Thank you!

Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo "seed bombing" runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts.

Part beautification, part eco-activism, part social outlet, the activity has been fueled by Internet gardening blogs and sites such as GuerrillaGardening.org, where before-and-after photos of the latest "troop digs" inspire 45,000 visitors a month to make derelict soil bloom.

Link to original article here.

Hillary Clinton makes my soul ache.  Not just for the damage she is doing to the party and to the country, not just for her incessant lies, not just for her slimy rhetoric, and not just for the hundred other assorted reasons she has thrown into the aether.  No, Hillary makes me spitting mad because she changed this fan into a despiser and has me questioning whether the anti-Clinton wingnuts had it right all along.

I 've tried to stop listening to her, but she does have an amazing talent for spewing lies with the aura of truth.  Pure venom that you know intuitively to be false yet can't quite articulate how and why.  These are the lies that rattle in my brain like a penny in a tin can.

The latest and greatest is that Hillary lost this primary because she is a woman.  That a grand misogynistic conspiracy has coalesced to elect a black man to the presidency rather than have to deal with having her delicate lace bras line-drying in the Oval Office. 

Without doubt, I am hard-wired to take seriously any and all accusations of discrimination.  So no matter how ridiculous is may be to bemoan Obama's great fortune in being a man of color, I am unable to categorically dismiss her comments.  After all, even today Patriarchy continues to be a virtually foundation our society.  We can't always see it, but it is omnipresent and this white male ought have no business arguing.

Well, big thanks to AmericaBlog's newest commentator for calling hogwash on something that has been irking me for weeks:

Just because Clinton's a woman does not engender blind allegiance. I don't think her campaign is about girl power. It hasn't been from the beginning. It sure isn't about that now. Some women are passionate about her campaign, and I won't deny she has done well amongst some female voters. But I think her campaign has done more to downplay her gender in an effort to prove she's strong enough to be Commander-in-Chief than emphasize it as an asset.

Give me an example [of Clinton being a victim of sexism in this campaign]. Like I said, I can't think of any time that Clinton's being female has come up in conversation as a reason to vote against her. Where's this sexism taking place? Not on TV. Not online where I read and communicate. Point it out. I'll be happy to speak up against it.

...

The women I admire are honest and trustworthy and powerful because they honor their promises and play by the rules and still come out on top. I was all for a female President until Clinton started playing dirty. Female President? Yes. This female? Not so much.

This campaign is not - nor has it ever been - primarily about women. If it were, I would have been on board with bells on. To say that's why Clinton hangs on - for all those suppressed victims of sexism who need her now more than ever - is a crock. This campaign is about a woman. One woman. Hillary Clinton.

Check out the rest of her post here.

Once again, McSame is wrong wrong wrong on every count.  Why does the MSM continue to view this joker as some kind of foreign policy joker? 

Speaking about Iraq at a townhall event on Thursday evening in Greensdale, Wisconsin, Sen. John McCain declared, "I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's  succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr city are quiet and it's long and it's hard and it's tough and there will be setbacks..." (Video is below.)

McCain was wrong on two points. First, U.S. forces have not returned to pre-surge levels. Before the surge, there were 130,000 troops in Iraq; even if the scheduled troop reductions are carried out as planned, there will still be 140,000 troops in Iraq in August.

Moreover, McCain's claim that Mosul is "quiet" was disproved earlier today in grim fashion. Three suicide bombings -- two in Mosul and another in a surrounding town -- left 30 Iraqis dead and more than two dozen injured, according to press reports.

Clearly, McCain's various congressional trips to Iraq haven't made him infallible on the issue.

Sigh.  Military service, time in a POW camp (making 32 propaganda videos for the enemy) does not make one an expert on foreign policy any more than strumming a guitar in Folsom turned Johnny Cash into Jeffrey Dahmer.  Apparently, neither does a prolonged stretch of security briefings or strolling around Bhagdad in a flack jacket.

Check out the video here.

Welcome to the Northern Plains of Mars:

With Newtonian inevitability, NASA's Phoenix lander plunged into the martian atmosphere today at 12,700 mph and then used atmospheric friction, a large parachute and finally, 12 individuallly controlled rocket engines to complete an automated landing near the red planet's northern polar cap. The successful touchdown at 7:53 p.m. marked a dramatic reversal of fortune for NASA, which suffered a devastating failure the last time the agency attempted a rocket-powered descent to Mars nine years ago.