Lily Update 2

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Lily hasn’t been euthanized yet. She appeared to be a bit perkier this morning, so the Vet suggested I take her home and try to give her a few more good days. I brought her home about an hour ago. So far she seems uncomfortable and unhappy, but we’ll see.

I remember Miss Lucy continued to show some interest in life and wanted to be petted and cuddled up till a few hours before she died. But then, she didn’t have surgery to recover from. I put Lily on a big, soft pillow, and now she appears to be nodding off to sleep.

The Vet bill for her diagnosis and care is pretty steep, and donations received will be gratefully appreciated.





A big thank you to everyone who has contributed so far.

George Zimmerman: Persona Non Grata

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Yesterday some jailhouse audiotapes of conversations between George Zimmerman and his wife were released. I haven’t listened to them, but there’s a description in the Orlando Sentinel.

The recordings show that from his jail cell, Zimmerman gave his wife step-by-step instructions on how to change a password and clear security questions so she could move money, gave her orders to withdraw specific amounts and directed her to pay the bills.

Prosecutors allege the couple was moving money out of an Internet PayPal account that was awash with donations for Zimmerman, who’s charged with second-degree murder in one of the most racially-charged criminal cases in the country. He shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, in Sanford Feb. 26.

The couple spoke in code, according to prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda. In the calls Zimmerman makes repeated reference to “Peter Pan,” an apparent reference to PayPal.

Joe Coscarelli provides a bit of transcript in New York magazine.

SHELLIE: After this, we go over, you’re gonna be able to just, have a great life.
ZIMMERMAN: We will.
SHELLIE: Yeah, we will. You’re
ZIMMERMAN: I’m (inaudible) excited.
SHELLIE: Yeah, you should be. You should be excited.

In other words, these two seem to think they had just hit the mother lode. And you’ll love this bit:

They also discussed Zimmerman getting out on bail, and how to keep him from the press. The Sentinel reports that his choice of words was not ideal:

… “Well, I have my hoodie,” he says, a possible joke, referring to the hooded sweatshirt Trayvon Martin wore the night Zimmerman shot him in Sanford, Feb. 26.

Classy.

Zimmerman’s lawyer Mark O’Mara has filed a motion asking the Court to reconsider an order to release all of the audiotapes. He says the Zimmermans were not talking about the money on those tapes, so the public doesn’t need to hear them. Still …

The really remarkable thing about the audiotape release is that they’ve made very little splash in the blogosphere. Even righties who have blogged exhaustively about every news story about what Zimmerman’s second cousin’s garage mechanic said about the shooting are oddly subdued about the newly released recordings. Poster boy remorse?

——-

I am still soliciting donations for Lily’s vet bill. I’m so sad she can’t be saved, but I think I would have been a lot sadder if I hadn’t tried because the bill would put me in a hole. But what’s done is done. Please help if you can.





All donations of any amount are deeply appreciated.

Lily Update

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The vets found cancer in Lily’s stomach, so I will probably have her euthanized tomorrow. She’ll never be able to eat again, they tell me, so there isn’t much point bringing her home.

I will still be stuck with a terrifying Vet bill, so I hope some of you will still pitch in and donate a few dollars. If everyone who drops by here on a typical day gave even $1, it would be a huge help. As I wrote in the last post, I hope this will be the last time I have to rattle the tin cup.





Thanks sincerely for all help.

Help for Lily (the Last Maha Fundraiser?)

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I haven’t written about Lily before now, but she moved into my apartment a few weeks after the late Miss Lucy died and took over Lucy’s job of household management. Lily is a black and white shorthair, now about seven years old, who is the most people-friendly cat I have ever met. She marches right up to complete strangers and wants to kiss them (or at least smell their faces). Very often when I’m writing she is curled up next to me, purring.

Last week she stopped eating. Saturday a vet looked at her and suspected gastritis. But yesterday she developed black diarrhea, indicating internal bleeding. X-rays and an ultrasound didn’t show a cause, so this afternoon she’s getting exploratory surgery.

