Lesson On Progressives: Globalism And Soros

Mexico Gunmen Kill American Consulate Staff

View of the US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua State, Mexico on March 2.

As the third world experience we call "Mexico" spills into our country, will Barry use this as an excuse to extend health care to all Mexicans?

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Gunmen in the drug war-plagued Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez killed two Americans and a Mexican linked to the local U.S. consulate, an attack U.S. President Barack Obama said "outraged" him.

An American woman working at the consulate in Ciudad Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, and her U.S. husband were fatally shot by suspected drug gang hitmen in broad daylight on Saturday as they left a consulate social event, U.S. and Mexican officials told Reuters.

A Mexican man married to another consulate employee was killed around the same time in another part of the city after he and his wife left the same event, a U.S. official said.

The U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said it was not clear if the victims had been specifically targeted, and the motive for the attacks was unknown.

Bloodshed has exploded in recent months in Ciudad Juarez as the head of the Juarez cartel, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, fights off a bloody offensive by Mexico's No. 1 fugitive drug lord, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, at the worst hotspot of Mexico's three-year-old drug war.

"The president is deeply saddened and outraged by the news," said White House National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer. He said Obama "shares in the outrage of the Mexican people at the murders of thousands in Ciudad Juarez and elsewhere in Mexico."

The U.S. State Department updated its warning on travel to Mexico to say it had authorized the departure of dependents of U.S. government personnel from consulates in Ciudad Juarez and five other northern border cities.

Nearly 19,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon came to power in Mexico in late 2006 and launched a military assault on the country's powerful drug cartels, sparking a surge in violence that has alarmed Washington, foreign investors and tourists.

Most victims are rival traffickers and police, and to a lesser extent soldiers, local officials and bystanders. It is rare for drug gang hitmen to target foreigners.

"The Mexican authorities are determined to clarify what happened and bring those responsible to justice," the Mexican Foreign Ministry said of Saturday's attacks.

CHILDREN SURVIVE SHOOTING

The attack on the U.S. couple began with a car chase and ended in front of the main border crossing into El Paso, an area heavily patrolled by soldiers, local newspaper El Diario reported. The couple's baby girl survived the attack.

The Mexican spouse was murdered in an upscale neighborhood of the city when gunmen boxed in his car with other vehicles and shot him, according to a local newspaper photographer who soon arrived at the scene. His wife, who was following in a second car, was unhurt, but their two children were wounded.

Calderon was already scheduled to visit Ciudad Juarez on Tuesday, his third trip there in a month, as he scrambles to find a way to deal with a surge in killings that 8,000 troops and federal police on the ground have failed to curb.

The drug war has killed more than 4,600 people in the key manufacturing city in two years, and constant scenes of bullet-ridden vehicles and bodies lying in pools of blood have prompted many middle-class residents to flee.

Across Mexico, drug war violence is at its worst level ever, and many U.S. students have heeded warnings not to cross the border this year for their annual "spring break" vacation.

A burst of drug gang clashes killed at least 27 people -- including four who were beheaded -- this weekend in or near the Pacific resort of Acapulco, one of many popular with spring breakers.

At least 13 were killed on Saturday and at least 14 on Sunday, police said, including nine men who were killed in a shootout and a young woman shot as she drove by in a taxi.

Obama voiced his support for Calderon's drug war during a visit to Mexico last year, but the rising violence along the border with Mexico has become a big concern for Washington.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan; writing by Noel Randewich; editing by Catherine Bremer and Mohammad Zargham) [source]

Obama Supports DNA Sampling Upon Arrest

Cloward-Piven Strategy

Ever get arrested, but not convicted? If not, don't act so smug. It happens a lot in our judicial system, which I still believe to be the best in the world. Sure there are corrupt judges, politicians, jury members, cops, etc, here and there in our justice system, but the beauty of it is that we can elect those who control these things. In time, the corrupt actors get exposed more effectively than in ANY other country of 300 million people as diverse as America.

That being said, it is worth noting the continued exposure of the useful idiots on the Left who are acting squirmish and anxious at the path their messiah has been on of late.

Guantaunomo Bay still exists.

The Patriot Act had its sunset laws extended.

He let the Navy kill those Somali teenagers.

He fired Van Jones for his political views.

