Friday Parisian Cat blogging

Well, it was a very exciting holiday in Parisian cat-land (the 15h of August is a national holiday in France as in much of Europe).

At about 1 this afternoon (or "13 hour" as they say in France), Nasdaq, the fat one, starting letting out a rather large moan on the back patio. Now, Nasdaq usually does this to get attention, and the kittie doctor told Chris and Joelle to ignore it, lest Nasdaq learn to moan at all hours of the day and night just to get attention. But this time, Sushi, the grey one, knew something was up. Sushi immediately abandoned his now new-traditional post, sleeping between my legs (see photo above), and ran outside to be with Nasdaq. I looked over and started watching because Sushi had his "ready to pounce on Nasdaq simply to be a dick" look. See photo below for Sushi in a pre-pounce moment, looking all innocent while Nasdaq, rather foolishly, cleans him.

Now, before we continue on with our story, you might ask, why does Nasdaq insist on cleaning Sushi, knowing full well that sooner or later Sushi will lift the proverbial football and out of the blue, with no provocation whatsoever, take a full-throttled swipe at Nasdaq's unsuspecting face? Because Nasdaq lives under the delightfully naive but adorable delusion that Sushi will stop attacking her if she just licks his ass one more time. Sound like any political party we know?



Soon I realized something else was up entirely. Nasdaq was munching on something. Lest we have a repeat of the infamous "pigeon" incident, I got up to see what was going on. And yes, our little Nasdaq, all 16 pounds of her, had captured a moth and was dutifully chomping down. The moan/squeak was, I think, Nasdaq's way of letting us know she'd caught her prey. It was all a rather disgusting, yet oddly somewhat proud, moment in my ongoing duties as cat-au-pair.

A quick update since last we discussed "les chats." Sushi has now moved pretty much full time on to the couch behind me, where he now sits between my legs, a lot, and Nasdaq has bravely moved more and more my suitcase, which was Sushi territory before, but now that Sushi has become my own personal stalker, Nasdaq thinks she's being brave taking over the suitcase (and in many ways, she is brave, or naive, because Sushi McCain will strike again).



NB Any similarities between Sushi and Nasdaq and any persons, living or dead, fictional or real, Democrat or Republican, are simply coincidence. Really. Read the rest of this post...

Will McCain require potential vice presidential candidates to cancel their Manhunt subscriptions before joining his campaign?

Discuss amongst yourselves. Read the rest of this post...

McCain: I'll take a pro-choice VP, but not a pro-gay one

Though apparently pro gay-sex is okay with McCain (in his donors, at least - well maybe his VP too). And the corporate media still thinks it isn't news that McCain would accept a maxed out donation from a gay sex merchant, but of course he won't have a VP who is "pro gay rights." That's news, folks. Not to mention, I thought McCain kept trying to promote this image as "pro gay rights." At least that's what I've always heard from gay Republicans. So what gives? Now we're worse than abortion? More from Pam. Read the rest of this post...

The world according to McCain: Georgia is "the first, probably, serious crisis internationally since the end of the cold war"

HUH??? For someone who claims that foreign policy is his strong suit, John McCain gets some very basic facts very wrong.

Last month, John McCain decided to ignore the war in Afghanistan when he claimed that Iraq "the first major conflict since 9/11."

This month, John McCain decided to ignore Afghanistan, Iraq, 9/11 and a host of other major crises. See foreign policy expert John McCain, who spent the last week pretending he's the president and single-handedly in charge of the situation in Georgia, thinks that situation in Georgia is the first serious international crisis since the Cold War ended. Wow. He's more out of touch than we thought. Again, for Georgia to be the first, serious international crisis, McCain is overlooking, among other things, the fact the United States is currently engaged in two wars.

Think Progress posted the video:



How are McCain's friends in the traditional media going to explain away this latest major gaffe? Read the rest of this post...

Possibly the lamest ad ever

Liberal group "Campaign for America's Future" has released a Web ad showing a guy in a proctologist's office with an action figure stuck up his ass. He tells the doctor that his kid must have left the toy on a chair (notice the guy hesitates as he's telling this, as though he's making it up - I also find the guy's delivery a bit gay, but perhaps that's me). I'm told there's a Seinfeld episode that's similar to this. To me, it looks like a reference to gerbil stuffing, and strikes me as kind of homophobic, to say the least. Regardless, action figures stuck up a guy's ass? This is the best we've got for arguing why Congress should provide "quality healthcare to all." Jesus. I'm all for organizations on the left getting edgier - God knows our side is far too coy about everything. But seriously, butt fucking action figure jokes. Are they kidding? You guys too cheap to hire a professional to make your videos? Don't get me wrong. Edgy is great. But Campaign for America's Future has done what most liberals do when they try to get "edgy," they screw it up so badly that they'll never have the nerve to be edgy again. Watch the ad for yourself. Am I overreacting or is this just pathetic (and offensive to boot)?

