Sh*t Happens

It’s been a shitty week around here, and I can only wish I were being metaphorical.

I’ve mentioned before that we have a dog, a 14-year-old yellow lab, and at his age, we fully realize we are running on gravy time. The average lab lives 9-12 years, I’m told. He’s generally been fine up until now, slowing down, but essentially the same dog he’s always been. But now, we can see the endgame approaching.

He’s always been extremely reliable in that he never went potty in the house. Ever. He always came to get one of us to let him out. Last Monday changed all of that.

I woke up to find a serious shitstorm. He had left a big pile on the throw rug right beside the back door (his usual route to go outside). He must have done it between the time my wife left for work and when I got up for the day.

Then every time I’d clean it up and leave the room, I’d come back to another pile. I was about to have a meltdown. See, I’m not the one who generally tends to the dog’s maintenance, aside from letting him out. This was Sweetpea’s dog, and his care has remained under her domain. I’m extreeeeemely squeamish about handling poop. In fact, I’ve only changed one diaper in my lifetime and still remain traumatized by the experience. (It made an entertaining post though.) But I couldn’t leave it there on the floor for the next eight hours, so I had to do something.

Sweetpea’s usual MO for poop detail (inside or outside) is to put her hand in a plastic bag, pick up the offending matter, and pull the bag down off her hand, thus encasing the poop. That would not work for me. I’m not touching that stuff no matter how many layers of plastic are involved. She seems to have infinite patience for this stuff; maybe it’s because she’s dealt with small children all day for 30+ years.

Anyway, I took the rug outside and squirted it off with a hose, then hung it up to dry over a railing.

When I came back in, there was more. After I cleaned that, I finally got to sit down and peruse the internet, after which I came back out of my office to find even more. I was pretty much losing it by that point.

It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t always fresh work. I noticed he had stepped in some with his back paw, so what I was finding was where he had tracked it around. So I got him outside and hosed off his foot, butt, and general hind area. That solved the immediate problem.

The dog has gotten very weak lately. So when he goes to squat, he can only hold the pose for so long. Then he tires and sort of slides back down into his creation, thus doubling any cleanup efforts.

I was never so glad to see someone come in the door as I was to see Sweetpea that evening. We needed to pow-wow to come up with some solutions, because from what I could see, the entire focus of my retirement was now trying to keep the dog from shitting in the house.

One of the things we did was line a path through the living room with old towels, so in case of an accident, we could remove the piles quickly. Unfortunately, that wasn’t always easy; the boy is no longer simply dropping logs. He’s had some degree of diarrhea for the last two weeks, which was like one part Velcro, one part toxic waste, and smells like hot death. You probably ought to go buy stock in Febreze, because we’re using that stuff like crazy.

Of course, the towels never stay flat; they get rumpled up via dog and foot traffic, so our living room looks like a giant unmade bed. Add that to the area rugs we have all over the kitchen, because the dog has a hard time getting up (or even walking on) the tile floor. He’s prone to taking tremendous cartoon-like pratfalls where all four legs splay out as he thumps to the floor. He can still get back up, though. Sometimes he struggles, but he can do it when he’s sufficiently motivated (usually by food). But it’s a process.

Maybe we should just put down a tarp and make the whole thing look like an indoor Slip-N-Slide.

One night in the middle of last week, after Sweetpea was in bed, I saw the dog appear at the exit from the kitchen and assume the position in the hallway. I leapt from the sofa, going, “NONONONONO-outsideoutsideoutsideoutside…” and hustled him to the door. This was a big mistake because he left a trail of doots along the towel-brick road. I should have left him be where he was, standing on a plastic runner just inside the front door. That would have been a much easier cleanup. But all I could think of was to reinforce the “outside” part of the process and not tacitly signal that indoor pooping was OK.

Eventually, we realized that we could go buy some more plastic runners and substitute them in for the towels. Sweetpea did that yesterday. That makes cleanup easier, and the room looks much less rumpled.

All of this has led to a new normal.

Every morning, I get up to find a note from Sweetpea, informing me of the dog’s poop status, so I know what I might expect.

We found that, in discussing the subject and given the ever-changing nature of what the dog is producing, I suggested that we create a poop scale so that we needn’t get bogged down with descriptive details. So we created a 1-5 scale, where:

1 = Chocolate milk

3 = Pudding

5 = Lincoln Logs

This week, the scale went into effect.

