Why the surge is working. Or not.

Iraq's cabinet has approved changes to a draft oil law and sent it to parliament in a step seen as vital to curbing sectarian violence.

Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, said it was the "most important" law in the country.

"The law was approved unanimously ... it was referred to the parliament which will discuss it tomorrow," he said.

"I call on all our partners in the political process and in this national unity government to respect this deal."

A couple of years ago, I wasn't entirely convinced that our invasion of Iraq was entirely about OIL. These days I'm not so sure of that.

They've toned down the language a bit, made some concessions on some percentages, and shortened some timeframes for leases, but the Iraq Oil Law is still all about production sharing agreements, and a few troublesome folks aren't buying off on it.

Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday joined a growing chorus of Sunni, Kurdish and Shiite opposition to a draft oil law approved by Iraq's cabinet and backed by the US government.

Sadr's supporters said they would not support any law that would allow firms 'whose governments are occupying Iraq' -- a reference to the US, Britain and their coalition allies -- to sign Iraqi oil deals.

My guess is that the surge was all about stabilizing just enough of Baghdad and buying just enough time to get the infamous oil law signed, and not about anything else.

Presentation of the draft to parliament after the cabinet approved it on Tuesday was a big step towards meeting a key political target set by the US.

Please prove me wrong.

France ... Italy ... Italy ... France ... I dunno.

It's a toss-up.

Italy. I like Italian food better [lots], and I speak slightly more Italian than I do French [I speak this || much French]. On the other hand, they let the Pope live there. You'd think that someone with snakehandlers in their family tree wouldn't be afraid of the Pope, but I am.

France. I've long wanted to visit Brittany. I could take day trips to London. I'm a fan of Inspector Maigret [and Clouseau too]. I've always wanted to learn to speak French, and I'm a believer in the immersion method.

Greece. Maybe I'll skip them both and just escape to the land of retsina and stuffed grape leaves. Besides, it's close to Turkey.

B-b-b-but, the taxes!

It'll cost a fortune to provide free health care for everybody!

Well, no, not really. We're already spending a fortune on lousy health care for only part of our population, as numerous people have pointed out. And now here's a blogger who tackles the thorny question I'd been avoiding: just exactly where are those other countries getting the money?

[via]

Green Goddess

Curmudgeon cat is in his last week [one hopes] of pills and shots for flea allergy. I've never really had any trouble giving pills to cats, in part because I use the Yummy Food technique.



So, what is this magic procedure? you ask. It's very simple, I say.

1. Announce that it is pill time. What? Your cats don't come running when you tell them that you are about to shove horse pills down their throats? You're doing it wrong.



2. Get the can of Yummy Food out of the refigerator and set it next to the cat's food bowl.



3. Grab the cat's head, pull back gently [just until the lower jaw drops open], put the pill on the back of the tongue [far enough back that the cat can't spit it out, but not so far that you shove the pill down the airway].



4. Immediately plop a spoonful of Yummy Food into the cat's food bowl.



5. Go around the house, distributing Yummy Food into all the other pets' bowls too. This is an important step. Leaving it out creates resentment in the household.



6. Put the food and pills away until next time.

This works best if your cat is a Glutton Cat, but will work for almost all cats [dogs, horses, gerbils, goldfish... ]

So what constitutes Yummy Food? Only your cat [dog, hamster, goldfish, horse... ] can tell you, but for best results it should be something that your animal companion doesn't get as a regular part of its diet. Gotta be something special. Around here, that usually means the smellier the better. Last week it was Kozy Kitten canned fish dinner. This week it's Green Cow canned beef tripe.

Green Cow is everybody's very favorite around here [not me, but I don't count], and they all, even the little wild heathens who won't let me touch me them at any other time, follow me through the house like I'm the Pied Piper, the cat's whiskers, the Goddess of Yummy Food, when I bring out this stuff.

That's me, Goddess of Tripe.

Administrative costs, here and in Canada

from Costs of Health Care Administration in the United States and Canada by Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., Terry Campbell, M.H.A., and David U. Himmelstein, M.D.

In Table 1, the authors [admitting that the numbers are imprecise] attempt to break out the various administrative costs in the two health care systems. Ours costs more. No surprise there.


Table 2 is a bit more interesting. The percentage of health care employees [doctors offices, hospitals, clinics, etc] in the US who are administrative or clerical has grown over the years. This isn't proof that the insurance industry is the cause of this growth, but if you've ever had a lengthy, complicated, expensive illness, you've dealt with more than your share of these people. >Bryan has some related info.


My apologies if Table 3 is unreadable here. If you click on it, a larger version should appear.

How many insurance company employees does it take to screw you out of your hard-earned dollars, and try to deny you decent health care? In Canada, it takes about 1.5 employees to deliver Canadian Medicare to 10,000 enrollees [patients, or potential patients]. In the US, it takes 23.5 employees to deliver for-profit health insurance to the same 10,000 enrollees.

Forgetting for the moment how to calculate and compare administrative costs between two very different systems, how about if we just assume, and it's a reasonable assumption, that we could dispense with 90% of those employees? This would bring it down to about 2.5 employees per 10,000 users of health care services. Even if the salaries + benefits of those employees only add up to a paltry $20,000 per year per employee, that's roughly $3 billion per year that could be spent on doctors, nurses, orderlies, pharmacists, and other truly useful people.

What are those approximately 150,000 displaced insurance workers going to do? They can do like the rest of us who have lost jobs to re-engineering, right-sizing, down-sizing, out-sourcing, and off-shoring: get another job. I wouldn't mind paying them to mop the floors in the hospitals, or take my blood pressure at the doctor's office, but I'll be damned if they ought to get any money from me for the purposes of denying me the insurance I paid for.

Speaking of denials, I didn't stumble over this until last night, but there's a whole denial managment industry out there. That's right, if we scrap the for-profit insurance industry, we're also going to put a bunch of people out of work whose job it is now to try to get the insurance companies to pay those claims that get filed.

Things are really bad when the only adult in the room

is a 16-year-old child.

She's sixteen years old. She's made it through tenth grade. She has no job, has never had one. She lives with her mom and brother. No dad, he died. This brother has already fathered a child and his mom is raising it, her grandchild, for him.

If she were to stand up before you right now and say I want to have children someday, but not just yet, you would praise her for her wisdom, her intelligence, her maturity, her sense of responsibility.

Here's the kicker: she's already pregnant.

She wants to get an abortion. She lives in a state that requires minors to notify their parents before getting an abortion. For whatever reason, she feels like she cannot do this and has petitioned the court for "judicial bypass," the process where a minor can go before a judge and get special permission to get an abortion without notifying her parents.

