Dexter's Homecoming

Well, I am safely back from Atlanta with my new kitty. Thanks to Susan at Verismo for opportunity to acquire this lovely critter. This is my 3rd Verismo bred Maine Coon (and probably the last for a while) and they are all wonderful (and huge)

New Addition

I freely admit to being a crazy cat person. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that knows me that I am flying to Atlanta (I live in Connecticut) in the morning to get yet another cat.



Her name is Dexter and she is a littermate to Max


And no doubt a new tormentor for Athena

Glenn Greenwald on Mukasey

"Torture should not be what America stands for . . . I do not vote to allow torture," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy. Russ Feingold said: "we need an attorney general who will tell the president that he cannot ignore the laws passed by Congress. And on that fundamental qualification for this office Judge Mukasey falls short." Feingold added: "If Judge Mukasey won't say the simple truth -- that this barbaric practice is torture -- how can we count on him to stand up to the White House on other issues?"

Wow -- it sounds as though there was really a lot at stake in this vote. So why would 44 Democratic Senators make a flamboyant showing of opposing confirmation without actually doing what they could to prevent it? Is it that a filibuster was not possible because a large number of these Democratic Senators were willing to symbolically oppose confirmation so they could say they did -- by casting meaningless votes in opposition knowing that confirmation was guaranteed -- but were unwilling to demonstrate the sincerity of their claimed beliefs by acting on them?

The Post said the vote "reflected an effort by Democrats to register their displeasure with Bush administration policies on torture and the boundaries of presidential power." Apparently, they wanted to oh-so-meaningfully "register their displeasure" but not actually stop confirmation.

As I said. We deserve real leaders.

Go Read the whole story at Glenn Greenwald's place on Salon.com

Because I hate parallel parking - part II

Using the available navigation screen, the Advanced Parking Guidance System [1] allows you to select icons to choose whether to parallel park or back into a space. Align the vehicle, press a button on the screen, put the vehicle in reverse, then simply remove your hands from the steering wheel and regulate the vehicle’s speed by using the brake.

I need a new car

Because I hate parallel parking

I am the world's worst parallel parker and will do damned near anything to avoid it so this looks just perfect to me

How not to be a leader

Question: On the Nomination (Confirmation Michael B. Mukasey of New York, to be Attorney General )

YEAs ---53
Allard (R-CO)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Carper (D-DE)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-NE)
Roberts (R-KS)
Schumer (D-NY)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

NAYs ---40
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Casey (D-PA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Sanders (I-VT)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

Not Voting - 7
Alexander (R-TN)
Biden (D-DE)
Clinton (D-NY)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Dodd (D-CT)
McCain (R-AZ)
Obama (D-IL)

Vote Details from Senate.gov

There is no rational reason for a member of the Democratic Party to have either not shown up or voted to confirm.

• "They deserve an AG" is not a rational reason
• "He isnt as bad as Gonzales" is not a rational reason
• "This is the best nominee we will get offered" is not a rational reason
• "He was going to be confirmed anyway so my vote didn't matter" is not a rational reason
  

Those are the excuses of gutless weasels, not leaders. As regular readers can imagine I am especially unhappy that Chris Dodd thought that campaigning was more important than voting on this one.

I love this song too

Not a real Stan Rogers clip but not a bad cover.

Just because I love this song ... no other reason .. really

Minnie Riperton was a huge talent that died far too young.

Quasi-House Arrest for Bhutto?

The house of Pakistani opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, has been surrounded by police, hours before her party is due to hold a mass rally.

She has not been formally placed under house arrest, and police say the measure at her residence in Islamabad is for her own safety.

Several thousand of her supporters are reported detained ahead of the rally planned to be held in Rawalpindi.

I have a horrible feeling that this is not going to end well.

Story at bbc

Canadian Auto Workers and Magna reach first deal under new framework

The Canadian Auto Workers union has signed up its first Magna International Inc. parts plant under the Framework of Fairness agreement the two organizations signed last month.

About 250 workers at a plant called Windsor Modules, which supplies door components to Chrysler LLC factories in Windsor, Ont., and St. Louis, Mo., ratified a three-year agreement that increases wages to about $15 an hour immediately from $12 and will boost them to about $17.85 an hour over the length of the deal.

