If they weren't so true, I'd be able to laugh...

There are no words for this kind of beauty...

Audrey, bun adopted by Kelly W. from our fuzzbutts at Rabbit Match.

www.rabbitmatch.org

Oh, the friggin' irony...

Okay, so what do you do with a really good thing from a really bad person...?

*

As a Real Surprise, I was notified this week that I had been nominated and had been chosen to receive the President's Volunteer Service Award. Wow! Great! Wow! Uh, oh wait...

It'll be signed by George W. Bush, worst preznit** we've ever had in our nation's history.

So. What kind of karma would cause something like this...hmmmmm???

*The President's Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) is an award given by the President of the United States to recognize the valuable contributions made by volunteers across the nation.

**War Criminal Idiot

Say hello to Giselle.

I figure I can write about this in 1000 ways, but it makes sense to introduce you directly.

No. 393952, Type: Rabbit, Intake Date: 8/13/07, Reason: Owner Surrender, Weight: 7.3 lbs, Est Birthdate: 4/1/07, Breed: Himalayan x, Status: Active

Giselle.

That's my girl. One of 15 (at the moment) and one of the most beautiful creatures on this earth.

Rabbits are different than cats or dogs. Oh, I don't just mean how they are predators or prey. It's more than that. It's a way of seeing the world and how they interact with it. They are pastoral.

Main Entry:

¹pas·to·ral

Pronunciation:

\ˈpas-t(ə-)rəl\

Function:

adjective

Etymology:

Middle English, from Latin pastoralis, from pastor herdsman

Date:

15th century

1 a (1): of, relating to, or composed of shepherds or herdsmen (2): devoted to or based on livestock raising b: of or relating to the countryside : not urban c: portraying or expressive of the life of shepherds or country people especially in an idealized and conventionalized manner <pastoral poetry> d: pleasingly peaceful and innocent : idyllic

That's not to say they don't fight. They do. But their experience of life is grazing. No feral hunt, no killing, no ripping a being apart or 'just practicing' how to kill it.

It's such a difference.

These guys literally saved my butt.

I realized just yesterday how much I've kept silent about them on this blog. I fear people roll their eyes. But hey, if this blog is about life--my life--then it's about these guys too.

As it should be...

June 17, 1922. Iola Swinnerton and Anna Neibel, winners of a beauty contest at Washington's Tidal Bathing Beach. Miss Swinnerton resides at 3125 Mount Pleasant Street NW. View full size. National Photo Company Collection.

The faces...

August 1908. "Noon hour in an Indianapolis cotton mill. Witness, E.N. Clopper." View full size. Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.

From Seed Back To Earth

One of the most beautiful posts I've ever read...

I am practically holding my breath. This whole dying thing is much quieter, more private, and full of anticipation than I really knew. I suppose it must be tenfold worse when it's a person and not just a cat. Yet, I have to say, I really don't know if the death part is all that different. Sure, you will miss some people more acutely than you would a loved cat, but, the dying isn't really different. I find myself wondering about my own death. I can't tell you how many times I plotted and planned for it when I was much younger. Now that I don't really want it, it has a different taste in my thoughts...

http://dustpanalley.blogspot.com/2008/01/from-seed-to-back-to-earth-or-so-story.html

John Edwards Plan to Build One America

Fascinating story...

Annie Card, 1909
North Pownal Manufacturing Company
cotton mill, Pownal, VT

http://www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/addiesearch1.html

The small of it and the large of it...

Mom and her fledgling...



Nevada Mountains, Peru

Women

October 1942. Lathe operator machining parts for transport planes at the Consolidated Aircraft plant in Fort Worth, Texas. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Howard Hollem, Office of War Information.


Nov. 10, 1916. Vicinity of Bowling Green, Kentucky. "Hazel family (very poorly educated). Children have not been to school this year although living within 1½ miles of school." View full size. Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Falling Fast

The US dropped 9 places in the 2006 Index of Press Freedom by Reporters Without Borders issued last month...

