Lassie Doesn't Have Anything On These Pets

We love our pets, and they love us.  Sometimes, life throws us curveballs and pets have come to the rescue of their owners.  The article below debates whether it is love instinct, such as a mother throwing herself in front of her children, or a more selfish instinct that lets the animal know they need their owner's help in getting away from danger.

The stories below are 15 examples of animals saving their owners.  I read a few, sniffled a lot, and decided this is worth sharing.  The next time I want to call my cat useless, this will be running through my mind.

In early November, 3-and-a-half-year-old Duncan saved his best friend's life.

Duncan, a boxer, pawed and barked at his owner, Scott Dunn, until the man awoke to find the house full of smoke, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Dunn was able to escape to his truck, but heroic Duncan died in the fire.

We often hear stories of life-saving pets like Duncan, but what compels these faithful animals to perform such heroic acts -- love for their owners or their own survival instincts?

The answer varies depending on a factors like breed, training and socialization, according to Amy Shojai, author of 23 pet-care books and a certified animal behavior consultant. But she does think love has something to do with it.

"It's doubtful that pets consciously think about their own safety in such situations any more than a human mom thinks twice about throwing herself in the path of danger to save her child," says Shojai. However, she adds, other times self-preservation may motivate the heroic act, such as when the pet feels threatened and needs the help of its owner to get to safety.

No matter what the true motivation, a pet who saves a human is still heroic in our book. And the amazing thing is, these courageous acts happen more often than you might think. Check out these real life Lassies -- dogs, cats, rabbits and more that have saved their owners' lives in recent years.

Year's End Business: Bon's Top Sites Of 2011

As the end of the year comes closer, I've been thinking about 2011 and all it had to offer.  My favorite holiday is New Year's, because it is a clean slate, a fresh chance to set new goals and leave failures behind.

Today's list are my top five favorite websites, and why I love them so.

5.  Thinkgeek.com- Come on, really.  T-shirts where you can pick your own theme song to play, USB microscopes and bacon-flavored gumballs?  How can so much perfection wind up on a single site?

4. Standford Online YouTube channel- From game development to introduction to physics, these full hour-long classes are actually useful.  They have little fluff and are thorough.  As a geek who likes to study for fun, I've spent many hours soaking up the knowledge.

3. Jibjab.com- I take a lot of pictures, and I get a chance to put my mother-in-law in movie trailers.  With her permission, ftw.

2.  Fark.com- News never looked so good, and the headlines are fantastic.  Some of the jokes make me laugh out loud regardless of the news it links to.

1. GrammarGirl gets my favorite site of this year.  The email subscriptions are free of junk, and give tiny little bites of grammar advice with real examples.  We all have our bad habits, and in the last year I have caught so many little mistakes and used the site for reference.

And now you have glimpsed my geeky little world.

Climate Of Distrust

Well, make it two for two this morning in the President Odubya category, because the continued US failure to get anything done in climate change talks in Durban, South Africa this week means we're almost out of time to do anything at this point.

President Barack Obama’s position that dangerous global warming can be averted without deeper cuts in fossil fuel emissions before 2020 is stirring backlash in nations from Norway to Barbados.

“Multiple pathways” exist to prevent temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) without countries strengthening pledges to reduce greenhouse gases by 2020, U.S. climate envoy Jonathan Pershing said at United Nations climate talks last week.

“It’s a very risky assumption, too risky,” Norway’s top climate change envoy, Henrik Harboe, said in an interview. “We know we are far below the recommendations of science.”

The question of when the world acts to contain global warming is at the heart of the talks in Durban, South Africa, where delegates from more than 190 nations are working on how to take the next steps in curbing emissions after the limits outlined in the Kyoto Protocol expire next year.

The UN says pledges to cut greenhouse gases need to double by 2020 to contain warming to 2 degrees above preindustrial levels. While scientists say a rise of 1.5 degrees may lead to “dangerous” climate shifts, countries have agreed to take steps to ensure warming doesn’t exceed the 2-degree mark.

“There are no credible scientific scenarios that will allow temperatures to be held under 2 degrees if action is taken after 2020,” Selwin Hart, an envoy from Barbados, said in an interview in Durban. 

Basically the US is punting until 2020 to do anything about climate change, and the rest of the world is rightfully going "Um, seriously?" 

