Mother nature can be so wonderful

What a great story and great photo of a thrush protecting her chicks from water. Telegraph:

The Mistle Thrush had built her nest on top of a downpipe, blocking the water's passage and causing the gutter to flood.

But desperate to protect her young, she puffed herself up to twice her size and sat in the drainpipe to stop the tide of rain water swamping the nest.

She was so occupied with her task that her mate was left to feed her and their young.

The images were captured by amateur wildlife photographer Dennis Bright at a house in Fareham, Hampshire.

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The other side of the Sri Lankan conflict

The Sri Lankan government hardly deserved praise but the Tamil Tigers wrote the book on brutality including using children soldiers. Sickening.

The accounts of these boys and girls who surrendered to the Sri Lankan army were shocking. They say they were dragged screaming from their families and sent into action with only a few days of basic training. The older members of the LTTE warned them to keep firing and advancing, or they would be shot by their own side from behind.

Those who did try to escape said they were fired on by their own side. Children who were recaptured had their hair shaved off to mark them as deserters and boys were beaten.

Darchiga said she was shot in the stomach by the army two days after arriving on the front line, having been forced to pick up a rifle and go forward to fight. She said LTTE cadres left her bleeding for four hours before she received any medical treatment.

According to her testimony, the Tigers had warned every family that those children who could carry a weapon were expected to join up, regardless of age. Some as young as 11 and 12 had been taken, she said. "They told families that one child was enough. If they had five children, they would take four and leave just one."

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The Advocate's Kerry Eleveld on Obama's slience on gay issues

For the past several months, Kerry Eleveld has the Advocate's D.C.-based correspondent. She was detailed here a couple months ago. In that very short period of time, she's become an astute observer of the workings of D.C. She's the reporter at the White House briefing who asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about Obama's intentions on repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was a campaign promise. He didn't have an answer:

In addition to her regular reporting, every week, Eleveld writes a column, "View from the Hill," which captures the week's legislative and political news as it relates to LGBT issues. It's becoming a "must read." This week's column is titled "Obama's Silence" -- and captures what many in D.C. don't seem to grasp:

When the administration’s LGBT announcements come, I will be watching what the Amy Ballietts of the nation think, not what those in Washington say. Why? Because a cultural and generational shift is taking place that Washington politicians and even our LGBT organizations seem to be either missing, dismissing, or ignoring.

Here’s my thoroughly unscientific, crude analysis: Gay baby boomers typically stayed in the closet because they didn’t want their lives to be ruined; LGBT Gen-Xers expected that we (I'm an Xer) could be mostly visible without fearing life, limb, and job loss (depending on where one lived) but figured there might be some trade-offs in rights even if we knew it was unfair; a majority of millennials, LGBT and straight, just don’t get why we all pay the same taxes, work the same jobs, make the same contributions, but queer people don’t enjoy the same legal rights and protections in the military, civil marriage, employment, or anywhere else for that matter.

So while Washington tinkers around the edges of LGBT rights -- maybe trying to get gay couples counted in the Census, strengthening federal hate-crimes protections, or providing same-sex partner health benefits to federal workers -- our nation’s young may simply wonder why their best friends can’t get married or why their sisters and brothers died cloaked in the closet of our country’s uniform.

I’m quite confident that is not the “change” they envisioned at the ballot box last fall, and I do wonder, what will be the price of President Obama’s silence among the ranks of our nation’s future?

I think she's spot on. I'd just add one thing. Many gay baby boomers and Gen-Xers, who had been somewhat complacent, have become much more radical and intense after the Prop. 8 debacle. It's one thing to think we're working towards achieving rights. It's another to have newly secured rights taken away. More and more, I hear gay people talk in the same language I've heard NRA-types use for years. And, our straight allies are equally as fired up. We're engaged like never before -- and I don't think that's fully understood here in D.C.

By the end of June, we'll know if the Obama administration intends to defend DOMA in the GLAD lawsuit seeking to have Section 3 of that law found unconstitutional. That will be a seminal moment for this administration and its relationship with the LGBT community. I'm not sure if the great minds in the West Wing fully grasp that yet. My suggestion to the White House is: Don't bother with the small stuff and the Gay Pride proclamations if you're going to say in Federal Court that DOMA is constitutional and should be upheld. If you do that, it's over. Read the rest of this post...

