It's almost time for a terrorist alert!

It's one week until the mid-term election and Republicans are getting desperate. DC news reported tonight a "suspicious package" outside The White House. The Secret Service are investigating.

I wonder how long it will take for them to find Karl Rove's fingerprints all over the package? Well, unless he delegated this one to Ken Mehlman.

Stay tuned!

Happy Halloween!

Sunday Funnies

o

The woodpecker appears

Finally, I've gotten some photos of that woodpecker that comes to the suet feeder:

Not very clear, but you can see the red patch on the nape in the first one, and the second one is a little clearer. I've really got to get better at focusing. At any rate, I finally got this guy.

It's a very cold and very windy day today, and the sun is shining into partial cloud cover. Everything has a beautiful golden glow; this is my favorite time of the day. I took a few photos of the view out the back door:
The ducks--dozens of them--were really active this afternoon, circling the marsh, flying away, then coming back finally to settle in.
It's probably hard to see on the web, but when you look closely at the duck pair there, on the right side duck, you can see his little legs trailing behind him. It was really cute.

My inability to capture with a camera the things I see with my eyes frustrates me. I know the eyes are far better able to adjust and color the world than a lens ever could be, but I think that I might someday be a better photographer and capture images in a better fashion.


A puffed-up little sparrow lit on a fencepost, but when I tried to creep closer, he flew away.The sky is beautiful right now:

I really like this one, taken just left of the fast-setting sun:

I like the way mists cling to the mountains like puffs of smoke and then they rise into the sky:
Finally, a shot of one of my favorite things: the moon.

Why Republicans Should Lose on Nov 7

The 2006 elections might go down in history as the worst year for mudslinging ever ... that is if the Republicans have anything to say about it. And they are saying/slinging quite a lot!

It shows the utter desperation Republicans feel right now, as the party begins to crash and burn.

Head (of State) games

The trouble starts at the top as Bush lies about whether or not he ever said we should "stay the course" in Iraq.

The Washington Post reports:

President Bush and his aides are annoyed that people keep misinterpreting his Iraq policy as "stay the course." A complete distortion, they say. "That is not a stay-the-course policy," White House press secretary Tony Snow declared yesterday.

Where would anyone have gotten that idea? Well, maybe from Bush.

"We will stay the course. We will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed," he said in Salt Lake City in August.

"We will win in Iraq so long as we stay the course," he said in Milwaukee in July.

"I saw people wondering whether the United States would have the nerve to stay the course and help them succeed," he said after returning from Baghdad in June.

Oops ... it seems the president forgot there is a press corp reporting virtually everything he says. The Washington Post story went on to say: ". . . the White House is cutting and running from "stay the course." A phrase meant to connote steely resolve instead has become a symbol for being out of touch and rigid in the face of a war that seems to grow worse by the week, Republican strategists say."

The Cheney Factor

When asked in an interview with conservative talk radio host Scott Hennen of WDAY in Fargo, N.D. -- "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" the Vice President responded, "Well, it's a no-brainer for me."

Backpeddling on Friday The Washington Post reports:

Cheney said that he was not referring to an interrogation technique known as "waterboarding" when he told an interviewer this week that dunking terrorism suspects in water was a "no-brainer."

Cheney told reporters aboard Air Force Two last night that he did not talk about any specific interrogation technique during his interview Tuesday with a conservative radio host.

"I didn't say anything about waterboarding. . . . He didn't even use that phrase," Cheney said on a flight to Washington from South Carolina.

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Cheney was not talking about torture: "You think Dick Cheney's going to slip up on something like this? No, come on."

Asked about Cheney's comments at a photo shoot on Friday, President Bush said, "This country doesn't torture, we're not going to torture."

"Is the White House that was for torture before it was against it, now for torture again?" Sen. John Kerry said.

And now a word from the pundits

Earlier this week radio talk show host, and self proclaimed drug addict, Rush Limbaugh accused actor/activist Michael J Fox of either "going off his medication" or "acting" in ads Fox produced for Congressional candidates who support stem cell research.

In a response to the charges, Fox defended his appearance in recent political campaign ads, saying he was neither acting nor off his medication for Parkinson's disease.

