Once you realize it is no longer your bed, no longer your chair, and no longer your house, living with cats is pretty easy.
I walk into the bedroom to go to the bathroom, and that is what I find. You can see him almost daring me to move him. Bastard.
Jerzy Russian
He has got that “come over here after my nap so I can kick your ass” kind of look.
Joy in FL
Steve is magnificent.
debit
Steve!! What he really wants is for you to go back to bed and cuddle, John. You should!
Mnemosyne
“Look at my soft underbelly. Don’t you want to pat it?” (Unsheaths claws) “C’mon, give it a try.”
If I come home at night and Annie is napping on the couch, I have to tiptoe around because otherwise she jumps off and then gives me a martyred look from the other side of the room. Damned semi-ferals.
seaboogie
@Jerzy Russian: Steve looks pretty pensive – assuming he’s trying to figure out how to be on the bed and the chair simultaneously.
PaulWartenberg2016
my cats are more prone to sit on the edge of the bed, alert, than to stretch out like that.
ET
I would have gotten in bed next to him and snuggled.
schrodinger's cat
He looks so cuddly! Want!
piratedan
guess the MSM thinks that the horse race is more important than the details… maybe they envision lawsuits and show trials and scandals galore with a Trump administration. Suffering under the illusion that everything will be as it always is and that Trump will suddenly comply with all of the expected norms and not come for them as well. Gotta be nice under that there bubble they’ve constructed.
Miss Bianca
Lefty Kitty seems to have gone missing. Pancho Kitty was literally (yes, literally) climbing the walls (OK, the door jamb), and yowling until I had to let him out of the office. Normally she doesn’t go outside by herself, so I’m wondering what’s happened.
I am not worried. I am *not* worried. I am NOT worried. I’m not going to go look for her, no, I’m not…I’m just going to take a walkabout and keep my eyes open, that’s all…
khead
Don’t kid yourself and try it, dude. Steve will, in fact, cut you.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
The trick is to go for the chest area rather than the belly, unless you know the cat very well.
randy khan
I was stuck near a TV with CNN as I ate my lunch (note to self – find somewhere else to eat in the food court!) and saw that Trump told the Wilmington crowd that there would be only one set of rules for everyone in a Trump Administration. He neglected to mention that the rules would be based strictly on ability to pay.
Winnief
He’s such a magnificent beast. So beautiful…
Of course the minute you tried to rub the belly you know you’d lose a finger.
Keith P.
I’ve now get a non-alpha cat, which is a pleasant surprise. She can be pretty forceful when she wants to be petted (will jump almost anywhere near me and give a pitiful meow), but there’s no destruction of stuff, not taking of the best parts of the bed (her late companion would take my pillow). She picks random spots to relax, but it’s never any place I sit.
Villago Delenda Est
He’s not as floofy as the lamented and much missed Tunch was, but he’s pretty freakin’ floofy!
schrodinger's cat
Steve looks so cuddly. Want!
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Yes, this is true with my cat, she loves chest rubs…but venture south at your peril.
germy
@Winnief: Our cat loves belly rubs. Of course they must not go on too long, otherwise the “hug with front arms and disembowel with hind claws” rule kicks in. I’ve learned through trial and error how much belly rub she’ll tolerate.
p.a.
Man Without a
CountryComfyChair.NotMax
It’s a cat. You don’t like where it has chosen to sprawl, pick it up and move it.
SATSQ.
Villago Delenda Est
@p.a.: Cat with a country, a comfy chair, a comfy bed, and don’t you forget it, hairless ape.
Gin & Tonic
Magnitude 7.1 quake in NZ.
Roger Moore
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Stretching out like that is a sign the cat is relaxed and feels safe. If they don’t feel safe, they’ll try to find a hiding place to sleep in.
Miss Bianca
@Gin & Tonic: Holy shit!
Shell
Actually, Steve looks kinda small in that pic.
Roger Moore
@randy khan:
Nah. The one set of rules will be the Calvinball rules.
