A family of feline squatters has moved into a foreclosed home in Lake Elsinore. Residents of the Tuscany Hills development first noticed the bobcats about a week ago.
From The LA Times
By David Kelly, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 5, 2008

With real estate values plummeting and foreclosed homes sitting empty, a family of bobcats apparently decided the time was right to pounce.

So last week, they slipped out of the parched foothills of Lake Elsinore and into a spacious, vacant home in well-groomed Tuscany Hills.

Residents of the development got their first look Aug. 27 when the feline squatters -- at least two adults and three kittens -- lolled atop a wall outside the Spanish-style house.

Someone called 911, reporting mountain lions. Four police cruisers showed up and officers ordered everyone inside. But soon they were out snapping photos along with the neighbors.

Bobcats are not known to attack humans, said Monique Middleton of Animal Friends of the Valley, which provides animal-control services.

"But are they pussycats? No. Can they do a lot of damage? Yes," she said. "They usually look for a food and water source, and there is an old koi pond in the backyard and that's where they are headed."

She said she expected the animals to move on in a few weeks, when the kittens are old enough to travel.

Tuscany Hills has been hit hard by foreclosures, and the house on Vista Palermo has been empty at least six months, neighbors said.

Said Scott Brown, who with his wife, Karen, moved here from Long Beach to be close to nature: "They are great neighbors, and as long as they don't want to baby-sit my kids, it's not a problem."

mood: amused

Dunda Angiomyosarcoma

mood: Beautiful

This site deals with Biblical Prophecy and some of the "Anti-Christ" characteristics of Barack Hussein Obama. Barack is the perfect candidate to allow "Full Anti-Christ control of the U.S."

mood: Oh, dear...

“So Sambo beat the bitch!” ~Sarah Palin

mood: figures

http://jblaque.livejournal.com/502150.html

http://community.livejournal.com/the_recession/61126.html

mood: depressed

A one-legged hooker was killed in Brooklyn after a john hit her over the head, causing her to fall backwards out of her wheelchair and slam her skull against the wall, cops said yesterday.

mood: brain fried

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag people along. . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." ~Hermann Goering

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin

mood: cynical

1774 – In response to the British Parliament enacting the Intolerable Acts, representatives from twelve of Britain's North American colonies convened the First Continental Congress at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia.

1793 – French Revolution: The National Convention began "The Reign of Terror", a ten-month period of systematic repression and mass executions by guillotine of perceived enemies within the country.

1905 – Under the mediation of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (pictured), the Russo-Japanese War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA.

1914 – World War I: The First Battle of the Marne began with French forces engaging the advancing German army at the Marne River near Paris.

1972 – A Palestinian terrorist group called "Black September" took hostage eleven Israeli athletes and coaches at the Olympic Summer Games in Munich, West Germany; all of the hostages were killed less than 24 hours later.

mood: contemplative

From McClatchy
Thursday, September 4, 2008
By Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

BEIJING — Wang Fei's infidelity deeply upset his wife. She wrote of her distress in a diary, and then jumped from their 24th floor balcony.

Her family posted details of Wang Fei's affair on the Internet, angrily blaming him for his wife's suicide. ( Soon, tens of thousands of Chinese web users knew about Wang Fei... )

mood: cynical

As the means of communication have evolved, presidential campaigns have grown increasingly multifaceted, with each election featuring layers of complexity that were not present four years before. The most striking feature of the 2008 election may be the sheer volume and variation of the attacks being directed at Sen. Barack Obama. Though they come from many sources, arrive through a variety of media, and cover a wide range of subjects, a close examination reveals a unified thematic structure to these attacks.

As has been extensively documented, many of the criticisms Obama has faced are based on outright falsehoods. The truth is that he is a Christian, not a Muslim; he was born in the United States; he doesn't refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance; he wasn't endorsed by Fidel Castro; and so on. Other attacks are outrageous distortions with a kernel of truth at their core. Click here to go to main site

mood: cynical

David Spade is the father of Playboy pinup's baby

mood: cheerful

...that TWAT stands for The War Against Terrorism.

mood: moderately snarky

~I just got a NYT News Alert e-mail telling me McCain won the Repug nomination. How is this 'alert worthy'?

