wraith

I grew up in a mixed pet family. My dad loves cats; my mom dogs. It was exactly the way you describe it, too. I get why people adore cats and dogs both, but they do draw different personalities.

Yes, you can't expect an animal that basically tamed itself to respect your boundaries, and that's why dog people don't like them. They jump on the counter or try to break your coffee cup if it's too close to the edge of the table.

But overwhelmingly, in my experience as a cat shelter volunteer, people who have owned catsand do not like them feel that way, not because Mittens got overstimulated and scratched them once, but because they cannot cope with their boundaries being disrespected all the time. It isn't the cats fault, true. It's just an animal acting the way it evolved to act--but let's try to be understanding about why many people struggle with them as pets.

It really does take a certain personality to be okay with living with a cat.

I like cats, but this argument is dumb. The people I know who don't like cats don't like them precisely because cats don't respect boundaries or consent the way dogs do.

I have no idea. I know the city animal control has it now. She is trying to get him released, though.

A friend of my wife and I got a pit bull a couple months ago. She was going on and on about how sweet he is and how he would never hurt anyone. Last week, it mauled her roommate. Nearly took his hand off while he was changing into his work clothes. His career is likely over and she's still defending the dog.

Probably the allegations she had an affair with Trump aide Corey Lewandowski. As we all know, family values is when you cheat on your husband.

Congress is hopelessly broken, gridlocked and unable to pass policy on its own merit. That's how we end up with quadrillion page omnibus bills every year. It's a failed institution, and it's been this way since at least Reagan.

That's very true. It's less that it can happen, and more that it's happening with virtually every trade agreement at once, along with dozens of diplomatic norms.

That said, the authority of the executive is undeniably stronger today than back then. Congress has acquiesed its authority and powers on virtually every issue imaginable and it alternates between being too complicit and too incompetent to change that (and too gridlocked to achieve meaningful policy anyway).

There are too many metastisizing issues to count at this point.

It could take decades longer than even that. America has experienced mind-boggling collapse in just 4 months. The damage to its reputation will take an entire restructuring of the powers of the executive branch to overcome. I mean, who wants to make a deal with an admin, when every 4 years it can go back on its word?

We still have at least 43 more months to look forward to. The bottom hasn't even begun to drop.

Is it more underreported than the notoriously underreported abuse in schools?

For real, we are on a post where an abusive career teacher got a 'teacher of the year award' no doubt in part for her behavior around students.

I am not doing this to whatabout abuse in the Catholic Church. I left it and won't be going back. But it's so odd to bring it up on a post about a teacher getting charged, the school clearly not identifying the problem (she had been a teacher for 11 years, it had been going on for a year, they didn't report it and even rewarded her behavior prior to the reports).

Schools have a serious systemic problem here too, and I don't believe we should deflect every time it makes the news. That's all.

Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Got hit with three notifications at the same time and replied to the wrong one.