Anoniminous
@Gin & Tonic:
Tsunami Warning issued. Only a “threat” at this time.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Ironically, Annie the semi-feral who likes to pretend she’s scared of us LOVES to have her whole belly rubbed and will demand it of us. Then when she’s had enough, she jumps up and runs away like she suspects we were about to hit her with a brick.
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: That haircut grew back pretty fast, Seems to me.
Aleta
Steve: We all have to make sacrifices, John.
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: I got the kitteh pics, they has a cute and an awesome. I hope lefty kitteh comes back soon.
patrick II
Two things.
First, while the normal mass media is busy normalizing Donald Trump, the same is not true for the late night comedy shows. Colbert, Kimmel, Seth Meyer, John Oliver, and others have been mocking and humiliating him nightly. I don’t know what the ratings for all of those shows are, but it must have some effect in countering the normalizing being performed by the horse race news channels.
Second.
Donald gained three or four points in the polls last week. How is that? After Donald tried to make an issue of Hillary’s health we got to meet Donald’s doctor which would seem to discredit any argument Donald would make about the seriousness of health reports, and earlier in the week Hillary gave what I thought was an excellent speech on Donald and the alt-right, which seemed to lead to conversations about the rise of the new racists in America. Yet still, the week ended in a minus for Hillary. What happened?
JMG
@patrick II: Not even white people can accuse white people of racism without losing support. Republicans who’re thinking of supporting Trump out of party loyalty don’t want to think they might have racist tendencies. Plus, the coverage was pretty exclusively “Clinton descends into the gutter.” Democrats aren’t allowed to fight hard and be tough, either.
Major Major Major Major
Aw, he looks sweet in that picture. Hair’s still growing in, yes?
@patrick II: The afterglow from the convention is gone (it was long though this year) and Trump managed not to do anything that pissed off the people who aren’t really paying attention. No super high-profile stuff like his RNC “YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE” speech, or the Curiel thing, or whatever. The race is reverting back towards where it’s been the whole time. Meanwhile the steady drumbeat of anti-Hillary stuff continued, so in the absence of Trump-discrediting incidents she slides back to +4, +5.
The electoral college hasn’t budged, though.
FlipYrWhig
@patrick II: My hypothesis is that some amount of the CORRUPT CLINTON FOUNDATION bullshit made some soft Clinton support waver, which shaved a point or so off her numbers, and then in addition to that she went down one and Trump went up one, which is statistical noise. So it went from 48-40 or so to 46.5-41 or so. I haven’t been taking stock of every poll result but that’s what I think I saw, in a general sense.
redshirt
By FSM that picture is in focus and centered! Is our Cole learning?!
Punchy
@Gin & Tonic: I’m seeing 5.7 on the intertoobz
low-tech cyclist
One of our cats, Wilbur, loves for me to pet his belly with my foot. If I tried doing it with my hand, I’d get clawed, but he’ll roll over on his back and let me stroke him with my foot all the way from neck to crotch.
Major Major Major Major
@Punchy: My innertubes say 7.1. USGS.
raven
If anyone wants to enter their dog in out neighborhood dog parade in October now is your chance!
scav
@Punchy: There seems to have been a smaller one in the same area (here). Here’s a link to local radio / news which currently has info on bigger plus level two tsunami threat.
Pogonip
Cole, I don’t think you should eat that sausage; it’s growing hair!
Starfish
@patrick II: More email happened. I accidentally wandered over to some Donald Trump reddit community, and they are sure that the 30 emails related to Benghazi that have just been found by the FBI are totally going to discredit Hillary Clinton and send her to jail even though we have had years of investigations on the issue.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I also suspect this is CORRUPT CLINTON FOUNDATION after effect, which was of course ginned up to try and drown out Clinton’s masterful speech about Trump’s ties to white supremacists.
raven
@Starfish: Two days ago, I known it’s hard but try to keep up.
Hal
Meh. Hillary is not winning this thing by double digits, she never was. But a 4 to 6 point margin in the general election is millions of more votes. Trump’s support is almost exclusively white male driven and after his speech last night, I’m guessing he’s going to lose more points from Hispanic/Latino voters. His path to victory is not getting better. Hell, I’m not even convinced the media spin on his mexico trip is going to do anything for him.
