I look at Niall Harbison’s feeds every morning first thing. I honestly believe it’s what keeps me from total despair sometimes. He rescues street dogs in Thailand, feeds them, gets them medical attention and in many cases finds them homes all over the world. His story is inspiring. He was a successful marketing person in Ireland suffering from depression and alcoholism who moved to Thailand to try to get his life straight. He hit bottom there and decided to devote himself to the dogs he was feeding around the town he lives in.
He saves them but he says they saved him and I believe it.
He is reproducing his rescue operation all over Asia and has a massive social media following where he shares stories of the dogs he’s saved from various difficult and sometimes horrific situations and we watch them respond to love and care from humans — and it just makes your heart melt. I need to see it like I need a cup of coffee in the morning.
The world feels very heavy right now, dark even. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling that as I scroll my little black depression device while having my morning coffee.
Even in messages and chats with friends I get a sense of unease, tension and rising anger about a variety of issues.
I wanted to give everybody some hope through the lens which I see the world ; Through my interactions trying to save street dogs…
Things I Witness
Trying to help street dog is an incredibly hard thing to do. I can’t even begin to explain some of the things I have to see. Recently they include…
What links all of these cases is human involvement and they are the tip of the iceberg in terms of what I share. One major reason I choose to help street dogs is because they are a species that humans domesticated and who then became loyal to us. Dogs are very bad at caring for themselves and need our help but like so many things in this world, many humans discard them, abuse them and move on.
If you think the world is tough for us right now then you should see what it is like for street dogs! But there is hope…
People Also Give Me Phenomenal Hope
It would be easy to cast all humans as bad. Thats just not what I see. I could pick from 100s of examples I see on a daily basis but three recent stories pop into my mind that are dog related (and in the pics below)…
Maximus was also chained up, close to death and supposedly “vicious”.
Humans put them in those positions but it was also humans who saved them and gave them hope…
Trooper had his life saved by a series of operations that were funded by the community. He made it because Jam drove with him for 14 hours to Bangkok keeping him alive en route. He has had about 30 kind humans involved in saving his life to date.
After 3 years of rebuilding her life with us, Britney found her hero in Sam. He flew to Thailand to adopt her and he is training her and giving her the happy life she never knew she could have.
There is so much bad in the world but it is more than balanced out by all the good. Look at the smiles in those photos. I see that in messages, real life and around dogs every single day X100 despite all the stress and bad situations I often find dogs in.
Fixing Big Problems Needs Hope
To me It feels like the world lacks any sense of hope and optimism at the moment.
When dealing with dogs it would be easy for me to become bitter and lose all hope. To respond to dog abusers with outrage and to scream at those who are indifferent to the problem. That feels to me how much of the world is behaving right now on a whole range of issues. It doesn’t really get you anywhere constructive.
There always has to be dialogue, education and differences of opinions. Maybe I am stupidly naive comparing everything to dogs but to see the suffering they face and the odds they battle against yet they still constantly bounce back with optimism fills me with hope.
Take little Chance for example who was stabbed in the stomach 4 months ago but look at her now.
We Can All Learn A Lot From Dogs
I always think we can learn a lot from dogs. Kindness, loyalty and compassion to name but a few of their best traits.
More importantly they often bring out the very best in all of us humans. If you’ve ever been to a dog park you’ll know what I mean. You’ll often find yourself talking to all sorts of people you might normally never say a word to. The race, age, sex or status of the other person often fades away as you stand there gushing over dogs with big silly grins on your face.
Dogs bring us together in the most wonderful and meaningful ways and that is true online also. I believe one of the biggest reasons we have so much division, hate and animosity in the world is because of social media algorithms. People disagreeing is good for business for the platforms. Social media feels so toxic to me at times that were it not for the dogs I would delete it fully.
In fact one of the most surprising parts of this mission is the impact the positive dog content has had on humans. I see what we share as injecting a little positivity into the online world to keep everybody sane. I know from many messages I get that the dogs offer a little ray of light in many people’s day among all the gloom.
To do that means to offer a vision and a mission of hope. Not one coming from a place of anger and frustration no matter how much I feel those emotions myself from tough situations.
In tough times when I think it is impossible I’ll look at dogs like King Whacker, Buster, Phoenix & Faith, Billy, Rusty or Candy. All dogs who were at rock bottom. To see them now shows that with hope anything in life is possible.
I know these might just be some words about street dogs in Thailand but I think we all need to grab onto as much positivity right now. Things will always get better in life and as the dogs show there is always Hope.
Take care of yourselves and spread a little positivity in whatever way you can to dogs but also to fellow humans. The world needs it right now.
