So, how come is was alright for Rep. Dan Burton [R-IN5] to investigate the use of White House staff, postage, and stationery to answer mail addressed to Socks, but a terrible thing to investigate Karl Rove?
Show some courage Karl, Socks held a press conference.
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
The opinions expressed in Comments are those of the individuals making them. Truly absurd comments and opinions are subject to being cruelly mocked, but "flame wars" will take place on someone else's dime.
Your first comment, all comments with extensive links, and random comments that the software decides it doesn't like for no discernible reason will be held for moderation.
[Be aware that for unknown reasons the software rejects comments shorter than 15 characters, so if you want to leave a short comment fill the gap with periods ........]
14 comments
Oh… “R-IN5” … at first I thought it was “R-INS” as in “R-INSane.” IIRC, Burton subpoenaed over 1000 Democrats and no Republicans when he was chair of the GROS committee. No surprise that Socks’s handlers were among them.
(Really nice official pic of Socks. Maybe you could persuade your Sox to pose at a podium sometime…)
Hmm he looks like he has the right stuff to be yoour president. Will the Democrats select teh Right Clinton? (I suppose Sosk is dead by now?)
Steve, if I put Sox on a podium he would either fall asleep or slide off. Burton should have spent more time with his children, both in and out of wedlock, not bothering cats.
Jams, I know he made a visit to a charity event last year, and seemed to be in good health. He lives with Clinton’s former White House secretary now.
I miss Socks.
Bill Clinton said that “I did better with the Palestinians and the Israelis… than I’ve done with Socks and Buddy.” — from Socks’ wikipedia entry
Socks was there first, but got discarded when he objected to Buddy moving in. Happens to cats a lot.
Hmmm… not entirely unlike Israel.
He really was Chelsea’s cat and she went to a college that didn’t didn’t have Hogwarts’ enlightened policies on cats.
Bill got a dog because he was leaving office and most of his other “hobbies” were not going to be permitted.
Let’s face it, big dogs don’t really understand personal space and Socks was too old to want to train him.
most colleges lack that enlightenment.
no need to paint the big dogs with such a broad brush. labrador retrievers, including buddy apparently, typically don’t acknowledge the concept of personal space, but plenty of other big dogs do, particularly mine [though by my standards he’s not big]. around here, it’s not predicated on size, or species, so much as age. it’s the rowdy in-your-face youngsters who know no boundaries that we oldsters [dog, cat, and human] are having to constantly defend our persons from.
There is a lengthy process for introducing new pets in a household that had an existing cat, but it’s not guaranteed.
We always had Shepherds, and my Grandfather had Great Danes, and neither were respectful of personal space, but I admit that the worst offender was a neighbor’s cocker spaniel who treated cats like puppies, including trying to carrying them around. It got noisy.
been there, done that, disagree with the approach [practically a guarantee of failure imnsho].
dogs in general are the groupiest of groupies and don’t care a lot about personal boundaries, yours or theirs [unless they’re old and creaky]. it’s just more noticeable in the big guys when they sit on you, lean on you, drool on you [our neighbors had a houseful of great danes, wonderful dogs].
i think god designed shepherds to be shedding machines. i have yet to figure out if this was intelligent or not. the recent human interference in the design of the breed makes me about as rabid the faux moralists on abortion do.
We had real German Kennel Club registered Shepherds beginning with the Countess Jenni von Felsenfehr [Susie] who we bought in while living in Germany. They are designed to live outside with the flock, so the shedding doesn’t matter.
She loved the winter and the snow and would herd anything available, people, cows, cats, rabbits.
Have a dog constantly trying to get everyone into a small group, was extremely annoying. The only being she avoided was our senior cat, Torch. Torch was 20 pounds of evil who did what she damn well pleased, and anything that contested that reality ended up bleeding.
all the double-coated breeds are designed for outdoor living, but most of them shed all at once in the spring and again all at once in the fall, with some additional year-round shedding if they’re living indoors. shepherds are the world champions at that year-round part of it.
the herders can be intensely annoying. when i lived at the beach i had two of them, a collie and a mix [australian shepherd-x?]. i used to swim a half-mile or so in the sound every afternoon, with the collie [afraid of water] running back and forth on shore, barking her head off, and the mutt swimming circles around me, alternately trying to pull me and push me back to shore. we all got plenty of exercise, even if we did look like an episode of lassie gone terribly wrong.
the same mutt who wouldn’t let me swim laps in peace adored swimming on his own when all the humans were safely on shore. a few of us, collie included, were walking down the beach one day, when one of my cmpanions asked, out of the blue: do you know what your crazy dog is doing? [no, i didn’t, he had disappeared under the surface of the water, but he did that a lot] your dog is herding that school of mullet that’s going by.
As a child, I loved the dogs and cats in the household and neighborhood. As an adult, all of my human housemates and close friends have had mostly cats. I pity the dog (or human, for that matter) who tries to herd Stella’s 19-year-old cat Tabitha… prepare to treat deep claw-marks!
Socks went to live with Betty Currie, Mr. Clinton’s personal secretary, when the Clintons moved out of the White House. Buddy, the chocolate lab, was killed a couple of years ago; hit by a car in Westchester.
According to Wikipedia, Socks is still alive.
I don’t know why herding mullet would be unusual, Hipparchia, they travel in a herd naturally, so he was just closing them up. Dolphins do it all the time. Now, if you had a casting net, that would be a valuable dog, indeed. Lot of good eating in a school of mullet, and the dog wouldn’t be eating them like the dolphins do.
Individualism is the bane of the herder, Steve. There’s always one who doesn’t want to go along. She’s probably a Democrat.
I wouldn’t be surprised, MB, I’ve known a lot of cats that have lived into their twenties with proper care and no parasites.