Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Motown is Joe-Town!

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

This blog will pay for itself.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

When we show up, we win.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

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52Comments

  2. 2.

    The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion

    Various unintelligible baby-talk noises, repeated ad infinitum

  8. 8.

    rikyrah

    DEMONS!!

    Five surplus Army tents hold hundreds of migrants in El Paso. The government doesn’t want you to see that, so we got a telephoto lens.
    https://t.co/frKXfoii3J pic.twitter.com/4pghzkdnCF

    — Justin Miller (@justinjm1) April 15, 2019
    Children as young as 5 months old are held in tents, sleeping on parents’ legs. There are no cots.
    https://t.co/frKXfoii3J pic.twitter.com/InXZaUqoZ7

    — Justin Miller (@justinjm1) April 15, 2019

  9. 9.

    Brachiator

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I broke ground on a new short story yesterday. That’s always exciting, up until it becomes… work.

    Good luck with your new story.

    And given the theme of the thread, be sure to have your belly scritched.

  10. 10.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: The next Presidential nominee to suggest how we need to understand T voters, should be shown that footage. No, we do not need to understand the motivations of the people who make such atrocities, like these concentration camps possible.

  12. 12.

    germy

    “When Assange wanted to be unpleasant he put excrement on the walls and underwear with excrement in the lavatory. We had to remind him to flush the toilet and clean the dishes.” -Ecuador’s UK ambassador.https://t.co/ItXnpilIOC— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) April 13, 2019

    While you may find this to be "unpleasant" (a subjective measure), there is no question that this is protected journalistic behavior. If we allow them to define smearing feces on the wall as "not journalism", there's no question what 1st amendment freedoms they'll come for next. https://t.co/JNgF37cIsv— Glem (I Do *NOT* Support Trump) (@GlemGreenwald) April 13, 2019

  13. 13.

    randy khan

    We have one cat who is totally into the belly scratching (provided he is in the correct location at the time – there are certain specified places where he will allow himself to be petted), one who thinks it’s okay, but not the main attraction, and one who will cut you* if you happen to be stupid enough to pet her there when she’s rolled over on her back. Naturally, the latter is the one who wants to be petted the most. Just not there.

    *Okay, she’ll scratch and bite, but you get the idea.

  14. 14.

    Aleta

    Young Finney went for his neuter this morning.
    Vet tech: “He LOVED the anaesthesia!”
    He seems quite happy without testicles.
    He’s thrilled with life in general.

  16. 16.

    germy

    Question for the cat experts:

    A few months ago I brought our cat in for her regular vet visit. Everything was fine until one point when I saw the vet lift my cat by the scruff of the neck. Our cat is 10 years old.

    I thought only kittens should be carried like that.

    Should I find a new vet, or am I being overprotective?

  19. 19.

    MisterForkbeard

    Those purrs are magnificant.

    My big orange tub o’ flub (Hobbes) does the same thing, except he also starts uncontrollably licking anything nearby.

    He also does this when you scritch his back. As my daughter says “He’s a licky cat”

  20. 20.

    Aleta

    Article at the NYT by Isai Rodriguez, forced to leave his beloved family as a teen, hoping it would protect his family from a gang that wanted him.

    Isai Rodriguez is an immigrant from El Salvador. This article is adapted from a narrative that appears under a pseudonym in the forthcoming “Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders With Youth Refugees From Central America.”

  22. 22.

    rikyrah

    NFL player who saves nearly 90% of his income teaches a money class at Penn called ‘Life 101’
    Published Sat, Mar 2 2019 • 9:30 AM EST Updated Mon, Mar 4 2019 • 2:59 PM EST

    New York Jets linebacker Brandon Copeland, 27, knows that his football career has an expiration date. “It’s guaranteed football is going to be over one day,” the NFL star told ESPN in 2017.

    That’s why Copeland is planning ahead: The Wharton School graduate, who spent two summers interning at the investment bank UBS in college, took an off-season job on Wall Street in 2017. He also has experience flipping houses and opened a real estate company with his wife last year.

    His latest side hustle brings him back to the classroom: He’s teaching a financial literacy seminar at his alma mater alongside Dr. Brian Peterson, the director of Penn’s Makuu Black Cultural Center.

    The class, which Copeland nicknamed “Life 101” and started this spring semester, covers “the realities of life we all have to deal with,” he says, like how to invest, plan for retirement and build credit. He came up with the idea of the course two years ago, when he and a former teammate were talking about money mistakes and what they wish they’d known in their early 20s.

    ………………………………

    While Copeland is the first to admit he doesn’t specialize in financial literacy — “the first day of the class I’m going to tell the class that I am not an expert in all of this stuff, and no one is an expert in all of this stuff,” he told the Wall Street Journal — he’s careful with his cash.

