these students and their schools face an increasingly bleak and uncertain future.
dmsilev
@Elie: I’m still trying to figure out what the deal is with this trip to the Vatican at the end of the week. Never mind how, or by whom, the invitation was issued; what is Sanders and his campaign thinking by taking him out of country for two or three days just prior to the NY primary?
Edit: And scrambling his body clock with jet-lag ping-pong to boot. He’ll be even crankier than normal for a day or three after getting back, and that’s not a good look on him.
Arm The Homeless
@redshirt: There is an endless supply of know-nothing busybodies to be rhetorically b*tchslapped on PP’s account. Welcome to the future!
Elie
@dmsilev:
Who knows? Why bother going negative then disappearing? The picture that is emerging from all this is a very disorganized campaign run by some big egos who have not connected the dots. Hilz, I believe, is gonna wipe the floor with him in NY… just what I believe — but I don’t run things…
Miss Bianca
@Elie: It’s complicated. By now corporatism – what Naomi Klein calls the “disaster capitalist” model – is so entrenched in our economy that it’s going to take real, concerted – and incremental – effort to turn the ship around. To get people believing that government is not “the problem”, should not be starved or shocked into submission so that it rolls over for big business, so that reliable checks and balances can be installed. I’d love it if Senator Sanders was articulating a view like that, to urge people not to give up on the system, or burn it down, but change it so that it begins working for more than just the 1%. But that does’t sound nearly as sexy as “break up the banks!”
SiubhanDuinne
@Miss Bianca:
It’s pretty easy :-)
(No offense to Mnem!)
rikyrah
AWE….
just dust…just dust in the eyes.
Father’s labor of love puts 5 kids through Boston College
By Michael Levenson
GLOBE STAFF
APRIL 10, 2016
It was past midnight, and all was quiet inside Robsham Theater, a sprawling performance space at Boston College.
Fred Vautour sponged down sinks, scrubbed toilets, and polished mirrors. Pushing a yellow cart loaded with a mop, broom, and cleaning supplies, he moved on to the hallway, where he swept up paper scraps and cleaned the large windows looking onto the campus. In the distance, the Gothic towers of Gasson Hall and Bapst Library faded into the dark sky. In a little more than 12 hours, Elizabeth Warren was coming to speak on economic inequality.
For the last 15 years of his long working life, Vautour, 62, has performed his painstaking rounds on the graveyard shift at Robsham Theater as if they were a calling. And, in a sense, they are.
Next month, his youngest child will collect her nursing degree from BC, and Vautour’s triumph will be complete: The night-shift custodian will have put all five of his children — Amy, John, Michael, Thomas, and Alicia — through Boston College.
“It kind of gives you the tingles,” Vautour said. “We became a big BC alumni family.”
Vautour said he never could have afforded a college education for five children on his salary of $60,000 a year. His wife, Debra, was a homemaker who now works the front desk at the Waltham Senior Center.
But because Vautour is a BC employee, all five children were able to attend the college tuition-free, which knocked about $51,000 off of BC’s $66,000 annual price tag. After scholarships, Vautour said, each child’s college education cost him about $3,000 per year.
Knowing that five college degrees were in reach kept him going, he said, night after night and year after year.
Elie
@Miss Bianca:
Yep… I just have no faith in what I have heard from this guy. He is old and has been in a very specialized environment in the senate. He has had no real responsibility or accountability for doing anything but showing up for a long time. He may not actually know, emotionally or intellectually, what it MEANS to run a country as big and complex as ours — the many dependencies he has to both manage AND stay away from. He is not God. He would not be responsible for all sectors of this country, social, economic, whatever… The Presidency is powerful — but there are limits and unless he thinks he is the emperatur ,he better stay the fuck out of some of it… actually most of it. Instead, he has to convince, cajole, manipulate and sometimes sneak and do things. Its not overt power for the most part except when he is using the military — and that he had better be careful of. All that and he is seventy fucking four years old!!!!! He thinks he is 20 years old with his brain running like it did (if it ever did) back then. They would kick his ass in ways he never knew an ass could be kicked! NONONONONONONO. He is not an appropriate candidate for this office. I have to wrestle with my promise that if he is the Democratic candidate, that I would vote for him. This would be very tough. Every day, the more I learn about him, the tougher it gets.
Miss Bianca
@PhoenixRising: heh heh heh. Maybe somebody threw a Scooby snack up into the tree.
@rikyrah: So, a grrr and an awww on the education news front, eh?
Miss Bianca
@Elie: Alas, I have only the old fall-back answer: Consider the alternatives…
But I do think Sec. Clinton is going to be our nominee. FWIW.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Lotta dust around these parts. Some of it got in my eyes too.
Elie
@rikyrah:
Cool — very important. This would be less of a problem here in the US if people could easily recover the ability to repay their loans. Problem is that this is not the case (as you know)….
Arm The Homeless
@rikyrah: Lovely story, sent it to my SO.
This hits home for me. I couldn’t have afforded college either if not for the tuition break from working full-time for the state and my school’s library. Floriduh, in their infinite wisdom has reversed this policy and made it apply to only 2-year community colleges. Fucking wankers.