The lower court has ruled that she's too immature to make this decision on her own. She appealed that ruling, and the next higher court has also ruled that she's too immature to make this decision on her own.

Right.


There's a lot not to like about this whole case, and I had planned to tell you in detail what I think of the court's decision, but I'm just too angry right now. Maybe later.

Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!

I've been working on several lengthy and depressing posts for y'all, but got distracted. First by idiots while researching those lengthy and depressing posts, then by the Meme of 8, Conscientious Objector Sub-Sector.

1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with ocho random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their acht things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose oito people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I'm in ur blogz, stealin all ur m3m3z! I have another blog, run by one of my sockpuppets [I have more sockpuppets than Imelda had shoes]. I lurk at other peoples' blogs, then post their memes on my blog, without telling them or tagging anyone. If you're missing one of your memes, you might find it over there.


2. I can say shit in 8 different languages.


3. I have 1 pair of steel-toed boots, and an uncounted number of flipflops. Mostly I go barefoot.


4. I rescue elderly and abused dogs. So why is my place full of kittens?


5. I was raised by Republicans.


6. I like to blow stuff up. It's why I got the chemistry degree.


7. I don't see in 3-D the way most people do, but I'm better than you are at visualizing complex 3-dimensional objects from 2-dimensional drawings.


8. Mensa wants me. They can't have me.


9. There is a kitten attacking my bare foot as I type this.

Gone herping. Drop dead.

Gosh, it's cute. Really and truly. I stole the picture from Wikipedia. Tuatara. Look it up if you care.

I adore herps. I don't keep them as pets, they're smelly and too often bacteria-laden [komodo drool, anyone?], but they're really cool-looking. Real-life dragons. How could you not love them?

Back in ye olde college days, I had a summer job doing environmentalist stuff [ok, most of my college jobs were tree-hugger-y], and one of the projects I helped out on, just for fun, was collecting endangered salamanders. Or was it newts? I forget now, but don't google newt if you love funny-looking critters [or do].

Catching the the slithery little critters the easy way meant getting in the car and driving slowly down the roads in the middle of the night, spotting them in the headlights. So that our housemates didn't worry about us, we always put signs on our respective bedroom doors: Gone herping.

--How did you spend your summer vacation?
--Salamander-jacking.

I forget what it was that prompted me to google herps several days ago, but I haven't forgotten the result. Google asked me, did you mean: herpes and then went on to list a boatload of links to articles about, and eeeuuuuwwww gross pictures of, herpes. And the ads! Ads galore for herpes cures, and at least one herpes dating site.

Now, I'm all for public service announcements, and putting all kinds of good and useful information out there, even if it is gross, and making it available to the widest possible audience, especially if nobody else will tell you about it. Google has probably helped out any number of computer-literate people who can't spell but probably ought to be calling up their doctors. That's a good thing.

And being a spelling nazi myself, and a very good speller too [though a clumsy typist and dyslexic reader], I almost always appreciate it when Google catches one of my typos and lets me change direction in one mouseclick, rather than making me retype the whole word. I use this little convenience a lot. Thank you, Google, but

NO I DID NOT FUCKING WANT TO KNOW ABOUT HERPES !!!

Herps. Snakes. Lizards. Alligators. Crocodiles. Salamanders. Turtles. Eye of newt and toe of frog. Them critters. That's what I wanted pictures of. I count myself among the very fortunate that when I clicked on "Images" with herps in the search box, what came up were in fact images of snakes and other creepy crawlies, instead of festering sores.

On the matter of technology mostly being helpful and mostly acting the way you expect it to, but not always: today was Go Live day. The project I have devoted, and I do mean devoted, myself to for the past few years has been to drag this operation [no further specifications forthcoming] from the 19th century into the 21st [not a typo]. This portion of it entails sending a bunch of grumpy computer-illiterate technophobes out in pickup trucks, armed with laptops, wireless cards, and fancy-schmancy software.

This particular week, a lucky select chosen few of us, the normally-office-bound geekheads, will be spending our days riding around in said trucks, acting as personal coaches for the New Users. Note to self: one chocolate bar is not enough to get through a whole day, take two tomorrow.

They said we were randomly paired up for this, but I've been assigned to the gentleman who got stuck with me my first week on the job. His assignment back then was to teach me his job, so that I could then come back into the office and spend the next few years of my life taming the electrons needed for him to do his job paperlessly. He very patiently spent that week teaching me to use all his equipment [that didn't come out right, did it?] and holding my hand while wading through the mountains of paperwork.

Bonus: he also taught me water-witching that same week. There are people who will tell you that I was already good at the witchy part. Don't listen to them.

I survived today, obviously. There were some glitches, including one important function that was working last night but crapped out this morning and another important function whose launch is just going to have to be delayed for several months. Grrrrr. The day was hot and humid, a few F-bombs were dropped, I got carsick. I am, however, a goddess now. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+V is way faster than writing the required comments on paper.

Kill me now.

No. Wait.
You should read this.

Sermonizing and stuff

• I've added a link in the sidebar to BibleGateway.com. Not to worry, though, I haven't got religion. I just want to be able to recklessly throw around Bible quotes. I used to be able to do this from memory, but have since decided to devote those brain cells to other functions.



• Verse of the Day for today, when I did happen upon BibleGateway.com, was “But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.”- 2 Thessalonians 3:3 I'm not sure if Jesus can save me from Darth Cheney, but Thessalonians is just a fun word to say.



• Speaking of whom, in Ron Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine, Cheney justifies the GWOT and all of his other actions basically, by saying that if there's even a 1% chance of ___insert fear-of-the-day here___ happening, we must act as if it is true. Not that he ever bothers to show his work on those calculations. What goes into deciding that there's a 1% chance that Saddam Hussein had WMDs? I'm betting Cheney just pulled a number out of the ether.



• Speaking of pulling numbers out of ethers, in that same book, Cheney or some henchperson figures out that if you follow the money, you can maybe track terrorists. Rather than hurriedly cobble together a computer program and/or database, they just went to FirstData and got all their data. Yep, that's right, FirstData would be the company that handles abut half the credit card transactions in the US. Cheney didn't even have to snarl at them to get them to hand over the info, they were plumb tickled to do their patriotic duty and help their country. Nor is this the first-ever time in history that the government has asked a huge corporation to hand over their records of their customers' transactions and the corporation has complied.



• Speaking of credit: a small public service announcement



• Google Street View is still just a fun toy, no way are we anywhere near living in a panopticon society, right? Well, maybe just in New York City and London and a few other places and a few remote spots in sunny Florida.

