2 Weeks to Go

Lion kitty Maxx sez give to your favorite candidate or the peep gets it!!

Here's a handy link to John Kerry's Take Back the Senate contribution page. All funds go to media buys in Missouri, New Jersey, Tennessee and Virginia.

Damn

I don't know who told Bobo that he was competent to analyze the political landscape, or to make predictions about American society, but whoever it was, they deserve a big bitch slap.

Bobo's column is behind the paywall. Don't worry though, you're not missing anything, unless you enjoy reading tripe that would embarrass a 9th grade government student.

All I can say is, damn! Someone actually pays him to write that nonsense.

Now Here's a Headline

Via AP:

Republicans Fear Powerful NY Democrats

Bwa HA HA HA HA HA HA!!

The article is about New York State races and the expected coattails from Spitzer and Clinton, but one might hope that republicans everywhere will learn to fear democrats.

Rainy afternoon lion kitty

Maxx is bored with teh stoopid republicans and their flip flopping rhetoric.

Idiot

AP/Ron Edmonds

He sure seems to be pointing that finger a lot these days. And I guess barbaric Barb never told him that he looks like a twit when he makes those faces.

Hard Kwestions

AP/Gerald Herbert

"He's asking hard kwestions. Maybe I can designate him as an enemy combatant."

Death Squads

Reuters/Helmiy al-Azawi

Via CNN and TIME Magazine, a horrific story about organized ethnic cleansing:Ethnic Cleansing in a Baghdad Neighborhood?

U.S. soldiers have uncovered evidence that one Shi'ite militia is engaged in a systematic campaign of violence and intimidation to clear out Sunni residents

Posted Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006
The place was empty when U.S. soldiers burst in, raiding a house in Baghdad's violent Washash neighborhood in the hopes of finding killers involved in sectarian murders. By the look of things, no one had been there for some time, even though neighbors in the area reported seeing people dragged inside in recent weeks. But apparently someone involved in the area's sectarian violence had been there recently: left behind was a leather-bound day planner that gave a disturbing picture of the systematic nature of Baghdad's bloodshed.

Though the book was largely blank, inside were several sheets of loose paper covered in Arabic writing. Back at Camp Taji, a massive U.S. Army base north of Baghdad, translators sifted through the papers and found evidence backing up what some U.S.troops who patrol Washash have come to suspect — that Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army are conducting what amounts to an ethnic cleansing campaign in Washash, a predominantly Shi'ite area with pockets of Sunni residents.

Sadr's militia, the document suggests, are systematically driving Sunni families from their homes around Washash, which some U.S. troops who patrol there have taken to calling Little Sadr City. Among the papers found in the raid is a list of 65 houses around Washash where Shi'ite families have replaced Sunni families. On other pages were drafts of threat letters clearly intended for delivery to Sunni homes. And there was a roster of "virtuous families" in the Washash area with house numbers written next to their names, so the militia relocation agents could keep track of people deemed fit to stay.

"They're very well organized," said Capt. Johnny Sutton, whose troops head up U.S. patrols in Washash.

Yes, I'll bet they are. And yet we had the commander of US troops in Iraq, General Pace, telling us yesterday that Iraq, "was NOT awash in sectarian violence."

Sectarian violence. What a neutered term. Let's call it what it is, ethnic cleansing. And when we've got the terminology right, let's go the rest of the way and admit that we, America, made this possible.

The United States broke a sovereign nation, resulting in the horrific deaths of thousands. I, like Billmon, am willing to accept responsibility for the horrid actions taken in my name.

Too bad the president is unwilling to do the same.

2:13 pm update: Apparently I spoke too soon. The preznit said he takes full responsibility for the war in his presser this morning. Buck stops here on Iraq: Bush. Unfortunately, he then went on to say that americans should return the people who rubberstamped that failure back to congress. Presumably so they could fail miserably some more.

I think we'll pass on that scenario, if it's all right with you, Mr. Preznit.

Maxx

Maxx is looking for a republican who is not crazy, corrupt or stupid.

Antidote

AP/Scott Lieberman

Something pretty to repell some of the ugliness we'll hear from Ken Mehlman and company today.

Tuesday night lion kitty.....

Lion kitty Maxx spent the afternoon hanging out with me, watching teevee.

Wanker of the Day

Joe Klein.

Overheard on Scarborough Country just now:

"Dick Cheney, legitimizing this guy Rush Limbaugh, is just as bad as democratic politicians rushing out to Las Vegas to kiss the ring of Daily Kos and the blogosphere."something of a paraphrase

I invite Joe Klein to come on over here and jump on my razor sharp, nuclear powered pitchfork. Right after you kiss my centaur ass.

