Puppy Love

Mutts - February 12, 2014

Olympian Gus Kenworthy and some lucky pups

I read two different stories tonight about people trying to save stray dogs from execution in Sochi Russia, including the U.S. Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy.

This was one of two photos from his Facebook page that were featured in a story on The Huffington Post. There was a sweet caption to this as well. "It's still love to a puppy".

The other story also on the same site was about a Russian man from Moscow, who drove all the way from there to Sochi to take in about a dozen dogs and then take them back to foster homes in Moscow.

I had first read about Putin arranging for literally thousands of dogs to be disposed of before the games began a few weeks ago and it made me sick to my stomach. You know that it will be an cruel death, and it's just one more heartless act from a brutal SOB.

Another recent story that has made me sick to my stomach is the giraffe in the Danish zoo that was killed and feed to the lions. I cannot even conceive of how they could do something like that. Zoo's are there to protect wild animals, not execute them. And to make matters worse this was all on public display. It's no wonder the staff are now getting death threats.

Buddies

This was featured on Huffington Post, and it is truly so sweet.

Stray Cat Takes Day-Old Puppy Off The Streets...from The Huffington Post

The pictures are from an article published today on The Huffington Post by Alexandra Zaslow. 

Earlier this year, we wrote about the interspecies love between a cat called Lurlene and a pit bull puppy called Noland.

Now, six months later, the Cleveland Animal Protective League, the organization that rescued the pair, has won a $25,000 grant from the Petco Foundation's 'Holiday Wishes Grant Campaign' contest.

A humane officer from the APL had stumbled upon a day-old pit bull covered in fleas in a Cleveland garage, Cleveland.com reported.




When the officer couldn't find his mother, she took the puppy to APL.

The team decided to place Noland with Lurlene, who had also been taken off the streets and had recently given birth to four kittens.

Molly, Noland's mother, was discovered later that day looking anxious and famished. Her owner, who was later convicted of animal neglect, had her chained up behind the home.

Since Molly was unable to care for Noland herself and he'd been getting along so well with Lurlene and her kittens, they decided to have the puppy stay with Lurlene's family in a foster home until he was old enough for adoption. He would occasionally go back to the shelter to play with his mom.

"Noland blended in with the family so well, he was even found using the litter box a few times," Judy Hunter, APL's director of development, wrote to Petco.

Eventually, he was placed in a foster home with puppies his age where he learned how to be a dog.

Sharon Harvey, APL's director, said their story encompasses all of APL's values, including "learning from them about the power of forgiveness and unconditional love and acceptance. And when you get right down to is," Harvey told Cleveland.com, "that's really what it's all about, isn't it?"

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Cat?

This cracked me up - any dog and or cat lover will enjoy this.

Teach Our Children Well

I read a very thoughtful blog post on The Huffington Post two days ago about teaching values to our sons to respect women. The author is Jim Wallis whom I had never heard of before, and even though he is apparently well known as a religious based writer, the article was pretty straight forward about the values of respecting women as being universal.
The more I think about the problem, I think he is 100% right that the biggest force for change starts in the home and the values we learn from our parents. I always give credit to mom & dad for the values and ethics that have informed my adulthood. If you like Jim's article, please pass it along.

I'm On My Soapbox Again

Yes, I am on my soapbox again, because once again I read something I find sickening. First there was an article about a Republican New Mexico State Representative that wants to make it a crime for a woman to abort if she ends up pregnant as the result of rape. Another article a few days later reiterates that, and then goes on to detail states where the rapist can claim custodial parental rights to have access to the child born of his rape.

It really makes me wonder if all Republican lawmakers hate their mothers. Otherwise I sure don't understand what is at the heart of all the decisions they want to force on all women concerning their bodies.

We Are Not the Top of the Food Chain...

If anyone is reading this blog, I hope that they can tell that I am a spiritual person, hoping for a world where human beings are striving to be better people and not wallowing in the depths of degradation. And I would hope that I'm not alone in that wish. This story about rape , actually two different events in India, could easily lead me to hate all men but I really don't want to live that way. But as a woman, reading about this hurts me to my core.

