Puppy Mills

Sadly, 2 to 4 million puppy mill puppies are sold each year while
millions of animals at shelters are euthanized for lack of good homes.
To feed this brutal industry, untold numbers of breeder dogs spend
their entire lives confined to tiny and filthy cages, giving birth to
one litter after another until their worn-out bodies can no longer
reproduce.

But The HSUS is determined to defeat this cruel
underground business. Here’s a glimpse of how we’ll be working to stop
puppy mills in the months ahead:

* Litigate to end the
notorious sale of puppy mill dogs by Wizard of Claws: A class action
suit filed by HSUS members seeks to end this Florida retailer’s
practices of selling severely unhealthy puppy mill dogs and defrauding
customers about the puppies’ origins.

* Pass federal legislation to increase protections for dogs across the nation languishing in puppy mills.

* Pass state laws to require licensing, regulation, and inspection of
large puppy mills, which currently escape USDA scrutiny due to a
loophole in the Animal Welfare Act.

* Reach out to prospective
puppy buyers – using everything from billboards to word of mouth – to
educate them about the cruelty of puppy mills and where these animals
are sold.

Puppy mills can only thrive if consumers are kept in
the dark about the fraudulent tactics and inhumane conditions used to
mass produce purebred and designer dogs. You have the power to shine a
light on these cruel practices and prevent further animal suffering.
Please spread the word to your friends and family by picking up some
cool cause gear to the right – and help us put this brutal industry out
of business!

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Vitter’s Madame: “Most of the clients who wanted to be dominated were Republicans.”

Via Andrew Sullivan, Jeanette Maier, whose small business Senator David Vitter (R-Canal Street Brothel) patronized, tells her story:

Some of the fantasies at the Canal Street Brothel got a little rough.
For those who liked that kind of stuff, there were whips, chains and a
lot of leather. Jeanette says that most of the clients who wanted to be dominated were Republicans. She cracks a smile, then adds, “They wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings—Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings—and these are the people who run our country.”

(As an aside, that means that the Republicans must be terribly frustrated by the Democrats’ overly-gentle approach, because they’re not getting what they really, really want,
even though they can’t admit it to themselves. Maybe Dean Broder should
recommend that Harry Reid shackle Mitch McConnell right there on the
Senate Floor, then call for a closed session and, er, undertake a
series of tricky procedural moves…)

Check it out here

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George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house

31.03.07

 

The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984 has become a reality – in the shadow of the author’s former London home.

It
may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell’s vision
of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person’s
movements is now here.

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Foresight: The cameras crowd George Orwell’s former London home

According
to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras
- one for every 14 people in the country – and 20 per cent of cameras
globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera
an average of 300 times daily.

Use of spy cameras in modern-day
Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell’s fictional world,
created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking
Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

On the wall outside
his former residence – flat number 27B – where Orwell lived until his
death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian
author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras,
scanning every move.

Orwell’s view of the tree-filled gardens
outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched
on traffic lights.

The flat’s rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.

In
a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell’s favourite pub, the
Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every
person entering or leaving the pub.

Within a 200-yard radius of
the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of
private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors
to homes, shops and offices.

The message is reminiscent of a 1949 poster to mark the launch of Orwell’s 1984: ‘Big Brother is Watching You’.

In
the Shriji grocery store in Canonbury Place, three cameras focus on
every person in the shop. Owner Minesh Amin explained: ‘They are for
our security and safety. Without them, people would steal from the
shop. Although this is a nice area, there are always bad people who
cause trouble by stealing.’

Three doors away, in the dry-cleaning shop run by Malik Zafar, are another two CCTV cameras.

‘I need to know who is coming into my shop,’ explained Mr Zafar, who spent £400 on his security system.

This
week, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) produced a report
highlighting the astonishing numbers of CCTV cameras in the country and
warned how such ‘Big Brother tactics’ could eventually put lives at
risk.

The RAE report warned any security system was ‘vulnerable
to abuse, including bribery of staff and computer hackers gaining
access to it’. One of the report’s authors, Professor Nigel Gilbert,
claimed the numbers of CCTV cameras now being used is so vast that
further installations should be stopped until the need for them is
proven.

One fear is a nationwide standard for CCTV cameras which
would make it possible for all information gathered by individual
cameras to be shared – and accessed by anyone with the means to do so.

The
RAE report follows a warning by the Government’s Information
Commissioner Richard Thomas that excessive use of CCTV and other
information-gathering was ‘creating a climate of suspicion’.

original article here

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This is how Republicans “support our troops”

US Senate Republicans have blocked a proposal to give American troops in Iraq
more rest from battle, as Democrats renewed their attempts to change
President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy.

While the White House won this initial skirmish on a military policy bill, it lost the
support of seven of Mr Bush’s fellow Republicans in the Senate’s vote
on requiring minimum rest times between troop deployments.

Six of the seven Republicans who broke ranks are up for re-election next year.

Mr Bush faces another challenge on Thursday, this time in the House of Representatives.

Democratic leaders predicted they will pass a bill requiring the start of US
combat troop withdrawals within four months and completing it by April 1, 2008.

“My main concern is the readiness of our U.S. military,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, a
Missouri Democrat who is pushing the legislation and thinks the long
Iraq war is “draining” the army.

In March, the House passed a similar plan, which was not accepted by the Senate.

House Democrats hope passage of this bill, coupled with public opposition to
the war, will goad the Senate into action on a similar measure setting
an April 30, 2008 deadline for withdrawing troops.

But passage there will be difficult because of procedural rules that likely would
require 60 of the Senate’s 100 members to approve it.

Several Republicans have signed up to co-sponsor the Senate withdrawal
proposal, including Senators Gordon Smith of Oregon, Olympia Snowe of
Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Trying to calm dissent among a growing number of Republicans over the Iraq war, the White
House dispatched national security adviser Stephen Hadley to Capitol Hill for the second straight day, while Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice telephoned lawmakers.