Needless to say, this has blown the budget right out of the water.

My other bit of news is that awhile back I decided to give up trying to hang on to my apartment and sell it. I have quite a lot of equity in the place, even in these trying times, so once it’s sold I’ll have some cushion money for veterinary and automotive disasters and perhaps can stop begging for more money every few months whenever my cat gets sick or my car breaks down. I have an agent, and it’s supposed to go on the market officially this week. If anyone is looking for a reasonably priced two-bedroom co-op in southern Westchester County, New York, let me know, and I’ll pass you along to the agent.

So this might be my last fundraiser for a good long while, or even forever. But I’m guessing I’m looking at about $3,000 in vet bills on top of the $900 or so I already shelled out to save Lily. Which is $3,000 I do not have right now. I’m reconciled to giving up my apartment, but I would be very lonely without Lily.

I don’t have any good photos of Lily, but here is a video taken of her by a previous temporary owner:

And here’s the PayPal button. I’m still looking for some other way to pay online, but if you really can’t deal with PayPal, let me know.





All help, however modest, is deeply appreciated.

Can Romney Overcome Romney?

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© Karen Roach | Dreamstime.com

It’s been a discouraging couple of weeks for the Obama campaign. Now that the Right has more or less reconciled itself to having Mittens for a candidate, and is more or less solidified behind him, Romney has gotten far kinder coverage in the news than he had before. I’m expecting the media narrative of the 2012 campaign to shape up as well-meaning softie Obama versus tough centrist businessman Romney.

Except Romney is a sock, and Obama can be tough when he needs to be.

And here’s a surprise — in Nate Silver’s forecast model, Obama’s chances of winning the general election went up slightly last week, and Romney’s went down. My sense of things is that Romney had a better week in media than Obama did, so that’s not what I would have expected.

My suspicions are that the more the American people see of Romney, the less they will like him. His own worst enemy may prove to be himself. However, “the narrative” can go a long way toward putting lipstick on the pig, as they say.

The President’s new policy on immigration drew a typical Romney response.

For hours, Romney tried to ignore the news. Finally, after a rally here with a ragtime band playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in a town-square gazebo, Romney made a statement that struck a radically different tone from the hard-line approach he took on illegal immigration during the Republican primaries.

“I believe the status of young people who come here through no fault of their own is an important matter to be considered and should be solved on a long-term basis so they know what their future would be in this country,” he told reporters outside of his campaign bus.

“I think the action that the president took today makes it more difficult to reach that long-term solution, because an executive order is of course just a short-term matter. It could be reversed by subsequent presidents. I’d like to see legislation that deals with this issue.”

But he made no commitment to supporting any particular option.

The less-crazy elements of the GOP understand that they can’t keep pissing off Latinos and expect to win elections. But to endorse the policy would stir up the wrath of the rabidly xenophobic base. So Romney had to find a way to say the policy is fine but the President was still wrong to implement it. One wonders how many hours it took the Romney team to craft the message the candidate finally delivered.

And, of course, the biggest reason the President went ahead with the policy change is that there was no hope there would be “legislation that deals with this issue” in the foreseeable future.

Today Romney is accusing Obama of playing politics to get the Latino vote, but he refuses to say that he would repeal the executive order if elected.

A big chunk of the electorate won’t focus much on the elections until the conventions. My prediction is that as people get a closer look at Romney, the more uncomfortable they will be with him. The only question is whether the Right’s propaganda machine can make up for their candidates’ obvious shortcomings.

Update: See also Romney: Being Vague About My Plans Helps Me Get Elected and Romney Dodges Immigration Questions.

By Any Means Necessary

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The heckling of President Obama by a Daily Caller reporter today is just the beginning, I fear. Make no mistake; this episode had nothing to do with getting a question answered. The Right will do whatever it takes to make the President seem weak and small and inept, and the reporter, Neil Munro, was just playing his part for the Cause.

