Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Fight them, without becoming them!

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Let there be snark.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Evening Pup (Open Thread)

Evening Pup (Open Thread)

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I’d started to write a post about a racist asshole GOP donor in Florida who got caught being a racist asshole, but fuck it — you can read about it here if you’re so inclined. I don’t want to waste a pixel on that racist asshole today. Here’s a Badger photo instead:

He came in wet from the rain and used my pants to wipe his muddy paws, the little shit. Open thread!

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  2. 2.

    Mike in DC

    Michael Cohen has been doing multiple sit down interviews with Mueller’s team in the past month. So, Trump’s fixer, chief accountant, campaign manager, deputy campaign manager and national security adviser are all or have been cooperating with prosecutors.

  6. 6.

    WaterGirl

    That face. Adorable.

    He seems to find you adorable, also, Ms. Cracker. Unless you’re holding a steak, in which case I would like to withdraw that conclusion.

  9. 9.

    Haydnseek

    I really like this photo. The slight lack of sharpness gives it an interesting feel it might not have if it was tack sharp. Intentional? Who cares? It really works. The fact that he’s just such a funny, appealing little guy doesn’t hurt either.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    Badger! Bug-eyes are still buggy; cute is still cute.

    Spouse is touristing Paris and I’ll cautiously note that Bruno and Gracie, our late beloved Dalmatians, are now resting with Jim Morrison, or guarding him, I’m not sure which. We hatched the idea last week when she told me she planned to bring a little of them along, just in case it proved possible.

    And hey, beats dumping them into the Seine.

  16. 16.

    piratedan

    well it is election season and the dark money is rolling in…. watching the AZ Senate and Governor ads is a bit revealing… McSally is tying herself to Trump because that’s what the GOP does and Gov Ducey is taking credit for the teachers pay increases that took place when the teachers actually marched on the Capitol for financial restitution….. and all of the dark money is coming up with the character assassination ads on what they believe are questionable optics from Dem challengers, for the Governor it’s all about the wall and how even the support of the wall has made us all safer somehow and over on the Senate side, its McSally wrapping herself in the flag about being a bomber pilot and the attempted poleaxing of Sinema on her record as a Congresswoman on Veterans issues… and while I have yet to see an ad from David Garcia (no matter, I’ll be voting for him anyway), the Sinema ads take a serious approach about working for a unified AZ (not that I agree with that but its a damn sight more palatable than the other side) and bolstering of her rep with the vets by having actual veterans speaking out for her and her efforts on their behalf….

    so on one side, character assassination and fear and on the other side, talking about trying to bring functionality back to Government…

    Is this the same game plan we’re seeing elsewhere?

  25. 25.

    JPL

    @piratedan: Stacey Abrams was the lone democratic member who voted with the state republicans to pass a strong sex offender law. The previous law was struck down by the Supreme Court. It’s now being used against her because she supports sex offenders within 1000 ft of schools.

  26. 26.

    karen marie

    @ruemara: Next vet visit, have her blood pressure taken, then do it annually. Avoid having a 15-year-old blind cat like I do. It’s so sad (even if a little bit funny) to watch her walk into things.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    I met a cute doggo named Chowder today when his very kind owner helped me carry a package down the stairs of our apartment building. I would swear he was a corgi since he had the short legs and big ears, but he was mostly black, which apparently is not a corgi thing. Maybe he was a mutt?

  30. 30.

    trollhattan

    @eclare:
    Thanks! Dals are pretty photogenic and she was at her happiest discovering the beach. Sand, birds, waves, birds! what could be better?

  35. 35.

    JPL

    A few minutes ago I was speaking with a friend and mentioned the last minute mailings, and white powder that Karen Handel received. I also said that method to turn out voters at some point will wear thin. After I hung up, I saw this on Kyle Griffins twitter feed.

    Brett Kavanaugh’s wife has received violent threats this week following the allegations against her husband, WSJ reports. The U.S. Marshals Service is investigating.
    One note reportedly read, “May you, your husband and your kids burn in hell.”

    The FBI needs to investigate both threats against Dr. Ford and Kavanaugh, but just like Handel I doubt they find out who. Handel also received white powder so that is something to watch for.

  36. 36.

