Jackie and Dunlap discuss Sarah Palin.

"At the very least he prevented a grateful nation from having to learn anything at all about Tim Pawlenty." That's funny right there. (No offense to Gov. Pawlenty, of course.)

Nothing, absolutely nothing, must be allowed to stand in the way of Hopeiness and Changeitude™.*

Hence the Obama campaign's mob-like efforts to squelch this ad; it's got the potential to be the political kiss of death, and they know it.

If they want this to remain unseen, they'll have to do better than threaten.

Tell your friends.

More, from Mike Hendrix, on why Ayers matters.

* Or is that Changeiness and Hopeitude?

Obama hasn't taken a stand on the Surge; what he's really been doing is called posturing.

Those who were there might have something to say about that.

Via Hot Air.

Today's theme: campaign ads.

More to come.

Enjoy them while I'm shampooing the carpet.

Taliban suicide troops attack US forces in Afghanistan, with predictable results.

Perhaps they should have watched a training video or two:

More video of the lads.

They wrestle a lot, almost always as an effort by each to groom the other.

Maybe that's why Kismet grooms my head at night when I'm in bed — I don't fight back.

An award — this makes it two Fridays in a row. Clearly, we need to start being nicer to more people more often.

From Skittles the Huntress:

Aww... 't'weren't nuthin'.

Friday. Ark. Be there.

You've got to love the Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos, this week at Mind of Mog.

Carnival of the Cats will be hosted this week by Samantha Black & Mr. Tigger.

Yesterday I went to do my grocery shopping. As usual, when leaving the house, I had to go out the front door and open the garage from the outside, because when I go directly out to the garage through the door that opens off the kitchen, Kismet and Packet race each other to go out to the garage, and I'm just not quick enough to get out and close the door before they get out.

When they get out into the garage, it then takes me ten minutes to wrangle them back into the house, before I can then open the garage door, start the truck, and leave. I don't often have that much time to burn.

I ultimately got home and opened the door into the kitchen. As usual, the lads had heard the garage door opener, and were waiting in the kitchen for me to open the door. I did, and they zipped out into the garage, as usual. And as usual, I wondered what the attraction was.

Just a couple of minutes later, while I was putting away the groceries, Kismet came in and showed me what was so interesting in the garage: he'd caught and dispatched a lizard. Fortunately, I'd left my camera downstairs.

At the beginning, you can see he's "on point" — I couldn't see what he was looking at, but I think it was either Mycah or Packet checking out his acquisition.

The ex-lizard had already bought the farm — kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, rung down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible — but Kismet wanted to play more with his new toy.

It seems like he doesn't quite know what to do with it.

Me, I just wanted to get the little corpse away from him before he could take it upstairs and deposit it in my bed.

Eventually I distracted him (thank you, keychain laser) and was able to give the late lamented lizard a quick watery funeral.

What do you do if you're Hollywood creative genius Joss Whedon — the man behind Firefly — and there's a writers strike on?

You take your skills to the web, naturally.

Of course, the WGA strike is over... but it may have been worth it, since as a byproduct we now have (drumroll, please...)

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is... well, it's different. And entertaining, with actual recognizeable actors in it, and far, far better production values than any high school doofus with a webcam publishing to YouTube. It stars Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, Nathan Filion as Captain Hammer, and Felicia Day as Penny the love interest.

It's available to view — free! — in three 15-minute installments... but only through midnight Sunday. (Later, it will be available on iTunes.)

It's a bit of mostly-light-hearted fun, and highly recommended. Catch it while you can.

Packet has become a TV junkie. Cat Sitter is his favorite DVD so far.

Rodents and birds are not the only things he likes to watch. He seems to enjoy Good Eats as much as I do, and he's a regular Red Eye viewer. He's a big fan of ombudsman Andy Levy.

He's probably hoping to get an autographed picture of Andy's cats, Pixel and Stormy.

Start your weekend at The Modulator's Friday Ark.

The Carnival of the Cats this week is hosted at the M-cats Club.

And as always, for your every day cat needs, a visit to the Cat Blogosphere is recommended.

Kismet says a very quick hello.

I really need to get a longer vid of him at his most talkative, but when the camera comes out, he goes quiet. Uncooperative little cuss.

Check out the neat goodies that are being raffled off at Cat Friends Helping Friends.

Don't miss the Friday Ark at The Modulator.

The Carnival of the Cats this week is hosted by our friends at Artsy Catsy.

And as always, for your every day cat needs, a visit to the Cat Blogosphere is recommended.

Yes, yes, I know — lots of cat stuff lately. So sue me. If I were having health problems (apart from the usual rounds of physical therapy and such) I'd be posting about that.

The lads had their first night of freedom last night. Naturally, they used it to best effect by playing the Thundering Herd of Elephants game while I was trying to get to sleep. They eventually settled down around dawn.

When I woke up, Kismet was sleeping at my feet. Very cute.

I'm not going to call them inseparable, but they do enjoy hanging out together.

Mycah still doesn't quite know what to make of these interlopers. When I have had human visitors in the past, she was always pretty skittish at first, and would be "off her feed" for a couple of days. Same thing now — I can't believe I actually have to work at it to get her to eat. She'll get back to normal pretty quickly, I expect.

The lads have been acclimating to the house, and to Mycah's presence... as much as they can, under the door.

They are a pair of serious nose-poker-inners. Here are their first few moments of freedom:

They made a break for it today — when I went in to feed them, they bolted through the open door. Mycah was right behind me, though, and the boys were startled enough to dash across the hall into the bathroom rather than down the hall and to the rest of the house.

In my somewhat debilitated physical condition, I was unable to wrangle them into their bedroom. Fortunately, they are young and as yet not jaded by shiny things, so the laser spot was successfully employed to lure them back into their room.

I think I have names for them. A few have been floating through my head, some relating to my chosen profession, but they aren't all geeky... unless you count my having been a Korean linguist as geeky.

OK, bad example. Linguists are very nearly the biggest geeks in the Army.

A couple more days. In the meantime, they're being referred to as "buddy" and "fluffy boy." They really are quite a pair.

Mycah is a complete and utter hedonist.

But then, not too many cats could be described as altruistic.

Or many people, for that matter.

A visit to the Modulator's Friday Ark is required. Get thee hence.

On Sunday, it's the Carnival of the Cats — this week at Nikita's Place.

And for your recommended daily allowance of Cat, there's the Cat Blogosphere.

Recently, after going in with family members to get my niece a camera for her birthday, I decided it was time for me to upgrade to a new digital camera. I've had the old one for about eight years, and it was getting to be quite a bit behind the times. I hadn't really done anything for myself in quite a while, and with the amazing prices these days, it was hard to say no.

I shopped around, and decided on a Kodak. It's far more powerful a camera than the old one, at about one third the price I paid in 2000.

What I wasn't really looking for, but was pleased to find, was that the camera has the capability to capture video. Sure, it's limited to the available memory, but I'm not ever going to try to be a Spielberg.

Nevertheless, here's my first shot at making Mycah a star.

I suppose I'm going to have to get some video editing software somewhere.

Since it's Friday, you know you have to go visit the Modulator's Friday Ark.

The Carnival of the Cats is hosted this week at Artsy Catsy.