Dogs and cats are not "wild animals." They've been domesticated for centuries.

What's your problem with my owning a cat?

You seem to imagine that animals are interchangeable. They aren't.

you not only brush off the economic euthanization of animals that could easily have had long, and happy lives, you claim to be unable to understand the different value people put on dogs and cats and fish, birds, etc. For the record, I've known people to spend well over $500 for the care of a parrot, probably because, like dogs and cats, they have far greater longevity than hamsters and gerbils (which live only a couple of years) and can interact on a far more personal level than fish in a tank.

No, I don't consider you a "terrible inhumane person" but I do see serious trouble ahead if you're unable to understand your girlfriend's love for her dog. If she faces a choice like the writer of this piece did, I'm not sure you will be able to offer her the support she'll need.

You obviously know very little about having pets.

Then you don't understand companionship and affection, which are the primary reasons most people keep pets.

Yes, you should probably confine your interaction with animals to watching from a safe distance.

I get lots of that from my own family too. Doesn't prevent me from also deriving affection and companionship from pets.

I grew up in a family with lots of kids and pets. The affection we all had for our cats and dogs did not detract one iota from the affection we had for each other.

I assume you don't own a car, or have cable service or a TV, or a computer, or ever go out to dinner or a movie, or buy an occasional Starbucks. I assume that every spare penny you have goes to supporting the welfare of other human beings and not to anything that could remotely be construed as a luxury.

...Right?

When did you give up your car? Your TV? Your computer? When did you give up going to movies or eating out? Surely you don't own a house, or for that matter, rent an apartment... No doubt you live an entirely austere life in handmade clothes because really, it would be an obscenity for you to be spending any money at all on anything construed as a luxury...

Bravo!

posting several wildy insulting, hyperbolic messages at a shot.

You are.

Looks like you're the one with time on your hands.

If this is your attitude, you should never have been entrusted with a pet. There are plenty of people who have room in their lives for both pets and children and who manage to keep some sense of proportion. Hope your cats find a better home -- and soon.

what irritates me about the cartoon is its naivete about the right.

There's this bland, apparently almost indestructible cluelessness among some Americans about the effectiveness of right wing propagandists. I wish I had a dime for every complacent moderate or liberal who, in the past few years, has patted me on the hand and murmured soothingly that we don't need to react to Rush Limbaugh because he's stupid, or to Ann Coulter because she's crazy, or to the Swift Boaters because they're such a bunch of liars nobody could POSSIBLY believe them, etc., etc. etc. These same hand patters always evince such pained astonishment at the results of their do-not-engage policy.

And so I'm annoyed by the New Yorker cover. The national media has spent two decades loftily ignoring the radical and highly effective agenda of the far right. As a result, the idiocies of talk radio are so deeply mainstreamed that satirical images like that cartoon are no longer really effective as political satire -- which is supposed to embarrass its targets rather than provide them with a weapon.

If what the mother did was, in fact, a form of revenge rather than an effort to keep him alive through hope, then what she did was obscene. There is nothing remotely funny about it. Why, for God's sake would you encourage the notion that taking revenge in such a vile manner is cute? Or clever? Or admirable? Or, worse, that its victim would ultimately be amused by it?

"For sheer number of innocent people exterminated under an infamous regime, Hitler is no match for Stalin."

So what?

Hitler fascinates because unlike Stalin, within just a few years, he succeeded in dragging an open, cultured and tolerant society into barbarism. He did not do this through a violent revolution. He did this by convincing the German people to throw away freedom with both hands.

That's the difference.

Anything unclear about this?

Driving someone insane with that kind of solitary confinement definitely qualifies as torture. If someone kept a dog or a cat under those kind of isolated conditions, with so little contact or mental stimulation, they'd be considered grossly inhumane and unfit to care for an animal.

Torture is inexcusable. Period.

Why does humanity have such a hard time grasping this very basic principle?

No, do you have some actual quotes FROM Cynthia McKinney that bolster your implication that her father's statements reflect her own attitudes?

Who is the other woman and how long have you been seeing her?

anonanon asks: Why assume that the LW is having an affair?

Because he's carefully avoiding going into details, and his language about his wife reeks of a man who's casting the poor woman in the role of someone who -- alas -- just didn't measure up to his wild romantic standards.

As opposed, I strongly to suspect, to someone else he has in mind -- possibly the person who's given him the week-long deadline about deciding on divorce.

Where did you get those statistics?

Since the LW describes having "reestablished trust" with is wife, and says that she is a "kind person," the situations you describe are plainly not comparable.