Now this.

You can feel the breath being sucked out of their weak hearts. Loudmouth, jubilant, self-righteous one year, then this the next:

Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties knight in shining armor many were expecting.

Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.

When it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration has come under fire for often mirroring his predecessor’s practices surrounding state secrets, the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There’s also Gitmo, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18 states that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The data is lodged in state and federal databases, and has fostered as many as 200 arrests nationwide, Walsh said.

The American Civil Liberties Union claims DNA sampling is different from mandatory, upon-arrest fingerprinting that has been standard practice in the United States for decades.

A fingerprint, the group says, reveals nothing more than a person’s identity. But much can be learned from a DNA sample, which codes a person’s family ties, some health risks, and, according to some, can predict a propensity for violence.

The ACLU is suing California to block its voter-approved measure requiring saliva sampling of people picked up on felony charges. Authorities in the Golden State are allowed to conduct so-called “familial searching” — when a genetic sample does not directly match another, authorities start investigating people with closely matched DNA in hopes of finding leads to the perpetrator.

Do you wonder whether DNA sampling is legal?

The courts have already upheld DNA sampling of convicted felons, based on the theory that the convicted have fewer privacy rights. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that when conducting intrusions of the body during an investigation, the police need so-called “exigent circumstances” or a warrant. That alcohol evaporates in the blood stream is the exigent circumstance to draw blood from a suspected drunk driver without a warrant. (source)

Health Care Summit: When Owning 2 Branches Of Federal Gov't Ain't Enough

Rush Has A Heart Scare

HONOLULU (AP) - A Honolulu television station is reporting that conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh was taken to a hospital with chest pains.
KITV reported Wednesday that paramedics responded to a call at 2:41 p.m. from the Kahala Hotel and Resort where Limbaugh is vacationing.

The station, citing unnamed sources, said paramedics treated Limbaugh and took him to The Queen's Medical Center in serious condition.

Queen's spokesman N. Makana Shook says the hospital is unable to comment on the report.

Limbaugh was seen golfing at Waialae Country Club earlier this week. The country club is next to the Kahala Hotel and Resort. [source]

After hearing of this news, I got caught up in thought over the contribution that Rush has made to America and how easily that could be taken away; how soon he would be forgotten (except, of course, to those of us who like to read and listen to things), as his name is swallowed up in the memory hole. The mainstream media have performed already as a blackout of Rush amongst their own signals, only begrudgingly bringing up his name when a salacious or embarrassing angle is employed.

I thought it only proper to offer an ode to a Thomas Paine of our times, Rush Limbaugh, at my favorite political watering hole, Sweetness & Light:

I first learned about Rush when I ETS’d out of the Army back in 1990. My political philosophy was already firmly in the Conservative realm, but I had spent my adolescent years smothered in Democrat-controlled, Appalachian mountain ignorance. My people lived like Conservatives as we stayed within our budgets, found enjoyment in the little things, and realized that Earthly pleasures don’t lead to salvation. But as rural people, many of whom still get their drinking water from a nearby mountain spring, desperation and generations of inadequate education lead even good, God-fearing people to fall for the Senator Byrds of this world. Eating nothing but chestnuts and old apples for a few winters in a row could do that to you, of course.

But if you think that people like my Scots-Irish father voted Democrat all the time because he was a Dixiecrat, then you don’t understand southern white men. Even though my father was a pure redneck cracker, we never heard the word nigger used in my household. He wasn’t like that. As a drinker, he had several friends who drank with him on a regular basis throughout his 64 years. A few of those were black men from our backwoods county, and my dad never acted like there was anything strange about it. He laughed and had a good time with them, so there was nothing to it.

But my father, like much of the men from that area, had a superstitious distrust of anyone who spoke well and was educated. As my brother and I used to ask deeper questions about politics of my drunk father, and the questions contained more logic, the only thing he would finally seize upon is, “My dad always told me that the common man does better when Democrats are in control, and I’m for the little man, dammit!” and the conversation was inevitably shut down at that point, as he stormed off to his bedroom.

It took my entry into the Army for my own personal philosophy to crystalize. At 18, I thought I was an Independent: “I vote the man, not the party”, blah, blah. That’s the kind of thing you say with a steely look in your eye and a mind full of pride that you aren’t “controlled” by any outside groupthink. I said that kind of thing because I was immature in my understanding of the world.