Big Love
Niall
P.S You can support the mission by just subscribing to this newsletter or donating to Happy Doggo here.
REPORTER: “Regarding Antifa being a terrorist organization….”
TRUMP: “Who are you with?”
REPORTER: “NPR…”
TRUMP: “NPR? I thought they were gone. They’re still here? Oh, good. Congratulations. Not for long…”
REPORTER: “How do you target [Antifa]?”
TRUMP: “Do they have anything to do with YOUR network, Antifa?”
REPORTER: “No.”
Trump: When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump… They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that. pic.twitter.com/kSsqkmWZBU
Trump thinks that the Constitution gives him the power to do anything he wants. He literally believes that and is acting accordingly. But apparently, some members of Congress are worried that he might not actually have the right to kill people indiscriminately as he’s doing down in the waters off the coast of Venezuela (and soon elsewhere) so they want to make it explicit:
Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would hand President Trump sweeping power to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any nation he says has harbored or aided them, according to people familiar with the matter.
A wide range of legal specialists have said that U.S. military attacks this month on two boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea were illegal. But Mr. Trump has claimed that the Constitution gave him the power he needed to authorize them.
It was not clear who wrote the draft congressional authorization or whether it could pass the Republican-led Congress, but the White House has been passing it around the executive branch.
The broadly worded proposal, which would legally authorize the president to kill people he deems narco-terrorists and attack countries he says helped them, has set off alarm bells in some quarters of the executive branch and on Capitol Hill, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity about sensitive internal deliberations.
Some people think that Trump’s extrajudicial killings, which he takes great pride in (when he’s not lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize) could be a problem:
Critics have also said that Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have given illegal orders, causing Special Operations troops to target civilians — even if they are suspected of crimes — in apparent violation of laws against murder.
What are these laws against murder you speak of? Haven’t they heard that the president can do anything he wants and is immune from all accountability no matter what?
It seems there’s a tiny bit of concern among some Congressional Republicans about all this:
At a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on Thursday, several Democrats asked questions about the legal authority for the military strikes. But a Pentagon nominee said he was unable to answer them. At the end of the hearing, the Republican chairman of the panel, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, said the administration must respond.
“The questions about what happened in the Caribbean are going to have to be answered,” Mr. Wicker said. “This committee has congressional oversight responsibility. Members are entitled to ask the questions that they’ve asked, and answers will be given. And I just think it’s important for every American to understand that obligation.”
David Ignatius wrote about the military’s role in all this which should be of concern. They aren’t supposed to carry out unlawful orders. But, as Ignatius points out, Pete Hegseth has purged the military of most of its lawyers, recently even sending 600 of them to become immigration judges. He is overwhelmingly hostile toward them:
Hegseth has a 20-year beef with military lawyers. He ridiculed them in his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” writing that the JAGs “are often not so affectionately known as ‘jagoffs.’” He claimed that “most” JAGs prosecuted U.S. troops rather than “bad guys” because “it’s easier to get promoted that way.” His resentment, by his account, dates from a 2005 JAG briefing in the south of Baghdad, where his platoon was advised not to shoot someone carrying a rocket-propelled grenade unless it was “pointed at you with the intent to fire.” Hegseth, a young lieutenant in the National Guard, said he told his platoon, “That’s a bullshit rule that’s going to get people killed,” and ordered them to, if they saw a threat, “destroy the threat.”
Hegseth’s antipathy deepened when he became a Fox News commentator. His friend Parlatore, who had represented him in a divorce proceeding, was a lawyer for a Navy SEAL named Eddie Gallagher who was accused of war crimes in the 2017 death of an Islamic State prisoner in Mosul, Iraq. Parlatore told a military jury that the case “should be terrifying … to anybody that has to go down range and then have their actions questioned by investigators like this,” according to author David Philipps.
Parlatore helped Hegseth publicize the case on Fox, and Trump, then in his first term, was an avid viewer. According to Philipps’s book, “Alpha,” Trump phoned Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and demanded that Gallagher be released from the brig — then he phoned again and said, “I want you to call Pete Hegseth at Fox and tell him what you’re doing.”
Gallagher was convicted of desecrating the corpse of the prisoner, but Trump overturned the verdict and restored his Navy SEAL insignia. At the time, critics warned that presidential intervention at the urging of a Fox commentator could undermine military justice.
The Gallagher case was Hegseth’s “origin story” as defense secretary. During his confirmation hearing in January, he didn’t budge in his opposition to what he called “burdensome rules of engagement.” And a month after he took office, the attacks on military lawyers began.
