I have stairs like that for Pi, my Senior Cat with osteoarthritis. One set goes to my bed, and one goes to his favorite chair with the heating pad set to 104 degrees, 24/7 (he has another heating pad on the back of the couch, so he has napping options). I also have a slightly taller ramp for him that goes to the kitchen counter, because that is where he prefers to take his meals.
Pi is my ride or die for over 14 years, so he gets whatever he wants to make his life easier/more comfortable. 😺😺
I had a neighbor once with an enormous Newfie. She lived in a downstairs apartment, so to take him out (and he was the sweetest thing) she bought a board and put anti-slip stickers on it, and twice a day I'd come help her pull him up or slide him down the board over the stairs. He was very patient with us.
My 65# LULU chased a black bear that had raided the bird feeder. It was at night and quiet outside. I never even thought what would happen if she had caught the bruin. 8-10 minutes later back she came all proud of herself!
Since retiring, getting up is a long and fitful process. I rarely get downstairs to the kitchen before noon, although I awakened at 4 a.m. If I get sleepy again, I lie back down for two-three hours. Right now I am lieing in bed, perusing Wonkette and pecking out whatever it occurs to me to say on my phone.
I’m most often up well before Mrs Mild. I think we get our morning wakeup times from our mothers. My mom would always be up by 6 (after staying up to watch the 11:00 pm news), and make sure the kids would be up and ready for the school bus (my step-dad, who taught at the high school was usually the last one up). For years she made 7 breakfasts and 7 lunches for us before heading out to her job.
Mrs Mild’s mother would sleep in. Her dad would be up getting Mrs Mild and her brother off to school (her sisters were much older and fended for themselves).
I still wake up early, often before 6. Mrs Mild is usually up a couple (or 3 or 4) hours later.
I’d like to say that I use that time productively, but I don’t, so I won’t ;).
My doggo also likes to dismount from things by dragging his hind legs like that, although I don't think I've seen him go from getting down from something to lying down on the floor. Yet.
When we get another Democratic Congress, and we might, maybe, some day, but probably not because ... fuckin' Democrats, but anyway, when we do, they better UN-EMERGENCY all the powers, repeal every goddamned one of them, and fuck the Presidency because now that Trump's opened the Pandora's box, no President will be able to resist declaring fake emergencies to do whatever the fuck they want.
So, the whole faecal microbiota transplantation thing is not all that odd if you ignore the headline and read the entire article or, better yet, the original study. It was looking at a treatment for juvenile obesity using a relatively small sample and girded 'round with the usual cautions you get in Actual Science.
Headline in the article: "A single fecal transplant provides years of health benefits." That's your classic "half truth." Full truth would be more like "Small group four-year followup study shows that a single fecal microbiota transplant provided benefits for a small sample of juvenile diabetes patients."
I suppose a criminal like The Donald wouldn't consider domestic violence to be a crime. i happen to know a lawyer who works in D.V. and some of the stories he tells would curl your hair. Like the cases where the husband and wife simultaneously stab each other. (This actually happens pretty often). And that's just a mild one.
If the police are reluctant to respond to reports of D.V., it's not because they don't consider it a crime. It's because they know that those are some of the most dangerous situations to get involved in.
Rebecca, time to pull those big girl pants on and lay down the Law. Your going to bed and don't wake me unless the house is on fire, and only after the fire trucks have arrived.
“Well, look, I don’t hate anyone, Sean, but congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is a creature, a creation of the media,” Kennedy said. “She checks all the boxes. She’s young, she’s liberal, she’s attractive, she’s ethnic. Her problem is that she’s shallow as a puddle. You scratch the surface and you just get more surface.”
Kennedy then piled on to a recent claim repeated by Hannity that the progressive congresswoman spent lavishly at nice hotels while touring with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to rally the left. Her travels, which included at least one first-class flight, were said to be at odds with her criticism of class disparity. “For her recent conduct, which you talked about, she gets and and deserves a certificate of hypocrisy,” Kennedy continued. “And I would remind her that it’s it’s not your beliefs that make you a good person. It’s your behavior.
Honestly, at this point I don't know whether he knows better or not. And it probably doesn't matter since he's either a lunatic or a cynical opportunist.
Strange that HE has the nerve to call someone else shallow. Oxford education or not, Kennedy is not exactly the Deep Blue Sea of intellectual achievement.
Kavanaugh appears to be construing the white-gloved, hands-off, deferential, wink-wink FBI "investigation" into his alleged sexual assaults and debauchery, that he experienced, as the default of interactions with law enforcement.
