Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

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

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We won’t go back.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republicans in disarray!

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Merry Giftmas

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Merry Giftmas

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If you’re looking to catch up on your reading, over the holidays…

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114Comments

  2. 2.

    raven

    Artie has no interest at all in any kind of toys. She’s nuts about squirrels so I bought her a pretty realistic squeaky squirrel, nada, zip nuttin. On the other hand I asked one of the kids she meets every morning how many cookies she should get and he said “ONE MILLION”!! She liked that.

  9. 9.

    Betty Cracker

    @zhena gogolia: I had a cat ages ago who loved the plastic rings that come off a milk jug when you open it for the first time. She would play fetch with those rings! Or just gnaw on it if no one threw it for her. But she wasn’t interested in store-bought toys.

  11. 11.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Betty Cracker: 

    Milk carton rings as cat toys has been a staple in our house(s) for 40+ years. They disappear and you toss out new ones. Once a year you move the fridge and the stove to find em all underneath.

  12. 12.

    debbie

    @raven:

    A friend’s black lab was the same way. The dog would stand by her bed in the morning, tail madly thumping the closet door (small NYC bedroom). It was louder than any alarm clock!

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: Billie loves her squeeky balls, but if she lays on the couch she will suck on my blanket/pillow for hours. Woof loved his floppy frisbees, but he had a little stuffed chickie that he was very protective of, walking around with it in his very soft mouth so nobody could “get it.”

    Percy? Couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

  19. 19.

    rikyrah

    Think that muthaphucka Manchin overplayed his hand.

    Bravo to whomever put the Black Lung healthcare in the BBB.????

     

    He really thought that the miners wouldn’t notice him taking away their healthcare

  20. 20.

    JMG

    My son and his wife’s two cats, who’re with us for Christmas, have toys and love them. My late dog Blackjack would demolish toys in like 15 minutes, so we stopped buying them. All he wanted to do was tear it apart to get the squeaker.

  23. 23.

    germy

    “Kitty Can’t Cope” catnip sacks are the most durable cat toys I’ve ever seen.  Indestructible.

    My wife created some mouse toys with her sewing machine.  Stuffed cloth mice with whiskers and a long leather tail.  Cat tosses the mouse in the air, then catches it, then rolls around with it.   Fun for everyone.

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    Badger the Destroyer also makes quick work of soft toys. He can take the cover off a tennis ball in just a few minutes. The only toys capable of withstanding his gator-like chomp long term are the KONG thingies.

  38. 38.

    germy

    Biquette the goat, sold to an abattoir after she stopped producing milk but was rescued by punks and then spent 10 years watching grindcore bands. She could come and go as she pleased and, in the words of her rescuers, “escaped death, lived punk”. Absolute legend. pic.twitter.com/CdCoOajz1c

    — Daniel Pietersen (@pietersender) December 21, 2021

  40. 40.

    Another Scott

    Giftmas is good.

    Meanwhile, …

    PressRun:

    Surprise! Press stopped caring about Critical Race Theory exact time GOP did

    Don’t act shocked

    Eric Boehlert

    But shocked, shocked is my best look!!1

    (via Wonkette)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  43. 43.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: Our Kongs are upstairs because our mutt Max was destroying them! I’m talking the black, super strong Kongs. My mother got him some of the red ones; they didn’t last much time at all. He’s some kind of super chewer. It’s been 9 years since then, maybe I could chance it again

    ETA – can I say how much I hate computer updates of any kind? The database at work I use for about 95% of my work is down because evidently it was updated last night. It seems that they fuck something up almost every time they do an update. Why is that? Last time it was the date fields, which they said aren’t going to be fixed until sometime in January.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    How is it a thing for the subjects of official investigations to sue investigators to stop investigations? (Trump vs. NY AG, Flynn / Bannon / Meadows vs. 1/6 committee, etc.) I’ve heard of suits for wrongful prosecutions, but I don’t recall hearing about preemptive lawsuits to stymie investigations until recently.

  45. 45.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: They think they should be immune from investigation, and believe they can use the courts to stop them. I’m sure Trump’s is some bullshit about how it’s all political and an effort to “get” him.

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @raven:

    On the other hand I asked one of the kids she meets every morning how many cookies she should get and he said “ONE MILLION”!! She liked that.

    Utterly charming.

  53. 53.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly: We gave Woofie a good sized slot in the calendar, but even so I’m not sure that people could tell that he had a FOLDED frisbee in his mouth.

    That was not lost on beth and I, though.  But we didn’t know it was a “soft” frisbee so we were especially impressed.

  55. 55.

