“I think the fact that we keep trying to drive – the media continues to want to make this and push that this is some sort of a racially charged and divided White House.”
I’m afraid it’s a little late from Trump World to express discomfort with the “racially charged” label.
This is, after all, a rather unique presidency. Donald Trump’s rise to political power was fueled in large part by his role championing a racist conspiracy theory about the nation’s first black president. As a candidate for public office, Trump went after Judge Gonzalo Curiel because of his ethnicity, hesitated when asked to denounce David Duke, and equated Mexican immigrants with rapists.
As a president, Trump has pushed several versions of a Muslim ban, defended some racist activists as “very fine people,” and launched a prolonged feud with athletes engaged in a silent civil-rights protest.
Now, the president’s chief of staff is describing the cause of the Civil War in a decidedly ahistorical way.
If there’s a “racially charged” narrative surrounding this White House, it isn’t “the media” that created it.
Today was supposed to be the day. After months of behind-the-scenes negotiations and behind-closed-doors legislating, House Republicans recently boasted that their tax plan would be unveiled on Wednesday, November 1.
This wouldn’t just be an outline or a vague blueprint; GOP leaders assured everyone that this would be actual legislative text, ready for committee scrutiny. Everyone involved in the debate was ready to see what Republicans had finally come up with.
The wait, however, will continue a little longer.
House Republicans will delay releasing their tax bill until Thursday, it was announced Tuesday night.
The bill had originally been scheduled to be unveiled Wednesday. But speculation over a delay was rampant on Capitol Hill on Tuesday night, with representatives of House leaders pointing to the Ways and Means Committee for any final decision or announcement…. Republican members privately aired their frustration with a process that they feel cut out of, and some issues were still unresolved hours before the bill had been slated for release.
5.
kindness
John you are so cruel to your kids. I switched over to flannel sheets about a week ago. My critters (& I) were ready for it.
6.
Roger Moore
I’m turning the heat down to 55 while I am gone just to spite them.
Because driving them further under the covers should be any sensible pet person’s goal.
7.
gvg
it really bugs me that walmart is selling “Birth of a nation” in the cheap dvd bin and it’s also availible in redbox rentals. no special labeling, just there with all the yesterdays shows that didn’t stay big. Sure it’s something to be available for history research, but this is in the bin with low quality cartoons and old CHIP seasons…implies that there is a market for it and I wonder what the people who buy it think.
8.
BC in Illinois
A note from the PPP Pollsters. (The title of the article is “Support for Impeachment at record high.”):
Trump is already in a very bad position when it comes to hypothetical match ups for reelection in 2020. He trails Joe Biden by 18 at 56/38, Bernie Sanders by 15 at 53/38, Cory Booker by 11 at 49/38, Elizabeth Warren by 10 at 50/40, Kirsten Gillibrand by 10 at 48/38, Kamala Harris by 6 at 45/39, and Frederica Wilson by 3 at 42/39.
He trails FREDERICA WILSON by 3!!! A congresswoman most people had never heard of until a month ago. Simply by telling the truth while Trump and Kelly told lies, she leads him as a potential president. (No, she’s not going to run; she’ll be 78 on election day 2020.) Those of us who looked into her record [on Wikipedia, from which all knowledge flows] can testify that she has done more good in her life — as a teacher, a principal, a leader and mentor of young people, an organizer of programs for young people, and as a local politician and US Rep — she has done more good in her life, for more people, than Trump can even falsely claim to have done.
@rikyrah: This is the funniest thing about racists, they don’t mind doing and saying racist shit but if you call them on it, they are like, I ar not a racist, no siree. They look and sound so hurt.
If they can make it through to the end they deserve a medal. I watched it in film history class long ago. Fell asleep. Pretty much what happened much later when I tried to read “Mein Kampf”. Second half of that book is literally unreadable. Not in the sense of “filled with racist horror” but in the sense of “the word just before this word has nothing to do with the word I’m reading and the sentence makes no sense”.
They’ll keep it out on the coffee table so all their racist friends can know that they are with the program, and in hopes that a liberal will come by and be offended.
THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O’DONNELL 10/31/17 Ex-US Attorney: Trump team should worry as new aide testifies
Barbara McQuade, fmr. US Attorney, says the White House should be “very concerned” about Sam Clovis’ cooperation with Mueller’s probe. It suggests others may soon be targeted for interviews. Ezra Klein, Barbara McQuade & Jonathan Capehart join Lawrence O’Donnell.
