I’ve got nothing, but it looks like we need an open thread.
(via)
Early Morning Open Thread: More Like This, Please
Sometimes all you can make is a little gesture. Sometimes that little gesture looms very large…
Nearly 10 years ago, a lovable German shepherd/golden retriever mix named Bailey was put up for adoption. For Sharon Conlon, the timing was right… a longtime friendship blossomed. But a year ago, her life got a lot more difficult. “I lost my job and I was finding it harder and harder to pay for everything,’’ the 66-year-old Quincy resident said recently. “I went through my unemployment and then my 401K.’’
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Meanwhile, Bailey’s health took a turn. The dog had kidney disease and kidney stones, and was placed on a special diet available only through the vet. Conlon didn’t have the cash to meet Bailey’s needs but refused to give up her buddy. “I’d starve first,’’ she said.
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Enter Fairy DogParents, an organization that helps dog owners keep their pets when times get tough. Conlon read about the Duxbury-based group in a regional magazine. “They’ve helped me with Bailey’s vet visits and with his food,’’ Conlon said. “It’s been a godsend. I didn’t know there was anything like this out there.’’
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Duxbury resident Marlo Manning is the dynamo behind the nonprofit, which she founded in March 2009 following the death of her own dog. “Ladybug had been a rescue dog and had tons of diseases,’’ Manning said. “When I went to get her ashes, I told the vet tech I was used to the expense of my dog, so could I be a silent donor for someone else? The vet tech mentioned a newspaper story about all the pets being surrendered due to the economy.’’
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That story was the spark. After a good deal of research, Manning found only a handful of organizations nationwide that offered support to owners to help them keep their pets. By June last year, Fairy DogParents was up and running. “When people say those words, ‘I’m bringing my dog to a shelter because I can’t afford to take care of him,’ that’s when Fairy DogParents comes in,’’ she said.
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Manning operates with just a couple of volunteers, storing supplies at her home and making most deliveries herself. “We’re still small enough where I can name every single dog we’ve had,’’ she said. To date, the group has helped 32 dogs stay in their homes…
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Referrals have come from shelters, rescue organizations, and even food pantries. “The MSPCA has us on their website, and they refer to us all the time,’’ Manning said. She has developed financial connections with area pharmacies and veterinarians, and her organization foots the bill for everything from cancer treatments to simple annual wellness visits, along with the cost of medications.“The money is given directly to the vet or pharmacy,’’ she said. “The dog owner is responsible for 15 percent of the cost.’’
And, yes, Fairy Dogparents has a website, set up for Paypal donations.
Early Morning Open Thread: More Like This, PleasePost + Comments (19)
Open Thread
Whenever there has been a several hour lapse in posts, I feel the need for an open thread.
Privatization That Makes Sense
I never really understood why states were in this business anyway:
For months, aides to Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell have been meeting behind closed doors with alcohol retailers and wholesalers, public safety officials and faith-based groups to come up with a way to fulfill one of the governor’s most notable campaign promises: privatizing the state’s liquor stores.
The consequences of what they come up with are potentially enormous and would amount to one of the most noticeable changes in the relationship between Virginians and their government in years, if not decades.
For the drinking-age public, a privatized system could mean many more liquor stores, a much wider variety of libations and lower prices. Like beer and wine, liquor could be sold in grocery stores, big-box stores such as Wal-Mart or anywhere else a licensed dealer chooses to locate.
I remember as a kid WV had state stores, but I never really thought about why we once had state stores. Does anyone have the history on why states were involved in this in the first place?
It was a fine idea at the time
When I first started hearing about the New Black Panther manufactured scandal, the first thing that went through my head was “how long til the Kaplan ombudsman writes that the Post needs to cover this story in order to make its conservative readers happy”? Paul Waldman of TAP describes the process very well:
It’s a very simple formula: take some incident or person who can embody something you want people to believe about the left (elitists, scary black people, etc.); put it into heavy rotation on Fox and conservative radio; immediately begin screaming that the liberal mainstream media are ignoring this vital story; watch while the mainstream media pick up the story to prove they really aren’t liberal. Rinse, repeat. It works pretty much every time.