I have never been sexually assaulted, and I cannot imagine the hell these women went through. But an assault on one woman, is an assault on all women. One event after another this year, has made me feel like we have not made any progress at all in terms of prejudice and equality for women. Some countries are much worse than others in regards to how little respect women get, but no country is immune to the problem. I still cannot get over the fact that it is 2012, on the verge of 2013, and we still have so many people that are the equivalent of cavemen. We can be better than this, and we should be better than this.

There Is No Simple Solution

Okay, it's finally time for me to sound off on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

I have read a lot of commentary from people far more eloquent than I am, and I don't have everything linked here, but these are two articles from The Huffington Post from today, that I think are worth reading. The first is from Janelle Ross featuring individual stories as well as statistics for gun related deaths of children in the U.S. The other article is about the National Shooting Sports Foundation that ironically is based in Newtown Connecticut.

It's hard to know where to begin. I posted Mitch Albom's editorial from the Detroit Free Press a week ago. He was asking when we were ever going to find it okay to talk about gun violence in the U.S. His subject was Bob Costas who was battered for bringing up the subject after the murder/suicide involving a football player. As Jon Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show, if conservative pundits think it's not appropriate to talk about gun control right after a shooting, then we would never be able to talk about it, since there is at least one every single day in the U.S.

Another Free Press writer, Rochelle Riley had a editorial right after the shooting took place, and she sadly ended up referencing one of her own previous articles after the mass shooting in Aurora Colorado this summer. And that was her whole point; that we keep having this kind of violence, but nobody wants to do anything real about it, and she's sick of that hypocrisy.

And so am I. We cannot as a nation, continually entertain ourselves with violent media, whether it be video games, movies, or television, and then ask why when it happens in real life. We are hypocrites to watch this stuff, and not think that life imitates art. Our tolerance for violent movies and television continually increases, to me it's not a coincidence that the violence in our every day lives has increased along with it.

And the irony is not lost on me that the first victim of Matt Lanza was his mother, who owned the gun that was used to kill her. It blew my mind, when a friend was quoted as saying that she had them for protection. Protection, from what? She lived in an upscale neighborhood in a nice community.

After the shooting in Aurora this summer, I saw on the news that gun sales had dramatically increased. Then the question came to mind; I wondered if there were people in the theater that had a concealed weapon, and if so, did they make any attempt to use it to disarm James Holmes. If the reason that most people get guns is to protect themselves, how many times does that actually happen?

The NRA thinks that we should have more guns to fix the problem, not less. Having armed guards at every school in America is their solution. If shootings only occurred in schools, then that might make sense, but that's not reality. In the last week, the shooting in Newtown was the only public shooting at a school. There were two people killed at a shopping mall in suburban Portland Oregon 4 days earlier. And this week, there have been at least three other shootings with multiple victims, and not at single one at a school.

The head of the NRA also said that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun". I hope someone mails him a newspaper clipping about the shooting death of a girl here in Washington state earlier this year so he can see how wrong he is. A police officer's young daughter died in an accidental shooting when he left his loaded revolver in the family vehicle and another one of his kids shot her with it. If the police can't even be responsible with their own guns are there really any "good guys"?

When a mass shooting happens, every wants to arm themselves instead of take a serious look at why we have so much gun violence here. Having access to guns is a big part of the problem, but so is why they are used. Domestic violence and drug & gang related violence. When you consider that 1 in 17 Americans suffers from some level of mental illness, why should it be so easy for them to get their hands on a gun?

People that are driven to harm others will find a way, but should they be given such an easy route to harming as many people as possible in a matter of seconds? We want the freedom to have anything we want, but we don't want to accept the responsibility that comes with it.

Saturday Night Live - November 17th

I was catching up on the news online today when I caught this clip on The Huffington Post of New Jersey governor Chris Christie on SNL last night. It's pretty good.

Then I came across this other clip with guest host Jeremy Renner. I need to make it a point to catch up to this online.....

More Election 2012

I don't want to say that I enjoyed  This blog post from October 29th on The Huffington Post, in the sense that it's not entertainment; but for me it really hits the nail on the head. I don't for a second believe that Mitt Romney really gives a rip about most Americans, and in making our lives any better, I think he just wants to be President for the power.

