Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

T R E 4 5 O N

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

We’re not going back!

Fight them, without becoming them!

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

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

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

This really is a full service blog.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Monday Morning Open Thread: “Answers to ‘Lucky’… “

Monday Morning Open Thread: “Answers to ‘Lucky’… “

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lucky Khampha Bouaphanh - Fort Worth Star-Telegram

(Khampha Bouaphanh – Fort Worth Star-Telegram via the Washington Post)

Speaking of shaggy-dog stories. I love the expression on the smaller guy’s face, and that’s not even the heart of the story…

Corky went missing in August of 2009, when he somehow slipped away from the Montez family’s fenced-in yard in Texas.

The family spent months looking for the little terrier, whom they had adopted that year. He was wearing his collar when he went missing…

The family moved from their home near Boyd, Tex., to Fort Worth, and added two dogs (and more kids), but they never forgot about Corky, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

Then, this month, the Montez family got a phone call.

Corky was microchipped, which was lucky for all parties involved here. Because that’s how he was reunited with the family, after he and another dog were brought into the Humane Society of North Texas.

Staffers discovered the microchip after Corky and another dog, named Captain, were brought in, according to a Humane Society post on Facebook. Kim and Jimmy Montez were contacted and when the family arrived, they took home not only Corky, but his pup pal, the one-eyed Captain…

More pics & details at the link. ‘Scuze me, it’s been a terrible season for allergens (that’s my story & I’m sticking to it).

What else is on the agenda as we gear up for another week?

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  4. 4.

    Steeplejack

    The little one looks like he’s in training for an “ugliest dog” contest. Those always seem to go to wigged-out purse-rats (h/t Betty Cracker). His hair needs to be tuftier.

  9. 9.

    Mustang Bobby

    Aw… I’m a sucker for cute-doggie stories.

    Forty years ago today I woke up in a cabin at a summer camp in Estes Park, Colorado, to find that the heavy rain the night before was a harbinger the worst natural disaster in the state’s history: the Big Thompson flood. Over 140 lives were lost, millions of dollars of property damage, and for the kids at two of our camps in Glen Haven, which was in one of the paths of the flood, an adventure in real-life survival skills. The kids, including one little girl named Darryl Hannah, came through without a scratch, singing as they hiked up the scarred road to the buses awaiting to take them to the main camp, and we all learned what it was like to be in the middle of a national news story.

  12. 12.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    Jonathan Martin ‏@jmartNYT

    Trump is now going to make elected Rs have to decide whether they want to side w him or parents of war dead

    477 retweets 543 likes

    Jennifer Rubin ‏@JRubinBlogger

    If Pence had an ounce of dignity he wuld walk off the ticket now. His son is serving and risking his life to protect America

    744 retweets 1,166 likes

    Even JRub

  14. 14.

    Schlemazel

    @raven:
    You are right, this is chromebook. But I am not convinced, they seem to have thought of everything. I could take a screen cap and then edit it but I don’t have time for that in the morning.

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Spent the wkend in AR helping out one of my Arkie caving buddies.

    About a month ago he was removing an old cave gate** so he could install a new one (as per contract with the NFS). He was cutting down the old one when a #400 piece fell on him. Had to hike 1/4 to 1/2 a mile and up 300 feet of elevation to get back to his truck (fortunately, while he usually works alone this time he had a helper). Long story short- small town hospitals, docs who think they are Gods while demonstrating gross incompetence, 2 weeks in ICU, 6 surgeries to repair a perforated intestine, peritonitis, etc etc etc- he got out of the hospital a week and a half ago. The local arts community, he lives outside of Mountain View so it’s a rather large arts community amongst which he has more than a few friends, held an auction fund raiser for him to help with his medical bills etc.

    RC is one of my favorite Arkie compatriots so I had to go down and help out. Went early so I could do anything he might need done around his place. Turns out what he needed done was help with cutting up the new steel for the cave gate so that the guy he hired to finish the install didn’t have to. His incision is still partially open so he is limited to picking up 15 lbs (will be limited in what he can pick up the rest of his life- no more cave gating for RC) so I moved steel around and did lay out while he was cutting it up. A fair amount of that steel was 6″ angle iron, 20 feet long, weighing #400.