    Betty Cracker

    @Soprano2: That’s their motivation for sure, but I’m wondering why/if there’s even an avenue for that. I mean, if I get a speeding ticket, can I just sue the authorities for issuing it? 

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WaterGirl: The hard frisbees never lasted very long as he would chew them up. The soft frisbees would last a lot longer because instead of chewing them, his predatory instinct was to shake his head violently side to side (to break the neck/back of prey) and they stood up to that fairly well. In the end they all died.

    @danielx: Due to Chronic Wasting Disease protocols that call for butchering deer where they fall, mine bring home deer parts from November into January.

  60. 60.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: I’m sure you can’t. I think their avenue is having a shit ton of money and being able to find attorneys that will file these suits for them. I hope TFG’s got their money upfront

    We just got an e-mail – evidently our database outage was due to an Amazon Web Services power outage in the Eastern region of the U.S.  I bet that’ll be in the news.

  63. 63.

    WereBear

    @rikyrah:

    Bravo to whomever put the Black Lung healthcare in the BBB.????

    He really thought that the miners wouldn’t notice him taking away their healthcare

    Well. That could be awkward back home.

  65. 65.

    Soprano2

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: Because when the president is a Democrat, the press actually thinks of themselves as “opponents” of a kind, determined to get “the truth” out of the president. This is actually what people should want, a press determined to get to the truth of things. When the president is a Republican who provides juicy tidbits to members of the press, though, then they see themselves as some kind of friend to the president, and soft pedal their questions accordingly.

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Betty Cracker:

    How is it a thing for the subjects of official investigations to sue investigators to stop investigations? 

    If you remember we’re talking about walking shitstains here…

  73. 73.

    Feathers

    The NHL has announced no Olympic break. NHL players not going to Beijing.

    Also, US figure skating nationals/Olympic trials are first week of January and in Nashville. No bubble for competitors, the only place masks will be required is at the arena itself. They’ve even scheduled athlete meet and greets.

  74. 74.

    CaseyL

    Mornin’, everyone!

    My holiday starts tomorrow and ends Monday.

    I plan to sleep late each and every day.  My cats’ probably plan to wake me up at the regular time for breakfast.

    We’ll see who wins.

    (Not Christian, and no family closer than 3000 miles, so no Holiday Gathering plans.  Which suits me just fine.)

  76. 76.

    Kay

    Ugh- Manchin must be in heaven. Two glowing NYTimes articles about him, and all the web news sites are all Manchin, all the time.

    We created a monster. This vain, corrupt man must think he won the lottery.

  77. 77.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I am looking forward Christmas.  Every year I usually come up with one gift that is perfect for the recipient; the others are fine, but lightning strikes only once.  This year, it is my dad’s turn.  My dad has gotten deep into genealogy and currently fleshing out the life stories of some Norwegian ancestors.  I found a book of Norwegian traditional recipes with a family immigration story and a shitload of photos that literally came from the farm next to my own family’s farm halfway up a river valley from a fjord in Norway.  My dad usually buys himself anything he actually wants, so the key is to find him something he didn’t know he wanted.  This book is as obscure AF, so I think I have a hit on my hands.

  80. 80.

    Kristine

    @zhena gogolia: @raven: Gaby played with toys when King was around. She used to love the ones that were essentially a fuzzy tail with a squeaker inside. She also enjoyed taking toys out of King’s mouth and egging him on to chase her. After he died, her interest vanished. She will very occasionally play with a tennis ball–less often now that she’s slowing down.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    Peter Baker
    @peterbakernyt
    ·2h
    The US economy is booming, with a 7% annualized growth rate expected in the final quarter compared with 2% last quarter. America is outpacing the Eurozone (2%) and China (4%

    It’s certainly booming where I live. I don’t care how much inflation there is, if you’re at all a participant in this economy you know it’s booming. It is the best I’ve ever seen, and that includes the Clinton years.
    I genuinely believe that media have convinced the public the economy sucks. There’s no other explanation for it. I know you’re going to say “gas prices” or “inflation” but if that were true they wouldn’t be SPENDING like they are. Whatever they’re paying for gas they seem to have a lot left over. My people are not wealthy- they are hourly and salary ordinary wage earners. They’re spending like crazy.

  83. 83.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @eclare: I did a search for a church that a g.g.g.g.grandfather designed and built.  I found a website.  The book cheaper there but I couldn’t get it in time, so I got the last one from a vendor in Amazon.

    @Baud:  Tough.

  85. 85.

    prostratedragon

    My cat liked the stick tied to a rope hanging from the doorway.