MomSense
Aww, Bixby is such a boss dog. A 120 pound Great Dane up a tree must have been quite a sight.
Elie
@Miss Bianca:
Yeah, I am sure that would snap me around pretty quick. Still — I am sorry. I want to respect the Bernie supporters but I just do not see what they see and what he presents — well — sigh. Yes, compared to the other two, ok — Lord, If anyone but Hilz is elected, our reputation and economic standing internationally will take a hit. That hit would cost us billions, trillions and our standing as the lead super power. These folks would signal our weakness and inability to lead the world. Believe, me… they are watching with great interest to see what we are made of. Don’t like China and Russia now? They would be up our ass so tight you wouldn’t even have time to take a breath… electing any of the currently known candidates except Hillary would be catastrophic. Trump, Sanders, Cruz — none of them know shit and would be a disaster. Think we have economic and job problems now?
Miss Bianca
@Elie: You know, I think HRC is going to be a great candidate, and has the potential to be a great President. But I can’t help feeling sometimes like that little girl who cried when she found out PBO wasn’t going to be the President anymore…
burnspbesq
@Elie:
In for a penny, in for a pound.
Southern Beale
If anyone is on Twitter we would appreciate some re-Tweets and original Tweets on the #CanIPeeInTN hashtag. We’re fighting one of those heinous GOP bathroom bills targeting trans people. THX
Elie
@Miss Bianca:
Yeah. No lie.
eclare
@Miss Bianca: Agreed.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Springsteen got jowly, eh? Probably all that pallin’ around with Chris Christie
burnspbesq
@Elie:
It’s truly astounding how few people get that. My FB traffic today included a post asking me to sign a petition asking Obama to remove the San Francisco County DA, who is apparently a racist.
sm*t cl*de
@Miss Bianca:
Trebuchet. The answer is always “trebuchet”.
gf120581
@Elie: This last week has really been eye-opening at how dysfunctional the Sanders campaign is. I thinks it’s a mixture of factors:
1. A campaign that no one involved started out thinking would get this far and therefore had a severe lack of planning and organization involved.
2. Major talent drain as all the good people went to Hillary, forcing Bernie to take what was left (which is how he wound up with the likes of Tad Devine).
3. A candidate who still seems to act like he’s running a typical campaign in VT and often seems clueless about what it takes to run a national campaign.
4. The reality of approaching defeat and the stress and pressure of accepting that.
5. A candidate who increasingly is coming off like he’s got a major case of “I’m the savior here to save the country” and it’s causing him to mess up badly.
6. A campaign seemingly caught between the cynical, more realistic view of Devine (who at this point I think is just up for prolonging this race so he can get paid more) and the zealotry of Weaver, who essentially Grand Poobah of the Sanders cult and is in full “burn this fucking place to the ground if my guy doesn’t win” mode.
In short, this campaign is a hot mess.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I hope those kids can five him and his wife a cozy retirement. Or at least a cruise.
Miss Bianca
@sm*t cl*de: Fetchez la vache!
Arm The Homeless
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I lol’d
What happened to The Outlaw Jersey Whale? He got really quiet after his Trumpnapping, I wonder if the Feds are getting close to him. Not that being in the same State wouldn’t be “near” him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gf120581: I think the inside story of the Sanders campaign is going to be interesting. I wonder if there’s a bookie anywhere who will take my bet that there’s some personal beef with Devine and the Clintons, and if Devine will find himself the Ed Rollins of the Democrats, a once top-shelf con$ultant who now finds himself with his calls unanswered.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
What can I say — it’s a reflex at this point.
Just got home from the Festival of Books, very tired. Only came home with 11 books (3 of them free), so I didn’t go too crazy.
dmsilev
@gf120581: In (partial) fairness to the Sanders campaign, he’s losing right now and losing campaigns almost always look like the wheels are coming off. See, for example, Clinton 2008. The Sanders people probably have internal polling that shows New York and the mid-Atlantic states looking ugly for them, and they’re throwing shit against the wall trying to reverse that. It usually doesn’t work.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dmsilev: The Sanders people probably have internal polling that shows New York and the mid-Atlantic states looking ugly for them
I don’t know from internals (and why are internals thought to be better or more accurate than public polling, if they are?), but:
Dr. McCoy
@Miss Bianca: —Jon Lovitz ref. nice.
gogol's wife
@Miss Bianca:
I constantly feel like that little girl. I AM that little girl.
Adam L Silverman
@desertflower: @TaMara (HFG): I highly recommend these:
http://www.amazon.com/Chais-Choice-Pet-Products-No-Pull/dp/B00URW5CUE/ref=pd_sim_sbs_199_30?ie=UTF8&dpID=51vtL3kWWGL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=1P8APKAYDHMX8RQX0552
I’ve used/tried many different harnesses. This is the best one I’ve tried yet.
Andy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If Bernie wins New York- isn’t it more of a revolution? And quite possibly, I know you find it hard to believe, not about Bernie.
Maybe Occupy had more resonance than you all put stock in.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Catahoula Leopard Dogs do it all the time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dadV4DCO_0g
My pup, who has some Leopard Dog in her, has tried, but doesn’t quite have the knack.
