pinions of buddy don: happy last throes day!

twuz a mere year ago today that mr cheney eggsplaind how we wuz in the last throes, ifn ye will, of the insurgentsy. ye half to add mitt, tiz hard to git a good understandin of jes whut, eggzackly, 'last throes' is spozed to mean.

so i am takin that honorabull n verr honest man, mr cheney, at his wurd. furst, heres the eggzack quote:

The insurgency in Iraq is "in the last throes," Vice President Dick Cheney says, and he predicts that the fighting will end before the Bush administration leaves office.

so since we wuz in the last throes one year ago, whut duz that mean? ye mite member how folks gut to speckulatin on how long 'last throes' could be. rumsfeld gut out in frunt of the is-shoo rite away, witch mayhap he wonted to give hisself a nuff time to git everthang dun befor them throes cums to a end:

As part of a public relations campaign leading up to President Bush addressing the nation Tuesday night about the war in Iraq, members of the Bush administration have been trying to downplay the strength of the insurgency in Iraq.

But on Sunday US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave the first indication Sunday that some members of the Bush administration recognize that the insurgency may not be in its "last throes," as Vice President Dick Cheney said recently. Mr. Rumsfeld told Fox News Sunday: "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years."

sum of yer left wingers gut to sayin them bush folks dint know whut wuz happenin, derrick z. jackson, fer instunts:

The White House is searching for weapons of mass deletion.

On CNN's ''Larry King Live" on Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney said of the violence in Iraq, ''I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

This is after May became the deadliest month for US forces since the January elections, with 76 US military casualties.

At a press conference on Tuesday, President Bush was asked about the US casualties and the deaths of 760 Iraqis since the new Iraqi government was named April 28. A reporter asked Bush, ''Do you think that the insurgency is gaining strength and becoming more lethal?"

Bush responded, ''I think the Iraqi people dealt the insurgents a serious blow when they, when we had the elections."

Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers was asked on ABC's ''Good Morning America" about the deaths. ''Myers said, 'Well, first of all, the number of incidents is actually down 25 percent since the highs of last November, during the election period. So, overall, numbers of incidents are down. Lethality, as you mentioned, is up. . . . I think what's causing it is a realization that Iraq is marching inevitably toward democracy."

ye kin probly find plenty of addishunull speckulatin on the topick.

so how is thangs goin now, one year after we larnt we wuz in them last throes?

fer one thang, insurgent attacks is up (probly insurgents trine to git in on the ackshun before them last throes is over):

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon reported yesterday that the frequency of insurgent attacks against troops and civilians is at its highest level since American commanders began tracking such figures two years ago, an ominous sign that, despite three years of combat, the US-led coalition forces haven't significantly weakened the Iraq insurgency.

In its quarterly update to Congress, the Pentagon reported that from Feb. 11 to May 12, as the new Iraqi unity government was being established, insurgents staged an average of more than 600 attacks per week nationwide. From August 2005 to early February, when Iraqis elected a parliament, insurgent attacks averaged about 550 per week; at its lowest point, before the United States handed over sovereignty in the spring of 2004, the attacks averaged about 400 per week.

The vast majority of the attacks -- from crude bombing attempts and shootings to more sophisticated, military-style assaults and suicide attacks -- were targeted at US-led coalition military forces, but the majority of deaths have been of civilians, who are far more vulnerable to insurgent tactics.

"Overall, average weekly attacks during this `Government Transition' period were higher than any of the previous periods," the report states. "Reasons for the high level of attacks may include terrorist and insurgent attempts to exploit a perceived inability of the Iraqi government to constitute itself effectively, the rise of ethno sectarian attacks . . . and enemy efforts to derail the political process leading to a new government."

As if to underscore the grim report, a spate of violence swept Iraq yesterday. Bombs and other attacks killed 54 people, including an American soldier, according to wire reports. The deadliest bombing, in a popular market in a town about 20 miles north of Baghdad, killed at least 25 people and wounded 65.

this kinda news aint good. it could even dismay the bleevers, witch ifn ye read this, ye mite could thank it has dun alreddy happend:

President George W. Bush has likened the “war on terrorism” to the cold war against communism.

Addressing military cadets graduating from West Point, Mr Bush reaffirmed at the weekend that the US “will not rest until the promise of liberty reaches every people in every nation”.

