Guns Again

UPDATE:  Here’s a link to the Knoxville Relief Fund.  They are collecting funds to help the injured and also for counseling for those who witnessed this terrible event.

Via The Moderate Voice

As happens every time some nutcase decides to go down in a blaze of glory, the gun nuts decide that what we need is more guns.  Mike Gallagher spent the first part of his show this morning arguing for it, claiming that the reason people were killed was because places of worship are gun free zones and label themselves as such.

Just as the Virgina Tech tragedy brought out the gun nuts advocating guns on campus, this horrible event will bring out the gun nuts again.  They want our society to go backwards, not forwards.  They want more people to have guns, not fewer.

Per usual, Gallagher and his friends ignore one aspect of what happened in Tennesee.  One man, Greg McKendry, stopped the shooter’s plan.  Why didn’t I hear his name on Gallagher’s show this morning?  Why has Bill Bennett ignored what happened?

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A Mistake I Had Only Dreamed Of

I screwed up today.  I have tried to be very careful not to let Dora in the same room as Tammy.  I have also had the fear of screwing up.  Usually I worried that it would be late at night, just as I was going to bed, or forgetting which one was in what room when I got home.

When Dora is in my room, and she needs to go outside, I put Tammy and Murphy in the other bedroom.  Dora always runs to that bedroom door first before running to the front door.

Earlier this afternoon, I forgot that Dora was in my bedroom with me and Tammy and Murphy were in the living room.  I was listening to what was on teevee through the bedroom door and just opened it to say something to Roberto, who was in the living room.  Dora rushed out and ran right into Tammy and Murph.  For a second we were all stunned, then Dora went after Tammy.  I fell to the floor between them and pulled Dora off Tammy.  Thankfully Roberto was here to save my mistake and was able to get Tammy into my room.

Instinctively, I grabbed Dora and held her to my chest as tightly as I could.  Murphy kept his distance.  He didn’t bark or come near Dora and me.  He just went up on his back legs, looking for help or direction.  Roberto got him out the front door.

It really shook us all up.   I really screwed up.  Roberto saved my screw up, and I am grateful, forever grateful.

Things are back to normal now.  Tammy was anxious earlier but has calmed down.  Murphy protected the yard all alone for a few hours and showed himself to be capable.  He’s now in here with Tam sleeping, while Dora is barking at nothing in the front yard.  Getting it out of her system, I guess.

I’m ordering an Anxiety Wrap for Dora.  My hope is that it will calm her down, not that she will ever be able interact with Tammy or Murph again.

Murph has been really sweet to Tammy this evening.  And he likes this plastic bone and his Kong toy.  He’s a good boy.  He showed it today and this evening.  Oh, and I almost forgot.  He even helped wash off the porch earlier by wiggling all over it while I sprayed it with the hose.

McCain Takes a Shot

On ABC news this evening, there was a preview of the interview McCain gave for This Week  tomorrow morning.  Since he can’t attack Obama on anything legitimate, he’s decided to claim that Obama disrespected the troops by not visiting Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.  He’s even got a campaign ad out on it.

“If I had been told by the Pentagon that I couldn’t visit those troops, and I was there and wanted to be there, I guarantee you, there would have been a seismic event,” McCain told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview to air Sunday on “This Week”.

The article doesn’t state if Stephanopoulos challenged McCain — not about the official reason Obama didn’t go — but rather about how MCain has followed Pentagon rules in similar situations in the past.  From Vote Vets:

The problem here is that the McCain campaign was denied a visit to a military base under the same policy back in April.

As they always say, go read the entire post and the comments at Vote Vets.  It’s worth the time.

I don’t think it’s tinfoil hat territory to speculate that the MCain campaign is getting a little help from the executive branch. (Remember his Colombia visit . . .)

Oh, and I just remembered.  McCain also recently put out an adblaming Obama for high gas prices.  But on the local news tonight, they reported that gas prices are declining — not because of anything Bush has said or done (which is what McCain thinks — and please just ignore McCain’s mixing of oil and gas prices . . .) — but because demand has fallen.

Also Predictable, but with Additional Crass on Top

The other day Obama was at the Western Wall in Israel.   Some people weren’t very happy about him being there.  He was respectful and as is the tradition, put a prayer, written on a small folded piece of paper, into the wall.

Well, some yeshiva student took the prayer from the wall, gave it to a journalist and a paper called Maariv published it. (via Meaningful Distractions)

Predictable

Today KTRH had a poll and Michael Berry has run with it.  He’s always thought that everyone else is ‘too clever by half.’   Clearly, he thinks he is simply ‘clever.’

Twice now, he has played the Yes We Can music with a Ronnie speech.

5:42 Godwin on Michael Berry’s show.  (7/24 Hour 1)

Obama in Berlin

Luckily, I got to both hear and see most of Obama’s speech today in Berlin.  The message, both in words and images, was more than I expected.

CNN had a live feed — it took me a while to get it going — before it started.  I had the sound off and just watched the shots of people gathering.  There were booths set up and a couple of guys were sitting precariously on a very tall lamp post.