Miss Bianca
@Dr. McCoy: eh?
Andy
@gogol’s wife: –Not me. Gub-bye! Thank You, Gub-bye.
lamh36
Finally got my house to myself. Spent the majority of the day hanging with my sister and Nicey Zoe
Spent some time at my house then the warehouse store and finally back at home.
Just enough time for Zoe to enjoy some chocolate cake I made…just like her Teedy, Zoe loves chocolate cake, she even does a little um um shimmy when she gets some…lol.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Yow! But aren’t they bred to tree lions and…err…leopards and such?
ETA:ooh, I like the looks of that harness…My Siberian Luna(tic) could probably profit by one of those!
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: https://unicornbooty.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ALIENS-guy.jpg
Dr. McCoy
@Miss Bianca: –I’m just a country Doctor.
Dr. McCoy
@Miss Bianca: –Dana Carvey? “Church Lady”?
burnspbesq
@Andy:
It’s not enough for Sanders to win. If he wins 60-40, he’s still fucked. That’s how far behind he is.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: “I seen ’em! They’re real!! ONE OF ‘EM HYPNOTIZED ME!!”
burnspbesq
@Andy:
Sure, maybe. But there is a distinct lack of evidence in support of that hypothesis.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: No, they’re a Louisiana breed designed to tree small game. They are also used to hunt wild boar. And they’re not an actual hound per se, though some of the theorizing on the breed development is that they do have greyhound in their makeup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catahoula_Cur
They’re beautiful dogs. My pup has the crystal eyes and the spots on her paws.
Dr. McCoy
@Ken: “Church Chat”
https://youtu.be/Ncu02ODfxHE
Miss Bianca
@Dr. McCoy: Oh! That one! Sorry, I’d already progressed to Monty Python…my mind is such a jackdaw’s nest of random pop culture references that I sometimes forget which ones I’ve dragged out.
PurpleGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Does that guy remind anyone else of Londo Molari from Babylon 5?
debbie
@TaMara (HFG):
Do you think Bixby would know what to do with a bison if he caught one? He looks ready to spring.
burnspbesq
@PurpleGirl:
Yes. That is some Centauri hair. But I don’t remember ever seeing a Centauri with any facial hair of any kind.
Adam L Silverman
@PurpleGirl: No, why do you ask?
http://i.qkme.me/35dqht.jpg
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: wow! I do know of one guy here in CO who has a couple of ’em that he’s trained to tree mountain lions, that’s why I got confused…but I’ve never seen one before, that one in the video is a stone beauty!
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Bison prime rib! Bison brisket! Bison flank and hanger steaks! Bison ribs! Bison burgers! Bison fillet!
smith
@burnspbesq: Doesn’t he have to get something like 68% everywhere from here on out to catch her? When this campaign started I’d hoped he stay in until the end, just to maximize the extent to which his candidacy could push Hillary (and the party) leftward. But I’m beginning to feel he’s wasting a huge opportunity by adopting slash and burn tactics rather than more pointed attacks that could extract some meaningful promises from her. Too bad politicians need to have such big egos to get into the business — it’s too often their downfall (see also Bill Clinton v BLM).
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: That makes sense. There are breeds that were bred to go after big cats. Rhodesian Ridgebacks and Filas are two of them.
dollared
@Elie: I just don’t see how you say that the rest of the world will see some problem with President Bernie Sanders. The rest of the world would like us to be less militaristic, and run our country better. Senator Clinton can do the latter, but she won’t do the former. And he will be a Democratic president, trying to implement the same policy regime that exists in most of the developed world – progressive taxation, sound economic policy, universal health care, etc. How would that cause a crisis in US relations?
burnspbesq
@smith:
68-point-something, I think. I use the Bloomberg delegate tracker as my reference. And FWIW, six months ago I was pretty much exactly in the place you describe. I might even have voted for him if the California primary had been in January. Now I’m just pissed at the entire Sanders operation.
PurpleGirl
@Adam L Silverman: The hair isn’t an exact copy of the Centauri style and the Aliens guy does have other facial hair which Molari doesn’t have but every time I see the Aliens guy I just think of Molari.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: This.
dollared
@burnspbesq: Really? Have you seen the polling on raising taxes on the rich, breaking up the banks, rewriting trade agreements, universal health care? They are all up significantly since Occupy.
burnspbesq
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-delegate-tracker/
(2,383-1,068)/1,941 = .6775
He’s doing better than I remembered. Feel the sumpin sumpin!
Andy
@dollared: @dollared: –Most here are the 20% financially so most arguments against the status quo are not “credible”.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: My Siberian both distinguished and disgraced herself today by running with the foxhounds on an exercise run. (wasn’t intentional, I just forgot to put her up in the car). For a Siberian, she did wonderfully well – didn’t run off too far, didn’t tempt the hounds to break – but of course, the Master did not necessarily see it the way I did…”Luna has something of an attention deficit, doesn’t she?” “No, ma’am – she’s just a Husky.”
Then she managed to get into the chicken box at the farm. Was I aware that there were chickens in the greenhouse? I was not. Oh, boy! One half-grown Rhode Island Red, hardly enough for a meal for one…SIGH.
