Pay attention Rush, you've pissed off the gun clingers!

"You like the Humane Society," Mrs. Van Susteren said.

"Who?" Mr. Limbaugh asked.

"The Humane Society."

Laughing, the radio host, who spends three hours a day talking politics, said, "Well, now, you're getting into politics," and quickly moved off the topic.

The Humane Society's president and chief executive, Wayne Pacelle, said the issue shouldn't be political.

Sigh... You even make Greta sound like a genius and THAT is something.

Click--> Rush angers Republicans with guns.

I've mentioned in my shout box that my husband hunts and we use the meat. All of it. My husband was pretty much the only guy at work who didn't run out and buy all the bullets he could. Nor has he buried his guns in the yard. That is because no matter who is President (and I am typing slowly here)the Constitution guarantees our rights to bear arms. The Bible states that God created animals for the good of man (something like that. It's in Genesis if you doubt me). In the Carnivorian creed it says "Animals must die so plants can live." (Okay I TOTALLY made that one up.)
But I have been getting up 3 times a night to feed a baby kitten. I mentioned yesterday that only one of the 3 cats that my daughter found in the dumpster survived. People who dump newborn kittens or puppies are cruel. People who enjoy watching or participating in cock fighting, dog fighting, or bullfighting are cruel. People club seals or raise animals to kill for their fur and the people who wear fur are cruel. People who can experiment, cripple, torture, or kill animals like Jeffrey Dahmer did are cruel. I'm pretty sure that even if there are people in the Humane Society (which I'm sure their are) that want to stop the hunting of animals that are used as God expected them to be used, they have far bigger battles to wage than hunting. Ummm Rush??? Pssst. Over here, whaling is illegal internationally, but some countries ignore that completely. Be careful there Moby!!

OMG!!! Maybe I AM stupid, but it really feels like it's not me.

HuffPo Headlines: Senate Expected To Confirm Obama's Health Secretary Today...
New York Times: It Is "Deeply Disquieting" That Obama Administration Has Few Top Health Officials In Place

Senate MAY finally confirm Kathleen Sebelius as HHS. They shouldn't have to. The Republican party seems to have an objection to every decision that our President makes. It would be astoundingly amusing if it wasn't continuing to cost the world money and lives.

Does the NYT even PAY attention? These positions would be filled if the Republicans weren't being a huge pain in the butt for absolutely no good reason.

Feline update.

For those who care.
I made a very valuable friend this weekend. She runs the shelter here and she doesn't euthanize. She had a nursing mother that took the newborns my daughter found in the dumpster. She put them on a very nurturing mother that adopted them easily, but they had been neglected too long and only one of the three survived. Better odds than the dumpster, but still sad and even worse if you contemplate the alternative. I have offered to help to take care of babies that need to be mothered night and day, but one at a time. My daughter would like to help and will be volunteering and raising money for the cause. She's proven to be really helpful during nighttime feedings. She will be very dedicated to the volunteer work. The baby I am caring for now is thriving but I fall in love and this one is so sweet. I will be sad to see him go but he has a home lined up and I can't adopt every cat in the world, but I will certainly try to help the ones I can...

