Saying goodbye to her first human friend, Linda:
Meeting all her new human friends:
And some new canine friends:
Holly even has paparazzi:
A star just can’t get any privacy!
Holly’s friends, admirers, and paparazzi.
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Puppy Keep-Away
Saguaro spent a couple of days being a very grumpy old man about the introduction of a new puppy into our family. He’s adjusting, though, and they now play a very cute game of puppy keep-away:
Welcome, Holly!
Our new puppy came home yesterday! I was going to blog about it, but we’ve been up since the 3:30 a.m. trip to the backyard, so here are a couple of photos while I nap:
Though this was taken a few days before Holly arrived, it accurately reflects Saguaro’s views of recent developments:
Fox News: Random Word Generator
Fox Freaks Out Over CVS Ending Sales Of Tobacco | Blog | Media Matters for America.
On Fox’s The Real Story, host Gretchen Carlson approached the CVS decision with suspicion and a remarkably uninformed premise, asking, “Is it OK legally … to restrict tobacco availability in a private store like this?” She questioned her guests as to whether they would continue shopping at CVS and observed that, “For people who smoke, you know, they have a right to buy cigarettes. It’s not illegal.”
So a private company makes a business decision that liberals — and specifically President Obama — think is a good idea, and suddenly it’s not clear to Fox News whether it’s OK. What’s the alternative: requiring CVS to sell its quota of tobacco to meet the current five-year plan?
The GOP is supposed to be the party of private enterprise. Then CVS makes an inventory decision, or Costco makes a salary decision, or Coca-Cola makes a marketing decision, or Obamacare makes it easier to quit your job and start a new small business (or stay home with your kids), and the right rejects these monumentally pro-business moves for the simple reason that the left likes them.
Today’s Republican party is not the party of private enterprise. It’s the party of anger. Knee-jerk anger. I guess its chances of long-term success depend not so much on policies or demographics, but on the ability to sustain content-free anger.
America the Beautiful
I don’t usually get choked up over TV ads. (OK, yeah, I do. All it takes is folk music and/or puppies and I’m reaching for the kleenex.) But Coke’s America Is Beautiful Super Bowl ad was just beyond amazing.
It managed to portray – through images of our country, our American brothers and sisters, and the gorgeous voices of nine young girls singing “America the Beautiful” in nine different languages* — what is most beautiful, amazing, and exceptional about America. I’m not sure my desire to drink a Coke is any greater after seeing the ad, but I’m really glad they made it.
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Send them, she said. And they sent them. Us.** Which was highlighted eloquently by this excellent rebuttal to what turned out to be a conservative backlash against the ad. That’s right, the part of the political spectrum that spends a lot of energy on American Exceptionalism — a/k/a why America is the Best.Country.Evah!!!1!!! — is angry about an ad that shows how truly exceptional we really are. We’re not exceptional because we have guns – the Somali pirates have guns. We’re not exceptional because we speak English – the Brits have been spreading English with colonialism for centuries, and it’s taught in high schools from Beijing to Kinshasa. We’re not exceptional because we’re white – most of us aren’t, and lots of liberal socialists with universal healthcare in Canada and Scandinavia are white. We’re exceptional because we are one country formed by people from everywhere else.***
The prize for “I don’t think that word means what you think it means” goes to Glenn Beck who declared that the purpose of the ad was “to divide people.” Yes, precisely, if by “divide” you mean “unify.” Seriously, you have to be addicted to anger to dislike this ad. Do you think conservatives know that you can, in fact, be a Republican and still like this ad? It’s OK. They won’t take away your GOP membership card or your gun or your “Don’t Tread on Me” bumper sticker. Go ahead — smile. It’s a beautiful country full of beautiful people being sung about in beautiful voices. Enjoy it for just a sec, then go back to being angry at . . . whatever it is you’re always angry at, people getting healthcare or married or whatever.