Going shopping for chicks…online!
Omnes Omnibus
@dollared: Just as possible that Occupy was just one manifestation of a change in thought that was already taking place.
gf120581
@smith: He does. And it’s even worse now since he underperformed in WY (still can’t believe he only got a 7-7 split there). Basically he has to win everything by big margins from here on out and who honestly believes he has a chance at that?
I think also Bernie is having to grasp with the same thing that Mitt Romney had to realize on Election Night 2012; that crowd size doesn’t mean jack shit when it comes to predicting voting. He’s getting all of these big crowds and whatnot and yet he’s still losing by a ton. That difference can really do a number on a politician and Bernie seems like he’s grasping for any kind of answer or solution for it.
And judging by what his colleagues have been saying about him, maybe this is just who Sanders is as a person; a self-righteous, humorless, “I’m oh so smarter than you” crank with a savior complex and a deficiency in his personal relationships. Barney Frank’s comments about him come to mind, as did this recent one from Chuck Rangel where he said, “I don’t know anyone who’s had a conversation with Bernie Sanders, but I do know several who have been lectured to by him.”
burnspbesq
@dollared:
Do I really have to remind you, yet again, that correlation is not causation? That could just as easily be Trump supporters.
Show me an r-squared (you do know what that is, I assume).
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev:
What must be heartbreaking for them is that they’re losing even though, in national polls of Democrats, they’re creeping up to parity with Hillary Clinton and may well lead her soon. It’s bound to make them think that there must be some way to turn it around. But it’s too late, because so much of the voting has already happened and the remaining states aren’t ones where they’re strong enough. The last desperate hope might be to try to flip the superdelegates on the grounds that national primary polling implies that the people who already voted for Hillary are now regretting it.
rikyrah
Patient secretly recorded doctors as they operated on her. Should she be so distressed by what she heard?
By Yanan Wang April 7
Last summer, Ethel Easter wanted nothing more than to see a doctor. A hiatal hernia had caused her to suffer more than a hundred abdominal attacks within 24 hours, her stomach was bruised, and she found blood in her urine. The pain was excruciating, so Easter prayed that a surgery could be scheduled as soon as possible.
The doctor who would be operating on her at Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston did not share her urgency.
He told the 44-year-old Easter that she would have to wait two months, and Easter burst into tears.
“I can’t do this for two months,” she cried. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Well, who do you think you are?” Easter recalled the doctor abruptly yelling back at her. “You’re gonna wait like everybody else.”
Shaken, Easter later went to see her family doctor, who told her that the surgeon had taken notes on their meeting and raised “red flags” about her attitude — “as if I was the problem,” Easter said in a phone interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday.
………………………………….
From the start, Easter was troubled that she didn’t trust her own surgeon, but she was in too much pain to cancel the operation. Then she had an idea: She would go through with the surgery — it was ultimately scheduled about a month later, for August — but she would sneak a recorder into the operating room so that her family could know what happened to her in case things went wrong. She had a “bad feeling,” after all.
The audio recorder was the size of a USB drive. At the time, Easter had braided extensions in her hair. When she was changing into her hospital gown, she put her hair up in a ponytail and stuck the recorder inside.
“I was fearful,” Easter said. “I didn’t know if I was going to come out of the surgery, so I just wanted my family to know if something went on.”
The surreptitious recording, parts of which she shared with The Post, became the most traumatic part of the experience.
PurpleGirl
@dollared: Not rewriting trade treaties. Try renegotiating trade treaties. You know that there are other parties in all these trade agreements and we can ask them to change provisions but we can not rewrite them unilaterally.
burnspbesq
@gf120581:
Barney Frank would have been much better than Sanders in the role in which Sanders cast himself.
dmsilev
@smith: It’s not quite that bad; I think he would need something like 56 or 57 percent of the remaining delegates, though if Clinton wins New York, that threshold will tick up by a few percentage points.
Andy
@gf120581: —Ad hominem garbage. But it fits a narrative.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Sounds like everyone had an eventful day!
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, Adam…I pitched you a softball at the end of that post, and you’re not going to swing at it? ; )
PurpleGirl
Folks, good night. I’m closing the computer in advance of power being turned off. See you all in the morning.
smith
@dollared: I think Occupy helped prepare the ground for Sanders just as the financial crash prepared the ground for Occupy. Sanders will not win this time for various reasons, some better than others. But it is entirely possible that he will prepare the ground for someone younger and more temperate who will succeed. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And if your grandmother’d had wheels, would you be a bicycle?
Andy
@Miss Bianca: Big R has them in store right now in Pueblo.
gwangung
@PurpleGirl: I’ve seen some Sanders success negotiating on smaller stuff. Not sure about the bigger stuff.
And while I think the rest of the world would find his philosophy consistent with theirs, they may not feel sanguine on HOW Sanders plans to do what he aims for. And it’s not clear that he games out his plans far enough to predict adverse possibilities.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Have you seen the election results since Occupy?
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Nope. I knew what you actually meant and also could clearly see the hook through all the bait.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: It was too obvious. It reminds me of the joke about the masochist begging the sadist, “Beat me, please beat me” and the sadist replying “No.”
