Cartoon of the Day

Gary Markstein, Creators News SErvice

Cartoon of the Day

Chan Lowe, Sun-Sentinel

Annie's Song

Happy Birthday Annie

And don't forget Today & Tomorrow.

Cartoon of the Day

Bill Schorr, United Media Syndicate

It's Your Birthday, I'll Cry if I Want to

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

George W. Bush
Worst.President.Ever
Born this day in 1946

It's Mealtime (All over again)

I mentioned our cat Scrunchy recently, he of the lost and found adventure, who eventually turned up in our neighbor's garage after a 5 day journey away from home.

Scrunchy is a very particular (read that: picky) cat. He has his favorite food and doesn't appreciate variety. He likes the Fancy Feast (sliced) assortment of canned cat food, so he's not too happy if you try to substitute something else. He'll nibble at some dry food if you insist (and once in a while he's try a taste of the dog's food), but that doesn't take the place of his Fancy Feast. He also has his internal clock set to eat at 6 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. (assuming anyone's home at that time). From about 3:30 on, he'll wait in the gazebo for someone to come home & as soon as he sees us, he'll start meowing until he's fed.

Scrunchy is now over 10 years old and one of his more recent tendencies is to eat, take off for a little while (inside or outside, depending on the weather) and then turn back up, looking for his meal again. On occasion, if we ignore him, he'll start howling for food, even though he's just been fed. This is a new phenomenon. Before, he ate his cat food, then was fine until his next meal. It's been a running joke at out house that he's losing it and that he forgot that he already ate his meal. In fact, when he went missing this last time, my husband was concerned that he left, wandered off somewhere and forgot where his home was.

Although we often have joked about Scrunchy having Alzheimer's, I didn't really think that dogs or cats suffered from the disease. However, an article in the Inky suggests that animals, like humans, can suffer from dementia. Pets too can have these aged related diseases like cognitive dysfunction syndrome, more commonly known as dementia, Dogs in decline:

First recognized in dogs in the early 1990s, the disease causes progressive cognitive and behavioral decline. Changes in the canine brain mirror those seen in people suffering from dementias such as Alzheimer's disease.

Cats get dementia as well, though they are diagnosed less frequently, perhaps because felines are less social. Similar deterioration has been seen in the brains of aging rodents, sheep, goats, bears and primates.

Dementia in pets is apparently fairly common and the main symptoms are:

Animals with dementia appear generally confused. The main abnormalities, known by the acronym DISH (Disorientation, Interaction declines, Sleep-wake disturbances, Housetraining lapses), can take varied forms: the rottweiler that stops responding to its name. The poodle that paces all night and sleeps all day. The domestic short-haired cat that stares into space, howling for no apparent reason. The boxer that waits at the hinge side of the door to go outside.

See also: Does Your Pet Have Dementia?. The list doesn't mention forgetting that he's just been fed, but I assume that qualifies. He's always been a bit of a recluse otherwise, so it's hard to tell if any of the other signs are there.

Cartoon of the Day

Matt Davies, The Journal News

Secret Agent Man

This is truly a sad story.

Via From Pine View Farm, comes the story about the federal drug enforcement agent, known as "Sergeant Bill," who arrived in the rural town of Gerald, Missouri, to help the town's methamphetamine problem. After 5 months on the job, during which time agent Bill Jakob participated in a number of drug arrests, it was discovered that the man was a fake. As the NYTimes reports, Town Finds Drug Agent Is Really an Impostor:

Busts began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,” the drug scourge seemed to be fading at last.

Those whose homes were searched, though, grumbled about a peculiar change in what they understood, from television mainly, to be the law.

They said the agent, a man some had come to know as “Sergeant Bill,” boasted that he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.

But after a reporter for the local weekly newspaper made a few calls about that claim, Gerald’s anti-drug campaign abruptly unraveled after less than five months. Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding-performing minister, a former small-town cop from 23 miles down the road.

The story was also carried on NPR's Talk of the Nation, with an in depth interview of Linda Trest, the local reporter who uncovered the scam. She said that one of the problems was that many townspeople believed Jakob's claim that a federal agent didn't need to get a warrant, because warrants were no longer needed for wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping.

As Frank at Pine View Farm says, that's why it's important to honor the rule of law.

And that's why it is so sad that we've come to this. Happy 4th of July holidays, although I'm not sure what' s left to celebrate -- other than fireworks.