Ignatius points out:
The U.S. military has always emphasized obeying the laws of war, for all the difficulties that might cause. George Washington appointed the first judge advocate only a few weeks after taking command of the Continental Army; he wrote that “an Army without Order, Regularity & Discipline, is no better than a Commission’d Mob.”
George Washington was a loser. What did he know?
This is very, very bad. Trump seems to want to wage war in our hemisphere. His loose talk about “taking” countries like Greenland and Canada, the obvious attempt to create regime change in Venezuela, threats against Mexico, all of it adds up to some kind of imperial ambition.
At the same time he’s obviously on the verge of abandoning Europe and our Asian allies except as countries to strongarm into giving him money. He’s ignoring Putin’s military encroachments on Eastern Europe, saying in the UK this week that it doesn’t have anything to do with the United States:
Trump on Russia's war on Ukraine: "It doesn't affect us because, like, we have a big ocean in between." pic.twitter.com/Yopo4HIvUj
This is a foreign policy from hell and I don’t think anyone fully understands it, least of all Trump. But that’s exactly how things can go sideways in a hurry.
Any president has the most power in this area and Trump sees no impediments anyway. Now it appears that the Congress would like to completely abdicate any responsibility for national security and just let him have his way. Keep your fingers crossed that nobody makes a catastrophic mistake.
President Trump said he is aiming to regain control of Bagram Air Base, which has been under Taliban control since U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.
“We gave it to them for nothing. We’re trying to get it back, by the way. That could be a little breaking news, we’re trying to get it back because they need things from us,” Trump said Thursday of the base.
“We want that base back but one of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons,” he added
The president, while speaking at a press conference in the United Kingdom with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, did not expand on plans to get the base in U.S. hands and did not explain what he meant by the Taliban needing “things” from the U.S.
The base was the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan and fell to the Taliban during the chaotic withdrawal under the Biden administration. Trump in February asserted the U.S. should have kept control of the base and claimed that China’s People’s Liberation Army had taken control of it, which China previously denied.
Tom shared the compendium of late night show responses to Trump’s censorship. But you really need to see the full episode of The Daily Show. We need laughs. Badly.
Remember that hilariously unprofessional $15 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the NY Times earlier this week? Well:
In a ruling dripping with derision, a federal judge has rejected President Trump’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, asserting that the rambling 85-page suit did not follow federal rules for filing civil complaints.
The president’s team has been given a month to refile, and a Trump spokesperson indicated that they will do so.
Judge Steven D. Merryday of the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida said Friday that the suit “stands unmistakably and inexcusably athwart the requirements of Rule 8” of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
A complaint must be a “short, plain, direct statement of allegations of fact,” he wrote, and Trump’s broadside against The Times was “decidedly improper and impermissible.”
Merryday said Trump’s legal team can refile in the next four weeks, but must keep the complaint to 40 pages or fewer.
A complaint is not supposed to be “a public forum for vituperation and invective” or “a megaphone for public relations,” he said.
The complaint nominally lists claims about Trump, made during the 2024 campaign in Timesarticles and the book Lucky Loser, that have caused him “reputational and economic harm”—for example, that he inherited and squandered his father’s fortune, and that he only rehabilitated his image as a successful businessman by hosting the reality show The Apprentice.
But rather than straightforwardly listing the facts of the case, the complaint spends dozens of pages histrionically detailing how great Trump is and how terrible The New York Times is. It reads less like a formal legal document than one of Trump’s social media posts, calling the Times a “full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party” engaging in “wrong and partisan criticism.”
[…]
In its very first statements of fact, the lawsuit brags that Trump “won the 2024 Presidential Election over Vice President Kamala Harris in historic fashion, emerging victorious in both the Electoral College and the popular vote, and securing a resounding mandate from the American people,” which it calls “the greatest personal and political achievement in American history.” It even includes a screenshot of the election results. (During his first term, Trump often passed out copies of the 2016 election map to visitors.)
Much of the complaint reads this way, like a breathless hagiography any attorney should be embarrassed to file. In a lawsuit nominally making the case that the country’s most prestigious newspaper intentionally defamed Trump and harmed his reputation, the complaint lists more than two dozen of his film and TV credits. This is presented as proof that he had “masterfully applied his eminence in real estate and business to worldwide publicity,” which “bolster[ed] his sterling reputation…as evidenced by his appearances and speaking parts in numerous well-known movies, television shows, and beauty pageants.”