    And catnip.  One of those doggies made me wonder if there’s such a thing as dognip.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    I honestly believe that media and a lot of Right wing and Right leaning economists wanted people economically punished for covid. They wanted belt-tightening and austerity and suffering, because that fits with their ideological views of markets. So when the US went in a different direction and said “we’re actually going to bail ordinary people out” and then DID that, it was offensive to that ideology.

    Because it’s really different, right? It’s a wholly different approach. The designated sufferers were rescued instead of pushed off a cliff and we can’t have THAT. What if THAT caught on? What if the suffering they told us was necessary was actually optional?

    They can’t admit this because it’s ideologically incorrect. It wasn’t supposed to work. What works is pain and belt tightening and austerity and bailing out only wealthy people. The poors weren’t punished enough.

  87. 87.

    artem1s

    @rikyrah:

    He really thought that the miners wouldn’t notice him taking away their healthcare

    I’m pretty sure the miners are as done with coal as the rest of the country. They would be happy to get and see their kids get jobs in the renewable energy industry. The mine owners and the companies that still have coal fired plants (First Energy) are just fine with Manchin taking away their worker’s rights and benefits.

  88. 88.

    Mike in NC

    We got up this morning and discovered our Ragdoll cats had been wrestling under the Christmas tree. Looked like a lot of freshly fallen snow.

  89. 89.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think it’s partly that businesses and other entities are responding to inflation. We’re getting a 4% raise in January. I’ve worked here since 1993 and this is the first time ever that we’ve gotten a raise at any time other than in the summer when City Council approves the budget! Plus, that’s the biggest raise we’ve ever gotten except for the one time we got 5% but then had to go contributory into the pension plan. That meant pretty much the whole raise went into the pension and for the extra taxes people had to pay on the raise. Some people’s take-home pay actually went down when they did that! But yeah, the economy is booming here. On Saturday we had the best night at the pub that we’ve had since before Covid! We’ve actually done better this year than we did in 2019. People have more money to spend on things.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    This is a manufucturing area. If they’re booming, and they are, that can mean only one thing- someone is buying. They don’t produce the shit and stack it up in a warehouse. They don’t do three shifts and mandatory overtime and 2x hourly Sundays unless they have to.

  91. 91.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: They sure didn’t want people’s wages to go up in response to Covid. What’s so dumb is that these raises should have been happening over the past 5 years. One reason it’s problematic is that it’s happening all at once – an extra $5/hr in a year. That’s a lot for businesses to absorb – they can’t do it without raising prices.

  92. 92.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I could not find a parking space in our town square this past weekend. That has never, not once, happened to me before. Every bar and restaurant was full.

    I just think it becomes impossible to deny at some point, but I thought that of covid and they’re still denying that so maybe this is a new daily delusion that just becomes the norm.

  93. 93.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: My nephew got a job at a local dairy company, Hiland Dairy. He has to work a lot of overtime. He missed our Christmas celebration because he wasn’t going to turn down $46/hr to work on Sunday!

  94. 94.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kay: My poorer clients are doing comparatively well.  Between the low unemployment rate in my area and the advance childcare credits, many have never had so much income.  They also know that they are getting Biden Bucks.

  95. 95.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: It’s “I’m doing OK, but since the press is constantly talking about it other people must not be doing well”. I listened to a podcast about people who say they can’t find jobs, but it’s really that they can’t find the exact job they want. “I want to work remotely”, or “I want a certain wage and won’t settle for less” isn’t the same as “I can’t find a job”, and I wish programs would quit acting like it is. I get that workers have more bargaining power now, but saying that there are not jobs is just not true. What I want to know is how all those people who aren’t working are managing to live? What are they doing that allows them to live without working? Maybe do some stories about that.

  97. 97.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: On YouTube you can find videos compiling election-night coverage from past elections going back to the dawn of television. A while back I was watching some of these and, maybe I’m just paranoid, but I noticed a marked if subtle pattern in which the tone of the anchors and analysts seemed jubilant, like they were reporting on the Macy’s parade, whenever Republicans were winning, and kind of grim and matter-of-fact whenever Democrats were winning. The one possible exception was all the talk about the historic nature of Obama’s win in 2008. But even that… it didn’t seem like they were having a party.

  98. 98.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I expected it myself! The day they closed schools I immediately started thinking about how I was going to pay the employees in the inevitable recession that would follow.

    I was amazed they pumped so much money in. I had never seen it before. I expected working class and middle class to take a huge fucking hit which would be portrayed and inevitable and in the natural order of things. They’d bring out some Right wing douchebag who would immediately begin the austerity program and scold us on belt-tightening.  I still can’t get over it – “you mean that was VOLUNTARY before? We just hit them because we felt like it?”