13.
Capri
@schrodingers_cat: 100% agree. It reminds me of a line Chevy Chase once said on SNL a very long time ago: I don’t judge a man by the color of his skin, I judge him by the width of his nostrils.
Turn down the heat- they’ll only burrow deeper under the covers. You can’t outwit them.
15.
raven
There is nothing wrong with 55 for a dog. Lil Bit’s laryngeal paralysis is much better when she is coo and the Bohdi is a husky mix and he really loves it.
16.
Elizabelle
Rosie! Thurston! Lily!
Thank you. Petz needed this morning.
17.
Patricia Kayden
@gvg: How is “Birth of a Nation” any different than “Gone With the Wind”? They’re classics for different reasons and both glorify White Supremacy and Black inferiority. Not surprised that both still have a substantial market given how folks voted last November and who is currently in the White House.
The cats talked me into going out earlier than usual this morning. It was overcast, and the sun was just coming up.
Ric and I were at the bird feeding station in the back yard when he saw something in the next-door yard, ran toward the fence. I came along with him, on the other end of the leash.
It was a coyote! Fortunately on the other side of the fence.
I shouted, Ric jumped and fluffed out his tail, and the coyote ran. I picked up Ric and went back in the house.
One of the things I have worried about is that a coyote might see a cat on the end of a leash as an easily exploitable tidbit. I am going to use my better judgment and override the cats’ pleas to go out early.
19.
Tom
John – it’s the morning after Halloween. Give the guys a break!
The big difference is that “Birth of a Nation” is no longer under copyright, so it’s super cheap to make DVDs of it and turn a buck.
I’m still a little annoyed that, here in LA, they wanted to do a special screening of “BoaN” with a panel of scholars to set the context beforehand, and a discussion afterwards, but the theater that was going to do it got too many bomb threats and decided to cancel the whole thing.
Also, I’ve never seen or read “GWTW,” and I never intend to do so. There’s a particularly susceptible age of about 13 or 14 at which girls still read it because it’s a romance novel that their parents will actually let them read because all of the sex is only implied. However, I was already reading full-blown 1980s historical romance by that age thanks to a friend’s mother who would let me borrow her books, so it never really interested me.
23.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: For some time now, you are a worse human being for calling someone a racist than they are for being a racist.
24.
The Moar You Know
One of the things I have worried about is that a coyote might see a cat on the end of a leash as an easily exploitable tidbit. I am going to use my better judgment and override the cats’ pleas to go out early.
@Cheryl Rofer: Please do so for your cat’s sake (and yours). That happens every year in SoCal with small dogs, they just rip them right off the leash. And sometimes people with even not-so-small dogs get attacked or stalked. I gotta take my very small Golden out every morning pre-dawn because work schedule – I carry a knife when I do so and we’re at the time of year when I’m going to break out the wood staff as well. I live right on the edge of a canyon where at least one pack lives, and I have been finding cat remains at the school across the street about every three months or so.
Yeah, seeing an actual predator in the wild is kind of freaky — all kinds of instincts kick in. When I saw that bobcat at Lake Arrowhead, I knew it was unlikely to attack me since I was so much larger, but it was still hard to walk away calmly so as not to startle it.
I think it’s smart to stay inside until later in the day. Coyotes are pack hunters and you need to worry more about the coyote you didn’t see at that moment.
Today was supposed to be the day. After months of behind-the-scenes negotiations and behind-closed-doors legislating, House Republicans recently boasted that their tax plan would be unveiled on Wednesday, November 1.
On Dias de los Muertos? That would have been appropriate, actually.
I have not seen many coyotes or signs of them since I’ve been in this house. I saw them regularly in Los Alamos, and that was a denser housing area. I am wondering if the morning cat-walk activity drew this one in.
The coyote was only fifteen feet away or so – probably the closest I’ve ever been to one. On the other side of the fence, but they can jump too.
28.
geg6
Oh, fur babies! Lily, Rosie and THURSTON! Tell them all, especially Thurston, that Lovey says HI! Loudly. Koda says it in a much more dignified tone of voice.
@Mnemosyne: I have seen a fox, and a coyote but they were some distance away and I was not really worried. I was also seen a black bear momma with two cubs, fortunately I was driving and they were by the side of the interstate. Baby black bears look cuddly and cute.
@Barbara: As a sanctimonious asshole on Balloon Juice for calling out Kelly, I am well aware of the phenomena.