    My back is fucked up. No, I mean fucked up.

    ** the link shows a good example of what most cave gates look like. most cavers are ambivalent about cave gates. while recognizing the necessity of them in certain circumstances we also see them getting used way too much as the one single answer to every problem any agency might have.

  16. 16.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    Rick Wilson ‏@TheRickWilson

    I know we’re all about Khan today, but Manafort’s lie about the RNC Ukraine stuff is going to backfire very soon now.

    562 retweets 883 likes

    Joy Reid had a guest on yesterday (Fernand R. Amandi) who said the press is about to run a big investigative report that financially links Trump to Putin, exposing him as a puppet/agent of the Kremlin.

  17. 17.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    On Morning Joe, Sam Stein is wondering if they have to fact-check everything Trump says. Yes Sam, yes you do.

    ETA: And now it’s on to the Hillbeast lying about her email, CLICK!

  21. 21.

    PurpleGirl

    @raven: I’m always surprised at the number of minorities — AAs, Native Americans, or Japanese, etc. — who have enlisted in any of the Armed Forces and went on to show such bravery, dedication and idealism. And Trump (and all Republican chickenhawkes or draftdodgers) has no idea how special those people are.

  23. 23.

    Schlemazel

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    That whole story is fucked up. Sorry to hear about your friend & also feel bad about your back (I can imagine it would be in bad shape). I didn’t read the whole paper you linked to but it seems they are creating problems for wildlife with those things.

  24. 24.

    PurpleGirl

    Story on NY1 this morning: Cop passing a storm drain hears a kitten mewling and stops and goes looking for the source of sound; finds 4 kittens and pulls them out and saves them. Have skimmed the net for story and picture, will post link when found.

  25. 25.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Schlemazel:

    it seems they are creating problems for wildlife with those things.

    The gates do not stop critters who regularly use caves from using them (the one exception being bears, but there are plenty of ungated caves for them) everything from bats to ‘coons etc navigate them quite easily. The problem they are meant to solve is the human one, or to be more particular, the wrong human. I can’t count the # of caves I have seen vandalized beyond recovery (we call them ‘sacrificial caves’) but their main purpose is for the protection of rare/endangered cave life.

    All too often they are used for reasons that have nothing to do with cave life, including they are tired of cavers asking permission to go to it.

  30. 30.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    Trump leaked nude photo of his wife to NY Post in desperate attempt to change subject from the firestorm. (link)

    Ashley Feinberg

    7/31/16 8:58pm

    The only thing that makes me think this is actually a possibility is the fact that no one actually seems to care about the Melania photos. So if they did leak them as a distraction, it was a wholly incompetent strategy—which would keep it in line with everything else Trump’s campaign does.

  37. 37.

    Eric U.

    @debbie: the market for Trump parodies is mighty thin, given the self-parodying nature of the realdonaldtrump. Sorry losers! I parody myself better than you ever will. Sad!

  43. 43.

    mike in dc

    I read some comments stream on my FB feed(from people who, I guess, are friends of friends) and some of the comments about the Khan-Trump thing depressed me. “Go back to the middle east”, “foreign muslin[sic] guy”, etc. I do note these were mostly from white men, but it’s still disconcerting to me.

  44. 44.

    The Ancient Randonnuer

    Can you even imagine Secretary Clinton lashing out at the mother of Sean Smith after her speech at the RNC calling for Clinton’s imprisonment? I can’t. That’s because, even when an argument has no merit, our candidate doesn’t disrespect a grieving parent.

    #ImWithHer

  45. 45.

    bystander

    Re: Paul Ryan. If my child became absorbed and captivated by the works of Ayn Rand, I would turn her/him over for intensive behavioral therapy once reserved for gays and lesbians. If that failed, electroshock would be the only possibility left.

  46. 46.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Josh Marshall has a good column today, contrasting how a smart terrible person and a dumb terrible person would respond to the Khan family. Here’s the last couple of lines:

    a dumb terrible person is almost always dangerous. Trump’s mix of rage and insecurity are so unbridled that it is not simply that he is unable to protect others from their impact. He cannot even protect himself from the damage they create.

  50. 50.

    satby

    @rikyrah: @Baud: Good morning! I agree, it’s not like the vileness has been hidden for the last 8 years. It’s the Scorpion – frog story come to life.

