navelgazer

They lost Rula's other panther this morning, leaving just the tortie. Shelly does the best she can and the kittens are all warm and safe and loved, but sometimes they're just not put together right to stay with us. Some cute news, it looks like Ramona's three are starting to have peepers.

Jonah Goldberg is on to share his wisdom from the mountaintop and I actually started to listen. Then he came out with it's a problem with the left and the right, both sides do it, a pox on both of their houses, and I was done. False equivalence is one of the classic ways that conservowhackadoodles try to pretend that the hell we're in is not all on them. Elise is in sleeveless again, but the dress is black and she's not being shot from the sides and her upper arms look good today.

Kitten season again for Shelly and TinyKittensHQ in Langley, BC. Rula had three, two panthers and a torti, and Ramona had five dark tabbies, losing one to Fading Kitten Syndrome. The mama-to-be we're waiting for now is Chloe, this year's Catermelon. When she's not sharing Ramona's nest, she's in the Wedge of Denial. Grandpa Mason is still around, so he'll be in heaven once the kits are close to weaning. ETA: Ramona and Chloe are doing a communal birth. The first three Chloe was so big that Ramona helped her with cleaning and getting the kits breathing. This isn't something Shelly has ever seen before. It's really amazing to watch.

Bret Boone had some good bat flips, too. (He's the last bat flipper I remember in Seattle.)

Elise needs to take the advice of Coco Chanel via Katherine Parker in "Working Girl." "Dress shabbily, they notice the dress. Dress impeccably, they notice the woman." Nearly every side shot made noticeable the rolls on her back and fleshy upper arms. (I'm sorry, I don't mean to be catty, but seems like if she wants her appearance to be noticed, it should be for more complimentary reasons.)

Mic drop.

The problem with flipping the Senate for Democrats in 2018 is that of the 34 races, Democrats are defending 26 and the Republicans only 8. And 5 of those 26 are in states Trump won by more than 18%. (Credit Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight.com for the numbers.) Even as big as the blue tsunami is supposed to be, that's a rough haul.

Mariners/Athletics last night -- https://www.mlb.com/cut4/daniel-vogelbach-homered-over-the-hit-it-here-sign/c-272289756 Nelson Cruz's reaction to the bomb. You know you've done something when your clean-up hitter's face does that.

Bill just used that movie poster as an example while he made fun of Molly Ringwald writing an article for The New Yorker about the #MeToo movement and how things accepted then aren't anymore. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/what-about-the-breakfast-club-molly-ringwald-metoo-john-hughes-pretty-in-pink I couldn't make myself slog through it after she says Judd's character sexually harassed Claire throughout the whole movie. I'm a girl in Molly's age group and when I re-watched TBC recently I still liked it.

Ali Velshi said last night at the end of the show that BriWi will be back tonight. I've been wondering what he's been up to as well. I think he might have been occupied with the Headliners' profile of James Comey airing this Sunday, but that's just an uninformed guess. (Nicole Wallace did the Headliners on Mueller last week.)

Extremely overrated. Chuck Todd can't ask a follow-up question to save his fricking life.

Nicole Wallace's Headlines profile of Robert Mueller is well worth the watch, does a fair job of explaining Mueller's history, his personality, his reputation. It'll probably be judged by the Trumptards as a fluff piece, but don't mind them. I almost cheered out loud when I saw his interview with Meredith Viera where he said "no leaks." That explains a lot. One story I wish she had covered but she didn't was when Comey and Mueller teamed up as deputy attorney general and FBI director respectively to prevent a hospitalized Ashcroft from being forced by Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales to sign paperwork re-authorizing a Bush spying program that Comey had refused to sign off on as deputy AG.

The "normalizing" goes right along hand-in-hand with the false equivalence and the fake neutrality/impartiality that the pundit class suffers under because they're afraid of the RWNJ looneytoons who accuse them of being part of the "liberal media," which BTW never actually existed.

I only tuned in to hear what Clint Watts and Admiral Stavridis had to say. Everything else got buried with Scarborough's blow hole.

I noticed Joe leaning away from Confessore and into Mika's space . I saw her just before a break try to push him away a little bit. Now that I've seen it, that's all I can see. Oh, and Joe needs his glasses back. They hide how close his eyes are to each other and how just unattractive he is.

I detest, hate, loathe, abhor, despise, deplore, and dislike the random-yet-every-episode-buff-drop-tribe-scrambles. It's a great thing when it's really random, but when you do it every goddamn week, fuck that. I'm recording the show and only watching the end of challenges and the outcome of tribal. I'm bored to freaking tears by the rest of it now. (I have yet to learn any names except Dom and Chris and I bet I'm not alone.)

It's the "alternative facts" media universe we all live in now. That's the only thing that could make a douche like Twitler or George W. "Shitgibbon" Bush as pResident even possible.

Kyle Seager practicing his hair flip. I lol'd. Happy Opening Day!!! Can't believe it's finally here.

IIRC, after she talked it over with Rory, Lorelai was perfectly willing to give Rory's old room to Gigi. She even started moving the desk out by herself, which was fun to watch how much she was struggling. Once it was all over and Lorelai told him that he was the man she wanted to want, I was relieved. Now they've tried to be together as adults. It's like she said in the diner at the end of Sherri's visit to Stars Hollow -- that he was always this possibility and she always had him in the back of her mind and he got mad at her and told her if she had any other revelations to share with him she should leave a note. L/C didn't work because he was not the right man for Lorelai. He was insecure and immature. Lorelai needed Luke's steadiness to counter her flightiness. She loved Luke's rants, would tell him often to share them, "Go Luke, rant Luke" in the limo after the party in New York. Like Rory said when she told Christopher to "leave Mom alone," you leave and Mom's crying. "He's there and she's happy." I think David Rosenthal did a pretty good job with the crap decisions that ASP left him with. I don't detest S7 the way I used to.

Yeah, that's why I'm listening, how hard that is, to take her seriously I mean. The shocking pink lipstick shade Mika is wearing is très distracting.

I'm enjoying caffiened-up, bossy, pushy, bulldozer Mika. It's not random or boorish. She's previewing what they plan on talking about in future segments, which I find useful. And she calls on someone, they get to speak until they're finished, then she calls on the next person. It's actually easy to watch/listen to and kind of informative. I especially liked when John Heileman told everyone he was confused about Trump being either scared in a corner or puffed up and feeling more confident in his ability to be president than ever before and aren't those mutually exclusive and that Matt Miller was saying one thing and Maggie Haberman was saying the other and help me, please.

March Madness -- the NCAA men's college basketball tournament. It's kind of a thing. President Obama doing his bracket back in the day was a big deal.

I just heard that on MSNBC. Here's a link to BBC, not much detail, tho. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43396008

What is it with Chuck Todd and Jim Cramer and the brother/buddy "see how cool we are" sign-off? (This was on MTP Daily.) I don't give a damn if they're friends, drinking buddies, neighbors, whatever. There should be at least a modicum of professionalism on these shows.

That was beautiful. Holder took her false equivalence and stomped the stuffing out of it. Bill tried in his questions, but Chua would just say oh, you're so right, and then go right back into her jazz-hands both-sides-do-it routine.