Mike Luckovich, October 31, 2012

 The B.S. that has come out of his mouth, along with Paul Ryan is astounding. I'm going to try and articulate it as best I can; it dawned on me this past week that to hear them talk, most of the Republican candidates and pundits act like the sky is falling, ALL THE TIME. They act is if the world is going to come to an end for every single decision that President Obama makes. The level of fear that they seem to be operating under would cause so much stress you would think it would shorten their lifespan. It would be a lot more comical, if you they weren't serious, but they are.
President Obama has not accomplished everything he intended in his first term, and not as much as I hoped he would personally, but I know that his intentions are good, and that he will continue to try. And he did try, but has been demonized by Republicans from the beginning. If Obama gets re-elected, are they going to continue to fight him every step of the way? It's become the new normal to just slap a label on your opponent, and then react to everything they say or do as if it is actually fitting that stereotype, even when it's not. For me, the most offensive was to compare Obama to Hitler. Really? Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Yeah, he and Obama have so much in common, I don't know how I could have missed that.

Mike Luckovich, November 1, 2012

Then they even threw Chris Christie under the bus for praising President Obama's handling of the clean-up for Hurricane Sandy. How dare he not continue the party line of criticizing every single thing Obama does?
This would be a perfect time for Romney to put his money where his mouth is and donate billions of dollars to help out the victims of Hurricane Sandy since he thinks it's not the government's job.
You know who is helping out? It's neighbors helping neighbors. Every single major natural disaster it's the folks that don't have much that give the most. The rich stay that way, because they all think they don't have enough money, and therefore hang on to it for dear life.

Today's Parade magazine had a cover article on the election, and this was a side feature that I thought was pretty good food for thought:

Illustration by Yarek Waszul

Fixing Government
GOP strategist Mark McKinnon
• Pass “No Budget, No Pay” legislation that would dock legislators every day they fail to pass a budget on time.
• Require an up or down vote on presidential appointments within 90 days or the nominee is confirmed by default.
• End the use of filibusters to prevent a bill from reaching the Senate floor for debate.
• Allow members the ability, if they have a majority, to anonymously override a leader or committee chair’s refusal to bring a bill to the floor. The names would be made public after the bill passes.
• Make members come to work five days a week in session. Sync House and Senate schedules, with three weeks in D.C., one week at home.
• Introduce a “Question Time” for the president; on a rotating basis, the House and Senate would host televised sessions. And schedule monthly news conferences for the president.
• Have the comptroller general present an annual televised fiscal report to a joint session of Congress.
• Allow no pledges but the Oath of Office.
• Introduce monthly bipartisan gatherings, bipartisan seating, and a bipartisan leadership committee.
• Expand presidential power to reorganize or eliminate redundant parts of the federal government.

Mark McKinnon is a co-founder of No Labels, a movement dedicated to ending partisan gridlock.
http://www.parade.com/news/

Catching Up

Boo, Sunday October 21st

Woody, Saturday October 27th

Tom Cat, Saturday October 27th

I thought it was funny catching Boo sitting in the chair on the back deck like this. She's out there sitting in it right now as well, thanks to a mild afternoon.

Woody loves the quilt that Denise made for me, and he always cuddles up against the stuffed polar bear too. And surprise, surprise, he's sitting in the same spot today!


As usual I am playing catch-up on the weekend and trying to work in a fun project for work. I have to go get my mail at the post office and get my ballot, this is an election I obviously can't miss, and feel strongly about.

This is a good clip from The Daily Show from this past week. I had read a really good blog on Huffington Post towards the end of the week, but could not find it again today to link it here. It was about the reality of rape and statistics from around the globe, and the numbers were very sickening.
 There were references to several stories that I was already familiar with. One of them had to do with the on-going civil war in The Congo in Africa, and a doctor who treats women who have been so brutally gang raped by soldiers that they require surgery. I was reading that article within a day or two of reading about how someone had tried to assassinate him in an attack that left his bodyguard dead.
Sometimes, I just can't take reading about this subject, because it makes me so sick at heart. Last month there was a girl about the age of my niece that was gang raped in an apartment 6-7 blocks from where I live. I sat and cried thinking about her, and hoping that something like that never happens to Jennifer. I was talking to my good friend Gerry yesterday, and I told her that sadly, I don't think that we will ever get to a place and time where women will be able to truly live free, even here in the US.

