Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

This fight is for everything.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

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

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

He really is that stupid.

So many bastards, so little time.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

A consequence of cucumbers

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Monday Morning Open Thread: Winners

Monday Morning Open Thread: Winners

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Congratulations to Wasabi, his breeder / handler, and all the other Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show this year.

And for those of you giving conformation dog shows side-eye, try thinking of it this way: For the dogs, it’s like being an Olympic contender (mixed with a beauty-pageant circuit). The competitors don’t necessarily enjoy all the training, dieting, primping, and traveling — but there’s no dog competing at the Westminster level who doesn’t want to be in that ring.

Dogs like having a job to do, and the ‘job’ for these guys is showing off in front of crowds. Probably not the job you or I or our own household companions would choose, but it’s not as though they’d understand our commenting hobby…

Serious, grownup, political news:

Jen Rubin:

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Probably not the job you or I or our own household companions would choose, but it’s not as though they’d understand our commenting hobby…

    Some days, it does feel like work.

  3. 3.

    JR

    Maybe more like East German Olympic contenders, since the dogs don’t voluntarily compete.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    How enigmatic.

    US Pacific Air Forces responded with three F-22s to an incident reported off Hawaii on Sunday afternoon.

    The military said it could not provide details on the incident, but did confirm it was not a training exercise and was done in response to an FAA request.
    [snip]
    A Stratotanker also assisted. Source

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: Yesterday, Billie and Percy went for a morning walkabout. Billie came back covered in mud, Percy just had muddy paws. He is so much more dignified than that overly exuberant water dog.

  7. 7.

    MJS

    It’s my understanding that dogs used to like having a job to do, until socialist Joe got in office and expanded UI benefits. Now they have zero incentive to work.

  9. 9.

    Betty Cracker

    As I said last night, that Pekingese looks like a decorative, ambulatory facial tissue box holder with eyes. But it’s a cute little tissue box holder with eyes! My Great-Aunt Marylee had a series of Pekingese, so I got to know the breed a little through her. She spoiled them something awful! I haven’t seen one in the wild in ages.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Grace Lidia Suárez@gracels
    The dumbest people in the world.

    CanadianPam
    @PamelaApostolo1
    · 11h
    OMG-just saw this on FB!!!
    “This is just INSANE on a whole other level! These “tickets” are being sold for as high as $1,200 each on Q sites all over the internet, the crazy part is that people are talking about how excited they are because they’ve already purchased them.”

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: dogs get universal basic income.

    WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!!! Hooray for me!!!

    eta: how many Baud bucks am I gonna get?

  16. 16.

    Spanky

    @OzarkHillbilly: I see things like that and think “how can I get a cut of that?”

    Used to be I’d have scruples about it, but having now seen who these people really are, I feel much freer. Only worry now is I’d probably overthink things, when these people are at lizard-brain levels of function.

  19. 19.

    indycat32

    Louis DeJoy strikes again. Yesterday my package was here in Indy, today it’s in Columbia City. Fortunately, it’s nothing I urgently need.

    Doesn’t that pup get awfully hot?

  22. 22.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Betty Cracker:  My mother had a Pekingese, but she kept her fur trimmed up pretty short. That dog (Tinka) looked like a puppy rather than a dust mop.

  23. 23.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly:  One of the hallmarks of a cult is unquestioning belief in dates for events like this, and renewed faith when the event doesn’t happen. No, that is not logical.

  25. 25.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    As soon as I finish my sad half-caff coffee, I’m going out for a walk. In the meantime, I’m reading Jean Korelitz’s THE PLOT. The central character is a writer whose first book was a big deal. Since then, it’s been downhill. The person who recommended the book to me says he eventually steals a dynamite plot from someone who dies. That should be fun. At the moment, he’s hanging out at the places writers go. Boy howdy, do I recognize these people. Also, I feel seen

  26. 26.

    Baud

    Jackal Clickbait. Coming soon to a Twitter near you.

