Paula the cat is looking mighty fine. It seems more and more that she just needed some TLC: good food, love and affection, and safety and security. She was quite ill originally but is doing better. The person or persons who neglected her so horribly deserve a taste of their own medicine.
Weekend Cat Blogging #70 offers some photos and links to a whole lot more. Um, of cats.
It seems the GOP is imploding over the Foley mess. Each time they’re asked about when they knew what, the leadership tells another lie that promptly gets shot down by multiple sources that show they knew more and earlier. What we do know is that they were being mindful of Foley and warning Republican pages as early as the late 90s. Did anyone try to stop him? No. Did they investigate to make certain the pages were safe? No. Did they take action to ensure no laws had been violated? No. And yet they keep lying about it. Oh, and now it’s all to be blamed on Clinton and the Democrats. Whatever.
Seems NATO feels Afghanistan is turning back to the Taliban because things are swell… er… I mean not so well. “NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan said Sunday the country was at a tipping point and warned Afghans would likely switch their allegiance to resurgent Taliban militants if there are no visible improvements in people’s lives in the next six months.” We’ve been there for five years and haven’t turned things around, so who really thinks that will change in six months? “Afghanistan is going through its worst bout of violence since the U.S.-led invasion removed the former Taliban regime from power five years ago. The Taliban has made a comeback in the south and east of the country and is seriously threatening Western attempts to stabilize the country after almost three decades of war.”
As for Iraq, things there aren’t going well either. “The number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war. Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The sharp increase in American wounded — with nearly 300 more in the first week of October — is a grim measure of the degree to which the U.S. military has been thrust into the lead of the effort to stave off full-scale civil war in Iraq, military officials and experts say. Beyond Baghdad, Marines battling Sunni insurgents in Iraq’s western province of Anbar last month also suffered their highest number of wounded in action since late 2004.”
Remember Hurricane Katrina? Remember Brownie? Remember the mess? In response, Congress passed new rules that require the head of FEMA to have at least five years of experience in emergency management. Sounds good, huh? It seems Bush thinks that rule is for sissies. His latest signing statement was picked up by newspapers because it “said the White House served notice that the president would not abide by new Congressional rules which require the next head of FEMA — that’s Brownie’s old job — to have five years’ experience in disaster management.” I guess we never learn. Not only that, but who are we kidding? Dubya’s made it quite clear he has no intention of following any law under any circumstances, not even the Constitution, so no one’s going to tell him he can’t put another clueless git in charge of our country’s federal emergency response agency. Hell, why not just stick Brownie back in the position?
When I first heard about the “new” hypoallergenic cat being offered by a company called Allerca, I thought it was a horrific idea. Their research had been focused on deleting the gene responsible for producing the protein that causes cat allergies in humans. Genetic engineering a pet was a disgusting thought to me. Either deal with the animal as it exists, or move on. Then I read this and felt much better. “Most human cat allergies are caused by Fel d 1, a molecule that has been sequenced and its gene mapped in the last decade. At first, Allerca scientists sought a method to delete or disable the gene. But in testing to see whether the gene had been effectively silenced, they made a fortuitous discovery: A very small number of cats carry a mutant gene that produces a modified protein, far less likely to induce allergies. At that point, the research shifted course. Allerca screened thousands of cats to identify a population with the modified gene and then set those cats to breeding. Because the mutant gene is dominant, the breeding cats could be mated with normal cats to produce hypoallergenic kittens.” It seems the mutation is quite normal and can be used to produce the allergy-free cats without gene splicing and the like (or whatever was involved). Cool! I’ll say, though, that $4,000 for a cat is a bit much considering they’ve done very little work other than genetic testing. Other than that, the rest of the work was done by the cats (mating’s a natural thing, right?). Still, cool.