But the blame cannot be all placed on the Obama administration.  Let's not forget we have a Republican party that has been hostile to the idea of climate change for years and has done everything they can to block every piece of climate legislation presented by this administration.

Most of all, the blame goes on the shoulders of the energy companies that control our politicians.  Without them, we'd have a global climate policy in place already.

Back To The Drawing Board For Plan B

I support the Obama administration when they make policy decisions I agree with.  This is not one of them, and I'm calling them out on it.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration’s decision Wednesday that emergency contraceptives be sold freely over the counter, including to teenagers 16 years old and younger.

The pill, called Plan B One-Step, has been available without a prescription to women 17 and older, but those 16 and younger have needed a prescription — and still will because of Ms. Sibelius’s decision.  In some states, pharmacists can write the prescription on the spot for teenagers. But the restrictions have meant the pills were only dispensed from behind the counter — making them more difficult for everyone to get. The pill, if taken after unprotected sex, halves the risk of a pregnancy.

Under the law, Ms. Sebelius has the authority to overrule the agency, but no health secretary has ever done so, according to an F.D.A. spokeswoman. Her decision on an emotional issue that touches on parental involvement in birth control for teenaged children is likely to have powerful political reverberations in a presidential election season. 

If this was a political decision (and there's zero doubt about that, frankly, because the science supported making this medication available) then it's a completely moronic one.  There's no benefit politically for doing this.  It overrules the available science.  It's frankly a stupid move you would expect from a red state governor.  The FDA said: "Hey, we see no scientific reason this should be done."  Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama disagreed.

In a statement, Ms. Sebelius said that the drug’s manufacturer had failed to study whether girls as young as 11 years old could use Plan B safely. And since about 10 percent of girls are capable of bearing children as early as 11, those girls need to be studied as well, she wrote.

“After careful consideration of the F.D.A. summary review, I have concluded that the data submitted by Teva do not conclusively establish that Plan B One-Step should be made available over the counter for all girls of reproductive age,” Ms. Sebelius wrote. 

It's an election-year punt, period.  It's insulting, it's wrong, and it's cowardly.

Bad, bad call.

StupidiNews!

• 2011 has so far set a new record for number of billion-dollar weather-related disasters, with an even dozen so far, totaling $52 billion.
• Major League Baseball owners have instituted a new dress code for journalists and other media personnel covering the games.
• Yemen has formed a new unity government, but the role of ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh remains unclear.
• Singapore's government has added new property taxes in order to cool down the city-state's blazing real estate market, now in its third record year.
• Legendary Nintendo game developer Shigeru Miyamoto will step down as the company's chief project designer to oversee smaller games.

Last Call

Republicans are concern trolling about the payroll tax cut, saying that if we keep it, Social Security will suffer.  It's a complete sack of garbage, of course.  But the Republicans are eager to push it.

That argument, which has been adopted by members of both parties and perpetuated by news outlets like NPR, has one problem: it’s not true. Each of the plans under consideration is fully paid for, replacing revenue the Social Security Trust Fund would have lost from lower payroll tax receipts with money made up from either alternative revenue sources or spending cuts. The earlier payroll tax holiday, set to expire this month, was also fully-funded, and the program has thus far “been held harmless” from the holiday, as Reuters noted today.

And while the opposition from Republicans may seem like an impassioned defense of a vital and popular program, a look at their history with the program shows it is not. DeMint has supported privatizing the program while Paul is a proponent of means testing — “solutions” that are both bad policy and unnecessary. Despite Paul’s $6 trillion assertion, Social Security actually has a $2.6 trillion surplus and is solvent through at least 2037.

And if Republicans truly want to use the payroll tax to shore up its long-term viability, there is an easy way to do that. The payroll tax is currently collected only on the first $106,800 in income; raising or eliminating that cap would make the program fully solvent for the next 75 years.

Ahh, but the Republicans aren't the only ones pushing this lie.  There are plenty of folks on the  Professional Left that have screamed that the payroll tax cut was Obama selling out Social Security when it was implemented last year.  Now they are silent, and the President has the Republicans over a huge barrel.  It's like he knew what he was doing all along.

Funny how that works.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Congratulations, people invested with the job of spewing endless hate about President Obama's daughters, you have reached another milepost on the road to oblivion.

What are President Obama's kids eating at school on Pearl Harbor day? Japanese food, of course!

