At least it wasn't the spare wives he put up there.
Indeed, to all of it. And Irish setters are sensitive, jumpy dogs -- not that that wouldn't be incredibly inhumane for any dog, but doing that to an Irish setter is particularly brutal.
Fuck that, I think he's a monster because he named a kid "Tagg."
Agg, Bagg, Cagg, Dagg, Eagg...
I can kind of, just barely, imagine putting the dog-crate on the car roof for a very short distance, very slowly, within a suburb or in the country. On the freeway, however: that's incredibly cruel.
It's not the biggest issue in the world, but still, it gives me the creeps.
isn't there a quote about it's how one treats the defenseless that shows real character? It should go double for dogs.
6: I sort of believe that, just as I mostly believe that playing three holes of golf with someone tells you almost all of what you need to know about that person's character.
A twelve hour drive? Holy smokes, I'm not even a dog lover, but that is some serious fucked up.
This is why decent people don't run for office. Everything in your past is exposed to oppo research. I mean the dog torturing, the extra wives, the bizarre naming of offspring, it's all fair game. Where does it end?
8. You know what builds character? Beatdowns for sarcastic remarks.
It was the great American W.C. Fields who said, "Anyone who hates children and dogs can't be all bad," but I'm finding it difficult to defend Romney. There's a serious failure of empathy here, and at the very least, he didn't know what he was doing and didn't bother to find out how to treat a dog that he nevertheless owns. Creepy is right.
For those who don't click through but yet would like to Hate Romney some more:
Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway.
It is creepy and odd.
Only ogged should care about this, though, because the rest of us agree that personal character means nothing. Platforms are the only thing that matters, right?
Wait, holy shit, I didn't realize that Romney did so on purpose and that the drive lasted longer than 'til the end of the street. I hope that if I saw that on the highway, I would have the immediate instinct to pull in front of him and slow down until I'd forcibly stopped his car. That's appalling behavior.
does the Globe reporter secretly know that this is neither endearing nor an example of "crisis management" skills?
Proof that Romney is obviously a replicant.
You people are all missing the point. If this is how Romney treats his family dog, then we can all rest assured that he won't go all soft and mollycoddle a bunch of terrorists. Even if he is from Massachusetts.
Unless it was over 85 degrees when the story took place, hosing down a dog and then subjecting it to high winds would be additionally cruel.
If this is how Romney treats his family dog, then we can all rest assured that he won't go all soft and mollycoddle a bunch of terrorists.
Oh, so it's like that guy in The Long Goodbye.
"(SLAP) And that's someone I love. You I don't even like."
The trick is for the American people not to interpret "you" as being themselves.
17: So he's running on an anti-Mercerist platform?
19: It is sticky and gross now in Boston. I saw some toddler on the bus who had a small bottle of Poland Springs sparkling water. She wasn't drinking it, she had it pressed against her forehead.
Ack! i/s/b She wasn't drinking it; she ahd it pressed against her forehead.
I can't even get my own correction right. Damn.
Huh. Looks like the incident was 15 years ago.
My only explanation for "Tagg" is that there's some family requirement to name your firstborn:
random consonant 1
random vowell 1
random consonant 2
random consonant 2
Does Tagg have a son named Fizz or Xodd or something?
I'm just amazed that you corrected a comma that should have been a semicolon at all. In blog comments, I mostly just use dashes for everything, and errors in punctuation get ignored.
(I never used to use dashes at all, and then I picked them up from Idealist when we were working together. Now I have a real problem with them.)
It was summer and they were going to lake Huron. So who knows. 5 boys? Wow. That's unusual.
Of course it was 24 years ago. Need I remind people that those were the first, bold days of the Turtle? (ie, hard plastic car top carriers)
Romney is cooked. Pets (esp. dogs and cats) are up there with Mom and apple pie. You can't mistreat them. The rest of his campaign will be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Romney is cooked.
Romney has been cooked at least half a dozen times already since the beginning of the year. He keeps on comin' on. Is he a serious contender in the first place?
Romney is the candidate the oligarchs would prefer. That means he'll probably be the candidate.