    The sellers countered my offer too high, so I’m considering next steps while waiting for AT&T to come fix my internet access. I lead such an exciting life.

  54. 54.

    Tokyokie

    A couple of years ago, I found a kitten, maybe 6 weeks old, who’d been dumped on a hot, busy street. I stopped my car scooped her up (somebody had already run over her brother), and took her to the shelter where those two doggies wound up. I don’t know whether she was adopted (with five cats already, I couldn’t keep her), but I don’t think she would have survived 5 more minutes on that street.

  55. 55.

    mike in dc

    @Baud:
    I know. I keep hoping there’s some point of indecency that Trump blows past that finally shakes their support of him. I guess if they haven’t seen it yet, it may not exist.

  57. 57.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    Jeb Bush ✔ @JebBush

    This is so incredibly disrespectful of a family that endured the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
    3:00 PM – 31 Jul 2016

    6,651 Retweets
    10,915 Favorites

    This is great.

    No way Trump can keep himself from blowing his top over ¿Jeb? slamming him.

    This should extend the firestorm another 48 hrs.

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @bystander:

    If my child became absorbed and captivated by the works of Ayn Rand, I would turn her/him over for intensive behavioral therapy once reserved for gays and lesbians.

    I would turn him over my knee. (not, I don’t believe in spanking, but in this case I’d be sorely tempted)

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @mike in dc:

    I keep hoping there’s some point of indecency that Trump blows past that finally shakes their support of him.

    He’d have to attack white farmers or construction workers or men’s rights types or similar groups for that to happen.

  61. 61.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Warren Buffet will campaign with Clinton in Omaha.

    I’d love to see Buffett, Cuban, and Bloomberg join forces as “The Three Billionaires” (à la “The Three Tenors” of years past). Work up a routine, put a road show together, and troll Trump mercilessly from now through November 7th.

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    à la “The Three Tenors” of years past

    Or the Three Amigos! (Clearly we live in different cultural circles).

    Seriously, that would be funny. They can sip cognac and talk about what a business failure Donald is.

  63. 63.

    JMG

    The way people with REAL money loathe Trump is one of the most interesting facets of this campaign. Look at how Mort Zuckerberg’s Daily News goes after him.

  64. 64.

    MattF

    @Baud: Trump would have to do something that strikes directly at the party. I’m not sure what that would be.

  65. 65.

    OGLiberal

    Melania has a semi-nude photo shoot. She looks great, better than the post-work look she’s sporting now. Have no problem with it….her choice. But can you imagine the outcry if a Dem candidate’s wife did something similar? The tut-tutting by the media would be out of hand.

    Our fourth estate sucks balls. I don’t want them to give Trump shit for Melania’s sexy photo shoot – and they haven’t….but why is it OK for the party of “family values” to have a potential first lady who did a photo shoot teen boys might jack off too? I’m just so fucking sick of this shit. Why the fuck does the media give this douchebag such a pass.

    Jesus Ke-rist on a Bike, if this dude were reported on correctly, Dems would be competitive in South Carolina, Georgia and Utah. Fucking Utah. Sadly…both sides. And Bill got a blow job.

    I want to fucking scream. That I even feel like I have to worry about November is fucking pathetic.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @MattF: He’s already struck at the party and won. He has his white base in a thrall, and the only thing that will shake that is something that is seen as a direct betrayal of their loyalty and the trust they’ve placed in him. Attacking Muslim vets and their families is not in that category.

    ETA: It does turn off other folks, however. Trump’s base is far from a majority of this country.

  67. 67.

    mike in dc

    Watching the Khans being interviewed on Morning Joe, the fundamental decency of these two parents and citizens is deeply touching. I think the media in some ways feels shamed by them, because they have treated Trump’s outrageous and offensive comments with detachment and in many ways normalized it. Their voice is a rebuke to that mentality. This election is about decency versus, well, obscenity, for want of a better word.

  68. 68.

    Punchy

    @Baud: I think this is very important; too many Trump supporters actually think he’s a billionaire and great businessman. A trioka of peers constantly popping those bullshit bubbles every week at diff locations would be huge media events. Add the Kochs to that list and you’ve got the 4 Horseman of the Trumpacolypse.