The Daily Caller is unrepentant, btw. Their excuse is that the reporter thought the President was finishing his remarks. Tucker Carlson added,

“A reporter’s job is to ask questions and get answers. Our job is to find out what the federal government is up to. Politicians often don’t want to tell us. A good reporter gets the story. We’re proud of Neil Munro.”

I sincerely hope the Daily Caller doesn’t get a White House press pass for the next decade. But this is going to keep happening, in any venue into which the Right can get an operative.

Brian Stelter, New York Times:

By shouting out and repeatedly interrupting the president during a speech, Mr. Munro violated decorum at the White House and generated online shouts of disapproval from other reporters, analysts and historians. The incident took place two weeks after the president’s top strategist, David Axelrod, was nearly drowned out at a campaign event by hecklers who had come to support Mitt Romney. …

…Mr. Obama had only been speaking for about five minutes when Mr. Munro first shouted. He continued speaking for another five minutes afterward.

Mr. Munro did not specify what he shouted, but other reporters who were present said the initial question was, “Mr. President, why do you favor foreign workers over Americans?”

Earlier, the editor in chief of The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson, defended Mr. Munro’s behavior as an act of journalism. Mr. Carlson, who was on an airplane at the time of the presidential statement, said he had not seen the incident, but “as far as I’m concerned, not having seen it, as a general matter, reporters are there to ask questions.”

He added, “No politician wants to answer questions, but that’s not our concern.”

Mr. Carlson, whose site has highlighted what it calls liberal media bias, said he expected the “Obama worshipers in the press” to attack Mr. Munro. When told that his reporter was being called a heckler, Mr. Carlson answered, “That’s what it’s called when you try to get the president to answer your question?”

Joan Walsh:

I’m not one to revere the imperial presidency, but it’s unbelievable how wingnuts treat this man with such unprecedented and bullying disrespect: from Rep. Joe Wilson screaming “You lie” during Obama’s 2009 speech to a joint session of Congress, to Speaker John Boehner denying him his choice of dates for another congressional address (for the first time in history) last fall, to Donald Trump’s persistent, humiliating demands for the president to show him his papers (with no rebuke from ally Mitt Romney). And for right-wingers who insist Democrats are too quick to cry racism: Really, what else explains this constant, in-your-face (literally) contempt for a president?

Certainly they disrespected President Clinton, too, but never with such in-person abuse. Clinton was impeached after a political witch hunt and treated poorly even by the so-called liberal media, but he was never stalked into the Rose Garden or congressional chambers and heckled, as Obama has been.

The Right thinks it is justified in disrespecting the President, because liberals are mean to them. This is going to keep happening.

The Children Are Easily Amused

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Mikey Wilson, Sports Fan

Movement Conservatism in One Graphic

Yesterday the Romney campaign sent a bus to circle the venue where President Obama was speaking and honk at supporters waiting online. Metrosexual Black AbeJ explains this tactic in the first sentence of this post.

I realize most of us would look on the circling bus episode and think, “WTF?” It looks silly and desperate. But Josh Marshall nails this — what looks like a pointless, juvenile stunt to most people speaks to the very heart and soul of movement conservatism. Because, basically, all movement conservatism amounts to any more is a great acting-out of juvenile rebellion. And the children are eating it up.

For example, from Facebook, pulled from Buzzfeed —

your kidding me, Guerilla tactics, the dumycrats invented this. You know the more Romney fights back, the more I’m coming around to supporting him, ive always said why don’t republicans play by the same rules that the dumycrats use, and finally somebody is doing it.

I have no idea when this meathead thinks Democrats did anything like this, but then juveniles do have a distorted view of the grownup world. Ultimately, it won’t matter whether Romney’s policy proposals are true to “movement conservatism” or not, any more than was the case with George W. Bush. Deep down, all the children really want is someone to be their proxy middle finger, waved at the world.