Andy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I heard she was a bitch on wheels, maybe mine fell off.
burnspbesq
@dmsilev:
See comment 92. If you have issues with either the calculation or the underlying data, please feel free to share.
TaMara (HFG)
There is 160 lb dog in my lap right now. Every time I try to move, he snuggles down and grumbles. There is a reason when they are puppies you shouldn’t let them be lap dogs.
Ruckus
@Andy:
20%? Where do you get that crap? Most of the people here work real jobs and make middle of middle class money at best. Some of us are not even close to that. What we mostly are are realists, in what we earn, in our politics, and our expectations. You don’t seem to fall into that category.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Ouch! And that reminds *me*, for some reason, of an ancient SNL skit, with Lorne Michaels and Jane Curtin sitting at a bar and Lorne saying to Jane, “well, you know the old saying, Jane…sometimes we have to be cruel…”
“To be kind?” asks Jane, drunk and hopeful.
“No…to be even more cruel.”
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman:
See 2008.
Also, national primary polling includes people who didn’t vote, or who voted in the republican primary/caucus. And is meaningless, since the Electoral College is how you win the election. D’oh!
gwangung
@smith:
I devoutly hope there is someone younger and more savvy.
Andy
@Ruckus: 200K a year…is not middle of the middle. Even in a 2 earner household.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Wise man. Clearly, you did not come down with yesterday’s rain.
Omnes Omnibus
@Andy: Whence comes the 200k number?
dmsilev
@burnspbesq: That’s counting superdelegates, which is silly. If Sanders does somehow manage to pull out a victory in the pledged delegate count, most or all of those supers will switch their votes.
Eric U.
happily voting for Hillary in the PA primary. All the Hillary hate made me re-assess my thoughts on this. If Bernie could really point to a way where Hillary is wrong and different in a substantive way that gets him votes, that would be one thing. But mostly he’s been selling Clinton hate.
Miss Bianca
@TaMara (HFG): “Mamas, don’t let your puppies grow up to be lap dogs…”
smith
@gwangung:
I do, too. But making that possible is probably the most valuable thing Sanders is doing this year — he’s showing that a campaign based on economic justice can be a winner. Don’t be surprised if several younger more savvy people appear on the political scene with similar messages in the not too distant future.
Ruckus
@Andy:
And like I said numnuts how many people here do you think make $200K/yr? Show your work.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: God. I can’t believe you fell for that recycled troll nonsense.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: There was a Tenant’s beer commercial like that in the UK when I lived there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPy9OXnfP6o
serge
My great old Dane rescue, Maggie, had terrorized the family that originally raised her, and they had so badly trained her that the breeder took the dog back from them. Before she found me to take Maggie, an unsuccessful foster applicant had been held at bay by an eight month old (enormous) Maggie that was standing on the family’s dining room table barking furiously and snapping at anyone too close. Again the breeder came, hours later, to take the poor dog back. I got her eventually, drove three hundred miles to get her, and never looked back. She was one of the most wonderful dogs I’ve ever shared a home with. I never doubted that Maggie could climb a tree if she had a reason to, but I was certainly not going to encourage such adventurism…
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I used “whence.”
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: Just yesterday’s allergies and, I think, sinus infection. Got to call the doc again tomorrow.
burnspbesq
@Andy:
Ask somebody who is paying down a $500k mortgage (because that’s what starter houses cost in large parts of this country), trying to put money in a 529 account so their kids can go to a decent college, and trying to save money so that they’ll have more than Social Security and the pittance they can put in their employer’s 401(k) to live on after retirement (at god knows what age) how much 200K is. Hint: it ain’t what you think it is.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: And still…
Ruckus
@burnspbesq:
Even more important is his instance that most of us here make that kind of money. I’d bet all of his that most of us don’t fall into or anywhere near that level.
Andy
@burnspbesq: No matter, it’s above most, on a per earnings average. Ask that of the 50K/year wage slave, who can do none of those things. Plus why are you responding to a “troll”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: And still what? What did I fall for?
aimai
@lamh36: Hah! My little cousin’s one year old did the same thing when he was given sugar on his first birthday for the first time.
dollared
@smith: Yup.
Ruckus
@Andy:
I see we aren’t responding to a troll but to a douchebag. Thanks for clearing that up.
FlipYrWhig
@gf120581:
This. This is who he is.
@smith: Do you think he’s running a campaign on economic justice at this point? I think he’s running a campaign on how fucking awesome and virtuous Bernie Sanders is and doesn’t give two shits about anything else. He _cares_ about economic justice but he doesn’t think anything is required to achieve it other than glowering at the people who stand in the way of it. He’s an asshole.
burnspbesq
@Andy:
I don’t think you’re a troll. I think you believe a lot of stuff that is manifestly untrue.
smith
@FlipYrWhig: Regardless of whether Sanders’ current motivation is about economic justice, I think that’s what underpins the passionate support he is getting from a significant portion of the electorate. Other politicians will not fail to notice.
Mike J
@Miss Bianca:
It’s a very, very, very good sign.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: What brand of bass is he playing?
redshirt
Yoinks Scoob!
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Zoë is too cute for words.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@smith: Dunno.
