The Talking Dog "Sure, the dog can talk…but does it say anything interesting?" He ain't The Man's best friend

Footsteps

What I share with Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte is that I am a fabulously handsome thirty-two year old am an incredible athlete with a dozen Olympic swimming medals was mugged in Rio de Janeiro… in Lochte’s case, at gunpoint. Naturally, the Olympic organizers’ reaction was… to deny it even happened. Lots of good stuff going on at Rio– such as first time gold medals for Fiji (rugby) and Puerto Rico (women’s tennis), or Phelps and Ledecky and Biles and (f’ing eh!) Usain Bolt and Wayde van Niekerkand (the latter, a South African who just destroyed Michael Johnson’s 400 meter world...

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Acclerating news cycle

Hey, let’s all party like it’s 1968 1914 1848,,, damned if I know. WTF is going on in Turkey, with an apparent coup against the already-power-grabbing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and presumably his merry Islamist friends, which seems to have been put down within hours, if not minutes… for one thing, the airports (at least the important ones) were not under the control of “rebels” and Erdogan himself–also conveniently unaccounted for by coup plotters– returned from a beach resort to Istanbul, to reassert “control.” Meanwhile, “senior” military leaders were behind the government, as was the opposition, and evidently, many people...

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Bastille Day Bad Stuff

Perhaps adding another page to the terrorist play book, a truck driver in Nice, France piled through a crowd until he managed to kill at least 75, with at least another 100 injured, during the aftermath of fireworks to celebrate the annual Bastille Day holiday. One assumes that the Islamic State/ISIL/ISIS/whatever it’s called in French will soon be identified as responsible, with calls for increased assaults against that group in Syria notwithstanding that so much progress has been made in rolling it back that even Russian-American cooperation in Syria is possible (or, at least, Sec. of State Kerry is in...

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The right of WHITE People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Well, well, well… for those who thought that the National Rifle Association, at least to the extent of the professionals who do its public bidding, was little more than a money-grubbing arm of the culture wars, rather than any kind of “principled civil rights organization,” we have this hit piece on the NRA (as it were) from WaPo. Specifically, the piece notes the deafening silence of the NRA leadership on one of the clearest infringements on Second Amendment rights we have ever seen, to wit, the apparent summary execution (by a White police officer) of one Philandro Castle (a Black...

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Long, hot summer

Amidst protests over police shootings of persons of color in Louisiana and Minnesota, eleven police officers were shot and five killed during protests in Dallas yesterday. Pretty much defies comment– the murder of anyone is a horrendous act, but it seems that something unsettling is happening at an increasing pace, perhaps some wheels are coming off. Why can’t we all just get along? We kind of never have before, btw. In the middle of this civil unrest, we note (Hillary) that if you’re rich and powerful enough, you can, these days, get away with things that will land other people...

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Happy Fathers Day, such as it is

For your talking dog, the first such Fathers Day following the death of TD Dad last December falls into the realm of somewhere between confusing and surreal; I’ve spent the day at Stately Dog Manor with Mrs. TD and the Loquacious Pup, but of course, there’s definitely something missing. There’s no question that I grew up with my Dad, and now, an irreplaceable part of my life has moved on. The last two Democratic Presidents have some issues with that sort of thing. Tragically, Bill Clinton’s biological father died three months before the future president was born. And similarly, Barack...

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“Dangerous Donald”… part ___

The Grey Lady’s Adam Liptak treats us to his exegesis as to why Donald “the Donald” Drumpf Trump (whom his likely opponent Hillary Clinton now calls “Dangerous Donald”… good one, eh Hillary?)… will be constitutionally dangerous. It’s not thematically all that different from what fellow Establishment-writer-named Adam Gopnick, says here in the New Yorker. [Shorter Times/New Yorker: “Trump = Hitler”.] Seriously? What actually makes Trump so popular in certain American circles– his willingness just to say wtf he feels like, which often includes criticism of the rest of government or arguably sacrosanct institutions (such as the judiciary)… is what also...

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Happy June

And happy birthday to TD mother-in-law, now 85 years young. Your talking dog is pleased to have made it through the worst part of an appendectomy (that being… the appendectomy) and looks forward to… recovering. And another day, another month even, and more of same in American politics… The Grey Lady’s Tom Friedman tries to give equal “untruth” values to statements of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Have to admire the Establishment’s pluck in its unwavering support of Hillary, even as (sadly, behind paywall), one-time Bill Clinton pollster Doug Schoen observes that a Bernie win in California and...

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