Read the rest of this post...

Clinton vs. Obama

For once, I'm with Hillary:

Books, in fact, were a bit of a Clinton campaign specialty, and as I wrote last summer, the campaign was devastatingly effective in burying a pair of critical biographies of Clinton by authors far, far more credible than Corsi (with claims, of course, far less sensational).

Notably, the Clinton campaign even took control of the books' media roll-out, perhaps even leaking a copy of one to the Washington Post just before a holiday weekend. The dual aim: To define the books and the authors, and time the story for minimum impact.

Here, the Obama campaign took a different tack, really going after the book only after it seemed to catch on. While the campaign hasn't been able to keep Corsi out of the spotlight -- he appeared on the front page of the New York Times and on CNN, among others -- they have ensured that few of his appearances have gone without vigorous challenge.

Read the rest of this post...

Jenna Bush's wedding pastor rips McCain's adultery and comments about Cindy joining stripper contest

Even better, the McCain campaign blames Jenna's pastor's comments on Obama (because Obama is now somehow responsible for McCain cheating on his first wife? - that's a new one), and McCain calls these "disgraceful person attacks." Really?

First off, it was Evangelical leader Rick Warren who seemingly alluded to McCain's adultery in the past 24 hours, while speaking to ABC's Jake Tapper. And it was God himself, I believe, who included the admonition against adultery in Leviticus, so unless Rick Warren and God are working on the Obama campaign and nobody told us... In any case, accusations about disgraceful personal attacks from the people who have repeatedly suggested that Obama is un-American, hates the troops, and wants America to lose a war, an accusation with vaguely racist undertones, and have injected race into their TV commercials, a point noticed by at least one mainstream national network correspondent - now that's rich. So tell us again how pure as snow McCain is.

But to top even that, an unnamed Republican consultant says that we'd better not talk about McCain's adulterous affair he had with Cindy while married to his wife (McCain's first wife was in a terrible accident, physically deformed as a result, and McCain was "repulsed" by her and ended up cheating on her, then leaving her for his mistress who was rich and 17 years his junior) because then the Republicans might start talking about Rev. Wright and Tony Rezko. Are you freaking kidding me? Oh so you mean the Republicans won't bring up Wright and Rezko, they'll play nice, so long as we aren't mean to McCain. How stupid do you think we are? First off, McCain already brought up Rev. Wright, so spare us the implication that he hasn't yet. Secondly, you've been accusing Obama of hating his country for weeks (Joe Klein at TIME said it was so sleazy of you that it showed that McCain has a "character defect"), Dick Cheney's former aide just had a book published with anti-Semitic undertones and racist attacks on Obama again calling him a Muslim, and now you expect us to believe that McCain and the Republicans won't go into the gutter unless we provoke you?! And today the Republican party is bringing back the "bitter" comments. LOL These people are incredible. The gutter would be a step up for the McCain campaign at this point, and everyone in the media has noticed it and berated them for it for weeks. McCain lied about Obama's trip to Afghanistan, he lied about Obama's comments about fuel efficiency (and the lie is still on McCain's home page), and the list goes on and on. McCain, the guy who hired Karl Rove's deputy to inject some sleaze into his own lifeless campaign, is now worried about us going negative. That's just precious.

I really think the McCain campaign has completely fallen off their rocker. It's as if McCain is no longer running the campaign, or even aware of what his deputies are saying, it's all just so bizarre. But the notion that the Republicans will play nice if we do - seriously, you got a bridge to sell too? Read the rest of this post...

