Every dog has his day!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Even mutts!

I didn't know this before but today is Mutt's Day! No one seems to know how it originated but I think it's a very good idea.

If you don't have a mutt of your own, consider adopting one. There are truly uncounted numbers of unwanted dogs languishing in shelters right this minute for want of a loving home.

And while we're on the subject of animal companion adoption, why not take a look at a slide show type article on MSN entitled How Pets Keep Us Healthy as a little encouragement?.

If you already have a dog who happens to be a pure bred, well, why not make him or her an honorary mutt for the day (!) and pamper that sweet thing a little bit.

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Excellent illustration of how Breitbart smeared Sherrod:

Something in the "no kidding" category

Take a look:

You can't convince him of anything.

JOHN PRESCOTT, Britain's former Deputy Prime Minister, referring to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney while testifying at the U.K. inquiry into the 2003 Iraq invasion
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Friday cat blogging!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Hightower on the Sherrod business

I've admired Jim Hightower for a long time now and so I was happy this morning to see that he's weighed in on the disgusting racist story of the hour. The article is entitled "Why Is No One Talking About the Real Tragedy Behind the Shirley Sherrod Fiasco?" and here's the lead:

The Shirley Sherrod fiasco didn't just expose ugliness on the part of Breitbart, Fox News and Obama. It also overshadowed another, truly racist act.

Here's the part of the article that really, really, really got my attention:

Ugly Number Three is the Barack Obama White House, which swallowed the Breitbart-Fox false story whole and immediately dismissed Sherrod from her federal job. They literally tracked her down in her car and forced her to phone in her resignation, without letting her tell the true story!

To me, the Obama ugliness is the worst, for it reveals a shameful lack of loyalty, fairness and feistiness. Like ACORN and Van Jones before, Sherrod was under vicious and false attack from Obama's enemies -- but the Obamites are so afraid of right-wing smear artists that they instantly run from them, cravenly abandoning their friends. Hello -- if you don't stand for your friends, who'll stand for you?

I did not know that bit about Ms Sherrod being tracked down in her car. That is absolutely despicable.

And I agree that it is utterly reprehesible that President Obama is so afraid of being seen to favor African Americans that he'll turn on them without even the semblance of a proper investigation. Hasn't he figured out by now that the right-wing smear machine has absolutely no compunction when it comes to the dirtiest of dirty tricks?
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WOW

Just look:

Ousted USDA employee Shirley Sherrod says she will sue conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, the Associated Press reports.
...
Breitbart posted a heavily edited video of Sherrod on his website, BigGovernment.com, speaking to an NAACP group and appearing to admit that she had deliberately refrained from giving full assistance to a farmer because he was white.
...
A full version of the speech, released later, shows that she was referring to an incident that occurred more than two decades earlier and lessons she learned after initially hesitating to help a white farmer save his home.

Good for her. I hope she wins and wins big.
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Fallen Soldiers' Families Denied Cash as Insurers Profit

I heard this story on NPR while driving home last night. It truly made me quite ill:

Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son’s life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money -- like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers -- wasn’t actually sitting in a bank. It was being held in Prudential’s general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer.

Prudential paid survivors like Lohman 1 percent interest in 2008 on their Alliance Accounts, while it earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds, according to regulatory filings.

In other words, the insurance companies are still earning money on benefits after they are already supposedly paid out, well after the death of the person who has been insured. Instead of the lump sum requested, the beneficiaries are sent a book of "checks" (really drafts) but when they try to write an actual check on what they think is an actual account, the "check" won't work. That's when they find out what is going on.

It's a slick trick and you'll have to read about the intricacies of how the insurance companies get away with it to understand what's actually happening. You can do that right here.
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Oh, this is rich:

Quote of the day

Take a look:

There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new (law).

- SUSAN BOLTON, a federal judge, who blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona's immigration law from taking effect, delivering a last-minute victory to opponents of the controversial law which will take effect July 29

Hmmm. Ya think?
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A "thank you" to Bill Maher

for saying this:

Between the oil gushing, and the collapse of Wall Street and people wishing for the failure of our president, we are doing a much better job of destroying ourselves than a terrorist ever could.

It's tragic, really.

(Hat tip to Lisa Casey over at All Hat No Cattle)
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War and stupidity

Now here's a quotation to hold on to:

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

-- Blaise Pascal

Just because I like it:

Artist: David Martin

It's the Wikimedia Commons "image of the day".

While we're at it, we may as well look at something Benjamin Franklin said (as he said a lot of really good stuff):

Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd: Whatever sooths our Pride, and tends to exalt our Species above the rest of the Creation, we are pleas'd with and easily believe, when ungrateful Truths shall be with the utmost Indignation rejected. "What! bring ourselves down to an Equality with the Beasts of the Field! with the meanest part of the Creation! 'Tis insufferable!" But, (to use a Piece of common Sense) our Geese are but Geese tho' we may think 'em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho' it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful.

Or, to put it more simply: Pride goeth before a fall! :-)

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Climate change deniers, please watch this:

All right, Senator Inhofe. Listen up. How long are you going to claim that climate change is a "hoax"? It's not a hoax and you know it.
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The alarm that didn't sound

because it was kept on "silent":

The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, killing 11 people and setting off the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker on Friday told a government panel investigating the accident.

The worker, Mike Williams, the rig’s chief electronics technician, said the general safety alarm was habitually set to “inhibited” to avoid waking up the crew with late-night sirens and emergency lights.
...
While it is not known whether it would have saved the workers who died in the April 20 disaster, the lack of a fully functioning alarm hampered the effort to safely evacuate the rig, Mr. Williams said.

This is a good example of what happens when you let an industry regulate itself.

Are you listening, all you libertarians out there??????

(You can read the rest of the story at the New York Times right here.)
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Just a little comic relief:

Friday cat blogging!

Image from Wikimedia Commons