Lots of dreaming in technicolor here. Progressive Dems are still just a small minority in a party run by cynical careerists and incompetent, wildly overpaid consultants. I've been hearing "But Democrats CAN and MUST do better! Here's how." since Reagan, and the old fossils never listen.
NYT (excerpts): "A Venezuelan boat that the U.S. military destroyed in the Caribbean last week had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it, according to American officials familiar with the matter. The military repeatedly hit the vessel before it sank, even after disabling it.
One open question is where the boat was headed. Mr. Rubio initially told reporters last week that it was probably headed toward Trinidad and Tobago or some other country in the Caribbean, but administration officials have since characterized it as destined for the United States. Another is what it was carrying. Some have expressed doubts that a vessel of its size would need an 11-member crew.
Rear Adm. James E. McPherson, the top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2004 to 2006 who later served in the first Trump administration in several prominent civilian military roles, including general counsel of the Army: “I would be interested if they could come up for any legal basis for what they did,” he said, adding, “If, in fact, you can fashion a legal argument that says these people were getting ready to attack the U.S. through the introduction of cocaine or whatever, if they turned back, then that threat has gone away.”"
The Waldman thing was good. Probably doesn't go far enough.
It didn't address the military, for example. So far they are in effect complicit. Yes, that could change. Still needs to be addressed. Stronger guardrails than exist now. Purging Maga leadership and rank and file. If the fascists hang on for 10 years, doing their thing, it will be because the military acquiesced.
I'll have to look again if it addressed the EC and the Senate. I'm not seeing how you unwind fascism if those are not radically changed.
State control of elections, several other constitutional arrangements, they all have to go, probably. So you need a blue dictatorship, or possibly a blue and purple states only Constitutional Convention. And you'll probably have to let red states run their own local Maga shows within the much narrower bounds of a new federal structure, if you want to keep any kind of United States.
None of this is a good way of doing things, its all very terrible, but the alternative is a further descent into Maga/Nazi hell, or civil war. We'll have to be our own Allied forces imposing de-nazification on ourselves, so to say. The author is saying that, I think, but not as baldy as they could. We need to talk about this now, in order to reach something like a shared vision of what's necessary, and in order to push Dems in the right direction so they're ready when/if the day comes.
"A flotilla seeking to break Israel’s aid blockade of Gaza has said it was attacked by a drone for the second time in less than 24 hours. The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), which is carrying pro-Palestinian activists, including Greta Thunberg, said in a statement early on Wednesday that it had been attacked by another drone, which dropped an incendiary device on one of its boats, the Alma, as it was moored in the port of Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia. None of the passengers or crew were harmed and no structural damage was caused, it said."
How is ICE going to determine who is brown enough to detain? Is there a SCOTUS-approved color chart? And once cleared, how is a person not at risk of being detained yet again?
Hed gif source link: https://martiniambassador.substack.com/p/doggo-sliding-into-action
And meme chat: https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/d57a020c-464d-4271-9e3b-5498a7deb404?utm_source=share
It's the deep doggo sigh at the end that puts the cherry on this fuzzy-butted sundae.
I have stairs like that for Pi, my Senior Cat with osteoarthritis. One set goes to my bed, and one goes to his favorite chair with the heating pad set to 104 degrees, 24/7 (he has another heating pad on the back of the couch, so he has napping options). I also have a slightly taller ramp for him that goes to the kitchen counter, because that is where he prefers to take his meals.
Pi is my ride or die for over 14 years, so he gets whatever he wants to make his life easier/more comfortable. 😺😺
I had a neighbor once with an enormous Newfie. She lived in a downstairs apartment, so to take him out (and he was the sweetest thing) she bought a board and put anti-slip stickers on it, and twice a day I'd come help her pull him up or slide him down the board over the stairs. He was very patient with us.
You're very sweet to your Pi!
Newfies!! ❤️❤️❤️
It must have been the way his hair was, because I'm allergic to dander, but wasn't really allergic to all zillion pounds of him!
One time my dad saw him looking out the window and swore it was a bear.
They are remarkably bear-like, which is why I love them. It must be like hugging a bear without the risk of death! 🐻
My 65# LULU chased a black bear that had raided the bird feeder. It was at night and quiet outside. I never even thought what would happen if she had caught the bruin. 8-10 minutes later back she came all proud of herself!
Corgi abdominal cruise!
Also, Robyn, get well soon!
Thanks, although I think you meant to direct those well-wishes to Rebecca :-)
Uh oh! Must fix. Robyn might get out of her sickbed to (justifiably) slap me silly!
InCORGIgible?
It's a CORagious stance you've taken here.
Corgious!