By the end of my 4-year hitch in 1990, I had become a voracious reader of all things current events. My impulse came from the need to know where the next punch was coming from. As an 82nd Airborne Infantry soldier, I constantly did “fly-aways”, where one minute you’re in the barracks thinking nothing is planned except for tomorrow’s formation, and the next minute you’re mustered up, crammed into a C 141 with all of your unit, rigged for your jump into El Salvador, Panama, or Egypt. We didn’t have the internet at that time, of course, so I became very well acquainted with the major dailies around the country. I wanted to know a little about the possible places and reasons that might end my life.

I finally woke up to what the Democrats represented in the late 1980’s. It could have been a number of issues, but what really sticks in my mind is the luxury tax that Tip O’Neil’s Congress came up with. Big pleasure boats were targetted in the items to receive the extra tax, and when the reports came out not long afterwards, I think I grew up a little, politically.

What the tax did, of course, was nothing but put hundreds of ship builder employees out of a job and ruined their skillset’s marketability. Imagine being a man who isn’t good at anything but the one job he’s known for 20 years-the same job his father did, that his father did, etc., and now, thanks to some greedy, fat, Boss Hog-type politicians in Washington who’ve never had to live honestly for a living like the boat maker does…you’re ruined. The Democrat Congressmen pat themselves on the back and exclaim that they’ve “stuck it to the rich” while more lives get dashed against the rocks, people flailing along in the aftershock, dying a slow death of always trying to reclaim that job, quality of life, and place in the world.

Just when I was coming to this maturity, along came Rush. When I got out of the military the world was consumed with political correctness. Greenpeace and MTV had jelled pretty well. Live Aid had already spawned so many different “message rock” events that it was cliche’. 45 years of Cold War readiness had really brought out the malcontents and “anti-establishment” crowd, and there were NO cultural outlets that allowed for a conversation of what it meant to be a Conservative. Larry King was the only syndicated daily talk show that reached a considerably-wide audience, and it was overnight on the Mutual Radio Network, with the much-more talented Jim Bohanon filling in for him ocasionally. Larry conducted more of a celebrity-driven show, though, and bore NO resemblance to what this iconoclast named Rush Limbaugh was doing. Here it was, 12 o’clock in the afternoon, and people were actually rediscovering the AM band of their radios!

Phrases like ‘baseline budgeting’ were finally being disected by this man on the radio who broke it down piece by piece for you, allowing you to come to your own conclusion about how you think that Congress should look at the task of spending your money. This was a FIRST! Sure, there had been individual tv or radio broadcast segments which may have tried to discuss this in their brief 30-minute show one time in America’s past, but here was a man who was breathlessly rolling this kind of display for you daily, for 3 hours, and doing it with a laugh.

When complex thinkers who talk to the rest of us who aren’t as steeped in that particular knowledge, they usually eventually slip up if you listen to them long enough (who wouldn’t?). Not Rush. Granted, he has had a gallery of political thinkers around him since birth, (father, brother, uncle, etc in the legal profession), and was smart enough to employ Mark Levin as his fact-checker for the first decade of his national show. But frankly, that just adds to his appeal: Rush got it honestly. No Larry King, Rachel Maddow, or Katie Curic could speak extemporaneously for three hours a day and keep you listening the way Rush does.

Nor could they make sense the way Rush does. Rush’s mind makes such sense with bedrock Americans that it is almost scary. He could use his skills the way a sophist does, but he doesn’t.

A sophist seeks to decieve you; to close your eyes to a certain truth while leading you to another. Rush starts any discussion with a full hearing of the oposition’s precedent. Most of the time, he uses the exact words (in full context) of whoever authored the argument. Not only does he use many sources to cite the opposing side of view, but he invites you to call him on any given day to prove his argument wrong. Many try, but Rush politely refines his argument before our very ears, and we are left to decide who was right or wrong. No sophists could perform that long with any consistency, much less for 20 years.

I actually got on Rush’s show back in 1995. I was a FM radio jock, doing my afternoon drive shift one day, and I decided to give it a try. In between breaks and prepping, I was hitting Rush’s show number on the studio phone’s speed dial. After an hour of this, I finally made it. It was 5 till 3pm on a Friday, and so Rush’s “open line Friday” allowed for any topic I chose to speak about on his show.