PS I'll be very happy when I can delete all my Dubya icons.

mood: bored

Plasticopedia: Plastic Surgery Encyclopedia

mood: wut?

~Feeling very blah and unmotivated today. Not in a 'bad mood'. More like an 'un-mood'. Don't even feel like fin...

mood: blah

Your Life is Better Than 54% of All People

Your life is pretty average, with lots of normal ups and downs. You're on the way to having a better life, as long as you focus on what's really important. Remember to take the time to do the things that you like best, and let the little things slide. No one on their deathbed ever wished that they spent more time worrying or complaining!

Your result for The Heart Test...

Patron Saint's Heart

You are 30% Independent, 50% Idealistic, 30% Intimate, and 55% Indulgent!

Take The Heart Test at HelloQuizzy

[Sauze]

mood: annoyed

RE: The post "Pakistani lawmaker defends honor killings"

Nebs Sez: This is innate in these religions. As Mary Daly said, "If God is male, then the male is god."

#1: In Islam God is not male..or female...God is just God.

#2: LOL WUT

have you ever studied Islam? and i don't mean studying muslims you see on TV whose actions have nothing to do with the religion. Prophet Muhammad said that the best of men among the muslims are those who treat women respectfully and equally, as well as make them happy. i'm surprised someone could actually bring themselves to make a comment as ignorant as this.

Nebs Sez: Allah means The Lord, which is a 'male appellation', so therefor the statement “If God is male, then the male is god, ” is certainly applicable. But this goes deeper.

It is common in all three of the Abrahamic Father/God Cults – Judaism and it's two offspring, Christianity and Islam – for 'the faithful' to know very little about the actual history of their religion.

In ancient Judea, Yahweh's Consort was The Mother Goddess, Asherah, also known as The Queen of Heaven, e.g. Yahweh's 'wife'. Her followers erected wooded poles throughout the Holy Land in Her honor. They were known as Asherim or Asherot.

Before it was conquered by Mohammad, Mecca was a holy site of The Triple Goddess, and The Kaaba was Her Shrine. Her Aspects were Al-Lat, “The Lady” [Her Mother Goddess Aspect], Al-Uzza, "The Most Mighty" [Her Virgin Maid/Warrior Goddess Aspect], and Menat, “Time”, [Her Crone/Death Goddess Aspect].

During The Hajj, after a Muslim has completed The ʿUmrah and conducted a vigil at Mount Arafat, they go to Muzdalifah to 'stone the Devil' by throwing rocks at three stone pillars. This is presented as a metaphor for Abraham's rejection of the Devil.

But that is a smoke screen.

The three stone pillars are really a form of Asherot and meant to represent Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Menat. The Father/God and His followers live in terror of Her and Her True Daughters, and so must suppress and oppress them at every turn.

For a woman to worship The Father/God is for her to be trapped in an theological form of battered wife syndrome.

mood: contemplative

We're more aware of others today and want to take their needs into consideration as we decide what to do. The Libra Moon helps us to remain objective as we try to understand our relationships. Nevertheless, we can already feel the pressure building from tomorrow's conjunction between the Sun and karmic Saturn. The sooner we tie up loose ends, the better off we'll be later on. There's no escaping our responsibilities now and no reason to procrastinate.

Virgo
Others may see you as a heavy-handed authority figure today. You are likely wielding more control than you realize, but there's nothing that needs to be changed right now. You should be aware that the Sun-Saturn conjunction in your sign gives you the power to pull your energy in and effectively focus your intentions on the future.

...guess I'll just keep the axe to the grindstone..

"It was not a battle, but an execution." ~G. W. Steevens

[Source A & Source B]

A large fire began on London's Pudding Lane and burned the city for three days, destroying St Paul's Cathedral and the homes of 70,000 of the city's 80,000 inhabitants.

~Right now it's 57° F/14° C. That's the first time it's dropped below 60° in at least three months, maybe more. We ran the A/C only from 11:30am until a little after 8pm. And we both wore sweats and hoodies out on the porch this evening.