On the contrary, he had been overmedicated, the actor said during an interview aired on Thursday's "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric."

"The irony of it is that I was too medicated," Fox told Couric, adding that his jumpy condition as he spoke to her reflected "a dearth of medication - not by design. I just take it, and it kicks in when it kicks in."

"That's funny - the notion that you could calculate it for effect," he said. "Would that we could."

More Republican Dirty Tricks

In an article titled "The Year of Playing Dirtier" the Washington Post presents just a few of this election season's Republican dirty tricks. Seems Rove and the gang are working overtime to try and salvage their sinking ship.

The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit.

Here are just a few of the negative ads the Post calls "Positively Surreal":

· Rep. Ron Kind pays for sex!

Well, that's what the Republican challenger for his Wisconsin congressional seat, Paul R. Nelson, claims in new ads, the ones with "XXX" stamped across Kind's face.

It turns out that Kind -- along with more than 200 of his fellow hedonists in the House -- opposed an unsuccessful effort to stop the National Institutes of Health from pursuing peer-reviewed sex studies. According to Nelson's ads, the Democrat also wants to "let illegal aliens burn the American flag" and "allow convicted child molesters to enter this country."

· In New York, the NRCC ran an ad accusing Democratic House candidate Michael A. Arcuri, a district attorney, of using taxpayer dollars for phone sex. "Hi, sexy," a dancing woman purrs. "You've reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line." It turns out that one of Arcuri's aides had tried to call the state Division of Criminal Justice, which had a number that was almost identical to that of a porn line. The misdial cost taxpayers $1.25.

· In Ohio, GOP gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell, trailing by more than 20 points in polls, has accused front-running Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland of protecting a former aide who was convicted in 1994 on a misdemeanor indecency charge. Blackwell's campaign is also warning voters through suggestive "push polls" that Strickland failed to support a resolution condemning sex between adults and children. Strickland, a psychiatrist, objected to a line suggesting that sexually abused children cannot have healthy relationships when they grow up.

· The Republican Party of Wisconsin distributed a mailing linking Democratic House candidate Steve Kagen to a convicted serial killer and child rapist. The supposed connection: The "bloodthirsty" attorney for the killer had also done legal work for Kagen.

· In two dozen congressional districts, a political action committee supported by a white Indianapolis businessman, J. Patrick Rooney, is running ads saying Democrats want to abort black babies. A voice says, "If you make a little mistake with one of your hos, you'll want to dispose of that problem tout de suite, no questions asked."

· In the most controversial recent ad, the Republican National Committee slammed Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) for attending a Playboy-sponsored Super Bowl party. In the ad, a scantily clad white actress winks as she reminisces about good times with Ford, who is black. That ad has been pulled, but the RNC has a new one saying Ford "wants to give the abortion pill to schoolchildren."

The Post goes on to say:

One GOP strategy has been raising the specter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal, becoming speaker; for example, Rep. John N. Hostettler (R-Ind.) is airing radio ads warning that a Democratic victory would allow Pelosi to "put in motion her radical plan to advance the homosexual agenda."

The RNC has raised eyebrows with an ad consisting almost entirely of al-Qaeda videos starring Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. There is no sound except the ticking of a bomb before the final warning: "These are the stakes. Vote November 7th." John G. Geer, a Vanderbilt professor who has written a book defending negative political ads, said he told a well-connected Republican friend in Washington that the ticking-bomb ploy seemed like a desperation move. The friend e-mailed back: "John, we're desperate!"

It's time to show this desperate group the door.

What Women Want

In the spirit of full disclosure I must confess that I adore Martha Burk. She's smart, has spunk, and is a wonderful mentor and role model for women and girls. Her southern drawl can be disarming, but when she is on a mission -- look out!

Here is a recent article, leading up to the elections.

____________________________________

What Women Want

Martha Burk
October 24, 2006

Martha Burk is a political psychologist and director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women's Organizations.

Democrats are slavering at their prospects on November 7, when, barring Osama coming out of the freezer on November 6 or another attack on American soil -- real or imagined -- they will take control of the House of Representatives. Voters are more irate than ever with Congress -- latest polls give it a 16 percent approval rating -- so they may turn out in record numbers for an off-year election. Women comprise a majority of registered voters, so should figure prominently in that turnout. That's good news for the Democrats, and it could be good news on a number of ballot initiatives around the country that will affect women's lives more fundamentally and more immediately than which party ekes out a slim majority on Capitol Hill.