I have two computers in my office, so I had the CNN preview on one and watched another video on another.  Poor John McCain.  He had to try to explain how the surge started in 2006 in front of a cheese case in a supermarket.  And I thought the juxtaposition of Obama with Petraeus and McCain in a golf cart with Poppy was bad . . .

While the Obama campaign is running like a fine tuned machine (knock, knock, knock, tu tu tu), McCain’s is fine tuning, again.  While Obama has a commanding lead with Latinos, McCain is supposedly making gainsin states like Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.  I’m waiting to see how the Votemaster weights these polls tomorrow morning.

Watching and listening to the speech today confirmed to me that I made the correct choice that day back in March, waiting in line to vote in the Democratic primary.  It’s another day that gives me hope.  And that hope can’t be dampened by listening to Sean Hannity for three hours.  Quite the contrary, listening to him reassures me (as if I needed it from him — and he’s really spinning it here at the end of his show as I type this).

Thinking about it — there is really no comparison.  What is Hannity but an entertainer hanging onto the coat tails — literally he follows Limbaugh on most stations — of the worst thing to have happened to AM radio?

Sometimes I think I have spent too much time reading and listening to the extreme right.  I don’t know.  I feel it is important to know what they say and think.

Michael Berry is on the radio now, so I should post this now before I turn this into a Michael Berry is a punk post.

And there he goes!

This and That

I listened to Dan Patrick for about 10 minutes on the way home today.  You know, he’s a local conservativetalk show host, radio station owner and Texas Senator.  He started off stating that he’s not going to just take conservative or Republican stands, and then turns right around and follows the standard line from McCain that Obama insulted the troops by stating that it has been more than the surge that has contributed to the reduction in violence in Iraq.

Of course, in making that point, Patrick ignores the self imposed ceasefire of the southern Iraqi Shiites, the piles of U.S. money and weapons given to the Sunis in Anbar, the mass emigration of millions of Iraqis and the partitioning of Iraqi cities into ethnic neighborhoods. 

Oh, and I wonder if Patrick is worried about insulting this guy, the so-called “father of the surge.” (That last link is to the front page and the info there will probably change, but for now it calls Fred Kagan that.)

Also, given that Patrick hasn’t really been a part of the military and might need some insight on the views of those currently and recently serving, you know, in Iraq and Afghanistan, he might want to read what they have to say.  (That’s an arm of VoteVets.)  I mean, despite the effort of the current administration, the military isn’t all conservative/Republicans.

Back to Patrick.  In that five minutes, he also called Obama arrogant because he believes his vision to be correct.  Then Patrick goes on to say that he feels the same way about his vision, lots of people do.  But Obama is arrogant. 

It’s not the first time that Patrick has said stuff like this.  I’ve found him just as happy to make stuff up as any wingnut talk show host.  Oh!!! That reminds me.  I didn’t have time to look it up on Lexis/Nexis today, but I will tomorrow.  Bill Bennett this morning said that when he was drug czar (how many times does he say that in a 3 hour show?  About a hundred times) he was invited to Alaska by a bunch of pot smoking Libertarians to debate pot smoking and 10,000 of them showed up — just three days late!  Dumbass pot smokers!  For some reason (past fibbing?) I just don’t believe the guy.  But I will look it up.

Next, my very most favorite wingnut, Kathleen.  You know, she’s the homemaker/blogger with a crush on John McCain and an unhealthy/distorted  viewpoint on black people.  Today she got a little confused and in a way showed her ass.

From her post at the Chron today:

I also noted, as did others, that the volunteer greets in Afghanistan for Obama seemed to lack “diversity.” Most of the faces were black. Why was that? I found it curious. After those initial meetings I suppose someone in the campaign noticed this and Obama started meeting with unit formations. Because it is all about the presentation here folks.

(As a side note, McCain is at a townhall in NH — the backdrop is pretty pale, but no matter.)

She had up another post from yesterday:

There is this politican. He is black, charasmatic, and intelligent. Now that may sound like Obama, but this guy happens to be right on all the issues, instead of wrong like Obama.

Unfortunately, Kathleen gets a bit confused in the comments of her post from yesterday, thinking someone was questioning her about today’s pronouncement:

What does his skin color have to do with anything?

*note: Nothing at all unless they are changing photo ops to require diversity. The thing about it is that I don’t believe that Obama needs to do that. But obviously his campaign does.TexasSparkle

A little later:

*note: Nothing at all unless they are changing photo ops to require diversity. The thing about it is that I don’t believe that Obama needs to do that. But obviously his campaign does.TexasSparkle

 

So why mention he’s black if color doesn’t mean anything. You could have left the description at “charasmatic, and intelligent”. It’s obviously that your party of choice needs diversity, otherwise you wouldn’t have mentioned skin color in your description. Sounds like you’re contradictig yourself.