Just...seriously?  What the hell does that even matter?  You know what, this would only be insensitive to people who think what it means to be an American is all about holding a racist grudge for 70 years.  You know what, just go punch a fourth or fifth generation American of Japanese descent while you're at it.

Right wing nut jobs.  My God.  Oh, and the comments are just filled with people who are such badass patriots they go after the President's young daughters.  Way to go, America.

Never been more proud of you.  Here's what people should really find as insensitive on Pearl Harbor Day:

Today is the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day, a day when we reflect on the sacrifices of so many veterans who made our country and our world what it is today.

It's perhaps a little surprising, then, that Gov. Christie thought that this was a good time to shut down a proposed development for disabled veterans in Salem County - which, absent his interference, could have broken ground and provided both homes and jobs by Pearl Harbor Day next year. 

Keep being "sensitive" Republicans.

Knowing Exactly What Buttons To Push

So I wonder what the deal is behind this story, but that's not the interesting part.

Late Tuesday evening, a press release went out to numerous political journalists with stunning news. Mega-union SEIU had voted to withdraw its recently bestowed endorsement of Barack Obama. That’s certainly not unimaginable — SEIU often takes its own path and has a conflicted relationship with the Democratic party establishment.

Only it wasn’t true.

It was a pretty real looking hoax press release that managed to snare a number of reporters who posted the news on twitter. 

The interesting part is not who is behind it, the interesting part is the fact that whoever did it knew that a professional beltway type like Josh Marshall finds the notion of a massive union withdrawing its endorsement of a Democratic president plausible and almost irresistible, and would miss the irony of how that little piece of conventional wisdom completely fooled a number of "journalists" last night who couldn't resist the notion that THE LEFT HATES OBAMA ZOMG.

Exactly who else would SEIU endorse, Josh?  Newt?  Ron Paul?  Mittens?  Bachmann?  People so openly hostile to organized labor they want them eliminated completely, who regularly call them thugs and criminals and blame them for the state of the American middle-class?

Especially after already declaring for the President?  Are we that certain inside the beltway of the conventional wisdom that everyone secretly hates President Obama and that SEIU would pick up its ball and go home, knowing that the only real alternative to the President is people who want to see them utterly annihilated?  SEIU completely backs the President.  Is that more or less plausible?

So very eager for those emoprog stories, aren't we, liberal media.  It's to Josh's credit that he didn't fall for it, but he certainly thought long and hard about running with it, didn't he.  Whoever pulled this little stunt knew exactly how it would fall out, and just how successful it would be.  They got Politico's Ken Vogel, National Journal/Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, and more than a few other people to bite on it.

But even after debunking the story, the beltway types admit "Yeah, this was still plausible".  And that's all the proof you should need to know that our brave Village betters need a long, long vacation out in Actual America for some much needed perspective.

So Long, Colonel Potter

LOS ANGELES – Harry Morgan never planned to be an actor, yet he spent 10 years on one of the top TV series of all time, made 50 films and appeared on Broadway. He became one of the best-known character actors in Hollywood.

But it was Morgan's portrayal of the fatherly Col. Sherman Potter on "M-A-S-H" for which Morgan became most famous, and he knew it.

"M-A-S-H was so damned good," Morgan told The Associated Press. "I didn't think they could keep the level so high."

His wry humor, which helped net him an Emmy for the CBS-TV hit, carried onto the show.

"He was an imp," said Mike Farrell, who starred as B.J. Hunnicutt in "M-A-S-H" along with Morgan and Alan Alda. "As Alan once said, there's not an un-adorable bone in the man's body. He was full of fun, and he was smart as a whip."

Morgan died Wednesday at age 96 his Brentwood home after having pneumonia, his daughter-in-law, Beth Morgan, told AP.

 

I'm probably giving away too much about my age, but I grew up watching M-A-S-H.  Granted, I was little, but Harry Morgan was like an uncle. I grew up with him, and loved his dry wit and sense of fairness as Colonel Potter.  He was remembered for that role, but had so many others (does anyone out there remember the Apple Dumpling Gang?) that were equally memorable, just eclipsed by one of the best runs in television history.

RIP, Colonel.

From The Mouths Of Babes

Michele Bachmann was put in her place by a little boy.

Michele Bachmann was left speechless after an awkward encounter with a young activist named Elijah at a Chicago area book signing.