But as the US struggles to assert itself on the international stage, the president’s most radical supporters now dismiss this as mere rhetoric, and traditional conservatives are questioning the wisdom of a democratisation strategy that has brought unpleasant consequences in the Middle East.

Administration officials speak privately of a sense of fatigue over the worsening crisis in Iraq that has drained energy from other important policy issues. Senior officials are leaving – not so unusual in a second term, but still giving the sense of a sinking ship run in some quarters by relatively inexperienced crew.

Neo-conservative commentators at the American Enterprise Institute wrote last week what amounted to an obituary of the Bush freedom doctrine.

“Bush killed his own doctrine,” they said, describing the final blow as the resumption of diplomatic relations with Libya. This betrayal of Libyan democracy activists, they said, came after the US watched Egypt abrogate elections, ignored the collapse of the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon, abandoned imprisoned Chinese dissidents and started considering a peace treaty with Stalinist North Korea.

whut kin we do? i reckun tiz time to send in more troops!

WASHINGTON, May 29 — The top American commander in Iraq has decided to move reserve troops now deployed in Kuwait into the volatile Anbar Province in western Iraq to help quell a rise in insurgent attacks there, two American officials said Monday.

Although some soldiers from the 3,500-member brigade in Kuwait have moved into Iraq in recent months, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. has decided to send in the remainder of the unit after consultations with Iraqi officials in recent days, the officials said.

The confirmation that the number of American forces in Iraq would grow came on a day of soaring violence in Baghdad. Two Britons working as members of a CBS News television crew were killed on Monday and an American correspondent for the network was critically wounded when a military patrol they were accompanying was hit by a roadside bomb. (Related Article)

The movement of the brigade comes as several senior American officials in Iraq have begun to raise doubts about whether security conditions there will permit significant troop reductions in coming months.

so thangs is lookin up? tiz hard to tell witch way up is. mayhap mr cheney will cum out n tell us how long tiz till them throes is over. personully, i aint holdin my breath.

happy last throes day!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click 'link' below.)

stumblins of buddy don: look whut i found

i wuz surfin the innernets on sundy n stumbled upon sum intrestin sites, witch ye mite wonta go stumblin round yer ownself. warnin: ifn ye try it, ye mite find it so additiv to whar ye caint hardly do nuthin else. heres sum findins:

• i lack to see folks draw, but i never eggspeckted nobidy to draw a woman frum the inside out.
• ye could git lost in thisn, speshly ifn ye git to wunder how this feller dun it!
• who is the spider, who the fly?
• as ye mite coulda dun notissd, i luv playin with wurds n larnin bout whar thay cum frum, witch this site gives ye sum clues bout that.
• do ye lack games n puzzles? the river styx?
• mayhap ye dun seen thisn, but tiz sumthin that makes ye wunder bout thangs. could it be that the smaller ye go, the closer ye git to seein the hole universe? n vice versa?
• finely, heres a site a feller i know name of road kill mite luv a'lookin at.

i hpe ye stumblin upon sum good thangs today, witch i hope this hole day is a good thang that ye skip rite thru!

ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click 'link' below.

pitchers tuck by buddy don: sum lizards

ifn ye click on inny of them pitchers, a nuther browser will open up n show ye the pitcher full size.

ifn ye wonta make a comment, click on 'link.'

random handpickd songs of buddy don: protest then n now

It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won
With the sabre and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all

protest then

1. I Aint Marching Anymore by Phil Ochs frum I Ain't Marching Anymore
2. A Hard Rain's A'Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan frum The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
3. The "Fish" Cheer/Feel Like I'm a Fixin to Die Rag by Country Joe & the Fish frum The Collected Country Joe & the Fish
4. Where Have All the Flowers Gone? by Peter, Paul and Mary frum The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary
5. Universal Soldier by Buffy Sainte-Marie frum The Best of Buffy Saint-Marie
6. Sam Stone by John Prine frum Great Days: The John Prine Anthology
7. For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfireld frum The Best of Buffalo Springfield
8. Ohio by Neil Young frum Decade
9. Lives in the Balance by Jackson Browne frum Lives in the Balance
10. We Shall Overcome by Bruce Springsteen frum We Shall Overcome
11. With God On Our Side by Bob Dylan frum The Times They Are A'Changin