31.
The Moar You Know
On the other side of the fence, but they can jump too.
@Cheryl Rofer: My parents live out on the edge of the desert here, they sent me a security camera clip a couple of months back of an animal jumping to the top of their fencepost (six feet high). They thought it must be a big cat because “dogs can’t jump that high”. Of course, it was a coyote. He comes on their property every night, looks like a teenage male. He makes that six-foot jump pretty much every day.
Coyotes are pack hunters and you need to worry more about the coyote you didn’t see at that moment.
“Clever girl”
33.
BCHS Class of 1980
@The Moar You Know: IIRC that’s what happened to Kevin Drum’s cat Inkblot. I think coyotes are working their way into Tampa Bay but I’m already plenty paranoid about the existing predators.
34.
The Moar You Know
IIRC that’s what happened to Kevin Drum’s cat Inkblot. I think coyotes are working their way into Tampa Bay but I’m already plenty paranoid about the existing predators.
@BCHS Class of 1980: I’m not letting it happen to an animal of mine. I’ve seen what’s left and that’s no way to go.
I thought coyotes were everywhere in the US – but I guess not quite. And yeah, you’ve already got quite a few predators there.
I thought coyotes were everywhere in the US – but I guess not quite
The [coyote] call is coming from inside the house!
36.
NCSteve
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, have no fear. He’ll be along to join them once the temperature drops below 60.
37.
gvg
@Patricia Kayden: they are not the same thing. Birth of a Nation original was a KKK propaganda film promoted form the white house of the time with Woodrow wilson. It used a lot of fear mongering etc. Gone with the Wind is just romantic fluff glossing over the sins of our country but so do historical romances set in the middle ages or more recent stuff set in Aristocracies.
I googled to refresh my memories and found out there is an entirely new 2016 Birth of a Nation about Nat Turners slave rebellion from the slaves point of view done by Nat Parker, so apparently that is why it’s out there all of a sudden and I was being made paranoid by Trumpism. I have such an ick factor reflex that I didn’t touch one of those dvd’s. Also Parker was intending to fight back against the klansman history by using the same title. I guess it’s sort of why AA’s sometimes use the N word but I don’t think it will work.
We had a big black dog with a huge coat, he always loved it when we got the first big snow of the winter, and wouldn’t come in to the bedroom, preferring to sleep on the back deck outside in the snow.
I would look out periodically, and could see his eyes shining out from under a pile of snow on him. He would roll in it, rub his face in it, loved it.
Then in the spring when we would take him to the groomers for a spring shave, he would be so relieved – some years we kept a pompom on the end of his tail, and usually left his face alone too. He had a lot of dignity, and was very close to me. I named him Step Aside Clyde, Clyde for short, because he would walk so close to my feet as a puppy.
39.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Parts of GWTW still interest me, because Margaret Mitchell was a damn good writer, unfortunately. But the racial stuff means that I can’t countenance a re-read. But I still remember – and appreciatively quote – a couple of Rhett Butler nuggets, both times when he’s speaking to Scarlett:
I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day
And then, when she is bridling at being called out to dance while she’s in mourning:
How women clutch at the chains that bind them!
40.
Aleta
@BC in Illinois: Hope she ends up getting a publicity and funding boost from the Republican ugliness, and goes as far as she wants to. More educators in politics would help outreach I hope.
41.
Miss Bianca
@catclub: Our foxhunt actually chases coyotes. The state calls it “predator control”, but it’s really more like “predator hazing”. We’re extremely unlikely to catch one – and if they go to ground, we’re not allowed even to try – but a lot of locals, ranchers and others, have thanked us for encouraging the coyotes hanging around their properties to, ah, “move along”.
42.
Aleta
@The Moar You Know: Biologists here have started looking at the spread of coyotes into the East Coast as related to the increase in Lyme. Coyotes drive out (and eat) smaller foxes; but foxes are better at local rodent control than coyotes. (Both eat mice but iirc coyotes are less effective because of much wider range of territory.) Lately some are saying the Lyme problem might be from scarcity of foxes instead of the number of deer in a place.
He trails FREDERICA WILSON by 3!!! A congresswoman most people had never heard of until a month ago. Simply by telling the truth while Trump and Kelly told lies, she leads him as a potential president. (No, she’s not going to run; she’ll be 78 on election day 2020.) Those of us who looked into her record [on Wikipedia, from which all knowledge flows] can testify that she has done more good in her life — as a teacher, a principal, a leader and mentor of young people, an organizer of programs for young people, and as a local politician and US Rep — she has done more good in her life, for more people, than Trump can even falsely claim to have done.