Punchy
@Major Major Major Major: I’m seeing this
Aleta
Jacob Monty, a member of Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council, quickly resigned after the speech. Another member, Ramiro Pena, a Texas pastor, said Trump’s speech likely cost him the election and said he’d have to reconsider being part of a “scam.” And Alfonso Aguilar, the president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said in an interview that he is “inclined” to pull his support.
from Politico
Punchy
@scav: Yup, that’s the one I was seeing.
Chyron HR
@Aleta:
As they say in May-hi-co, “Shit or get off el pot.”
Major Major Major Major
@Pogonip: It’ll be fine with some mustard.
Hillary should have a Latino surrogate go out and start talking about how Trump is suggesting something that “would be even worse than what Eisenhower did, which was so blatantly racist that the people doing it called it Operation Wetback.”
Shell
Funny, how just a rollover of the months. …… August was just one endless succession of hot, sunny days; hardly a raindrop in sight. It rolls over to Sept 1st and we have our first all-day rainy day.
Villago Delenda Est
@patrick II: Horse Race narrative must be served, at all costs, to keep eyeballs focused on the Newz Showz. Or Chuckles the Toddler and his loathsome ilk will find themselves as on the outs as Dancin’ Dave.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chyron HR: I believe Steve Martin established that it’s “La Casa de pe-pe.”
Mnemosyne
@Hal:
Right now, I’m feeling like Hillary’s electoral college count will be very similar to Obama’s, with maybe one or two states flipping to D, but her popular vote count will be a blowout. If Trump breaks 30 percent here in California, I will be astounded.
rikyrah
We told you that it was Steve’s House and he lets you stay there because you feed him.
catclub
@Shell:
Seattle summer is drought, but whenever the UDub started – around Sep 25, was also when the rainy season arrived.
I wonder if that pattern still holds or climate change has bollixed it up.
RSA
Is it still your lap, though? If so, there’s a chance of recovery. If not, you might as well give up.
rikyrah
IF YOU’RE AN AMERICAN, AND YOU DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT BLACK AMERICANS, YOUR “PATRIOTISM” IS BULLSHIT
Damon Young, 9/1/16
…………………
Either way, the spotlight is shining on us and our complex relationship(s) to the ideal of patriotism. And the spotlight is shining in the wrong direction.
Black Americans are Americans. Living and breathing citizens of this country; many of whom can trace our lineages here back hundreds of years. Maybe our (collective) feelings about America are complex and perhaps our patriotism can be doubted at times (and for good reason). But one thing is simple: We are American citizens. This is an inextricable truth. A truth that remains true despite a history (and present) of that citizenship being doubted, questioned, and even outright dismissed.
But we are Americans. And for the Black American, the 300 million other American citizens are our countrymen. Which is why we need to start doubting the patriotic bonafides of those doubting ours.
Patriotism isn’t just an infatuation with and fanaticism for symbols and abstractions. It’s a steadfastness in making sure the country’s professed ideals aren’t just honored and protected, but extended to each of its citizens. It’s not standing for the flag, it’s fighting for what the flag is supposed to stand for. It’s wanting to keep your countrymen — all of them — safe.
D58826
then you have attained serenity.
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: LAtest Clinton ‘scandal’ from Politico – seems Bill has been using government money to fund the CF. Several breathless paragraphs later after talking about optics and smoke and blurred lines the writer mentions that Clinton bills GSA for certain post-presidential expenses under a law that has been on the books for decades. But the lede makes it sound like Bill stops by the government printing office and picks up a few bundles of C notes. I really hope these folks enjoy living under the Trump presidency.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: That last paragraph is particularly well said.
redshirt
@Shell: Old person thought: It seemed like in the past we’d have weeks of rain. Days filled with rain. But the last few years, it barely rains. We get most of our rainfall now in hit or miss thunderstorms.
