It’s Time for a Feel Good Story

For a change, something to warm the cockles of all us trailhands

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50 thoughts on “It’s Time for a Feel Good Story”

  1. One of the things about living out west and getting a few miles out of the city is to see working cowhands.  My wife’s uncle was a real cowboy.  Early in the 1900’s there were working ranches along the Front Range of the Rockies, including the Denver area.  He worked from Wyoming to Colorado Springs and probably a lot of other places.  When the ranches slowly went away he became a ditch rider (ran the water in the ditches to the farms).  It was great to see his saddle, boots and ropes.  The cowboys need the ropes and know how to use them.  And he was a great man.  Funny too.

  2. more twitter twattle (or twaddle if you prefer)
    nymag: Elizabeth Warren Just Said What Most Women Wish They Could to Donald Trump
    Many women across the country emitted a collective “Ugh” after learning that Donald Trump stayed up until the wee hours of Friday morning to send a tweet urging voters to “check out” an alleged sex tape featuring former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. It was merely his latest attempt to smear the woman he’s been fat-shaming all week.
    On Friday evening, however, Senator Elizabeth Warren decided she’d had enough of Trump’s constant degradation of women, and sent out a tweetstorm saying all the things many have been dying to say to the Republican presidential nominee for months.
    [….one of several tweets by lizzie…]

    @elizabethforma

    Is this what keeps you up at night, @realDonaldTrump? Thinking of new & interesting ways to call women fat or ugly or sluts?

  3. guess it’s a john wayne day for the guys

    excerpt from a story this a.m. at npr: Trump And The Testosterone Takeover Of 2016

    “It’s always been there,” said Michael Kimmel, a sociologist at Stony Brook University who has done extensive research on masculinity. “In 1840, we had probably the most gendered election in our history.”

    That year, William Henry Harrison defeated incumbent Martin Van Buren by casting himself as rugged and tough — the Whig party emphasized Harrison’s victory over the Shawnee Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe and referred to him as the “log cabin and hard cider candidate.” In contrast, the Whigs cast Van Buren as an aristocratic sissy. One campaign song referred to Van Buren as “Little Vanny.”

    It’s even possible that Harrison’s toughness contributed to the shortest presidency ever. Despite a cold Inauguration Day, he gave a nearly two-hour speech with no coat or hat, then attended parties in his wet clothes. He died 32 days later, of what doctors said was pneumonia. (However, that diagnosis has recently come into question.)

    An array of other presidents have benefited from the manliness factor, according to Kimmel: Teddy Roosevelt, with his outdoorsmanship and talk of speaking softly but carrying a big stick. John Kennedy’s “young manly vigor,” Kimmel said, arguably helped boost him over a “shady” Richard Nixon.

    That sensibility — that a masculine leader is a good leader — has continued into more modern campaigns, as political scientists Meredith Conroy and Caroline Heldman wrote in a recent essay. Even a single ill-advised photo-op can be damaging. Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis learned that with his infamous 1988 tank ride. When Dukakis grinned and waved from the top of a tank, wearing a massive helmet, the general consensus was that he looked weak and out of place.

    Journalists picked up on the display of manliness (or lack thereof) immediately. The New York Times made it the lede of its story: “Forget John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Forget Rambo. Meet Macho Mike Dukakis. At least that’s what his image makers are struggling to convey.”

  4. Good one PatD, got me in the mood to see a Rodeo, used to go to the one in Kissimmee now and then

  5. Reminds me of a great Heinlein quote:  “Any society not based on women and children first is doomed to extinction”.

    The above story is the good testosterone … A handsome man will open your eyes, A smart man will open your mind, and a gentleman will open your heart.  Somewhere along the way we stopped teaching our young people responsibility and empathy for others to create a good society.

    Over in Aleppo (and Trump’s Twitter machine) the bad testosterone is running rampant as Putin and Assad lay waste to hospitals and private homes.  Then we get the pictures of the dead and wounded innocents plus one good man sobbing because he was able to save an infant cradled in his arms clinging to him for safety

     

     

  6. Me: I was born in a log cabin.

    Her:  That is not a log cabin.

    Me:  Well……….It FELT like one…….