    Major Major Major Major

    I am having an okay day. I woke up just super nauseous and worked from home, but it seems to have mostly improved. The Balloon-Juice Minecraft server is coming along nicely, so I think I’ll spend some time there tonight :)

  37. 37.

    piratedan

    @JPL: gotta love the GOP Dark Money…. another ad blasting Sinema here is that when she was a state rep, she indicated that she didn’t think guys should be brought up on prostitution with a minor on a mandatory basis because she felt regarding how different people look at different ages, its impossible for a person to know the age of who they are sleeping with just by looking at them. Which upon reflection makes a certain amount of sense, yet the ad is twisted in such a fashion that it comes out as if she’s in support of sexual assault on minors… Granted, the whole notion of prostitution is fraught with endless tripwires but it never seems to fail that regardless of how evil the GOP is regarding sexual assault (h/t to Sen. Hatch) there’s always a way to have someone either ignore the context or twist it for their nefarious ends….

  42. 42.

    Jay

    “And Nikulin’s defense team — led by a New York-based attorney seasoned in representing Russians and Eastern Europeans charged with serious crimes in the U.S. — says Russian officials have shown unusually strong interest in his case, arranging at least once to visit him in jail when the attorneys weren’t present.

    The lead attorney, Arkady Bukh, said he remains concerned, maybe ”paranoid,” over Nikulin’s safety after a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned earlier this year in England with a nerve agent.

    “They are very active, by far more active than any other case,” Bukh said of Russian embassy officials. “Now it’s less frequent, but earlier in the case they were calling almost every day. I have no duties to them. They’re not my client.”

    boomantribune.com/story/2018/9/20/124327/736

  43. 43.

    Jeffro

    @Mike in DC: hundreds of charges against dozens of people, dropped all at once, I am telling y’all ?

    So… pretty busy day today for once. Just checking in for the first time – did I miss anything?

  44. 44.

    Marcopolo

    I think it is looking more and more likely that Murkowski will be a no on Kavanaugh:

    Walker opposes Kavanaugh confirmation as Supreme Court justice

    Kavanaugh’s record “does not demonstrate a commitment to legal precedent that protects working families,” Gov. Bill Walker, and independent, and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, a Democrat, said in a statement. They are running for re-election this year.

    “Key aspects of our nation’s health care and labor laws may be at risk if Mr. Kavanaugh receives a lifetime appointment,” the statement said. “Mr. Kavanaugh’s appointment could also jeopardize the Indian Child Welfare Act, Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and other laws that enable tribal self-determination due to his overly narrow view of the relationship between federal and tribal governments.”

    I’m thinking that the Dems will wind up presenting a unified front opposed to Kavanaugh. I’m thinking Susan Collins is backed into a really tight space right now and the walls are closing in–oh, and she so totally deserves it.

    Of course, as I have told my friends, this doesn’t necessarily mean we will get a much better judge on the Supreme Court but oh do I like to watch their flailing, their whinging…as Conan says: youtu.be/HjMQbzBhTb4

  46. 46.

    TenguPhule

    In his opening statements at an election debate Thursday, a South Carolina congressman kicked things off with a joke.

    “Did y’all hear this latest late-breaking news on the Kavanaugh hearings?” Rep. Ralph Norman (R) asked the audience at a Kiwanis club in his district. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out saying she was groped by Abraham Lincoln.”

    The opening remark prompted scattered laughter inside the room, but Democratic observers — in South Carolina and elsewhere — didn’t find it funny.

  49. 49.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Steven M. Alembik told POLITICO on Wednesday he wrote the Obama tweet in anger, that he’s “absolutely not”

    Character is what you are in the dark.

  53. 53.

    VeniceRiley

    At this point, I am for packing the courts the first chance we get. And appointments should start with qualified victims. I’m thinking Justice Anita Hill and Justice Ford, plus 5 other women of varying colors.

  54. 54.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    So since this is a pet thread…

    I decided to get a little more serious with training our shelter pup (hyperactive 19 month old beagle mix). We’re working on “down” as a command not to jump. I think he got the basic idea pretty quickly in the first 2 days, though it had what appears to be an odd side effect.

    So what happens now when we meet a stranger and I caution him with “down”, is he seems mostly well-behaved. But then he turns around, looks me in the eye and jumps up on ME, as if the jumping is just bottled up and has to go somewhere. My other theory, supported by his sniffing quickly at my hands, is that he’s looking for the chicken treat he got during training when he successfully stayed down.

