When The Lion Lies Down

Russian tankers invade Georgia

Now that Barry has reneged on the protective cover President Bush extended to the Polish and Ukranians last year, we see what the Bear must be thinking:

The armed forces are said to have carried out "war games" in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country's coast.

Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland's leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the "potential aggressor".

The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a "Polish" beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus – the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.

Karol Karski, an MP from Poland's Law and Justice, is to table parliamentary questions on Russia's war games and has protested to the European Commission.

His colleague, Marek Opiola MP, said: "It's an attempt to put us in our place. Don't forget all this happened on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland."

Ordinary Poles were outraged by news of the exercise and demanded a firm response fro the government.

One man, identified only as Ted, told Polskie Radio: "Russia has laid bare its real intentions with respect to Poland. Every Pole most now get of the off the fence and be counted as a patriot or a traitor."

Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, has tried to build a pragmatic relationship with the Kremlin despite widespread and vocal calls in Poland for him to cool ties with Moscow.

After spending 40 years under Soviet domination few in Poland trust Russia, and many Poles have become increasingly wary of a country they consider as possessing a neo-imperialistic agenda.

Bogdan Klich, Poland’s defence minister, said: “It is a demonstration of strength. We are monitoring the exercises to see what has been planned.

Wladyslaw Stasiak, chief of President Lech Kaczynski’s office, and a former head of Poland’s National Security Council, added: “We didn’t like the appearance of the exercises and the name harked back to the days of the Warsaw Pact.”

The Russian troop exercises will come as an unwelcome sight to the states nestling on Russia’s western border who have deep-rooted anxieties over any Russian show of strength.

With a resurgent Moscow now more willing to flex its muscles, Central and Eastern Europeans have warned of Russia adopting a neo-imperialistic attitude to an area of the world it still regards as its sphere of influence.

In July, the region’s most famed and influential political figures, including Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, wrote an open letter Barack Obama warning him that Russia “is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods.”

Moscow and Minsk have insisted that Operation West was to help "ensure the strategic stability in the East European region". (source)

Life Without Phoebe

I first noticed Phoebe's decline when she couldn't walk up the stairs like she used to. What used to be a steady stride up the 20 steps turned into a chore for her. Life now dictated that she slowly attack the first 10, then rest. I had a feeling of panic when I saw the look in her eyes as she rested before scaling the final 10. "Oh my God", I thought. "She's having trouble with those stairs. It must be arthritis", I remember telling myself.

Phoebe was 9 and a half years old, and I'd never experienced a health problem with her, save for the time she had an ear infection about 6 years ago. My beautiful Golden Retriever never spent a night away from Daddy for ten years, and he was accutely aware of any deviation from her normal behavior.

She was my child. And my dearest friend.

Me and Phoebe visiting my home place.

It was late 1999, in rural Virginia. The mountains have a sky full of grey, low clouds, contrasted with the ridges, hollows, and mountaintops full of bright oranges, purples, reds, and browns. I was travelling on rt 460, to a puppy farm of Golden Retrievers on the edge of Montgomery County. I turned right on srt 624, heading east on Mt Tabor Rd. It was only about 8 miles down this road where I found Phoebe's birthplace, a typical small farm with nice folks who ran it. I saw her parents: a masterful, barrel-chested father with energy, and her reddish-haired mother who showed great interest in this newcomer without any scent of other dogs on him.

The owner led me to the barn where the pair had given birth to 6 little beautiful pups. They said that mom and dad had just had a litter 6 months before, and that this one started right after that one. It was an "accidental litter."

There was a short segment on one of the news channels shortly before this, detailing methods of attracting the right dog for you when in one of these exact situations. Standing on the December soil, scattered with straw, I could smell the distinct mixtures of manure, wood, and livestock. At my feet were half a dozen squirming, cute, puppies. The temptation to fixate on the one with markings that appealed the best arose quickly in me, but I came with a plan from the experts on the news channel: I knelt down with them and licked my hand, then held it down among them.

I picked the one that responded the most to my hand: Phoebe.

She was with me during my 30's, a somewhat chaotic period. She slept on my bed for the first 5 years of her life. It wasn't until I moved for the first time during her life to Florida that I started the "no more sleeping on Daddy's bed" rule. She seemed bewildered at first, but not especially mournful, as the floor was something new to her: carpet. Her bones and joints weren't resting on the same wood floors she had known.

Phoebe was the best friend I've ever known. She never complained about anything, despite eating the same food every day and living life on a cable run. I would have let her run free, but I haven't lived isolated from others in 25 years, now. My family always kept at least 4 or 5 dogs at a time. They all ran free on those Blue Ridge mountains while they lived. Having known that life until 17, I never knew how special it was. How I wish I could have given Phoebe more, but it was beyond my reach to live that life again. She lived now with close neighbors, close roads, all dictating that I needed to keep her on a run when I let her out every morning.

