another good column by Ms. Ivins
posted by decemberx 6:20 PM[edit]
Bleh. Monkey man is going to jabber at us tonight.... so they won't re-run the season finale of CSI... it gets pushed to next Wednesday, since it's 2 hours, and they moved the season 2 premiere of CSI:NY to the 28th......
posted by decemberx 5:05 PM[edit]
Finally, the City of Lincoln gets a clue!Plan to control strays likely to raise hairs
By MARK ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
For many Lincoln cats, it’s a jungle out there — a cycle of frequent breeding, intense hunger and early death. Animal advocates say society’s costly attempts to eliminate the problem have failed. But managing feral cats within their colonies saves money and reduces complaints, they suggest. Animal Control and the Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department will give the alternative a try, working to eliminate population growth in one Lincoln colony of feral cats.
If it works, they’ll expand the program.
Tentatively, the department hopes to begin its experiment this fall at 48th and Leighton streets. Under the $3,000 program, The Cat House will work with All Feline Veterinary Hospital to treat one colony.
After being captured, the cats will be spayed or neutered, treated for parasites, inoculated for rabies and distemper, checked for other diseases, microchipped and ear-clipped for identification, and then released back to their environment.
“You want that one nasty male cat that beats everybody up,” said Beth Boal, vice president of The Cat House. “He manages the other cats.”
With the sex drive and reproduction curbed, there are fewer 3 a.m. disturbances, fewer starving kittens, fewer brawls over scarce territory.
Similar programs have been used in Washington, D.C., Atlantic City and Salt Lake City. At Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., a trap-neuter-release program achieved feline zero population growth almost immediately, according to the San Francisco SPCA, a nonprofit animal rescue organization.
The Lincoln department needs inexpensive methods of dealing with strays because of its impending divorce from the Capital Humane Society.
The society announced in June that this will be its last year of providing services for city strays.
For Lincoln, the no-kill program isn’t about the ethics of killing cats.
If not killing cats hadn’t saved other communities money, reduced cat numbers and reduced complaints, Director Bruce Dart told the Health Department advisory board Tuesday, it wouldn’t be considered here.
But if this works, he said, “We can quit wasting our time running around herding cats.”
When it comes to Lincoln’s strays, the numbers show a real problem howling for attention.
Each year, Animal Control picks up roughly 2,400 dogs and 2,000 cats. Each year it ends up killing 400 dogs and 1,300 cats.
Most of the dogs killed have a disposition that would prevent them from being adopted. With cats, it’s a matter of dealing with the numbers.
From two cats can spring 30 in two years, Boal said. Cats can go wild in one generation.
Killing cats, she said, doesn’t eliminate the problem.
Wild or semi-wild domestic cats — feral cats — breed to fill the available food supply. Killing cats creates a temporary vacuum, a situation of feline reproductive chaos, with all of the noise and competition that implies.
The pilot program would fill that vacuum with a stable cat colony — one with sterilized, healthy cats.
Used widely in Australia and South Africa, the trap-neuter-release movement got started in the United States in the early 1990s.
Becky Robinson, national director and founder of Alley Cat Allies, said she was cutting through an alley in Washington, D.C., when she stumbled into 10 to 20 beautiful, healthy cats — a feral colony that somebody was feeding.
Robinson said her goal initially was to stop the breeding in that one colony. The local humane society could only suggest that neighbors stop feeding them, she said.
Since her initial efforts, there have always been more communities trying to deal with their cat problem, she said. Alley Cat Allies estimates as many as 60 million feral cats live in the country.
They’re opportunists, she said. Extremely adaptable, cats find any niche.
In most cases, feral cats are easily distinguished from pet cats by their sociability. In Lincoln, cats with collars will be considered pet cats, Boal said.
Already, city ordinance requires that roaming pet cats be licensed and sterilized.
In some communities that have adopted the program, according to Alley Cat Allies, complaints about wild cats have fallen by 20 to 30 percent.
Reach Mark Andersen at 473-7238
posted by decemberx 11:10 AM[edit]
The Blog | John Cusack: Good-bye Hunter S. | The Huffington Post
posted by decemberx 2:41 PM[edit]
Hunter S. Thompson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
posted by decemberx 2:39 PM[edit]
Welcome to the Project for the New American Century more scary ultrarightwing whackjobs.......
posted by decemberx 11:30 AM[edit]
Backwards Bush: "The Official George W. Bush 'Days Left In Office' Countdown Clock" Unfortunately, as Marc said, there's waaaay too much time left on this.......
posted by decemberx 10:54 AM[edit]
Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor
John Nichols
Tue Sep 6, 1:08 PM ET
The Nation -- Finally, we have discovered the roots of George W. Bush's 'compassionate conservatism.'
On the heels of the president's 'What, me worry?' response to the death, destruction and dislocation that followed upon Hurricane Katrina comes the news of his mother's Labor Day visit with hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston.
Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees -- cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.
'Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them,' Mrs. Bush told American Public Media's 'Marketplace' program, before returning to her multi-million dollar Houston home.
On the tape of the interview, Mrs. Bush chuckles audibly as she observes just how great things are going for families that are separated from loved ones, people who have been forced to abandon their homes and the only community where they have ever lived, and parents who are explaining to children that their pets, their toys and in some cases their friends may be lost forever. Perhaps the former first lady was amusing herself with the notion that evacuees without bread could eat cake.
At the very least, she was expressing a measure of empathy commensurate with that evidenced by her son during his fly-ins for disaster-zone photo opportunities.
On Friday, when even Republican lawmakers were giving the federal government an "F" for its response to the crisis, President Bush heaped praise on embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown. As thousands of victims of the hurricane continued to plead for food, water, shelter, medical care and a way out of the nightmare to which federal neglect had consigned them, Brown cheerily announced that "people are getting the help they need."
Barbara Bush's son put his arm around the addled FEMA functionary and declared, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
Like mother, like son.
Even when a hurricane hits, the apple does not fall far from the tree.
don't think I even need add my 2¢ to this.......
posted by decemberx 4:18 PM[edit]
First By the Floods, Then By Martial Law -- Trapped in New Orleans -- By LARRY BRADSHAW
and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY a verrrry interesting first-hand account of just how inept (actually downright evil in some cases) the government (state & local) had been at dealing with the aftermath of Katrina... just confirms my feeling that many in law enforcement have Nazi complexes, and wish they could have been concentration camp guards......
posted by decemberx 3:28 PM[edit]
Weird Harold This is funny, because we used to refer to the Omaha paper (World Herald) as the "Weird Herald" when I was a kid... and it was actually a parody of the paper...
I love gratuitous Nebraska references in unexpected places... like Ike getting sent to Nebraska in South Park, Warrick saying he never bets on the Huskers in C.S.I. (there are actually at least 3 other references in various shows -- in "Recipe for Murder" a driver drops off Omaha steaks at a warehouse, another episode, Nick is reading a list of prints they found in a rental car, and one set was a nurse from Omaha; and the stupid chick that gets murdered in "Play With Fire" is from Omaha); Stewie reminiscing about his time spent in a Nebraska diner; and the guy in Team America, Joe, the All-American quarterback from the University of Nebraska....
posted by decemberx 9:53 AM[edit]
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