Pro-life terrorist opens fire in church, kills doctor

Thank God that the Obama administration caved last month to religious right and GOP demands that it withdraw a new domestic terrorism report that indicated, among other things, that radicals might use abortion as a justification for committing acts of domestic terrorism. Now a man is dead, and an American church has been shot up during services. Which leads to the question as to whether the Obama administration plans to do anything about the terrorist threat posed by religious right extremists, or whether typical Democratic spinelessness will lead us to now ignore this brutal murder, since that is the message that was sent last month, just weeks before this act of terror.

Note that had Obama held firm in the face of the criticism last month, he'd be riding high right now and the GOP would be cowering in shame for having basically enabled this terrorist act. But Democrats rarely look to the future, nor do they see benefit in having a spine or doing what's right. And now a man is dead.

Remember what I wrote only a month ago about the religious right demanding the right to kill. Today, in church, they exercised that right. As they have in the past. As they will in the future. Read the rest of this post...

Frank Rich: Next attack is Bush's fault

Frank Rich in the NYT:

The Bush administration did not make us safer either before or after 9/11. Obama is not making us less safe. If there’s another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone’s control well before Americans could throw the bums out.

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Cheney changes mind, says Powell welcome in the GOP

So long as Powell accepts the fact that the party is staying uber-conservative. It's not a very big tent when the party is wedded to one narrow definition of what it means to be a Republican, and you tell everyone that they're welcome provided they chuck their own views and agree to yours. Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

Good morning.

Guess what they'll be talking about on the Sunday shows today? It's almost all Supreme Court. Now, the question is whether the Republican Senators stand up to the very ugly rhetoric spewing from their leaders, Rush and Newt, and other GOP wingnuts, like Tancredo. It's risky for Republican members of Congress to take a stand against the haters, who speak for the party's base. But, the GOP politicos don't want to alienate Latino voters any further. My bet is the nuts and haters prevail.

The bottom line here is that Sotomayor is very well-qualified and will be confirmed. The Republicans can't stop that. But, they can do enormous damage to themselves -- and I say, have at it.

Here's the lineup:

ABC's "This Week" — Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and John Cornyn, R-Texas; Ed Gillespie, former Bush White House counselor.

___

CBS' "Face the Nation" — Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

___

NBC's "Meet the Press" — Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.; Anne Mulcahy, chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox Corp.; Jim Owens, chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Inc.; Google Inc. chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt.

___

CNN's "State of the Union" — Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas; Gillespie; Sameh Shoukry, Egypt's ambassador to the U.S.


"Fox News Sunday" _ Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass.

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Mother nature can be so cruel

But on the other hand, so nice as well. I snapped a few photos of our favorite plant in the garden the day before heavy rain and wind cleared it of most of the flowers. A few summers ago I decided to feed our rhododendron with guano and clean it up. It grew nicely but the next spring it barely flowered. It grew but we had a fraction of the flowers in the photo above. That's when I read online that feeding it will limit the flowering. It's now about three feet high and five feet wide as she reaches for the sun on the left. I was hoping to get out the next day around sunset for better light but that's when the rain and wind crushed the flowers.

A friendly bumble bee was buzzing around and you can see the pollen (it's pollen, right?) all over. The sun has again returned so now we're in major clean up mode outside over this long holiday weekend. I have the pleasure of using the faux-Karcher as Joelle enjoys picking mealy bugs from our jasmine, branch by branch and leaf by leaf. The rainy spring has sent those nasty little things into overdrive and they're killing our bushy friend.

Over the years we've figured out what works in our north facing garden and what doesn't. Many of the flowers and herbs that we enjoy won't make it here since the light is limited to a window in the morning and a bit in the late afternoon. We would love a rose bush but the poor things struggle in our garden. And then there are the snails, who have slaughtered our hostas. I try surrounding them with beds of little stones and egg shells but they are persistent. We avoid using a lot of store products outside because of the cats.