     

  7. Jim Webb got a nice-ish mention in a Slate article yesterday, about the false choice the media is pushing of only having a choice between Trump or Clinton.  It’s titled, appropriately, “Two, Crap Sandwiches.”

    Maine has something interesting on their ballot, too.  Rather than choosing between the lesser-of-two-evils, it is proposed that voters would get to rank ALL of the candidates on the ballot.

    If that were an option this year:  Stein! Johnson, Trump, Clinton.   If Trump wins, he’ll overstep his boundaries and be removed from office quickly.  I could live with a President Pence.   Hillary & Kaine both make my stomach turn.   Stein is the only candidate I actually like, though.

  8. My Dad’s first house, in the low country, SC………c. 1942.

    they had 6 years to make it ready for me.

  9. “…could live with a President Pence” ???

    Jesus H. Christ……..

    a republican by any other name would be….a republican.

    Period.

  10. President Pence

    he was the only republican willing to run with Trump and only because he was losing the gov race

    he is total right wing loser   he’s a free trader (before he met Trump and would be again) a right wing racist and thinks gay people should all be rounded up and “treated”   yeah we want a president who has been rejected by the state of Indiana as unfit for office
    just the cup of tea you re looking for…
    some people are so consumed with irrational hate they are just plain stupid

     

  11. According to Factcheck  Trump has had to LIE about Pence’s gov record

     
    Share229

    Donald Trump introduced Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate July 16, but, in doing so, oversold Indiana’s economic performance under Pence:

    Trump praised Pence for reducing the state’s unemployment rate, which has declined by 3.4 percentage points since January 2013. But that tracked the national average, which dropped 3.3 percentage points during that time.
    Trump said it was “very unusual” that Indiana has added 147,000 private-sector jobs. Not really. Florida (12.7 percent) and Utah (12.4 percent), for example, grew jobs at twice the rate of Indiana (5.9 percent). In fact, Indiana’s rate lagged behind 20 states and the District of Columbia.
    Trump praised Pence for balancing the state budget. “Can you imagine a balanced budget,” Trump marveled. But Indiana is legally required to balance the budget, as are all states except Vermont.
    Trump said Indiana has an AAA bond rating. But that has been true since July 2008 — nearly five years before Pence took office. He also said “very few states have that,” when, in fact, 15 states do.
    Trump correctly said that Indiana’s labor force has increased by more than 186,000 people under Pence. But he suggested that that was unusual, saying it is going “down, down, down” in other states. The labor force has gone up in 41 states.
    more

  12. bid, there for awhile you had “poo cattle”  the subject of this eco-parody (here are 2 stanzas of same)

    from amiright:
    Original Song Title:
    “That’ll Do (from ‘Babe’)”

    Original Performer:
    Randy Newman/Peter Gabriel

    Parody Song Title:
    “Cattle Poo”

    Parody Written by:
    Rick Duncan

    A lot of methane gas can make a car run true
    Though the air might seem unbreathable
    And quite heave-able to you
    A major bovine fart is a source we can renew
    It may not seem like very much, one cow
    Cattle poo, cattle poo
    [….]
    That kind of bovine fart is sure to get us through
    A little roughage goes a long, long way
    Gets your gas-guzzling Cadillac down the road each day
    And before you blow it, you’ll hear Greenpeace say
    Cattle poo, cattle poo, cattle poo, folks, cattle poo

  13. “A smart man will open your mind, and a gentleman will open your heart”

    Jamie, cowboy Robert did just that when he said the cops would do better if sometimes they use a rope instead of a gun

  14. Sturgeone,

    Great picture of the homestead. Is it still around? The 1850’s farmhouse where I grew up was bought & bulldozed; new owners wanted “modern.” Will say the original home had a great dirt cellar with a coal chute. Also a good place to hide the bodies. Just sayin’

  15. bid, just what is it you don’t like about kaine? his stance against racism or his religiosity?

    npr on kaine:

    In the heart of the Old Confederacy, Kaine’s rise has been fueled in part by his personal commitment to racial reconciliation. Politics, race and religion can make for a controversial mix, but for Kaine, they have comprised the core of his public and political life.

    “I do what I do for spiritual reasons,” he said in a C-SPAN interview.

