And then my 17-year old cat, that I love dearly, got ill very quickly and I took her to an animal emergency room. That costs me $600 for the tests to figure out what was wrong with her. The emergency vet was very specific about how much each test cost, so I knew before hand. It will probably cost me another $800 to $1000 to get a final cure.

Now, I've accepted the fact that she doesn't have much longer (maybe 3 years left) and I've decided that it depends not so much upon the money but upon if what is happening is going to be torture for her to endure in "fixing" what will eventually go wrong. By-the-way she has been and is in great shape.

Maybe it sounds silly but she has been one of my best friends (she is the most loving cat I've ever had), but I'll pay the price to the extent that I can. I feel I owe her that.

On the other hand, I'm wary of vets that push a lot of unnecessary this or that when I go in. I had one before that wanted to clean the cat's teeth just about every time I brought her in and then went to another one, they looked at her teeth and said they didn't see the need.

With this thought, I worked with a marketing company about 10 years ago and the "money" thing then was to push as many expensive different services and pills (this includes denistry, by the way) that could be viably argued for in order for the vet or dentist to come up with a larger bill (how to make your vet/denist business more profitable!). So, research the problem before you make a decision as much as possible. I think MOST vets are honorable but I'm always suspicious after that job.

While I agree with Michelman's basic assumption I disagree with her timing. If she hasn't noticed there has never been a potential female presidential candidate up until now. Far more importantly, there hasn't been a progressive Democratic female Presidential Candidate up until now.

And I know this will be shat upon here but especially one who is as hard working and as intelligent as Clinton who obviously is beyond capable to do the job. Statistically, for a woman candidate to get this far and this close to the Presidency is rather improbable compared to the amount of male candidates to compete against. Yes, there will be more female candidates -- but doubtful any that make it this far in the next 20 to 40 years. Anyone who knows statistics can tell this. Do the math. Especially in our "machismo" model of politics as it stands.

I simply cannot understand how someone who calls herself a feminist cannot see the truly monumental and historic nature of electing a Democratic female President will represent for women and doesn't GET how it will change the landscape and open doors for women which up to now have been locked shut. The complete lack of even acknowledgment of this boggles the mind! That it doesn't even show up in the radar of her consideration, not a blip, tells me how much she doesn't care for women's issues or feminism.

Her "feminism" is the complacency of many so-called feminists today. So much has been done for them and accomplished that they have forgotten that it took getting women into office in the first place to break down those barriers, not simply electing men who sympathetic. She seems to have also forgotten what women had to go through and ARE STILL GOING THROUGH in order to get here as she dismisses this without a word or a thought.

Furthermore, I don't hear Michelman addressing ANY of the misogynist propaganda that has been thrown at Clinton and basically thrown at women symbollically throughout this campaign. That's NOT a concern for her? She has nothing, absolutely NOTHING to say about this? Nor does she even comment on the difficulties that a woman candidate faces in a campaign such as this or how a woman has to appear both as a man and as woman to be taken seriously. Nothing? Not a word?

All in all, if nothing else, this tells me that Michelman is more concerned with her choice as representation of individual choice. That's fine. But in order to achieve true social justice in a social cause, it takes sometimes ignoring the individual choice in order to change the status quo. As a feminist, if that's what Michelman truly is, she should know that. She's willing to let a go of an immense opportunity that will make a huge difference in the lives of women and in the future lives of women everywhere in the world for the sake of her individual choice.

What have you been doing lately? Living under a rock? And I didn't say Obama.

"Should interrogation techniques that some consider torture, such as waterboarding, be a legal option?"

"I think it's really important for the United States makes it absolutely clear that as a matter of policy we do not condone or conduct torture. I think that has to be our value because that gives us a lot of moral authority which we have lost, unfortunately.

We also have to be smarter about how we interrogate. There's a lot of evidence that you don't get accurate, good information from extreme measures. In fact, you get it by developing some kind of system that can really get people to feel that they need to give you that information. That's what we did during World War II. That's what we have done in previous times.

So, I think for both the moral and values reason and because of the lack of effectiveness that a lot of these so-called techniques have, we need to be very clear that we do not conduct torture."

From: The View, Oct. 15, 2007