Noir for your sunny Saturday

• Dope Fiend


• The Concrete Puppy


• Two Trains Running


• Dogs of The Zero


• Interview with Pirate

A brief history of US health insurance

I've cherry-picked another quote for you:

At the forefront of these service (non)providers was U.S. Healthcare, which grew out of the first for-profit HMOs in the 1970s. By the early 1990s, it was the largest publicly traded HMO, with annual revenues of more than $1 billion. The company -- a notorious proponent of gag clauses in physician contracts that prevented doctors from giving patients a thorough description of their treatment options -- took on the mission of revolutionizing the insurance industry. In a 1992 interview with Business Week , U.S. Healthcare founder and chairman Leonard Abramson expressed scorn for traditional carriers, calling them "dinosaurs" and saying they operated in "a dying world." [emphasis mine]

We should be giving tax dollars to this industry? One that prevents your doctor from telling you about all possible treatment options for whatever ails you? No.

It's a readable and not overly techincal review of the industry's morphing from social insurance [premiums are the same for everyone, and risks are spread over as large a pool as possible] to actuarial insurance [individual premiums are based on individual risk, and high-risk members are "encouraged" to drop out of the pool].

Those "dinosaurs" mentioned in the quote above were of the social insurance persuasion, whether they were for-profit or non-profit, and they predominated until about the 1970s. There were flaws, and health care costs were rising*, but our present-day system is almost entirely actuarial now, and things are just worse. Much worse.

* Just thought I'd point out this sentence fragment [top of page 2 of the article]: "... escalating health costs -- a problem that was greatly exacerbated by the growth of for-profit hospital chains."

I [heart] Digby.

Especially now that I know she's a grrrl.

via

Dear Google:

found it at the best lolcats site evah of course

If you won't listen to me, maybe you'll listen to the cats. Your slogan, Don't Be Evil, is a good one, but it doesn't go far enough. How about you expand it to include, Don't Facilitate Evil. I'm a believer in Dirk Gently's interconnectedness of all things, and I like having lots of information at my fingertips like this, but y'all are going overboard. If I wanted everybody and his cousin's jackass to know all about me, I'd move back to that small town I left.

The City of Gulf Breeze is a meanie.

The city known as Gulf Breeze, [Santa Rosa county] Florida, being a rather-better-off-than-you-and-me bedroom community for Pensacola and Escambia county, has also long been known as kind of a snooty, stuck-up place with [fortunately] a slight leavening of surfer kids, since they're both rich enough to afford the hobby and close enough to the beach that they can skip only part of the school day and still get some surfing in.

It's a nice little community: clean, quiet, articulate even [also very white]. It's surrounded by water, making it a great place for boating and fishing and just hanging out in some wonderful parks. Used to be you could even hang out at the parks with your dogs. But some truly cranky types got it into their heads that dogs were going to be the ruination of the place or something, and some fairly draconian and dog-unfriendly ordinances were drafted and passed.

I've been boycotting Gulf Breeze businesses ever since [that would be years now]. Not that it seems to have made an impression on them. Then again maybe it did make an impression, because now the city is on the warpath against cats. The cats of Wayside Park, to be precise.

Wayside Park is at the foot of the Old Fishing Bridge, as it's known locally. There's a Wayside park on the Escambia county side too, where the other end of the old bridge was. What's left of the bridge at each end is now used as fishing piers, and we all know what kind of trash ends up at fishing piers. Dead fish. The ultimate in cat food. The el primo of cat food. All cats should be so lucky.

But the good luck is running out. Time is running out too. Come July 1st, the city is going trap and kill the cats. Actually, they're not even going to do the killing themselves. Gulf Breeze is in Santa Rosa county, which has its own animal shelter, but the cats are going to be carted across the bay into Escambia county, to our animal shelter, to be killed.

Did I call these people snooty? That was too kind of me. Hypocritical comes to mind. So do some other words.

Stepping off my soapbox for now. If you can donate to help the kitties, please do so. If you can make it to the June 27 city council meeting, do so. If you live far away, write to the mayor, the city council, the city manager, the parks department, and tell them [preferably politely] that if they start killing off cats, you will elect to spend your tourist dollars in some other [kinder, gentler, saner] town. Tourist dollars count for a lot here in Florida.

Also, if you could work in a few good words for TNR, that would be cool. It [public pressure] worked in Wisconsin, it can work here too.

nice website about the cats
http://www.waysidecats.com/

blurb at the City of Gulf Breeze website about the cats
http://www.cityofgulfbreeze.com/Cats.pdf

contact info for mayor, city council, etc
http://www.cityofgulfbreeze.com/govt/index.html


Apologies for the do-it-yourself linkages. Computer difficulties.

All the cool kids are doing it.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* abortion (5x)
* torture (3x)
* death (2x)
* sexy (1x)

I could have sworn I'd said death and abortion both more often than that.

over there --->

On the Times Select front page [from the link in your sidebar] I see these items listed on the right hand side of my screen. I was particularly interested in the one under The Opinionator ...a law professor says the Duke lacrosse case nearly ended differently.

I'm also interested in the Richard Conniff: Basic Instincts A well-run hierarchy beats giving power to the people, and Judith Warner: Domestic Disturbances On the women who like Hillary CLinton, and the women who don't.

Even if those last two are worth reading, I think it's unlikely that I'd blog about them, so those are minor requests.

What I'm reading

You've seen those widgets in people's sidebars, variously titled What I'm Reading or Book List or so forth. Then there are the various blogoland book clubs, some of which I even secretly follow, and there's no dearth of good reviewers out there in cyberspace either. I've got a list of books to read th-i-i-i-i-i-s lo-o-o-o-o-ong that I won't be able to reach the end of, even if I outlive Methuselah and all his grandkids, but there's a special section titled What Keifus Read that resides near the top of the list.

Not to mention a little light reading I was wading through at lunch today:

• Multinational Monitor


• Halliburton Watch


• The Effect of Taxes on Royalties and the Migration of Intangible Assets Abroad*


• Controlled Foreign Corporations, 2000

Just in case you wanted to follow along.

Holy simoleons, Batman!

In addition to the original complains Conney had against the school, it was discovered during court proceedings that her UCLA department had a secret reserve of money that they used to supplement the salaries of male faculty members only.

--------------

“Because women are taking advantage of educational opportunities in record numbers, there is a myth out there that higher education is a place where women have achieved equity,” [AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund Interim Director Lisa] Maatz said. “Janet’s case, and many others, shows that simply having large numbers of women on campus does not protect them from discrimination in academia or the workplace.”

I found the above while browsing in Twisty's new forum. I'd link it, but if you don't already know which forum I'm talking about, you're not a CrunchyRadFemAdvancedPatriarchyBlamer, and maybe you shouldn't go there.

