There once was a religious young woman who went to Confession. Upon entering the confessional, she said, 'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.'
The priest said, 'Confess your sins and be forgiven.'
The young woman said, 'Last night my boyfriend made mad passionate love to me 6 times.'
The priest thought long and hard and then said, 'Squeeze 6 lemons into a glass and then drink the juice.'
The young woman asked, 'Will this cleanse me of my sins?'
The priest said, 'No, but it will certainly wipe that devilish grin off of your face.'
to Broadway"
or have fun suggesting your own caption for the following photo.
Here's the photo;
According to a survey published in The Washington Post yesterday,
every governor (except 1) in the USA has an approval rating higher than Trump's.
That exception, governor Brian Kemp of Georgia, is actually tied with Trump at only 43%.
Every other governor in the nation has an approval rating above 53%.
The range for those 49 governors goes from 85% to 54%.
Trump & Kemp are just exceptionally bad.
Unfortunately, Kemp started a 4 year term in 2019,
meaning Georgians likely have to suffer for almost 3 more years of his ineptness.
Thankfully, Trump can be voted out of office this November
with the swearing in of the new president in February of 2021,
only 9 months away from now.
Hopefully, we will all still be alive to celebrate.
"Of course Trump wants to defund the World Health Organization.
It stands for things he hates. The world, health and organization."
~ Stephen Colbert
In response to:
8 Things We Do That Really Confuse Our Dogs
Taking a walk in a puppy’s paws can help us understand humankind’s best friend.
by Melissa Starling & Paul McGreevy
Dog behaviour is extraordinarily flexible – this is why we can keep them in our homes and take them to cafes with us at the weekend.
Nevertheless, there are ways in which evolution has not equipped dogs for the challenges of living in our world, and puppies must learn how to cope.
These are some of the things we do they struggle to understand.
1. We Leave Them Alone
As born socialites, dogs make friends easily. Puppies are intensely interested in spending time with other dogs, people, and any species willing to interact with them socially. They usually play, rest, explore and travel with company. Yet we often leave dogs alone: at home, in kennels or the vet clinic.
In these situations, naive dogs can’t be sure we’ll ever return to collect them. Only after experience are they likely to expect a reunion, and even then, their experience depends on the context.
At home, we may try to enforce dog-free zones. Naturally, many dogs protest. How can they stay with their (human) social group when they’re separated behind impenetrable barriers (doors)? This explains why dogs so often demand to be let inside when their human family is there, and why those with separation-related distress frequently find some solace in being indoors.
Dogs want to be with their group (you) at all times.
2. We Are Visually Driven
Dogs live in an olfactory world, while ours is chiefly visual. So, while TVs may offer a visual feast for humans, parks and beaches are an olfactory banquet for dogs.
An additional challenge is dogs move while investigating the world, whereas we often sit still. They may not relish the inertia we enjoy in front of a noisy, flashing light-box.
3. We Change Our Shape and Smell
Shoes, coats, wallets, briefcases, bags and suitcases: countless smells cling to these items after we take them into shops and workplaces, then back to our dogs. Cleaning products, soaps, deodorants and shampoos also change the scents our dogs are used to.
Towels, hats and bags change our shape when we’re using them. And when we’re pulling them on, jumpers and coats alter our visual outline and may catch dogs unaware.
Dogs change their coats at least once a year. In contrast, we change our external cladding every day. This means the odours we carry are changing far more than dogs have evolved to expect.
In their olfactory world, it must be puzzling for dogs to encounter our constantly changing smells, especially for a species that uses scent to identify familiar individuals and intruders.
4. We Like to Hug
How humans use their forelimbs contrasts sharply with how dogs do. We may use them to carry large objects a dog would have to drag, but also to grasp each other and express affection.
Dogs grasp each other loosely when play-wrestling, and also when mating and fighting. Being pinned by another dog hinders a quick escape. How are puppies to know what a hug from a human means, when that behaviour from a dog might be threatening?
Dogs might feel threatened by our enthusiastic hugs. Photo from Shutterstock.
5. We Don’t Like to Be Bitten
Play-fighting is fun for many puppies and helps them bond with other dogs. But they must monitor the behaviour of other dogs in play-fights and know when they’ve used their tiny, razor-sharp teeth excessively.
Humans are much more susceptible to pain from playful puppy jaws than other dogs are, and so we can react negatively to their attempts to play-fight with us.
Dogs interact with objects almost entirely with their muzzle. And to feed, they use their jaws, teeth and tongue.
(continued below in my first comment)
He is corrupt and a real danger to EVERY American.
Today from of the New York Times;
In response to: How Virus Data Can Misleadby David Leonhardt
Life in New York City felt pretty normal in early March. Children were going to school. Restaurants and theaters were packed. On March 9, I recorded a podcast in front of a few hundred people in Times Square.
In hindsight, we know that the coronavirus was then sweeping across the city.
Deaths peaked in early to mid-April. And the typical time from contraction to death is from three to five weeks, according to my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli — which suggests early March was near the peak for transmission.
Over the next couple of weeks, it’s going to be important to keep this recent history in mind. Without mass testing — and the United States is not doing mass testing — there is a lag before a virus outbreak becomes apparent.
Most people who develop symptoms don’t do so for at least five days, and sometimes longer. The worst symptoms usually take almost three weeks to appear.With more parts of the U.S. starting to reopen, many people will be tempted to look at the data this week and start proclaiming victory over the virus. But this week’s data won’t tell us much. It will instead reflect the reality from early May and late April, when much of the country was still on lockdown.
