I apologize to anyone who, like me, had Parker withdrawal today. He was at day camp, and I was in meetings all day, so not only am I late getting TDP out today but also there was no ParkerCam.
As a reward for your patience, I present two portraits of the holy terror himself:
Check out this short (3-minute) video from Talking Points Memo.
Parker didn't seem to mind much when Ron picked him up:
A moment later, though, I think he wanted to get down:
Poor guy, doesn't get any respect.
Parker, I mean.
(Via Romanesko.)
Indiana University's Journalism School has released a paper demonstrating that Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly uses significantly more propaganda than the infamous 1930s radio commentator Fr. Charles Coughlin:
O’Reilly is a heavier and less nuanced user of the seven devices developed by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in the late 1930s than the notorious radio commentator of that time, Father Charles Coughlin. O’Reilly also employs other propaganda techniques, identified by Lasswell, Berelson and Janowitz. This includes ample use of fear appeals and the construction of the battle between good and evil. The most evil villains in O’Reilly’s world are illegal aliens, terrorists, and foreigners because they are apparently a physical and moral threat to the United States. Slightly less evil—but unambiguously bad—are groups (media, organizations, politicians) who share a political leaning to the left. On the other side, the virtuous flank emerged as an all-American crew made up of the military, criminal justice system, Bush administration, and ordinary US citizens.
In other words, as all patriotic Americans know, O'Reilly is a reactionary, imbicilic blowhard, who beats up on the innocent in his ongoing campaign to take away your freedoms. Of course, we on the left are usually too polite to point this out.
When Parker first discovered this ball Sunday morning, it was round:
And yesterday's note from the dog-walking service made me laugh: "He's a good walker, but I can't get him to crap for me." I suppose Parker is a one-human crapper, because he performed beautifully both going to and coming from the dog park yesterday.
Finally, no ParkerCam today because he's at day camp.
The weather this past weekend precluded posting to TDP. We simply spent too much time not in front of a computer. Actually, Parker doesn't spend any time in front of computers that he knows of anyway, though sometimes he seems dimly aware of the ParkerCam.
Parker did, on the other hand, get a chance to stick his nose out the window of a moving car a few times. Like at this stoplight, when I suddenly felt whiskers and a cold nose on my earlobe:
(I have to say, it's a little disconcerting to have a dog nosing one's ear when the car is moving.)
I also want to post Friday's note from the dog-walking service: "He was great today. A guy even stopped us to tell me that."
After some trial and error, and even though he's still unclear on the concept, Parker finally got down and dirty with the tug toy yesterday:
Did I mention the "trial and error?"
He did, eventually, put all four paws into it:
He also killed one of his oldest toys last night, the lion-head tennis ball he's had since he couldn't even get down the stairs by himself. Yeah, once he started working on it, he spent less than five minutes scattering stuffing all over the floor. So now he has a tennis ball that used to have a lion head on it.
Oh, dear. I can't wait until they start building this, just one block from my office:
Developers went public Thursday with their plan for another race to the sky, this one in downtown Evanston: A proposed condominium tower that would crack the 500-foot barrier and become the tallest building in Chicago's suburbs.
Sure to incite heated debate in a suburb already in the throes of a high-rise building boom, the plan calls for tearing down a two-story retail building on a triangular block bounded by Church Street, Orrington and Sherman Avenues, and replacing it with a sliver-thin, 49-story condominium tower sheathed in glass and metal.
Pity, because the building they're tearing down is actually quite charming. It gets "better:"
The plan also envisions tearing down a 1940s mid-rise office building at the block's south end and replacing it with a low-rise restaurant building whose footprint would be half as large. The developers still have to purchase that property.
I'm torn. I think Evanston has to grow taller, but the old buildings in its downtown are part of its charm.
Another one bites the dust.
Apparently he's back on the Hollofil again. He actually killed two squeakies yesterday, and continued his project of removing the stuffing from my mortally-wounded comforter. Sigh.
(Via Talking Points Memo.) The Senate Judiciary Committee would like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to return within a week:
We believe the Committee would benefit from you searching and refreshing your recollection and your supplementing your testimony by next Friday to provide the answers to the questions you could not recall last Thursday.
Ouch.