    Sarah Rumpf / Mediaite:

    Bernie Sanders: Biden Campaign Made Me Feel ‘Very Welcome,’ In Contrast to Clinton, Who ‘Wanted My Support,’ And ‘Tolerated’ Me

  27. 27.

    Baud

    Today show: 2100 of 3000 belligerent airline passengers this year were because of airline mask mandate.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @Soprano2

    Well, according to Pillow Cretin, SCOTUS will rule to overturn the election in August – when they’re not in session.

  30. 30.

    germy

    How long will it take Mike Lindell to host a pro-Bibi rally in Jerusalem?

    — Trevor’s Still Hopeful For His Personal Flyover (@ObamaClintonDem) June 13, 2021

    I liked Bibi’s last speech: “Who else will stand up to Biden?!!” he demanded. Reminded me of all the money we’ve sent his way.

  35. 35.

    Spanky

    Duplicate comment deleted. My Andoid is jumping the edit window around on me. Anyone else with Android notice anything wonky?

  37. 37.

    narya

    First running event of the season yesterday (at Revolution brewing, for those of you in the vicinity), and it was . . . weird to be inside with so! many! people! I stayed to the edge of the room, and it has REALLY high ceilings, but it was still weird. Beautiful here this morning–cool breeze, nice sun; I’d take off of work if I didn’t have a zillion things due before I take off at the end of the week.

  39. 39.

    Mathguy

    The whippet should have won, since it’s a real dog and not a tribble.*

     

    *-Of course, having a whippet at home that we love has nothing to do with it.

  41. 41.

    germy

    They should add “Eating cat poop from a litter box” to the competition.

     

    I’m talking about Cenk and Greenwald.

  47. 47.

    germy

    @Starfish:

    You have to excuse Glenn on this. He must be fuming that the Trump administration was recently exposed for spying on Democrats in Congress, members of the press and His own WH counsel.?

    — sidney hunsecker (@SidneyHunsecker) June 14, 2021

  50. 50.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: I think today is the day when AG Garland meets with CNN, WaPo and NYT reps to answer questions about this issue.

  55. 55.

    Geminid

    @germy: I liked Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s speech at yesterday’s Knesset meeting. After seeing the raucous jeering and heckling of new Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, Lapid discarded his prepared remarks and reprimanded the opposition-to-be for their discreditable display, by way of an apology to his mother:

       “My mother is 86 years old and we don’t ask her to come to Jerusalem lightly, but we did so because I assumed you would be able to get over yourselves and behave with statesmanship at this moment, and she would see a smooth transition of government.

    When she was born, there was no State of Israel, Tel Aviv was a small town of 30,000, and we didn’t have a parliament. I wanted her to be proud of the democratic process. Instead she, and every citizen of Israel, is ashamed of you and remembers clearly why it is time to replace you.”

  56. 56.

    Ken

    I half-suspect the reason the Pekingese won is that the judges can’t see the dog’s body under all that fur, so can’t knock off tenths of a point for slight deviations from the AKC standards. But that’s the part of me talking that despises the AKC for the damage their standards have done to so many breeds.

  59. 59.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Starfish:

    Damn, Greenwald is an arrogant, rage addicted asshole.  Cenk threw him the biggest, slowest softball in the world.  He straight up said this was Greenwald’s chance to flaunt how his detractors were wrong.  Instead Greenwald throws a screaming, profanity filled hissy fit.  What a prima donna.

  65. 65.

    sab

    @Another Scott: You’re not kidding. None of them even meet the original breed standard because their back legs are so screwed up they can’t do the flying trot any more.

  66. 66.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:

    Yeah, but all Greenwald would have needed was to reply with one example of some time he has criticized Putin, and Cenk has helped him pretend the whole ‘why don’t you criticize Putin?’ attack line is bullshit.  There has to be one example.  This is pathological levels of “How dare you question me?” ego.  Unless it’s pathological levels of “How dare you question Putin?” but I doubt that.