Yes, and the fact that Romney is a serious contender speaks volumes about the weakness of the entire current GOP presidential field.
Romney isn't so bad. He does a lot of things that appeal to mainstream Republican voters. I really think they should nominate him. Nominating him would be the best thing the Republican party could do.
Isn't it true that people used to treat pets much less like humans than is considered normal now?
Of course, like all "this was a time when..." arguments, this is explanation rather than excuse.
Generally, pampering pets and treating them essentially like children is associated with urbanization. The farther a population gets from working animals (and slaughtering their own food) the more likely they are to relate to an animal solely as a family member and not as a tool.
The flip side to this is that as countries urbanize, farms mechanize, and the quality of life for food animals basically disappears. Thus there is a bizarre double standard for the treatment of animals in the industrial world. Food animals are treated like machines without feeling and pet animals are treated like babies.
29: I worry that the sloppiness will infect my writing. I sometimes wonder whether blog commenting doesn't have some actual utility. It's slightly more sophisticated than text messaging, and it gives one a chance to develop something of a voice.
Re 42: I have a much easier time whipping off e-mails and written correspondences since I started blogging.
Re 41: Today I was behind a semi filled to the gills with chickens on their way to the Tyson Chicken Factory. Fortunately I was able to pretend that these were totally different than the kind of chicken that I like to eat.
I'm a terribly slow, blocked writer doing anything serious -- even a blogpost rather than comments takes me a surprising amount of time. I justify some of the time I spend commenting by thinking that it'll loosen me up on professional writing -- I think it does some, but the difference hasn't been huge.
I do type about twice as fast as I did two years ago -- I never had to turn out enough words in a day that typing speed was a bottleneck, and I wasn't a particularly fast typist. This has changed.
Yeah, but your blog-posts have developed content. I don't mean that lightly - when I read your posts, it's clear you've put thought into what you're trying to say.
Proof that Romney is obviously a replicant Chevy Chase.
Actually, requiring every candidate to pass a Voight-Kampff test could only improve our elections.
45: She's after your ass, LB. I say this as a friend.
48: Only because she fears it rivals her own.
That's what I said. She puts content in her posts. She has junk in her trunk.
Drat. I had a great response, but it would have involved being unmotivatedly unpleasant to someone not involved in the conversation.
It's a terrible thing to have scruples.
OH GOD I KNOW YOU MEAN ME!!! My trunk is junk, it's true.
Oh, all right, I was thinking of a comment of the form "There can be only one true ass of Unfogged, and I haven't seen [name] around lately." But it's not funny without filling in the blank.
Even my wife says Romney has a certain attractiveness. Is this true? I'm not saying he's revolting or anything, but I think I sometimes notice the attractiveness of men and he didn't make much of an impression.
#47. Yeah. I remember reading that at the time. Very funny that Ammiano was the only one who admitted to getting the joke. Obviously, Newsom was a "pleasure" model. Above and beyond the call of duty, I'll volunteer to retire any candidate who fails to pass the test. I'm even willing to share this job with Bob McManus.
44: My typing speed tripled when I started using real-time chat programs. Nothing like having your friends all typing, "duuuuude, your typing is so slow hahahaha!" at you to motivate you.
He's quite attractive in a WASPy, Southern Baptist banker sort of way. Which is to say, ick.
Oh, I was thinking of Fred Thompson for some reason. Romney is perfectly fine looking for a man his age, which puts him one up on most politicians.
I'd say Romney is the third most attractive male candidate in he race, after Edwards and Obama.
Kucinich clearly has some kind of inexplicable animal magnetism in person.
Huh, his features are even and everything, but not attractive to me in any way. Eh, whatever.
Perhaps not the biggest issue in the world, but it does make me wonder how this person reasons their way to a conclusion. I.e., what could have possibly convinced someone that strapping their crated dog to the roof of the car for a 12 hour drive from Boston to Ontario was a good idea (the windshield notwithstanding)? Even taking into account that this was 20 some years ago and people's attitudes towards their pets have changed in that time, this was not, is not and never will be a good idea.