Truthiness is Not a Joke, from The Huffington Post

Sophia A. McClennen

Professor, Penn State University; Author, 'Colbert's America: Satire and Democracy'

Truthiness Is Not a Joke: Lying and Loving It at the RNC

Posted: 09/02/2012 3:21 pm

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When comedian Stephen Colbert launched his show,The Colbert Report (2005), he introduced the word "truthiness" to the U.S. public. Speaking in character as a bloviating right-wing pundit, Colbert explained that truthiness was thinking from the gut, ignoring facts, and holding beliefs with no basis in reality.

At the time, his main target was George W. Bush, who had repeatedly told the U.S. public during his presidency that things he felt were necessarily true. The word also emerged in response to claims by the administration that the War in Iraq was about finding Weapons of Mass Destruction. You can watch the segment where he calls the WMD justification a flat out lie here:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

It didn't take long for "truthiness" to enter widespread use and it was named the Word of the Year by Webster's in 2006. In those early days, the word held the punch of satire and it encouraged critical thinking about the ways that truth was increasingly absent from policy decisions, media coverage, and public perceptions.

But whatever the context for the word's role in 2005, we have clearly hit a new era in political discourse where truthiness trumps truth all the time with little, if any, repercussions. The proof is in last week's Republican National Convention where truthiness was alarmingly on display at a rate we have never seen in U.S. history.

Each day as the speeches wound down, media outlets dedicated stories to fact-checking the speeches. After Paul Ryan's speech, Joan Walsh of Salon.com wrote that "Paul Ryan gave a feisty anti-Obama speech that will have fact-checkers working for days." CBS News reported that most of the major claims made by Ryan about Obama's record were misleading and untrue. Ryan then kept up his pattern of truthiness after the RNC when he lied about his best time in a marathon, shaving off more than an hour from his finish time. Seriously?

The master of truthiness-checking himself, Stephen Colbert also gave his audience his own version of the truth. Watch the clip where he fact-check's Ryan speech here:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Ryan's lying was followed by Romney's. Perhaps even more disturbingly, some media reporting found comfort in the fact that Romney's speech was not as lie-ridden as Ryan's. According toUSAToday the good news is that Romney's speech mostly included "puffery and exaggeration" in comparison to Ryan's flat-out lying:

In a speech heavy on anecdotal history but short on policy details, Mitt Romney avoided major falsehoods in making his case to the American public while accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. Even a key Democratic strategist, Bill Burton, a former press secretary for President Obama, tweeted shortly after the speech ended: "Romney actually avoided almost all of the lies from Ryan's speech."

While he may have avoided the same lies as Ryan, Romney's speech had its own fair share offalsehoods too.

And lest it seem like the fact-checking was simply a partisan matter, Sally Kohn of Fox News wrotethat "to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan's speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech."

So given the fact that we have learned that the RNC was full of falsehoods, why aren't the liars suffering from backlash? Why aren't their supporters enraged that the candidates they support were incapable of stating their positions and describing their differences with Obama without lying? Has the Republican Party simply given up on truth and embraced truthiness?

According to the Romney campaign's pollster Neil Newhouse it has. After the media questioned the accuracy of speeches at the RNC, he explained that "we're not going let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."

The politicians lied. The media proved the lies. But does anyone care? Nope.

Or at least they don't care enough. Polls showed that the RNC gave the Romney ticket a bump that now puts them in the lead. While post-convention bumps are considered common, it is worth asking why the lying and the public knowledge of it didn't make any difference. Shouldn't their numbers have gone down? Is our knowledge of political truthiness now just a joke with no punch line?

When Colbert first described truthiness his hope was that he could encourage the U.S. public to expect the truth from the nation's leaders. Colbert's truthiness was a joke -- but it was a joke that was meant to be taken seriously. In the world of satire the idea is to mock in a way that makes a difference. First we spot the truthiness and then we do something about it.

The worrying trend today is that even when there is abundant evidence of lying, there are no repercussions. It's a case of lying and loving it. And it needs to be stopped. If on Election Day we no longer care about the difference between truth and truthiness, then the joke will be on us.

I wanted to share this, because while I don't think any candidate is perfect, and even though I follow politics, I am constantly disgusted with what political races have become. The presenting of opinions as truths, and  all the money being thrown around by the same people that claim they are being gouged by government. Yet those folks always seem to have copious amounts of money to throw behind a candidate that is close to their heart. If even half the time and money that goes in to politics these days was spent on truly worth causes, most of the issues that every one is complaining about would be resolved...