Good for vacations, terrible for the land. The balsam firs in the northland are dying.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
FWIW, Fred Clark at Slacktivist has been calling out his fellow white evangelicals for racism for several years now. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to see white evangelicals and fundamentalists rally around Trump — their racism is more important to them than their stated religious beliefs.
Peale
@Chyron HR: Yep. Jeebus. What wimps.
cat copeland
@Roger Moore:
My cat WILL NOT, I repeat, WILL NOT allow any underbelly rubbing. Yes, He WILL cut you. He has TALONS for nails!
NR
@patrick II:
What happened is Hillary Clinton is a horrible candidate who voters can’t stand.
Any other Democrat would be clobbering Trump. We decided to nominate the only candidate out there who could possibly lose to him. And the country may very well pay the price for it.
Aleta
@D58826: ha
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: for whatever reason, humans think there was more weather (especially thunderstorms) when they were younger, regardless of the actual weather history.
Major Major Major Major
@NR: that’s amazing. Literally nothing you wrote is true. Quite a feat.
Iowa Old Lady
@patrick II: It may be normal fluctuation in the polls. The more reliable polls run less frequently. I believe I read somewhere that at least until August, they were running once a month. The ones in between are more Trump friendly. We’ll have to see.
Betty Cracker
@NR: Yay, Stillwell Angel is back! Is there are specific polling gap that triggers your reemergence, or is it more of a blood sugar thing? My “put up or shut up” offer still stands, BTW.
cat copeland
@Villago Delenda Est:
So John, Steve has commandeered your furnishings. Well, that’s what CATS do!
AND, you wouldn’t have it ANY other way!!!!
redshirt
@NR: A dream for Bernie…… Alas.
gvg
@piratedan: Yeah media coverage of Trump seems odd to me because he has specifically been nasty to them and riled up his almost Lynch mobs against them. If I were them I’d be determined to nuke him from orbit.
hovercraft
Bamboozled! What Made Everyone Think Trump Was Changing On Immigration?
TPM gives us a step by step of the con job.
gvg
@Miss Bianca: check closets and attics and cabinet doors. Kittens can get themselves locked into places. Nephew just got his first kitten. Robin is adorable but has managed to get herself locked somewhere with no litter box several times in a row. We need heavy books in front of doors for awhile.
My first cat got herself locked in other peoples attics for a week twice. Hunting mice. We would not have found her the first time if not for my mother playing easter bunny for her sad daughter very early in the morning with no noises to cover up tiny kitty mews from neighbors house. neighbor was on vacation but we had the key. cat snuck in their garage and up attic steps we think.
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Guessing an extra dose of chemtrails in his neighborhood.
Thanks, Obama.
NR
@Major Major Major Major:
Show me another Democrat with favorability ratings as bad as Hillary’s. I’ll wait.
Rob in CT
@Betty Cracker:
LOL. Actually, truly, LOL.
And hey, there’s hope. Stillwell Angel turned out ok in the end.
inventor
@Betty Cracker:
That’s freakin’ priceless!
Chyron HR
@NR:
It’s kind of funny how you forgot to pretend that Jill Stein is a viable candidate.
hovercraft
I want the media to call Donald out for his use of the phrase “catch and release”, undocumented immigrants are not fish. The phrase is demeaning (probably a feature not a bug, I know), but still it’s dehumanizing.
Gravenstone
@Major Major Major Major: But it is terribly consistent in its wrongness. That is also quite a feat. Makes one wonder if it is actually Bloody Bill Kristol in disguise?
redshirt
@NR: “Mr. Favorability Ratings”.
It’s literally the only thing that matters to NR.
Gravenstone
@redshirt: No, I’m thinking attention is its primary motivation. Whinging about “favorability” is just this cycle’s means to that end.
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major: In the past when I was 4, the snow regularly fell up to my waist !! Many times, I remember, so deep it was over my head !
Major Major Major Major
@NR: no thanks. I try to avoid really stupid conversations.
jl
We need to find a loving ‘forever home’ for Cole.