An ounce of prevention

It's interesting to me that what they call the 100 year flood in my area has occurred like 5 or 6 times, that I know of, in my life time and I'm not 5 or 6 hundred years old. I've often pondered the shock people must feel as basements are filling with water and they are counting backward to the LAST 100 year flood. Why don't they rename it and prepare for it. It isn't rocket science how it happens. One very warm day the snow melts up the canyon or it rains heavily and the water takes the exact same path it always has. I am not certain whose grand idea it was/is to keep building in the path of the flood, but they do. However a couple years back they started widening out the creek and shoring up the sides and digging reservoirs a long the way. I hasn't been 100 years yet so we've yet to see if an ounce of prevention was worth it. (MHO it will be)
So in February 2004 an avian influenza was detected in birds in Vietnam. It was a virus that crossed over to humans and had a much lower toll than projected. It also hasn't been classified as a pandemic because they haven't found it to be sustained and efficient enough of a virus to be passed from human to human. Every known case was passed from a bird to a human. My husband came in as I was writing this and we were talking about the difference between an epidemic, pandemic, and endemics. Plagues, viruses, influenza, fevers, etc. He told me that the hospital corporation he works for had been preparing for the SARS pneumonia outbreak which was stopped by nation and international health authorities before it could become pandemic. Preparation for this sort of thing is what the GOP stripped from the stimulus as unnecessary spending. God forbid they look at it and say "yeah our country's health is important." An ounce of prevention...
So now we have an outbreak of an influenza virus that has been named Swine Flu. It sounds like a very frightening and real threat because of the death toll in such a short span. And not to make light of a serious thing, but just as the Avian Flu conjured scenes from Hitchcock's movie "The Birds", Swine Flu sounds like something you'd pick up from the spittle spray of Rush Limbaugh's mouth as he rants incoherently.
I wondered how this one was going to be pinned on President Obama, but the GOP is going to need to hire the Brothers Bush Fairytale author's to explain that while bitching and fussing and mocking the wasteful government spending stimulus money on such trivial things as flu epidemics and Jindal who joked "They want to spend stimulus money on volcano monitoring? Why everyone knows that the Hill Witch keeps tabs on our volcanoes by floating chicken bones in her own intestinal ichor!" It was stripped from the stimulus by the GOP as well. Oops! My bad. The Hill Witch must have taken her eyes off of Russia long enough to miss the eruption of Alaska's Mount Redoubt (ironic name). Now I'm not going to suggest that it takes a bunch of superstitious Republicans to believe that there is a guaranteed 100 years between floods, volcanic eruptions, and diseases of mass destruction. Okay.. Yes I am. I mean, for real, Sarah Palin didn't know how fruit flies are used in DNA research. And I live in Utah. The only thing more prevalent than prairie dogs here are Republicans.

Oh, and my mother's oldest brother died of Rocky Mountain Spotted fever when he was 12. He contracted it from a prairie dog that he had trapped in their cattle field. If a cow steps into a prairie dog hole, it can break it's leg and have to be put down. Times have changed and much can be prevented. It just takes people willing to talk to people who study these things. A president can't be expected to be everywhere all the time. He can't stop natural disasters, viral outbreaks, or unnecessary lives lost to a war dreamed up to benefit corrupt politicians. But he can listen and he can learn. Sadly President Obama is having to listen to people who can help us AND people who talk out of their butts.

Waterboarding: Torture or not?

In the Republican debates, Andrew Jones, a college student from Seattle submitted the question: "Recently, Senator McCain has come out strongly against using waterboarding as an instrument of interrogation. My question for the rest of you is, considering that Mr. McCain is the only one with any firsthand knowledge on the subject, how can those of you sharing the stage with him disagree with his position?" In response to this question Mitt Romney stated "I oppose torture. I would not be in favor of torture in any way, shape or form". Prompted by the moderator as to whether waterboarding was torture, Romney said "as a presidential candidate, I don't think it's wise for us to describe specifically which measures we would and would not use" which prompted the following exchange between McCain and Romney: McCain: "Well, governor, I'm astonished that you haven't found out what waterboarding is". Romney: "I know what waterboarding is, Senator". McCain: "Then I am astonished that you would think such a – such a torture would be inflicted on anyone in our – who we are held captive and anyone could believe that that's not torture. It's in violation of the Geneva Convention".

Waterboarding dates back to the 1500's and has been used and defined as torture During The Spanish Inquisition, the Japanese and Gestapo, to name a VERY few. The US Generals in the Vietnam war defined waterboarding as torture therefore illegal. Much to the embarrassment of the U.S. a picture surfaced of an American soldier and a South Vietnamese soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese soldier.