Evening lion kitty Maxx

I am happy to report that lion kitty Maxx has abandonned the closet for the sofa. Oh, and it is a truism that if you throw towels on the floor, your cat will go nap on them.

Whopper Update

AP/Balce Ceneta**

Billmon has the update on Bartlett's nonsense from this morning. Bernhardt at Moon over Alabama went a googling and found 18 examples of the chimperor squawking, "Stay the Course! stay the course!! polly wants a cracker!!"

Someone with some time should count up how many times everyone on the Titanic has used the phrase. I'll bet there are hundreds. With congress pukes thrown in, the number is probably in the thousands.

Sheesh.

Next they'll be saying that democrats MADE chimpy invade Iraq.

**those are NOT thoughts flying around his empty head, trying desperately to get in.

Space News

Via National Geographic News, Colliding Galaxies Ignite Stellar Nurseries

October 19, 2006—Astronomers, it turns out, like to rubberneck too.

Scientists haven't been able to take their eyes off a nearby stellar collision. This image, snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope and released October 16, is the sharpest yet of the merging Antennae Galaxies.

The spiral galaxies, named for long antenna-like arms that extend far from the galaxies' centers, began colliding only a few hundred million years ago. The pair represents one of the closest galactic collisions to Earth, and one of the youngest known to science.

The reddish-orange blobs to the right and left of the picture's center are the two galactic cores—consisting mostly of old stars crisscrossed by filaments of dust (brown).

What has researchers really excited, though, are the blue star-forming regions, which are surrounded by hot glowing hydrogen gas (pink). Billions of new stars will be formed by the energetic collision, scientists say.

The brightest and most compact star-forming regions are called super star clusters.

By determining the age of clusters in the image, scientists now know that only about 10 percent of super star clusters will last for a substantial amount of time. These collections will most likely go on to form globular clusters—densely packed spheres of stars that orbit a galaxy—similar to globular formations in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

The rest of the super star clusters will disperse, with the stars born there disappearing into the galaxies' background.

Sometimes my despair at the ugliness of the affairs of man threatens to overwhelm me. (Or at least make me drink heavily.) The beauty of space always restores me. Glorious!!

Turtles, oh my!

Via National Geographic News, which has just posted it's annual "Best Wildlife Photographs of the Year." View the complete photo gallery here.

About the photo above:

Animal Behavior Winner: "Turtle Grooming"
Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition, 2006

This green turtle is getting a full-body cleaning and massage courtesy of local fish at Turtle Pinnacle near Kailua Kona, Hawaii.

U.S. marine biologist Andre Seale, who took this photo, says the protected green turtles that come here rarely have to wait long for such a treatment from the fish, though some get more attention than others.

"Not all turtles attract so many fish, perhaps because of the amount of algae that's growing on them," Seale said.

The algae-eaters are colorful yellow tang and goldring surgeonfish, a species found only around the Hawaiian Islands. Also indigenous to the region is the saddleback wrasse, seen underneath, which feeds on dead and damaged skin.

"The turtles go up for a gulp of air, then come back down again," he added. "It's a bit like a car wash for them."

Delightful!

STAY THE COURSE! STAY THE COURSE!! BRRRKKK!!!!

About a year ago, one of the political cartoonists (Oliphant maybe?) had a very funny cartoon of the Bush administration as a sailing ship heading into a storm, with Bush as a parrot on Rummy's shoulder squawking "Stay the Course! Stay the Course!" I wish I'd have kept it.

In the meantime, ThinkProgress has the evidence of just how dumb the entire Bush administration is. Bartlett: ‘It’s Never Been A Stay The Course Strategy'

Would someone please explain to these yahoos the concept of an "archive"? It's not really a hard concept. Of course I realize that they don't want to let all the hard work of their planning for the new meme for the Iraq War to go to waste, but let's face it, ADAPT AND WIN!! is never going to catch on. Not only is it lame, but reality just doesn't support it.

Not only is the Pentagon not adapting or adjusting particularly well, they're not winning. And the whole world knows it.

Monday plush

Fall is a delightful time for little guys in fur suits.

Your Sunday plush

Lion kitty Maxx enjoyed the nice weather today, but not my efforts to take his picture.

Adapt and WIN!! err, or maybe not.