One particularly egregious US case cited is the jailing of Josh Wolf, a freelance journalist and blogger, who has been imprisoned more than four months for refusing to hand over video tapes he filmed in San Francisco of a protest against the G8 Summit last year...

Other cases of US press intimidation include Sudanese cameraman Same al-Hajj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazzeera, who has been held without trial since June 2002 at the US military base at Guantanamo; and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April. The AP has been trying to secure his release for seven months...

During the first year of the index, in 2002, the US was ranked 17th. The US has fallen...36 places since 2002.

Full Article

During Clinton's presidency, the Republican majority in Congress spent 140 hours hearing testimony over whether Clinton had misused the White House Christmas card list to seek out potential Democratic donors. By contrast, there have been only twelve hours of testimony so far on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

Georg Mascolo in Washington

What’s the Best Reasonably Realistic Scenario for the Next Six Years?

Steve Says:
October 14th, 2006 at 10:55 am

I look for an end to poverty in the entire U.S. I look for the most refined and efficacious healthcare system in the world. I hope for a candidate in office who has the boldness and conviction of vision to embrace a true wed of the Socialist and Capitalist model. I hope… and dream, for November 7, 2006.

1. Andrew Bard Schmookler of The Blinding of America

What Our Country is Coming To

With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.

AUSTIN, Texas - Oh dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. In Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of planning to “cut and run” on Iraq.

Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. “I just could not believe he would say that to me,” said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?

The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of “technical fixes” that were the point of the putative “compromise.” It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.

This bill is not a national security issue‹-this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.

Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.

The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.

For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, “Let’s give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him.”

This gets passed on as “Don’t touch the mayor unless he really screws up.”

And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as “We can’t say anything negative about the mayor.”

The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to.”

In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words “outside the United States,” which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.

The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Quick, define “purposefully and materially.” One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.

The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.

As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.” But not unbridled sadism‹-you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain” and substituted
“serious pain,” which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.”

In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: “The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.”

Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary‹-these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.

I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world seriously begins comparing us to the Nazis.

===

http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=322

More...

It will not be long before persons start to disappear within the United States now that the Spector Amendment has been defeated. It may be that the votes today will ultimately result in a second civil war in the US when the people start to reassert their basic values as a free people. This process will take years, but as the infrastructure of tyranny and as the elections of 2008 fails, the die is now cast today as the protections against arbitrary government action is stripped away.

Within twenty years, America will be unrecognizable as a free society.

Nobody | 09.28.06 - 12:43 pm | #


from a comment on Unclaimed Territory

After today, there is no way back for the US.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemoeller

Taking the "scenic route" to torture

The White House's Dan Bartlett put it best, and most accurately, when he said, "We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there." Only the Bush administration could speak of taking a "scenic route" to torture…

If this "compromise" legislation is enacted -- and it can now be stopped only by the invisible, impotent congressional Democrats -- the United States will be a country that has formally legalized torture, and the president's "interrogation program" will continue unimpeded, with firmer legal authorization than ever before. And the American people, through our representatives in Congress, will have embraced and approved of the use of torture. Far and away, it is the impact on our national character that will be the most significant and enduring result from this "compromise."

-- Glenn Greenwald

[reproduced from salon.com]

Two more follow...

Due to overcrowding where I volunteer, two beautiful black/dark brown buns were euthanized yesterday. I feel privileged to have been there the 1- 1/2 hours before they were taken. They got fresh water and hay and lots of pets. I cried. Boy, I cried. When the technician came I moved them so they were in hands they trusted. I kissed them on each head and said goodbye. I hope they know they were loved. I am so sorry you had to go.

I see you.
Alice & Bill
? -- Monday, 8/21/06

I will miss you.

In Memoriam II

Beauty & Lucius

I see you.

Both were in the shelter since I started volunteering there.
A deadly bureaucratic mistake took their lives.

You are loved.
? -- Friday, 8/18/06