The Republican Senate played games with the minimum wage right before they recessed to go home and face the voters. Tying an increase to yet another tax giveaway for the rich, the measure was defeated, but the vote will still allow for some grandstanding on the campaign trail. According to an analysis in the fall issue of Ms. magazine, voters aren't going to wait for a rerun in the new Congress. Proposed increases in the minimum wage are on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio. Since adult women are the majority of minimum wage workers, they're likely to pull the "yes" lever. (Even the Governator knows the power of the female vote. Having ticked off the state's nurses a couple of years ago, he just signed an increase in California's minimum wage in anticipation of November 7.)
(full story)

Desperate RNC runs racist ad

The RNC is running patently racist advertising against Harold Ford in Tennessee. Here is an analysis of the ad.

Historic Victory in New Jersey Supreme Court Opens Door to Marriage Equality

Statement from Freedom to Marry's Evan Wolfson:

Today's unanimous NJ Supreme Court ruling is a recognition of the equal needs and common humanity of committed same-sex couples and their kids. The Court said these American families are entitled to equal rights and responsibilities under the law. As the legislature moves now to implement the constitution's command of equality, we are confident that legislators will see that the right way to end discrimination in marriage is, indeed, to end discrimination in marriage, not repackage it. The easiest next step is not to cobble together a separate new system with two lines at the clerks' office, but rather, to end the exclusion from marriage itself with two simple words, "I do."

------------------------------
The Latest News

NJ court sends marriage issue to lawmakers
Reuters
October 25, 2006
Saying that times have changed, New Jersey's highest court on Wednesday guaranteed gay couples the same rights as married heterosexual couples but left it to state lawmakers to do the right thing.

268 key NJ leaders endorse 100 percent marriage equality bill
October 25, 2006
Today, immediately upon the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in favor of marriage equality, Garden State Equality released the following communique from 268 key New Jersey leaders addressed to Governor Corzine and members of the New Jersey Legislature. For further information, contact Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality, cell (917) 449-8918, Goldstein@GardenStateEquality.org

NJ Court backs gay and lesbian unions
New York Times
October 25, 2006
The court's eagerly awaited decision found that an arrangement similar to that of Vermont, which authorizes civil unions between same-sex couples but does not call them marriages, would be consitutional in New Jersey under the equal protection guarantees. The court gave the legislature a six-month deadline to enact the necessary legislation to provide for same-sex unions.

Drug Addict Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot

Rush Limbaugh is at it again. The drug addicted talk show host is attacking Michael J Fox for recording television ads in support of candidates who support stem cell research.

Fox has a long, and very public history as an advocate for stem cell research. The well respected actor announced in 1998 that he had been diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson's disease seven years earlier.

Limbaugh, who once said -- "Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. ... And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up" -- received what amounted to a slap on the wrist for his abuse of prescription medication.

Tonight Limbaugh appears to be trying to back peddle on his comments about Fox. I suggest Limbaugh do us all a huge favor and back peddle himself completely off the air.

Backyard photos, chilly fall day edition

I haven't posted any photos in a while, so I thought I'd go take some backyard photos of the marsh in the autumn.

We have an amazing number of white-crowned sparrows (updated ID thanks to Mike McDowell--I had "swallow"--what was I thinking?) here today. Here are a pair who let me get about eight feet away.

It's not a great photo, but I love the guy on the left's little expression and his profile. The birds really love that thicket (the one where we found the little Peeper) and I have thought about making a blind for myself and just setting up near it and snapping away. I like the red branches of this big woody-stemmed plant, though I don't know what it is.


Here are some other photos:

This is a sorry state of nasturtium unhappiness, I must say, though one flower refuses to give up! I don't know how he's surviving, but he must be huddling under the dead plants at night or something, because it's been very cold.

I don't know what kind of growth this is on an old stump in the yard. Here's another look at a more colorful specimen:For some reason I thought these were called "bracken" but that's actually a fern. So perhaps it's some form of lichen? I checked a lichen web site, and while I did find this little tidbit about a lichen that's used by golden plovers for nesting material, I didn't find any lichens that looked like this.