The Anti-Patriot

As you watch the fireworks, a fitting end to the day, from Matthew Rothschild of the Progressive, Why I’m Not Patriotic:

It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out.

Spare me the puerile parades.

Don’t play that martial music, white boy.

And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s.

You see, I don’t believe in patriotism.

It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic.

Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game.

Yet most people accept it without inspection.

Why?

For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion.

Go read the rest, it's well worth it.

Live in Philly

In honor of John Legend's appearance in Philly for the 4th of July celebration, here's a clip of John & Stephen Colbert, being patriotic:



It's raining, so I passed on the concert (but, of course, my daughter's there -- what's a little rain when you're young).

Cartoon of the Day

Dana Summers, Orlando Sentinel

Senator No

It was reported today that "Senator No" -- Jesse Helms -- died. I certainly won't pretend that that is sad news to me. As the Charlotte Observer said, Helms dead at 86:

[Helms] served three decades in the Senate before retiring in 2003. He was a figure seven presidents couldn't always agree with but could rarely ignore.

To admirers, Helms was a man of principle who stood for conservative values even when he stood alone. Supporters didn't always agree with him. But they knew where he stood.

Critics knew, too. To them he was a cynical manipulator who oversimplified issues, supported right-wing dictators and built a half-century career on race-baiting, polarizing politics.

His death comes months after he published a memoir in which he sought to define his legacy and soften his image. He acknowledged mistakes in his early opposition to AIDS funding but said he never advocated segregation or used race as a political wedge, a claim critics found disingenuous.

Although he later tried to deny the charges, Helms was a career bigot. As the article observes:

Helms' campaigns divided North Carolinians. He used homosexuality, school prayer, race and other “hot button” issues to separate himself from his opponents.

A 1990 ad accused Democratic opponent Gantt of taking money from gays. Another showed a pair of white hands crumpling a job rejection letter as a voice says, “You needed that job, but they had to give it to a minority.”

Analysts such as Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, called the ad “a textbook illustration of how to play on racial fears,” and said Helms “took targeted, fear-based appeals toward other groups to a new high.”

The true nature of the man is best seen in his own words. Via AmericaBlog, a few gems that give a hint of his soul:

As an aide to the 1950 Senate campaign of North Carolina Republican candidate Willis Smith, Helms reportedly helped create attack ads against Smith's opponent, including one which read: 'White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.' Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)

* * * *

Of civil rights protests Helms wrote, "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." (WRAL-TV commentary, 1963) He also wrote, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced." (New York Times, 2/8/81)

* * * *

Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality "degenerate," and homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches." (Newsweek, 12/5/94) In a tirade highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988: "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." (States News Service, 5/17/88)

Of course, there is also the irony in his dying on the 4th of July. I didn't think anything of it until I read this piece about Helms' death, Conservative Icon Former Senator Jesse Helms Dead At 86, which notes:

Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July.

He was 86.

"It's just incredible that he would die on July 4, the same day of the Declaration of Independence and the same day that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died, and he certainly is a patriot in the mold of those great men," said former North Carolina GOP Rep. Bill Cobey, the chairman of The Jesse Helms Center in Wingate, N.C.

Helms died at 1:15 a.m, the center said. He died in Raleigh of natural causes, said former chief of staff Jimmy Broughton.

After reading that, it hit me. There is no way the man died on the 4th. He died before midnight & they waited awhile before saying anything. The Republicans will lie about their middle name, if given the opportunity. This is just too convenient to be true. A manipulator till the bitter end.

UPDATE (7/5): The obit for Helms in The Guardian provides a good overview of the man who, the paper notes:

To echo this newspaper's memorable comment on the death of William Randolph Hearst, it is hard even now to think of him with charity.

Life, Liberty & BBQ

So, it's the 4th of July. A day for picnics, swimming at the pool or beach -- and a day we generally celebrate the founding of our country and its basic principles that we (supposedly) hold so dear.

This year, there's yet again a little bit less to celebrate, since we seem to be more focused on the BBQs than the rights that form the bedrock of our nation's founding. As Scott Horton of Harper's so elequently put it, it's more of the same trend of the Bush Administration (with the complicity of the Democrats) who are Treating the Constitution as a Doormat.