(The “pork” had nothing to do with our subject today, just a note telling me I don’t need to take tonight’s dinner out of the fridge.)

To help with his stance, she bought a support strap, about 10 inches wide, with handles on both ends and padded with fleece, so when he hunches over outside, one of us can slip one end under him and pull up to keep him from falling back into his mess. He doesn’t like it much, but he tolerates it. So when he goes out, we have to go with him. I don’t know how this will work in the winter. Suffice to say, he won’t be waiting around at the door while we put on our coats and boots.

So now we have a dog who has trouble walking and getting up, gets scabby protrusions through his fur, and he’s half incontinent. (I say half because he never pees inside. I guess he can hold that better.) He can hardly see, and his hearing is diminished too. He sleeps about 22-23 hours a day.

I know what you may be thinking… that maybe it’s time to put him out of his misery.

We’ve considered that too, and it might come to that eventually. We’re keeping an eye out. He doesn’t seem to be suffering. He still has a voracious appetite. For whatever is going wrong, he still wants to eat all the time. And that brings its own problem because his “give me food” behavior is the same as his “let me out” behavior, so we don’t always know what he really wants. We just treat every action as “let me out” and go from there. This is how our typical evening’s activities play out:

·         After his and our dinners (and treats), we sit down for the evening.

·         Dog signals us.

·         We go to let him out. He goes to the Treat Bar.

·         We tell him no; he’s had his dinner and treats.

·         We all sit down again.

·         He gets up and signals again.

·         We told you, NO MORE FOOD. (He knows what this means.)

·         He takes the stance like he’s about to go.

See, NOW he wants to go out; he just wanted food first. Or, he’s hoping for a treat when he comes in (which Sweetpea often provides). We used to go through several rounds of this each night before he’d finally settle in. Now he’s done after the first cycle.

So, he still seems to be “him.” Despite bumbling around, he doesn’t seem to be in pain. He enjoys seeing his best human friends when they come over, and he certainly enjoys every meal. We don’t think it’s time to take any drastic measures yet.

But ask me again later if my quality of life is still so intimately tied to dog shit in another month or two.

Maybe it should be ME getting put out of misery.

He's Not Leaving, Pt 847

In a temporary win for democracy, the Supreme Court ruled last week that the president cannot use the post office to screen mailed ballots, limiting them to voters he likes. The main thrust seemed to be that it is too late to change the rules, as ballots are already beginning to go out.

Local Note: This morning I received an email from my local elections board that my ballot has been mailed. I plan to turn it around ASAP and bring it to a ballot drop-off receptacle. Unlike Texas, Maryland allows more than one per county. We have one right down the street.

This is the second time SCOTUS has decided this matter based on timing. They ruled the initial suit was filed too early. Now it’s too late. It seems like they’re bending over backwards to avoid ruling on the principle of the case.

Unfortunately, I believe we’ll see this matter surface again. It seems Justice Kavanaugh left them some breadcrumbs to follow for 2028. In a concurrence, he wrote, “In my view, based on the briefing the Court has received at this interim stage, there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority," thus clearing the way for Republicans to draw at least one more vote in a third go-round. Alito and Thomas, the two dissenting votes, were just fine with this manner of voter suppression. I wouldn’t put it past Gorsuch and Roberts to do a 180 and find for the Felon when the chips are down, and the dominoes are about to start tipping.

Another part of the order that was killed called for all states to create identical mailing ballots. I’m sure they really wanted that… That would mean the Post Office would only need to devise one sorting profile for the machines nationwide, which would cover all ballots. Again, even the issues that seem benign on the surface have malignant purposes. Sifting out ballots would be a breeze.

I keep saying it: If the president is still alive in 2028, he’s not leaving office willingly. If he can’t win the election, he’ll cancel them. If he can’t cancel them, he’ll disrupt them. If he can’t disrupt them, he’ll create an emergency and claim wartime powers to ignore them.

Yes, I know it’s all illegal, and there’s no precedent, but so are most of the things he’s done in the last year and a half, and no one has stopped him yet. With his blanket immunity, the Justice Dept. refusing to investigate anything that falls between the cracks, and using ICE as his enforcement/defense mechanisms, he is impervious to outside pressure. (Save for maybe the Russians.) The FBI won’t help; they’re now just as partisan and corrupt as Justice:

Don’t believe me about TFG’s intentions? Check out this message from him last weekend. If this doesn’t chill your shit, nothing will:

Who do you think those drones are meant to be fired at? China? Iran? Venezuelan fishermen? These armaments are meant for us, ie., anyone who dares defy his authoritah via direct protest. OR, say, a splintered militia made up of military and police members who are willing to disobey direct orders and dig him out of the White House like a tick.

