One of the pics:


July 15, 2011
"One of the most poignant days of the year was when Ruby Bridges visited the White House. Ruby is the girl portrayed in Norman Rockwell's famous painting "The Problem We All Live With," which depicts Ruby as she is escorted to school on the court-ordered first day of integrated schools in New Orleans in 1960. When the Norman Rockwell Museum loaned the painting to the White House for a short period of time, the president invited Ruby to view the painting while it was on display outside the Oval Office."
Pete Souza / The White House
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-2011-the-year-in-photos/2011/12/30/gIQAUiIYRP_gallery.html

These are great!




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Some outraged donors are threatening to pull their support for the Humane Society after it euthanized the beloved cat of a former heroin addict hours after he brought it in for medical treatment.

The Arizona Republic reports (http://bit.ly/tNzWqN ) that Daniel Dockery's 9-month-old cat, Scruffy, was put down not because of cuts it got from a fence but because the 49-year-old Phoenix man couldn't immediately pay $400 for its care.

Dockery said that he reluctantly surrendered the cat to the Humane Society on Dec. 8 after clinic staff declined to take a credit card from his mother over the phone or wait 24 hours for her to wire him cash. They told him that the cat only would be treated if he signed over ownership, he said.

Dockery searched for the cat for three weeks at agency shelters and repeatedly asked staff what had happened to Scruffy but learned Tuesday that the cat was euthanized a few hours after he brought her in.
<snip>
More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/daniel-dockery-cat_n_1172415.html

Bastids!




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Great nugget from @mattbai
Gingrich profile:
Newt said he took vaca in Greece b/c he "really needed to see the Greek fiscal crisis up close"

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!





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<snip>
Being a kitty person, I knew better. I ran outside and found the baby.  He was all soaking wet.  The house had been power washed earlier but no one knew there was a baby kitty over in the bushes or that he had gotten wet.  I cleaned him off with paper towels in case he had offensive tasting soap on him and put him back down and went back inside so the mama could get her baby.  After much sitting there watching him cry, she walked away and didn’t come back.

I ran over to Wal-Mart, got a kitten bottle and kitten replacement milk and took the baby home.  I got up throughout  the night to feed him and help  him with his toilet needs and he slept in my drawer.  That night, I thought, I will sneak him into the office in a shoe box on Friday morning.  I planned to take his milk along and keep him in the Administrator’s desk because she is an animal lover to the 100th degree. I planned to take him to the local animal shelter at lunchtime.

So, I took him to work but as lunch time neared, the administrator started to cry. She said, “You can’t take him to the shelter.  They’ll just kill him.” I said, “Well, I can’t keep him up here and get in trouble. He has to be fed every two hours.”

She called the Human Resource Director who came up and saw what we had. I told her I was going to the shelter at lunch and the HR Director said, “If they don’t have a mama cat at the shelter to foster him, bring him to my office Tuesday morning.  You can keep and feed him in there.”

Guess what? They had no foster mamas at the shelter.

<snip>
The rest of the story: http://tinyurl.com/7efrcbz

Good on all of them!

HONOLULU — The Obama administration has decided in principle to allow the embattled president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to enter the United States for medical treatment, subject to certain assurances, two administration officials said Monday.
<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/world/middleeast/saleh-yemen-leader-to-be-admitted-into-us-for-medical-care.html?_r=1&hp#

Can anyone say Shah of Iran?

While they insist there are no comparisons between the situations, any move is viewed with suspicion. Why do we want to tie ourselves to him like this? Is it worth it for a country and region known for its instability?

ICE denies people with the same requests all the time.






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Forever:


They really did a good job with this. Loved Rose to Jordan fist bump.

1. The Interrupters


Steve James (in center above), who made the masterpiece "Hoop Dreams," now makes his most important film, telling the story of ex-convicts who go daily into the streets of Chicago to try to talk gang members out of shooting at each other. All have done prison time. Some have murdered. They were young when were seduced by the lure of street gangs. Today they see young people throwing their lives away and often killing bystanders by accident.

James' film follows members of CeaseFire, tough negotiators who monitor gang activity in their neighborhoods and try to anticipate developing warfare. They make it their business to know the gang leaders and members. They build trust. In some shots in this film they are physically in the possible line of fire--and so are Steve James and his small crew. This film has true impact.

8. Garbo the Spy


He was called "Garbo" because an Allied spymaster thought he was the best actor in the world. Juan Pujol García, a Spaniard based in Lisbon, fed the Nazis a stream of misleading information from a spy network that existed entirely in his imagination. Using invented facts and a spy network that didn't exist, he convinced the Nazis that the Allied landing at Normandy was a decoy operation to draw their troops away from the "real" landing site, at Calais. One man's imagination changed the course of the way.

Lacking period footage of Garcia (naturally), director Edmon Roch ingeniously cobbles together newsreel footage, scenes from old war movies, and modern talking heads to piece together his story of a startling deception.

All 20 here: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/12/the_best_documentaries_of_2011_1.html


Would like to see some of these!

A Book on One Page
Full text novel posters
Imagine a whole book on a single sheet. A bold art print on which, up close, you can read the full and complete text of your favourite classic work, right from "It was the best of times" to "a far, far greater thing".

Peter Pan


Phantom Of The Opera


Hound Of The Baskervilles


Black Beauty


Wind In The Willows


Genesis


Alice In Wonderland


Gulliver's Travels


The Wizard Of Oz


More at this site & much more info: http://www.spinelessclassics.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1

People amaze me with their creativity!

WW2 Tweets from 1939 (@RealTimeWWII)
12/26/11 6:38 AM
This winter is 1 of coldest on record in Europe- temperature in Finland today below
-30°C (-86°F). 1000s of Red Army men suffering frostbite

My Daddy was over there after D-Day until the end of the war. Had to be brutal in the winter even then. They didn't have high tech gear.

Far be it from me to point this out, but…. Callista Gingrich is the singularly least appealing First Lady-in-waiting to shuffle down the pike since probably Mary Todd Lincoln. I can’t honestly believe that Gingrich’s campaign people are on-board with making this botoxed trailer park Pamela Harriman a focal part of the campaign.

This is all on Newt. Put aside the six-year adultery binge which is between Callista and her Catholic Jesus (who has his hands full enough as it is with priests treating altar boys like the entree line at the Golden Corral), there ‘s not enough Vaseline in the world to soft-focus the lens and make Callista appear warm and fuzzy.

As a trophy wife she’s more Third Place Runner-up material and Miss Congeniality she is most definitely not; Callista’s so brittle she makes Nancy Reagan look like Sarah Silverman. Excuse me – she makes Nancy Reagan look like a drunk Sarah Silverman.
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/

Well, that's the harsh truth.