One can imagine that the guy had to be a total ass to his family, too, since he had to have overridden their concerns about the dog.
I used to say that "attractive" for a politician was a synonym for "has his hair & isn't fat". Apparently "on TV" can substitute for "has his hair" based on the Fred Thompson coverage...Romney looks like a TV local news personality or something.
This is actually my favorite part of the Globe article, and adds to my suspicion that the reporter was secretly out to get him:
On March 21, 1969, exactly four years after their first conversation, Mitt, then 22, and Ann, 19, exchanged rings in a civil ceremony in her parents' home. It was officiated by church Elder Edwin Jones, the man after whom teenage Mitt had patterned his hairstyle.
So... much... hate...
If Romney passes out cold in the next five minutes then I have some very good news about my potential to develop psychic powers.
63: In '04 I saw him at a campaign appearance here. Women were dying to touch him. I'm not exaggerating. I - at 6'3" and somewhere around the 230-240 lb. mark - was getting shoved out of the way left and right by women who were literally breathless in their attempt to get their hands physically on him.
And while my Romney-hate is refreshed I might as well weigh in on the attractiveness factor. He's very neatly put together, entirely aesthetically inoffensive, in a way that's very plastic. Once one sees that entirely mechanical smile one starts to suspect that fucking him would sound a lot like humping a Rubbermaid trash can. The last image I saw of him from a debate showed his hair slicked back and the gray accented just so such that he looked like a flunky from a cheap sci-fi flick whose hair had been extruded and then mechanically pressed.
70 is a thing of beauty, McManly; seriously.
I have a sound effect in mind but I'm not sure how to spell it. It's funnier if you come up with your own anyway.
I hate him so much. I actually have to walk away from the computer and go have a smoke and just hope a breeze comes along to carry this hate away.
70 is entirely correct. (and yes, it creates its own sound effect; no need for onamotapoiea or however you spell that). In fact it's not just plastic; he faintly creeps me out--this nice-and-clean-cut-but-actually-an-android-who-will-kill your family quality. As far as physical attractiveness he probably comes in third among the presidential candidates, and yet, if all of humanity died except me and the presidential candidates, he's clearly below the 50th percentile.
70 is a thing of beauty, McManly; seriously.
He talks like that in real life, you know.
67 - Indeed.
70 - Would this Rubbermaid trash can be the kitchen type or the garbage-at-the-curb type?
70: At last I understand the true meaning of the expression "badonkadonk".
Don't forget that Romney also has close ties to teenage torture camps.
Christ, what an asshole.
I love convertibles! I drive with the top down all of the time. I do have a windshield. I have the top down in the heat of the day and the cool of the night.
I've even been caught in the rain on a drive with my mother with the top down. My children, grandchildren and dog love to ride in the back seat. I've had many road trips with the top down all day and especially at night!
I have to say my dog has never messed in the back seat of our convertible with the top down, however I did have a dog mess all over my grandfather's shoe in the back seat of our car with the top up.
Gosh, I never thought a convertible was torture. I'll have to let the motorcycle drivers and convertible owners know this is a torturous way to travel.
I'm going to have to think about how I'll let my dog know the bad news.
I didn't leave the Democratic party; The Democratic party left me.
Oh wait, he washed the dog with the hose? That means that he drove off with a soaking wet dog on the roof, which means that the effects from the wind were even worse to the dog. Could have suffered hypothermia.
Jeez, what a sick bastard.
Labs, did you see that Andrew Sullivan linked and quoted this post?
But I've heard from reliable sources that he doesn't shit when you strap him to the roof of your car, so that's something.
Alright, who the hell is 82? It's a magnificent parody.
No, I think it's sincere opposition from someone who came through from Sullivan.
Wow. They pretty much constitute their own argument against democracy, don't they?
"sincere opposition" is an interesting way of describing 82.
87: Sullivan did once shit on my grandfather's foot but ol' pappy was a weird one and probably into that kind of thing.
We just hosed it off and tied it to the roof for the rest of the trip. No harm, no foul.