protest now

1. Not Ready to Make Nice by Dixie Chicks frum Taking the Long Way
2. We Can't Make It Here by James McMurty frum Childish Things
3. American Dream by Lucinda Williams frum World Without Tears
4. Let's Impeach the President by Neil Young frum Living With War
5. Dear Mr. President by Pink (featuring the Indigo Girls) frum I'm Not Dead
6. Mosh by Eminem frum Encore (Deluxe Version)
7. Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day frum American Idiot
8. Where's All the Freedom by Merle Haggard frum Chicago Wind
9. Some Humans Ain't Human by John Prine frum Fair & Square
10. For the Duration by Bohemian Hillbillies frum Once Removed
11. World Wide Suicide by Pearl Jam frum Pearl Jam

weekend plans of buddy don: seein thangs

me n miz bd is lookin ford to this weekend on a counta thar bein three daze off. i reckon mos everbidy is doin the same thang.

we plan to git back to that bronx zoo on a counta havin so much fun thar last weekend. we wonta see sum animulls while we still kin.

we also wonta see that thar movie bout how the worl is a'gone lose sum of its gratest treshurs. the movie wuz dun by that feller them jurnlists lacks to laff at, who hes the one who ackshly won the 2000 eleckshun. we all lost whenever we let the process git corrupted, the eleckshun stole frum the voters. now thays minny a preshus wunder we lackly will see fer the last time sumtime this centry.

thisn fer instunts, witch he looks purty bored n sad but how wood you feel ifn yer worl wuz a'meltin away?



i hope ye have a great memorial day weekend. tiz a weekend fer mournin them thats dun gone. we caint do nuthin bout them, but we mite could save sum of them thats in danger ... ifn we wonted to.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: Whom Shall We Trust?

Whom Shall We Trust?

Whom shall we trust to protect and preserve
Our way of life and our constitution,
If the executive, sworn to conserve
It, uses its power for retribution?

Will it be congress to balance and check
Assertions of powers never defined
To let the president's statements reject
The clear intent of the law he just signed?

Or will the courts stand up to proclaim
That even the president must obey
The laws of the land and the very same
Ideals that he vowed never to betray?

Or will we trade cheap our sweet liberty
For the false promise of security?


ifn ye wonta make a comment, click 'link' below.

ramblins of buddy don: news, news n good news

most of the news on inny given day aint sumthin to make me happy, but today thays at lease one story that gives me a smile.

but furst, how will mr bush reack to this? ifn tiz true he bleeves in eggzawstin all diplomatick opshuns furst, he wood half to anser n talk, no?

Iran has followed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent letter to President Bush with explicit requests for direct talks on its nuclear program, according to U.S. officials, Iranian analysts and foreign diplomats.

The eagerness for talks demonstrates a profound change in Iran's political orthodoxy, emphatically erasing a taboo against contact with Washington that has both defined and confined Tehran's public foreign policy for more than a quarter-century, they said.

mayhap by now sum of them neocon kin see whar they dun been 'mugged by reality,' witch thats whut one of em claimd switched im frum librul to cunservativ:

Bolsheviks in the cause of their vaporous intentions, so bent on ignoring reality that they dismissed and suppressed all intelligence that prophesied the bloody complexities of the post-Hussein landscape, they [the neocons] conjured from nowhere and guaranteed the world an idealized postwar Iraq.

The sharpest irony was their stunning indifference to the need for civic order. When the Army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, said that the occupation would require many hundreds of thousands of troops to establish and maintain the peace, he was publicly rebuked by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the administration's foremost neocon, and quickly put out to pasture. When the first U.S. official to take charge in post-invasion-Iraq, Jay Garner, called for a massive effort to train Iraq's police and restore order, he was summarily dismissed. When looting far more widespread than anything the United States had ever known swept Iraq's cities after Hussein's fall, Don Rumsfeld shrugged and said, "Stuff happens" -- a two-word death sentence for the possibility of a livable Iraq.