As always, Jon Stewart has the best response. I tried to embed the entire clip but failed. But trust me, you’ll love it, especially — starting around the 4:30 mark — the long lost clip from a 1928 Super Bowl ad, in which similarly marginalized and excluded Americans sing “America the Beautiful”:
Gotta watch all the way to the end — I love this lady! Belt it out, sister!
***********
* You can see each version individually on YouTube along with the girls’ narration: English; Tagalog; Mandarin; Arabic; Hindi; Hebrew; Spanish; Keres; and Senegalese French.
** Well, most of us.
*** Again, ahem, most of us.
Art Appreciation: Dustin McNa
Tim and I and our friend Kevin Williams decided to get cultured and appreciated some art last night. Tim’s assistant Dustin McNa is a talented artist whose work is on display for the month at the Europa Coffee House.
The artist in residence:
I wish I had the vocabulary to describe his work but sadly that part of my brain is completely overwhelmed by the parts that think in outline format, answer Jeopardy questions about word origins, and remember to feed the dog. But I really enjoy Dustin’s work and have purchased one piece that — when the part of my brain that should be in charge of organization gets organized — I plan to hang on my wall.
Dustin explains his work to Kevin:
The D’Souza indictment: a heaping helping of schadenfreude
Conservative Author Dinesh D’Souza Charged With Campaign Finance Fraud.
Liberals of my age (53) have been listening to this guy make an ass of himself in the name of conservatism since we were all in college — though thank God not the same one — at the same time. As a founder of the Dartmouth Review, his idea of a good time was to do courageous things like support apartheid, defend the school’s use of a native American mascot, and publish an article in faux “ebonics” to make fun of affirmative action.
This led to a predictable career on the conservative gravy train/welfare line, working for the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, and publishing an absurdly inflammatory anti-Obama screed. From Wikipedia, as I had no idea just how out there he had become, we learn that in his book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, he wrote that:
The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11 … the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the non-profit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.
But my favs are quotes like this:
In Letters to a Young Conservative, written as an introduction to conservative ideas for youth, D’Souza argues that it is a blend of classical liberalism and ancient virtue, in particular, “the belief that there are moral standards in the universe and that living up to them is the best way to have a full and happy life.”
Because in the article where Talking Points Memo reports D’Souza’s indictment, we also learn this:
Federal Election Commission records show D’Souza, his one-time wife and a woman he once described as his fiancee all donated to Long’s campaign. (In October 2012, D’Souza said he and his wife filed for divorce after he admitted he was dating the other woman.)
Living up to those universal moral standards, are we?
I was also strangely gratified to learn that his first wife was named “Dixie.” Seriously, if you wrote a novel about an arrogant college conservative, your editor would not let you name his wife “Dixie.”
Phoenix, day 1
When we left Denver, it was 1 degree at the end of the jetway; when we landed in Phoenix it was 75. Ahhhhhhhh. Although we had great plans to spend the afternoon on a photo walk/roll through the streets of Phoenix, we spent the first half waiting for the van rental company to get its act together, checked in to the hotel, walked half a block, found a bar with outdoor seating in the sun, and ixnayed all further plans. In celebration of the warm weather, I enjoyed an excellent HefeWeizen from the local San Tan brewery, though I was puzzled by their slogan:
What else would you do with it?
I want to live somewhere where I need this item.
The Container Store > PerfectCurve® Flip-Flop Rack.
I’m trying out an add-on called “Press This” which lets me send a webpage directly to WordPress. Of course, I’m perusing The Container Store’s site because I should be writing a brief. Still — what a wonderful aspirational product. Just think of the sort of place where you’d need storage for your eight different styles of flip flop.
The Man-Haters at Fox News
“Brit Hume and Bill O’Reilly Think America’s Too ‘Feminized’ to Appreciate Chris Christie.” Hume:
I have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct and are kind of old-fashioned tough guys run some risks.
This only works if “masculine” means “childish, lying, grudge-carrying asshole” and “feminized” means “acting like a decent, grown-up human being.” Given what we know about Christie’s behavior, Hume’s declaration can only be read as an insult to men, something I would not have thought I’d hear at Fox News.
Thought Snax 