    Because if they can do this, they can do a LOT of things they haven’t been doing.

  100. 100.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: That wouldn’t surprise me, since most people seem to believe that the economy is better off when Republicans are in power, even though the evidence shows that isn’t true. I know that in 1980 people wanted a change because of how bad things were; I think anyone the Republicans ran that year would have won because of it.

  102. 102.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: But they won’t, because Biden is now getting hammered for spending money on lazy workers and causing inflation.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    My then-18 year old made 20 an hour last summer. They just took him back for break and honestly? I don’t think he’s a super employee. He has a lot of “questions” and they keep moving him around which is generally not a good sign :)

  105. 105.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: I honestly think that, not just elites, but a broad segment of the middle class have a conception of a “good economy” that requires the poor to be squeezed somewhat. We’re seeing it in the discontent now. A “good economy” doesn’t mean that there are a lot of good jobs and wages are high; it means that I can get quality goods and services whenever I want, and to hell with the well-being of the people who are responsible for that. If they won’t bow and scrape for me, we must be coddling them too much.

  106. 106.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I thought it was going to be an absolute bloodbath in the restaurant/bar industry. Restaurant after restaurant going out of business, I said at the beginning. I’ve been really surprised at how few of them in our town actually went under. I think you can attribute that to all the money they pumped into the economy. It kept people spending. One thing I will never forgive the Obama people for (as much as I love Obama and think he did a pretty good job) is how they fucked up the whole housing market thing. There were programs to help homeowners, but they mostly went begging. There were millions of foreclosures that didn’t have to happen; lots of those houses that used to be owner-occupied are now rentals owned by huge hedge funds. That’s squarely on the shoulders of the Obama administration and the decisions they made. It didn’t have to take 10 years for the housing market to come back.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There simply wasn’t enough suffering by the lower classes. It upends the natural order.

    For me personally it was a really nice experiment because this is my ideological belief- that if THEY (most people) do well I’ll (we all) will do well and that has proven true. So I was thrilled. I feel like someone on the Left should be shouting it from the rooftops – “help THEM and we all benefit! See? It works!” It’s essentially an economic experiment in liberalism.

  109. 109.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: But if the price of an In-N-Out Burger goes up…

    I’ve seen some other weird aspects of what I think is sabotage. Recently the strike at Kellogg’s ended with a wonderful result in which the workers basically got what they wanted. I saw a Twitter meme going around in which this was characterized as… a demonstration of the superiority of “workers who get shit done” over do-nothing, milquetoast Democrats. Successful strike and this somehow gets framed as “Democrats suck”, and I saw lefty people I liked approving of this.

    Further down in the thread, some libertarian starts going on about how it just proves the government should stop meddling in these things and let people work it out privately. Yeah, I bet the strikers and the Pinkertons could just settle their differences amicably over a couple of beers.

    I can’t look at that and not think some kind of deliberate right-wing spin campaign in “radical left” clothing is behind it.

  111. 111.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Matt McIrvin: You can’t let yourself get wrapped around the axle by what some online leftists say.  Democratic politicians supported the workers in the Kellogg’s strike.  Democrats were the people who enacted laws to protect labor rights, and Democrats, by and large, have fought against the erosion of those rights.  For the most, on its side, labor knows that and supports Democrats.  Don’t let people fake a wedge.

  112. 112.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Exactly the point I tried to make, but I got a little pushback from a friend who argued that lately, Democrats have “favored management over labor”. I think it’s a point that would have been a bit more correct 30 years ago than it is now.

  113. 113.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: I remember President Biden speaking very forcefully against Kellogg’s plan to break the union. He shined a harsh spotlight on what the company was doing, and they backed off. These lefties would like to erase that speech.

    Of course, some of them were so busy talking to each other that they did not notice.

  114. 114.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:
     

    Due to Chronic Wasting Disease protocols that call for butchering deer where they fall, mine bring home deer parts from November into January.

    Due to not wanting to haul the whole thing out of the woods, deer parts are available to our dogs from min-Nov into Jan. Last night at bedtime I discovered one of our young dogs had brought home some venison, it was barfed up in bed, a bloody pile right between our pillows.

    We were in bed changing mode right at bedtime, wife was nearly in a coma. The blood didn’t soak through the mattress cover, quite, but the zippered pillow cover had some small droplets on it, a brand new down pillow. The actual pillow case was pretty bloody on the edge towards the center of the bed, no big deal, they wash pretty well.

    Maybe a pint or 1.5 pints of bloody bits barfed up for Wife and I to share at bedtime, to the dog. That’s how they share with the pack, bring it home inside where it keeps warm…

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