Face my Cat, Face Death

I'm not sayin' that my cats would do this......but if the bear was small enough and Fat Nitty was hungry enough...the part I love is where the bear goes for the trash bag and Fluffnums rockets off the porch. You can almost hear it yowling "The FUCK? That's MY used human food, Yogi!"

Return of the Death Cat

Is this cute, or what?

We call this the "Death Kitty", and, no, it's not related to the "Death Cat" of this post,

(...or this, this or this.)

(Jesus. I sure gave that furry litte bastard some bandwidth, didn't I?)

Anyway, this is a different Death Kitty: Death Kitty, the Handbag! Cute, no? One of the many adorable creations from Skullcat Designs- check 'm out!.It was a tough choice between Death Kitty...

...and Little Beaver lovin' his log. How totally fucking kick ass adorable can you get!?!?!

Anyway, Mojo loves her goth kitty handbag, and I love Mojo sporting her frisky new sporty clothes and fun accessories. Win-win, baby!

So this time? No need to fear the arrival of the Death Cat!

Gone

The drama of the "171-H Saga" isn't over...it's just on hold. We'll know more Wednesday. Until then, I wanted to take a break from all things adoption and talk about the OTHER big news Monday: the resignation of Attorney General Gonzales.The thing is, I like to think I'm a pretty politically savvy guy. And when I look over this whole Gonzo deal I'm not sure I get it. Why him? Why now?

I mean, like the tiny handful of you that watch CSPAN I also watched the guy wriggle and deny and "forget" and flat-out lie his ass off in front of Congress this summer to the point where if it'd been an episode of "T.J. Hooker" Bill Shatner and Adrian Zmed would have hauled his ass out behind the LCPD holding tank for a little wall-to-wall counseling. And what happened?

Nothing. Zero, zip, nada. The guy skated. Like everybody else I figured that was that, he'd walked. The Dems were gonna have to find some other Bushie stooge to torment. As far as I can tell the whole tempest had died down to a teapot, and a pretty tepid one at that. And now this.

WTF? Makes no sense to me.
If we were in another time, and our Chief Executive was a different man, I'd say that it was time for a Big Change. Maybe one of his aides could put it to Dubya (who, I understand, fancies himself something of a Baseball Guy) as his "Kenesaw Mountain Landis" moment.
--
Time to acknowledge that the gamblers have gotten all over the Inside, that the whole system is worm-eaten rotten and what is needed is a gimlet-eyed hardcase to restore the public trust. Finding himself a Babe Ruth would help, too. But the point is it's NOT a different time, and Dubya isn't going to send some straight-shooter to replace Gonzo. He'll nominate another Ranger or Pioneer whose primary loyalty is to the Decider. And to hell with the nation.

To me , the saddest thing about the whole Abu Gonzales story is the sheer pointless stupidity of the man's entire tenure. Had he spent more time doing the job the Constitution directed him to do and less time trying to find ways for Dubya to skate around the parts that he didn't want to obey...

One of my fellow commentors at Intel Dump observed that Gonzo's syncophantic approach to his job "hurt his client, George W. Bush, who needed wise counsel more than he needed another cheerleader at the time..." The problem with this notion being, I would opine, that his client has one of the most irritating and self-destructive traits in a client, which is that he doesn't want wise counsel if it contradicts what he desires and believes, won't listen to it when he receives it and will ostracize and eventually fire counsel who continues to provide him with such advice.
--
I have long accepted that these guys have the anti-Midas touch...call it the "Michael Bay Touch", in that everything they set their hands to goes to shit. But even for this inept crew it passes disbelief that they'd try this now if their idea was to huck out the deadwood before bombing Iran. That would be some level of stupid beyond moronically inept...it'd be weapons-grade stupid. I'm not sure that they're capable of such a sustained level of stupid.
--
So I still don't get it. This entire mess makes no sense to me, politically or in terms of the personalities of the people involved.
--
But at this point, does that really matter? Ex-Attorney General Gonzales, meet the Death Cat. He's here for your career.
Back soon with more China adoption insanity. Get in, sit down, shut up and hold on: it's gonna be a helluva fucking ride.

Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys

I can't add much to what Glenn Greenwald has already said over at Salon about the Congressional Democrats' tripeless submission to the Bushies' demand for yet more extrajudicial authority to snoop, pry and poke into everybody and their brother's communications in the name of "fighting terror".
--
What I would want to ask Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid if I could haul them before the Fire Direction Center Seat of Justice (it's down the hall right next to the Occasional Table of Mercy) is why - why?!? - in the name of all that's sacred and profane they felt the need to hand this authority to The Decider and his sock-puppet-fist?

Was it because these two are so trustworthy? Because they're so well loved by the People they as well as these congressional "leaders" purport to serve?
--
WTF??!!
--
Look, I understand the need to keep your political appeal to the mouthbreathers. And I know that Democrats have been consistently and violently slimed as "Defeatocrats" and "weak on terrorism" ever since Karl, Dick and Dubya figure out that this issue was a club and the Democratic Party an adorably helpless baby Harp Seal.
--
But for fuck's sake!
--
You're gonna get slimed anyway! You're fighting against a guy that is arguably the weakest, worst, least competent president since the one-two Franklin Pierce/James Buchanan back-to-back incompetence slam! What the hell is there to lose?
--
More to the point, why the hell are you treating this guy like he has any honor left? Like you could trust him with your civil rights, a couple of loose quarters or an open can of Steel Reserve? Time and again he's shown that he cares only for himself, his opinion, his "legacy" - which he interprets purely in the light of his own narcicisstic belief that if the President does it, it can't be wrong.
--
He's not just part of the problem with our nation and our government - for the most part he IS the problem. And by deferring to him, the people who should be our party of loyally principled opposition are being both disloyal and unprincipled.
--
Harry, Nance, this cat needs a moment with you.

Friday Death Cat Blogging: Long Pig Edition

In our sleepless quest to bring you all things "Death Cat", here's someone not afraid to ask the question we've all been wondering about, courtesy of Amanda at Pandagon:

"OK, now I’m left to wonder (she writes) … if Oscar isn’t really interested in people, is it really ok to attribute Oscar’s curling up to the terminally ill to some sort of sympathetic desire to comfort the dying? Maybe he really likes being in a building with a bunch of weak old people.
--
…In fact, maybe he’s getting really pissed off that he goes through all the trouble of staking these people out and is then removed from the room before he can eat them.
--
You can’t blame cats. They spend all their lives around the large, hairless monkeys and they have to wonder if we taste better than that damn kibble we feed them. So they wait and watch and on very rare occasions, one actually has the chance to know if we really do taste like raw pork."
--
Speaking only for Miss Lily, she does like a little nip o' the long pork once in a while. But she claims that, unlike the scurrilous cannibal rumor, we actually taste like chicken.

--

Update 7/28: The Death Cat appears to have taken up politics.

Le Chatte de Mort

Okay, let's start with the premise that most newspapers are crap. Some, mind you, are more crap than others. But give or take a few Los Angeles or New York Timses, pretty much crap.

Now our local Oregonian is usually not the floaty-est turd in the newspaper crap bowl, but today's edition was almost beyond belief. Out in the big, scary real world the U.S. Attorney general was flat out lying to Congress, wars, disasters, cheating cyclists...all these things were happening yesterday. So what's above the fold on today's Oregonian front page?

An article about how if you get fat all your friends get fat, too (or maybe not...!),

Kids slapping each other on the ass, and...

The Death Cat.

I'm serious. No shit, I couldn't make this up.

Jesus wept, no wonder people in general are so fuckin' ignorant.