I saw a few ducks flying around over the marsh, their winter home.

It's hard to see but there's a duck flying above my head here (the black speck). I called this photo "lone duck sky" which sounds like a strange combination of an Asian and a Native American name. Perhaps I should make a sequel to Dances with Wolves?

Egg Hill, resplendent in its fall outfit

Here's some evidence of a woodpecker on this new suet cake I'm trying:
It's some sort of "red hot pepper" flavor, which according to the package was supposed to drive woodpeckers wild or something, but I haven't actually seen any birds on it yet. Still--someone's been pecking.

Now that's a lot of box elder bugs.

Here's a photo of the art studio/crazy uncle house/office/cottage I've been working on:

It used to look like this:
This is a view from another angle, but I had to show you the hideous faux brick tar-paper-siding stuff that used to be on it. We stripped that off, and later I was told by a friend that this siding had asbestos in it--uh oh. I guess it's too late to worry about that now. . . . At any rate, we've been redoing the windows and everything, just trying to make it look better than the eyesore it once was, and more like a little cottage or studio.

By this point, I was really getting cold, so I came inside to find Niblet doing a little reading:

He really loves his subscription to Vanity Fair. But then I've always suspected that he's one of those liberal weirdos who can't get enough of that Hollywood gossip.

(bunny experts: that glossy paper isn't bad for him, is it? He really loves it!)

"Hey, I haven't read that issue yet! Did you eat
the cover photo of that dreamy George Clooney?! Gees!"

Birds in Box Stores

This article came to me courtesy of Robyn Graboski, our local wildlife rehabber. Go swallows!

"Hi-tech Barn Swallows"
A couple of Minnesota Barn Swallows have raised the bar on the scale of "Swallow IQ." For the past four years, a pair of Barn Swallows has nested inside the lumberyard entryway at the Home Depot store in Maplewood, Minnesota. At least one pair has learned that if they fly a tight circle in front of the motion detector above the double doors at the entry to the Home Depot, the doors open. Each bird then flies one more loop as the doors open and swoops inside where the pair has built a nest atop a small pipe near the ceiling. When a bird is ready to leave, it flies a tight circle in front of the motion detector inside the doorway and the doors again open for Home Depot's small avian customers.

The press report:
Keith Stomberg, a supervisor at the store, first noticed the birds nesting inside in the summer of 2001. He was fascinated by their apparent learned behavior and left them alone to raise their families. It was a good place for the swallows to raise their young because there were no predators or bad weather. The pair typically raised two broods each year. When the birds returned to nest in 2003, he contacted the staff of the Non game Wildlife Program of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
Wildlife biologist Joan Galli observed the nesting swallows and was amazed to see how the birds had adapted to the unique setting in order to raise their families. "We typically think of the crow family and the parrot family as among the most intelligent of birds, " according to Galli, "but apparently the swallows have a few tricks of their own that help us appreciate how birds are constantly adapting to survive in novel human-created environments.