That Corgi was me last night after 4.5 hours of meetings. Come home, fall asleep on the sofa, wake up at 11:30PM, go to bed, go right back to sleep.
Corg! I miss my goofy little guy.
That could have been me this morning.
Yawn.
Definitely me. Got home 1am. Not for fun tho. Work.
Still handling stairs better than Trump
Geebuzz, do I know that feeling...
I have similar stairs for the little ol' lady cat, she manages them comfortably, but without the élan of that doggo...
draggin doggo.
I've always felt that waking up is not just one thing. It is a process. I ,myself, am only on step three of my usual 8 point plan.
They say that waking up is hard to do
Now I know, I know that it's true
Don't say that this is the end
Instead of waking up, I wish that I was back asleep again
"Down, dooby-doo, down-down, comma-comma...."
"APOSTROPHE THE END"
Since retiring, getting up is a long and fitful process. I rarely get downstairs to the kitchen before noon, although I awakened at 4 a.m. If I get sleepy again, I lie back down for two-three hours. Right now I am lieing in bed, perusing Wonkette and pecking out whatever it occurs to me to say on my phone.
I’m most often up well before Mrs Mild. I think we get our morning wakeup times from our mothers. My mom would always be up by 6 (after staying up to watch the 11:00 pm news), and make sure the kids would be up and ready for the school bus (my step-dad, who taught at the high school was usually the last one up). For years she made 7 breakfasts and 7 lunches for us before heading out to her job.
Mrs Mild’s mother would sleep in. Her dad would be up getting Mrs Mild and her brother off to school (her sisters were much older and fended for themselves).
I still wake up early, often before 6. Mrs Mild is usually up a couple (or 3 or 4) hours later.
I’d like to say that I use that time productively, but I don’t, so I won’t ;).
Sounds exactly like me except today I have chemo at 8:30. Otherwise noon is my get out of bed time, even if I wake up at 4:00am. Like I did today.
Thinking of you, friend. 🥰
Hurkle-durkling, eh?
Living the dream
La vida sin Wonkette no es vale nada.
Y tambien? Chinga la migra.
Verdad! Asi es.
Having little Juan guarantees that I am up and walking my pal by 6:30. That is my new step one.
All tuckered out from those stairs. I don't blame the corgi for being an eepy boy.
There are day where I can relate to the doggo.
My doggo also likes to dismount from things by dragging his hind legs like that, although I don't think I've seen him go from getting down from something to lying down on the floor. Yet.
Hope you're feeling better Rebecca.
When we get another Democratic Congress, and we might, maybe, some day, but probably not because ... fuckin' Democrats, but anyway, when we do, they better UN-EMERGENCY all the powers, repeal every goddamned one of them, and fuck the Presidency because now that Trump's opened the Pandora's box, no President will be able to resist declaring fake emergencies to do whatever the fuck they want.
So, the whole faecal microbiota transplantation thing is not all that odd if you ignore the headline and read the entire article or, better yet, the original study. It was looking at a treatment for juvenile obesity using a relatively small sample and girded 'round with the usual cautions you get in Actual Science.
Headline in the article: "A single fecal transplant provides years of health benefits." That's your classic "half truth." Full truth would be more like "Small group four-year followup study shows that a single fecal microbiota transplant provided benefits for a small sample of juvenile diabetes patients."
But I guess that's not very good clickbait.
I suppose a criminal like The Donald wouldn't consider domestic violence to be a crime. i happen to know a lawyer who works in D.V. and some of the stories he tells would curl your hair. Like the cases where the husband and wife simultaneously stab each other. (This actually happens pretty often). And that's just a mild one.
If the police are reluctant to respond to reports of D.V., it's not because they don't consider it a crime. It's because they know that those are some of the most dangerous situations to get involved in.
Rebecca, time to pull those big girl pants on and lay down the Law. Your going to bed and don't wake me unless the house is on fire, and only after the fire trucks have arrived.
Rest and get well.
Senator "Foghorn" Kennedy on Hannity:
“Well, look, I don’t hate anyone, Sean, but congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is a creature, a creation of the media,” Kennedy said. “She checks all the boxes. She’s young, she’s liberal, she’s attractive, she’s ethnic. Her problem is that she’s shallow as a puddle. You scratch the surface and you just get more surface.”
Kennedy then piled on to a recent claim repeated by Hannity that the progressive congresswoman spent lavishly at nice hotels while touring with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to rally the left. Her travels, which included at least one first-class flight, were said to be at odds with her criticism of class disparity. “For her recent conduct, which you talked about, she gets and and deserves a certificate of hypocrisy,” Kennedy continued. “And I would remind her that it’s it’s not your beliefs that make you a good person. It’s your behavior.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-kennedy-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-shallow-puddle_n_68c17af4e4b059d8ed36c202?origin=home-latest-news-unit
"And I would remind her that it’s it’s not your beliefs that make you a good person. It’s your behavior." Dang. The dingbat owes me a new irony meter.