"Im not sure what's wrong with her. I saw her begin to have problems with the stairs a couple of weeks ago, and I wrote it off to arthritis. I went out and got her some daily supplements for dogs with joint problems, and some better food", I told the veterinarian a few months ago.
"Was she having trouble chewing her food?" he asked.
"Yes. She just all of a sudden stopped eating her dry food not long ago. When the supplements didn't seem to help her with the stairs, I decided to bring her in."

The doctor took a blood sample, and asked that I wait in the front office with her while he did some quick analysis. It was then that I started to get a worsening anxiety about my dearest friend. We sat there in the July heat, me wishing that the little building had better ac, as I watched Phoebe pant continuously.

Then again, she'd been panting a lot lately at home, too.

This last year was rough on her Daddy. Having lost my job a year ago, we had to move because Daddy couldn't afford the rent anymore. Off we went to a one-roomed existance, crowded by not only the bed, but desk for Daddy's computer, a chest of drawers, and boxes. She never complained, or acted like it was less than another adventure that her and Daddy embarked upon: strange at first, but all ok because she was with her Daddy.

God I miss her.

"It looks like Phoebe's white blood cell count is down", the vet said. "Before I do anything drastic, which could even mean a blood transfusion, I want to prescribe her some medicine and see how she looks in a few days. How about Monday to bring her back?"
"Ok", I managed to respond.

I followed the vet's prescription exactly for the next few days. She actually seemed to respond positively to it. For weeks I had to carry her up the stairs every time she went out. Soon, I had to carry her down, as well. But after a couple of days on the medicine, she could actually go downstairs on her own. I momentarily had a glimmer of hope. The next visit dashed my hope and spirit, though.

"Her white blood cell count is dropping", he said sympathetically to me. "I'm afraid for the worst for her. I'd like to send a sample of her blood to a clinic nearby to do a full analysis, but it's a little pricey."
"I'll do it", I replied. The results came back; Phoebe was suffering from anemia, and she was dying. The only thing that could be done was to either euthanize her or try to make her as comfortable as possible until the end.

I somberly told the vet that I may be taking the route of euthanization if I see her in pain. He prescribed her some cortisone, and told me that a week would be most likely the length of her remaining days.

I crushed up her pills each day and put them in a syringe for her, in the morning and at night. The illness progressed, and I continued to carry her up and down the stairs for three more weeks.

Here was my closest companion for the last decade of my life, panting and gasping for her every breath, but trying to smile for me. I couldn't pass her without laying on the floor next her, coaxing a kiss from her on my face or nose. Many a time I lay there at her feet over these 10 years, needing her exchange with me. She would nustle her nose in my neck, then start to wag her tail. When I have been at my lowest, she was there for me. Something that made me feel like my life hasn't been such a waste. I have no child, no wife, no one who depends upon me except myself.

But Phoebe depended on me. And she showed me ten years of utter devotion and worship. I am a better person because of Phoebe, and her time here on Earth. She forced me to think of someone other than myself in real, life-or-death aspects. I never had to lay a hand on her, and my voice was never raised in anger at her. A truer friend a man couldn't get.

Phoebe finally passed back in July. My girlfriend fed her some leftover gravy she made for our biscuits that morning, and she loved it. I fed her that gravy until the end, a couple of days later. I was in shock and deeply affected when it happened, at three in the morning. I had told myself only hours before that I would finally have to take her in the next day, to be put to sleep.

She left before I had to make that terrible choice, though, and that fact provides me with only a small amount of solace in her wake.

I hadn't been sleeping well at all for weeks, and was in and out at 3am when it happened. I stayed with her while the death throes shook her, and for a short time after everything stopped. I couldn't look at her face. I carried her downstairs immediately in a burial blanket. For the next hour and a half, I dug her final resting place in the middle of her run path, where she was always at ease and amused with all of the Florida critters only feet away from her in an empty, overgrown lot that had it's own small ecosystem of birds, snakes, armadillo's, rabbits, squirells, etc, that kept her fascinated when she wasn't resting in the shade.

Phoebe's pssing affected me more than I anticipated, but who can know what life is like without our loved ones until it happens? I find myself thinking about her at least once during the day now, three months since she left us. The house is quieter, there's no one waiting for me when I get home, and there's no one who licks my face anymore.

I'd give anything to have her back.

