Working a door to door sales job in Alaska, Oregon and Wyoming was not the easiest way to make money.  However, my mother took those jobs on and made them pay, even if they did not necessarily put us on Easy Street.

Owing to the somewhat isolated nature of job, mother occasionally ran into people whose world view was shaped less by society's pressures than by nature's necessitys.  People, however, were one thing.  It's the animals that you have to watch out for.

It has been reported that the Obama family is considering purchasing a new dog.  We in the animal rescue community are strongly urging the Obamas to adopt a dog instead of purchasing one.  

 A "new" polling demographic turns up an area where McCain is leading.   AP-Yahoo! News conducted a survey which was taken in June, and finds both dog and cat "owners" favoring McCain.
 Personally, I had no idea about whether either had pets, say nothing about which ones. Apparently,  John McCain has a number of pets, from dogs to fish.  Evidently, the Obama's don't have any pets at this time.  
 Of course, neither McCain has probably seen any of their pets for months, having spent so much time on the campaign trail.  There was no indication in the article that any of the pets travel with them, or in which residence(s) the pets live.
More . . .

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Lab-Grown Meat

Earlier today, in the comment section of another diary, I was musing about the Tleilaxu (a/k/a Bene Tleilax) and their ability to create, among other things, a lab-grown meat (a slug-pig combo) loved by many and known throughout the vast Imperium as "slig."  But that's all fairy-tales and sci-fi and until recently, I didn't think it existed outside of that realm.  Some months (maybe a year?) ago, I read in the Findings section of Harper's Magazine, a tidbit about lab grown meat.  I decided to look into it today and thought it was definitely a diary-worthy topic in that it touches on quite a few wide-ranging topics of interest to us Kossacks, such as global warming, the health of the environment in general, feeding the poor, and the ethical treatment of animals.

Follow me into the lab for more discussion and links.

I’d like to invite everyone to take a journey with me over the next year and a half.  It’s a farewell to our beloved farm, and the beginning of a new one.  In the course of it, I hope to give y’all a glimpse into the real life of a farm and the practices of sustainable ranching.  And I'll share a few pictures of our farm, including some adorable baby lambs, along the way.

My husband and I have a small, organic (not-certified) farm just outside of Austin, Texas. I bought this place after I graduated law school ten years ago.   I’ll post about my transition from environmental attorney to farmer another day.  For now, suffice to say that I am a student of holistic management and eco-agriculture.  

This diary is cross posted at
La Vida Locavore

Be a good neighbor:  Stow those fireworks.  Resist the temptation to buy them, resist the temptation to set them off in your neighborhood.  Don't become your local "terrorist."

Believe it or not, it's NOT unpatriotic to celebrate the Fourth without snap-crackle-pop.

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.

~ Anatole France

(photos by Photos by smitme for Kinship Circle on Flickr; published with the written permission of Best Friends Animal Society)

A little while back, I wrote about the rise of metal theft as indicative of the faltering economy.  News about the economy has been slowing down, but this is another sign of the time: an dramatic increase in animals being given to shelters.

I enjoy watching animals of all kinds, because I feel I can glean a bit of knowledge about myself from doing so (and because I just enjoy it). I was watching a jumping spider today, and a mud-dauber wasp was near it. I expected the little spider to jump the wasp, but he made off as quickly as possible and hid. That type wasp paralyses spiders and uses them to feed their young, and the spider seemed to know that. I've also seen other spiders kill other versions of wasps (a yellow-jacket).

Tired of all the Obama/Clinton/Obama/McCain/Obama.... diaries? I am, so I've finally created my first pootie (and other animal) diary. After finally having (low-tech gal that I am) figured out which code to use in posting images from PhotoBucket. Woo Hoo!

on Earth" is the title to article I read today at CommonDreams website. This is the link to the original article.

http://www.commondreams.org/...

The article deals with very rapid extinction of species here on our planet, approaching today near one-third of species, unmatched in history since the great dinosaur extinction event. They cite as the reference "a report, produced by WWF, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network," which reports that, "land species have declined by 25 per cent, marine life by 28 per cent, and freshwater species by 29 per cent." Those are frightening figures, folks.

In a cynical act of administrative jujitsu yesterday, Bush and Cheney rewrote the

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT.

The Act is now known as the

ENDANGERING SPECIES ACT.

In a performance of unmatched chutzpah, the Administration yesterday both declared the Polar Bear a threatened species, and explicitly ruled that actions that threaten the polar bear can continue, AND AUTHORIZES ACTIONS THAT INCREASE THE THREAT THROUGHOUT THEIR ARCTIC HABITAT..

As you probably know, yesterday, as per today's NYT,

Polar Bear Is Made a Protected Species By Felicity Barringer
May 15, 2008
The polar bear, whose summertime Arctic hunting grounds have been greatly reduced by a warming climate, will be placed under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced on Wednesday.

Excellent recent diaries on this by:desmogblog and
Devilstower

However, Frances Beinecke of NRDC writes in an email we got today

There was good news and bad news for the polar bear today.

More below the fold.

Farming is the heart of every country.  Corporate agriculture - INDUSTRIAL agriculture - is destroying it worldwide.  

Notice that after the vaunted "Green Revolution" and the much ballyhooed "biotech" solutions to food problems:

  the earth is swimming in 6-10 more pesticides than before GMOs,
  fishing stocks are failing because of run-off into oceans,
  prices on commodities are sky-rocketing,
  people are not seeing the great promised yields that were allegedly proposed to solve hunger,

but in fact:

Pootie and critter relief time!

I will share critters.
Please share your critters!

I've been prodded into writing a brief diary about cetaceans in general and dolphins in particular.  We humans have a tendency to gravitate toward certain animals for which we have special affection regardless of where that affection derives.  For me, it's cats.  I have three magnificent Maine Coon cats who rule my life and show me love.  As cats go, they're pretty smart.  If I could conjure up an IQ number that was valid, I would give my cats an IQ of about 15, just slightly lower than our mayor, and a couple points higher than our current President.  I also have a compelling interest in dolphins and whales.  Well, here goes...

I'm a contributing editor to a nationally syndicated pet feature, and one of two lead bloggers at one of the best known and most popular pet blogs, Pet Connection. I’ve had an account here since the last presidential election, and did a lot of blogging here during the pet food recall, covering it from a political and regulatory perspective.

And if you read my personal blog or my comments here, you also know I am as crazed a supporter of Barack Obama as anyone has ever been.

But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about the Kentucky Derby, and the horse race of politics, and how disappointed I am that some of Obama’s supporters here on Daily Kos don’t seem to share his vision for a new kind of politics in this country, because they’re willing to use what happened to Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby today as some kind of cheap political metaphor.

Photo by Xirzon

In the wake of the HSUS Chino slaughterhouse investigation, several members of Congress are now calling for video cameras to be installed at slaughterhouses.

Wrote Erik Marcus recently. (Watch the HSUS video here)

Video cameras are an excellent, economical supplement or alternative to hiring, training, and staffing more USDA inspectors to regulate the meat and dairy industries. Video cameras would help create more transparency in animal agriculture and would likely result in better accordance with the laws protecting public health and preventing animal cruelty.

But many people in animal agriculture don't want video cameras. One must wonder, what are they hiding?

*Disturbing image below. Block images if you'd rather not view that.