I think successful politicians mostly go with what works. Winning is what they want to do, and they’ll usually do whatever they think it takes to do so. Being “pure” and drawing big crowds and lots of small donations won’t be the example if he doesn’t win.
Bernie’s policy proposals will get more attention if things are close. Just like Perot’s positions (especially balancing the budget) got more attention when he got nearly 19% of the vote in the 1992 election. If Hillary has a blowout win, then she’ll be the example going forward of how to win nationally and Bernie’s campaign will be a footnote.
Having enthusiastic young people is great. I remember what it’s like – my first presidential vote was for John Anderson. But young people are only a small part of the voting universe. They can’t expect to drive the outcome on their own any more than self-identified liberals can, simply because there aren’t enough of (either one) of them. Winning candidates draw a majority – not just a committed, enthusiastic subset.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike J
@Omnes Omnibus: Rickenbacker.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
Definitely not Fender, Gibson, Guild, or Rickenbacker. Hagstrom or Hofner, maybe.
Mike J
@Mike J: Whoops,sorry, was watching good girls don’t. That looks like an SG bass.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Miss Bianca: Annoying (hyperbole!) the Master inadvertently – cool. How’d the whips feel about the situation?
Andy
@burnspbesq:—- Not in my world, or the millions of supporters of Sanders. The old workplace signage was “Think”.
Mike J
@Mike J: It’s the duel horns that make me think it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: @burnspbesq: We have a factual dispute here. I can generally recognize guitars, but, basses are not in my thing.
Mike J
@burnspbesq: Ok, looking again, it’s a Hamer.
redshirt
So my actual retirement plan is to get a sweet customized small truck and then drive around the country, solving mysteries (for $$$) with my devoted dog.
Is this unrealistic?
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
The body looks like a Rickenbacker guitar, but the headstock is a tell for me. Also, every Rick bass I’ve ever seen had a much deeper upper cutaway.
https://www.google.com/search?q=rickenbacker+bass&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi62_jO2YXMAhVjtYMKHfeDCXwQsAQIUA&biw=1449&bih=1069
opiejeanne
@redshirt: Go back and read what he wrote. He isn’t trolling PP.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Gosh, it sounds like I have wandered into an Irish R.M story.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: As CS noted, the guy hasn’t been back since people questioned the number. Drive-by-GOP troll.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: Related.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mike J: I was going to guess SG, but I haven’t been branding basses in a while. I did to “pet” a gorgeous upright bass once owned by Stanley Clarke. Steve Bailey and Victor Wooten bought it from him for a pretty good price during a divorce, and they kept it after legal proceedings were concluded.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: I forgot how weird foxhunting terms can sound to regular people, and they read even weirder.
Cacti
BernieBro Thom Hartman disses disabled voters in Wyoming for voting Clinton.
Black voters, disabled voters, who else should have their vote invalidated for the sake of the people’s revolution?
tastytone
@Mike J:
Yup–he played Hammer 8 strings for a while (but in the video, the pointy-bits on the headstock look knocked off).
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): As violinist/violist, bass should make sense to me. Four strings and all that… But I was a First Violin and always in competition for First Chair; thus lead guitar is my focus.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I read the Irish R.M. stories for the first time when I was doing a semester in London. Reading something other than what was required was my favorite form of rebellion – and how I discovered Robert Benchley.
Arm The Homeless
@opiejeanne: I think ole Redshirt was just a bit confused. Perhaps it’s my syntax. Thank you for the support though. It’s been wonderful bantering with you.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Not competitive or anything.
It must have seemed weird given that we were talking like people who have (had, for me) some of those stories in our actual lives. And I recognized scrolling down how weird my comment about Stanley Clarke’s former bass was. Obviously, it wasn’t one of the ones I was handed to schlepp to the bus after the show.
Jerzy Russian
@Cacti:
I first heard Mr. Hartmann during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq while poking about on the internet radio part of iTunes. Man, was he a breadth of fresh air. I haven’t listened to him (or any other talk radio) in a long time. It is sad to see that he is apparently losing his grip.
redshirt
@Arm The Homeless: I’m easily confused, so that’s entirely possible.
tastytone
@Cacti:
Unsurprising. I used to listen to Hartmann daily. His Brunch With Bernie segment had me all but in the tank for him until July. (Hartmann’s “Catastrophe is coming! Buy gold!” commercials eventually ran me off more than anything).
F’n Bernie…all he needed to do was to lay-out a feasible path forward, and he still hasn’t. It’s easy to shout and bitch about all the things we all agree we hate about the country–this blog alone has that covered, for God’s sake.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): The reference to competitive was to me. Everyone on the first four chairs of the first violins knows that they should be First.
gwangung
@efgoldman: Frankly, if there’s a person that’s at least as savvy as Clinton and has a message like Bernie’s, they’d be formidable. Even against a sitting VP.
Xenos
Just going to leave this here.
Goat rescued from Greek power lines
Arm The Homeless
@redshirt: No worries, no hard feelings on this end. Have a great evening.
Big R
@Andy: I do?
opiejeanne
@Cacti: Voters for Hillary who aren’t as enthusiastic as Bernie voters, or so I’ve heard a couple of times.