And now, just as middle-class Americans fled the cities in the wake of urban disorder, so middle-class Iraqis are fleeing, too -- not just the cities but the nation. In a signally important and devastating dispatch from Baghdad that ran in last Friday's New York Times, correspondent Sabrina Tavernise reports that fully 7 percent of the country's population, and an estimated quarter of the nation's middle class, has been issued passports in the past 10 months alone. Tavernise documents the sectarian savagery that is directed at the world of Iraqi professionals -- the murders in their offices, their neighborhood stores, their children's schools, their homes -- and that has already turned a number of Baghdad's once-thriving upscale neighborhoods into ghost towns.

Slaughter is the order of the day, and the police are nowhere to be found. "I have no protection from my government," Monkath Abdul Razzaq, a middle-class Sunni who has decided to emigrate, told Tavernise. "Anyone can come into my house, take me, kill me, and throw me into the trash."

how bad is thangs in iraq? so bad ye caint tell witch side them in uniforms is really on:

Even in a country beset by murder and death, the 16th Brigade represented a new frontier.

The brigade, a 1,000-man force set up by Iraq's Ministry of Defense in early 2005, was charged with guarding a stretch of oil pipeline that ran through the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dawra. Heavily armed and lightly supervised, some members of the largely Sunni brigade transformed themselves into a death squad, cooperating with insurgents and executing government collaborators, Iraqi officials say.

"They were killing innocent people, anyone who was affiliated with the government," said Hassan Thuwaini, the director of the Iraqi Oil Ministry's protection force.
Forty-two members of the brigade were arrested in January, according to officials at the Ministry of the Interior and the police department in Dawra.

Since then, Iraqi officials say, individual gunmen have confessed to carrying out dozens of assassinations, including the killing of their own commander, Col. Mohsin Najdi, when he threatened to turn them in.

Some of the men assigned to guard the oil pipeline, the officials say, appear to have maintained links to the major Iraqi insurgent groups. For months, American and Iraqi officials have been trying to track down death squads singling out Sunnis that operated inside the Shiite-led Interior Ministry.

But the 16th Brigade was different. Unlike the others, the 16th Brigade was a Sunni outfit, accused of killing Shiites. And it was not, like the others, part of the Iraqi police or even the Interior Ministry. It was run by another Iraqi ministry altogether.

Such is the country that the new Iraqi leaders who took office Saturday are inheriting. The headlong, American-backed effort to arm tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and officers, coupled with a failure to curb a nearly equal number of militia gunmen, has created a galaxy of armed groups, each with its own loyalty and agenda, which are accelerating the country's slide into chaos.

Indeed, the 16th Brigade stands as a model for how freelance government violence has spread far beyond the ranks of the Shiite-backed police force and Interior Ministry to encompass other government ministries, private militias and people in the upper levels of the Shiite government.

Sometimes, the lines between one government force and another — and between the police and the militias — are so blurry that it is impossible to determine who the killers are.

"No one knows who is who right now," said Adil Abdul Mahdi, one of Iraq's vice presidents.

but thay wuz sum good news! thanks to a tip frum anne johnson, who shes the one that rites one of my favert blogs, the gods are bored, i found this story:

A group of Philadelphia investors will return the region's largest daily newspapers to local control, ending 36 years of corporate ownership under Knight Ridder Inc.

Philadelphia Media Holdings L.L.C. will pay $515 million in cash - most of it borrowed from banks - to Knight Ridder's successor, the McClatchy Co., and assume $47 million in pension liabilities, to take over The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, Philly.com, and related publications and Web sites.

The investors, who include some of Philadelphia's most prominent business people, were brought together by advertising and public-relations entrepreneur Brian P. Tierney, who promised they would not interfere with the news and editorial sides of the business.

"The next great era of Philadelphia journalism begins today," an ebullient Tierney told employees at the papers' Broad Street headquarters in one of several meetings. "No one thought we could do this." But, he added, "there's a real jewel here." He shuddered theatrically when publisher Joe Natoli repeated the price tag.
Tierney said the investors intended to continue publishing the Daily News, and would honor labor agreements and had no plans for job cuts.

corse, twood even be better ifn the addministrayshun wuz to deecide it wood do its job of pertecktin the constitushun n enforcin the laws:

But in any case, Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Bush have not shown the slightest interest in upholding constitutional principles or following legislative guidelines that they do not find ideologically or politically expedient.