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 5

Let’s add up some “knowns”:

1) Gates is a Harvard professor of humanities, making a career of Afrocentrism.
2) He is a self-described adherent of identity politics.
3) He has produced several PBS series on various African American subjects, including one that aired in February of this year and another soon to air.
4) Barry’s push for socialized health care will not come before the legislature before the August recess, and when the congressmen return from it, they will be very leary of passing it as he wants it due to fear of upsetting their re-election chances in 2010.
5) Barry is friends with Gates, and shares his attitude about the dominant race in America.
6) Barry needs sympathy from America to stem his declining poll approval numbers, and to possibly rescue his UHC dreams after August.

Knowing all of this, it seems very possible that Barry’s venture into what should have stayed a local (non)issue concerning the Cambridge police’s arrest of a disorderly professor Gates, was nothing more than a cunning ploy to distract attention from his failed UHC bill and further attempt to both racially divide this country and garner sympathy for him as a “black man in America where the black man is still a victim.”

It also seems very possible that Gates purposely inflated the situation with officer Crowley, knowing that the attention he manufactured from it would help sell his books, dvd’s and future projects.

And perhaps unrelated is the fact that CNN aired its much-hyped “Black In America” series for the last two nights. The massive promotions and lead-in to the shows were dramatically sensationalized by featuring the breaking news of the Gates case. The reporting on the Gates case by CNN has been decidedly one-sided, and after two days officer Crowley’s side was finally aired, but has been treated as if it is too-little-too-late and completely unconvincing. The interview with Soledad O’Brien today was particularly telling of a CNN perspective.

If you have the curiosity and patience for it, I have actually chronicled the CNN segments featuring this Gates case for the last three days on my new channel at Youtube. You can survey them at your leisure here.

Barry In Charge: Starting A Race War The Old Fashioned Way: Stupidity

For a Harvard-educated law graduate to make this kind of a pre-judgement is embarrassing. For our American president to say it is shameful.

These police officers put their lives on the line every time they respond to a call from you and me. To condemn them as "stupid" shows an elitism from a man who has never gotten his hands dirty with anything that taught him some basic principles of life: namely, that police have an enormously hard job and you don't backtalk them or give them any of your attitude. They are ready to die for you and me, and they surely don't get paid as much as a Harvard professor who has made a lifetime of arousing black suspicions about whites, police brutality, unfair justice practices, and overall victimhood for blacks in America.

Poor Barry here is associating Gates' arrest with the fact that Gates showed his credentials of identification and address, as if that's why Gates was arrested [with an African American police officer assisting during the entire episode, by the way]. The racemonger president knows better, but is choosing to further endanger the Cambridge Police officer's lives with these reckless statements.

Just to refresh Barry's beleagured mind a bit: Gates wasn't arrested for not being who he said he was, or for breaking and entering his house. He was arrested for disorderly conduct for mouthing off [even Gates' lawyer admitted that his client acted thusly] and acting beligerent during a routine response call from a neighbor.

It takes a couple of Harvard-educated idiots to not know that you answer politely and comply completely with the police or you suffer the consequences, no matter how important you think you are.

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 4

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 3

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 2

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 1

CNN has been lagging so far behind in cable news ratings that they started scandalizing the benign long ago, much as the Hearst-era dailies of the past did in order to drum up sales. What is nothing more than a silly story of a grown man acting like a child makes national news under the special banner, "Divided Nation".

Where there is nothing more here than the division of people who appreciate a neighbor being concerned enough to call police when witnessing two people breaking into a nearby house versus those who ignore such things like the bystander effect noted in the famous Genovese case, CNN tries to amplify this embarrassing case of overrreaction by a grey-haired professor ("Yeah, I'll speak with your mama outside", indeed) into a national case in order to portray America as something it isn't: broken.

But as the famous news publishers of the past have bellowed, "The American people don't know what to think until I TELL THEM WHAT TO THINK."

MSM Diary: A Reporter's Life Is More Precious Than An American Soldier's pt II

As reported here weeeks ago, the msm went to great effort to keep the identity of a kidnapped journalist out of America's headlines, but in stark, amazing, despicable contrast, they gleefully report the kidnapping of an American GI by the same Taliban that captured one of theirs.

Here's a follow-up story about how even the soldier's hometown tried to keep their local serviceman's fate a secret.

HAILEY, Idaho – The Pentagon said Monday that troops are "sparing no effort" to find an American soldier captured by the Taliban as his family pleaded for privacy and residents in his hometown tied yellow ribbons on trees along Main Street in a show of solidarity.

The actions came two days after the Taliban released a video of Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl in captivity expressing his fear that he would never see or hug his family again. The footage showed Bergdahl with his head shaved, eating a meal and sitting cross-legged on what appeared to be a bunk.

"We've been overwhelmed with the outpouring of support and concern towards Bowe and our family," the family said in a statement read by Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling. "As you know, the situation is extremely difficult for everyone involved. We'd like to remind all of you our sole focus is seeing our beloved son Bowe safely home."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates condemned the video Monday, saying he was disgusted by the exploitation of a prisoner. "Our commanders are sparing no effort to find this young soldier," Gates said at a Pentagon news conference.