  70. 70.

    Baud

    @Punchy: Seriously, people from Noam Chomsky to Mike Bloomberg are saying vote for Hillary. How much more evidence do you need to understand that Trump is an existential threat to this country.

  71. 71.

    MattF

    @Baud: Yes, but that’s not quite the same as the question of what it would take to make Ryan and McConnell drop their endorsements. They are, specifically, party men (as is Priebus)– their political power is predicated entirely on the continued existence of the R party. I think that’s why they’re all hanging on.

  72. 72.

    EconWatcher

    A commenter on another blog raised an intriguing possibility: What if Manafort is still on retainer for Russian-related interests?

    Normally, I would dismiss this possibility: I mean, a national campaign couldn’t possibly allow that to slip by, could it?

    But here, of course, all bets are off. Al Franken once described the easiest job in the world as fact-checker for Rush Limbaugh (nothing at all being expected). But surely, ethics officer/conflicts of interest monitor for the Trump campaign would be an even easier gig. Trump has shown he doesn’t have even the most basic notion of concepts like “bind trust” and “conflict of interest.”

    So inquiring minds want to know: When did Manafort’s paid work for Russia end? Did it end?

  73. 73.

    Baud

    @MattF: They should say, we need to vote against Trump, but we need to vote for a GOP Senate to keep her in check. I’m glad they haven’t, because that could work.

  74. 74.

    MattF

    @EconWatcher: As a famous Maryland politician once said, when accused of a conflict of interest, “It doesn’t conflict with any of my interests.”

  77. 77.

    MomSense

    @OGLiberal:

    Remember a couple months ago when a citizen journalist tweeted his experience at a der Trump rally? There was so much racism, xenophobia, violence totally out in the open. Why were all the journalists covering his campaign silent about it for all those months of his campaign?? Why were they covering for him?
    The way our fourth estate has tried to make this authoritarian asshole acceptable is a disgrace.

  80. 80.

    PurpleGirl

    @Patricia Kayden: Buffet has his quirks but I’ll say this for him: he raised his children very well, they don’t think they are entitled brats. He raised them to work for themselves and society, and as each child reached adulthood, he gave each one a set amount to use for charity work.

  82. 82.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mustang Bobby: We just had an evacuation of the Lutheran summer camp over on the other side of the hill from us for the Hayden Creek fire, which seems mostly contained now. There was, apparently, singing. Must be a natural response in CO to natural disasters!

    So you were there for the Great Flood…

  83. 83.

    EconWatcher

    @PurpleGirl:

    I think using actual successful businessmen like Buffet and Bloomberg to troll Trump is a winning strategy. This angle is most likely to reduce him to some kind of screaming rant on camera. No amount of indecency will ward his followers off. But a big display of weakness might.

  84. 84.

    JPL

    @EconWatcher: The New York Times has an article about Manafort..
    link

    It is not clear that Mr. Manafort’s work in Ukraine ended with his work with Mr. Trump’s campaign. A communications aide for Mr. Lyovochkin, who financed Mr. Manafort’s work, declined to say whether he was still on retainer or how much he had been paid.

  86. 86.

    EconWatcher

    @JPL:

    If that pans out, it would be yuuuuuuuuuge. There would likely be an indictable offense in there somewhere.

  88. 88.

    Miss Bianca

    Yet another testament to the wisdom of micro-chipping your companion animals! Yay!

  91. 91.

    JPL

    @Gin & Tonic: He’s probably under audit and can’t. Gen. Hayden was on CBS This Morning and mentioned that Manafort’s connection to Ukraine is an interesting plot line, but at this point it’s only conjecture. Hayden wondered whether Trump, has his own ideas about Ukraine, or if someone gave him those talking points.

  92. 92.

    Quinerly

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Of course, but at least people are talking about it and the connection. We are beyond the fluff pieces of how Manafort got his start with Bob Dole and how Dole came around to Trump because Trump hired Manafort.

  93. 93.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JPL:

    A communications aide for Mr. Lyovochkin, who financed Mr. Manafort’s work, declined to say whether he was still on retainer or how much he had been paid.

    So, that’d be a Yes.

  94. 94.