A reoccurring theme of late has been the government's unrelenting intent to spy on its citizens at will, without justification and without our knowledge or any recourse. I have discussed Congress' likely cave in on the domestic surveillance and telecom immunity reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, You Say Compromise, I Say Capitulate.

As the NYTimes points out, Obama has taken heat from his liberal supporters for expressing his intention to vote in favor of this legislation, Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity, especially with the telecom immunity intact:

During the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But he has switched positions, and now supports a compromise hammered out between the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership. The bill is expected to come to a vote on the Senate floor next Tuesday. That decision, one of a number made by Mr. Obama in recent weeks intended to position him toward the political center as the general election campaign heats up, has brought him into serious conflict for the first time with liberal bloggers and commentators and his young supporters.

Many of them have seen the issue of granting immunity to the telecommunications companies as a test of principle in their opposition to Mr. Bush’s surveillance program.

He has been so much flak for his concession on the FISA issues that he has posted a response on his website. Mike Stark, the activist/blogger who started the on-line protest, is not impressed, saying the latest response is "a stiff arm to the people that care about the Constitution." I'd add that it's also a stiff arm to the constitution itself. His essay, as well as the spin worthy explanations of his campaign, do not provide justification for the turnabout, other than politics as usual. As Glenn Greenwald, who has been all over this issue, said, Obama advisor Greg Craig: Adding insult to injury:

It's bad enough that Obama is supporting a new warrantless eavesdropping scheme. They should just candidly admit that he changed his position rather than feeding incoherent and insultingly false rationalizations to the public -- whereby they throw around the terms 'National Security' and 'balance' enough times and hope that nobody notices or cares that what they're saying makes no sense. One of the strengths of the Obama campaign has been a willingness to have adult discussions about complex political issues, assume a fair amount of rationality and intelligence on the part of the voting public, and avoid manipulative, obfuscating sloganeering like this.

I have been among the bloggers criticizing Obama for the surrender of his principles, see You've Changed and Everything Must Change. As I've noted before, Obama wasn't my first choice (and he even tied with Clinton until she started getting crazy), mainly because I didn't think he was particularly liberal. And I most certainly am/was not a Obamaholic; I'm much too cynical for that. However, I appreciated the enthusiasm his candidacy has engendered by a public that has largely been disenfranchised and/or disinterested in politics.

The view of his evolution, best advocated by Andy Borowitz, Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Election, is that a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do to get elected, which was seconded by Andrew Sullivan. I know that it's the conventional wisdom that you have to appeal to the base in the primary and then move to the center to succeed in the general election, which I could certainly understand -- up to a point. However, there is even some question whether the CW on this is true, as explored by Glenn Greenwald. As he notes, even if there were some truth to that theory, the current climate of unhappiness with the state of the state would belie the argument this time around. In addition, as he observes, in The baseless, and failed, "move to the center" cliche:

For that reason, isn't the perception that Obama is abandoning his own core beliefs -- or, worse, that he has none -- a much greater political danger than a failure to move to the so-called "Center" by suddenly adopting Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies? As a result of Obama's reversal on FISA, his very noticeable change in approach regarding Israel, his conspicuous embrace of the Scalia/Thomas view in recent Supreme Court cases, and a general shift in tone, a very strong media narrative is arising that Obama is abandoning his core beliefs for political gain. That narrative -- that he's afraid to stand by his own beliefs -- appears far more likely to result in a perception that Obama is "Weak" than a refusal to embrace Bush/Cheney national security positions.

I think the biggest problem is the fact that he flipped on so important and fundamental an issue that has dismayed his supporters, compounded by the fact that he so suddenly and substantially change his position on FISA and other issues.

I hardly expect that any candidate will echo all of my opinions, even on the important issues. I try to prioritize and support whomever I feel will be the best out of the bunch & will hopefully defeat these dastardly republicans who are destroying our constitution in many ways, big and small. Ultimately, I think what is concerning is that his recent forays further to the center/right are hardly the best harbinger of what to expect from his presidency, if he is elected.

Ultimately, I have to agree with the opinion of Daniel Larison (from the American Conservative, no less), who discusses Obama's dissembling on FISA and says, in Is There Anything Worth Defending?:

It seems to me that there have to be some things that are not negotiable and things that should not be compromised for electoral expediency. You might think constitutional protections would be among those things, and that this would not be the concern of left-liberals alone. Apparently, you would be wrong.

