Traditions? I don’t need no stink’n traditions!
Why I love Paul Krugman.
Yeah, ah….. I have the greatest dad ever!
Last night I invited them out for Friday night all you can eat fish fry at Peggy Sue’s (no web presence, sorry). Well, a few weeks ago my washing machine died. So, I mentioned it to dad earlier this week and asked if he had a line on a cheap used washing machine. He said he’d look; talked about how Menard’s sometimes have trade-ins they sell for $49, etc., etc., etc.
Well, yesterday when he showed up for the Fish Fry, he had a used washer in his van. My cost? NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Actually, I bought the fish.
Seriously: Greatest. Dad. Ever!
Oh, and laundry is agitating as I type this.
So, 3 days out from new cat addition. So far Cinnamon has done what all cats do when a new kitten is introduced; she hisses and bats at Kang. For his part, he is not intimidated. A true Klingon. Well, almost. He does not attack or antagonize. So on top of not being intimidated, he is smart.
The distance between them is shrinking, as well as an equivalent reduction in hissing and growling by Cinnamon. I expect that eventually they will be sleeping together on my bed.
Usually it is Cinnamon who sleeps on my bed, both when I am in it and when I am gone. However, Kang quickly asserted dominion over the bed, possibly extending what might have only been a two day bitch session into a week. Still, things are progressing nicely.
Of course, as I expected, Cinnamon is not eating as much. It is what she does when she gets upset. That too will change.
Seriously: Not Safe For Work!
Hat Tip to NTodd who posted it to Facebook. That means you won’t find this video on his blog.
Because I have been thinking Cinnamon has looked depressed lately, I decided to adopt a rescue kitten from Camp Companion to keep her company. They are a volunteer group in Rochester MN who take kittens born to feral cats or are in kitten mills/hording homes. His name is Kang. My girlfriend Norene – who volunteers with Camp Companion – nursed him from when he was first born. He became very ill in his first few months of life. 3 of his siblings did not survive their illness.
Anyway, he is very mellow and laid back. He is almost a Tuxedo cat. Not quite though. More white than usual. He will leave adults alone if they show any animosity towards him. In fact, he is making a wide berth of Cinnamon at the moment because she is obviously upset at a new addition to the household. But I trust her to make friends quickly.
He is named after a character in Star Trek played by Michael Ansara. Pictures to follow.
From Bryan over at Why Now?
A veteran uniformed police officer stopped by his bank and walked in on an armed robbery in progress. Both the cop and the robber had six-shot revolvers. More than two dozen shots were fired at a distance of less than 20 feet and neither was hit. Fortunately no one else was injured but the bank’s lobby was a mess. The robber gave up after he ran out of ammo, while the office still had bullets. The robber reloaded once and the officer twice during the incident.
An off-duty officer stopped by his favorite bar on his way home after work. Just after he sat down, two men came out of the men’s room and one of them had what appeared to be revolver in his hand. The officer drew his auto-loader and fired 14 rounds at a distance of less than 15 feet. Neither of the men was hit, and they surrendered. The weapon turned out to be a pellet pistol designed to look like a Smith&Wesson large frame revolver. The officer was a member of his department’s pistol team and a range instructor.
These were trained police officers that I personally have seen group their shots on a timed course at 75 feet. When confronted with a shoot situation, their accuracy disappeared. You have to be a stone-cold killer not to experience an adrenalin surge and a blood pressure spike in a life or death situation. You experience hearing loss and tunnel vision as your brain stem prepares the body to fight or run by diverting blood from ‘unnecessary’ systems. Training reduces the problems, but they can’t be eliminated.
Given these realities, what are the realistic chances of someone with less training and seasoning than an NYPD SWAT officer being able to make the head shot required to take out a shooter wearing soft body armor and firing an AR-15 at you? An armed guard at that school would have been the first person to die, and wouldn’t have prevented anything. The shooter knew what was going to happen, and that is a huge advantage.
There is a national shift about gun safety. There is a national shift about how we take care of our own inside our own borders. The NRA still has yet to make an official announcement about the massacre. 31 pro-gun lobby Senators refuse to go on the air and discuss the implications of this latest tragedy.
This is the tipping point. After over 3 decades of crying “What about the children?” it has finally come home that the conservative approach to social issues has been wrong.
Had they been right 20 children would not now be dead.