    EconWatcher

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Manafort recently denied that the Trump campaign was responsible for removing lethal support for Ukraine from the platform. From what I understand, this is an easily demonstrable lie. If so, you gotta ask, why would he lie about it? Feeling the heat?

    Can you imagine the shitstorm if a national campaign was shown to have an undisclosed, paid foreign agent heading its staff, and said agent used his influence to make the party platform more friendly to the hostile foreign power that was paying him? Teapot Dome and Watergate would look like nothing.

  95. 95.

    OGLiberal

    @MomSense: I think too many of them have hung out with him at cocktail parties where Donald was putting on his “sensible” act and they think that he’s still that guy. (and he might be, today, while tomorrow he’s the other guy…anybody who is a different person on different days is unfit to be president) They think he doesn’t really mean what he says. Either way, if one guy thinks that way, I don’t really give a shit. But this one guy is inciting millions of Americans to unleash their already near the surface racist, hateful, violent tendencies. And that shouldn’t be looked at humorously or as “well, he doesn’t really believe that personally”. The fuck what he believes personally – what scares me is what the people who want to vote for him believe personally. And what scares me about those people is that they are scary. As individuals, not so much – without firearms I’ll fight to my last breath to insure I kick their ass – but in numbers they are frightening.

  97. 97.

    hovercraft

    Boris Epstein a Trump surrogate says they respect Captain Khan, but since Mr Khan personally, viciously attacked Trump, and Trump has the right to defend himself, and that by attacking Trump he became fair game. He the said if he came in and attacked Hillary, she would have the right to attack back. See because Mr. Khan attacked for no reason. At the rate the campaign is digging, someone should get them a back hoe to make it easier. The Gold Star Families statement this morning is blistering.

  98. 98.

    Gin & Tonic

    @JPL: Trump doesn’t have his own ideas about anything. Read the transcript of his exchange with Stephanopolous on the subject yesterday. He is completely clueless about the situation on the ground, so he stalls with his all-purpose “we’ll look into it” but then regurgitates the Kremlin/RT position.

  99. 99.

    J R in WV

    @JPL:

    You have bought into Trump’s fabulous propaganda: An IRS audit is not a reason to keep tax returns confidential, per IRS. So Trump (and Manafort) are not releasing tax returns for some other reason.

  100. 100.

    MomSense

    @OGLiberal:

    Far scarier than der Trump are the people who are crawling out from under their rocks to throw more fuel on the Trumpster fire. I think that some of our journalists are just so fucking turned on by being in the in crowd and having access that they would do anything to maintain their status. Then there are some who just think they are immune from the consequences. THey think that because they are not Mexican they won’t be turned in or tracked like a FedEx package (that was a particularly disgusting comment by Chris Christie) so they pretend they are just covering the story and doing their jobs. Some are truly imbeciles. And there are probably some who are sympathetic. Just like McCain, McConnell, Ryan et al should be asked every single day how they can endorse this evil, journalists should be asked every single day why they didn’t tell the truth from the beginning.

  102. 102.

    Gin & Tonic

    @MomSense: They should be asked every single day why they are so sure that under a Trump administration they will not end up like Georgiy Gongadze or Anna Politkovskaya.

  104. 104.

    Kathleen

    @MomSense: Media has been providing cover for Rethugs for 40 to 50 years. The accumulated effects of that can be seen today’s media coverage, It’s an inevitable conclusion to the frog boiling of racism.

  105. 105.

    Capri

    @Punchy: I read in interesting take on Trump supporters. They know he’s a monster, they support him exactly because they think he’ll blow everything up. So the more he acts terribly, the better they like him because that makes him that much more likely to burn it all down. Which is why they support him more after each crazy thing that comes out of his mouth.

  106. 106.

    Miss Bianca

    @Capri: And what I can’t figure out is how so many people seem to think that somehow, they’re going to be the ones with the gasoline and matches going “Whoo, look at that sucker burn!” rather than the ones on the pyre. A failure of imagination – to say nothing of empathy – always seems to be at the root of such nihilism.

  107. 107.

    karen marie

    @Capri: A comment thread to a story about the nude Melania photos was dominated by supporters claiming the nude photos were proof positive Melania was more beautiful and therefore would be a better first lady than Michelle O. It was jaw-dropping.

Comments are closed.