*note: oops, sorry! I was referring to the wrong post. When I check these comments it doesn’t show which post they are on. I thought you were referring to Obama and his photo ops in the Middle East. Ok, I use the term “black” because I was comparing Williams to Obama. In case you didn’t notice, Obama is black and people think that is kind of an historical thing. Oh, and our party DOES need diversity–TexasSparkle

“People thinkthat is kind of an historical thing.”  It’s all in your mind, people.  I mean, srly, McCain is an historical thing, too, no?

 

My Goddaughter Turned Three Today!

Of course, she is as cute as a bug.

I went to the Target on the way to her house to get her gifts.  It’s always a little difficult to find things not made in China, but I lucked out.  I got her a pair of sunglasses and a little bracelet and hair clips made in Thailand and the Philippines.  I also got her a game called “Don’t Spill the Beans” made here in the U.S.A.

While I was choosing a card, I heard someone say, “Hi, Michelle!”  It was one of my old students.  I can’t tell you how often that happens — and strangely enough at Target.  I couldn’t remember his name, but I knew he was a Turk.  We had a nice conversation — I know he is here teaching math to the children of other Turks in the community.  We had a mini-scandal at work when his group started washing their feet in the bathroom sinks . . . but that has since been superseded by the Kazakh invasion with their take over of the valet racket (from the Iranians).

Back to the party . . . it’s always a challenge.  My family is small.  My brother’s in-laws are large — both in numbers and in weight, physical, not emotional.

My mom seemed ok, but my sis was all mad about her vacation to Canada.   That’s all I can say.

My sister-in-law is pretty cool.  I like her.  Her family is another matter.  The men separate themselves from the women.  When I got there, the men were standing in the kitchen, the women in the breafast area and my family outside.  When the food was ready, the men served themselves first.  The women sort of helped the kids — who get to run wild — and then the women can get something to eat.  It’s really weird that our families do things differently.  My brother and I take care of my mom, and my sister tends to my nieces, along with my sister-in-law.

After the fat fuckers have eaten, they migrate to the living room to watch sports on tv.  While my side of the family (including my sister-in-law) are huge baseball fans, there’s no way that the fat fuckers are going to let us watch the game.  We’re just tending to the children.

Even when my niece blows out the candles on her cake, they watch baseball (sort of — I think if I had cared enough to ask any of them the score, they wouldn’t have been able to tell me how it had gotten there).

After cake and ice cream, we move to opening presents in the living room.  The men move outside where my family had been.   Manly men (not including my brother) can’t be seen watching a female of their own opening gifts.

If I had balls, I would go out on that porch and smoke a cig, bust them on their ignorance.  But I’m a weenie.  Now.  I did that already.  It just made me a person to be avoided.

It’s really weird to be the most pro-female in an almost all female family.  How I wish that my father had lived to see this.  I know that my father would have enjoyed his granddaughters and loved them, and would have shown his love.  He did always have a knack with the little ones.  As it stands now, my nieces have one grandfather, and he could care less about them.

Not McCain: Another Reason

Another reason to add to the NOT McCain file (from Reuters via TPM):

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator’s trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials’ visits to Iraq in advance.

“I believe that either today or tomorrow — and I’m not privy to his schedule — Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators” who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon.

<snip>

If Obama is going to Iraq this weekend, I can not begin to imagine how much this is complicating the security planning for the trip.

So, is it the old man excuse or the everybody already knew it excuse.

Add that to this and I think the McCain campaign is pushing the limits.

I’m curious.  Will this make it onto The News Hour, just like the hysterical “Obama Changed His Website!!!!!” nonsense?  I’m not going to hold my breath or anything.

ADDED:  That Reuters article is chock-full of McCain old man finger wagging.  What a complete nag that man is.

AlSO ADDED: Not a peep on The News Hour.

Today

Tammy had her first chemotreatment today.  There was some additional worry involved when the vet said they needed to do an ultrasound to check her liver for mast cells.  Thankfully, it turned out negative.  She’s been fine since she’s been back home.  There are two different pills she has to take, but she is a very good patient (read: she’ll take anything I give her in a vienna sausage). Earlier this afternoon, she rolled over on her back and showed me her shaved belly.  It’s amazing how thick her fur is.  Murphy was truly happy to see her when she got back.  They’re in my room playing now.  It’s the first step in journey that I’m not sure about with her.   My bottom line is that she is happy and doesn’t suffer.

We went on our field trip at school today — to the sculpture garden, the Contemporary Arts Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts.  We do this every year and I’m not that big on ART, so I find it more of a chore than anything.  Sometimes CAM has something cool.  Per usual, the guard at the sculpture garden nagged all of us relentlessly.  CAM was mostly boring except for the functioning moonshine still on exhibit.  MFA was ok.  The main room had a collection of pieces by British artists from the early 1990’s.

I was in charge of taking pictures, and of course the batteries died even though I had checked them before leaving.  I usually go to the Cafe Express for lunch.  For whatever reason, I picked something different than I usually get.  Big mistake.  Instead of getting the combo (mini-sandwich, cup of soup, small salad), I got the Blue Cheese Burger.  I think it was made last week or maybe yesterday.  And the fries were pathetic — nothing like the pictures!  I thought about taking it back but didn’t.  Lesson learned, I guess.