Nick Anderson

You can see the rest of Nick Anderson's animations here and his blog here.

h/t Steve, in the comments on the post below

BWAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA !!!!!!!!!!

That bright spot isn't the result of an incoming missile, it's from the operator's own rocket that made a 180 and came back home to roost.

Think you can do better? Try it yourself.

[via]

Vote

Lolcat Caption Contest #1

You have till 11:59 Monday.

My Dog Has Fleas

eine kleine background music while you read
more

The dog has fleas.
Curmudgeon cat has fleas.
Mom cat has fleas.
The weightless balls of fluff all have fleas.
I have fleas.

That last was confirmed yesterday. I was driving to work, waiting for the red light to change, when I noticed some little black specks merrily hopping around the front of my crisp white shirt. Oh, great. Now my car has fleas.

The front porch has fleas. I stepped out there yesterday afternoon and immediately my nether limbs, from knee bone to toe bone, were covered in little black specks. Little black specks that jumped on me faster than I could brush them off. Nothing to be done for that except step back into the house to brush them off. Great, now my carpet has fleas. I've always hated this carpet anyway. Maybe I can talk the managment into replacing it. With linoleum. Lemonade, right?

The Fab Five have only recently, in the past 2 or 3 days, expanded their range to include the bedroom. This afternoon when I got home I found patches kitten and tiger kitten sleeping in the folds of the squunched-up blanket. Oh now this is just dandy. My bed has fleas.

The dog kept me awake most of last night, squeaking and whining and panting in frustration as he tried to pick all the fleas out of his chow-thick fur. Curmudgeon cat and I will be spending Caturday morning at the vet, getting shots and drugs for his flea allergy.

Yesterday I stopped at the vet's on the way home from work and picked up enough Advantage for all of us. $107.

The vet asked first how old the kittens were [they have to be 8 weeks for Advantage]. I can only make educated guesses, but I fibbed and said they were 8 weeks old. Based on their eyes being fully open and their coordination being pretty good when first I spotten them, I'm thinking they're very close to 8 weeks, and very definitely no younger than 7 weeks.

It doesn't matter. They're getting dosed now. Even if the rest of us were willing to wait another week, just to be sure [we're not], the risk of flea anemia is just too great with an infestation like this.

Applying the stuff to curmudgeon cat and the dog was easy. Did that last night, no problemo. Squirt squirt, here's a bite of chicken for your cooperation. The Fab Five, on the other hand, are a challenge. They will let me get very close to them now, and in turn will get very close to me, but touching them is iffy. Stealth is called for.

I fed them well last night, but a bit lightly this morning. Then I heaped the plate full of yummy kitten food and set it right next to the chair where I'm sitting now, blogging all things flea. I opened all the tiny-cat tubes of Advantage and propped them on the keyboard. As each furry body approached and fell to eating with abandon, i slowly reached down and squirted out part of one tubeful onto each pair of shoulder blades I could reach.

Three down, two to go. Mom cat wasn't too too difficult, skittish though she is, mostly because she's a slightly larger target than the weightless balls of fluff. Thing 1 and Thing 2, the two tailless blues, are tamer than all the others, and can actually be stroked while chowing down. They were easier than I expected.

Tiger kitten and patches kitten are another kettle of fish.
-- what did you do all day saturday?
-- crawled around the apartment on hands and knees, ambushing wild kittens.

I [heart] global warming. Global warming?! What's that got to do with fleas? ok, make that global climate change. Fleas don't like dry weather, and the past few years have been very dry here, unusual for this area, which used to have an annual rainfall of 60 or 70 inches. The trees are stressed and everybody's lawn is green only where the touhghest weeds are growing.

But the lack of fleas has been lovely. No more. It rained buckets not very long ago, and all those formerly dormant, now hungry fleas have come out to feast on the rest of us. I haven't mentioned yet that I still have flea spray to buy, for the porch and the car. And then I'll have to move the 8 of us to somewhere before I can flea bomb the house.

This was not in the budget. Not any of it.

Oh, well. Y'all will just have to avoid this part of the state until I can save up enough money again for that brake job and CV axle I'd been saving up for. The roads in my immediate vicinty are going to remain unsafe for a bit longer.


Update:
Tiger kitten and patches kitten have finally been gotcha'd. I can go to sleep now.

Incessant barking

I found it! I found it! Thanks, DC.

More Alex Gregory cartoons here. They're grrrrreat.

My new favorite blog

WallStreetJackass

AutoAdmit update.

here

Life lesson for some of you: hate speech is not free speech and not all of your victims are going to meekly disappear into the woodwork.

This is your candidate. This is your candidate on abortion.

Democratic candidates, pay heed: we on the real left are watching you. Closely. And we're taking notes.

Mike Gravel beats the opposition on this issue, hands down. On Roe v Wade:

Any decision on abortion should remain between a woman and her doctor. There is no room for interference from politicians and judges. [emphasis mine]

On the recent Supreme Court decision that is too stupid to be named:

I am opposed to today's ruling or any ruling that places restrictions on reproductive freedom. Today's decision authorizes federal intervention to prohibit a nationwide procedure that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found at times to be medically necessary.

Clean, clear, no-nonsense. None of this hand-wringing that we get from all the other candidates over how difficult this is, or how women need help from family, clergy, or other do-gooder interferences in making such a momentous decision.

It's true that late-term abortions are often performed because an otherwise wanted pregnancy has gone wrong, and that these women, and their families, can and do suffer real grief, but beyond that, get over yourselves, people. It's a clump of cells, and while we can't be sure, estimates are that Mother Nature herself spontaneously aborts a hefty percentage of pregnancies before women even realize they're pregnant.

On the Republican side, what it all boils down to: evey single one of those privileged white males thinks that privileged white males should be the ones to decide this issue for the weaker sex. I'll admit to having entertained, secretly, a guilty liking for Ron Paul, but not after reading his statements on abortion. He may be an obstetrician, but so was David Hager.

via Jill at Feministe

Amphibious Glocks

Bullets don't travel well in water. They slow down, veer off course, don't hit the target. Guns don't behave well under water either, even if you do find a way to keep your powder dry, there are still other problems to overcome.

But it's not that Glocks can be modified for use underwater that's scary, after all, modifying them for the purpose reduces their killing power. What's needed is a whole new weapon, one that shoots liquid bullets, and the military is busy working on it. Lucky us.

If you're geek enough, you can read the actual patent here.

cliff... rocks...

I've done some mildly ambitious skiing before, but nothing like this. I'm not even sure I want to try it. This makes me feel old. O-L-D old.
[more]

Save birds: drink coffee.