"Birds Opening the Coop" -- Kermit Pattison in The St. Paul Pioneer Press, 6/26/04:
Some barn swallows apparently have figured out how to operate motion detector doors at the Home Depot store in Maplewood in order to nest indoors safe from weather and predators.
Wildlife biologists from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources are observing the birds as an unusual example of learned behavior and adaptation to the human environment.
"I thought this is so unusual that it needs to be recorded and put in the book of knowledge on barn swallows," said Keith Stomberg, the Home Depot employee who first noticed the phenomenon. "This takes deductive reasoning. The term 'bird brain' now has got to be modified."
Steve Kittelson, a DNR wildlife specialist, said it remains unclear to what degree the swallows have "learned" to trigger the motion sensors. Obviously, the birds have figured out that if they circle outside, much as they would instinctively do in front of a closed barn door, they will eventually get through. The question is whether they realize that their own presence actually triggers the door to open.
"It's very interesting and amazing to watch that they can make this work to their advantage," Kittelson said. "It certainly gives them a secure site for nesting. They've eliminated a lot of predators and weather elements. They even have air conditioning."
This year marks the fourth spring the swallows have taken up residence inside the giant home improvement retailer at 2360 White Bear Ave. Now there are at least a dozen nests inside various entrances, said store manager Gregg Barker.
"They'll operate all the doors," said Barker. "All of them do. To get inside, they'll flutter right underneath these sensors until it opens."
The cavernous store has become an attraction for birdwatchers.
"One lady, she stops in once a week just to check them out," said Barker. "I had a couple of groups of bird watchers who come and set up videos to tape them."
Stomberg said he first noticed the unusual behavior about three years ago while working at the contractor's desk near a set of automatic doors.
He said the swallows would flutter by the motion detectors until the door opened and even would do so as a courtesy for birds on the other side who wanted to get through.
"One of the assistant managers locked the door early," Stomberg recalled. "The barn swallows weren't done yet. They actually picked him and harassed him until he unlocked the door like, 'Hey! Unlock the door dummy, I'm not done feeding my kids!'"
Stomberg said he called the Department of Natural Resources last year. The DNR officials who came to investigate last spring initially were skeptical, he said, but then "picked their jaws up off the floor" as they watched the birds.

Sunday Funnies

This is a few months old, but still funny ... and something to remember as you head out to vote on November 7 ! In his own words, Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, 8th District of Georgia.

Ahhhhhh . . .

. . . from my balcony at the hotel.

Until we meet again!

An early Sunday Funnies

Just When We Thought Voting Was No Laughing Matter

A very public typo. Ottawa County, Michigan “will pay about $40,000 to correct an embarrassing typographical error on its Nov. 7 election ballot.” The county must “reprint 170,000 ballots that were missing the letter ‘L’ in the word “public.” “It’s just one of those words,” the county clerk said. “Even after we told people it was in there, they still read over it.”

A 'Must See' Before November 7

Is this the beginning of the end of America? Keith Olbermann thinks so, do you?

A sad day for freedom

Warning: If you don't feel like reading a political post, head over to another birdy blog for a while. (But come back tomorrow!)

I actually posted some thoughts on this new Military Commissions Act of 2006 that the president just signed into law on my more politically leaning blog, Impeachment and Other Dreams, but it bears noting on every blog, history book page, and scrap of paper in America that yesterday, the rights and freedoms guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution were taken away.

Basically, from now on, if the government chooses to label you an "enemy combatant" or as a person who's given "material aid" to terrorist groups, you will be disappeared. As in "made to go away for a very long time and it's not to summer camp either." You will not have the right to even question your imprisonment. You will not have the right to see the "evidence" the government has compiled to prove their "case."

I recently read the first three books of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, and I have to tell you that what is happening now sounds very much like what happened in Russia in the last century.

Last year, Bush supposedly said that the Constitution was "just a goddamned piece of paper." I guess the stupidest man ever to hold public office is finally right about something. Hope he's happy.

Recharging your battery . . .

Sometimes it's good just to get away from it all and take a little break. I don't do it often, but it has been nice just relaxing in the warm Florida sun. I would encourage everyone to find time to get away. Go to the beach, hike in the mountains, or do whatever it is that you enjoy.

I've just spent a few days with friends on one of Florida's beautiful beaches. There was a book written about Florida many years ago titled, "Oh God, Not Another Beautiful Day." I know just what the author means!

I'll be getting on a plane soon for DC. Back to the hustle and bustle of a major political city. As I said in my profile, I love my work -- but it has been nice taking a little break.

A lot has happened while I've been gone, so I have much to catch up on. In the mean time, I think I'll go take one more look at the inside of my eyelids!

Be back soon.

BAC

Finally--a scope update

I'm sure you're wondering what's become of my homemade spotting scope. I haven't had much time to play with the scope or anything lately, what with my class, my job, and my work on the little cottage in the backyard. Here is an update, though there's very little news to relate.

Remember that I ended up with a huge objective lens, 80mm in diameter. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to go from my 1-1/4-inch eyepiece/image-erecting prism to that giant diameter. Before, I had just kept the smaller diameter tube from when I had the crazy non-color-corrected objective (remember the full-bore horror show?), then added a big adapter for the big objective. However, I had a big problem with vignetting, which Astronomy Boy reminded me meant that somewhere, my focal path was being interrupted. I figure it was somewhere in the barrel/eyepiece.