After a quick, pleasant exchange with The Godfather (it was about Ted Kopell’s performance the night before. I didn’t like the way Kopell treated a GOP Senator during the interview, and Rush defended Kopell as someone he’d always liked, so he wouldn’t join in my bitchfest about it, lol), I asked if it would be ok if I said “hi” to my father and brother in Virginia. He said sure, so I did. It was a great experience.

One of my distant cousins from Texas happened to be listening ( I was calling from Ohio), and she recognized that the caller had to be me because I mentioned their jobs and what part of Virginia they were from. Otherwise, this cousin had never talked to me, and I was introduced on Rush’s show by only my first name, so that was special that she knew it was me, I thought. My father also happened to be listening, as he always loved to scream at the radio while listening to Rush. My Texas cousins were calling my folks’ house immediately, and the buzz reached me in Ohio before I left the station that night.

It is a GREAT memory of mine, and I have Rush to thank for it.

I also want to thank Rush for affecting the political climate in America (the world?) the way that he has. His voice has been a rallying cry for those of us who feel as if we are alone in the world. Rush’s words, passion, and steady dedication serve as an example to us all. As all of the S&L community here has expressed, “God be with you, Rush.” (source)

Barry In Charge: Ft Hood Slayings Don't Move The Coldhearted

President Obama didn't wait long after Tuesday's devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.

After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner." Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?

Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That's the least that should occur.

Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event.

Did the president's team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on -- and the initial words coming out of their president's mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.

It must have been disappointing for many politically aware Democrats, still reeling from the election two days before. The New Jersey gubernatorial vote had already demonstrated that the president and his political team couldn't produce a winning outcome in a state very friendly to Democrats (and where the president won by 15 points one year ago). And now this? Congressional Democrats must wonder if a White House that has burdened them with a too-heavy policy agenda over the last year has a strong enough political operation to help push that agenda through.

If the president's communications apparatus can't inform -- and protect -- their boss during tense moments when the country needs to see a focused commander-in-chief and a compassionate head of state, it has disastrous consequences for that president's party and supporters.

All the president's men (and women) fell down on the job Thursday. And Democrats across the country have real reason to panic. (source)

MSM Diary: What Media Bias? (election night, 11/03/09)

Barry In Charge: His Idea Of "Stimulus"

After a flurry of stimulus spending, questionable projects pile up

November 3, 2009
The $787 billion stimulus bill was passed in February and was promised as a job saver and economy booster. Here is where some of the money went:

- $300,000 for a GPS-equipped helicopter to hunt for radioactive rabbit droppings at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state.

- $30 million for a spring training baseball complex for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.

- $11 million for Microsoft to build a bridge connecting its two headquarter campuses in Redmond, Wash., which are separated by a highway.

- $430,000 to repair a bridge in Iowa County, Wis., that carries 10 or fewer cars per day.

- $800,000 for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pa., serving about 20 passengers per day, to build a backup runway.

- $219,000 for Syracuse University to study the sex lives of freshmen women.

- $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid.

- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla.

- $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla.

- $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades.

- $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased.

- $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn.

- $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill.

- $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota.

- $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan.

- $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money.

- $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio.

- $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally friendly public housing on 300 people in Chicago.

- $356,000 for Indiana University to study childhood comprehension of foreign accents compared with native speech.

- $983,952 for street beautification in Ann Arbor, Mich., including decorative lighting, trees, benches and bike paths.

- $148,438 for Washington State University to analyze the use of marijuana in conjunction with medications like morphine.

- $462,000 to purchase 22 concrete toilets for use in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri

- $3.1 million to transform a canal barge into a floating museum that will travel the Erie Canal in New York state.

- $1.3 million on government arts jobs in Maine, including $30,000 for basket makers, $20,000 for storytelling and $12,500 for a music festival.

- $71,000 for a hybrid car to be used by student drivers in Colchester, Vt., as well as a plug-in hybrid for town workers decked out with a sign touting the vehicle's energy efficiency.

- $1 million for Portland, Ore., to replace 100 aging bike lockers and build a garage that would house 250 bicycles. (source)

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.