They urged senators to back Mr Bush’s determination to wait until September for an evaluation by
General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, instead of embracing
some lawmakers’ attempts to impose change with a series of votes this
month.

“Basically the White House position is we should wait
to hear from General Petraeus before we take another step,” said Sen
Lamar Alexander of Tennessee after a session with Mr Hadley.

Seven Republicans joined 48 Democrats and one independent to vote for a plan
by Virginia Sen James Webb to ensure that troops, many of whom have
endured multiple deployments to Iraq, get adequate time at home between
tours of duty.

But that was still four votes short of the 60 needed given procedural hurdles erected by Republican leaders.

The Bush administration is expected to issue an interim report on Thursday
on the situation in Iraq and how the government in Baghdad is
performing.

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What if Libby Was Black or Mentally Retarded?

This post, written by Bob Cesca, originally appeared on The Huffington Post

Scooter Libby’s sentence was “excessive,” President Bush said.

In
other words, two-and-a-half years in jail for perjury is just way, way
over the line in a case in which the White House and Scooter Libby
undermined national security; exposed a CIA agent’s cover; and
potentially damaged this agent’s covert operation to track
unaccounted-for nuclear material (loose nukes) — all orchestrated by
the vice president and Libby to sucker punch Ambassador Joe Wilson.

So the president all but pardoned Libby by commuting his prison sentence.

The Republican-American
pundits and bloggers are, of course, applauding this action by the
president for some reason, which is weird since the same set of
googly-eyed Cotton Mathers wanted President Clinton at least impeached
and, at most, castrated after he was caught lying to a grand jury about
oral sex.

However, in the case of Scooter Libby, justice is simply too unfair and mean. To wit, I give you these remarks from Michelle Malkin’s freshly minted comments section:

We need to support the President on this one. He did the right thing in the face of the stiff political winds. This witchhunt against Libby
was wrong from the beginning. I only hope that the President pardons
him later on. The libs are going to be spitting up their lattes up on
this one.

This is a brilliant decision.
This means that Libby can still appeal, and that the injustice done by
the lower court can still be righted. A full pardon would have taken
that away, from what I understand.

It
was the LEAST Bush could do for Libby – and I do mean THE LEAST! he
whole trial was a fiasco and Fitty should have been on trial by now for
abuse of power Nifong-style.

Good decision. I always looked at the whole thing as a sham anyway. Too bad he is still strapped with the fines.

Yeah. Poor Scooter.

But
let’s get back to “excessive.” That’s a strong word considering
President Bush’s war for reelection and profit has killed anywhere from
30,000 to 600,000 Iraqi civilians. That’s excessive. It’s also a strong word for a man who four years ago today
baited the Iraqi insurgents to attack our soldiers by taunting them
with “bring ‘em on” — the most irresponsible statement any president
has uttered since President Grover Cleveland streaked pantless across
the White House roof while shouting, “Bring on a New Jersey Turnpike
rest area named after me! Let it thus betoken my legacy, and so too the
Roy Rogers fixins’ bar contained therein. Oyez! Huzzah! And other
joyous old-timey skidoo!”

What’s excessive? President Bush, who
suddenly hates excessive punishments, once refused to commute the death
sentence of a 33-year-old mentally retarded black man with an IQ of
around 60 and the functional skills of a 7-year-old boy.

10 years ago last May, President Bush and Alberto Gonzales
received a request for clemency on the day Terry Washington was to be
executed for killing a college student in 1987. President Bush skimmed
Gonzales’ incomplete summary and denied clemency.

Terry Washington was dead before the sun went down.

Regarding the record 152 executions during his two terms as governor, Bush “wrote” in his autobiography, A Charge To Keep,
“I don’t believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my
own.” He went on to write, “You know what’s interesting? I once
swallowed a coin.” I just made up that second quote, but I like to
imagine that he’s the kind of guy who has accidentally swallowed a coin
or two.

The truth is that commuting Libby’s prison term had
nothing to do with any sudden outbreak of Bushie sympathy or humanity.
After all, this is the same man who literally smiles from ear-to-Vulcanish-ear when talking about warfare and ordering more soldiers into combat in Iraq.

No,
the president’s decision had everything to do with: 1) a likely deal
between the vice president and Libby’s attorneys in which Libby
promised to keep the scuttlebutt away from Vice President Cheney in
exchange for the VPOTUS promising to see what he could do about the
sentence; and 2) Scooter Libby isn’t poor, black or retarded.

That’s it.

If
Scooter Libby had been some unfortunate nobody who was either black or
poor or retarded or, whoops!, all three, the president would’ve merely
skimmed the Gonzo Notes and remarked, “He’s a retarded and his first
name is “I. Lewis Scooter”? Deny. ACK! I swallowed another coin.”

Sadly
and seriously, in the president’s universe — shared by his thinning
brigade of dittoheads (see above blog comments) — the excessive
punishments are reserved exclusively for people like Terry Washington:
a man who lacked the ability to control his actions and communicate at
a normal level; a man who was unable to comprehend what was going on
around him. In other words, a man who was clearly more competent than
the president.

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Some quotes (that fit the times)

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic
leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of
leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools
and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and
terrorism on the other. (Bertrand Russell: Freedom, Harcourt Brace, 1940)

===
“Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through
people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was
false.” : Bertrand Russell

===
Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of
opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to
unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural
kindliness in favor of systematic hatred. - Bertrand Russell, Unpopular essays

“Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters
down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the
flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves
smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is
not a children’s pastime like mere highway robbery.” : Stephen Crane

Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of a private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. (FDR: message to Congress proposing the monopoly investigation\