So I need to go get a bigger barrel (a little over 3 inches), then figure out how I'm going to bring that down in diameter to accommodate the prism and eyepiece. Perhaps something like this? (excuse the horrible MS Paint drawing you're about to see--I wish I had access to Adobe Illustrator or even PhotoShop, so I could create some decent graphics)










So--basically, I'm wondering if I can find some sort of adapter that sizes down in one step between a 3-inch-ish PVC pipe and a 1-1/4-inch pipe. I also have to find a pipe that's only slightly smaller than the 3" pipe in order to create the two-piece sliding barrel that will enable me to focus. This will require some hard time at the hardware store, playing around with all those crazy adapters and pipes and things.

I'm hoping to get down to the hardware store this weekend. Wish me luck, and if you have any suggestions at all--bring 'em on! I could use all the help I can get.

Evangelicals Duped by Bush Administration

I've asked it before, but I will ask again ... just how gullible are these folks?

Happy National Coming Out Day!

National Coming Out Day is observed on October 11 by members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities and their allies.


The day commemorates October 11, 1987, when 500,000 people marched on Washington, USA, for gay and lesbian equality. National Coming Out Day events are aimed at raising awareness of the LGBT community among the general populace in an effort to give a familiar face to the LGBT rights movement.

In the United States, the Human Rights Campaign manages the event under the National Coming Out Project offering resources to LGBT couples, parents and their children as well as straight friends and relatives to promote awareness of LGBT families living honest and open lives.

Candace Gingrich became the spokesperson for the day in April 1995.

For an explanation of "coming out" and related terms, see coming out.
______________________________
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bald eagle sighting

Yesterday, as I stood out in the backyard surveying my handiwork on the little cottage, I looked up and saw a real-live bald eagle flying over the treetops across the road. I've seen two bald eagles before, but both were in captivity at raptor centers. This was the first time I'd ever seen one in nature before, and it was unmistakeable--the brown large body, the white head and neck. It was a real treat for me, and another lifebird to add. (I don't count the birds I've seen in cages.)

I just wish I'd had my camera.

Sunday Funnies

While Republicans and their media pundits try and blame Democrats for the Foley scandal late night comedians know the real story.

The little peeper

A couple of weeks ago while we were outside working on the art studio/crazy uncle house/cottage, we kept hearing this little sound--mew mew mew mew mew mew--like a baby catbird calling its mother. We heard the sound for a few days in a row but couldn't find the source. It was coming from the marsh, but we couldn't see anything.

Finally, last Saturday, I found the source; it wasn't a bird at all. It was a little kitten! He was tiny, all alone, and meowing his little head off. Well of course when I tried to approach him he ran off into a thicket of multiflora rose. There was no getting him out of there, so I just put some food by the fence.

Next day, what do I find curled up asleep on the compost pile? The little kitten. We thought at first he might be dead, but he was alive. He let me pick him up and we brought him in and called our local PAWS and left them a message. Obviously, with our FIV+ babies, we couldn't have him around.

We quarantined him in Em's room and fed him some food and milk. Poor little guy--so small that his tail is still doing that little kitten shaky thing. Here's a picture of the boy:

He's very tiny:

He kept up that little "mew mew mew," and because we found him where the spring peepers usually live, I began to call him Peeper. Kat wanted to call him Catbird, but then shortened that to Birdie.

Needless to say, the other cats were not amused. Both of them wanted to know just what was making that noise and why it wouldn't go away. Clawsie got so vexed that she took to swatting at Kisses any time she heard little Peeper/Birdie making noise. Poor Kisses--Clawsie can be a cruel sister.

At any rate, we got him to PAWS, where he tested negative for FIV, FLV, and all the other bad things kitties can get. He had a little case of worms, but they took care of that quickly. He's now at a good foster home with a little playmate his age (about four weeks), waiting for a permanent home to find him.

Now that he's left us, I miss him. If he'd had FIV, we would've adopted him ourselves, but there was no way we could bring a healthy cat in. The risk would be too great for him and for our babies. But I'm glad we got to save him. We still haven't seen any potential mother-cats around, so we really have no idea where he came from. The marsh, I guess.