As seen in the below video, the Republican candidate and Tea Party darling greeted the soft-spoken eight-year-old at a meet-and-greet event for her new book, "Core of Conviction: My Story," which was released last month.



"My mommy -- Miss Bachmann, my mommy's gay but she doesn't need fixing," Elijah said to Bachmann, after some lighthearted coaxing. A dumbfounded Bachmann then shoots the boy's mother an icy look before the pair walk away.

For someone who hates to look stupid, she does it so well!  If she had any reason, any logic-backed argument at all, she could have said something.  Instead she hides behind religion and slaps people in the face with her "wisdom" that they do not deserve recognition and rights under law.  She deserved this.

Generosity Abounds

BENTON, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man who spent nearly 16 years in prison for a 1992 homicide he didn't commit is helping fund an investigation aimed at finding the real killer.

Joshua Kezer was exonerated two years ago in the shooting death of Angela Mischelle Lawless. The 19-year-old woman was found in her car near a southeastern Missouri exit off Interstate 55.

Kezer reached a legal settlement earlier this year with Scott County and some former law enforcement officials.

Now, KFVS-TV reports (http://bit.ly/u9MhyR ) Kezer has donated $10,000 from the settlement to the continuing investigation being led by Scott County's current sheriff, Rick Walter. Kezer says it's a matter of "doing the right thing" and helping the victim's family find closure.

In many ways Kezer was a victim as well. Of course he would like to see the person truly responsible pay for it, but to ante up his own money and show such goodwill to a family that (mistakenly) wanted him to rot in jail is a turnaround that should give us pause. An innocent man is going above and beyond to help catch a criminal and bring peace to the victim's family. Here's hoping the right person goes down for the crime and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.

An Impossible Crowd, Forget Tough

The most striking thing about the President's speech yesterday was the number of people on the left who had A) been complaining that the President had not yet taken the opportunity to give a fiery populist speech espousing the values of the Occupy movement, and B) when the President actually did that yesterday, they then said the President's speech was virtually meaningless.

Taylor Marsh is a classic example of this, having made up her mind before the speech yesterday that the President's hand had been forced by the Occupy movement, and that she was completely uninterested in what he had to say.

The patter is “Obama channels Teddy Roosevelt,” but that’s not quite right. What Pres. Obama is doing is channeling Occupy Wall Street and all the Occupy movements across the country, hoping to blast your message wide while simultaneously attaching himself to it, but without you getting credit for it.

It’s as clever as it is dishonest, a political master stroke by Obama reelect that is so cynical it could only come from one of the two big corporate, Wall Street parties.

That's a hallmark I've found of the Professional Left, the media folks who make a living by attacking the President with assaults ranging from "not progressive enough" to "worse than Bush."  Marsh is the archetype for one mode of the Professional Left, the Disillusioned Hillary Clinton Voter.  They've never forgiven Barack Obama for beating Hillary in the primaries in 2008, and insist that the country would be infinitely better off with Hillary at the helm, fighting for "real progressive values".  Marsh's book, The Hillary Effect, is a long treatise on how Clinton is the only real progressive leader.

The most odious feature of this mindset is a relentless belief that Barack Obama is the least qualified human being on Earth to be President of the United States, a disdain bordering on pure hatred, something you'd expect to find in the most rabid Tea Party operative.  Marsh displays this contempt for the President openly in a piece from last month.

I’m not disappointed in Pres. Obama for not being a more progressive leader, because I knew he wasn’t a progressive from the start.

It’s also not disappointing that Pres. Obama has made the Democratic Party more like the Republican Party through his continual leaning to the right, because both parties are basically the same these days, though the Republican right’s crazy is more virulent, while the Democratic left is just feckless.

I’m not disappointed Pres. Obama didn’t get a primary challenger, because you’d have to be nuts to go up against a man so thoroughly bought and paid for by Wall Street and big business.

She's not disappointed you see, because she never had a very high opinion of President Obama in the first place.  She had made up her mind that he was a failure before he took office, a failure born of his theft of the Presidency from Hillary Clinton.  She manages to remember to breathe at some point while writing this and throws in a half-hearted "Pres. Obama is better than the current leading alternative on the Republican side, which today is Newt Gingrich" but then bemoans how awful that truly is.

