I woke up swathed in suffocating darkness. Panicking, I screamed, struggled and cursed and I was out in diffuse light, standing next to a table where green tinted, white beaked shadows backed away from a shape on a table obscured by a dark tarp.

Let’s talk about privilege. I’m a white guy living in North America. Even better, I’m able-bodied, of average height, college-educated, and middle class. I could level that up if I went to the gym more often and had Chris Hemsworth’s jawline, but basically I’ve won the jackpot. The whole Western world is geared to show me a good time, and all I did to earn it was get born.

No one knows for sure why we bond so closely with our pets. For me it was a dog, Juno. Three years after her death I still pine for her, write about her, and shed tears for her if the right song comes on at the wrong time. I will spare you the story of the best dog ever. But it seems many, if not most, of us have had one. In the dog business we call them lifetime dogs, as in once in a lifetime. They are the ones who come along, sometimes when we least expect them, and change everything.

I was up in the hills above Salt Lake City poking around in a huge stand of pink and white spreading dogbane when I took this photo. "Check out that bumble bee!" I thought, as I snapped the shot.

Here are the facts on Chick-fil-A’s harmful giving.

Friday evening, Chick-fil-A (CFA) CEO Dan Cathy issued this statement to Mike Huckabee:

In response to a widely-publicized claim that Chick-fil-A (CFA) has made important concessions to Chicago Alderman Proco Moreno regarding its harmful corporate giving policies, the company issued a press release today that aims to “clarify” its principles. This is news that many of us have been waiting for! Let’s take a look:

I woke up on the ground several miles out from the base of the beanstalk inside of a small, but oddly deep crater. “Ow ow ow ow ow,” I yammered sitting up. I hurt everywhere. I reached into my pouch of pebbles and froze. There was a crowd of people surrounding the hole with an inner layer of curiassed and harnessed guardsmen. They didn’t have the eagle pattern I associated with the Legion.

Today, only hours after a deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya, Donald Rumsfeld took the ghoulish step of blaming murdered state department Ambassador Chris Stevens for the violence done against him. Rumsfeld claimed in a tweet that “The attacks on our embassies & diplomats are a result of perceived American weakness. Mitt Romney is right to point that out.” What Mr. Romney had “pointed out,” hours earlier, was that early statements from “the Obama administration” were too apologetic and not outraged enough by the killings. In fact, as many news outlets have explained, the early statements were from the people actually in the embassies, were issued before killings, and were intended to quell some of the violence before it got out of hand.