Little catbird.

Democrats: Take Back Congress or Find a New Career

Quick, someone give Republicans a bigger shovel! The hole they are digging for themselves is pretty deep, but then I said months ago the 2006 election was the Democrats' to lose.

The troubles keep mounting for Republicans.

Bob Woodward took the air out of George Bush's tires, and now the administration's plan to use Iraq and fear about terrorists attacks is going nowhere fast.

A new authorized biography on Colin Powell says the popular Republican was fired by the Bush Administration. More reason not to trust Bush & Company with the job of running the country.

Rep. Mark Foley is revealed to be a sexual predator, but the bigger news is the House Leadership knew about it years ago and left him in place to continue to prey on young boys.

Rep. Don Sherwood, a Republican fighting for re-election in northeastern Pennsylvania, says in a TV ad that he is "truly sorry" for cheating on his wife but denies ever abusing the woman he had the affair with.

Always ready to jump in and help, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has the perfect defense: Gingrich said Wednesday that Democratic sex scandals have been far worse.

That Newt, he's never at a loss for words!

Democrats needed to take 15 seats to regain control of the House. Foley's seat is now a given, as is apparently Arizona's 8th district, where Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe is retiring. According to conservative columnists George Will: "It seems the Republicans used the primary to vent, nominating a probably unelectable fire-breather on the immigration issue."

I don't often agree with George Will, but I do have to agree with the closing line of his column where he writes:

"If, after the Foley episode -- a maraschino cherry atop the Democrats' delectable sundae of Republican miseries -- the Democrats cannot gain 13 seats, they should go into another line of work."

Enough said.

Tony Perkins Pathetic Response to Foley Incident

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council wants you to believe it was fear of "gay bashing" that prevented Speaker Hastert and other Republican leaders from responding to Foleygate.


Perkins is simply another religious right bigot who is more interested in advancing the GOP than in doing the work of GOD. Perkins and FRC claim to support 'family values' -- and recently held a summit in Washington DC named the Value Voters Summit. Snake oil salesmen like Perkins wouldn't know a family value if it knocked on their front door. Just how gullible are conservative religious voters? I guess we will find out in November.

Cheers & Jeers for CBS Evening News

How can a network get one story so right and so wrong within 30 minutes? I watched CBS News with Katie Couric this evening, to see how the nations first solo woman anchor would report the news about the terrible school shooting in Pennsylvania today.

Unlike the coverage I'd watched earlier on NBC, Katie didn't let me down. She reported that little girls had been killed, and that less than a week ago other little girls had met a violent and tragic death. I thought to myself that it took a woman, with a woman’s sensibilities to recognize that little girls are under attack in this country and we'd better wake up and figure out why.

CBS gave extended coverage to the story, nearly nine minutes of the 30 minute broadcast. NBC had given the story less coverage, choosing instead to move ahead to the 'important' news the day -- of political scandal and fallout from the Foley incident.

I sat back thinking its good having a woman at the top of the news division, particularly one with two daughters. Couric seemed appropriately horrified by this senseless tragedy.

So how did CBS News choose to explain why this happened? In a new segment called “Free Speech,” CBS invited Brian Rohrbough, who lost his son during the Columbine shooting rampage in 1999, to provide some context for this tragedy. The following is a transcript of Rohrbough’s comments:

“This country is in a moral freefall. For over two generation the public school system is taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government. Replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak without moral consequences. And life has no inherent value. We teach there are no absolutes, no right or wrong. And I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including by abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children. Suicide has become an acceptable action, and has further emboldened these criminals. We are seeing an epidemic increase in murder-suicide attacks on our children. Sadly, our schools are not safe. In fact, we now witness that within our schools our children have become a target of terrorists from within the United States.”

This is COMPLETE and UTTER BULLSHIT, and actually CONTRIBUTES to THE PROBLEM.

Not only did Rohrbough fail to address the misogyny inherent in the two latest shootings (and many over the past decade), he contributed to it with this tirade against a woman’s right to make reproductive health decisions.