Also, several of us have been told to find an ice floe, now.
opiejeanne
@redshirt: Heh. I have done the same thing, misread something and reacted the opposite of what I would have had I been paying attention.
opiejeanne
@Arm The Homeless: Good talking to you too.
delk
@Mike J: Hamer BS8 He borrowed it from Bruce Thomas of the Attractions.
redshirt
@Arm The Homeless: You too. Regardless, I’m sure I was right.
redshirt
@opiejeanne: I’m sure I’m reading you as totally supportive. Thanks!
Suzanne
Bixby is adorable. He looks like my Luna–big jowls and a goofy grin.
It’s been a hard weekend. Spawn the Elder went to her dad’s house on Friday night for her typical every-other-weekend, and I started getting panicked texts from her a couple of hours later. My ex’s other daughter, who my Spawn just HATES, had been given a new smartphone. Spawn has been wanting one, and had been feeling kind of raw about it, since we had told her that if she got her grades up that we would get her one, and then this last quarter her grades slipped somewhat due to her anxiety attacks. But the phone was just sort of the precipitator—Spawn has hated and resented this girl for years, and she couldn’t deal and my ex is not sympathetic and he forces them together and tells Spawn to suck it up. Anyway, he blew his top on Friday night, then called me at almost midnight to tell me that she finally confessed that she wanted to come home, so he brought her back. She cut herself almost as soon as she got home, which I found out today.
Saw my ex yesterday and he was just such an ass. Talked about himself nonstop—how he’s soooo tired, how his feelings are badly hurt that she doesn’t want to be at his house. But I told him that Spawn feels really bad over there at his house and she doesn’t feel like she can talk to him about it. She doesn’t have an emotional safe space. That night, she reached out to me and asked for a positive distraction, which is what I’ve been encouraging her to do—and my ex just blew his shit. It makes me enraged that he keeps forcing Spawn to be around this girl. He has each of them only on alternating weekends, and he wants them on the same weekend because it’s less work for him, but my kid doesn’t consider her a real sibling, and she’s just a stressor. I want to have Spawn trade weekends so she won’t have to see her until she’s doing better with her therapy and has more coping skills, but my ex thinks I’m “rewarding her bad behavior”. However, she’s very kind to her sister at my house and I think my ex needs to stop trying to make fetch happen.
Anyway, I am looking at going to court to reduce his parenting time and get more child support, as I am getting fucked. God. I need a spa weekend.
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: I already have several online friends who have agreed to share. I’m 66 and I figure I’ve got about 30 good years left, so I’m not planning on doing this soon.
Origuy
When I saw the title of this post, I thought of this picture. Lochindorb Castle in eastern Scotland. It has a history:
Medieval Scottish history reads like it was written by George R. R. Martin.
opiejeanne
@redshirt: I am trying to sound supportive, so that’s good. Not snark.
Mike J
@efgoldman:
I was always happy to be rhythm guitar. I brought a girl back to my room one night and thought I needed to play guitar before I played with her, and she was shocked. You can actually play! Well yeah, that’s why I was up there. If I had more ego I would have played more guitar and less mixing board. And I have a shit ton of ego.
Mike J
@efgoldman: She’s in the PNW. The lake Washington dock I sail out of will be on the sound before she’s threatened.
Mike J
@efgoldman: My only playing was in punk bars. Finding out somebody had taken comp/theory classes was pretty shocking.
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: I’m just east of Seattle, on Hollywood Hill. The town is due to be underwater and we will then be on an island. A raft will have to do.
And yes, living to 96 is pretty standard in my family, even before modern medicine and penicillin.
redshirt
@efgoldman: How short?
opiejeanne
@Mike J: Taking Music Theory is a bit shocking, too.
Tempered scales? Mind-blowing stuff if you’re a pianist who had really basic instruction before you got to college. The violinists laughed at us.
Calouste
Sanders is pretty much a bullshit artist like Trump. Trump doesn’t release his tax returns because”he is being audited”. Sanders doesn’t release his tax returns because “he doesn’t know where his wife puts them”.
Mike J
@opiejeanne: Imagine before a song starts you yell, “in G!”, and the only people who know that you mean to play G, C, and D are you and the drummer, and it doesn’t really matter to the drummer.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
66 here as well and from where I sit 30 does look pretty optimistic. Not saying it won’t happen but only mom, of all my relatives made it that far, most are many yrs less. I’d imagine that it changes your outlook, having that family history.
redshirt
@efgoldman: That’s short.
Mike J
@efgoldman: I never met a musician who wasn’t trying to get laid.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Very hot peppers take care of that.
Ruckus
@Mike J:
I think it’s pretty difficult to limit that to any subgroup other than just humans.
Mike J
@efgoldman: My response kept going from “duh” to “touché” and back again. Take your pick.
Luthe
@Origuy: I think you got that backwards. George R. R. Martin says he bases his books on medieval Scottish history.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Strictly an aside.
Rhode Island dropped down a notch or two on my own ranking of states after recently learning the official state beverage is coffee milk.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Per Wikipedia:
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: Piano was my major instrument. I also played clarinet, oboe, sax, and took up violin and voice after the first year, but until that first week when we learned about tempered scales, I was uneducated.