To the allegation that The Apprentice saved him irrelevance, Trump says it was the other way around. The filing counters that while the series was “one of the top-rated shows of all time and a trailblazer in American television,” its success was “thanks solely to President Trump’s sui generis charisma and unique business acumen….’The Apprentice’ represented the cultural magnitude of President Trump’s singular brilliance, which captured the zeitgeist of our time.”
It goes on. The lawyers who drafted it certainly understood their client’s emotional needs. I’m sure they’ll be well taken care of in the MAGA welfare circuit.
It’s all coming together in President Trump’s push to find a way to bring criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James: the retribution, the denigration of the rule of law, the evisceration of the Justice Department, and the ultimate unbridled unitary executive.
In another important story, ABC News reported overnight that Trump is poised to fire U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert of the Eastern District of Virginia for not seeking an indictment of James on the bogus mortgage fraud claims the administration has drummed up.
The latest news comes after a deeply reported ABC News piece earlier in the week that prosecutors had turned up considerable exculpatory evidence in the case. So even though the investigation had begun on a pretextual predicate, it had done more to exonerate James than to implicate her in the supposed mortgage fraud. For that reason, Siebert wasn’t going to seek a grand jury indictment in the Virginia mortgage fraud case.
The refusal to bring a case against James apparently enraged Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who pushed Trump to fire Siebert, ABC News previously reported. It appears now that Trump is expected to follow through on Pulte’s demand.
As someone on BlueSky pointed out, “knowing that a prosecutor might well get sacked if they don’t find incriminating evidence in matters deemed politically important by Trump really makes you wonder about the incriminating evidence in ongoing matters deemed politically important by Trump.”
That’s not to say that I have many doubts about that already. The dynamic duo of Bondi and Patel hardly inspire confidence in the integrity of the DOJ. But this will be the final nail in the coffin.
Remaining late night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers stood up last night for suspended colleague Jimmy Kimmel. In part, with satirical fawning over the most insecure man ever to occupy the Oval Office, a man whose skin is as thin as his hands are small.
STAND WITH COLBERT, KIMMEL AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT!
WATCH: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers rally around Jimmy Kimmel.
📌 Fox spent years spewing absolute lies about Obama and Biden, yet neither of them tried to yank Fox or any other critic off the… pic.twitter.com/41NAJGoxaF
Colbert, whose show was cancelled in July, had called out his own network’s $16 million settlement with the White House over a CBS “60 Minutes” segment. It was mere conincidence that his network’s parent company had an $8 billion merger deal between Paramount Global and Skydance Media pending before the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
Colbert on Thursday insisted, “With an autocrat, you cannot give an inch. And if ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive.”
Colbert went after FCC chair Brendan Carr, calling the Trump 2.0 administration’s strong-arming of networks. That’s because shutting down political speech is “a serious threat to our freedoms.” So said Brendan Carr 1.0 in February 2020. That was then.
“Oh, man,” said Colbert, “do not tell Brendan Carr that Brendan Carr said that or he’s going to get Brendan Carr to cancel Brendan Carr.”
Regarding free speech, a former Marine, 28, walked up to the drive-time sign protest yesterday afternoon and began playing a conservative version of evangelical “20 Questions” with the woman beside me. (Perhaps he just had an impulse to spar with the opposition, a la Charlie Kirk.*) Playing dumb, he asked me about my First Amendment-themed sign and what it meant. He wondered why I seemed so personally invested. Maybe “NEXT YOU” was exaggerating.
Maybe because I have a threat letter (similar to this one) sitting in my printer tray and sent to me in 2019 on behalf of Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. Only it’s dated seven weeks earlier.
Jon Stewart made a special The Daily Show appearance last night in solidarity with Kimmel. But he had as a guest Nobel Peace Prize-winner Maria Ressa from the Philippines.
It’s a sobering conversation.
* “20 Questions” is where the streetcorner evangelical asks if you’ve been “saved” and, if you say yes, they interrogate you in a game intended to expose the heretic. Because if you’re not attending their church, you must be one.
“Director Patel’s testimony raises more questions than answers.”
FBI Director Kash Patel bobbed, he weaved, he sneered, he smeared, but he would not answer. Before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) nine times asked a yes-or-no question: Had he told AG Pam Bondi that Donald Trump’s nemae was in the Epstein files?
That’s pretty much how it went with Patel. Asked why he hadn’t released all the Epstein case files in the FBI’s possession, as Donald Trump promised to during his campaign, Patel claimed he could not:
“I’m not going to break the law to satisfy your curiosity,” Patel said during the second day of Congressional oversight hearings after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) challenged him on why he hasn’t released more of the files.