I can just imagine an automated machine gun stand on the top of this arch, remotely controlled from inside the White House. It could have two settings: Just Hit the Legs, and Kill’em All. Whiskey Pete would love it. I won’t be surprised if he outfits the ballroom with the same weaponry.

So he’s digging a massive bunker/safe house under his ballroom, arming monuments, and revoking freedom of the press. Oh yeah, he did that too when he banned MS NOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House. He said that anyone who publishes news he doesn’t like will get banned. The president now decides what can be published. First Amendment is gone in a whirlwind of Big Mac wrappers and methane. I wonder what other Amendments he’s going to nullify because he doesn’t like someone who uses them.

None of these are the actions of someone who will leave power willingly. He knows that as soon as he loses the protection of the presidency, he, his inner circle, and some of his children are going to jail. He has zero incentive to go peacefully and every reason to use every method imaginable to cling to power. His lack of scruples or ethics practically guarantees it. 

Update 9/23/26:

Welcome to the party, CNN!

It's All Part of the Plan

Our Clown-in-Chief said more stupid things last week, most of which occurred at his Big Texas Circle Jerk. One of the more terrifying tidbits was that he expects The War That Isn’t a War to end after the elections.

There are a couple of angles to this.

First off, you could say he knows he can’t end the war before then. So then, any other time will be, by definition, “after the war.” But that’s just the literal aspect.

The second point, the one that scares me, is that the means by which he intends to end the war will be so distasteful that he needs it to be after the elections, or else it will negatively affect the vote. As if there aren’t a dozen other atrocities that weigh on the scale right now.

The first thing that comes to mind is the use of nukes, which will roil the oil market and send gas prices into the stratosphere for decades, and probably dam up the Strait for good. After that, oil will seem like a quaint idea when we can’t get enough fertilizer to grow nation-sustaining crops.

And, of course, there is the horrific, massive loss of innocent life that happens any time a nuclear bomb is used. Of course, to this Administration, the fact that these will be brown people with weird names mitigates the damage.

Then there is the possibility of in-kind retaliation, either by a foreign state or an independent terrorist with a suitcase nuke. After a national tragedy like 9/11, the nation came together. If such an emergency happens again, I don’t think we’ll see such a unified front. The race to blame political opponents and exact revenge will short-circuit everything else. And it’s exactly the kind of thing TFG would use to declare martial law and assert power indefinitely.

It’s funny that in the best possible outcome, he’s just blowing his usual torrent of lies and exaggerations. But you never really know with this guy.

 

The other big item was his $5,000 bribe to vote Republican in November. The fact that he continually proposes handing out cash, without it ever happening, practically guarantees that zero cash will ever be forthcoming. No one is taking this “offer” seriously, except maybe a few MAGAs who are still waiting for their special NFTs to turn a profit, or their gold shoes to show up.

The national Republican apparatus was quick to cast doubt on the prospect, but they may not be in on the possible endgame.

Consider the fact that Republicans can be relied on to do two things:

·         Spike the deficit when they’re in power by slashing taxes for the rich.

·         Demand a balanced budget when the Democrats are in power.

It seems to be their most effective weapon, even though anyone who’s been paying attention for the last 45 years can see the pattern. We Americans have the national attention span of a flea.

So if this giveaway spikes the deficit even more, it only adds to the case Republicans are sure to bring in the future: that spending needs to be slashed because of the deficit. (Assuming we can ever actually remove the current occupant.)

What’s one of any future Democratic administration’s priorities? It had better be de-Trumpifying the government, via un-naming things he smeared his logo on or built in his own honor, restoring the governmental departments that have been gutted, and rehiring tens of thousands of government workers to staff them. That’s going to take a lot of money, and we won’t have it. And no matter how the Congressional makeup turns out, the fat cats will buy off just enough Democrats to guarantee that no substantial changes are made to the tax code that require that the rich kick in more.

So, spiraling the deficit is the Republicans’ insurance policy to keep the government the way they just made it: built by and for the Rich. Doing it via handout makes it seem like they’re trying to help the little guy.