My BA is from a university originally renowned for Ag and engineering, and I was one of the first five grads of the Music program. We had some good teachers and one terror. That terror became my favorite teacher and my friend and I treated him like a favorite uncle. He didn’t quite know how to deal with the lack of terror on our parts (we were just a couple of years older than the other students) but he did accept the chocolate chip cookies we baked for him on a regular basis. Still I had to fight for a B from him, he was such a jerk sometimes: “What do you need with an A? You’re just going to get married/stay married, raise babies, and never use this degree.”
opiejeanne
@Mike J: Been there, done that, but it was as a senior in the jazz ensemble. Any earlier and I would have whimpered and run away.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: Dad died early at 94 of food poisoning that was treated incorrectly and turned into something worse. One grandmother lived to 90, two great grandfathers lived to 95 (the last one died in 1945), cousins have hit 102 without much effort. We don’t seem to have a lot of cancer in the family, and the only ones dying before 90 have had accidents or have caught something like the flu or gotten food poisoning that was left untreated.
re.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Suzanne: I don’t know what to say other than, “Good luck.”
Anne Laurie
@NotMax:
Rhode Island’s the caboose sibling of states when it comes to tourist crap; it’s always hard for them to find a way to differentiate themselves from their much larger, more aggressive siblings.
And really, ‘coffee milk’ is just a poor person’s frappachino, isn’t it?
Anne Laurie
TaMara, Bixby is a very handsome fella, and would look good on any medieval tapestry.
But that news story reminded me of my friend the Great Dane breeder, who would remind us that Great Danes are sighthounds, just like greyhounds/salukis/wolfhounds/basenjis. They see prey, they will go after it, with no thought of possible consequences. And then sit up in that tree (or on the wrong side of the busy highway, or the other side of the shattered plate-glass door) wearing their best YES I TOTALLY MEANT TO DO THAT WHY WOULD YOU EVEN ASK expression…
Steeplejack
@burnspbesq:
I think it could be a Hamer, similar to this one.
Lowe occasionally played a Hamer eight-string bass, so presumably there’s a bit of a connection.
@Mike J:
And I’m late to the thread once again.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
For some reason this song is in my “Nick Lowe/Graham Parker adjacent” bin: the Members, “Working Girl.”
Anne Laurie
@debbie:
True story: I got to watch an adolescent Great Dane introduced to her first Shetland pony. She thought it might be a really odd dog, and did the proper play-bow introduction. Pony thought dog might another pony, so she kicked her, as pony matriarchs will do when a new herd member gets uppity!
P.S. The pony knew about dogs, even quite sizable dogs (her people had large Goldens & Irish Setters). But nothing as big & leggy as a half-grown Dane could possibly be a *dog*!
SectionH
@Anne Laurie: Also too Borzois and Huskies. Well, I’m not sure about “sighthound” for the Huskies, but omg, do some of them have a prey drive. “In the middle of the big duck pond in a major downtown tourist area” for another instance.
Anne Laurie
@gf120581:
Unlike previous caucuses where he did well, WY allows absentee voting for cause. Which means some of the less filtered Sandernistas on social media have been decrying how old people, those with disability issues, and workers who can’t take several hours off on a caucus weekend have been “allowed to distort the process of DEMOCRACY!!!”… defined as Bernie partisans shouting down all opposition, for JUSTICE.
I know it’s only a minority of Sanders supporters, but it’s an unfortunate recap of the “HRC can only win in the Confederacy and those states shouldn’t even count” trope. By the time they’ve dismissed people of color, women, those over 65, people with disabilities, and those whose jobs require evening & weekend shifts… all that’s left is young white men with good jobs or other sources of income. Not a good look for a Democratic candidate, frankly.
sm*t cl*de
@efgoldman:
Natural? Flat? Sharp?
Anne Laurie
@Suzanne: All I can offer is sympathy, and that’s not worth much.
I’m assuming you can’t to the stepsister’s mom, for reasons. Because she probably hates having to share her Daddy weekends, too, even if her reasons are different…
Apart from that, during some of the more chaotic periods of my own childhood, my old man (alcoholic/enabler) would point out that the upside was that, assuming we survived, we’d have the bedrock confidence of knowing that nothing could break us. It was actually consoling, when I was an adolescent.
Anne Laurie
@Origuy:
Or (as I’m sure you know) like GRRM took advantage of Scottish & other European history when creating Game of Thrones. Haven’t read the books or watched the series, but I do remember him crediting the War of the Roses as a source!
Origuy
@Anne Laurie: Yes, I did know that. The “Red Wedding” was inspired by the Black Dinner, where the advisers of the 10-year-old King James II had the 16-year-old William Douglas and his younger brother David beheaded. They were cousins of the Archibald Douglas that lived in Lochindorb Castle.
GRRM says that the Glencoe Massacre was also an inspiration for the Red Wedding. I’ve been to Glencoe, too.
Betty Cracker
Bixby is a handsome boy! A family down the road from us has a Great Dane, and I’m often startled by the sheer scale of the beast. Makes my boxers seem almost dainty.
desertflower
@TaMara (HFG): Thanks a bunch!