Shade-grown coffee, that is, and do so in moderation.

The candidates on health care: Republicans

I promised you Republicans last night, so Republicans you get. They're easy, most of them care not a whit, or maybe just a whit, about health care.

• Rudy Giuliani has nothing to say about health care


• John McCain has nothing to say about health care


• Mitt Romney believes in personal responsibility and extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms.
  


• Mike Huckabee wants the private sector to find innovative ways to bring down costs and values the states' role as laboratories for new market-based approaches


• Sam Brownback wants price transparency, electronic record-keeping, and health information privacy and hates socialized medicine


• Jim Gilmore has nothing on health care


• Tom Tancredo favors AHPs, getting rid of illegal immigrants, and letting states pay for their own poor people


• Ron Paul has nothing on health care


• Tommy Thompson believes in preventive medicine, information technology, and state-wide pools for the poor


• Duncan Hunter believes in a lot of stuff, including empowering the poor by not over-taxing anybody, but he has nothing on health care specifically

compare the candidates at CNN Election Center 2008

The lights are on, and we've all come out to play.

So, last night, after a weekend of withdrawal, I was wandering through The New Fray, some of which really is an improvement [what does this button do?], when I stumbled over JackD's question about healthcare mandates. I'd been wondering much the same thing, and in particular: How did Canada make the switch from private health insurance to universal public health care? so a-Googling I did go.

And eventually ended up somewhere deep inside this site [I don't remember where exactly]. Whichever page it was, I found some information, but not enough, so I sent an e-mail to the address that you see in the sidebar on the left there, asking for more information. I figured I'd probably eventually get some kind of form letter reply.

I came home this evening to find this in my email inbox:

Thank you for your recent email to the National Union of Public and General Employees regarding the origins of Canada's single-payer health care system. We have a pamphlet posted on our website which provides some background detail on this subject. You can find the pamphlet at this link: http://www.nupge.ca/publications/Not%20without%20a%20fight%20FINAL.pdf. In essence, we were able to establish a single-payer system for a few simple reasons: (a) In the 50's and 60's we had a social democratic Premier in the province of Saskatchewan named Tommy Douglas. He believed in the benefits of a single-payer system (specifically the notion of equality) and introduced legislation that guaranteed a single-payer system in that province. It didn't happen without a fight (as our pamphlet explains). The opposition consisted mainly of for-profit insurance companies and doctors. But Douglas stood his ground. (b) the people of Saskatchewan were fed up with the for-profit medical system that existed and wanted a public system (c) Once Saskatchewan had a single-payer system and proved it could work better than a for-profit system, then the rest of he country wanted the same thing. In the late 60's and early 70's we had a series of minority federal governments and the opposition NDP demanded that the minority Liberal government implement a national single-payer system or they would no longer keep the government in office and force an election. The liberal minority government wanted to retain power so they introduced legislation called the Canada Health Act guaranteeing a single-payer system for all Canadians. All of that's to say you need: (a) a strong political leader willing to legislate single-payer and prove to other states that it does work; (b) strong grassroots support for a single-payer system; (c) the right political circumstances nationally in order to spread the system across the whole country. I hope this information has been helpful. Again, our pamphlet has more details about the situation in Saskatchewan in the 60's and 70's.
Take care,
Mike Luff
Coordinator of Communications and Research
National Union of Public and General Employees
www.nupge.ca

Wow. That's service. Thank you, Mike.

I've browsed their site a bit this evening, especially the parts where they're trying to fight off the backers of for-profit health care. Nice karmic touch: here I am, merrily blogging about how wonderful universal health care would be and what a great example of it Canada is. Meanwhile, they're using the United States as a great example of how expensive, inefficient, and just plain awful private, for-profit health care is.

Here's their front page for the section about Canada's Medicare system.

I really do need to get back to my letter writing. This time, I think I'll start with the eight Democratic Presidential candidates, and send them all e-mails about what I want them to do about health care.

The candidates on health care: Democrats

I'm unquestionably for Kucinich, and not just because of his health care plan, which is [as far as I can tell] the only single-payer, publicly-funded plan offered by any candidate. Of all the for-profit plans, I think I like Richardson's idea the best. However, as a public service, I link you to each of their websites.

• Dennis Kucinich offers Medicare for All. You can see the original bill here.


• Bill Richardson would let all the rest of us buy the same for-profit insurance that federal employees have, lower the age to get into Medicare, and expand Medicaid/SCHIP for the lower-income folks.


• Mike Gravel offers us universal health care vouchers. I don't know exactly what these are, and he only provides a short paragraph or two on each of his issues. Maybe he'll expand on this later.


• Barack Obama* wants to make for-profit insurance more affordable, modernize technology, increase quality, and give us incentives to lead develop healthier habits.


• Hillary Clinton has a whole page but doesn't give many details. Looks like she's for making for-profit insurance more affordable too, but I can't tell for sure.


• John Edwards* would make for-profit insurance more affordable and lean on businesses to shoulder the burden for their employees.


• Joe Biden3 short paragraphs that essentially add up to modernize the status quo and wait to see what states do about their problems.


• Chris Dodd essentially offers the same as most of the others, make for-profit insurance more affordable, modernize the system, incentivize healthy behaviors, etceterblah etceterblah etceterblah.

Republicans tomorrow night.


*Update: I re-read these two plans, Edwards' and Obama's, more carefully, after reading Krugman's critique of Obama's plan. Looks like they both propose to not only regulate for-profit insurance more closely, but to set up public health insurance plans too, that [some? all?] people will be allowed to buy into. This means I should go back and re-read all the others more carefully too. Alternatively, y'all could just read them yourselves, now that I've been helpful enough to link to them for you.

What he said.

Ian Welsh, at The Agonist, on the American health care system: Hard And Complicated Aren't Synonyms

Jesus H Fucking Christ, Bill!

What part of NO MORE TORTURE did you not understand?!

Just put on your blue eye shadow, get yourself a snazzy little BMW, and go park it somewhere, whydoncha.

Dickhead.

Dear Google:

Are you listening? Probably you are. Do you care what I want? Maybe you do. Will you do as I ask? Probably not, but here goes.

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine
By SAUL HANSELL
Published: June 3, 2007
[NYT article, may require registration to view]

That tweak about the "hot news" for new items is a good one. Keep that one.

Personalized search? Already I don't like it. The whole reason I use Google is to find stuff outside of my own personal realm. If you're restricting what I see based on what you think I want to see, I'll have to go look elsewhere.

Privacy issues. Lots of them, and they're piling up. I'm sure you already know all about this, being the secretive bastards you are when it comes to your stuff. Quit collecting my secrets.

