Awakened by windstorms

The wind is howling through the trees around Chez scarlettina this morning. The sky is solidly dark blue-gray. Sometimes the gusts are so strong that I can hear the whole building creaking and shifting. It's weird.

Good Saturday morning, LJ!

Things I don't understand

These are things I don't understand:

--Not signing the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell REPEALED!
--Not funding benefits for 9/11 first responders
--Not signing START (the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty)

Don't Ask Don't Tell is a fundamentally discriminatory policy. Aren't we beyond this kind of bullshit all ready? Protesters forecast the downfall of America when the military was racially desegregated, and yet today we have the strongest military in the world. Gays and lesbians serve just as heroically as their straight brothers and sisters in the military. I wish President Obama had followed Truman's 1948 example and just done it by executive order so that it was a fait accompli. We've wasted millions of dollars and months arguing something that is self-evident and elementally American: equality under the law. Truman knew it. The American people know it, too.

ETA: DADT--REPEALED! Yes!

9/11 first responders gave their health and continue to give their lives as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. They qualify, for all intents and purposes, as the first veterans of the Afghanistan war. They are American heroes of the first stripe. Denying them benefits is unethical, ungrateful, and incomprehensible.

START helps keep the world safe. Period.

Why are these things even being discussed? Why aren't they just being acted on? Because they're being used as political footballs. We don't need more discussion. The issues are clear. That these items are being used as political fodder is incomprehensible to me. I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican. As human beings, it's our obligation to push these things through and make them reality. They make us stronger, more ethical, and safer. The fact of a politican's objecting to them should be used against those who stalled them in the strongest terms possible come the next elections. No one should be allowed to forget: these politicians put petty politics above the best interests of our nation and of the world.

Spanky report

Administration of Pet-inic, an oral vitamin supplement: successful.

Administration of oral potassium supplement: successful.

First subdermal injection of Epogen, a hormone to stimulate red blood cell production: 100% successful, for both kitty and human.

Flaming hoop cleared.

Whew!