At this point, one of the primary roles of ombudsmen, at least at the Times and the Post, is to facilitate this process. So it’s time to say it clearly: the Times and Post should get rid of the ombudsman columns and blogs. It’s fine to have someone who answers reader emails and complaints (Deborah Howell at the Post was excellent about giving thoughtful answers to my emails, FWIW — the others were all awful), but don’t give this person a public voice.
The public editor experiment has been an unmitigated disaster, whether it’s Clark Hoyt and Andy Alexander pimping the ACORN story, Daniel Okrent going Malkin on a reader, or the Howell/Abramoff/profanity debacle. The one good thing I can think of that came of the experiment was Orkent’s take-down of the Times over its bogus WMD reporting.
When the Times rolled out the public editor thing, I thought it was a great idea. I was wrong. If papers want to encourage public internal criticism, do it via blogs like Greg Sargent’s and Ezra Klein’s, or even the awful Post Partisan.
An ombudsman will never write anything beyond “shape of earth, views differ”, and that’s not just pointless, it’s actively destructive to the mission of journalism.
Update. The Post has had an ombudsman since 1970. It would be interesting to see if the position has always been as useless and counterproductive as it is now.
Update update. All of this applies only to “national newspapers” — I think that ombudsmen who focus on coverage of local issues can be useful.
Open Thread: Trash-Talking Rage Monkeys
Jim Newell at Gawker alerts us to Reagan-idolator Peggy Noonan’s fears of an internet planet:
In today’s comical jumble of foggy Victorian wrist spasms, “Youth Has Outlived Its Usefulness,” Noonan lashes out at Earth’s toddler authority figures and their petty, corrosive effects on discourse. They are incompetent, pre-pubescent. Why do these middle-aged men have no midwives or governesses to monitor them as they sway in the cradle?
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“Mr. Obama is young, 48, as is British Prime Minister David Cameron (43), with whom he meets next week, and as were Bill Clinton (46 on Inauguration Day) and the somewhat older but still distressingly young George W. Bush, sworn in at 54. Mr. Cameron’s partner in governance, Nicholas Clegg, is also 43. Stephen Harper of Canada is 51, Nicolas Sarkozy of France a youthful 55.
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Youth is supposed to bring vigor and vision. In general, however, I think we find in our modern political figures that what it really brings is need-for greatness, to be transformative, to leave a legacy. Such clamorous needs! How very boring they are, how puny and small, but how huge in their consequences.”
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And who enables these petulant 50-year-old rapscallion devils? The bloggers, who are somehow even younger! Look at them, on their “Internet” machines, slamming the typing boards like unmedicated Jacobins.
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“On the Internet, you read the fierce posts of political and ideological writers and wonder, Why do so many young bloggers sound like hyenas laughing in the dark? Maybe it’s because there’s no old hand at the next desk to turn and say, “Son, being an enraged, profane, unmoderated, unmediated, hit-loving, trash-talking rage monkey is no way to go through life.”
At the age of 54, it would be rather thrilling to be dismissed as a mere stripling, except that Peggy Noonan is a Very Serious Person promoting the Very Serious presidential credentials of… a bunch of piggy-eyed Heartland(tm) Republican hacks. I wish Finley Peter Dunne’s work were more widely available online; during America’s first Gilded Age, he wrote a wonderful satire of punditocratic headshaking over the impetuous results-oriented methods of President ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt that could be substituted for Noonan’s tut-tutting with a simple updating of the proper nouns.
On the other hand, ‘Trash-Talking Rage Monkeys’ would be a great name for a garage band, eh?
Open Thread: Trash-Talking Rage MonkeysPost + Comments (103)
Open Thread
Had planned on hot sausage sandwiches, but I started the sauce way too late, so I’m settling on a couple of slices of gut bomb pizza from DiCarlo’s. I’ll just let my sauce and peppers simmer and then finish it for dinner tomorrow. I think I am going to hit the matinee and see Inception, so a quick dinner when I am done will be nice.
Has anyone seen the Invention of Lying? That is the new movie on HBO this week- looks pretty good, hard to go wrong with Louis C.K. and Ricky Gervais.
Talk amongst yourselves.