Pay me a couple hundred grand and I'll be Georgian too

Earlier this week John McCain declared that all Americans are (former Soviet) Georgians, oddly comparing the "crisis" in Georgia, a country most Americans have never heard of, nor do they need to ever hear of it, to the Soviet occupation of Berlin. Then it hit me. No wonder McCain has devoted the entire week to talking about the Georgian cris. As has already been reported, McCain's top foreign policy adviser took hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby for Georgia. And now, suddenly, John McCain devotes an entire week of his campaign to championing the cause of a government that paid his top foreign policy aide hundreds of thousands of dollars (I wonder how much you'd have to pay McCain's foreign policy advisers for us all to be English - I've always liked the English). Kind of puts McCain's "interest" in Georgia into a whole new light (compounded interest, I'd call it). It would have been nice to see the Democrats devote the past week to hammering McCain repeatedly, in a coordinated effort with surrogates, grassroots, press conference, and more, on whether McCain is calling us all Georgians simply because a foreign government bought him off. But I guess that would be mean. And smart. And we don't tend to do either. Read the rest of this post...

Why is presidential candidate John McCain sending a SWAT team of advisers to former-Soviet Georgia?

Who does McCain think he is, the president? Presidential candidates don't send SWAT teams into foreign countries during crises (though we did get a kick out of McCain sending Lindsey Graham - what, Charlie Crist wasn't available?). It's creepy. And highly inappropriate. Rather deluded. And perhaps even somewhat deranged. I've mentioned before that McCain clearly thinks a lot of himself - referring to himself as an "American hero" on his own Web site (whether or not he is, you don't refer to yourself as a "hero"), thinking that he has earned the right to decide who is and who isn't a good American. And now, McCain is sending advisers to interfere in a foreign war. Imagine had Barack Obama done this. Oh imagine the outcry. The accusations of hubris and inexperience, the questions about poor judgment. In McCain's case it's not totally clear if this is McCain thinking too highly of himself, or McCain no longer thinking at all. And it's not clear which is more dangerous in a commander in chief. Read the rest of this post...

So McCain has no problem with forced abortions and child prostitution. Nice.

I had no idea that McCain's fundraising buddy, Ralph Reed, had a connection to forced abortions and child prostitution, but there it is in a campaign ad run by Reed's Republican opponent in the last election. It's from a story in the Washington Post, and it's nasty.

In August 1999, political organizer Ralph Reed's firm sent out a mailer to Alabama conservative Christians asking them to call then-Rep. Bob Riley (R-Ala.) and tell him to vote against legislation that would have made the U.S. commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands subject to federal wage and worker safety laws....

"The radical left, the Big Labor Union Bosses, and Bill Clinton want to pass a law preventing Chinese from coming to work on the Marianas Islands," the mailer from Reed's firm said. The Chinese workers, it added, "are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ" while on the islands, and many "are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand."

A year earlier, the Department of the Interior -- which oversees federal policy toward the U.S. territory -- presented a very different picture of life for Chinese workers on the islands. An Interior report found that Chinese women were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry.

On the heels of the news that McCain is fine with a pro-choice VP, and that McCain accepted a $2300 donation from a gay sex merchant (and still, from what I've heard, hasn't given it back), the religious right is getting a taste of the real McCain. And it ain't pretty. Read the rest of this post...

FAA lied: Obama's plane DID declare an emergency last month

Creepy story. And someone at the FAA should be fired over this. Can the Republicans ever not lie to the American people? Read the rest of this post...

Evangelical leader Rick Warren: I'd have a problem voting for an adulterer

ABC's Jake Tapper is clearly, politely and obliquely, asking Evangelical leader Rick Warren about John McCain, who had an adulterous affair with Cindy while he was married to his first wife. (There are also rumors about other women as well.) Warren's answer is clearly directed at McCaim:

WARREN: John Edwards and others like him (emphasis added) have lost the trust of America because they lied, and fundamentally beneath every affair it’s dishonesty, its deceit, its deception. They’re lying to God. They’re lying to themselves. They’re lying to their wives and they’re lying to the public. How do you trust someone who’s constantly lying? You can’t. That’s why it is a myth to say their personal life doesn’t matter. It does matter -- all of leadership is built on credibility.

TAPPER: Would you have compunctions about voting for someone who had cheated on his wife?

WARREN: Absolutely I would. Absolutely I would. Because if you can’t keep your faith to your most sacred vow – “’til death do us part” -- how in the world can I trust you to lead my family? My government? My nation?...Absolutely I would. I think people first need to ask forgiveness and then earn trust back over time. Can trust be re-earned? Absolutely but it takes time.

Since Tapper and Warren were still rather oblique in their reference to McCain, will the corporate media again choose to ignore McCain's adultery, even now that a top evangelical leader has said he'd have a problem voting for someone like McCain, i.e., an adulterer? Read the rest of this post...

McCain: "We are all Georgians." WTF?!

This is the reason John McCain doesn't deserve to be commander in chief of the US military.