White House Photo/Eric Draper

So chimpy met with the usual cast of fools this morning at the White House and decided all those mean folks in Iraq were just trying to make him look bad. Bush: No Iraq Pull Out Until 'Mission is Complete'

President Bush met today with his top advisers and military commanders on Iraq, but he offered no indication of change in strategy in his weekly radio address where he vowed not to pull U.S. troops out until "the mission is complete" and said one of the causes of the increased violence in Iraq is the enemy's desire to break America's resolve.

"The terrorists are trying to divide America and break our will, and we must not allow them to succeed . . . ," Bush said.

He met with his council of fools and then went for a nice bike ride. Let's see, 78 soldiers dead already this month, suicide bombings, mortar attacks on civilians and a mounting toll of abducted and murdered civilians by death squads. Can't let reality get in the way of his fitness program.

Heck of a job, Bushie!!

Pay no attention to the coffins

AFP/Ali Yussef

I'd like to say that this is unbelievable, but in this era of the PR presidency, the UN is reporting that Iraq Seals Data on the Civilian Toll.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 20 — The United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country’s medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there, according to a confidential cable.

The cable, dated Oct. 17 and sent to United Nations officials in New York and Geneva by Ashraf Qazi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, says the prohibition may hinder the ability of his office to give accurate accounts in its bimonthly human rights reports on the levels of violence and the effect on Iraqi society.

Concern over the numbers of civilians who have died in Iraq has risen sharply at a time when organized attacks by insurgents are swelling the numbers of victims and when a new report from a team of Iraqi and American researchers shows that more than 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion.

I have no doubt that Bush told al Maliki that he needed to do something about the bad news coming out of Iraq if he wanted continued support from the US government.

What a travesty. Pretending civilians aren't dying in droves there isn't going to make it so. And nothing Bush does in his PR offensive is going to erase the stench of this catastrophe.

American voters won't be fooled either. The pictures don't lie.

I want to take a moment to salute the Iraqi photojournalists who have continued to work in incredibly dangerous circumstances to bring the truth to the world. Regular readers may have noticed that the photographs I post here often have arabic names in the captions. These are the stringers working for the Associate Press, Agence France Press and Reuters. The fact is that it is just too dangerous for western journalists to work in Iraq unless they are embedded with a military unit. The locals have stepped into the gap, risking their lives on a daily basis to bring the story to the world. We owe them our gratitude.

BTW, in the photograph above, a family is putting the body of one of their relatives into a coffin. He was killed in what is now commonly labeled as "sectarian violence," a sanitized description if I ever heard one. Just another of the nameless victims that chimpy and his puppet al-Maliki want to hide from the world.

Appalling.

QUOI??????????????

Overheard on Eschaton:

"Mena is Way cutier than the most adorable kitty."

Simply shocking. Though Mena is awfully cute.

Happy Friday!

Lion kitty Maxx is looking for the friday news dump- it's 4:00 pm in the east, so it should be any second now.

Late night lion kitty

It's gotta be friday somewhere.

Can you say....

Reuters/Jason Reed

...petulant little pissant?? I knew you could.

Kind of blurry

The previous plushy pic was a little bit fuzzy. I apologize, and give you more plush to atone for my sin.

Aiiiii YAHHHHHH!!!

"Whatch doing, four legs?"

So many things to talk about, and so little time to post. Visit with Mr. Plushy in the meantime.

Congratulations Vicki!!!

You are a superstar.

Swamped!!

I am back in the office and swamped, so please visit some of the nice folks on my blogroll. And give Mr. Plushy a virtual scritch.

His favorite spot

Maxx is a funny little guy. He picks a spot he likes to nap in and sticks with it for weeks at a time, then for no reason that I can see, he'll abandon it for a new favorite spot.

His current one is the floor of my closet. Silly cat.

RIP Habeas Corpus

Jonathan Turley on Countdown just now:

"This congress has just handed the president despotic powers."

I wonder when the American public is going to wake up? And are republicans aware that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 applies to American citizens?

Guess what, republicans? President Hillary Clinton is going to be able to lock your cracker asses up and throw away the key. How do you like those apples?

Stupid fucks.

And Ken Mehlman, you fucking penis head, kiss my centaur ass.

Lion kitty

A nice side effect of having his centaur home is that lion kitty Maxx gets to enjoy some time outside during the daylight hours.

The Eye!! the Eye!!