About 87 per cent of workers ratified the deal, which does not give them the right to strike, a contentious point in the Framework of Fairness that has created strong criticism from some CAW members, including the union's largest local in Oshawa, Ont., as well as others in the labour movement.

Layoff and job security provisions in the deal are new benefits to Magna workers under the agreement, the union said in a statement.

I think that this bodes well for the future of labour relations in NOrth America but then I am a hopeless optimist.

The money still isn't great but it is better than it was and the deals have some nice job security provisions in them.

Read the article at reportonbusiness.com

How not to support the troops

Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job.

This is should make every single person in the country so wildly pissed off that they march down to Washington and camp out on the Mall until President Bush and Congress jointly agree to fully fund the VA Hospital system including a mammoth increase in resources for mental health services. But of course we won't do that and these numbers will grow.

This is not how a nation "Supports the troops".

Read the item atYahoo! News

Rachel Maddow ... MSNBC please hire her.. please please

Based on some recent posts on DU, I've heard that MSNBC is looking to hire a new host for the 9pm slot. There was also a rumor in another DU post about Tucker being cancelled.

If you would like to see Rachel Maddow get her own program on MSNBC, this is a good time to contact them! I've been watching Rachel on MSNBC these past few months, and she's been amazing! She's poised, articulate, thoughtful, funny, quick on her feet, very smart, and has a good tv presence. She's a class act! Best of all, she makes us progressives look really good!

I heartily agree with this. I know that Rosie is a known quantity and god forbid that a TV network do something original but Rachel is a far more articulate and (sorry Rosie) sane person to be out in front of the camera with the sign "progressive" under her on the chyron. Rosie has a habit of shooting from the lip and while that might be entertaining it risks turning the time slot into a "oh she is just like limbaugh or hannity" and that would be such a huge loss.

MSNBC doesn't need a liberal bomb-thrower, which is unfortunately what Rosie can be. Now, if MSNBC decides to fire Tucker Carlson's lame ass ..... that opens up 2 slots so we could get Rosie for entertainment value and Rachel for content.

Inspired by a post atDemocratic Underground

Microsoft CIO Fired .. the reason .. crickets

Microsoft said it fired Chief Information Officer Stuart Scott for violating unspecified company policies.

The company terminated Scott after "an investigation for violation of company policies," said spokesman Lou Gellos, who declined to give details.

Call me crazy but if a senior executive of one of the world's largest publicly traded companies gets his ass fired one would think that there would be a wee bit more information made available.

Valleywag has an interesting take on it. Irrespective of whether or not the rumour behind it is true the fact that this will be CIO #4 in 4 years is pretty much unheard of in a company of this size.

What does Scott's departure really tell us? That the CIO job at Microsoft, where Scott's chief responsibility was inflicting Microsoft's newest, buggiest software on his colleagues, is deadly boring. Boring enough to make a bit of intramural entertainment plausibly worth the risk of getting caught. Scott's successor will be Microsoft's fourth CIO in as many years.

Wingnuts for tort reform?

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”

Giggle through the rest at New York Times

Musharraf had "no other choice"

In an address to the nation that ended in the early minutes of Sunday, Musharraf justified his declaration on the grounds that he needed a free hand to battle rising militancy in Pakistan.

But a top adviser conceded later Sunday that the final decision came only after a Supreme Court judge quietly informed the government last week that the court would rule against Musharraf's effort to stay on as president.

"After that, there was no option," said Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League. "He is not happy with this decision, frankly speaking. We are all not happy with the decision. But there was no other choice."

Because of course the other option would have meant that he would no longer be president and God forbid that happen. After all he is the only person that could possibly run that country.

Republicans would do well to study the speech he gave for hints and tips. You never know when a Supreme Court is going to rule against you ... oh .. never mind.

More coverage at washingtonpost.com

Activist Judges Are to Blame

I would like to ask the whole nation. Why? Why this state of affairs? In my opinion, it is the judicial activism - which is a pillar of states in clash with the other two pillars, the executive and the legislative. The judiciary has interfered with the other two. And now every one is suffering and is paralyzed in every manner and in every department.

Thats the basic issue.

I wonder if the Republicans are paying attention to this speech by Musharraf because it could come in handy for them in a year or so.

Who would ever think that judges enforcing the rule of law was the thing that was ultimately to blame for forcing a thug ruthless despot democracy loving statesman to declare martial law.