I’ve had a really shitty afternoon at work, but this gave me a HUGE smile!
44.
low-tech cyclist
John – where do YOU sleep?
45.
singing truth to power
The year before last, foxes raised five kits under my sunroom. I saw them every morning until they moved on, and they were just magical. They played tag, caught rodents and birds and used the bodies as toys, played king of the hill on my giant hostas, and mashed them pretty flat. Even when they were not much bigger than a large cat, they could leap over my 4′ chain link fence. They moved on, as foxes do, before they were fully grown. I wish they would come back –
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schrodingers_cat
Where is Steve?
rikyrah
Cole,
I don’t really see a space for you in that bed. They, however, look adorable.
rikyrah
It’s too late for Trump World to balk at ‘racially charged’ label
11/01/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
………………………………………..
I’m afraid it’s a little late from Trump World to express discomfort with the “racially charged” label.
This is, after all, a rather unique presidency. Donald Trump’s rise to political power was fueled in large part by his role championing a racist conspiracy theory about the nation’s first black president. As a candidate for public office, Trump went after Judge Gonzalo Curiel because of his ethnicity, hesitated when asked to denounce David Duke, and equated Mexican immigrants with rapists.
As a president, Trump has pushed several versions of a Muslim ban, defended some racist activists as “very fine people,” and launched a prolonged feud with athletes engaged in a silent civil-rights protest.
Now, the president’s chief of staff is describing the cause of the Civil War in a decidedly ahistorical way.
If there’s a “racially charged” narrative surrounding this White House, it isn’t “the media” that created it.
rikyrah
Republicans miss their own deadline on tax plan unveiling
11/01/17 08:41 AM—UPDATED 11/01/17 08:45 AM
By Steve Benen
Today was supposed to be the day. After months of behind-the-scenes negotiations and behind-closed-doors legislating, House Republicans recently boasted that their tax plan would be unveiled on Wednesday, November 1.
This wouldn’t just be an outline or a vague blueprint; GOP leaders assured everyone that this would be actual legislative text, ready for committee scrutiny. Everyone involved in the debate was ready to see what Republicans had finally come up with.
The wait, however, will continue a little longer.
kindness
John you are so cruel to your kids. I switched over to flannel sheets about a week ago. My critters (& I) were ready for it.
Roger Moore
Because driving them further under the covers should be any sensible pet person’s goal.
gvg
it really bugs me that walmart is selling “Birth of a nation” in the cheap dvd bin and it’s also availible in redbox rentals. no special labeling, just there with all the yesterdays shows that didn’t stay big. Sure it’s something to be available for history research, but this is in the bin with low quality cartoons and old CHIP seasons…implies that there is a market for it and I wonder what the people who buy it think.
BC in Illinois
A note from the PPP Pollsters. (The title of the article is “Support for Impeachment at record high.”):
He trails FREDERICA WILSON by 3!!! A congresswoman most people had never heard of until a month ago. Simply by telling the truth while Trump and Kelly told lies, she leads him as a potential president. (No, she’s not going to run; she’ll be 78 on election day 2020.) Those of us who looked into her record [on Wikipedia, from which all knowledge flows] can testify that she has done more good in her life — as a teacher, a principal, a leader and mentor of young people, an organizer of programs for young people, and as a local politician and US Rep — she has done more good in her life, for more people, than Trump can even falsely claim to have done.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: This is the funniest thing about racists, they don’t mind doing and saying racist shit but if you call them on it, they are like, I ar not a racist, no siree. They look and sound so hurt.
Major Major Major Major
This is a much nicer thread for my blood pressure, thanks.
The Moar You Know
@gvg: “Klan curious”
If they can make it through to the end they deserve a medal. I watched it in film history class long ago. Fell asleep. Pretty much what happened much later when I tried to read “Mein Kampf”. Second half of that book is literally unreadable. Not in the sense of “filled with racist horror” but in the sense of “the word just before this word has nothing to do with the word I’m reading and the sentence makes no sense”.