The fabulous watertiger points us to this bit of insanity from little Ricky Santorum, They really don't come any dumber:

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) explains the Iraq war by citing Lord of the Rings: “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum told a newspaper editorial board. “It’s being drawn to Iraq and it’s not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don’t want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”

As usual, he gets it ass backwards. We aren't the hobbits, off on a brave quest against the evil empire of Mordor. If you ask the rest of the world, we are Mordor. We are the uruk-hai. We are the evil hordes that invaded a country and devastated it.

I'd laugh at the level of teh stupid, but it just isn't funny anymore. The only consolation is that Pennsylvania voters are about to throw little Rickey out on his puppy raping ass.

A little strong? Hey, there is NO evidence that santorum doesn't rape puppies, is there? I thought not.

photo illlustration courtesy of watertiger

Monday afternoon

Once of the nice things about taking a sick day is the four hour nap I got to take with Mr. Plushy today.

He is such a good boy.

Brits go home

Reuters/Atef Hassan

Taken in Basra on Monday, a boy throws a rock at a burning british army vehicle.

Perhaps Poodle Blair would like to reconsider his "stay chimpy's course policy." I don't think the locals want you there.

Monday Plush

I'm at home today, under the weather. It's a good thing that I've got a plushy kitty to nap with.

Pony Blow, get on the rocket

The NYTimes reports that Pony Blow is out on the fundraising trail.

In the six months since Mr. Bush enlisted him to resuscitate a White House press operation that was barely breathing, Mr. Snow, a former Fox News television and radio host and a conservative commentator, has reinvented the job with his snappy sound bites and knack for deflecting tough questions with a smile. Now, he is reinventing it yet again, by breaking away from the briefing room to raise money for Republicans, as he did here on Saturday night for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

Mr. Snow, who will make 16 such appearances before Election Day, acknowledged he had entered “terra incognita”; to his knowledge, no other White House press secretary has raised money for political candidates while in the job. But with his star power from television and his conservative credentials, Mr. Snow, unlike his predecessors, is in hot demand.

snip

Yet even as the Republican establishment revels in his celebrity — “It’s like Mick Jagger at a rock concert,” Mr. Rove said — Mr. Snow’s extracurricular activities are making some veteran Washington hands, including those with strong Republican ties, deeply uneasy.

“The principal job of the press secretary is to present information to reporters, not propaganda,” said David R. Gergen, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and also advised President Bill Clinton. “If he is seen as wearing two hats, reporters as well as the public will inevitably wonder: is he speaking to us now as the traditional press secretary, or is he speaking to us as a political partisan?”

I'm sorry Mr. Gergen, but is there any doubt? And how is this even vaguely ethical? Pony Blow is an employee of the U.S. taxpayers, not the RNC.

Not that anyone working for chimpy has ever let ethics stop them. Really, these people are beyond appalling.

Go ahead and die already

Via TPM, reader DKM has posted a link to the Tom DeFrank article about tension between Poppy and chimpy at the christening of the SS Bushie. TPM linky here:

"Forty-three has now repudiated everything 41 stands for, and still he won't say a word," a key member of the elder Bush alumni said. "Personally, I think he's dying inside."

Well, regular readers won't be surprised by my reaction:

Go ahead and die on the outside too, you fucking old prat. You put, and continue to do so to this day, family loyalty above your loyalty to this country. It's your fault as much as anyone's that your "boy" has completely fucked this country up.

So fuck off and die already.

Lion kitty Maxx

The news is agitating me today, so I'll post a picture of a fluffy kitty cat instead.

Woodward Interviews Kerry

Okay, this is a "what the hell?" post. From the Washington Post, A Conversation With John Kerry

In the months before the 2004 presidential election, The Washington Post's Bob Woodward sought to interview Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, about how he might have conducted foreign policy in the 18 months between Sept. 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. For his book "Plan of Attack," Woodward had interviewed President Bush on how and why he made decisions during that same period. Woodward gave the Kerry campaign a list of 22 questions based on Bush's actions, asking how Kerry would have responded at each key decision point if he had been president. Kerry declined the interview at the time. More than a year later, on March 7, Kerry agreed to be interviewed by Woodward and answer the 22 questions.

Okay, Woodward interviewed John Kerry more than a year after the election. Why is the Washington Post just getting around to publishing this interview now?

Piling on? Well, okay, have at it.

Or were they afraid to publish something that so explicitly criticizes the chimperor until his polls were in the cellar?

One thing's clear, the contrast between the thoughtful way that John Kerry would approach a problem and chimpy's "I listen to my gut" nonsense is startling. What a clusterfuck the entire Bush presidency has been. As Kerry said at the end of the interview:

I think history is going to be very, very tough on not just the way the war has been managed, but on the way in which the decision to go to war was carried out. It's going to be a low moment . . . in the presidency in history.