“The data are always two or three weeks old,” Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania told me. “And we have a hard time understanding that things are different from what we’re looking at.” Crystal Watson of Johns Hopkins University told The Associated Press that
we wouldn’t really know how reopening had affected the virus’s spread for five to six weeks.It’s possible that the re-openings won’t cause the outbreaks that many epidemiologists fear — because many people will still stay home, or because they will venture out cautiously, or because the virus may spread more slowly in warmer air. But it’s also possible that the country will find itself suffering through a new wave of outbreaks in June.
Either way, I’d encourage you not to leap to premature conclusions.
From Bloomberg;
Inspector generals are the apolitical watchdogs to ensure that things are done legally & properly, no matter who is in power. Last night Trump fired another one and plans on replacing him with a Pence crony. This is by far, the most corrupt administration is US history.
About an hour ago in USA Today;
In response to:
Democrats launch investigation into Mike Pompeo's firing of State Department inspector general
Deirdre Shesgreen
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Top congressional Democrats opened an inquiry Saturday into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's ouster of a government watchdog and accused Pompeo of trying to shield himself from an internal probe.
In a joint letter, Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on the White House and the State Department to "preserve all records related to the firing" of Inspector General Steve Linick.
“President Trump’s unprecedented removal of Inspector General Linick is only his latest sacking of an inspector general, our government’s key independent watchdogs, from a federal agency," the two lawmakers said on Saturday in a series of letters demanding documents related to Linick's firing.
"Reports indicate that Secretary Pompeo personally made the recommendation to fire Mr. Linick," Engel and Menendez said, "and it is our understanding that he did so because the Inspector General had opened an investigation into wrongdoing by Secretary Pompeo himself."
A senior State Department official said Pompeo’s move to fire the agency’s top watchdog “blindsided everybody” and smacks of “political retaliation.”
The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, confirmed the Inspector General, Steve Linick, was investigating Pompeo’s use of State Department staff to run personal errands for himself and his wife.
“If Secretary Pompeo is involved in firing his IG – who is heading up that investigation – then that is definitely retaliatory,” the person said. “Someone obviously has something to hide that they don't want the IG to find out about.”
The State Department press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations that Linick's ouster was a move to shield Pompeo from an internal probe and an act of political retaliation.
On Friday, the State Department said an ally of Vice President Mike Pence would take over Linick's role at the helm of the IG's office.
The White House is required to give Congress 30 days notice before removing an IG, which President Donald Trump did Friday night in a letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at about 8:30 p.m.
"It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General," Trump wrote.
A State Department official declined to say why Linick was fired.
But Democrats said it was part of a broader pattern of purges the White House has undertaken to remove government watchdogs charged with ferreting out malfeasance and corruption.
“The President’s late-night, weekend firing of the State Department Inspector General has accelerated his dangerous pattern of retaliation against the patriotic public servants charged with conducting oversight on behalf of the American people," Pelosi said in a statement Friday night.
Linick was fired "for honorably performing his duty," she added.
The senior State Department official said that based on his interactions with Linick, the IG is a by-the-book investigator with no political agenda.
"The guy has never picked sides politically. He's just a straight shooter when it comes to doing his job for the taxpayer," the person said.
(continued below in my first comment)
...if the best 2 players in the world have a match between one another,
is it still appropriate to call the game..... BADminton ?
What do you think about going back to my place and washing our hands together ?
Do you have Covid-19 ? Why ? Because you look a lot hotter than 98.6 F
Is that hand sanitizer in your pocket, or are you extra happy to be closer than 6 feet from me ?
I'd love to be self-isolated with you for several weeks.
Hey baby, if you have the time, I've got 2-ply at my place.
Add your own, if you like.
“The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.” ~ Bill Watterson
Last night (7 hours ago) from CNN;
In response to:
McConnell admits he was wrong to say Obama administration failed to leave a pandemic playbook
By Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Updated 9:05 PM ET, Thu May 14, 202
(CNN)Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded Thursday night that he was wrong to claim that the Obama administration had not left behind a plan to deal with a pandemic in the US.
"I was wrong. They did leave behind a plan, so I clearly made a mistake in that regard," McConnell said during an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier.
The concession comes days after he falsely accused the Obama administration of failing to leave the Trump administration "any kind of game plan" for something like the coronavirus pandemic during a Trump campaign online chat with Lara Trump, the President's daughter-in-law.
"They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this," McConnell had said Monday.
In reality, former President Barrack Obama's White House National Security Council left the Trump administration a detailed document on how to respond to a pandemic.
The document, whose existence was publicly revealed by Politico in March, is called the Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.
The playbook contains step-by-step advice on questions to ask, decisions to make and which federal agencies are responsible for what. It includes sample documents that officials could use for inter-agency meetings. And it explicitly lists novel coronaviruses as one of the kinds of pathogens that could require a major response.
Additionally, outgoing senior Obama officials also led an in-person pandemic response exercise for senior incoming Trump officials in January 2017 -- as required by a new law on improving presidential transitions that Obama signed in 2016.
Last week, Obama described the Trump administration's coronavirus response as "an absolute chaotic disaster" during a private call with people who worked for him in the White House.
Still, McConnell added Thursday that "as to whether or not the plan was followed and who's the critic and all the rest, I don't have any observation about that because I don't know enough about the details of that to comment on it in any detail."
CNN's Daniel Dale contributed to this report.
Hear it from Moscow Mitch's own mouth;
JimNastics Blog (1,965)