  67. 67.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Spanky:

    I see things like that and think “how can I get a cut of that?” 

    You ain’t kiddin’!  At some point, you just can’t help it with people this willingly stupid.

    And even if the person photoshopped that and is making a point, there still are people who truly believe this “reinstatement” bullshit.

  68. 68.

    sab

    @Ken: I inherited my uncle’s cocker. He had had a cocker as a child in the 1930s. I wish I had asked him about grooming Topsy back in the day, because there is no way they were hauling a dog in for professional grooming every two months during the Depression. There is no way you could take a dog with the silky fluffy fur of the modern American cocker out in the field for hunting. Our English cocker who died 35 years ago didn’t have the modern imstantly matting fur either.

  70. 70.

    Bunter

    @Ken: The AKC doesn’t write the breed standards though. Breed clubs write them and then either the club members or board votes on them. And while I’ll disparage hair dogs winning anytime, the judges do put hands on them and through their fur. I’ve had a show dog and I belong to a breed club. And I stopped showing him when he stopped enjoying the outing.

  71. 71.

    Spanky

    Don’t know how a post titled “Winners” devolved into a discussion about Cenk and Glem.

  73. 73.

    WereBear

    @Ken:

    But that’s the part of me talking that despises the AKC for the damage their standards have done to so many breeds.

     
    Agreed. They also don’t police the scam breeders, which COULD be done. And rescue organizations, who pick up the pieces, have been asking them to do something for DECADES.

  79. 79.

    sab

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: My college roommate worked for years in bookstores in Ohio. She said one of the biggest customer groups for YA was Mennonite and Amish women. They liked the coming of age (growth into moral adulthood) and toned-down sex aspect of these books.

  80. 80.

    mrmoshpotato

    @laura:

    Imagine a slap fight in a bus station bathroom. 

    Very generous.  I’d go with uncleaned port-a-potty.

  81. 81.

    Kristine

    @Another Scott: According to friends, you need to get a dog from one of the working lines. Their backs don’t slope. But even so, from all I’ve read, you need to be careful. I’m always glad to see a GSD with a straight back.

    The first dog I remembered seeing was Prince, the GSD my folks had when I was 3, 4. He was a great dog. Yes, I hate what’s been done to the breed, too.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    In other news, Priming doesn’t work well, but boosting and other techniques might in the fight against fake news:

    […]

    We also found some indication that the prime may work better for US Democrats than for Republicans, with the latter appearing to barely benefit from the intervention. There could be a variety of reasons for this. Given the highly politicized nature of COVID-19, political motivations may have a large effect. Conservatism is associated with lower trust in mainstream media, which may lead some Republicans to evaluate credible news outlets as “biased.”

    Priming effects are also known to disappear rapidly, usually after a few seconds. We explored whether this is also the case for accuracy primes by looking at whether the treatment effect occurs disproportionately in the first few headlines that study participants were shown. It appears that the treatment effect was no longer present after participants rated a handful of headlines, which would take most people no more than a few seconds.

    Ways forward

    So what’s the best way forward? Our own work has focused on leveraging a different branch of psychology, known as “inoculation theory”. This involves pre-emptively warning people of an impending attack on their beliefs and refuting the persuasive argument (or exposing the manipulation techniques) before they encounter the misinformation. This process specifically helps confer psychological resistance against future attempts to mislead people with fake news, an approach also known as “prebunking.”

    In our research, we show that inoculating people against the manipulation techniques commonly used by fake news producers indeed makes people less susceptible to misinformation on social media, and less likely to report to share it. These inoculations can come in the form of free online games, of which we’ve so far designed three: Bad News, Harmony Square and Go Viral!. In collaboration with Google Jigsaw, we also designed a series of short videos about common manipulation techniques, which can be run as ads on social media platforms.

    Other researchers have replicated these ideas with a related approach known as “boosting”. This involves strengthening people’s resilience to micro-targeting—ads that target people based on aspects of their personality—by getting them to reflect on their own personality first.