History is going to be scathing, not just on the Iraq war, but on everything this president has touched. Everything.

Meanwhile, back in hell

46 Iraq Sunnis Killed in Revenge Rampage, via the WAPO.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Suspected Shiite militiamen killed at least 46 Sunni Arabs in a weekend rampage of revenge killing in a city north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday, raising the toll in the latest sectarian bloodletting there to 63.

A string of bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk killed 10 people, including two girls who died when a man detonated explosives strapped to his body in front of the al-Mallimin girls high school in downtown Kirkuk, police officials said.

If you read the whole article, it's a catalog of horrors. And it's the violence report from one day. I can't imagine how Iraqi civilians feel living in the middle of this carnage.

Meanwhile, the pentagon reports 5 more Americans died there:

The U.S. military reported the deaths of a Marine and four soldiers. The Marine was killed in combat in Anbar province, the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad on Saturday.

Three soldiers died in a roadside bombing Saturday south of Baghdad, and one soldier was killed in a roadside bombing Friday night southwest of the capital.

The marine appears to have been the lucky one- he was merely shot to death (I assume.) The others were blown apart by roadside bombs.

The terrible thing is that the deaths of these soldiers didn't even merit a separate article. Just more numbers, I suppose.

A pox on everyone who wanted this war.

More plush

Lion kitty Maxx has gone out for a prowl, so in the meantime we have some "kitty in a box."

Saturday after noon

Lion kitty Maxx does his best Curly imitation.

extra bonus plush

"Four legs, are all republicans corrupt, greedy, thieving assholes?"

"Yes kitty, sadly, they are."

Dogs are silly

AP/David Duprey

If Brutus had proper snow shoes like Mr. Plushy, he wouldn't be in this fix.

Space News

NASA

Artist’s concept of Epsilon Eridani, the nearest extrasolar planet to our solar system.

Atronomers confirm that planets form from disks around stars, the McDonald Observatory announced.

PASADENA, Calif.—Astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin have gone a long way toward proving that planets are born from disks of dust and gas that swirl around their home stars, confirming a theory posed by philosopher Emmanuel Kant more than two centuries ago.

G. Fritz Benedict and Barbara E. McArthur have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with ground-based observatories, to demonstrate that Kant and scientists were correct in predicting the source of planet formation.

snip

Benedict and McArthur’s observations show for the first time that a known planet orbiting the nearby sun-like star Epsilon Eridani is aligned with the star’s circumstellar disk of dust and gas. The planet’s orbit is inclined 30 degrees to Earth, the same angle at which the star’s disk is tilted. Epsilon Eridani is 10.5 light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus.

The planets in our solar system share a common alignment, evidence that they were created at the same time in the Sun’s disk. But the Sun is a middle-aged star—4.5 billion years old—and its debris disk dissipated long ago. Epsilon Eridani, however, still retains its disk because it is young, only 800 million years old.

No one tell the fundies!

Extra cat blogging

Cause we know Atrios isn't going to give us kitties.

Or new macs.

Friday Plush

Ah, the life of a kitty.

US Forces Killed British Reporter

Via the AP, a british coroner has ruled that US forces unlawfully killed a wounded ITN reporter in the opening days of the Iraq war. Article here:Coroner: U.S. killed British TV reporter

OXFORD, England - A coroner ruled Friday that U.S. forces unlawfully killed a British television journalist in the opening days of the Iraq war.

Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he would ask the attorney general to take steps to bring to justice those responsible for the death of Terry Lloyd, 50, a veteran reporter for the British television network ITN.

Witnesses testified during the weeklong inquest that Lloyd — who was driving with fellow ITN reporters from Kuwait toward Basra, Iraq — was shot in the back by Iraqi troops who overtook his car, then died after U.S. fire hit a civilian minivan being used as an ambulance and struck him in the head.

"Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming," Walker said. "There is no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces. There is no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire."

Will the pentagon allow those responsible to be brought to justice? somehow, I doubt it.

Late night kitty

"4lgs made me come in for the night, so I guess I'll play with my toys."

your daily plush fix

Before anyone starts whining and stuff.

More photography

While we're on the subject of photography, this beautiful shot of Grouse Mountain in Pikes Peak National Forest was taken by National Geographic photographer Thomas Cooper during the 2003 fire season.

It's included in National Geographic's new collection, The Best Mountain Photography.

