HässleholmI came across your collar today Sorting what remains So faded These eyes Can barely make you out But pretty in pink I breathe you in And jingle jangle For a moment I think you’re here To know me No me Into the drawer to fragrant past days
In honor of National Make a Dog’s Day, let’s do so with four-pawed Factslaps (E&T Remix):
As of 2018, Americans own 89.7 million dogs.
The world’s oldest dog died at age 29.
Dogs poop in alignment with Earth’s magnetic field.
Humans and dogs first became best friends 30,000 years ago.
Every dog’s mitochondrial DNA is 99.9% the same as a gray wolf.
In English-speaking countries, the most popular names for dogs are Max and Molly.
Dogs have 13 blood types, horses have 8, cows have 9, while humans have only 4.
Paul McCartney recorded an ultrasonic whistle audible only to dogs at the end of “A Day in the Life.”
“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” — Stalin
To: The Lincoln Project
From: The HollywoodBowles
To whom it may concern,
First off, a caveat and compliment. I wear the liberal title proudly, and am ethically opposed to most of what you represent: non-choice, non-diversity, non-tolerance, non-science, non-environment. That makes your party a non-starter for me.
BUT. You make great commercials! Much better than anything we libtards can concoct. I don’t know why, but we suck at catch-phrasing. As the president would say, it is what it is.
And it’s in that spirit I offer you a new campaign in the presidential homestretch. It’s not nearly as clever as your brilliant Wake Up ad, but it beats the hell out of “Lock Her Up” or “Sleepy Joe.”
I call it the Quarter-Million Campaign. As you know, the U.S. will be approaching 250,000 American casualties from COVID — around the week of the election, perhaps a few days later, if rates and estimates maintain.
There are not many political leaders who get saddled with the word “million.” And when they are, it’s never positive. Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Hitler, Mussolini sported the figure, too.
And soon, Donald Trump. His handling of coronavirus — more than his affairs, finances, Russian collusion, government shutdown, etc. — synopsize in just three words (two if you drop the article) his incompetence. The virus has exposed just how out of his depth Trump is, from handling crises to calming a nervous nation to providing citizens with basic medical information.
An effective ad wouldn’t even need all of the words used in the above paragraph. Simply an ever-rising Johns Hopkins fever chart of casualties, played to the soundtrack of Trump’s rosy forecasts for the pandemic: “It’s going to be gone in summer”; “It will magically go away”; “If we did less testing,” yaddy. Then fade to a black-and-white photo. Maybe something like this.
You could probably run an ad as long as Wake Up, given how much snake oil we’ve been sold in the last eight months. My favorite is his latest: “We’re rounding the corner.” Like, into an alley?
It’s not fair to lay 250,000 deaths at his feet, I know. In truth, we are as much to blame for the catastrophe as he, if not more. Even in my own state, an allegedly educated one, even my friends, even my own mother — my mother! — seems determined to play with fire when it comes to a global pandemic. Because, you know, it is what it is.
But the president trades in hyperbole, so let’s speak his language. The beauty of the concept is that it’s evergreen: It will last well beyond the election, far into 2021, when the courts are being lobbied over how to call the race. You’ll want public opinion in your corner in that final dash, and A Quarter-Million can be easily modified as the body count rises. It’s a self-working magic trick: Each new title — A Half-Million, A Million — is more astonishing than the previous.
A Quarter Million. We’re not rounding the corner. We’re rounding off.
It was easy to miss amid all of the political braying that is October in an election year, but the Catholic Church did something seismic today.
It acknowledged reality.
Forgive the misquote, but I’m pretty sure this is on the scale of the loaves and fishes. Because it was a hard reality for the religious: Gay people exist. And God’s cool with it.
Pope Francis, who is becoming Catholics’ Rebel Without a Pause, broke the news Wednesday to those whose faith mandates bigotry.
“Homosexuals have a right to be part of the family,” the pontiff said in Francesco, a documentary about his life. “They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.
“What we have to create is a civil union law,” he added. “That way, they are legally covered.”
First off: Hell yeah! The pope granted an interview? To a documentary film crew?? All Fran needs now are a pack of smokes, some Chuck Taylors and a skateboard, and I’m converting.
The comment also underscored an inescapable truth that’s perhaps just as uncomfortable for the religious and conservative: History always drifts to the political left. It can’t help it.
Take any U.S. political or societal issue over the decades: women’s rights, minority rights, gay rights, animal rights, guns, weed, porn, language, ad nauseum; we are more liberal on that issue than we were a generation ago. I cannot find an exception.
You can’t unlearn enlightenment. You can only choose to ignore it.
Which is what The Catholic Times has apparently done. After learning of Pope Kickass’ comments, I checked out the popular publication, dedicated to Roman Catholics worldwide, to see their take it all.
I discovered that the CT is a weekly newspaper, so I could forgive it not having a piece on Francis’ bombshell. But I found something more disturbing. This picture and promotion:
Surely, I thought, this was simply click bait. The headline “Is it sinful to vote for Joe Biden?” had to be an editorial ruse.
But no: this from Paprocki’s column, which pointedly cites the Biden-Harris pro-choice stance: “In order to justify voting for a proponent of abortion, one would need a proportionately grave reason that outweighs the killing of 860,000 babies per year.”
He continued: “Note also that I am not saying that you must vote to re-elect President Donald Trump.”
Uh, yeah you are. This is the sort of semantic soft shoe that allows religion to skirt modern-age questions with Iron Age answers. Instead of telling readers to come up with a reason “proportionately grave” to the killing of 860,000 babies, how about just being honest with people? Your religion mandates that abortion is an atrocity, and your political interests must align with Republicans, even if it means Trump. We can at least be honest on that level, can’t we?
Interesting, too, that he did not bother to ask what seems a basic Catholic question — or implore his readers to ask it themselves: Which candidate is the better Christian?
But I’m not a theist, so what do I know? So we’ll turn it over to someone who is. Bruce Morrill, the Chair in Roman Catholic Studies at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University, said Wednesday’s papal wokeness is “not surprising coming from Pope Francis because of the trail of individual statements he has made here and there over his papacy.”
Morrill, a Jesuit priest, added that one of Francis’ characteristics was “that he likes to speak and act on the principle of mercy.”