Righties: Lying Under Oath Is OK Now

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Awhile back, y’all might remember a certain Democratic president who testified in a civil trial and before a grand jury that he had not had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, and the House impeached him for it. If we’d all gotten nickles for every time some rightie uttered the phrase “Clinton lied under oath” we’d be able to buy out WalMart.

But today we are told that lying to a judge is no big deal, and charging Shellie Zimmerman with a crime for (obviously, to anyone whose head is screwed on) conspiring with her husband to hide assets from the court during a bail hearing is just the prosecution being mean.

On the other hand, at least one rightie blogger has figured out that their knee-jerk support for George Zimmerman is likely to bite the Right in the ass, because the trial may reveal that ol’ GZ’s defense is a pack of lies. And this will play into the hands of those nefarious liberals.

Never, ever let the exception drive the rule. That’s how liberals gain control over law abiding citizens, by claiming the need to avoid giving criminals opportunities.

If anyone knows what planet these people live on, please speak up.

Falling Out of Love with the GOP

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Just a brief comment on “Why I Gave Up Being a Republican” by Michael Stafford — It begins —

When I was young, Ronald Reagan bestrode the world like a colossus. I grew up watching the Cold War end-game play out as Reagan faced down the Soviet Union- which really was evil- and helped break the long night of communist repression in Eastern Europe. He was my hero.

The extent to which Reagan was responsible for the fall of the Iron Curtain is something most of us would, um, quibble about. Reagan was mostly good at posturing and assuming credit for events that other people were driving. However, once again we have the example of a Gen X individual who fell in love with Reagan in his youth and was a loyal Republican for decades after. For many of us who were older in the 1980s Reagan didn’t stride the world like a colossus as much as smother progress like a big, wet blanket. But the young folks sure were taken in.

The rest of Stafford’s article is mildly interesting, also.

Mrs. Zimmerman Arrested

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When George Zimmerman was finally indicted I promised myself to leave the story alone until there was a trial. But this is too juicy to pass up. You probably heard that George Zimmerman’s bail was revoked a few days ago, for trying to hide assets from the court during his bond hearing. Now Mrs. Zimmerman also is arrested because the two of them conspired to hide assets, namely about $135,000 in donations raised on a private website and available to the Zimmermans.

Jeff Weiner writes in the Orlando Sentinel:

In an affidavit, prosecutors revealed new details about Shellie Zimmerman’s alleged efforts to hide money from the court.

Four days before she testified to having no knowledge of the funds, the affidavit says, Shellie Zimmerman began a series of transfers into her account — totaling $74,000 between April 16 and April 19.

The affidavit says about $47,000 more was transferred from George Zimmerman’s account to his sister’s. Shellie Zimmerman withdrew about $18,000 more cash, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors say the Zimmermans used a rudimentary “code” to discuss the money in recorded jailhouse phone calls — referring to $100,000, for example, as “$100.” At least two of the calls, the state alleges, were made while Shellie Zimmerman and her husband’s sister were at a local credit union making the transactions.

“In my account do I have at least $100?” Zimmerman asked. “No… there’s like $8. $8.60,” she replied.

Zimmerman told his wife to “pay off all the bills” with the money, prosecutors said, including an American Express card and a Sam’s Club card. He also instructed her on how to pay for his bail.

According to the affidavit, after her husband was released on bond days after the bond hearing, she transferred more than $85,000 back into his account. A branch manager at their credit union told prosecutors he knew the couple, and saw Shellie Zimmerman talking to her husband on the phone on April 16.

The manager said he’d helped Shellie Zimmerman transfer control of George Zimmerman’s account, at one point speaking directly to George Zimmerman by phone.

Since his defense largely hangs on a jury believing his version of events, in spite of a mess of sloppily collected evidence and contradictory witness statements, a perjury charge probably won’t help Zimmerman’s case, I suspect.

Rightie reactions range from calls for firing Zimmerman’s lawyer to the quaint theory that the prosecution is trying to drive a wedge between the Zimmermans and their version of events. I doubt the wife’s version of events would have been heard at trial, though.