They’ll keep it out on the coffee table so all their racist friends can know that they are with the program, and in hopes that a liberal will come by and be offended.
rikyrah
THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O’DONNELL 10/31/17
Ex-US Attorney: Trump team should worry as new aide testifies
Barbara McQuade, fmr. US Attorney, says the White House should be “very concerned” about Sam Clovis’ cooperation with Mueller’s probe. It suggests others may soon be targeted for interviews. Ezra Klein, Barbara McQuade & Jonathan Capehart join Lawrence O’Donnell.
Capri
@schrodingers_cat: 100% agree. It reminds me of a line Chevy Chase once said on SNL a very long time ago: I don’t judge a man by the color of his skin, I judge him by the width of his nostrils.
Shell
Turn down the heat- they’ll only burrow deeper under the covers. You can’t outwit them.
raven
There is nothing wrong with 55 for a dog. Lil Bit’s laryngeal paralysis is much better when she is coo and the Bohdi is a husky mix and he really loves it.
Elizabelle
Rosie! Thurston! Lily!
Thank you. Petz needed this morning.
Patricia Kayden
@gvg: How is “Birth of a Nation” any different than “Gone With the Wind”? They’re classics for different reasons and both glorify White Supremacy and Black inferiority. Not surprised that both still have a substantial market given how folks voted last November and who is currently in the White House.
Cheryl Rofer
The cats talked me into going out earlier than usual this morning. It was overcast, and the sun was just coming up.
Ric and I were at the bird feeding station in the back yard when he saw something in the next-door yard, ran toward the fence. I came along with him, on the other end of the leash.
It was a coyote! Fortunately on the other side of the fence.
I shouted, Ric jumped and fluffed out his tail, and the coyote ran. I picked up Ric and went back in the house.
One of the things I have worried about is that a coyote might see a cat on the end of a leash as an easily exploitable tidbit. I am going to use my better judgment and override the cats’ pleas to go out early.
Tom
John – it’s the morning after Halloween. Give the guys a break!
schrodingers_cat
@Cheryl Rofer: The tale of the tail. You should take a camera with you on these outings. Such great material for FP posts.
Cheryl Rofer
@schrodingers_cat: My only thought was to get Ric inside and safe from the coyote.
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
The big difference is that “Birth of a Nation” is no longer under copyright, so it’s super cheap to make DVDs of it and turn a buck.
I’m still a little annoyed that, here in LA, they wanted to do a special screening of “BoaN” with a panel of scholars to set the context beforehand, and a discussion afterwards, but the theater that was going to do it got too many bomb threats and decided to cancel the whole thing.
Also, I’ve never seen or read “GWTW,” and I never intend to do so. There’s a particularly susceptible age of about 13 or 14 at which girls still read it because it’s a romance novel that their parents will actually let them read because all of the sex is only implied. However, I was already reading full-blown 1980s historical romance by that age thanks to a friend’s mother who would let me borrow her books, so it never really interested me.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: For some time now, you are a worse human being for calling someone a racist than they are for being a racist.
The Moar You Know
@Cheryl Rofer: Please do so for your cat’s sake (and yours). That happens every year in SoCal with small dogs, they just rip them right off the leash. And sometimes people with even not-so-small dogs get attacked or stalked. I gotta take my very small Golden out every morning pre-dawn because work schedule – I carry a knife when I do so and we’re at the time of year when I’m going to break out the wood staff as well. I live right on the edge of a canyon where at least one pack lives, and I have been finding cat remains at the school across the street about every three months or so.
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Yeah, seeing an actual predator in the wild is kind of freaky — all kinds of instincts kick in. When I saw that bobcat at Lake Arrowhead, I knew it was unlikely to attack me since I was so much larger, but it was still hard to walk away calmly so as not to startle it.
I think it’s smart to stay inside until later in the day. Coyotes are pack hunters and you need to worry more about the coyote you didn’t see at that moment.
Fair Economist
@rikyrah:
On Dias de los Muertos? That would have been appropriate, actually.
Cheryl Rofer
I have not seen many coyotes or signs of them since I’ve been in this house. I saw them regularly in Los Alamos, and that was a denser housing area. I am wondering if the morning cat-walk activity drew this one in.
The coyote was only fifteen feet away or so – probably the closest I’ve ever been to one. On the other side of the fence, but they can jump too.
geg6
Oh, fur babies! Lily, Rosie and THURSTON! Tell them all, especially Thurston, that Lovey says HI! Loudly. Koda says it in a much more dignified tone of voice.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I have seen a fox, and a coyote but they were some distance away and I was not really worried. I was also seen a black bear momma with two cubs, fortunately I was driving and they were by the side of the interstate. Baby black bears look cuddly and cute.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: As a sanctimonious asshole on Balloon Juice for calling out Kelly, I am well aware of the phenomena.