Mr. Gonzales served as White House counsel and as attorney general during the period Mr. Bush concocted more than 750 statements indicating that the president would not obey laws he didn't like, or honor the recorded intent of those who passed them. Among the most outrageous was Mr. Bush's statement that he did not consider himself bound by a ban on torturing prisoners. Mr. Gonzales was part of the team that came up with the rationalization for torture, as well as for the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans' e-mail and phone calls.

If Mr. Gonzales has developed a respect for legislative intent or a commitment to law enforcement, he could start by using his department's power to enforce the Voting Rights Act to protect Americans, rather than challenging minority voting rights and endorsing such obviously discriminatory practices as the gerrymandering in Texas or the Georgia voter ID program. He could enforce workplace safety laws, like those so tragically unenforced at the nation's coal mines, instead of protecting polluters and gun traffickers.

i almost fergut bout a nuther cuple stories, hurricane al:

OK, so no one's going to be surprised that Al Gore is sincere and earnest, or that he's well informed about the scientific mechanisms behind global warming. But viewers of "An Inconvenient Truth," the new documentary about Gore's personal crusade to educate the world about its warmer future -- especially those of us who declined to vote for him in 2000 -- may be surprised by the man's soulfulness, sense of humor and professorial charisma.

"An Inconvenient Truth" is directed by Davis Guggenheim, a longtime TV director and the producer of HBO's fine western series "Deadwood." His film was received warmly here at Cannes, where it premiered last weekend, but the real honors went to Gore himself, who (like his former boss) is understood in much of Europe as representing a completely different America from that of the Bush-Cheney administration.

European critics have wondered whether Guggenheim's film did enough to explicate Gore the man, but this may reflect a misunderstanding of American politics in general and the former vice president in particular. Guggenheim spent many months with Gore and interviewed him repeatedly, while traveling around the world with Gore's wonky but highly effective lecture-demonstration on global warming. More than anything I've ever seen or read about Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth" brings this notoriously awkward politician into focus as a human being, both warm and guarded, intellectually curious but not especially introspective. Guggenheim gets Gore, for instance, to discuss the two central emotional events in his life: his sister's death from lung cancer, and the near-death of his son, who was run down by a car, at age 6, in 1989. In both instances, it's clear that Gore is being as emotionally open as he can, and that behind his stilted, almost clichéd language lies a universe of painful meaning. His sister's death turned him into a fervent campaigner against Big Tobacco, and his son's accident, he says, made him determined to focus his work on the damaged planet we are leaving for future generations. The fact that Gore simply isn't capable of speaking in the canned, confessional Oprah-isms of our culture -- the sort of thing that comes as second nature to Bill Clinton -- only made me like him better.

n "Global warming kills":

Think you've been hearing a lot about global warming lately? If a new climate-focused group hatched by Al Gore has its way, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

After nine months of behind-the-scenes planning and wrangling, the Alliance for Climate Protection is now nearly ready for prime time. In a recent interview, Gore said the group aims to raise big bucks for a single goal: "To move the United States past a tipping point on climate change, beyond which the majority of the people will demand of the political leaders in both parties that they compete to offer genuinely meaningful solutions to the crisis."

Practically speaking, this means launching a massive media and grass-roots education campaign trumpeting the urgency of global warming and targeted at all manner of Americans -- "NASCAR fans, churchgoers, labor union members, small-business men, engineers, hunters, sportsmen, corporate leaders, you name it," said Gore -- on the assumption that "where public opinion goes, federal policy will follow."

With a leadership team that includes Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford; Carol Browner, head of the U.S. EPA under Bill Clinton; and other heavies, the alliance could considerably pump up the volume of the green movement's barely audible public outreach on global warming. It plans to raise "tens of millions at least," Browner said. The group's official launch date is not confirmed but will likely be in the coming weeks. The search for a CEO is under way, and board meetings have already commenced.