But tell me, in what way is robbing every citizen of $10,000* and then giving them back $5,000 considered “help?”

*Or whatever the number comes to that we’ve overpaid for tariffed goods, medical services brought on by getting sick via our uninspected food or unvaccinated virus carriers.

They’re counting on us to forget about all that, just like we forget who contributes the most to the annual deficit. I vote that we remember this ploy in this and every November.

 

Blogging Note

If you have a blog using Blogger/Blogspot, have you noticed if your blogroll has stopped updating? As of today, mine has been stuck at what it showed five days ago. I’ve seen at least one other blog with the same problem, so I know it’s not just me. Any ideas as to the cause, or what to do about it?

At Least the USPS is Improving at Something

The day after my last post, about how the current attempts to sabotage the midterm elections are likely to succeed regardless of legality, a new story broke about how the post office is continuing to develop a voter suppression technique despite being forbidden by the courts.

Long story short, (and aside from the fact that it is illegal for the post office to have any role in voting systems, other than just delivering the mail, AND the likely illegality of states having to filter their voter rolls through a federal “approved” list), the plan is for the USPS to take a sample of around 400 outgoing ballots from a batch of 10,000, bump them up against the federal list, and if even a single one is deemed ineligible, the entire group of 10,000 will be returned to the state.

You can see how that would inevitably entail tens of thousands of ballots being sent back and forth, eating up all the available mailing time before the election.

This is how you know it isn’t about preventing ineligible votes. This system is designed to stop the whole process in its tracks; otherwise they’d just pull the ineligible votes and send the rest on.

A whistleblower provided an account of the work continuing on this voter-prevention system, despite the court having already instructed the Post Office to cease all such activities, so you can see how seriously the Administration takes court orders. “Just carry on, and by the time it all shakes out, it will be too late.”

This is also a scenario that defeats the use of drop boxes. You can’t leave your ballot in a drop box if you never receive it in the first place. I think the states should seriously look into either emailing ballots or making them available online. It shouldn’t be hard to limit downloads or emails to those on their list of registered voters. Of course, the Republicans will scream bloody murder about a new avenue of alleged “voter fraud,” but they do that about any practice that circumvents their voter suppression tactics. That’s how mail-in voting became an issue in the first place.

Another story that broke last week was how a Tarrant County election commission in Texas decided to eliminate 92 voting locations. This action immediately followed a “town hall meeting” wherein the overwhelming majority of attendees supported NOT removing voting locations. Tarrant County abuts Dallas and contains Fort Worth, and is one of the “Bluer” areas in Texas, and key to the Democrats picking up a Senate seat. Making it more inconvenient for your opponent to vote is a cornerstone of Republican voter suppression, whether it’s actions like these, or removing voting machines from key precincts, removing or decreasing early in-person voting days, or draconian water prohibitions when in line to vote.

They know that white-collar (upper class) can spend all day in line and their employers will accommodate, while blue-collar (middle/lower class) workers’ employers are much less lenient. Someone has to be there to make the donuts. Not to mention the loss of hourly wages while standing in line.

And regarding another voter suppression angle I covered last week, there was an article in the paper regarding using the military to appear at polling places.

The AP article quotes Gen Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying that there are no plans to send troops to the polls.

That’s fine, except that it has no bearing on whether ICE is sent. ICE is not part of the traditional military and is not under their chain of command. The president, via the Department of Homeland Security, can send ICE anywhere he wants. I guarantee they will be out and about on Election Day, on the prowl for brown voters they can pick up or scare off. I suspect this article is just one more way that mainstream media is trying to keep a lid on things, to keep people happy and complacent.

We can no longer afford to be complacent about anything. Big changes are afoot, and without our active resistance, the move to a fascist authoritarian regime is imminent.

One more quick observation. Do you know how TFG has been filling up Truth Social with fantastical AI depictions of himself in godly/heroic scenarios? There was a telling passage in the new book, "Regime Change" (Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan) that might explain it. They report that he was enthralled by AI technology, particularly about how you can just tell ChatGPT something and it will spit out what you want. He had a lot of questions about it and how it worked. (This is unusual, since he's not normally curious about anything.) So I wouldn't be surprised that rather than merely forwarding the fawning work of others, he was creating these things himself, or at least telling Natalie what he wanted.