Russian roulette is probably safer

Drug companies, the FDA, and some doctors, don't appear to have your health as one of their top priorities. Newsflash.

First up, clinical trials in general:
After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay
By GARDINER HARRIS and JANET ROBERTS
Published: June 3, 2007
[NYT article, may require registration to view]

A decade ago the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice accused Dr. Faruk Abuzzahab of a “reckless, if not willful, disregard” for the welfare of 46 patients, 5 of whom died in his care or shortly afterward. The board suspended his license for seven months and restricted it for two years after that.

But Dr. Abuzzahab, a Minneapolis psychiatrist, is still overseeing the testing of drugs on patients and is being paid by pharmaceutical companies for the work. At least a dozen have paid him for research or marketing since he was disciplined.

Medical ethicists have long argued that doctors who give experimental medicines should be chosen with care. Indeed, the drug industry’s own guidelines for clinical trials state, “Investigators are selected based on qualifications, training, research or clinical expertise in relevant fields.” Yet Dr. Abuzzahab is far from the only doctor to have been disciplined or criticized by a medical board but later paid by drug makers.

An analysis of state records by The New York Times found more than 100 such doctors in Minnesota, at least two with criminal fraud convictions. While Minnesota is the only state to make its records publicly available, the problem, experts say, is national.

But we have the FDA looking out for us, keeping up with this, keeping us safe, because that's why the agency was created in the first place, right? Wrong.

Drug makers are not required to inform the agency when they discover that investigators are falsifying data, and indeed some have failed to do so in the past. The F.D.A. plans to require such disclosures, Dr. Woodcock [deputy commissioner and chief medical officer of the Food and Drug Administration] said. The agency inspects at most 1 percent of all clinical trials, she said.

Just a side note, but it looks like Minnesota is a good state to practice in if you're not a very good doctor:

The records most likely understate the extent of the problem because they are incomplete. And the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice disciplines a smaller share of the state’s doctors than almost any other medical board in the country, according to rankings by Public Citizen, an advocacy group based in Washington.

And here, one drug in particular:
Doctor Says Drug Maker Tried to Quash His Criticism of Avandia
By STEPHANIE SAUL
Published: June 2, 2007
[NYT article, may require registration to view]

I don't think I'll pick out any quotes from this one, it's difficult to tell from this article whether the drug company suppressed data, or the doctor has an axe to grind because he has some kind of interest in a competing drug. Looks like it could be either or both or some of each, but none of it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling about clinical trials.

I can has Heisenburger?

No, I wasn't on my toes enough to think of that one myself, damn it. It was one of the commenters here.

UPDATE 6-10-2007
The link to the blog where I found this picture no longer works exactly, though you can get there eventually, if you keep at it, but I did find the story about the original image. It's a great image, and Xena's a gorgeous cat. Read all about it here.

I [heart] the pursuit of perfection in trivial things

old dichotomy: left brain v. right brain
new dichotomy: backhand v. forehand

Herding kittens

you're not blogging about those darned kittens again, are you?
why, yes. yes, i am.

It's possible that I'll find myself filing this one under Be careful what you wish for at some later date, but for now, Mission Accomplished!.

The porch cats have all moved indoors. Finally. They're a bit confused by the door that won't open. Curmudgeon cat has resigned himself to accepting the whole situation with bad grace. The dog is beside himself with joy. I've put out 3 litter boxes and now I'm going to bed.

Meanwhile, here's a charming little time waster for you. I made it to 263 while I was waiting for all the cats to work their way far enough into the living room for me to sneak past them and close the door when they weren't looking. If I ever remember which blog I found it at, I'll paste the link Aha! Found it here.

Chaos! Subversion! Sweet!

I was on the verge of sympathizing with some blogging buds on the general and particular suckinesses of the Democrats when I spotted this piece at latimes.com. I don't usually reproduce someone else's words in full and verbatim, but this time I'd like to. These things have a way of disappearing behind firewalls and this one is too good to lose, so I c&p'd the whole thing for you, with Peter Wallsten's words in bold, and mine interjected in regular type.

Democrats scramble to prevent Florida primary election fiasco

An early contest could shift delegates to less-popular presidential candidates -- or discount their votes for the party's 2008 nominee altogether.
By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — For front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, Florida looked to be a major battleground in the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. With its big, sprawling population, the state was a natural for high-profile candidates who could afford costly campaigns, and the prize was a whopping 210 delegates.

But now, because of an unexpected glitch, those delegates could go to a candidate most Americans don't even know is running: a crusty former senator from Alaska named Mike Gravel. Or maybe to Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, the quixotic peace candidate who barely registers in the polls.
Yay, Kucinich! Let's hear it for the Peaceniks! Kucininch, the only candidate with a not-for-profit health care plan.

It sounds like just another wacky political dust-up from the land of hanging chads and butterfly ballots. But the problem is considered so serious that Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and state party officials are embroiled in frantic behind-the-scenes negotiations to stave off a potential disaster that could quickly spread across the nation.
Disaster!

The trouble sprang from a decision by Florida lawmakers to jump to an earlier spot on the primary election calendar, following the lead of other big states tired of voting too late to have a meaningful say in choosing each party's nominee.
The wacky land of hanging chads and butterfly ballots. That would be us, always at the forefront of elections shenanigans.

But whereas California, Illinois and many other states are moving to set their primaries for Feb. 5, Florida opted to leap ahead to Jan. 29 — a week earlier than allowed under Democratic Party rules. And that has triggered mayhem.
Mayhem!

National Democratic officials have vowed to enforce party rules that strip delegates from any state that moves too early in the calendar, and also from candidates who campaign in those states. The penalties were meant to stop states from continually leapfrogging each other in a race to be among the first to vote.
Frogs! Who knew you had to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a President?

As things stand now, Clinton, Obama and other prominent contenders may not be eligible to win any Florida delegates, though the state offers a compartively large share of the total needed to win the Democratic nomination. Under one scenario, it could turn out that no Democratic candidate gets any Florida delegates.
The turncoat bastards don't deserve our votes.

Democratic officials are alarmed by these possibilities, though they are reluctant to talk about the problem for fear of jeopardizing the negotiations.
Alarm! Jeopardy! [Politics for $500, please, Alex.]

For starters, they don't want to undercut their own candidates in what many consider the biggest swing state for the general election. And if the Florida crisis is not resolved quickly, it could prompt other states to change their voting dates again — with some ballots possibly cast as early as 2007. New Hampshire, which plans to vote Jan. 22, has said it will do whatever is necessary to protect its status as the first presidential primary state.
Crisis!