There's also more to it than just irrational hatred bordering on "becoming the monster you wish to defeat" as she consistently displays open derision for the President, but discussion of that particular demon on the left always seems to lead to a lot of trouble.  That always brings up a political cartoon I remember seeing just after Obama's election in 2008 where a young black boy and a white girl are playing on a swing set, and the black boy says "Do you know what it's like to finally have a President who looks like me?"

The white girl of course says "No."

Some people have never gotten past that.

Dr. Strangemoron, Or How I Learned To Stop Thinking And Hate The Bomb

Via DougJ at Balloon Juice comes this explanation from Danielle Pletka of winger think tank American Enterprise Institute as to what our Iran policy should be.

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it's Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don't do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, "See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn't getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately." ... And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem.

For years we've been warned that a nuclear Iran was an immediate threat to  everybody, and that the second the last bolt was tightened on it, they were going to strap it to a rocket and aim it at the nearest Israeli hospital maternity ward, then build radioactive zombie war machines out of the rubble.  That was never the reality, the reality was that if Iran got nukes, we'd have to give them foreign aid.  That's what we do with "responsible powers" with nuclear weapons.

Ask Pakistan.  President Obama didn't exactly start that little corollary.  That's why the new threat is "Israel is going to start a war, not us."  They're not.  They're instead sneaking Mossad ninjas in to blow up nuclear research labs and going "Who, us?  We were all busy that day."

No, the real problem is Iran becoming an acceptable member of society with a nuke or two, going to the UN Security Council, and saying "About crossing our palms with silver, gentlemen..."  Now, the GOP will freak out if we try to put up an embassy in Tehran, but the thought of regime change and selling weapons to Iran's neighbors will kick in, and we'll end up doing business with them just like we do with Pakistan.

Neocons hate admitting that's the next move on the board, but as long as there's filthy lucre to be had, they'll live with it.

StupidiNews!

• The nation remembers the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day, the last marked by the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, disbanding at the end of the year.
• LA becomes the first major America city to adopt a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to ban "corporate personhood".
• An Alaska child therapist has been sentenced to 22 years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.
• Another Facebook security glitch allowed users to see people's private photos, and the company says this has been corrected.
• Scientists have discovered yet more evidence that quantum physics is behind the process of plants turning light into food.

Last Call

A couple of important things happened today involving President Obama.  First, he made an excellent speech in Kansas in the same town where a century ago, Teddy Roosevelt challenged the country to believe in building America, a "New Nationalism" as he busted the trusts.  Today, the President applied that to the 21st century.

Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250%, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent.


This kind of inequality - a level we haven’t seen since the Great Depression - hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity - that’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.


Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them - that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.


More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That’s why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores.


And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance fell to around 40%. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a 1 in 3 chance of making it to the middle class.

It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for.


Fortunately, that’s not a future we have to accept. Because there’s another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country - a view that’s truer to our history; a vision that’s been embraced by people of both parties for more than two hundred years.

Secondly, somebody in the Village actually realized that President Obama's regulatory policies weren't anti-capitalist socialist pogroms or job-killing nightmares, and used their media bullhorn to actually say something about it, in this rare case, David Brooks.

Data collected by Bloomberg News suggest that the Obama White House has actually reviewed 5 percent fewer rules than George W. Bush’s did at a similar point in his presidency. What has increased is the cost of those rules.

George W. Bush issued regulations over eight years that cost about $60 billion. During its first two years, the Obama regulations cost between $8 billion and $16.5 billion, according to estimates by the administration itself, and $40 billion, according to data collected, more broadly, by the Heritage Foundation.

That’s a significant step up, as you’d expect when comparing Republican to Democratic administrations, but it is not a socialist onslaught.

Nor is it clear that these additional regulations have had a huge effect on the economy. Over the past 40 years, small business leaders have eloquently complained about the regulatory burden. And they are right to. But it’s not clear that regulations are a major contributor to the current period of slow growth.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics asks companies why they have laid off workers. Only 13 percent said regulations were a major factor. That number has not increased in the past few years. According to the bureau, roughly 0.18 percent of the mass layoffs in the first half of 2011 were attributable to regulations.

Some of the industries that are the subject of the new rules, like energy and health care, have actually been doing the most hiring. If new regulations were eating into business, we’d see a slip in corporate profits. We are not. 

Amazing how that works.  Utterly amazing.