  16. Pat: Love the cowboy story! We need more stories like that…as Anne Murray sang originally in ’83 “we sure could use a little good news today!”  https://youtu.be/BOR6Vx-Ogbk
    Can’t get the video to show up 🙁

    Jamie: That cow story is very sad! More reasons to let cows eat their natural food and to stop feeding them corn & wheat!

    Here’s the full piece that Hillary wrote regarding national service: https://medium.com/@HillaryClinton/building-on-what-makes-america-great-915fcd48ffc5#.r4kcce9og

  17. bid, or is it his background?

    Raised in Kansas City where he worked in his father’s iron welding business, and educated by Jesuit priests in high school, Kaine went to the University of Missouri, then to Harvard Law School. Along the way, he took a year off to do missionary work in Honduras, where he picked up Spanish.

    Returning to Harvard, his soon-to-be wife, Anne Holton, persuaded him they should settle down in Richmond, Va., where she had grown up. The lure was the predominantly black Catholic church where the Kaine family has worshipped ever since. Indeed, Kaine sang in the choir every week for ten years, until he had to give it up because his obligations at various levels of government meant he couldn’t make the Wednesday night rehearsals.

    Kaine practiced law in Richmond for 15 years, focusing on civil rights cases and winning a multi-million-dollar settlement to end housing discrimination in bank lending practices.

    His wife Anne, a former judge and state secretary of education, was no stranger to racial conflict. In 1970, her father, Republican Governor Linwood Holton, was frozen out of politics after he lead the way to school desegregation in the Commonwealth. As governor, he not only decided not to appeal a court order to desegregate, he sent his children to the predominantly African-American public schools in the center of Richmond.

    But when Kaine decided to run for the racially divided and dysfunctional Richmond City Council in 1994, Holton couldn’t believe his ears.

    “You’re crazy!” Holton recalls telling Kaine, who replied, “But I thought you encouraged me to get into government.”

    “I did,” Holton agreed, adding, “but the city council is where they bury budding politicians.”

    It didn’t work out that way. Kaine proved such a successful peacemaker that the majority black council voted by acclamation to elect him mayor in 1998 and then to re-elect him for a second term. Only one council member dissented.

    According to Kaine’s former law partner and friend Thomas Wolf, the councilman wanted to make a “wholly inappropriate” deal in exchange for his support, telling Kaine that the vote would then be “unanimous.” Kaine just laughed, Wolf says, informing the councilman,” I don’t even get unanimous support in my own household. I don’t think I need it on the council.”

    In 2001, Kaine was elected lieutenant governor, and four years later governor.

     

    just not presidential enough for you?

  18. granny, here’s the original vid version:


    Original Video remastered in CD-Quality sound. Audio is much better than video
     

    even includes a few seconds shot of sen. webb at :30 in

  19. mother jones:

    The Republican presidential candidate praised the Islamic law, or Shariah, system during a 60-second syndicated daily radio commentary called “Trumped!” that he recorded from 2004 to 2008. In a January 2008 segment, Trump discussed a news story of a Saudi man who had divorced his wife for watching a television show while alone at home because, in Trump’s telling, the husband considered it tantamount to being alone with a strange man.

    “Men in Saudi Arabia have the authority to divorce their wives without going to the courts,” Trump said. “I guess that would also mean they don’t need prenuptial agreements. The fact is, no courts, no judges—Saudi Arabia sounds like a very good place to get a divorce.”

  20. pat, you always make feel good….gooder…..cowboy storys, even gooder yet:

    My Mom and Dad were real cowboy/cowgirl….they had their own ranch back in ol Mexico…Mom could ride and shoot with the best of em…even better than dad.

    Ive been told that when i was around 4…i stole my unlcle Philips horse he had tied up near town….I rode him into town where all the young people gathered to dance….the gals would walk clockwise…the cowboys counter the clock……seems that i rode that hoss right up to them…and there he decided to unseat me and threw me right on top of them…..guess the big breasted gals broke my fall…….and probably where i learned to love to dance no?mmmmmm

    anyway im still a cowboy at heart….and still waiting for santa to bring me my pistolas with the holsters……a cpl of wks ago, i had to help a young cow girl get ready for her horse ride…it was her first horse…and she was a little short for the task at hand…..so i saddled and adjusted her stirrups and all……..the smart ass even—-after i adjusted her first stirup, she told me…hey i got two legs u know……..was tempted to let her ride thata way…on one short stirrup and one long one……Oh click on the blue link above

  21. Pat: Thanks for the video. I was torn between the original the more live recent performance. Sooooooooooooo how the heck do you get videos to show up???