I would also note that McCain has also been less than clear (or steady) about his position on FISA, McCain's Lack of Clarity, but that's just par for the course for him (and the GOP) in general, so it's not worth commenting on.

(I found this cartoon via Jeff parker, Florida Today after I wrote my post and figured it fit perfectly)

Cartoon of the Day

Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune

Slamming Sam

Uncle Sam (born July 4, 1776) is the national personification of the United States, an economic and cultural imperialist, the mascot of the New York Yankees, frequent used car salesman, and a dick.

From the very moment Uncle Sam was born, he immediately began insisting that everybody else live exactly like him – speak his language, wear his style of clothing, listen to his music, eat his mass-produced fast food products. He’s a dick in the same way as your pretentious friend who demands that you listen to Radiohead, watch The Wire, and eat organic food because all those things are “sooooo amaaaaaazing.” The big difference is that your pretentious friend won’t launch precision air strikes on your apartment or incinerate your entire city with a nuclear bomb if you don’t like the new Jim Jarmusch movie.

For more on that dick, Uncle Sam, see The Huffington Post's Uncle Sam - Dickipedia.

Cartoon of the Day

Walt Handelsman, Newsday

Cartoon of the Day

Mike Luckovich, Atlantic Journal Constitution

Thurgood Did Good

Thurgood Marshall
Supreme Court Justice
Born this day in 1908

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

For all that he accomplished, both as a Civil Rights leader and a Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall has not received the recognition that he deserves. A new website has been launched about Justice Marshall on the 100th anniversary of his birth. See Thurgood Marshall -- Tribute.

Mary Frances Berry, former Chair of the Civil Rights Commission discusses Marshall on NPR,
Thurgood Marshall, 100 Years After His Birth and there is a new Broadway play about Marshall, 'Thurgood' Plays To Standing Ovations On Broadway. Finally, there is a "lost" interview of Marshall with Mike Wallace, where he "talks about Adam Clayton Powell's controversial support of Republican president Dwight Eisenhower and the Democratic Party's failure to act on segregation in the South." See Thurgood Marshall Would Turn 100 Today ...

Life is a Beach

It was the after graduation trip to the shore (a ritual our daughter repeated just this year).

I was there with my friends from high school, back in the days when you not only used sun tan lotion, but added baby oil for a quicker tan. My then boyfriend Bobby was also there (with his corvette). I was cruising the boardwalk with my girlfriends, when my friend Beth ran into her boyfriend. He was with a bunch of his friends and I struck up a conversation with one of them.

Dave and I ended up walking along the beach & we spent the rest of the night together. I ditched Bobby and the rest is history. Of course, not everything has been fun and roses since then. We had a fight on the bus ride back to Scranton (over Eldridge Cleaver, no less!) and I wouldn't talk to him after that. We ran into each other a few weeks later and made up.

That was 37 years ago today. It's also our 20th wedding anniversary.




The Reasons by Earth, Wind & Fire is a favorite (as is this song).

Up, Up & Away

Sometimes the muse of poetic justice is in perfect alignment with the gods of comedy.

This is one of those times. In the wake of the Heller case, Gun Lover's Delight, the National Rifle Association didn't waste any time. A recent Georgia law allows concealed weapons to be carried in public places, which is in sync with the ruling just issues by the Heller court. The limits of the law are about to be tested, according to this article, Lawsuit filed over Atlanta airport barring guns:

The nation's busiest airport dueled with gun rights advocates Tuesday over whether a new Georgia state law allows visitors to carry firearms at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

City officials in charge of the airport declared it a "gun free zone" when the new law took effect Tuesday. Gun rights supporters, including a state legislator who helped pass the law, quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the designation.

I think the only gun free zone that's going to be left after the NRA gets done is the grave. After all, why not airports:

The new state law allows people with a concealed weapons permit to carry guns into restaurants, state parks and on public transportation.

John Monroe, an attorney for the gun rights backers who filed the lawsuit, argued the Atlanta airport qualifies as public transportation. There are also restaurants in the terminal, which Monroe said should be accessible to gun-toting visitors under the new law.

Why not? If we're going to be supremely stupid about gun violence, lets go all the way.

I have to admit, this piece just made my day. The only thing better than this would be if there were a lawsuit to contest the ban on guns at the Supreme Court.