Of course, it is supposed to go up to 95° F/35° C this afternoon, but that's life in the desert. The overall temp is going down and with will go our electric bill.

During the Fall and Winter, we keep the windows open in the day and shut at night and hardly ever run the heat. That'll be a couple hundred bucks back in our pocket each month right there.

And that's a Good Thing.

mood: calm

( Tribesmen bury five women alive for wanting to choose their own husbands )

mood: Militant

What will America look like in two years?

The system is the problem, it's rigged

mood: blah

"One of the Lessons of Modern Life is that corporations really don't give a fuck about what goes on with their products or services as long as it does not effect their Bottom Line. Want action taken on a problem by a corporation? Go after their money, which includes everything from bad PR to civil suits. Gets their attention PDQ!"

mood: litigious

~Okay, Owen Harmon, Berta Daniell, Emogene Lashauda, Phylicia Lakeesah, Price, Shizgal, and Irish Greta are all way too concerned with the size of my dick.

mood: wut

HuffPo's Coverage of Sarah Palin

mood: amused

~Still fizzeling with the Temple thingambob. It's about two thirds done at eight pages in New Times Roman 14 font. But I need to do more than just fizzel it, ya know. *sigh*

I think I need some more sleep, too...

mood: tired

The Moon's entry into agreeable Libra at 7:44 am EDT places the emphasis on the various relationships in our lives, rather than our individual feelings. Of course, our emotions won't disappear, but they are more likely to be dependent on those around us. Consideration of others is paramount, especially since the Moon conjuncts nurturing Venus, thoughtful Mercury and physical Mars, which are all clustered in the balancing sign of the Scales.

Virgo
It's important for you to keep your feet on the ground today while also playing the role of a social butterfly. You can turn on the charm now, but you cannot escape from the pressing concerns that are weighing on you. Spending a little time on more serious matters may be a smart idea, but don't be too hard on yourself for taking it easy.

..first forecast I could live with in days..

Marketers target aunts without kids

BY SUZANNE PEREZ TOBIAS
The Wichita Eagle
Sun, Aug. 31, 2008

Not long ago, DINKs -- dual income, no kids -- were all the rage among marketers.

But get ready for the next big consumer demographic: working women who don't have kids, but who care about and buy things -- potentially lots of things -- for other people's children.

Melanie Notkin calls them PANKs -- professional aunt, no kids.

"People are just starting to realize how huge this segment is," says Notkin, founder of SavvyAuntie.com, which launched last month. This just gets worse...

mood: Die!!

By DAVID BAUDER,
AP Television Writer
Sun Aug 31, 5:36 PM ET

NEW YORK - Television networks rapidly shifted focus and personnel away from the Republican national convention to Gulf Coast communities in the path of Hurricane Gustav on Sunday, wondering how much of their political planning will be for naught.

( Anchors Katie Couric, Charles Gibson, Brian Williams, Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith were all going to the New Orleans area for the storm instead of being with Republicans in St. Paul, Minn. )

Via drugaddict
From: John Whitbeck
Date: Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 11:57 AM
Subject: William Pfaff: "The Disasters that Await a New President"

TO: Distinguished Recipients
FM: John Whitbeck

Transmitted below is the latest wisdom from Bill Pfaff, who does not even attempt in this article to list the DOMESTIC disasters that await a new president.

I have wondered for some time why ANYONE in his right mind would wish to be sworn in as president of the United States next January.

The Disasters that Await a New President
Date 2008/8/30

Paris, August 28, 2006 –- The Bush administration has lived by a strategy of tension, and will go out from office bequeathing the wars it has started, and the ill-will it has created, to its successors, to compromise those who come after.

Guantanamo and the "black sites" abroad will be left, and the probably more than one thousand U.S. military bases abroad, presumably including the 50 bases (currently) that Washington still wants to keep in Iraq after the troops go home, if they go home. And of course the administration's outsourcing arrangements for torture and kidnapping abroad will be left to a new administration.

