You can't make this shit up!

Click here to see the whole screenshot. 

(right click, open in new window so it doesn't freeze)

Okay, so this cat "followed" my husband home.  Well, I thought I would be nice and feed it b/c it looked too skinny.  While I was feeding it, I noticed that it's left back leg is broken.  It does not hurt the cat and it seems to be an old injury, but now I feel like I cannot just put it back outside.  Especially since I live in an apartment complex.  Cars fly through the parking lot and there are dogs that people let roam around.  Unfortunately, it is Friday night and there isn't anywhere to bring it.  It seems to have fleas and it is pretty dirty, but it is sweet as hell.  I just have to keep my other cats upstairs b/c I do not know if this one has it's shots.  I am hoping that a shelter is open tomorrow, but I am not counting on it.  It is going to be impossible for me to keep my other cats cooped up upstairs all weekend.  This is really a sad situation.  The back foot of the cat is not attached to the bone in it's leg, it kind of just hangs there.  I feel so bad for it.  Also, I made a flyer to put up in the complex in case it belongs to anyone, but I doubt anyone will claim it.

What should I do? 

Hummingbird
Simon

daleelama

Dave

Karen

 You are now "it".

 This information is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

 "The Tally So Far

The three rounds of tax-cut legislation (in 2001, 2002, and 2003) account for a substantial share of the nation’s current deficit. 

• The tax cuts would reduce revenues by $276 billion in 2004, according to Joint Committee on Taxation estimates.  Further, the interest costs associated with the enacted tax cuts would equal $20 billion, using Congressional Budget Office assumptions.  The total cost would therefore be $297 billion, or 2.6 percent of the economy (or GDP).

• Using these estimates, the cost of the tax cuts account for more than half of the 2004 deficit, which CBO estimates to be $477 billion or 4.2 percent of GDP.  Based on these estimates, the deficit would have been 1.6 percent of GDP without the tax cuts.

 click to enlarge

Distribution of Tax-Cut Benefits

The benefits that the tax cuts provide to different groups vary dramatically.  New data from the Tax Policy Center show the effects in 2004 of the tax cuts that have already been enacted, including the corporate and estate tax cuts, as well as the individual income tax cuts.  The Tax Policy Center data show that the combined effect of the tax cuts in 2004 is as follows:

• The one-fifth of households in the middle of the income spectrum will receive an average tax cut of $647.

• The top one percent of households will receive tax cuts averaging almost $35,000 — or 54 times as much as that received on average by those in the middle of the income spectrum.

• Households with incomes above $1 million will receive tax cuts averaging about $123,600.  The tax cuts for millionaires will cause their after-tax income to jump by 6.4 percent, nearly three times the percentage increase received by the middle fifth.

The overall shares of the tax cuts that are going to different households also are illuminating.  The Tax Policy Center data show that:

• In 2004, the middle 20 percent of households will receive 8.9 percent of the tax cuts.

• By contrast, millionaires — totaling just 0.2 percent of U.S. households — will receive 15.3 percent of the tax cuts.[3]  In other words, the small handful of millionaires will receive total tax cuts far larger than those received by the entire middle 20 percent of households. 

• The tax cuts will confer more than $30 billion on the nation’s 257,000 millionaires in 2004 alone."

"Professors have been threatened. Doctors have been killed in their clinics. Killing has become common," Fayed said. "Some people believe this is intentional, to try to empty Iraq of its elite."

Kubasi, the former head of Iraq's military medical corps, believes that. In late April, his secretary handed him a letter written in what he called "bad Arabic" giving them all by May 6 -- 10 days -- to leave the country. He showed the letter to authorities, who suggested he had faked it. By May 8, Kubasi was in Jordan.  (How many Arabs write in bad Arabic?  And why would the police accuse a doctor of faking a death threat?)

"It's mental death to sit here. But even my patients say I should not come back. Really, really, I could not pay for a kidnapper's ransom. And in that case, you would be killed."

"The circuit of teaching, training and care is being broken. It may not be recovered," he said.

The men terrorized [Um Mustafa and her family] for more than two hours, threatening to kill or kidnap their 6-year-old son, while their 2-year-old cried. They beat Um Mustafa's husband, finally leaving when they were satisfied they had found all the jewelry, guns and money in the house. They left the couple bound with plastic handcuffs (How many of the insurgents have plastic handcuffs sitting around).

"I've been through four wars. I never, never felt like leaving before," Um Mustafa said. "Now, life in Iraq has become unsafe. I don't feel safe in my own bedroom -- or in the whole country."

I suppose this is just another example of the media only reporting the "bad stuff", right?  What good is there in fixing up a school if there is no one to teach in it?  What good is there in fixing up a hospital if there are no doctors to treat patients in it? 

This does not mean that I think Saddam was doing a better job or I want him back or any ignorant shit like that.  I just think there is undeniable evidence that we have royally fucked up nearly every part of rebuilding this country.  These guys say that it has been worse in the last 6 months than it has been for the previous two years.  How can you call that progress?  Progress is supposed to make things better.  Progress is supposed to make people safer.

Baghdad was once considered the Paris of the Middle East.  They were the cultural and intellectual bright spot in that culture.  Now all of the people that made Baghdad University and the Iraqi medical system, etc. something for the rest of the Middle East to look up to are being forced out. 

Why?  This is the more important question not raised by the article.  Why would Iraqis do this to their country?  I remember right after the invasion that all of the professors at all of the universities and a lot of the lawyers were being killed in the streets or fleeing the country.  Now they are all gone or dead, so the focus has shifted to the doctors and businesspeople.  What field will be purged next?  Surely the Iraqis would not do this to themselves.  Surely they would not willfully destroy their own culture.  What can be done about this?  The current status quo certainly isn't doing anything effective to prevent this sort of thing.  What new strategy will effectively allow the Iraqis to maintain their cultural and intellectual excellence?

This is only what I have been saying the entire time.  I have been called many ugly things for declaring the same concerns that these wonderful men have noted.  I am very proud of these men for standing up for what they know is right and standing up for the values of America and all human kind during a time when it is not popular to do so.  I salute all of these brave men.

But there are always those people that disagree.  They would equate all 22 of these men with terrorists.  But the truth is that all of these men are men of honor.  Something that is obviously lacking in this country right now.

 

 

I have lived in many states, so I thought I should also give them recognition too.

North Carolina (born here)

Alabama (grew up here)

Mississippi (went to college here)

South Carolina (currently live/stationed here)