    “I’ve literally hoarded money,” he told ESPN in 2017. “I’m literally stacking, stacking, stacking.”

    Nearly 60 percent of Copeland’s post-tax salary goes towards “safe, long-term” investments, he explained. Another 30 percent goes towards savings. He lives off the remaining 10-15 percent.

  24. 24.

    jk

    On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the “Black Friday” market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in “unusual secrecy” and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama’s leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

    Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar?

    Barr’s efforts in 1989 did not serve the Justice Department well. He had long left government service when the OLC opinion was finally made public. The true content of the opinion, given what Barr told the American people and testified before Congress, remains much to the discredit of the Attorney General.

    h/t https://www.justsecurity.org/63635/barrs-playbook-he-misled-congress-when-omitting-parts-of-justice-dept-memo-in-1989

  25. 25.

    Fenix

    “Petting the tummy of a kitty is like frolicking in the back hair of an angel”
    Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal

    Two out of the 3 members of my ruling clowder allow me this joy.

  26. 26.

    catclub

    @schrodingers_cat:

    No, we do not need to understand the motivations of the people who make such atrocities, like these concentration camps possible.

    and it seems to have taken the media about a week to figure out that transporting asylum refugees tocities where they will probably be treated well, rather than say, put into these tent camps, may not be the best strategy to reduce immigration.
    I think by next year, historical charts of immigration numbers will show that we can reduce immigration by getting rid of Trump. He has made the problem worse.

  27. 27.

    mrmoshpotato

    @rikyrah: Good for him. Glad to see he didn’t see a big paycheck and buy everything under the sun.

    Article-related, I’m damn tired of the term ‘side hustle’. When the hell is teaching a financial literacy class a ‘hustle’?

  29. 29.

    The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion

    Anyone else seen the footage from Paris? Notre Dame appears to be burning.

  31. 31.

    rikyrah

    NOOOOOOOO!!

    Fire engulfs the historic Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris with huge plume of smoke seen billowing from the roof
    By GEORGE MARTIN FOR MAILONLINE
    PUBLISHED: 13:10 EDT, 15 April 2019 | UPDATED: 13:20 EDT, 15 April 2019

    A fire has broken out at the world-famous Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris.

    Pictures posted on social media showed enormous plumes of smoke billowing into the city’s skyline as firefighters rushed to the historic site.

    According to French newspaper Le Monde, the fire broke out in the attic of the historic monument before spreading to engulf a large section of the roof.

  33. 33.

    Just Chuck

    @germy: I’ve done it all the time with several different cats. I wouldn’t carry them around for long doing that, but for a quick lift it’s harmless. They have tough skin, especially around that area, and my cat actually seems to like it. With a lot of cats, if you grab them by the scruff, they instantly go limp and stop fighting you. It’s a kitten instinct thing.

    Might not be a good idea if the cat is extremely obese, of course.

  34. 34.

    Aleta

    from australianmuseum, a great closeup of dinosaur cassowary claw

    Heavy has other pictures and links to stories about the Hajos family, who raise “exotic animals including kangaroos, zebras, camels, parrots, tortoises, ostriches and several kinds of monkeys for zoos and petting farms.” Marvin Hajos is the man who was killed when he fell after feeding a cassowary.

  35. 35.

    Mel

    @Aleta: He seems born to be a fabulous lap cat! Thank you for giving that sweet little guy such a good and loving home.

  36. 36.

    rikyrah

    SCOOP: Trump’s attorneys are warning of possible legal action if accounting firm Mazars USA complies w/ the House Oversight Committee’s imminent subpoena for Trump’s financial records.

    Letter obtained by Politico urges Mazars outside counsel not to complyhttps://t.co/4kSCx5Ufnp

    — Andrew Desiderio (@desiderioDC) April 15, 2019

  37. 37.

    Aleta

    @schrodingers_cat: Orange Ones (kitteh not human) are such love bugs.

    The billing receptionist at our vet doesn’t usually say much. Today when it was time to pay for Finney: “Yours is the love bug, right?”

  44. 44.

    Gin & Tonic

    @matt: That’s prudent, as I doubt they have public sources of running water in a backwards location like downtown Paris.

  45. 45.

    blackcatsrule

    @germy: It’s fine to pick them up that way, for short periods of course, not to tote them around, and support the butt when you do it. I’ve done a scruff and grab in urgent situations, once in a fight and once when we had to vacate a building that was on fire.

  47. 47.

    germy

    @matt:

    suggested using flying water tankers to put it out.

    We may need flying water tankers to put him out when the time comes.

  51. 51.

    BroD

    I have been taugt by several cats that scratching a cat on it’s belly, however gently, is a good way to turn my hands and forearms into a bleeding mess.

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