By all accounts, the alliance was Gore's idea, but he is choosing not to take a spot on the board of directors or participate in the governance of the group -- in the interest, he said, of avoiding confusion about its political objectives.

have ye a grate day! look fer sum good news. make sum!

ifn ye wonta comment, click on 'link' n tell me bout sum good news. thankee!

pitchers tuck by buddy don: animull souls

i have a frien that lacks to argue bout flossofy n relijun. he wood argue that animulls aint gut no souls. i kin see whar that bleef wood putt ye in a hard place ifn ye wuz a bleever in evolushun, even the intelligent deesine kind, on a counta this questchun: when did god injeck souls into the furst human?

my frien is honest a nuff to add mitt he caint bleeve in a literull interpretayshun of the bible, so ye half to wunder how he splains souls in sum of the animulls n not otherns. wuz a lil bit of soul putt into the missin lank n then a full meashure of soul putt into the furst human?

i wood argue that that thay aint no livin creatchurs that dont have souls. period. sum folks ansers me back that ifn they gut souls, then why dont they ack lack humans? why aint they gut intelligents?

one anser i give is that ifn ye tuck inny humans entire intelligents n persunalty n everthang that goes with it n putt it into the body of a fish or a squirrel or a bird or a worm or a snake or a tree, twood ack jes lack a fish or a squirrel or a bird or a worm or a snake or a tree, period. the bidy that persun wuz putt into wood deetermine that.

so the fack that them animulls dont ack lack humans dont proov nuthin, lease in my pinion.

tuther anser i give is that yer animulls is higher creatchurs than humans. taint originull. this feller writ a wunderfull essay bout it name of The Lowest Animal, witch heres a quote frum it:

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.

He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven…

The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter.

I wonder why? It seems questionable taste
– The Lowest Animal essay, 1897

heres sum more pitchers of them higher animulls we seen at that bronx zoo ...

furst, sum tree kangaroos ...


thisns a white naped crane ...


this here camel wuz givin folks rides, witch the humans wuz takin money fer the servus, but them camels dint cumplain nun ...


these macaques wuz groomin each other ...


i have notissd how ever sangle fish i ever had in my aquarium has gut a differnt persunalty, witch tiz a nuther reason i bleeve fish n all livin creatchurs has gut souls ... heres a carp takin a look at the humans a'gawkin at a tankfull of big ole fish ...


ifn ye click on inny of them pitchers, a new browser should open up with full size vershuns of em.

ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.

pitchers tuck by buddy don: grate apes at the Bronx Zoo

yesterdy me n miz bd tuck the #2 train up to Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, witch frum thar tiz jes a cuple blocks to the Bronx Zoo. tiz a grate place to visit n we had us such a wunderfull time that we deecided to join the Wildlife Conservation Society, witch that means we kin go back fer free n i reckon we will wear that privlidge out.

innywho, heres sum pitchers that cum out ok. twuz hard to git good pitchers on a counta all the folks thats visitin. twuz also difficult to git good pitchers on a counta the plexiglass twixt folks n critters in lots of places. but heres a few pitchers that cum out ok.

this silverback seemed to be king of his lil worl, witch they gut em a purty big place to live in even ifn taint the wild ...



thisn heres a yungster, but not the yungest of em ...



the Bronx Zoo is famus fer thar gorillas on a counta how thar breedin so much. one of them liluns is on its mamas back, witch thisn aint but a few munths old ...



this is a differnt newborn, witch thisns a lil older, but not much ...



ye kin see how them folks n gorillas wuz bof intrested in gittin a closer look ...



ye kin git a good idee of how them grate apes has gut em a purty good place to live by these pitchers.

furstns a ebony langur takin a nap way up in a tree ...



nextuns a silver leaf monkey lookin verr cumposed ...



ifn ye click on them pitchers, twill open em up in a nuther browser in thar full size.

ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link'.

pomes of buddy don: Not A Class War

Not A Class War

It's not a class war, can't you see?
It's more of a class rout.
The rich are winning handily –
The rest have been left out.

pitcher tuck by buddy don: parkin liberty

lets hope we kin git er back sumday. heres a pitcher that splains a lot of whuts happenin rite in frunt of our eyes, liberty bein parked.

mayhap they kin brang er back out once sum of them offendin frazes has all been scraped offn er. i thank ye know the ones i mean, the ones writ by emma lazerus:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

pitchers tuck by buddy don: sum flowers grow in brooklyn

heres a few more pitchers i tuck tuther day at that brooklyn botanic garden. whut a deelite that place is. ye kin git away frum most everthang, witch after readin this mornins papers, thats jes whut i am trine to do.

ifn ye click on the pitchers ye kin see em full sized, witch thays much better thataway.

there heres a yellow shrimp plant ...




chive blossoms attrack honeybees ...




clematis name of elsa spath ...



them lilacs wuz in bloom ...



ifn ye wonta make a comment, click on 'link' below ...

pomes of buddy don: Or Would That Be Classified Too?