Photo of the Month

National Geographic/Aris Messinis

Via National Geographic, this amazing photo was snapped during a thunderstorm over the Acropolis. National Geographic online has a number of free newsletters, including one of amazing photography, which includes wallpapers and other goodies from NG's incredible archive.

Also, check out this page on National Geographic News for the online archive to "Photos in the News."

The plushy is a tramp

He is completely shameless.

Iraq is even more broken

From today's report in the Lancet, Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000.

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

snip

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

I think it's time to stop saying that the Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam. Some mealy ass senator (too lazy to look up the quote) said that we (Americans) wouldn't care much about civil rights if we were dead.

The corollary to that is that dead Iraqis couldn't care less about peeance and freeance. Since they haven't got either.

And WTF is up with this? Bush: Iraqis Are Willing To ‘Tolerate’ This ‘Level Of Violence’

Today in his press conference, President Bush applauded the courage of Iraqis, stating that he is “amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.”

They "tolerate" violence? Bush is flat out delusional. As ThinkProgress notes, nearly a million people have fled Iraq to escape the violence. The people that are staying have no choice in the matter. They're just trying to stay alive from one day to the next.

As a wag on ThinkProgess notes: "Mad cow is eating his brain like an hor’s d’ouvre."

Just so, just so.

Mr. Plushy!!

Does this cat look unloved to you?

Gorgeous

I love technology, and I love when people find interesting ways of using it to create art.

Via the NY Times, take a look at the amazing images scientist Thomas Eisner is creating with a common color copier. Eye-Catching Images of Nature, Made With a Common Machine

In 1952, Thomas Eisner, a graduate student at Harvard, drove around North America for two months with a fellow student, Edward O. Wilson, to see the country and its insects. For the past half century, Dr. Eisner, now an emeritus professor at Cornell, continued his travels in the fields of entomology, evolutionary biology, chemical ecology and conservation. Some of his best-known research was on the explosive chemical outburst of the bombardier beetle, which he and his colleagues analyzed and photographed.

snip

Recently, however, the limitations of Parkinson’s disease led Dr. Eisner to explore the capabilities of a new tool for capturing the natural world: the color copier. Now commonly available, the copier, he writes in an e-mail message, “can serve for the inventive generation of imagery, for composition of novel pictorial arrangements, and in that capacity find use in the expression of fantasy.”

Go read the whole thing, and take some time to look at the photo gallery on the NYTimes Website. The images are exquisite.

Oy

I am a bad, bad parent. I refilled lion kitty Maxx's prescription last night, and while reading the label, I realized that I had been giving him his antibiotics incorrectly for the past month. I wasn't giving him enough.

No wonder he tried to run off with a co-ed last night.

(I shall slink away in shame now.)

Titanic Watch!! Look out below!!

GOP Officials Brace for Loss Of Seven to 30 House Seats

Republican campaign officials said yesterday that they expect to lose at least seven House seats and as many as 30 in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, as a result of sustained violence in Iraq and the page scandal involving former GOP representative Mark Foley.

Just an observation, but if they are publicly admitting they may lose as many as 30 seats, the real number in play is probably closer to 50.

Pass the popcorn.

Meanwhile, more progress

AP/Khalid Mohammed

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, progress!! Another 60 Bodies Found in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Authorities found the mutilated bodies of 60 men in Baghdad in the 24 hours ending Tuesday morning, likely the latest victims of the sectarian death squads that roam the capital.

The bullet-riddled bodies all had their hands and feet bound and showed signs of torture _ hallmarks of death-squad killings, police 1st Lt. Mohamed Khayon said.

The death toll of tortured and mutilated citizens is running about 50 a day. That's 1500 people a month. This is horror beyond my imagination. These people aren't just being pulled off the street and shot, someone is abducting them and torturing them first.

Hideous. Though I'm sure Bush will tell us we're making progress in the fight to populate the afterlife with tortured souls.

In the meantime, Jane Arraf of NBC News, reports from Baghdad on the NBC Baghdad Blog. Calling Bob in Baghdad:

Some readers and viewers think we journalists are exaggerating about the situation in Iraq. I can almost understand that because who would want to believe that things are this bad? Particularly when so many people here started out with such good intentions.

I'm more puzzled by comments that the violence isn't any worse than any American city. Really? In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day? In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers?

To be truthful, there's not much the Bush administration won't try to explain away, but it's clear the American public sees this disaster for what it is. Not that that matters, Bushco isn't listening anyway.

Late shift plushy

He is a tramp, but he always comes home.

After all, this is where the paté is.