Whether it is Barack Obama or John McCain who enters the Oval Office in January, he will confront an inheritance of eight years of foreign policy abuses, failures and unresolved dilemmas, and in a climate of international crisis in the Caucasus and clash with Russia, expected by Richard Cheney and others in the Bush administration to promote McCain's election.

If this does elect McCain, it should pose no great problems for him because he is a man of simple commitment to the policy line of his predecessors: of military interventions in the Muslim world to win victory over the terrorists, and political interventions to control troubled European and Caspian-Crimean regions, and deter the new Stalin (or is it Hitler?; Stalin was not at Munich).

This conservative interventionism, in a Manichean politico-intellectual framework of Virtue and Freedom confronting Evil, leaves the Bush administration's successor with continuing conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, indirectly in Somalia, plus probable domestic crisis in Pakistan before the presidential inauguration arrives. The progress of Islamic integrist and tribal forces linked to the Taliban continues in Pakistan without an apparent solution that would satisfy Washington.

In all of these cases the American intervention is itself the principal continuing cause of conflict – something which in the American policy community is generally inadmissible. In none of these conflicts is America capable of providing a solution. Even in Iraq, which Bush and the neoconservatives now tout as a success, all that has happened is that the U.S. has pitilessly wrecked the country, and now the Iraqis have grown weary of fighting.

The war in Somalia that sets Somalian warlords and an "Islamic Courts" rebel coalition against an unsuccessful Ethiopian military occupation, engineered by the CIA, will be waiting for the new American administration, since any solution involving the Islamists is verboten to Washington.

The Georgian-Ossetian-Abkhazian-Russian drama will have worsened by January, and U.S.-Russian bilateral relations been envenomed (if no worse), as well as trilateral relations among the U.S., Russia, and the hapless and doubly intimidated NATO Europeans, incapable of taking an initiative in their own interest.

The neo-conservative determination that America must dominate at any cost a Hobbesian world driven by greed and self-interest has won the day. The television-rattled public fails to grasp just what this means, and for eight years the Democrats have been frightened into silence by the threat of being outed as unpatriotic.

Senator Joseph Biden, according to the analysts, was made the Democratic vice-presidential nominee because he knows everything about foreign policy. But everything that he knows about foreign policy is just what everybody else in Washington knows and thinks, and would never dream of questioning. There's the problem.

An Obama-Biden administration would lower the rhetoric of the war on terror and enter global negotiations with Iran. It would emphasize the common interest of the U.S. and Iran in the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan. It would acknowledge the political and social importance of Hamas and Hizbollah in the real world.

It would start over again with Israel-Palestine negotiations. Those backing the Obama candidacy talk about a "New Marshall Plan" for the Middle East (resembling Condoleezza Rice's proposals last month in Foreign Affairs), offering a "generational" program to lift the Middle East "from misery" and make it democratic, pro-American, and friendly to Israel. Alas, we have heard all that before; the United States is incapable of doing it; and the problem of the Middle East isn't money.

The leaders of such a new administration would negotiate with American allies rather than blackmail and bully them. They would resume good relations with international organizations and make good-faith use of them. They would protect the sovereignty of Georgia and Ukraine. They would be firm with Russia. They would protect western energy sources. They will fight injustice wherever they find it, even if that means more war. They say they will make a better world. The skeptic wishes good luck to them.

mood: cynical

From The NYT
By JOHN MARKOFF
August 29, 2008

( SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending... )

http://www.skyviewzone.com/moonvoidyear.htm

"Tell me, after my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck?...that would be the pleasure to end all pleasures." ~Peter Kürten, The Vampire of Düsseldorf

Mary Ann Nichols' body was found on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row, London, allegedly the first victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.

mood: Got yer Steampunk right here

Massive police raids on suspected protesters in Minneapolis
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/

Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/politics/30arrests.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1220104985-Dcl+Tjoc3eipfJB8HL+HPQ&oref=slogin

Shame on Minnesota
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/08/shame_on_minnesota.php

Raid on the Convergence Center
http://ginmar.livejournal.com/1537313.html

St. Paul, Minneapolis raids target RNC protesters
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=523357&catid=2

mood: Militant