All agree they need to find a solution.
Or a gel. Or a sol.

"The alternative is chaos," said Mitchell Berger, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and fundraiser for former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a top-tier Democratic candidate. "I'm encouraging everybody to calm down, take a deep breath and figure this out," said Berger, who is privy to the negotiations.
Chaos! [and privies!]

It was not supposed to be this way. To prevent this very problem — and to protect the practice of retail politicking in the traditional early-voting states — Dean and other party leaders established a nationwide schedule for primaries and caucuses, starting in January 2008. They designated Iowa as the first caucus state, along with newcomer Nevada. New Hampshire and South Carolina were approved for primaries soon afterward.
Retail politicking? WTF?

The DNC, trying to keep the selection process from being too front-loaded and thus stacked against candidates with smaller war chests, also adopted a rule saying no other state could hold a primary before Feb. 5.
I approve of this sentiment, as my candidate hasn't got the largest war chest in the tribe.

But Republicans in the Florida Legislature — supported by many Democrats — pushed through a measure setting Jan. 29 as the date for their state's presidential primary. Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, is expected to sign the bill.

If that date holds for picking Florida's Democratic delegates, penalties for violating the party's rules would cut Florida's delegation by more than half, to 92 votes. But most important, the rules would also take away any delegates won by candidates who campaigned or raised funds in the state.

Tension over the 2008 calendar is especially high because, for the first time in half a century, there are competitive primaries in both parties. The GOP, which also has rules designed to keep order in the nominating process, plans to strip Florida of about half its delegates to the national convention if the early primary is held. But the DNC rules go much further.
Order in the nominating process? We don't need on stinkin' order!

Strategists for Clinton vow that the senator from New York will campaign in Florida no matter what, underscoring her intent to build a campaign for the general election. Other well-known contenders such as Sen. Obama of Illinois, Edwards, Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson are not likely to forgo the fundraising riches of Florida, one of the country's biggest sources of campaign cash.

That means that Florida's delegates could fall to the also-rans who appear on the state ballot but face no pressure to campaign there.
Way cool!

Or, it could mean no candidate gets any Florida delegates. The Democratic rules also contain a provision that no candidate who receives less than 15% of the total primary vote may be awarded delegates, though party officials admit the rule is vague and it's not clear what would happen if the top vote-getters were disqualified.
What happens when you can't even give your votes away?

"This is a new road for us to head down," said Phil McNamara, director of party affairs and delegate selection for the DNC, which will hold the party's national convention in Denver in August 2008.

One possible solution gaining steam is to forget the primary and schedule statewide Iowa-style caucuses for February 2008.

But whereas Florida taxpayers would underwrite the primary, the Democratic Party would have to pay for the caucuses — estimated to cost as much as $10 million. And, though Iowa has a tradition of caucuses set in living rooms and firehouses, they might not work so well in the diverse, bare-knuckles political environs of Florida. A typical condo complex in Broward County has more residents than many Iowa towns.
Bare knuckles political environs! Our condos are bigger than your towns! Our senior citizens can beat up your farmers!

A state nominating convention is another possibility. It would be less expensive, but some strategists worry that it could create the perception that party bosses were picking the nominee.
You mean they're not trying to do that already?

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a quick resolution is the fear that if the DNC makes concessions to Florida, it could face new demands from other states. Even worse, some fear a legal battle could result if one candidate wins the statewide vote and another wins the caucuses — especially if the Florida delegates are needed to determine the nominee.
Legal battles for votes? Bring it on!

GOP officials in the state say they had no idea until late in this spring's legislative session that the change would create so much turmoil on the Democratic side.
Yeah, riiiiiight.

"I don't think anybody made us aware of that until the very end of the process," said Marco Rubio, the Republican state House speaker.

And Jeremy Ring, a Democratic state senator from Broward County and co-sponsor of the legislation, defended it.

"If the choice is Florida is relevant and has no delegates versus being irrelevant and having delegates, I'd choose being relevant with no delegates," Ring said. "We did this so 18 million Floridians could take part in the presidential primaries, not so a few hundred people can go to a party in Denver."
SMACKDOWN! Relevant Without Delegates vs Irrelevant With Delegates!

peter.wallsten@latimes.com

My original plan had been to stay registered as a Democrat until the day after the primary, then switch my registration to Independent the next day. I'd have done that years ago, except that Independents don't get to vote in primaries here in Florida and it hurts me something fierce to even think about losing an opportunity to vote.

Now that we're poised to accidentally-on-purpose throw the monkey wrenches to the wolves, though... Well, we'll see what happens on or about January 29.

Another Modest Proposal

You might as well start here with Mark Purdy's opinion piece on jock culture. I did, having been a bit of a jock myself [and nerd and geek and dork] all through school, and for some years after. One of my [many] soapboxes is Organization Is Evil, so I'll step down off of that one for the moment and just agree that jock culture needs an overhaul. Call this Plank One in my proposal.


If you've already clicked on the link, you noticed there's a list on the right hand side of the page of Related Stories, and that they're all about the De Anza rape case. I've read several of those, including this one, where the prosecuter explains one of the reasons for not going forward with the case:

Is it sexual assault when a victim is too intoxicated to consent to sex? Yes, but we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was so impaired that she could not understand what she was doing. We must also prove that the defendant should have known that she was incapable of consenting.

Well, heck, if you've got to prove all that, no wonder we can't get anywhere. So, for Plank Two, I propose we use Twisty's definition of consent [it's a good one]:

Well, what if lack of consent were the default? What if all prospective objects of dudely predation — by whom I mean all women — are a priori considered to have said “no”? What if women, in other words, were seen by the courts to abide in a persistent legal condition of keep-the-fuck-off-me?

Last one, Plank Three: What if we remove sex from the equation, dispose of the word rape altogether [and the phrase "sexual assault"], lump everything under one label? From Wikipedia:

Assault is often defined to include not only violence, but any physical contact with another person without their consent.

Don't use your penis, your fist, your baseball bat, your stun gun, your hairbrush, your [insert favorite object here] to make physical contact with someone without their consent. Don't reach out lovingly towards that pregnant belly, and don't admiringly stroke those manly biceps. Not unless their owner says so. Explicitly and enthusiastically.

lolcreationist

In the grand new tradition of lolcats, O’DonnellWeb mashes up the lolcreationist just for the Creation Museum Carnival. Hosted by PZ Myers at Pharyngula.

I don't quite know what to say either.

A Journery Through Adoption

via

It's ok to be feral

If I were to assemble the Anarchist Cat Manifesto, it would include this:

Being feral is OK. The goal is NOT "No More Feral Cats". The goal is "No More KILLING of feral cats".