The Moar You Know
@Cheryl Rofer: My parents live out on the edge of the desert here, they sent me a security camera clip a couple of months back of an animal jumping to the top of their fencepost (six feet high). They thought it must be a big cat because “dogs can’t jump that high”. Of course, it was a coyote. He comes on their property every night, looks like a teenage male. He makes that six-foot jump pretty much every day.
catclub
@Mnemosyne:
“Clever girl”
BCHS Class of 1980
@The Moar You Know: IIRC that’s what happened to Kevin Drum’s cat Inkblot. I think coyotes are working their way into Tampa Bay but I’m already plenty paranoid about the existing predators.
The Moar You Know
@BCHS Class of 1980: I’m not letting it happen to an animal of mine. I’ve seen what’s left and that’s no way to go.
I thought coyotes were everywhere in the US – but I guess not quite. And yeah, you’ve already got quite a few predators there.
catclub
@The Moar You Know:
The [coyote] call is coming from inside the house!
NCSteve
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, have no fear. He’ll be along to join them once the temperature drops below 60.
gvg
@Patricia Kayden: they are not the same thing. Birth of a Nation original was a KKK propaganda film promoted form the white house of the time with Woodrow wilson. It used a lot of fear mongering etc. Gone with the Wind is just romantic fluff glossing over the sins of our country but so do historical romances set in the middle ages or more recent stuff set in Aristocracies.
I googled to refresh my memories and found out there is an entirely new 2016 Birth of a Nation about Nat Turners slave rebellion from the slaves point of view done by Nat Parker, so apparently that is why it’s out there all of a sudden and I was being made paranoid by Trumpism. I have such an ick factor reflex that I didn’t touch one of those dvd’s. Also Parker was intending to fight back against the klansman history by using the same title. I guess it’s sort of why AA’s sometimes use the N word but I don’t think it will work.
J R in WV
@raven:
We had a big black dog with a huge coat, he always loved it when we got the first big snow of the winter, and wouldn’t come in to the bedroom, preferring to sleep on the back deck outside in the snow.
I would look out periodically, and could see his eyes shining out from under a pile of snow on him. He would roll in it, rub his face in it, loved it.
Then in the spring when we would take him to the groomers for a spring shave, he would be so relieved – some years we kept a pompom on the end of his tail, and usually left his face alone too. He had a lot of dignity, and was very close to me. I named him Step Aside Clyde, Clyde for short, because he would walk so close to my feet as a puppy.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Parts of GWTW still interest me, because Margaret Mitchell was a damn good writer, unfortunately. But the racial stuff means that I can’t countenance a re-read. But I still remember – and appreciatively quote – a couple of Rhett Butler nuggets, both times when he’s speaking to Scarlett:
And then, when she is bridling at being called out to dance while she’s in mourning:
Aleta
@BC in Illinois: Hope she ends up getting a publicity and funding boost from the Republican ugliness, and goes as far as she wants to. More educators in politics would help outreach I hope.
Miss Bianca
@catclub: Our foxhunt actually chases coyotes. The state calls it “predator control”, but it’s really more like “predator hazing”. We’re extremely unlikely to catch one – and if they go to ground, we’re not allowed even to try – but a lot of locals, ranchers and others, have thanked us for encouraging the coyotes hanging around their properties to, ah, “move along”.
Aleta
@The Moar You Know: Biologists here have started looking at the spread of coyotes into the East Coast as related to the increase in Lyme. Coyotes drive out (and eat) smaller foxes; but foxes are better at local rodent control than coyotes. (Both eat mice but iirc coyotes are less effective because of much wider range of territory.) Lately some are saying the Lyme problem might be from scarcity of foxes instead of the number of deer in a place.
low-tech cyclist
@BC in Illinois:
I’ve had a really shitty afternoon at work, but this gave me a HUGE smile!
low-tech cyclist
John – where do YOU sleep?
singing truth to power
The year before last, foxes raised five kits under my sunroom. I saw them every morning until they moved on, and they were just magical. They played tag, caught rodents and birds and used the bodies as toys, played king of the hill on my giant hostas, and mashed them pretty flat. Even when they were not much bigger than a large cat, they could leap over my 4′ chain link fence. They moved on, as foxes do, before they were fully grown. I wish they would come back –