"Following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding." John McCain

“Waterboarding -- that's what America does to its prisoners now. Dunking them in water until they confess. Of course, you have to remember -- we uncovered a lot of witches that way. So, credit where credit is due.” A.Whitney Brown

Information retrieved from the waterboarding may not be reliable because a person under such duress may admit to anything, as harsh interrogation techniques lead to false confessions. "The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law", says John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.[13] It is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough", said former CIA officer Bob Baer.

So after spending a lot of time today reading definitions and rationalizations I have discovered two things:
1. I can't blog this issue without bias. It's torture. I can't offer any other definition.
2. Many people are upset at the release of our torture/"enhanced interrogation" techniques not because the find them morally wrong but because we are tipping our hand to future torturees. But newsflash: We didn't invent any of this stuff. We learned it from the kind of people who have no moral boundaries. It's been done for centuries. They KNOW how it ends. It's amazing that we do. Firsthand.

Oh please...

I am so completely astounded by the total freaking crazy idiotic people who are peeing their pants over the torture memos and pictures being released.

1.) FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) Which was ironically signed into law by LBJ on July 4th 1966. It has been amended over the years (less info by Reagan, more info by Clinton. See the trend?)
2.) President Obama ran on (among other things) transparency and raise your hand if any of this torture, lies, war crimes, and most certainly more tales of heinous activities to boost the Bush Administration's popularity comes as a surprise to you. If you've raised your hand skip on down to the dictionary.com link and type in denial.
3.) This is America. We don't PRETEND to be above this horrifying behavior we really ARE above this behavior. The same dumb a$$e$ that are having total fits over President Obama's show of consideration to friends and enemies alike are having fits that this evidence is being released. Not that it happened, but that it's being released.

Is it a partisan act of revenge on the Republican party? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't think Democrats or liberals are the only ones that believe that for 8 years we've been wrong and betrayed. We've been shameful. I think that the more Republicans, conservatives and high ranking official with blood on their hands, try to suppress this, the worse they are making the right wingnuts, corrupted officials, and the Bush Administration look. When is everyone going to shut the freak up and realize that even if they voted against President Obama even a jackal would have been more humane not to mention intelligent than the last Presidency and the other choices in the election. (You know that Sarah Palin was gifted with some automatic assault rifle or something. She's picking off wolves at a much quicker pace with the helicop... I'm mean road to somewhere the taxpayers paid for.)
And Cheney.. I'm sure in between these appearances to spout your absolute insanity you are sleeping in some cryogenic coffin. Do the world a favor and lose the key.

It's hard to be a mother cat...

I know this because I am one right now. The boy down the street that found the kitten named it Snickers. I am guessing his girlfriend has something to do with this and when I call him to tell him about visitation, I'm going to tell him that if he doesn't come up with a better name that I'm going to start rumors that he's (Ummm p.c. moment) sensitive. So this little freaking cat wants to eat all of the time. I've figured he's 2-3 weeks old and he's eating formula from a dropper. He's getting better at walking and crawls all around me, night and day. His meower and purrer works really well and he never shuts up, unless he's asleep which is a lot more often than I am, now. At 5 a.m. my daughter took over and I don't know took over for her because she was helping some during the night. I'm pretty impressed that in one day he is using the litter box correctly but has only gone pee. No accidents and he was digging one hole but going pee where he was standing. Now he's getting it into the hole and burying it. So I look it up and find out that the mother cat licks the anal and genital area to stimulate it. I told my daughter that could be her job.... Ack. He's asleep right now and I'm typing really quietly. He sleeps tangled in my hair and burrowed into my neck. He starts licking my neck and biting it when he's hungry so I think he's definitely identified me as his mother. I wonder what happened to his mom and siblings. Not to be mean but if I had a litter, I'd run away from home. But I won't because I think he already has abandonment issues.