The sense of entitlement some men and boys think they have over women and girls contributed to this tragedy, and the ones that have come before. We need to take a serious look at how we raise boys, and what society allows some men and boys to get away with – shrugging off bad behavior with a 'boys will be boys' attitude.

And is Mr. Rohrbough blind to the contribution separation of church and state has made to why so many people in the US take part in worship services? Teaching a religious concept over sound science won’t stop school shootings, but it will kill any chance our children have of getting the kind of education they need to compete in a global economy.

Domestic Terrorism -- Girls Not Safe at School

For the second time in less than a week a suicidal man has decided to take not only his own life, but the lives of innocent little girls. When will the shooting stop? How many more little girls have to die before it's acknowledged that this society needs to figure out how to deal with male violence.

At this point I don't care why this man was upset. Early reports indicate he was taking "revenge" over something that happened two decades ago. Clearly whatever it was NONE OF THESE LITTLE GIRLS HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT!!

If these men are so upset that they are willing to enter into a situation that they know will bring an end to their lives, why don't they save others a lot of heartache and simply kill themselves.

It's clear this country does not allocate enough resources to mental illness. If people even have health insurance, most policies barely cover mental health care.

At some point society needs to address this, and the sense of entitlement that leads men, and boys, to carry out such violence. A few years ago there was a series of school shootings that involved young boys targeting girls and women because they have felt shunned by a little girl whose attention they were seeking.

How often do we hear about men taking the lives of their girl friends or wives, using as justification that if they 'can't have them no one else will either'. Crimes of passion are not about passion at all ... they are about men who have an inflated sense of entitlement.

It's got to stop.

October Surprise?

Liberals were expecting a Bush/Rove/Cheney October surprise, so go figure that it would actually come from Woodward, Foley and Powell.

The buzz had just started around Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial when news broke about Rep. Mark Foley's sex scandal. And now The Washington Post magazine tells us that former Secretary of State Colin Powell was fired by the Bush Administration.


The Post excerpt from Powell's official biography:

ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2004, eight days after the president he served was elected to a second term, Secretary of State Colin Powell received a telephone call from the White House at his State Department office. The caller was not President Bush but Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and he got right to the point.

"The president would like to make a change," Card said, using a time-honored formulation that avoided the words "resign" or "fire." He noted briskly that there had been some discussion of having Powell remain until after Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January, but that the president had decided to take care of all Cabinet changes sooner rather than later. Bush wanted Powell's resignation letter dated two days hence, on Friday, November 12, Card said, although the White House expected him to stay at the State Department until his successor was confirmed by the Senate.

All this, and October has just begun! Stay tuned.

Abuse of Power - GOP Cover Up

From the Executive Office to the Halls of Congress,
no one is safe when Republicans lead.

The War Against Women

The story is a few days old now, but still relevant. It's a story women hear about far too familiar with. Often it involves someone they know, but not always . . . and the victims keep getting younger and younger all the time.

I'm talking about violence against women and girls.

The media reported that last week a man in Colorado walked into a school and held several students hostage. What they didn't focus on was that all the students held hostage were young girls. Girls that were sexually assaulted -- and one young girl, Emily Keyes, who was assaulted and then killed.

As is often the case the man then turned the gun on himself.

This man terrorized these young girls for four hours before the ordeal came to a violent end. Can you imagine how frightened the young girls must have been. How helpless they must have felt against an adult man wielding guns.

What I keep asking is if these men are so unhappy why don't they seek help? And if they don't want to seek help or are not able to seek help, why don't they just kill themselves and leave young girls and women alone.

Houston, we have a monarch!

What's this?



Finally, on Day 30, our little caterpillar has become what he was born to be: a monarch.

He spent a few minutes trying out his little nectar sucker thing.
Look at the bluish tint of his right front leg in the sunlight.

He has a very hairy little body.

After a while, he managed to make it over to the railing of the front steps.

He's still out there, getting ready to fly.

This process of making it over to the railing took at least four hours. Is that normal? It's gotten rather cold tonight, so I'm a little worried about him. I'm glad he finally made it out of the ashtray.

I wish him all the best. Maybe he'll fly down past my parents' house in Harlingen, on his way to Mexico.

Adios, amigo. Que te vaya bien.