[snip]

... how many feral cats are out there? Some say 60 million, others 100 million. To [TNR advocates] that's 60 million ferals who need TNR. To anti-cat zealots, that's 60 million feral cats eating birds.

[snip]

... all pet cats belong indoors. What a loony idea.

and this:

Claim: Cat licensing will help raise the status of cats.

In our view, this claim is on a par with the suggestion that licensing poor people or the homeless will help raise their "status." Of course, cat licensing proponents aren't making a comparison to people, but to dogs: if cats are licensed like dogs, they will apparently enjoy the same "status" as dogs. Unfortunately, dog licensing doesn't confer any beneficial "status" on canines: it was and is a tool for protecting livestock, enforcing rabies laws, and ridding the public streets of the perceived threat posed by unowned, free-roaming dogs. Indeed, since 1933 California dog licensing laws have explicitly authorized the impoundment of of unlicensed dogs, and millions of dogs have been impounded and killed by animal control agencies throughout the state as a result of these mandatory licensing laws.

This is the precedent to which proponents of cat licensing appeal when they claim that licensing will raise the "status" of cats. We doubt, however, whether cats would choose such a status for themselves. They might well prefer to retain the unlicensed status they now share with humans. And the dogs may want to join them.

home page for Best Friends Animal Society
t-shirt [no longer available] from don't shoot the cat

Dog Whisperer, my left foot.

Cesar Milan, dog intimidator


Gracie is a lovely, bouncy Labrador retriever who gets all excited over the opportunity to chase a chicken. Look at her at the beginning of the video: ears and head and tail up, eagerness and concentration in her facial expression, lively and quick movements.

Now look at her at the end of the video. Do you see a dog who is "happier because she's no longer obsessed" with chasing chickens? No. She's a dog who is stressed and fearful because some bullying, hissing stranger has just appeared in her formerly idyllic life. He's acting out his dominance/submission fantasies on her against her will and her formerly trustworthy family members aren't even trying to defend her.

Sure, you can control your dogs by thoroughly intimidating them, but why would you want to?

You have until Thursday, 23:59,

to submit your entry for the Inaugural Bralessness Bazaar: June 7, 2007. Hosted by Braless Living LA.

Greenland is melting and so is your underwear!

The Global Warming Debate: “People always complain about the weather, now they’ve done something about it.”



Two Excellent Global Warming Links: “How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic” and “The Skeptics vs the Ozone Hole.” Plus a Picture.

Climbing lessons

The kittens are getting large, and rambunctious, and toothy. They've got claws too. Mom cat, seeking respite but still wanting to watch over them, spends hours resting on the top of the porch fence.

Yesterday, the two blues sat just underneath, trying to figure out how mom got up there, and what they could do to get there too. You can't really see them in this photo [shot through the screen door], but they're the darker blurs at the bottom.


Last night, tiger kitten, the champion climber in the clan, decided to give lessons. First pupil: blue kitten 1.


Ever the iconoclast, patches kitten wants to start from a different place, and aim higher too.


Tonight? The sky's the limit, or perhaps the porch ceiling is. Dude! How're you gonna get down?!



The management recently provided me with a new one-size-fits-all screen door, which means that it doesn't [fit, that is], but since I had to ask repeatedly to get this one, I've been putting up with it. I'll say one thing though, all four of them have been practicing their new-found skills on it, and have left nary a claw mark in the screening material. Tough stuff.

I'm too sexy for my tractor

Gosh,
they're
cute.

Give Me Your Vibrant, Your Strong, Your Exploitable

Who Is IOZ?: Give Me Your Vibrant, Your Strong, Your Entrepreneurial Eager to Make a Buck

IOZ, as an unrepentant and only-barely-domesticated anarchist myself, I'm in agreement with you on some basic values. But here's the thing: Why is it that you well-to-do big-L Libertarian free marketeers hate your fellow human beings so much that you're unwilling to pay them enough money to live as comfortable and dignified a life as you do?

Ask and ye shall receive.

T'were Mustang Bobby and Bryan who first turned me on to Friday Cat Blogging.

I [heart] Snowball, but had also noticed that Bryan has a link in his sidebar to Alley Cat Allies, and he has ever since been enshrined in my heart as a good and worthy person.

Bryan's worthy character notwithstanding, I've warned him that I was going to blame him for these kittens. As you can see here, I was grousing, not too long ago, about not having any kittens of my own.

What followed was that a week later I discovered a whole passel of kittens on my front porch!! Kittens in grayscale. Kittens with a blue mom cat who is a dead ringer for Ringo. I'm just sayin'.

In all fairness, I should tell you that shortly after discovering said kittens, I sent Bryan a panicked e-mail, asking him [in rather more decorous language] WTF do I do now?!. He very kindly sent me back a link to these folks. Manna from heaven! A TNR group right here in my own little corner of the Redneck Riviera!

A TNR group whose website I then perused with growing dismay. It looked like they could help low-income people who needed to have their pet spayed or neutered [phone number 438-FIXX] and it looked like they could help someone who wanted to become caretaker of a feral cat colony. I'm none of the above. Still, I finally, a few days ago, decided to suck it up and send them an e-mail asking for whatever help they can give me. I hope they answer soon, because these kittens are probably going to be old enough to go to new homes in another couple of weeks.

15 minutes of fame, 30 years later

Remember this? The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat



What's the hapless ski jumper up to these days? Find out here.

Carnival!

The First Carnival of Radical Feminists

via Dr Violet Socks

Good news, bad news.

The GOOD news is: all five cats are using the litter box.

The BAD news is: all five cats are using the litter box.

This is good news because one of the reasons that otherwise perfectly good, healthy, lovable pets are given up to animal shelters is euphemistically called inappropriate elimination [no, Emily, you cannot have one of my kittens]. This is bad news because cat pee is noxious stuff, even when eliminated appropriately, and even when four of the five cats are weightless balls of fluff [holding nose].

bonus linky: lolcats

brief kitten update

One of the blue kittens [hard to tell Thing One and Thing Two apart at night] has become terribly interested in all things indoors over the past couple of days, including running up to touch noses with the dog this evening. Of course, all this bravery is exhibited from the other side of the screen door.

This slight amendment in open door policy, leaving the porch door open, but the screen door closed, has come about because curmudgeon cat is pissed about being locked away in the bedroom every evening for hours on end. Curmudgeon cat, when sufficiently motivated and left unsupervised for long enough, can open most of the doors here. I suppose I could always lock him away in the dishwasher, it's brand new and has a sturdy latch that can only be operated from the outside. This strikes me as a too-permanent solution to the problem.