    Also, the Mother Jones quote is incredible. He has the nerve to call women pigs! Wish he would move to SA, he’d certainly fit right in!

  22. These last five days have been quite good, considering that for a week, or was it two, the floater seemed to pull his act, and it really was an act, together.  Although I should not have been concerned, his learning how to read a teleprompter was causing issues.  Maybe the battery attached to the cattle prod stuck between his shoulder blades wore out and he felt free to demean humans again?

  23. new stuff re bashing Bernie people that drumpf is throwing at Hillary hitting news today.

    so why is what she said such a bad thing to say in this leaked old audio reported by cbsnews:

    “They’re children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents’ basement,” Clinton says in the audio clip, first published by the Washington Free Beacon earlier this week. “They feel that they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don’t see much of a future.

    “That is a mindset that is really affecting their politics,” she noted, speaking to donors at a private event in McLean, Virginia. “If you’re feeling like you’re consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn’t pay a lot, and doesn’t have much of a ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe — just maybe — you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing.”

    Still, Clinton, who was scrambling for the Democratic nomination in a bitter primary fight with Sanders at the time, emphasized the need to appeal to such voters.  

    “We should try to do the best we can not to be a wet blanket on idealism — you want people to be idealistic, you want them to set big goals — but to take what we can achieve now and try to present them as bigger goals,” she added.

     

    even Bernie’s guy Mike Casca, Sanders’ deputy communications director and a “die-hard” Berner….. chastised a Politico story that he said was “clearly misleading” and noted that in the audio, Clinton is “clearly saying she gets why bernie’s supporters are frustrated.”

  24. sea, thanks for alerting us to that turn of events.  that’s the same stuff pence was pushing to allow discrimination against our friends craig, david, tony, bbronc et al
    who would be next? the “wrong” religion? the “wrong” race or ethnicity? using the “wrong” words? that’s not a slippery slope, that’s an avalanche….

  25. I see where the nra has senate dem candidates bayh and murphy in their guns and glory sights.  wonder if tammy duckworth will be their next target.  likely they’ll shotgun blast the airways in all the toss-up states and bring in all the big guns they can muster….  like half-guv and the dick.

  26. dailykos: More good news today out of New Hampshire:

    Democrat Maggie Hassan narrowly leads incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte in the closely watched New Hampshire race, a new WBUR poll (topline,crosstabs) finds.

    Hassan, the state’s governor, has the backing of 48 percent of likely voters, compared with 46 percent for Ayotte. Six percent of respondents said they’re supporting another candidate, or don’t know.

    Hassan is also more popular. Forty-nine percent have a favorable view of the Democrat, while 38 percent have an unfavorable view of her. Ayotte’s favorable/unfavorable numbers are 45 percent/43 percent.

    The poll also has Chris Sununu (R. NH) leading Colin Van Ostern (D. NH) 47-44 in the Governor’s race.

  27. President Pense? Just what the country needs.  A RW evangelocal antiabortionist appointing SCOTUS members.  Sorry, thats absolutely stupid

    Nothing blue left in you.  Should be RWiD.

  28. pogo, did you see this wapo editorial “Mob legislating by Congress”? dripping with sarcasm.  here’s a bit of it:

    “I’d like to think that there’s a way we could fix [it] so that our service members do not have legal problems overseas, while still protecting the rights of the 9/11 victims,” said House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). Really? This didn’t occur to you the day before?

    “This is a bill that should have been given a greater airing,” Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, admitted to the Atlantic’s Russell Berman. “It was not on my radar screen until after the train was leaving the station. The next thing I know, it’s on the president’s desk.” How about the stations where the Senate approved the bill and then voted 97 to 1 to overturn Mr. Obama’s veto?

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who runs the deliberative body that is supposed to act as a check on this kind of mob legislating, warned (after the fact) of “unintended ramifications,” saying, “Everybody was aware of who the potential beneficiaries were, but nobody had really focused on the potential downsides in terms of our international relationships.”

    Whose fault was it, in lawmakers’ telling, that Congress didn’t “really focus”? Mr. Obama’s, of course.

    Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, complained that the White House did not engage enough with him. Mr. McConnell cited “a failure to communicate on a piece of legislation that was obviously very popular.” Were members of Congress really so ignorant? Or did they want to “support” 9/11 families and worry about cleaning up their mess later? Given the tone of the second-day scurrying, it may be both.

     

  29.  

     

    What a day, is it a full moon out? I just keep running into stupid today. Makes me understand  Trumps success.

    lol

    Jack

  30. McConnell what a joke.  Blaming his mistake on Obama..he is a force for all things bad in government

  31. Granny:  You Tube posting how to

    1.  Go to You Tube

    2.  Search for the song or artist you want

    3.  Under the video is the word “share” with an arrow.

    4.  Click on that and underneath will popup a code

    5.  Copy that link

    6.  Come to the trail and paste that link

    When you post the comment, the video will pop up.

  32. Just kept shaking my head.  The President kept saying he would veto and giving reasons why the law was a bad idea.  Congress passed it anyway.  Obama vetoed as he said he would with another message about why it was bad.  Congress overrode his veto.

    Now McConnell blames the President for not telling him what was wrong with the bill.  I guess the GOP really does want a dictator.

     

  33. Sj…..it had become a pleasant little 2 bedroom bungalow by 48 at which time there were Ma and Pa and TheirThree Sons…..

    In 56 said family moved across the road to the new cinderblock house which had been a’building for a couple of years.  Just in time for Elvis.   The bungalow was then rented to the son of a neighbor who was a lineman for the co-op. He and his wife rode it a few years, and a family or two after that and then…….along about 63……..it became The Shack.  The band house.

    After a considerable time, say 65 or 6 (to 4) it somehow burned to the ground with mucho band stuff inside………I remember thinking, Is That All There Is To A Fire??

    so, in ashes, it passed from the eearth

    But years later…after so much water under that old bridge…….in the early seventies…..the garage, still intact,  was turned into……The Shack……..became a local underground legend.

  34. The Shack was bulldozed after Hugo to make way for Bill’s Farm……..our vegetable and flower enterprise.

  35. Sturg

    That is very cool.

    Mr C and I are going out with some neighbors to a local bar and grill (with a view of the Pacific Coast) and I am having a bacon-cheddar burger with jalapeno relish and maybe a Tom Collins.  I’ve been thinking about it all week,  Oh yeah and fries

    I am concerned about the 2nd debate.  Desperate people do dangerous and stupid things.  Before this townhall they should spend a bunch of time on how much and often he lies.  Everyone should know that he lies every 31/2 minutes.

  36. Pat

    Thanks for the post..

    Kathleen,

    Yes, Trump /Pence are up to their tricks again regarding gay marriage and other civil rights protections. No surprise.. Trump has pledged much to Tony Perkins and his hateful bunch..

    Pogo and KGC you both always make good sense..

    Granny, good trading you.. Solar you too..

  37. Craig

    Excellent post yesterday.. Yep Trump is just plain crazy..

    Yes, 30 or so days away from the election. Time to pull together and get the first woman President Dem elected.

    Also spot on, get her elected and hold HRC accountable for all her promises..

  38. Oh and anyone who says they can live with President Pence, well their just plain careless bigots.. Yes, Bigots and women hating gay haters..

    Or as KGC said perfectly “some people are so consumed with irrational hate they are just plain stupid”

  39. tony, so with that news, predictably he tries to distract the media… “ignore the guy not paying his fair share, folks, look over here and see the shiny stupid show”

    nbcnews:

    Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took to the stage here Saturday night and unleashed a tirade of unfounded accusations against his opponent and then physically mocked her on the day she fell ill at a 9/11 memorial.

    Arriving nearly two hours late, and a day after vowing he would be “nastier” than his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, Trump insinuated that she was unfaithful to her husband and “could be crazy.” He also reprised a call to jail her — “she should be in prison” — which was followed by a chorus of chants to “lock her up.”

    The mockery and dark tones came just as a New York Times report was published showing that Trump, who has made his business acumen a cornerstone of his campaign, actually lost nearly $1 billion in failed businesses in a single year. The loss may have allowed him under the law to avoid paying federal income taxes for 18 years following the 1995 filing, the Times reported.

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