Bergdahl, 23, grew up just outside Hailey, a central Idaho resort town where residents said he was home-schooled, danced ballet and rode his bike everywhere in town. They also called him adventurous and said he joined the Army at least in part because he wanted to learn more about the world. He had been stationed at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Bergdahl's parents, Bob and Jani Bergdahl, have refused requests to be interviewed, and the sheriff declined to answer personal questions about Bergdahl in a news conference that was televised nationally from this town of 7,000 people.

And few in town would speak openly about Bergdahl because of fears that any remarks might hurt the possibility of his safe return. The town learned about the capture in early July but kept quiet about the ordeal.

The circumstances of Bergdahl's capture on June 30 weren't clear.

On July 2, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press the soldier had "just walked off" his base with three Afghans after his shift. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

On July 6, the Taliban claimed on their Web site that five days earlier "a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison" and was captured by mujahedeen.

Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.

Officials with U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., declined to give additional details of his capture.

Bergdahl's family learned of his capture when a member of the Idaho National Guard came to their home in early July. Over the weekend of July 4, four service members who specialize in hostage events visited and told them what their son might be experiencing in captivity as well as what the military was doing to have him released.

Military officials in Afghanistan refused a request from the AP to interview fellow soldiers from Bergdahl's Army unit. Spokesman Navy Lt. Robert Carr in Kabul said the military was controlling the flow of information so nothing could be used against the other American forces or Bergdahl.

Not all family members of captured soldiers stay quiet about such situations.

Keith Maupin, whose son was captured in Iraq in 2004, was vocal during the four years his 20-year-old son Pfc. Matt Maupin was missing before his body was found.

"I know if they stay quiet, they're not going to get any information," Maupin told the AP from his home in Ohio. "They've got to stay on top of it."

Some say the discretion exhibited in Hailey fits with the region's history of respecting the privacy of part-time celebrity visitors and residents such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore

"It's just the way we are," said Hailey Chamber of Commerce Director Jim Spinelli. (source)

The Wisest Latina

Out of masochisim I found myself watching CNN on Saturday. It was coverage of the Sotomayor hearings from last week, and they were asking for viewers to comment on their companion website about the proceedings.

I decided to do my bit as a concerned citizen, and left this message you see below. It was taken down by the site moderators within three hours of being placed there. I was suspicious of their Leftist sensitivities and allergic reaction to anything that defended the opposite side of their obvious bias, so I took a screenshot of my comment post right after I posted it, which you can see below.

Here is the link to the site to see the type of comments CNN prefers instead of mine:

http://newsroom.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/17/sonia-sotomayor-are-you-convinced/#comment-19726

Decide for yourself if CNN caters to only the reactionary brain-dead in our country:

I watched intently many hours of the CSPAN 2 broadcast coverage of the Sotomayor hearings, and came away with the thought that Judge Sotomayor was well prepared for this process.

Having received Arlen Specter’s questions far in advance to this hearing, as he repeatedly admitted while questioning her, it became apparent that many more of the questions were also given in advance to Ms Sotomayor in order to practice and refine her responses.

Upon reflection, I am unable to say for sure whether we saw the “real” Sotomayor. After all, can someone watch an actor perform on stage and claim to “know” the real actor?

Much has been made about the composition of the Senate panel. Apparently, it upsets many people that white men proceeded to ask Ms Sotomayor questions. Indeed, Rick Sanchez reported just an hour or so ago how Latinas he interviewed, who weren’t just common folk, but well-educated and experienced women felt indignant at the questions.

An impossible bar is placed upon the men on that panel who are demanded by the Constitution to discuss and ask questions in order to determine any nominee’s fitness for SCOTUS. If they ask probing questions about a prepared public statement Sotomayor made not once, but 7 times concerning racial superiority of her ethnicity, they are accused of trying to deny a person’s “life experience”. If they ask casual, unassuming questions such as “Can you live on what we pay judges?”, they are criticized for presuming that her Bronx upbringing was inconsequential.

From what I saw, the white men asked about the only things they had to go on: her rulings, her speeches, and her advocacy work. What is so wrong about that? Previous nominees from Republican administrations not only had to answer questions from those areas, but had to also answer question on incidental memos, casual unofficial comments, jokes, and even their video rental purchases.

For such a fuss to be made over the lines of questioning Ms Sotomayor had to “endure” by these white men ignores not only the mandate of the Constitution, but the history of previous nominees as well. To continue with this act of being offended leads one to think that Latinas can’t handle a thorough vetting process. Or at least the ones that men must endure.

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