**If you are offended by the usage of words like "pee" you should stop reading now because this cat is dead to the world asleep and I need to pee.

Update and you will think I am making this up. I thought I was being punk'd but my youngest daughter came in crying with a Walmart bag. She was at a church activity and they took some stuff to the dumpster and found 3 newborn, STILL WET from birth baby kittens. I just found the city animal control officer who is very awesome and she told me she had a mother who had lost her litter and was very much in pain and she's suffering from the loss. We got the babies out there and she rolled over and let them nurse. THANK HEAVENS!!! I told her I'd be coming out to meet her and help foster a bit, but this put me at nine cats. My oldest would like to volunteer there and we could work well together. I need to learn how to foster a bit better and this is going to be a fun charitable thing for me to do. But it's a relief to have help after I get them eating and ready for adoption that I have some help and I will try to help adopt them out and the shelter is non-euthanasia. I can take care of babies past the colostrum age, teach them to litter train, then work on adopting them out. There's also a van that sterilizes them. New cause, YAY!!! But it's exhausting.

This and that..

Can I just say that I am so freaking happy that the weenie waving Mormon guy got voted off of Survivor last night?? Second favorite blindside in Survivor history. The gross Mormon reality stars are more prevalent than the good ones. Hasta Tyson!!!!

Also a couple of young teenage boys came to my house yesterday and said that they heard I rescue cats... They brought me a baby kitten that they found out by the bus garage. I am guessing he's about two weeks old, but he seems like a fighter. The boys say they'll take him back when I get him old enough to eat on his own. I need to start taking pictures of them. Cinder looked like she was on death's doorstep and she is doing much better now. She's filled out some but her legs and paws will always be misshapened I assume from malnutrition. So the current standing is... I have 6 cats. I won't torture you with the list of the menagerie except to say that I really think the sugar gliders are expecting.

Definately a GREAT money raising idea!!

As always, the conservative talking heads are trying to convince us that waterboarding isn't torture and are eventually going to have to give in. (It's called denial.)Especially since new photos are on the way. Israel has outlawed waterboarding calling it torture and we are not even THAT civilized? Sean Hannity has volunteered to be waterboarded and Keith Olbermann is offering $1000 per second that he lasts to charity (Like Families of Men and Women Lost While Looking For Weapons of Mass Destruction). This should prove to be interesting. If they can't find anyone to do it to him I think Shep Smith is pissed off at whoever is responsible that he may be open to the idea. But he may ask for Condy Rice and Dick Cheney give it a whirl as well. If the Democrats are going to be chipping in all the charity money, can we get Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh too???
Glenn Beck: Waterboarding?? Ohh pick me, pick me!!!

Governor Sebelius shot down by the Repug Senate members...

Senate Republicans refused today to allow a confirmation vote on his health secretary nominee Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kan.)

I have great admiration for Gov. Sebelius and had kind of hoped President Obama would choose her as a running mate. She is smart and shows the bipartisan qualities he seeks to bring to the country.

During her long stint in Kansas politics, Sebelius has been known as a moderate with strong relations across the aisle. She chose a running mate two years ago who had been a Republican Party leader.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said today that, if necessary, the Democratic leader intends to pursue the procedural maneuvers needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. That would likely push a confirmation vote into next week.

"We're confident there will be the 60 votes needed to confirm her," Manley said.

This afternoon, McConnell's office clarified in a statement that the nomination is "not stymied, she's just not getting confirmed today" and said that concerns about a filibuster are premature.

(The previous quotes came from WaPo)

I hope they can get her in. I'd love to see her run for President, she's a smart lady. Funny how the GOP keeps trying to dig up dirt on Dems. The Republican senate et al. have been palling around with terrorists for the past 8 years and are STILL trying to redefine torture. I was actually impressed with Shepard Smith of Faux news. He seems to be genuinely horrified that our country lost it's moral compass. Here's a clip (warning it's uncensored and he drops the f-bomb):

America doesn't torture