    This prompted me to wonder: if a dog figures out that obeying a command gets treats during training, but zilch when you’ve mastered it, what incentive is there to master any trick? Fortunately I think most of our canine friends haven’t thought that through.

    We’re working on “come” and “stay” next. I don’t know what this dog did during the first 1-1/2 year of his life, but it didn’t seem to include any obedience training. Or play with humans, something else I had to teach him.

  55. 55.

    JPL

    @Mnemosyne: Well duh! Dave Weigel was in town during that episode and he actually questioned it. Ossoff had actually hired security to protect his parents and that received little mention. The repubs are just better at screaming fire.

  56. 56.

    JPL

    oh just f..k.. now CBS news is mentioning the Kavanaugh’s receiving death threats. I bet they are post marked from SC.
    jfc

  57. 57.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Jeffro: Let’s see: Trump DIDN’T tweet us all at 2:18 as originally scheduled, so WW3 didn’t start today. It’s now postponed till Oct 3.

    There was a mass shooting in Aberdeen, MD, with a female shooter. I’m still on the security alert list from my old employer in that area, so that’s how I learned about it.

    Nobody in the White House indicted today, as far as I know. But the day’s not over.

    That’s all I got.

  58. 58.

    TS (the original)

    @debbie: but he was angry – and didn’t mean it – he is not a racist.

    hahahaha – you don’t instantly dream those words up if you are not a racist

  60. 60.

    CarolPW

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: You need to always keep a pocket full of treats when training. On walks, they are as necessary as taking poop bags. Dogs eventually learn that they may not always get treats, but they get them often enough to make them willing to do the right thing. “Often enough” changes as the pup gets more civilized, particularly when (if) they realize rewards for good behavior other than treats are good too.

  62. 62.

    Michael Cain

    Metro Denver ads are focused on the governor, the CO-6 Congressional district, and the anti-fracking initiative. As near as I can tell from the fine print, the candidates are playing fairly nice and the PACs are doing the character assassination. As best I can recall right now — and since I already know how I’m going to vote I try hard to keep my ears closed when the political ads are running — Trump is barely a thing in either race. Coffman, the Republican incumbent in CO-6, was down 11 percentage points in the most recent poll. It had to happen eventually — Coffman has done a masterful job of hedging for six years as his district changed due to redistricting and some demographics, but he’s in a bad place if there’s a blue wave.

    The fracking proponents are doing their best to convince everyone that Colorado still has an economy dominated by mining/drilling, and that limiting drilling will devastate things. When I worked on the state legislature’s budget staff a few years back, I lost count of the number of times I had to discuss with members of the General Assembly that Colorado today is a medium-sized, relatively wealthy, high-tech state — not mining/drilling/agriculture.

  64. 64.

    Chip Daniels

    I’ve found that after along exhausting day reading about the latest atrocity from our government, petting a dog is the best palate cleanser.

  67. 67.

    JeanneT

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Retired dog trainer here. I find it helps to think of training a dog as teaching it to gamble that SOMETIMES when I (the dog) do this behavior, treats happen to me. And gambling that is SOMETIMES rewarded is very addictive.

    That means I never 100% take a behavior off rewards. Never rewarding an obedience behavior makes it disappear over time! I might reward by play or by touch, I might reward by treat, I might say ‘good dog’ in a happy voice if my dog likes any of those as rewards. Or I might ask for several more behaviors and reward one of those. But every day, each of my dogs has several chances to have his gamble of obedience pay off.

    I also always teach my dogs that a certain sound means that he earned a reward – a clicker, a verbal YES, a kissy sound: any of these used consistently can become a conditioned reinforcer and eventually make your dog feel all warm and fuzzy just to know that THAT behavior is getting recognized as reward-worthy. When that happens, dogs start asking to perform or to learn things, just to have more chances to get that signal and the reward.

    The other training thought I have to share is that learning a behavior at home, even mastering it without treats every time, just means that it’s time to practice in 100 more situations out in the world. So at home, rewards for not jumping might be reduced to a minimum, but in public, at the park, at the pet supply store, near other people are all fair game for practicing WITH lots of treat rewards, then gradually phasing them at as the dog masters the behavior in each situation. New situations/places/people are training opportunities, so the advice you got earlier from CarolPW, that you should always have treats in your pocket, is very good advice!

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