Even with the tightest of budgets, we always like to spend a little on the garden because it gives us so much pleasure during the summer. Has everyone started their garden for the summer? What do you like where you live and what grows well? Read the rest of this post...

China to level ancient city, just because

Few countries in the world are immune to such idiotic city planning. In the US, Philadelphia made way for progress a few decades ago to create the ever-bland Independence Mall. History in a supposed historical city is such a drag. Not to be outdone, China is eager to modernize as well by leveling ten centuries of history in exchange for high rise apartments. Similar programs were implemented even in Beijing in hopes of showing Olympic visitors how modern China is. The idea of preserving history has not quite made it into the little minds of the communist leadership.

It took Philadelphia a while too, so maybe the government will eventually wake up and figure out that people at home and from abroad actually enjoy history. They even embrace it and will pay money to see it. NY Times:

A thousand years ago, the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road converged at this oasis town near the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Traders from Delhi and Samarkand, wearied by frigid treks through the world’s most daunting mountain ranges, unloaded their pack horses here and sold saffron and lutes along the city’s cramped streets. Chinese traders, their camels laden with silk and porcelain, did the same.

The traders are now joined by tourists exploring the donkey-cart alleys and mud-and-straw buildings once window-shopped, then sacked, by Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

Now, Kashgar is about to be sacked again.

Nine hundred families already have been moved from Kashgar’s Old City, “the best-preserved example of a traditional Islamic city to be found anywhere in central Asia,” as the architect and historian George Michell wrote in the 2008 book “Kashgar: Oasis City on China’s Old Silk Road.”

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Record numbers preparing for assisted suicide in Switzerland

Earlier this year a British couple left for Switzerland to die on their own terms. Both were terminal and both had to keep it a secret or else trigger religious and political outrage, as was experienced after the news hit the UK. As mentioned before, my personal belief is that people should have the option. Whether it's used is another story but that option would empower many people. I can understand opposition to this difficult situation because death is not an easy subject to discuss. It's uncomfortable and sad to even think of this day for our loved ones or ourselves.

I hadn't thought much about it one way or the other until my father was dying. He had been insistent on wanting to die at home, as comfortably as possible for someone with pulmonary fibrosis. The illness had come as a result of the chemotherapy treatment - not an uncommon side effect, I was later told - and over the course of five years he suffocated to death. Over that time he evolved into a person that few of us recognized. In addition to his own daily misery, my mother also slowly fell apart. She was physically healthy, though the mental strain of watching her husband of 40+ years decline was bad enough but she also had the pleasure of navigating a health care system that never could offer a clear answer or pay in a timely manner. (What's not to love about the corrupt US insurance industry that treats "customers" this way during such a stressful time.)

In the end, he was rushed to the hospital due to a bad fall at home. Naturally, like any good American hospital he was stopped in the front lobby as the hospital checked his insurance details. Twice in his final year hospitals did this insurance check despite the 911 calls. (And people think this business will change easily? Ha.) He became much too frail to leave the hospital which was the last place in the world he wanted to be and three days later he died. The religious extremists like to talk about glorious nature of dying but for me, I didn't see it. I saw peace following my father's death. It was an amazing transformation that happened within minutes of watching him take his final breath with us. He was tortured by his illness for years and suddenly his face returned to the look I had known years before. Some religions take pleasure in misery and find some higher meaning to such moments but for me I didn't see it at all.

In the UK, after the controversy over the couple who went to Switzerland to die, some politicians went on the offensive and talked about prosecuting family who had anything to do with the process. That has fortunately quieted down and now some in government are leading the move to legalize the process. There are also now over 800 Brits who are signed up with the Swiss clinic, seeking the option to die on their own terms. The Guardian:

Record numbers of Britons who are suffering from terminal illnesses are queueing up for assisted suicide at the controversial Swiss clinic Dignitas, the Observer can reveal.

Almost 800 have taken the first step to taking their lives by becoming members of Dignitas, and 34 men and women, who feel their suffering has become unbearable, are ready to travel to Zurich and take a lethal drug overdose.

The tenfold increase in the number of Britons who have joined Dignitas since 2002 will raise questions about the law that bans assisted suicide in Britain.

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