And that whole "Well, Al Gore Still Flies on Planes"-type sophistry shows just how shallow he is (and he certainly knows better).
Honestly, at this point I don't know whether he knows better or not. And it probably doesn't matter since he's either a lunatic or a cynical opportunist.
Strange that HE has the nerve to call someone else shallow. Oxford education or not, Kennedy is not exactly the Deep Blue Sea of intellectual achievement.
Tim Miller at the Bulwark called out the Mamdani ad above and a Mallory McMorrow ad (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o19skMJsvow) as how it's done, folks.
Last time, it was this Paige Cognetti for Congress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kk5sZbDrYg
More of these, please.
"What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!" Trump posted on his social media platform." [HuffPost]
What's with Israel violating Qatar's/Lebanon's/Syria's/Iran's/Yemen's airspace.
What's with Russia violating Ukraine's airspace.
What's with the U.S. violating Iran's airspace.
What's with Iran violating Qatar's airspace.
. . . . . .
Kavanaugh appears to be construing the white-gloved, hands-off, deferential, wink-wink FBI "investigation" into his alleged sexual assaults and debauchery, that he experienced, as the default of interactions with law enforcement.
Lots of dreaming in technicolor here. Progressive Dems are still just a small minority in a party run by cynical careerists and incompetent, wildly overpaid consultants. I've been hearing "But Democrats CAN and MUST do better! Here's how." since Reagan, and the old fossils never listen.
NYT (excerpts): "A Venezuelan boat that the U.S. military destroyed in the Caribbean last week had altered its course and appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it, according to American officials familiar with the matter. The military repeatedly hit the vessel before it sank, even after disabling it.
One open question is where the boat was headed. Mr. Rubio initially told reporters last week that it was probably headed toward Trinidad and Tobago or some other country in the Caribbean, but administration officials have since characterized it as destined for the United States. Another is what it was carrying. Some have expressed doubts that a vessel of its size would need an 11-member crew.
Rear Adm. James E. McPherson, the top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2004 to 2006 who later served in the first Trump administration in several prominent civilian military roles, including general counsel of the Army: “I would be interested if they could come up for any legal basis for what they did,” he said, adding, “If, in fact, you can fashion a legal argument that says these people were getting ready to attack the U.S. through the introduction of cocaine or whatever, if they turned back, then that threat has gone away.”"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/trump-drug-boat-venezuela-strike.html
The Waldman thing was good. Probably doesn't go far enough.
It didn't address the military, for example. So far they are in effect complicit. Yes, that could change. Still needs to be addressed. Stronger guardrails than exist now. Purging Maga leadership and rank and file. If the fascists hang on for 10 years, doing their thing, it will be because the military acquiesced.
I'll have to look again if it addressed the EC and the Senate. I'm not seeing how you unwind fascism if those are not radically changed.
State control of elections, several other constitutional arrangements, they all have to go, probably. So you need a blue dictatorship, or possibly a blue and purple states only Constitutional Convention. And you'll probably have to let red states run their own local Maga shows within the much narrower bounds of a new federal structure, if you want to keep any kind of United States.
None of this is a good way of doing things, its all very terrible, but the alternative is a further descent into Maga/Nazi hell, or civil war. We'll have to be our own Allied forces imposing de-nazification on ourselves, so to say. The author is saying that, I think, but not as baldy as they could. We need to talk about this now, in order to reach something like a shared vision of what's necessary, and in order to push Dems in the right direction so they're ready when/if the day comes.
"A flotilla seeking to break Israel’s aid blockade of Gaza has said it was attacked by a drone for the second time in less than 24 hours. The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), which is carrying pro-Palestinian activists, including Greta Thunberg, said in a statement early on Wednesday that it had been attacked by another drone, which dropped an incendiary device on one of its boats, the Alma, as it was moored in the port of Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia. None of the passengers or crew were harmed and no structural damage was caused, it said."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/10/gaza-aid-flotilla-carrying-greta-thunberg-reports-second-drone-attack-on-boat-at-tunisian-port
"Papers, please."
How is ICE going to determine who is brown enough to detain? Is there a SCOTUS-approved color chart? And once cleared, how is a person not at risk of being detained yet again?
Corgies make me smile, I recently saw a long-haired corgie I think they call them fluffy,
and btw, last Sunday ESPN had Corgie races on (and I'm not making that up), it was cuteness overload.