But Patel appears to be mischaracterizing those recent court orders, which came amid a hurried effort by the Trump administration to ask federal judges for permission to release grand jury materials stemming from the case of Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
Judges considering the ask said it appeared to be an effort to confuse the public, noting that the materials consisted of only a few dozen pages of hearsay — much of which became public during court proceedings — and were dwarfed by the FBI’s massive trove of records.
In fact, one of the judges who ruled on the grand jury matter — and who presided over Epstein’s criminal case before he died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019 — said the Trump administration had the power to release the records.
Asked whether there was evidence of other men to whom Epstein may have trafficked young women, Patel claimed there was no credible evidence. Rep Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) shot back:
“According to victims these documents in your possession, detail at least 20 men, including Staley, CEO Barclays Bank, who Jeffrey Epstein trafficked victims to. That list includes 19 over individuals, one Hollywood producer worth a few hundred million dollars. One very prominent banker, one high profile government official, one high profile former politician, one owner of a car company in Italy, one rock star, one magician, at least six billionaires including a billionaire from Canada. We know these people exist in the FBI files.”
HELL YEA: Rep. Thomas Massie just grilled Kash Patel on his attempted coverup of the Epstein files.
Patel admitted under oath that the documents include “a high-profile government official” linked to Epstein’s crimes.
Citing those names, survivors of Epstein’s abuse responded Thursday night with a public letter:
“Director Patel’s testimony raises more questions than answers. For years he has railed about the incompleteness of previous investigations. He is right about that: previous investigations were indeed incomplete. So what is his plan to make sure that a thorough and unbiased investigation is conducted at last?”
There is none.
“Those previous administrations are the ones that Kash Patel spent years accusing of a cover-up. Now he will pass the buck to them to decide that information about other men in the Epstein-Maxwell trafficking ring is not even worth following up on? There are victims and witnesses who, to this day, have still not been interviewed. Will they continue to be ignored?”
For as long as possible.
“As head of the FBI, Director Patel can work now to remedy that, in a way that finally centers survivor voices and finally pursues the whole truth. The public demands it; the victims deserve it; and our system of justice without fear or favor requires it.
The president’s net approval rating is -17%, down 2.6 points since last week.
39% approve, 56% disapprove, 4% not sure
How are people seeing Donald Trump on those issues?
He’s even underwater on crime and immigration.
This is something I’ve been wondering about:
Using YouGov’s data, The Economist has projected Mr Trump’s approval rating state by state. As you might expect, approval of Mr Trump is lowest in states that tend to vote for Democrats and highest in those that tend to vote for Republicans. Mr Trump’s voters still overwhelmingly approve of his performance as president. But the projection also shows how dissatisfaction with Mr Trump is widespread even in states that voted for him just a few months ago. The numbers will make anxious reading for Republicans facing competitive races in next year’s midterm elections.
Here is the country as a whole:
Note that the Biden 2020 to Trump 2024 states are not happy with him.
Here are just the people who voted in 2024:
That looks a little bit better for Trump. But I would invite you to look at the swing states GA, NC, PA, NV and AZ. And take a look at Texas.
Why is Texas unhappy? Well:
Trump/the GOP have made a big bet on Latinos with Texas redistricting. It may be a bad bet.
Among Texas Latinos: Trump's net favorable has fallen through the floor since 2024 (a 32 pt drop)!
Why? The economy. He's 40 pts underwater on it, while he beat Harris by 9 on it. pic.twitter.com/4BdIX8FOyv
Donald Trump is a dramatically unpopular president and he’s living in a bubble that tells him he is extremely popular and everything is going perfectly whole surrounded by people who are carrying out his every daft order while consolidating their power and carrying out their own wish list.
I’m not entirely sure how much public opinion matters anymore but at least we know we aren’t crazy.
REPORTER: Do you have some sympathy that he lost his job over historic links to Jeffrey Epstein?
TRUMP: I had heard that and uh, I think maybe the prime minster would be better speaking of that. What is your answer to that? pic.twitter.com/FZVhLtnVmD
Trump has difficultly pronouncing "Azerbaijan" while taking credit for ending a war between "Azerbaijan and Albania" (he meant Armenia) pic.twitter.com/7b80sMlVXZ
Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend asks Trump about "the autopen" during his joint news conference with the UK prime minister pic.twitter.com/rWcZOB6LwO
He is a demented old autocrat blurting out anything that passes through his mind. And he’s empowered fascist, fringe characters to fulfill a radical agenda in dozens of different ways. The combination is lethal.
And he’s got a good part of the world bowing down like the Brits just did because he’s in charge of the most powerful country in the world. (I’d guess that the new policy of using he U.S. Navy to blow up civilians in international waters might just have them all spooked.)