I think he said he was up to date on his vet visits and his shots, so should be plenty of places that have resources to help out.
hovercraft
@NR:
Here you go Harry Reid Favorable 22 Unfavorable 42
And here is Nancy Pelosi Favorable 25 Unfavorable 48
Those numbers are without an active campaign ponding them every day, and without the media digging up bullshit “scandals” every day.
You’re welcome.
randy khan
@NR:
Leaving aside that favorability ratings do not tell you whether she’s a good candidate or not, in practice she’s running a very good, very disciplined campaign. The DNC was beautifully done in nearly all respects (especially as compared to the RNC disaster), she’s taking advantage of nearly all of the lessons learned from the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns, she’s using local media well, she’s showing good judgment in choosing where to focus campaign resources, she’s consolidated her support among Democrats, and there’s much more. (For instance, all evidence suggests that she’s a really good retail campaigner.)
As for the alternatives, Bernie would have gotten crushed by the “socialist” label, and the others who ran were all limp noodles with no discernible signs of life compared to her.
Her liability is that the national press really thinks there must be a pony (to steal the old Ronald Reagan joke) somewhere, and so they go after her for things of no consequence. That’s obviously an issue, but it does not obviate all of the rest.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
You won’t find one, unless you find another one with a vagina.
Hillary has low favorability because of misogyny. Period. Once she’s elected, her ratings will go back up again, just like they have every other time she’s run for office.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
I got this.
Aleta
@NR:
Trump and supporters: Violence is good. Deportation is good. White supremacy, racism, attacking women are all OK by me.
Media to voters: Hillary isn’t lovable.
Calouste
@NR:
O’Malley only got 2% or so in the primaries. Can’t see why you would say he would be clobbering Trump.
booda
STEVE BELLY IS EVERYTHING
Roger Moore
@hovercraft:
I’d like to see somebody point out the difference between being arrested and being convicted. He wants to start deportation hearings the moment an undocumented immigrant is arrested, regardless of whether there’s any real evidence against them. It’s a terrible policy, because it discourages undocumented immigrants from having anything to do with the police, which in practice lets crime flourish in areas with large undocumented populations. That’s exactly why a lot of the “sanctuary cities” have adopted their policies of not talking to immigration officials.
ET
Did anyone see Rep. John Lewis crowdsurfing on Colbert? He really is awesome.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@redshirt: Never had “weeks of rain” here in SoCal but we had rain and most of the year was cool. That’s stopped, it got much hotter all year round, and our summers are now humid – but with no rain.
Ten years of this and there won’t be much in the way of trees left standing here. They all look awful. Thirty years of this and it will look like the desert 20 miles to the east – rocks and sand.
Lived here all my life – fifty years and counting. Change started in 1996 and got real obvious in 2005.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: I was done anyhow.
scav
NR is rather trumpish: it’s not the competency or the skills, it’s the pop-u-larity and the Starbursts and leg-tingles! Jill must have the special wink.
@Roger Moore:
It’s not as though his crowd cares about the distinction. That’s why they’re so cool with immediate execution by cop upon mere suspicion. The cops know who the bad guys are: just let ’em loose. Problem solved within an hour of his taking office. (Well, it will take them a bit longer to tidy up all the dead bodies in the street, if past action is any clue.)
Peale
@randy khan: Bernie would have the same problem that Clinton is having. Trump has a single campaign issue about immigration and the security threat it poses. As much as Bernie is going to want to talk about jobs or banks or student loan relief, if the other candidate only wants to talk about the threat of immigration and the media decides that the “immigration crisis” is what the election cycle is about, well thats what the election will be about. Immigration (as a security threat!) is not something Democrats are very strong on. Yes it helps drive voters away from Republicans, but it hasn’t actually been a strong draw to the polls for Democrat voters. Bernie could have talked up a storm about how we’ll break up those banks who caused all your problems and then it will be better, but that’s not going to be a response to “immigration crisis!” Bernie has no response to “immigration crisis”. Nor does Hillary. The longer Trump can keep the focus on “immigration crisis”, the more the race will tighten. I know she’s not going to lose, but whether she’s going to expand and capture other states when the election is about “immigration crisis.” Can cry all we want that the election isn’t about daycare or healthcare or banks or new programs.