Would That Be Classified Too?

How many plots have we identified
How many bombings obstructed?
Were the plots local or were they worldwide?
And how many have we abducted
And jailed without true judicial review?
Or would that be classified too?

And how many terrorists have we bagged
In casting our nets so wide?
How many evil-doers have we snagged?
And were they indicted and finally tried
In courts, whether legal or kangaroo?
Or would that be classified too?

How has the Patriot act been abused
To target the presidents foes?
And how do we know if it's ever been used
To threaten those who oppose
Whatever the president wants to pursue?
Or would that be classified too?

Are our votes counted?
Our voices heard?
Do we even matter?
Or is it absurd
That we the people believe we do?
Or would that be classified too?


(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on the wurd 'link' below)

pitchers tuck by buddy don: Brooklyn Botanic Garden

yesterdy loretta n paddy tuck joined me n miz bd out at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden fer a mothers day stroll. tiz one of the most beeyootifull parks on this here earth n as ye mite jes magine, i tuck a slew of pitchers, witch heres a few fer this mornin.

ye herd bout water runnin offn a ducks back? well, ifn ye click on this pitcher to make it big, ye will see how water kin stay thar in lil droplets ...



them ducks wuz a'cortin lack most everthang in the garden ...



i wuz hopin to git sum pitchers of sacrd lotus blossoms, but they wudnt up yet, so i gut a cuple pitchers of them lily blossoms ...





twuz a beeyootifull day even tho twuz overcast n threatnin rain, but i reckun thats all jes a matter of yer perspecktiv ...



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pitchers tuck by buddy don: mother goose with her gander n goslings

happy mothers day to all them mamas out thar, witch heres a pitcher of a purty goodn:

pomes of buddy don: You Need Not Be Proved Guilty

You Need Not Be Proved Guilty

You need not be proved guilty to sustain
More troubles than you ever could expect –
For if the president should ascertain –
From phone records he claims he may collect –
That your calling patterns might contain
Suggestions that you might just be suspect –
You could lose the few rights you think remain
And be thrown into prison to protect
Your fellow citizens, for to be plain
They cannot risk the chance you might defect!

Such is the price we pay if we neglect
To keep the president's power in check.

pinions of buddy don: furst thangs furst – tax cuts fer the wealthy

lets see whut kinda problems we have facin us.

we dun let our military git tied down in iraq at a cost of $300+ billyuns, 2,400+ dead soljers n marines n sailors, 17,000+ severly injured, uncounted iraqis dead, a safe haven fer terrsts to practiss thar evil arts in iraq (n more often than not, afghanistan n pakistan n who knows whar else), we caint even tell whuther tiz a civil war n we know taint close to bein over on a counta caint nobidy splain how we kin git out of it.

we dun run up the deficit lack nobidys bizness n growd our gummint fastern inny time since lbj.

we gut gas at $3 a gallon in all too minny places n caint do nuthin bout it cept play pall ticks.

we gut immigrunts streamin over the border n the best plan i herd on ackshly dealin with it is, 'larn spanish.'

we gut a medicare seckshun d plan that caint nobidy understand n makes certain that them phramaceuticull cumpnies git freedum frum havin to negotiate bulk deals (whut a waste that wood be! twood save money fer reglar folks at the eggspents of them big cumpnies, and ye know that caint be rite!)

i am shore ye kin find sum other thangs to wurry bout, most of em cawzed by the acks of the presdint n them Rubberstamplicans.

so whut ye a'gone do? eggstend the tax cut we dun give to the richest folks amung us, even ifn it means pushin the debt ceilin up agin! twill be purt near $10 trillion ifn thangs goes the way them publicans wont em to.

hows that a'gone wurk out fer reglar folks them that dont have money left over to invest in stocks n git a brake on the profits n dividend taxes?

