Saturday update

Young lion kitty Maxx is doing fine tonight. He's out for a prowl and seems to be putting a little flesh back on.

Friday Kitty-cat blogging

Retro plushy!!

The vet is saying the bartonella test won't be back for another week (grrrr). In the meantime, the receptionist said it's fine that he's out of antibiotics, he can wait another week. (double grrrrr) "No, go back and speak to the doctor again. We do not want Mr. Plushy to have a relapse since his mouth isn't healed yet, now do we?" No call-back yet.

In the meantime, Mr. Plushy felt well enough to go out for a prowl last night and to play with his particle accelerator. If he'd just start killing his carrot again I'd feel we were really getting somewhere.

Update:
The vet called back and said antibiotics should continue for the time being. I'm sure lion kitty Maxx will be annoyed, but I'm relieved.

The plushy report

Lion kitty Maxx is doing just fine today, still on the mend. He sends purrrrrs out to all of his plushy thralls.

Mr. Plushy!!

For his fan club.

Busy Day

A very, very busy day for me, but rest assured, Mr. Plushy seems to be on the mend. In the meantime, go read Billmon, he has all the scoop on the Israel/Lebanon clusterfuck.

It appears to me that the Israelis have simply lost their minds. My suggestion to them is that they quit listening to Cowboy George and Biggus Dickus. They don't know what the fuck they'e doing. And now, it appears the Israelis don't either. And the entire arab world knows it.

Get a grip.

Condolences

Max Baucus's (D-Montana) nephew was killed in Anbar province over the weekend.

Montana senator's nephew dies in Iraq

Terrible.

Plushy update

Lion kitty Maxx was sleeping peacefully in my desk chair when I left for work this morning, so all seems well for now. His abcess is still draining, but he seems comfortable enough. (Once I held him down and squirted his antibiotics in his mouth)

Thanks for all the good vibes everyone has been sending.

So far so good

The first round of tests came back and so far it looks like it's just an infection. We won't know for sure without a biopsy, but with his history we're going to wait and see how he responds to the antibiotics. No bartonella results until the end of the week.

Many thanks to all of you who sent Mr. Plushy good juju today.

Send good juju now, please

Mr. Plushy isn't feeling so brave today. And neither am I, for that matter. I'm worried sick that his tests are going to come back showing that he has a malignancy.

Any positive spells, prayers or other alternate dimension interventions would be appreciated.

Brave kitty blogging

Mr. Plushy is being very brave about taking his meds today. What a good boy.

Insanity

I had the misfortune to log onto c-span to stream the presser with Blair and Bush today. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. From Bush:

BUSH: It's an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.

For a while, American foreign policy was just, "Let's hope everything is calm" -- kind of, managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

Too bad Bush doesn't have a fucking clue what the root causes of terrorism are, and he is clueless to the fact that our actions today are going to be the root cause of terrorism for decades to come.

"This is a moment of intense conflict in the Middle East," Bush said in an appearance with Blair in the East Room. "Yet our aim is to turn it into a moment of opportunity and a chance for a broader change in the region."

Another moment of clarity, eh?

What's crystal clear to every arab on the planet is that Bush thinks large numbers of arab civilian casualties are acceptable as long as the US and Israel are safe. That message is unmistakable.

This nonsense that "they hate us for our freedom" has got to stop. They hate us for what we do, pure and simple.

I have to ask, isn't there a single, sane person around Bush who has the balls to stand up and tell him he's off his fucking rocker? And would someone put Blair back in his kennel? His yapping is beginning to get on my nerves.

I am astonished, once again, that a man so profoundly stupid, so profoundly ignorant of both world affairs and human nature is president of the United States.

Let the plushypalooza commence!!

Just because this week has been so fucking depressing.... I think everyone, including lion kitty Maxx, could use a little cheering up.

I hate the vet

Mr. Plush is not a happy camper today. I tell him that going to the vet is going to make his mouth feel better, but he is having none of it.

All he knows is that I broke my promise and left him there for hours and the vet poked him in the mouth with a needle. And someone stuck a thermometer up his butt.... and he saw that package on the counter.... four legs is gonna make him take some nasty medicine tonight.

Hmmmffff.

The Peep Strikes Back!!

Eeeeeeek!!!!!!!!

There's a peep on my cat.

tigers

Reuters/Thierry Roge

Just because.

Ecological Disaster

Reuters/Jamal Saidi

This makes me furious.

Oil spill adds ecological crisis to Lebanon's agony

BEIRUT, July 27 (Reuters) - Along Lebanon's sandy beaches and rocky headlands runs a belt of black sludge, 10,000 to 30,000 tonnes of oil that spilled into the Mediterranean Sea after Israel bombed a power plant.

Lebanon's Environment Ministry says the oil flooded into the sea when Israeli jets hit storage tanks at the Jiyyeh plant south of Beirut on July 13 and 15, creating an ecological crisis that Lebanon's government has neither the money nor the expertise to deal with.

"We have never seen a spill like this in the history of Lebanon. It is a major catastrophe," Environment Minister Yacoub al-Sarraf told Reuters.

"The equipment we have is for minor spills. We use it once in a blue moon to clean a small spill of 50 tonnes or so. To clean this whole thing up we would need an armada ... The cost of a full clean-up could run as high as $40-50 million."

The spill is especially threatening since fish spawn and sea turtles nest on Lebanon's coast, including the green turtle which is endangered in the Mediterranean, local ecologists say.

I am sorry, but it is not permissable to burn down your neighbor's country and kill its people to get at the bad guys. They are every bit as criminal as anyone in Hezbollah.

(hat tip to that fabulous equine, smarty jones)

Daily plush fix

The little scamp has been remarkably camera shy lately.

Plushy Action Alert - Save Benjy

I was doing some research this afternoon and I stumbled across this website. I encourage all of you to go there and read the story of Benjamin Margulies. Benjy has Tay Sachs disease and he needs our help.

When he was originally diagnosed, Benjy's parents found a doctor who was pioneering a stem cell therapy to treat Tay Sachs. Benjy was approved for the experimental treatment, and his insurance company, Aetna, approved payment for the treatment.

The treatment stopped the progress of the disease, and after months of therapy, Benjy had been making good progress, but in the spring of 2006, Aetna decided they would no longer pay for the nursing and therapy.

Please take a minute and help Benjy by writing to Ronald Williams, the CEO and President of Aetna and politely (please be polite) thank him for agreeing to review this decision and ask him to not abandon Benjy.

We can't help all the children in Baghdad or Beirut tonight, but maybe we can help this one little boy. BTW, Benjy's dad was one of the original "draftwestlyclark" guys, so he's one of us.

Thanks. Mr. Plushy will luv ya for it. (AND IF YOU DON'T WRITE I'LL WITHHOLD PLUSH FOR A MONTH!!)

Your daily Plush

Yes, it's a rerun, but one goes to blog with the plush one has, not the plush one wishes for.

Children of a Lesser God

Reuters/Nikola Solic

"...what future other than one of fear, frustration, financial ruin and fanaticism can stem from the rubble?"

Fuad Siniora
Prime Minister, Lebanon
July 26, 2007
Siniora's Agony

What future indeed? Via Froomkin, A Whole New War