    Additional tools include fact-checking and debunking, algorithmic solutions that downrank unreliable content and more political measures such as efforts to reduce polarization in society. Ultimately, these tools and interventions can create a multi-layered defense system against misinformation. In short: the fight against misinformation is going to need more than a nudge.

    The original article is here – https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976211024535

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    Another Scott

    @Kristine: There’s a young black GSD in our neighborhood that we’ve watched grow up.  Straight back, natural gait, just a beautiful well behaved dog.

    Our first dog was a GSD/border collie-ish mix.  Incredibly smart and empathetic.  We miss her every day.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    EthylEster

    I will never understand how people who say they love dogs can tolerate/support dog-breeding, which is done only to please humans and produces disease and suffering in the dogs.

    Dog shows like this manifest the cognitive dissonance of these “dog lovers”.

  93. 93.

    Miss Bianca

    @EthylEster: So, you think that all dogs should be the result of accidental or non-purposeful breeding, then? Or should there just not be dogs at all?

  94. 94.

    stinger

    @EthylEster: Oh please. I currently have three rescues from different rescue orgs, two of them very mixed breed. Love them dearly. But some day I will have a purebred again.

    Different breeds have different characteristics, so you know in advance what the dog’s appearance, personality, and energy levels will be like. Avoid backyard breeders and puppy mills; reputable breeders work hard and go to considerable expense to produce healthy, happy dogs. Dog shows are great places to learn about the various breeds and find out what kinds would thrive in the environment you can provide them and which wouldn’t work out.

    Also I eat meat.

  95. 95.

    Michael Cain

    @Another Scott: We had a border collie when I was a kid (it adopted us, a story for another time).  My sister was one of several three-year olds in the group of houses that shared a back yard.  The collie herded the little kids around.  20 minutes in the sandbox, then gather them up and move them over to the swing set for 20 minutes, then some time crawling around in the bushes…

  96. 96.

    prostratedragon

    @Michael Cain: That’s hilarious!
    Dead thread I know, but where better to recall the early days after 9/11 when security and bomb-sniffing dogs were in suddenly much greater demand, so that unconventional breeds for that kind of work were tried. Including border collies. They do indeed really want to herd …

  97. 97.

    J R in WV

    All of our dogs have been mixes, some of them look a little like recognized “breeds” but in reality probably only have a tiny proportion of genes in common with actual recognized dogs with “papers”.

    One had at least some Airedale, the curly close coat and head shape, so maybe 25%-50% Airedale.

    Was a cute, smart, affectionate dog, smart and affectionate is all we ask for. Cute helps too.

    Smartest dog we ever had was a long haired black dog, also affectionate, very smart, in control of all the other critters from squirrels to the dogs and cats. And deer, and, and… Some border collie?

    Right now we have 3 dogs, one is middle aged, white lab mix, 84 pounds of sweetness. The other two are litter-mates, mostly black, a boy 67 pounds and a girl 63 pounds. They are really affectionate, smart. Part Great Pyrenees, part lab, they were born and grew up at a goat dairy, were never inside until they came to us.

  98. 98.

    Just Chuck

    I love dogs so much that I measure the length and angles of their limbs… oh wait. Beauty pageants for different species are just a different kind of creepy.

  99. 99.

    sab

    @Another Scott: The dog love of my life (13 years gone) was a backyard bred beast with a lovely personality. She had a straight back, normal slightly longish back legs. She was huge. She was sable ( greyish all over with no saddle.)  Cheerful friendly personality. People used to stop me on the street and say “She looks like RinTinTin. This is what a GSD should look like.”

    When I lived in Las Vegas NV when she was a puppy, police units in the next field were always trying to buy her. She was obsessed with bite work. I wouldn’t let her do it until her obedience got perfect (which I knew would never happen.)  She maxed out at 135 pounds and was never fat. Just a big beast of a girl. She loved guinea pigs. Let them run up and down her back and even let them pee on her. Scary as hell to strange men approaching me in the park.

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