As you probably know, there's a growing crisis between Russia and the former Soviet state of Georgia. I won't get into the details, but it basically involves the Russian military moving into Georgia to help some separatists. Anyway, John McCain, in an effort to bolster his foreign policy/national security bona fides with the voters, has been talking tough about Georgia, threatening Russia, and just the other day, referring to his phone conversation with the Georgian leader, said "I know I speak for every American when I say to him, 'Today we are all Georgians.'"

No we are not.

This is why Americans, in the end, won't vote for John McCain. Making an equivalence between former Soviet Georgia and Soviet-occupied Berlin is, well, historically naive and clinically insane. It was worth risking war with the Soviet Union to defend Europe, it is not worth American going to war with Russia to defend Georgia, regardless of how good their yoghurt. The fact that John McCain thinks Georgia - Georgia! - is as vital to US national interests as Soviet-occupied Berlin says a lot about McCain's approach to foreign policy, none of it good. McCain is, at his core, a warmonger. 100 years in Iraq sound familiar? Bomb Iran? And now, "I know I speak for every American when I say to him, 'Today we are all Georgians.'"

Speak for yourself. Read the rest of this post...

Why is the corporate media ignoring the McCain gay-sex donor story?

No one has covered it that I can find. No one, other than gay and other non corporate-media sites. What's going on? Not only did the owner of the top gay pick up site in the world give McCain $2300, which is kind of a story right there, that the top gay pick up site is being run by a McCain Republican, but McCain accepted the money, and now a few days after the story went public, McCain still hasn't returned the money. How is this not news? And today Andy Towle reports that the chairman of the board of Manhunt, the Republican who gave McCain the maxed out donation, had to step down because of the donation. This is news. And the corporate media is again ignoring a story that hurts McCain because they know that he's really a nice guy inside, regardless of the facts. Donuts, anyone?

Actually, there's another thing going on here, I suspect. The corporate media is afraid that they'll be seen as anti-gay if they report on a gay donor scandal. They do this all the time. See: Jeff Gannon. What they don't understand is that they're not reporting on the story because the donor is gay, as if gay is bad. This is a story not because the donor is gay. It's a story because John McCain is running for president in a party that has a serious problem with gays, that rails against gays, that will very likely put some more gay-bashing in their party platform as they always do. So it's news when a lead gay businessman gives to McCain. And it's even bigger news when the donor just happens to run the largest gay sex site in the world. Because of the Republicans' ongoing problem with gay people, all of this makes this news. It's also news that the guy had to step down as chair as a result. And finally, it's news that McCain hasn't given the money back - he's chosen to keep it.

Don't you think getting the religious right's comment on this might make an interesting story? The fact that Bob Dole had to give gay money back in 1996, tying that to today? That McCain recently held a meeting with gay Republican leaders and got slapped around by the religious right as a result, and then had to promise to be more vocally anti-gay in public to make amends - so McCain's ambivalence also makes this news. There are lots of angles to this story, none of them anti-gay. Do your freaking jobs. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Today, Obama heads back to Chicago from his vacation in that "exotic" place called Hawaii. Not sure I'd want to see photos of John McCain body surfing.

Another day in Beijing, another gold for Michael Phelps. And, he's had good company. The U.S. swim team has been pretty amazing. It's been fun to watch them. Phelps, who goes for his seventh gold tonight, has to worry about eating enough every day (that's a problem I'd like to have) -- check out his daily diet.

Okay, that's pretty light stuff for a Friday morning. What's the real news? Read the rest of this post...

A bit of Paris before bedtime

I went to the Louvre again last night with my old friend Fabien (that's him to the left, he had free tickets), and was yet again captivated by the light surrounding the place. On Wednesdays and Fridays in summertime the Louvre stays open until 10pm or so. It's a bit mellower than during the day, and by the time you leave (9ish), the sun is still doing great things. I sometimes wonder if my crappy eyesight, including some oversensitivity to light, makes me so appreciative of bright light contrasting with dark shadows - cuz that's the way everything looks to me anyway :-)











Oh, and the final photo has absolutely nothing to do with the Louvre. It's the building across the street and a bit down the block from Chris and Joelle's place. I was walking home from the grocery store, with a treasure trove of incredible food (grocery shopping here is a joy - I mean where else do you buy duck because it's on sale and one of the cheapest meats in the store?), when I noticed that good ole 8pm sunlight hitting the balconies across the street.

Read the rest of this post...