The problem with Trump is that there isn’t an actual immigration crisis. But tad nabbit if the press isn’t going to help him by creating the idea that we’re at a big immigration crossroads.
redshirt
@Peale: Sanders would have gotten smoked by any Republican. We dodged a huge bullet that he didn’t win.
Peale
@Roger Moore: The goal of the policy is to greatly reduce the number of immigrants in the country and make their lives miserable so they’ll leave. It is not to make their concerns central since they are a threat to the continued existence of the country, an affront to its values, the cause of the spread of disease, the reason your daughter got knocked up and your son is sticking a needle in his arm. And you, dear liberal, want to care about THEM as victims! Who is the fascist here! It’s you who is trying to bring the big jack boot of Omar and Pepe down on the throats of Jack and Jill. Not the other way around.
(Geeze. I hang out on the wrong web site comment sections.)
steverinoCT
@Roger Moore:
I was at a bookstore, reading on the couch, and the resident cat and I had a friendly discussion as to whether I was “rubbing” or “tickling” his belly.
The clerk was aghast at the trickles of blood running down my arm. I accepted a paper towel, but the cat and I were good: just playing. I explain to my nieces that cats don’t have the fine control over their hind legs that let them claw without scratching.
Besides, who can resist a big fluffy belly?
rikyrah
NYT Scrambles To Rewrite Botched Story On Trump’s Immigration Speech
Sept 1, 2016
In Donald Trump’s much-hyped speech on immigration Wednesday night in Phoenix, which came the same day he met with the president of Mexico, the GOP nominee showed no signs of “softening” the hard-line immigration policies that have won him legions of supporters.
But that message didn’t come across in the New York Times’ initial coverage of the speech, which hailed Trump’s address as “an audacious attempt” to transform his image and reported that he shelved his proposal for a massive effort to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally. The story went through extensive edits when readers pointed out the story inaccurately characterized Trump’s speech.
Readers on social media were quick to point out the inaccuracies and suggest the Times had bought into the campaign’s song-and-dance about a softer touch on immigration issues.
About an hour after the original story was published, the story underwent a substantial rewrite to eliminate language about Mexico pitching in to solve the immigration crisis.
The Times didn’t run an editor’s note explaining the story had been substantively changed, but the edit-tracking site NewsDiff clearly shows the extent of the revisions. You can see the full edits here.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
That probably means that the reporter wrote it ahead of time, left the office, and the editors on duty had to scramble to try and fix it once people started calling them out on it.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I imagine that you’re supposed to check a story for verisimilitude before you click ‘publish’.
Joel
@patrick II: Trump stopped stepping on his own dick quite as visibly, so the race is settling back to where it was before the conventions. In other words, republicans coming home. It doesn’t matter how fucking awful you are, it turns out.
MomSense
@Miss Bianca:
I am NOT worried with you.
Lefty kitty, come home this instant!
Roger Moore
@Peale:
That’s the putative goal. The actual goal is to drive a wedge between undocumented immigrants and the authorities so that employers like Trump can continue to exploit them without having to worry about getting caught. If we actually cared about stopping illegal immigration, we’d go after employers who hire undocumented immigrants, even if that meant rewarding the immigrants for ratting out their employers.
ann
“This is my spot. And I refuse to even notice him.”
Miss Bianca
@MomSense: Today was warehouse delivery day, so one of us got the bright idea that maybe she’d gotten into the truck and been driven off! Alas, a call to the warehouse and then to the driver revealed that it was not so. Sigh. Meantime we’ll be scouting all over the place!
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Back in the olden days of 1993, you would actually *watch the event in question* before filing your story.
But I was a mere stringer, so I guess that’s why I never advanced to being a staff reporter. Well, that and I hated journalism once I was actually doing it.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
Find the bag of dry cat food. Walk around shaking it, pausing to listen for tiny meows. Repeat as necessary.