Middle-income households would receive an average tax cut of $20 from the agreement, according to the joint Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, while 0.02 percent of households with incomes over $1 million would receive average tax cuts of $42,000.

wunder how long twood take a marrd cuple wurkin 50 weeks a year at double the minimum wage to make that $42,000 avridge?

lemme try the math:

• hours wurked in a week by one person = 40
• hours wurked in a week by two persons = (40 * 2) = 80
• pre-tax money earned by two persons wurkin 40 hour weeks at double minimum wage = $11 * (40 * 2) = $880
• pretax money earned in a year of 50 weeks (two weeks off fer vacation n sick time n such) = $880 * 50 = $44,000!

looks lack them hard wurkin folks who wurks 50 weeks at double minimum wage wood cum out with a $2,000 pre-tax surplus over the averidge tax cut give to them makin over $1 millyun a year.

whut could be fairer than that? shorely thay aint no wurkin cuples who couldnt pay thar morgidge n buy food n git health keer n pay fer thar insurants n make thar car payment n have kids n live normal lives with a huge pre-tax paycheck lack that, rite?

the thang bout this tax cut is how it makes it easier fer rich folks to make money offn the stock market, witch that makes it look lack the economy is good even ifn thays pore folks that caint git by wurking full time at duble minimum wage.

could that be the real reason the economy looks good to them thats gut but is terrbull fer them that aint gut nuthin but a job payin duble minimum wage??

corse, thay aint no chants in hell that them rich folks wood reinvest thar money in foreign ventchurs? in offshorin jobs to india n china, rite?

shorely they wood feel cumpelld to invest thar money in the cuntry that give em the grate tax cut, rite?

shorely they woodnt move thar cumpnys headquarters off to bermuda or the cayman islands sos they could git outta payin corprutt taxes, rite?

shorely they wood be too patriotick to do inny of them kinda thangs that makes it jes that much harder to find jobs that pays duble the minimum wage, rite?

shorely they wood wonta repay the cuntry that putt tax cuts ahead of other lil problems in the cuntry lack immigrashun or health keer or the war in iraq, rite?

shorely they wood. ye kin take it to the bank, rite?

pitchers tuck by buddy don: Even More Hoboken Spring Arts and Music Festival – beeyootifull people

i wonted to rite bout sumthin that makes me angry -- nuther tax cut fer the richest folks -- but i need to calm down a lil furst. so with that in mind, heres six pitchers of sum of the beeyootifull people that wuz at the Hoboken Spring Arts and Music Festival.

pitchers tuck by buddy don: More Hoboken Spring Arts and Music Festival

yesterdy i posted sum pitchers of Red Molly, a fantastick group that innertaind at the Hoboken Spring Arts and Music Festival for 2006. thay wuz much moren jes Red Molly, tho, so heres sum more pitchers frum that near purrfeck day.

furst, thay wuz lodes of food. these three pitchers give ye a lil idee, but thay wuz minny more ...






corse, ye caint hardly have a festivull this time of year without sum faeries fairies n dragons showin up ...






natcherly ye speck thar to be sum artists, witch i cawt a cuple of em a'wurkin ...



then thay wuz a acktin cumpny name of Hudson Theatre Ensemble, witch they wuz happy to have thar pitcher tuck ...




this yung lady name of Susanne Newman proovd how deesignin thangs is also art ...


tiz obveeus that ye gut to have yer clowns, witch we gut us a local one thats a lil on the famus side name of Polka Dot ...


the crowd wuz the mane attackshun tho n whut a fine bunch of folks twuz ...

pitchers tuck by buddy don: Hoboken Spring Arts and Music Festival

yesterdy they had em a sprang arts n musick festivull in hoboken, new jersey, witch me n miz bd wuz lucky a nuff to go (they have a nuthern in the fall). ye couldnt git no better weather than we had n one result wuz how washington street wuz jammed with folks.

one of the mane attackshuns, lease fer me, wuz Red Molly, witch ye mite know how i am good friens with red molly of the blue page special.

i tuck the camera n gut sum good pitchers, witch the shame is ye caint here the fine musick Red Molly wuz playin. heres sum pitchers:




Laurie MacAllister (vocals, banjo, guitar)


Abbie Gardner (vocals, dobro, guitar)


Carolann Solebello (vocals, guitar, bass, mandolin)


as ye kin see, they had em quite a crowd n kep em in the palms of thar hands.



i will cover more of the festivull in the mornin, but i gut to git now sos i wont be late fer wurk.